admittedly, i haven’t done much to counter the sickness, neither rest nor doctor’s visit. but whaddya expect? i got sick on the 4th of july, as far as i know, the biggest holiday in the city. dc loves the 4th like nyc loves halloween. so if i DIDNT come out, it would’ve been the type of shame that i couldn’t look down.

eh, shit like this is what they made sudafed for.

i have hella ish that i need to write about, considering i missed two packed days. but because i will have a 16 hour bus ride, and at least two hours worth of battery life, i’ll make a second update about the past two days and about dc in general tomorrow morning… written on the bus.

that's where i wanta live!

some photos, no matter how touristy, are obligatory

so on the 3rd, i did the museum thing… the freer gallery and the national gallery east wing with my homeboy camden, as well as a more general walking tour of downtown dc. i’d like to publicly thank camden again for taking me around and showing me the sites. what a great guide to the city! it reaffirms my belief that you really do need locals in whatever place you go.

as per usual, i was amazed at the beauty that is art. i fucking love the national gallery. it is AWERSOME sauce. admittedly, the east building is a bit bloody tiny, but getting to see the Nude Woman Standing by Picasso was… life changing. it really is an amazing piece of work, as are so many works in the national gallery.

who's that sexy bum?(and yes, i changed clothes)

what the hell is it with manet and horses?

the walls are closing in!

nudie!

i REALLY wanted to go to the national archives to see the constitution and the declaration of independence, but the line was too ridiculous.

even then, i had an awesome time being a tourist in DC.

real coney island dog? i think not.

but even more than that, even more than the fact that i’m sick, i keep thinking about meeting the hare krishna boys. they travel from state to state, setting up this festival of india fair grounds thing. it was ridiculo random meeting them, as me and cam were randomly resting in front of one of their tents when i found out some of them played a little bit of submission wrestling. me being me, i asked them what affiliation they were with and somehow ended up wrestling one of ‘em.

taking the back and looking for an armbar

god i am a midget

big dude by the name of hari gave me one hell of a fight for my money, ’specially considering i had trained for so much longer than he had.

but afterwards, all the hare krishna folks took me, which is weird, introducing themselves, sharing their food and beverage. honestly, in trading stories and experiences with them, it struck me how much i depend upon the kindness of strangers on this trip. the hare krishna boys, among others have really fundamentally renewed my faith in humanity. there is such an open generosity of spirit in the human character and i feel like that feeling was definitely embodied by the hare krishna boys.

the boys + ninja dude

(one of the guys in the above picture is a ninja. i mean dead serious. completely able to blend in the background. i’ll talk about him and natural talents some other time. dude scared the bejesus out of me)

it’s trippy… life is such a game of inches, full of weird circumstances. my life is especially so. random things happen, random things come together. or don’t. but thas my life. and i’m set adrift on this river of circumstance that reaffirms my idea that if there is a god or some great power guiding the paths of our lives… he/she/it has one hell of a sense of human. or i might just be a cosmic joke. either way.

they stole my haircut!

that night, after laundry of course, was artmoatic, this massive art festival/warehouse party, where i got to meet up with some of the folks i met at hay qua. whoa, that was dope, even if i hardly spent any amount of time there. and even if my first purchase was a glass of wine. but hey. it’s me.

i hella enjoyed the day. more discussion about it later, as well as about more philosophical things i’ve been thinking about, as well as my fourth of july hijinks. which was minddblowingly awersome sauce. and more about the hare krishna folks, of course.

plus, i’ll talk about meeting up with one of my friends in highschool, using that as a springboard for discussion of how people change or don’t change over time. and about wingmanning for her ditzy arse. i am awesome.

oh… and if you’re reading, please comment. it’s too often that i can feel just the tiny bit alone. or that this blog is a scream into the ether.

oh and if ANYONE knows ANYONE in nashville tenn, please connect us.

life is like a cold… more often than not you’re floating on a benadryl haze… and when you ARE cognizant, it mostly sucks.

there’s a coupla things i wanted to discuss, ‘specially since i’m suffering from insomnia. it’s the perfect time to address them.

first off, my decision to hitchhike at least part of my route. obviously there’s the money issue, but it’s more than that. one of the big reasons that i set out on doing this whole thing was because i really am fascinated with the country and want to see it, want to experience it, meeting people, hearing their stories, seeing strange sights… and hey, what better way than hitchhiking? i’m not going to hitchhike the whole thing because i’m depending on a lot of kindly people to house me and wanta keep to some sort of schedule for them, but when it’s hostels or national parks or bus stations that i’m sleeping in, why not hitchhike?

sometimes i feel like this country is divided into a bunch of smaller countries. in some ways that was the entire point in the federal system. but (and this sounds cheesy as hell) we are all ostensibly tied together, one people. as such, i want to experience that in a really fundamental way.

that and i figure i’ll get better food by hitchhiking than by traveling by bus.

