Caged Beasts Driven Insane

[Pakse, Laos on 6/5/23]

Sherwood Anderson, “For a time he was lonely and wrote to Alice almost every day. Then he was caught up by the life of the city; he began to make friends and found new interests in life.”

Why quote a rather plain passage about a generic situation? Although a cliche by now, there is much tragedy behind it. Publishing Winesburg, Ohio in 1919, Anderson depicted not just a society, but the entire world, destined for social chaos and disaster. He himself lived it.

Uprooted, he was launched into a world of interchangeable strangers, with beautiful faces and smiles everywhere, and instant friends that could be discarded at will. With so many possibilities behind so many doors, of course Alice, his hometown sweetheart whom he had made loved to just once, would fade away.

Left behind, faithful and immobile, Alice was neither modern nor progressive. Even after Ned had stopped writing her, she still believed he would return. To prepare for this, Alice saved so they could even travel together:

“Ned always liked to travel about,” she thought. “I’ll give him the chance. Some day when we are married and I can save both his money and my own, we will be rich. Then we can travel together all over the world.”

Even now, that’s a common trajectory for more traditional, stable minded people. You get married, work, save then roam a bit after your kids are grown, so just before you’re dead. Boozing on a cruise ship, you can hop off every so often to buy trinkets and snap selfies, then get back onboard for more gin and tonic. Tonight, you’ll give béarnaise sauce a try, but what the hell is a bang bang bonsai roll?! Does it come with a condom? You still have it.

Ned was a newspaperman, so a spinner, if not liar, but someone must frame and compose the news, and history books, too. Without such professionals and factcheckers, we’d be awash in conspiracy theories that may even allege perfectly safe and effective Jewjabs mass murder! If you have a heart attack, stroke or fast acting cancer immediately after being Jewjabbed, it must be long Covid! That’s what you get for not getting boostered sooner!

Just before Ned moved to Cleveland for his career, Alice wanted to come and live with him outside marriage, so she’s not entirely traditional, “I do not want to harness you to a needless expense that will prevent your making progress. Don’t marry me now. We will get along without that and we can be together. Even though we live in the same house no one will say anything. In the city we will be unknown and people will pay no attention to us.”

Anonymity in the city allows this. You can live next to a cannibal for years without knowledge or care. Since privacy is sacred, everyone should just mind his own business. Seeing a naked and bleeding 14-year-old stumbling around outside, two Milwaukee women did call the cops in 1991, only to have them return the incoherent and terrified Laotian boy to Jeffrey Dahmer. It’s just a private quarrel between gay lovers, explained this cannibal. Cops didn’t bother to check his bedroom, where there was a fresh corpse. Konerak Sinthasomphone was next.

A century later, rootless urban culture has invaded suburbs and small towns, so hardly anyone is at home anywhere. Pushing this even further, the cellphone has made much of life unreal. It’s a struggle just to see who’s in front of you.

In the US, city life also implies living among blacks and dealing with black crime. Disseminated through the media, this culture has spawn rapping whiggers in sagging pants in the remotest hamlets. If written today, the dialogs in Winesburg, Ohio must be, at least partially, in Ebonics. No American boy would want to be Wally Beaver instead of Lil Wayne, or Gomer Pyle instead of Snoop Dogg.

From our perspective, Alice’s small town ennui and deadend may appear quaint even:

In the dry goods store weeks ran into months and months into years as Alice waited and dreamed of her lover’s return. Her employer, a grey old man with false teeth and a thin grey mustache that drooped down over his mouth, was not given to conversation, and sometimes, on rainy days and in the winter when a storm raged in Main Street, long hours passed when no customers came in. Alice arranged and rearranged the stock.

As foci and magnets for all human achievements, cities were inevitable, and even the least among them are marvelous, but our divorce from nature as enabled by cities has become life negating. Confined and fed garbage, we spend each free moment playing video games, half laughing at TikTok shorts or masturbating. Since this can’t go on, it won’t.

Alice’s last name is Hindman, so she’s left behind. Stuck between here and there, Alice went mad one night. Stripping, she ran outside into the rain to embrace the first warm body, but this man was old and deaf, so nothing happened. Regaining her senses, she “crawled on hands and knees through the grass to the house.” Having no outlet, the beast inside Alice had to break out, but at least she didn’t hurt herself or anybody.

After a year in Vung Tau, I’ve seen just one person reading a real book. About 30-years-old, she was sitting at VFB with Nam Cao’s complete short stories. Had he not been executed by the French in 1951, Nam Cao would have written more than 200 pages, but his “Chí Phèo” alone ensures his immortality. Of course I’m joking. Nothing human lasts more than a blink.

Turning to poet Nguyễn Quốc Chánh, I said, “This is not a real person! She’s just a robot placed here by the owner.”

Naked and wordless, we will crawl on hands and knees through burnt cities.

[Saint Paul, Minnesota on 8/20/14]

[Si Ma Cai, Vietnam on 2/18/20]

[Vung Tau, 2/3/24]

[Vung Tau, 12/7/23]