Part I cont.

It's Sunday night. I got drunk last night, too drunk on Baileys, of all things.

What kinda middle path is this?

I was born. That is one certainty.

My mom is half French, so that makes me a quarter French and three quarters Vietnamese and one hundred percent American. A kennel full of mongrels the US is. You gotta love that. Huddled masses. I work with mice. They huddle in masses to keep warm in their plastic cage once I remove them from their main facility to my own lab. Now I am mixing my metaphors? Which animal should I use to describe Americans then? Dogs or mice?

Doesn't matter. When I was born the white guy in me was busy killing the yellow guy in me. I never really experienced the war and left the country bound for USA when I was about 6 years old. I often view myself straddling two worlds. Western world and Asian world. Christ vs. Buddhism. Born into a war of worlds? What about that other religion, Islam? Oh, and Hinduism?
Naw, too many sects for me.

I live in Germany now. They believe in Christ. There's a church in every village, like the Mexican suburb of Canoga Park where I grew up. I visited Rome, Italy and the Vatican. They surely believe in Christ there. And yet they were busy killing each other.

How many churches in Middle America? How many pagodas in Tokyo/Edo. They killed a bunch of Chineses. The Chinese killed a bunch of some other people and so on and so on, like a perverted Tao or Dharma? Why am I so wrapped up in all this killing. White on white, yellow on yellow, black on black before the slave barges from old White man Europe came to break up the fights with chains. We arrive at a kaleidescope of killing between colors and within color.

But back to my story. I was born a poor black child... no wait. That story won't win the Best Cinematography Award.

I was born into a war. It didn't directly affect me but it must have shape me in some way. My family had to uproot, immigrate, and learn a new language/culture. There wasn't any Vietnamese restaurants or supermarkets when my family came to S. California. Maybe that's why I am wrapped up in killing, because I was born into a big mess of killing. And for no good reason when I look back In Retrospect. Oops, sorry for the tangent. mea culpa.

When the whole shit house collapse in Vietnam my family decided to leave. We were Catholic and would probably be targeted by the communist once they took over the country. (how many of my father's friends/students returned from re-education camps cripple men?). I remember a lot of waiting at airbases. And hearing the stories of our "escape" in the early years in America. How my dad and uncle almost did not make it with us. And the secret money belt my grandmother wore. We flew out in an Army? C4? cargo plane (not sure if it was the Army and whether the airplane was a C4), stopped briefly in Guam and then to sunny ... no not California yet. We stayed on a military base somewhere in the middle... which US state I can't remember, until we were all naturalized. I think our SSN are all very close together. My sister's SSN are probably close to mine. I should ask them to contribute their stories.

There we were, the extended family living in the US. Next stop, sunny southern California. We stayed with "foster" families for about 6 months until the adults found jobs and apartments to move us into. Those apartments would be in Tarzana, of the San Fernando Valley.

NExt time... Valley life, the formative years.