“i know you’re wise beyond your years, but do you ever get the fear / that your perfect verse’s just a lie, you tell yourself to get by.” – postal service –clark gable

secondly, more grandiosely, whatever that means, i wanted to discuss why i write this. primarily, (and yes, i know i’m doing lots of mini-lists tonight) it’s an exploration, a process through which i get down thoughts and allow myself to explore them in a format that requires at least some modicum of analysis. on another level, it’s a practice of writing, of putting together sentences, even if they aren’t poetry or academic work. it’s a practice that keeps my mind sharp and my writing skills eloquent (or so i’d like to think). and of course, on some level, like all writing, it’s masturbatory. the process of petty immortalisation, especially in this paradoxically ephemeral and eternal medium. and hell, it is fundamentally pretentious to feel that your writing has a value that others can recognize, that others would wish to engage with, that you have some part of the truth in you, that your overuse of the word ‘that’ is a stylistic quirk rather than the failings of an insufficiently erudite mind.

in the end though… what matters is that this gives me some satisfaction to do. it allows me to examine parts of myself that too often lie unexamined. and until the moment i stop gaining utility from the blog i’ll keep writing and hope that you’ll keep reading.

in keeping with that… i just wanted to tell all of you to stay tuned to this page for updates on my odd-yssey. i’m going to be posting a rough schedule of where i’ll be and when. also, i’m going to try to update the blog everyday or whenever i get internet access in order to a) keep you all assured that i am happily alive and b) so that i can have a thorough journal of my experiences.

but once again i am putting the call out, if i am goin to be anywhere near your neck of the woods, throw me an email or sommat and i will meet up with you. if you have a couch or a spare room or know someone who does or know a nearby hostel, get at me. more than that, i just want to see you, see new faces in new places and experience the diversity that a change in geography can bring.

life is the momentary blip of light in the dark expanse of eternity.

honestly, i wish i could sing, not only for karaoke (which always is a consideration), but so that i could sing songs like steve earle and mcgowan and tom watts do. goddamn. ballads and stories about real folks, truth that touches the heart.

*edit and aside* if any of yall know where i can find vietnamese folk, like old tyme vietnamese ballads, please send ‘em my way. ive heard some from my dad and some stuff that was on paris by night and such, but i need to hear more. in all seriousness, most vietnamese pop drives me nuts. too disco-ey… but i want to get in touch with those old ballady folksy roots that ive known very little.

i know i’ve been remiss with posting, my only excuse is that i was working on my thesis and finishing up college. congrats to me on graduating.

but along with that comes big big decisions about the trajectory of my life, my vision for the future and my development as a human being, a citizen and an artist.

so what else to do but take an odd-yssey ‘cross the continental united states? imma be hitchhiking, busing and generally trekking all o’er the place. i feel like there’s so much of this country that i haven’t seen and this will give me both an excuse and an opportunity to be a tourist all over the place. i’ll be able to perform at different joints and poetry venues wherever i can find ‘em, train at jiu jitsu places from coast to coast and even get a touch of culture and cuisine by eating local and visiting museums and honkytonks. more importantly than that, i’ll get to meet and get to know hella people from all walks of life, i’ll get to write, really allow myself to throw myself into art without the distractions of the city.

and most of all, i’ll get to maybe wrestle an alligator.

i’ll be blogging the trip the entire way, committing myself to at least one blog post a day, no matter how large or small. i’ll be leaving towards the end of june and taking a month to trek ‘cross the country to the apia spoken word and poetry summit, which yall should attend if you possibly can.

but as a part of that… if you have couch space or an idea of places to go or recommendations or advice or words of wisdom, please, please send ‘em my way. if you know someone who’d be willing to host or show me ’round their neck of the woods, please holler at ‘em for me. also, if you have any experience with couchsurfing.org, i’d love to hear from you.

