[Vung Tau, 2/26/25]
Even professional comedians repeat jokes. You must forgive me, then, for retelling this lame one. I will open a travel agency where each intrepid and spendthrift voyager is locked inside a plywood box, preferably within feet of his home. Paying, say, just $599 for seven days and six nights, all inclusive, he’ll get to peer through generous holes at his own neighborhood 24 hours a day.
Since no one does exactly what he preaches, I’m only traveling like that in small doses. This morning, I confined myself to a plastic chair for two hours at an alley cafe where nothing exciting ever happens. Again, I sat next to a man in dirty pants with two toes sticking out of his right sock. With less resentful or mindless pressure, his left one was merely threadbare. He paused playing a video game just long enough to ask why I had come and where I lived? With my 750-page Selected Stories of Nam Cao and a lurid shirt radiating universal discomfort, I didn’t exactly fit in.