Normality is Home

[view from veranda of Jenda Cafe in Pakse, 9/23/23]

This morning, Jenda Cafe is blessedly silent, so I’m sitting there again. This is a convenient pit stop on my way to Sacombank, short for Saigon Commercial Bank. Money I make on SubStack, I collect there. At Sacom, there are Vietnamese speaking tellers I can deal with, so I’m at home there.

Though officially named Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon is still Saigon, because its name has been linked to songs, novels, poems and too many memories. “Saigon” resonates. Plus, Saigonese resented having the name of their hometown changed through a decree imposed by outsiders. There was no referendum. After its tanks had rumbled in, Hanoi erased Saigon’s name.

When I told Vietnamese friends I had gotten shit from Americans for calling Saigon Saigon, they were astounded.

“Had these Americans been to Vietnam?”

“No.”

“So why do they talk like that?”

“Because they’re Americans!” I laughed.

With its cluster of sweet, soothing and bitter memories, home is nearly synonymous with normality, so wartime Saigon was normal for me, until I moved away. Barefoot on sidewalks, I played soccer.

Eventually, even Philly became normal, but not quite. My first time in Kensington, I thought the people weirdly ugly, and this was decades before fentanyl and tranc. Becoming so used to Kensington, I would take the L there to booze and blather at Jack’s or Bentley’s Place.

Swallowing whatever just to get by, a person should know there’s something not quite right about his deformed home. To make life easier, most just stifle all doubts and questions. Pity any American born after 9/11 or, worse, after the woke revolution. By six-years-old, he may beg to be castrated.

Those who experienced the world before 9/11 should know it has changed for the worse. This is especially true after the Covid hysteria. Incredibly, there are millions who are perfectly fine with the New Normal. Masked and boostered nearly to death, many demand the rest of us join their death cult.

I prefer Laos’ normality to the US’. Each morning, Laos patiently wait on sidewalks to give alms to monks. When it rains, they sit under umbrellas. Even small children do this without complaining. Everyone smiles often. From afar, monks in orange robes under umbrellas would approach. I saw one pulling a shopping cart. Having endured American bombs, what’s a little monsoon to a Lao?

Inside Jenda, I sip ginger tea. Near death, I finally learn how to be kind to my sore bored cadaver. I hope it’s not too late. Just now, a man under 30 asked if I was a poet. Never before had any stranger say that. Having eaten saner and less for three months, I’ve lost much weight, so resemble some ascetic monk. That’s close enough to his idea of a poet.

We’re in the prehistory of poetry, I’ve suggested. Stumbling over each other, we scratch bullshit onto cave walls. About to end, the world longs for a genuine poem, still millennia away. The authentic has become an impossible concept.

From Quang Nam, the young man comes to Laos for work regularly. Briefly, we chatter about Biden’s recent visit to Hanoi, where he made so little sense, his entourage had to cut him off. With jazz suddenly turned on, this global, historic clown wandered off.

Biden on 9/23/23, “Two of the greatest artists of our time, representing the groundbreaking legacy of hip hop in America. LL J Cool J, uh… By the way, that boy, uh, that man’s got bigger biceps than my thighs.”

After lauding a black person as among the “greatest artists,” Biden had nothing to say about his artistry, but swooned over how huge was one part of his anatomy, and he’s only a boy, no less. Wait until LL J Cool J reaches full length.

Future generations will be aghast at all the vapid clowns leading Western “democracies.” Just as farcical are the morons who voted for any of them.

Landing in Ottawa, Zelensky was embraced by Trudeau. With every other Canadian politician, they honored, with much emotion, a 98-year-old Nazi. Of course, Zelensky already has thousands of Neo-Nazis fighting for him in the Azov Brigade, for his intention, all along, was to get as many Slavs massacred as possible. Even with Ukraine soaked in blood, he’s not interested in negotiating for peace. Plus, he must keep this racket going, for it pays much better than his previous gig as an obscene fool on TV.

The biggest joker, though, is Yaroslav Hunka. He can’t be much of a Nazi if he’s backing a cynical Jew who’s wrecking his homeland.

Whatever you may say against Putin and Xi, at least they have gravitas. When they speak, people pay attention, except, of course, those who prefer catch phrases, slogans and sophomoric name calling.

With her nation sabotaged by the USA, Annalena Baerbock decided to pick a fight with China, Germany’s biggest trading partner. Already deprived of Russian natural gas and much else, it will deindustrialize even faster. Those who obey and collude with the USA will sink with it.

With a third of Americans ages 18-34 living with their parents, tent cities sprouting everywhere and the crazed homeless crapping on sidewalks or assaulting strangers, Biden could still declare on 9/3/23, “When I came to office, this nation was flat on its back. I knew what to do. I vaccinated the nation and rebuilt the economy!”