and watch out for a viet am poet boy with a big backpack round where you live in the months of july and august.

i’ll be posting more in the next few days about the tirp and more writing, it feels damn nice to have time to write again.

but for now, more trip planning and xbox 360 .

life is a journey, no wonder so many folks are lost.

it’s weird what you remember at odd times. as i was writing the original draft of this piece for yday, i was thinking about what my father told me… that back home, there was no meat anywhere to be found, relatively little of any other veggies, because he grew up in the hill land in the middle of vietnam. like hill peoples in other parts of the world, his region was poor as hell, the lack of fecundity causing the folks out there to depend on daikon to feed they families. like the irish with potatoes, they found a hundred hundred different ways to prepare daikon, it was fundamental to their cooking, to their way of life.

along with this, came the memory of my asking him how the hell the vietnamese managed to shrug off the yoke of french rule way back when. my father told me vietnamese are goddamn good in a fight, ’cause we’ve been fighting since light dawned on people, since lac long quan and au co went their separate ways. conflict is what we’re good at. we’re stubborn, we’re tough and we’re broke, so we can always make do. he went on to explain that this is also the reason why we can’t rule ourselves for shite… and why when you get a lot of vietnamese people in a room, give them alcohol, there will inevitably be at least four-five fights by the end of the night.

oh my people.

btw, fuck vivid dreaming. i had one of the most bittersweet dreams last night. woke up with a broken heart. shit was awful. i want normal people dreams.

i will be slamming tonight, 6 o clock at the bowery poetry club. you should roll through if you have time, i’d love to see your faces.

also, my team, Ronin Athletics, will be completing at Naga today, so wish ‘em best of luck.

april 3rd

daikons, donnybrooks, processed meat

dolan’s eyes widened
in incredulity
as i folded three weeks worth
of now-clean laundry, crammed it
into just one sports bag,
my smirk replied, if you think this is good
you ain’t ever seen asians on a road trip.

i remember my father and mother insisting
that because we were an american family
we’d eat meat with our meals, that their children
would have what they didn’t,
so the taste of spam, canned tuna and eel
eggs and devil ham
wreath my childhood like the aroma
of my mother’s heavy hand with the garlic

my father’s family back generations
could not coax anything but daikons
from the stubborn, war-weary womb
of their hills, so they made a hundred, hundred recipes
for daikon, depended on it
like the irish on potatoes, because hill folk
can always survive

i was too lazy to go to ikea
to buy bookshelves
so i made my own

… in a gas station bathroom
my friend david made good use of the wall street journal
after too much wack-ass chinese food

the vietnamese used rifles scavenged
begged and borrowed
to rise against the french, had no uniforms
‘cept what they could scrounge,
no armour but faith in the cause
with such they beat a power

david’s uncle hates his life
but will not abandon his family, his job
as a line cook in a pho restaurant
so every night, he drinks a bottle of cheap cognac
till now his face is splotched red
with cirrhosis, his sweat reeks with fermented sweetness
but he has never missed a day of work, his children
have food every night, clothes on their backs

they call ‘em field expedients
yah make do with what yah got
my life is full of ‘em

but you do what yah gotta with what yah got
it’s in my blood.

and my head keeps spinning, can’t keep having these visions, gotta get wid it

love.

casanova fucking by the copacabana, the sheer weight of the word is like mountains, like duty itself. yet, its glibness, the way it falls off the tongue, like pennies and peonies strewn haphazardly, with nothing but a grin at the way the sun hits petals and tarnished bronze just so.

love.

the source of childish laughter, drunken debauchery… of murders and masterpieces, the joyful spontaneity of a groaning exultation, the anguish that can drain away years in a few mere moments. what we all say we’re looking for, what we’re all so afraid of getting. the source of envy enough to launch a hundred thousand ships, the fire that illuminates the night even after the bombs have taken off all the lights.

romantic-fucking-love.

jeebus. why would i be discussing such a subject? oddly enough, because of a goddamn sitcom. a pilot at that. how much of a sap am i? but really though… i was going through one of those moods, the existential crises that drain the joy out of life, that makes you doubt the rightness of whatever you may be doing. not depression, that’s too much credence to lend it, rather a sense that there’s more than this life you’re living has to offer out there somewhere. maybe.

watching tv to try and take my mind off it, i saw the new abc show cupid. it was about a guy… who was either a man who had suffered such a fundamental heartbreak, so earthshattering and life-splitting that all he could do to cope with the force of it, that shock that took breath from the lungs, was to come up with the delusion that he was cupid or eros or whoever, the ever so fickle god of love. or maybe, it was really was the demi-god himself, the real cupid, punished for fucking his job up and now left to wander the streets of new yawk city until he can match up 100 couples with true love.

(as an aside, let me just say, fuck the way they treat the city… we really aren’t THAT devoid of wonderment and romance and the soft mushy things. hell, i would even argue that new yorkers are hold onto that delicate, transcendent part of themselves even more tightly than anyone else… is it a crime that we protect it more? we hold it more dearly, because we know how ugly the world can really be. the city runs you down, but thas why you grasp onto the idealism inside of you and hold on for dear life.)

i have a cigarette to pass the time, because the traffic is hell

but yes… to return to my point. i was watching this show, in my funk, and honestly, as i was watching it this smile crept across my face like a soldier creeping across no-man’s land. it was just too cute. i couldn’t help but enjoy it, i was powerless under the assault of its saccharine fancy. and it of course, cheered me up immensely, but more importantly, it made me think about love, which i’ve been tried to break down all these years anyways.

so here it is… my definitions of various expressions to describe it, ‘cuz dude, i’m just a boy… do you think i really give you the secret that haunts us all?

crush – a mild attraction that may or may not motivate enough effort to approach the object of affection, but is sufficient to be source material for both fantasy and for adolescent boys maybe something else.

lust – if’n you don’t know the definition of lust, you’re either a-sexual or pre-pubescent. if’n the latter, you shouldn’t be reading this blog anyway and tell your parents they should be bloody well monitoring your internet usage. if’n you’re the former… thas like trying to describe this to a blind man, or moonlight sonata to a deaf man.

infatuation – that stage, when you’re teetering the edge of sanity. sure, your OOE may not take up every thought of your day, but you sure as shit have the desire to call him/her entirely too much, especially considering it’s all a game. you savour the smell of their hair, the shape of their nose, the curve of their neck… and you know that in a blink, it can become all-consuming, if’n only it moves just a little bit more. or it can go completely the opposite way, and all of a sudden… it’s over. you’re bored. it’s done. this is where boys like me get stuck on.

in love – the phase where you can truthfully plead temporarily insane… that all consuming fire and passion and insanity that makes short shrift of anything so mundane as personality compatibility, credit reports or ‘other’ commitments. this is the stage where emotion is a drug, more insidious and ambrosial than anything else, that which the best quality MDMA is nothing but a pale ghost of an imitation. the wildness, the fascination of it, when you can’t help but ache, down deep when you’re not with your OOE, when your whole world, your very perception of life itself has narrowed down to this one person. when the locks of her hair caught in your towel, the ham-handed way he handles wine glasses, when those define your world. everything else is burned by the blow-torch intensity of it all… but… with that much more risk of burning out.

love – that stage, after the oil has taken the charcoal of your soul and burned away and what is left burns with a much more subtle, but steadier depth. that which is able to last, maybe even endure past the rain and the lack of oxygen. this is the stage of love that they say abides, where your perception of the world is able to see more than your OOE, but nevertheless, it like you yourself now cannot be defined, from now unto forever without your OOE. two plants, in nature, occasionally lean onto each other until they start becoming entwined, occasionally going so far as growing into one. this is where that starts.

granny love – … no you dirty mo’fo, this is not a porno title. it’s that place when someone becomes so fundamental to your life that they make it up. i don’t even know how to describe this, as i’ve never be anywhere near it myself… but we’ve all seen it.

settling – when you have none of these, but you make a relationship go anyway, if for no other reason then not wanting to be alone. and maybe, just maybe, it’ll become real love someday. for now though, this life is too hard, the trials too great to not be halved, the joys and triumphs too meager to not be doubled by sharing.