Like Trump, Biden brags about pushing the genocidal Jewjabs, and why not, idiots don’t mind paying $190.99 for the latest booster. With much worse to come, America is already flat on her face.

Halfway through this article, a laughing woman bounded into Jenda. She had gold lettering on her black shirt, “Rainbow / Rainy Days.” Sitting with four men, she kept laughing. So gay this morning, she spoke louder than anyone else. There’s a Vietnamese saying, “He laughs for three months, no one laughs for three years.”

So be it. Though no one laughs for three years, Laos laugh often enough, and so do Thais, Cambodians and Vietnamese. This is an easy going, laughing corner of the world.

Since my interview with Kevin Barrett was finally up at Unz, I checked in on the comments. Unsurprisingly, almost none deals with anything said by me or Kevin. Most graciously, Catdompanj characterizes me as a bug and cat kabob eating pussy living in a $4 a day hut. Since the $4 detail is true of my accommodation in Don Det, +5 months ago, this Angry White Pussy has stalked me onto SubStack! Kevin Barrett, Catdompanj calls a hack and Linh Dinh sucker. As for Unz, Catdompanj is incredulous he has let Barrett feature me. Since Barret is a hack anyway, he shouldn’t be on such a fine site!

Race baiting Jews have gotten Americans across the political spectrum frothing at the mouth. For seven years, I unwittingly was the moustache and trigger for Unz’ Angry White Pussy Pride Parade! Outdoing even the worst Jews and blacks, these cowering nitwits are playing the race card nonstop. To be civilized is to be composed. Incontinent, they shoot shit in full view of the world.

Consider this comment by Sulu:

I can understand why governments want to have the power of censorship. They must have it to keep the unwashed masses ignorant of their nefarious plans. But someone like Linh wants it so he can feel the almost Godlike power of hitting a button and divesting himself of the trouble of answering some one who has posted a criticism of him, valid or not. The guy is nothing more than a little Dink fuck with a word processor and a narcissistic personality. He is a total coward for not having the balls to defend the drivel he writes. He must have been able to do bitch level whining in order to persuade Unz to let him initially censor his critics. With any luck he will visit a country that America is getting ready to bomb and the little fucker will get what he should have gotten back in the 60’s in Nam.

Never in history must sane, civilized men have to deal with triple masked clowns who called themselves Catdompanj, Sulu or Profnasty, etc. Here, Sulu takes it for granted America will go on bombing countries, so it’s not just me he hates, but what do you expect from a population that think this Jewish joke hilarious, “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning”?

An Andrew Anglin fan mocks me for coining “Jewjab,” but citing this, he only dares to spell it as “hewjab.” Unable to help themselves, these commenters reveal the impotent rage which led me to brand them, and them only, as Angry White Pussies.

Since readers’ comments flesh out our understanding of a place in time, I’ve incorporated them into my articles. Gigolo Joe, Catdompanj and Sulu, etc., help define America in 2023.

Suddenly, they turned on some crappy American music, so I had to walk a mile to Amor Fati. It’s also the next day, by the way. I didn’t write the above in one shot.

Waking up this morning, I thought I should clarify what I meant by samsara in my last article. Three years after death, the Bodhidharma returned to this life in the same body, so he rejected, I posit, being recycled into the next realm.

Moreover, he decided to walk home after a life of wandering. Inside his coffin, the Bodhidharma longed to recapture, somewhat, his oldest sensations. He missed his earliest immersion in normality.

To Buddhists, samsara has six posthumous realms: gods, human, demi-god, animal, hungry ghost and hell, all temporary. Since we have to use this realm as referent, all hypothetical ones are variations of our life on earth, so as a “god” in samsara, you don’t have to work your ass off, just to end up in some freezing mobile home or under a bridge. As a “hungry ghost,” thus disembodied, you’ll still have a tiny mouth with a vast stomach. Insatiable appetite is hell. Seeing that everything harked back to this life, the Bodhidharma said, “Fuck it, I’m going home.”

Oh, how I suffer! Flies are an unavoidable plague, menace, curse and horror of sitting outside at Amor Fati. Most reluctantly, I have migrated into its air-conditioned confines. Jazz is playing.

Listen, man, if I want to hear Django Reinhardt, McCoy Tyner or Art Pepper, I’ll turn on each masterful solo myself, but not more than a few times while here on earth, lest I trivialize their art. Reincarnated as a cockroach, I’ll listen to them some more.

The Farnese Bull, I admired but once, in Naples. Its most astounding detail is the bull’s asshole, for it’s sculpted with tremendous love, like everything else on that hard-to-fathom masterpiece.

All of life is sacred, this earth is sacred and normality is home.

[Pakse, 9/27/23]

[Pakse, 9/26/27]

[Pakse, 9/27/23]

[Pakse, 9/26/23]