… maybe i’ll do more in the future, if’n anyone wants me to. as is, i’ve already taken up too much of all yous valuable time.

so au revoir.

we keep on pavin’ over paradise, because we’re only human

life is the awkward moments when you’re awake. whoa.

first and foremost, i want all yall to welcome one of my best friends in the world and one of the best goddamn artists i know to the vinhhua.com staff… give a hand to geoff ’sheeptang’ kim. geoff has a new york city hipster sensibility with the heart of a yay area hippie. he has an artistic style and flava that is like almost no one else’s, at once dismorphic and magnetic, transformative and transgressive. in addition to formidable visual talents, he has a unique way of looking at the world that is more often than not just a slight bit slanted. he’s seen the west coast, he lives on the best coast, has tripped from midtown skyscrapers and downtown dormitories, brooklyn dumps and every place in between. he’s a hella valuable edition to the team, and i’m hella grateful to have him on board.

‘but i don’t want to take your heart, and i don’t want a piece of history, no i don’t want to read your thoughts… anymore’ – the heinrich maneuver

kismet. fate. destiny. serendipity. all names for the same phenomenon, that sense that things are the way they are, that events and people come into confluence, not out of some random luck of the cards, but because it was ordained to be such.

hell, we had an entire movie about it recently. if you didn’t get that slumdog millionaire was about a fated love, then you weren’t paying attention… or only paying attention when freida pinto was on screen.

as a poet, it would be easier for me to just say that i believed in it, use it as a piece in my writing and act hella mysterious about the entire thing, but that’s too simple, too reductive. it takes freedom and agency out of the question, because if everything really is fated and pre-scripted, we have no real choice, we are on train tracks. it furthermore takes responsibility out of the equation, because hey, it was meant to be. so if i cheat on this girl, then it wasn’t meant to be, we weren’t meant to be together. if she says she loves another man, and comes back to me later, the pain that i went through, the alcoholism, all of it meant nothing, because in the end, it was ’sposed to happen that way.

we all know this shit ain’t true. or if it is, it shouldn’t be.

but at the same time though, i’m not lying when i say i’ve felt the occasional nudge in some direction, that moment when everything feels so perfectly right and you just KNOW this is how it is because it should be so. the smile on a lover’s face that makes you feel like this is what was meant to be. the crazy chain of coincidences that created the chance for smiles to touch in midwinter. times when, in desperation for some sense of meaning, you trace back time and realize it could not have but happened this way.

i’m not as quick to dismiss these moments as some people are, because i figure, something that i feel this strongly about has to have some validity in it right? yes… i know it’s a logical fallacy.

but love’s one hell of a logical foul up if you really think about it. and if you haven’t had that feeling of serendipity in your life, that moment where the strands of your life and another’s meets in such a way as to feel inestimably primally right, then i feel sorry for you. because no matter the heartbreak that it brings, no matter the drama it summons, it’s worth it.

then again, i’ve always been the peculiar sort.

——————————————————

so it’s a snow day, beautifully so. especially because i am sick as heo. i feel it in my nose and my throat and all over, just the weakness of it all.

it’s wack. but hopefully the extra day of rest, away from my long day, will fix me up. at least somewhat, i hope.

it did give me some time to think though… which is always good. actually, probably not in my case, but hey… i’m writing this section after watching tonight’s episode of chuck, which definitely plays into two themes i’ve already been thinking about previous to all this…

‘everybody talks’ and we all fall in love with the most inconvenient people at the most inconvenient time.

‘everybody talks’ is the idea that everyone has their limit, has that point within themselves that says they can’t take it anymore. it’s kind of a scary though, and something i’m not completely able to talk to about right now, because i realize how important it’s been in my life. and not even in the typical emo way that is easiest to interpretation. but hey.

the second one is much more obvious in its meaning, but it’s something i’ve been thinking about hardcore. both because of my ass getting broken up with on valentine’s day. as well as the general run of my relationships with women in general, everything from the girlfriends, to the flings, to the mistakes i’ve made along the way. it’s always the most inconvenient thing to happen to everybody involved… which kind brings this full circle, because it sure as shit makes me believe in fate or kismet. expect to see this theme in a lot of my poetry from now on.

oh and i forgot to say, the chapbook is being worked on hardcore… expect to see it soon.

and even though i spent most of the day asleep, i still managed to get some measure of work done. which is why i have a poem for yall…

ouroboros

a wise man, buddhist without
the belly, robes dyed red
with revolution, told me that he’d lived
a hundred thousand lives before this one,
and you always die
only to return

i gave a bum my last
three quarters today, kissed
my friend on his grimy cheek, he was a little
freaked, manhood threatened
by the obviousness of affection, and ate
three hot dogs on my stoop
to chase away the cold.

i have so many random stories
to give away, like shiny bits
of change.

like how i gave the homeless wino
laid out in front
of the ritzy real estate brokers
what was left of my jameson
to warm him through the night

the girl who stole my heart
and sold it back to me
for the price of a dance
and my harlequin’s mask, our toes
bent and twirling through the twilight

the grandmother who collected
empty bottles and soda cans
rhinestones strewn on the street
and cigarettes, as offerings for the dead
soon to be her companions

moppy headed
and spiked topped boys their
bruised fist metaphysics
who choked back tears
and gave me my name

the fortune teller, or maybe
the doctor, the dreamer
who told me death was but waking
and my body’s premonitions
were but the stirring

to end, life’s a loveable mess and hateable order.

firstly, as i realize hella folks don’t read through the entire post because they’re ridiculo long… i just want to say a few things right quick. i am still booking for the spring season, as well as getting my presskit together for the fall. if you want to see me, get one of your college orgs or local orgs to hit me up, i’d love to come out and see your beautiful faces. secondly, and more importantly, PLEASE contribute to my projects… you can find them on the projects and products portion of this website. i ESPECIALLY need more experiences and stories in my asian am women series.

————————————

the soundtrack to this blogpost will actually be coming from a new writing playlist that i created in itunes. these are just the songs that touch me, remind me of the romantic within myself. sometimes it’s hard to remember that i am who i am, that i am an artist who Believes, especially in this place, the city that all too often chews you up and grinds you down. i know you can’t see the playlist, but hey, i’m going to do song quotes and then youtube link the songs as i come to them… hopefully this will work. as per always, i’m trying that new shit.

‘you belong to the gang, and you say you can’t break away, but i’m here, with my hands on my heart.’
- the decemberists, “o, valencia” (great video btw)

it’s kind of ironic that this is the song that’s playing right now, especially if any of you know what i’ve been doing to pay my rent. suffice to say, that life is over… that i’m breaking away. o valencia is an absolutely heartbreaking song, with such passion to it, such strength of feeling. it narrates a romeo and juliet story and does it in a way, that while it does come from the tradition of such stories, it is still able to be somewhat original, and most of all, still touches. it’s kinda like west side story actually, more so than romeo and juliet.

actually, it’s like leonard di caprio’s version of romeo and juliet. which is actually one of my favorite movies of all time. the actors in that movie were so damned believable, the emotion was so strong, the love so real. i think that was my first exposure to the Bard, and i’ve loved his work ever since. hella folks can’t stand him, for various reasons, up to and including the way they shovel him down throats at schools… but i love him.

he has a fucked up, dirty minded sense of humour, a mind that is able to project imagery on multiple levels and most importantly, is able to convey a degree of emotionality through text that is unmatched by pretty much an author, poet or playwright i’ve ever seen. how do you not love a man who can make dirty jokes in a tragedy, who can play with emotions like yo yo ma plays the cello? and dude, shakespeare in love was gangsta.

‘and the grass, it was a tickin’ and the sun was on the rise, i never felt so wicked, as when i willed our love would die, i was your silver lining, as the story goes, but now am gold’
- rilo kiley “silver lining” (god this song breaks my heart everytime)

which kind of leads me into one of the topics that i wanted to discuss today, the idea of having a name, being a man and being up front with yo’ shit.

i love internet culture, i study it for school and study it for fun. being part of the iGeneration, i feel the weight of history on my shoulders every time i facebook or i blog or i hit up 4chan. yes, i go to 4chan. it’s oddly entertaining.

but the thing about is, my presence online, even though i’m fascinated with the concept of anonymity, has almost always been one wherein my name is out there. hell, i’m a member of bullshido.com, a martial arts forum, and i’ve met people there in real life. my face, my name are tied to whatever my screen name is at the time.

… let me restart a little actually.

my father told me, all a man has in this world is his family and his name, his head and his hands. that’s been drilled into my head. if you break down my father’s metaphor, you’ll see the sentiment that has installed itself as a Derridan supplement to my identity.

your family is what is to be protected. it is the ultimate end goal. and more than the actual physical members of the family, which always take precedent, this section contains more. it holds within itself the idea that a man has responsibilities greater than himself. there is something larger, something greater, for which he must be willing to sacrifice or give of himself or dedicate himself to. this may be your country, it may be your art, but it is always something that you must serve. there is no life without responsibility. or at the very least, this is an empty life. your family, your community, those are always at the heart of a man’s character, and must always be, because before anything else, the traditional masculine role is one of provider and protector.

a man’s hand and his head are his tools. those are what he has with which to provide for his responsibilities and to protect his family. these are a relatively simple idea to understand.

but it’s the last item to be discussed, the name, that is the purpose of this discussion. a man must have his honor. to be able to exist in a society, a man must be able to make it known that he can be trusted, that he is able to back what he says.

and more than that, he must be able to stake himself on his ideals and on his ability to fulfill his responsibilities. and yes, i know these uses of the term man are problematic, reductivist in a lot of ways, but bear with me. i am using the terms my father taught me, which are come from a culture that does have very strong gender roles… but i would like to remind folks that the role of women in traditional vietnamese culture is significantly stronger than in most cultures of the world. and furthermore, this is an art blog.

so yes. if i am to take a stand, i must be willing to put my name to it. i must be willing to put my face and stake my reputation on it. if i feel that i am right, that i stand against injustice or in favor of justice, i must be enough of a man to risk myself by being forward with who i am.

which is why internet activism is a problem. because names ARENT tied to physical bodies, so that people are able to troll.

which is why student activists who decide to take a stand by donning masks and having amnesty as their first demand are complete bullshit.

if a man is unwilling to put his name on the line, what does that say about his belief in his cause?

‘if could start again, a million miles away, i would keep myself, i would find a way’
- johnny cash “hurt”

let me open this section with a quote…

‘ There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. […] Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.’
- E.B. White, Here is New York

i love new york.

i don’t compromise on calling it the greatest city in the world. in my heart of hearts, down in the depths of my understandings of the truth, this kernel will always remain. i have not doubted it since the first time i visited new york, when i was still a lost ass tourist, and i don’t doubt it now that i lived here long enough to consider myself a new yorker.

but no matter how much i love the City with a capital ‘c’, it’ one hell of a fucked up, and i realize this. a friend of mine compared it once to one of those horribly horribly unhealthy, fucked up and abusive relationships. usually not as bad as chris brown and rihanna, but pretty bad. then again i and my friend are both settlers, our relationship with this place is not and can never really be as familiar, as relatively calm, as almost comfortable-marriage like as someone who has been here all their lives. at the same time though, our relationship with the City will never be the flirtation/hook up relationship that bridge and tunnelers have. they’re not as committed i don’t think, the City is a mistress to them, not the love of their lives.

but i am a settler, and new york is my greatest love. no matter how fucked up of a relationship we have.

’so alone in love, i’m going to haunt you everyday, haunt you everyday’
-weezer “haunt you everyday” (absolutely AWFUL version of this song, but all i could find.)

you love new york, you hate it. sometimes, it’s so good, there’s nothing else like it. it is able to touch you in ways you’ve never been touched before, you wake up in the mornings, breathe in the smell of pizza, corruption and cannabis and know it’s going to be a beautiful day. you eat well, drink hard, live life fully and see sights that will forever be imprinted on your mind. you find truths around every corner, the City caresses your face with its palm, and it’s like the world is made new, that every experience is opened up for you. you wake up and go to a polish deli to get a huge american breakfast, stop by a brasilian place to get some bomb coffee. you’re peckish so you get an empanada for later, head to work or school and see every type of people this world has to offer. get lunch at the dosa man, eat it in the park, as capoeristas play and college kids smoke up and throw frisbees. stop by chinatown for dinner because you broke as heo, eat up, head to your home boy’s show at this hipster bar in the east village. rock out, destroy shit, get fucked up and then do it again.

but then, in the bad times… it’s completely horrible. the City abuses you, adds to the workload and the stress load. doesn’t return calls or txts, acts as if it doesnt love you anymore. or rather that i hates you. you become lonely, despondent, insignificant in this place where millions live. you ache inside, worst than any lover before. nothing goes right, everything goes wrong.

those are the worst times. i’ve seen people break down and cry. i sure as hell have. the City runs you down, makes you feel like shit, does its absolute best to make you hate it… but you can’t, not if you’ve been here for awhile. and you always make excuses for it, in the hope that it’ll get better, even if the landlord raised your rent and you’re about be kicked out, even if you just got robbed, even if you feel so utterly alone and isolated that it seems as if it’ll never get better.

such is the City i love. such is the relationship i have with it. so i am driven to drink, to escape anyway i can… but so too do i feel, in ways that i could never feel in any other place. there really is an energy to this city, to this place that is unlike anything else in the world. so you remain, even through the bad times, the changes, the abuse.

oh new york.

‘breaking rocks in the hot sun, i fought the law and the law won’
-the clash, “i fought the law”

jeebus, i meant for my blogposts to get smaller, but they’ve only gotten longer. my deepest apologies. even more than that, my apologies for being a fuckup… apologies for loving it. and since people seem to enjoy pictures of me in dire straits… for your viewing pleasure. and no, while i am damned short, i’m not THAT short… my homie is just massively tall.

if it wasn't taken, my rap name would be tooshort

thank you for reading, please comment. and yes, considering my workload, i probably do spend entirely too much time on this blog. but hey, maybe it’s my stress relief, my crutch. more about that later.

oh, btw, i met happy slip last night at sarah gambito’s book opening for her dope, dope book ‘delivered.’ yall should buy it. i can’t believe i forgot to take a picture with her. oh and free food is amazing.

and let me leave you with this video on hip hop in china… too dope for me to analyze right now. too crazy too.

all vid cred to atunes.

life is most awful and most transcendent experiences you’ve ever had and all the bullshit in between.

btw, this is going to be a long asssssed post, covering a wide arrange of topics. so be forewarned. to a large extent, i’m blogging so profusely because it’s helping me to explore myself in a way that i haven’t been able to for awhile. i have been writing poetry, but in a lot of ways, i haven’t been able to say much new. i haven’t been progressing as much or as quickly as i want to be. i’m hoping that by blogging, i can push open the artistic barriers within myself.

“i’ve written pages upon pages, trying to rid you from my bones”

it’s weird to see someone you once loved, deeply and powerfully, but no longer do now, for whatever reason. especially when there was also negative emotions enough to match the positive ones. which is not to say that love is inherently positive.

i saw my ex today for the first time in awhile. or i should say, for more than second, more than a flash and a glimpse. i gave her a grin or a half-hearted smile, i’m not sure which.

there’s so much emotional weight, so much baggage to even an image of a person who had that type of place in your life. it’s hard to reconcile it with the realities that we deal with in the everyday, when, some part of us remembers that link between people.

soldiers who have lost limbs say that they sometimes feel those missing pieces of themselves, as phantom sensation or the pain of something that isn’t there but should be. i guess seeing someone you once cared about touches that old wound, reminds you of a bond that was once there. and on some level, no matter how “ever tortured” you are, some part of you can’t help but want that back.

these moments are life’s kicks in the balls. the awkwardness, the shock. the oh shit factor of it all. the freezing up and the wondering what the hell to do. and then the pain afterwards, the inevitable ache of a missing limb.

no wonder i’m epic fail at relationships.

but hey, like they said in dedication, no woman loves the truly fucked up guys. so i guess it’s time to make an effort to fix myself. or to find myself a shy illustrator somewhere who is just as damaged as i am. someone who needs to be needed.

which actually brings me to the first of my love poems to an asian women. yes, i know that’s not grammatically correct. it was done on purpose. i’m artsy like that. or a moron, either way.

—————————————————————————————
#1

insomnia
her constant companion
now, in the days after

when she has reconciled
or she tells herself over
and over, again

her body
remembers too well
the missing comfort
of squeezing into sparse space
between arms splayed

being needed.

she slept earlier, then
as if holding together
tenuous miscommunications
enough to tire the heart out
the effort at trust

she wishes him well, she prays
in half sleep, everything
he needed, she didn’t have
her feelings, she examines, paws over
touch till they lose their cutting sharpness
the angles worn, memories fade
dulls the ache, cools
the phantom warmth
lingering

stiffness of dried tears, regrets
maybe even the resentment
like fleeting city air
through the the gap of her window
begging to be filled.

now she waits, till
the sun creeps its fingers
to her windowsill
before she will climb
the few feet, insurmountable
to her bed.
———————————————————

“your pain was my pleasure, your sorrow my joy, i’m afraid i’ve lost you now to pain and good cheer”

one of the most interesting things i’ve gotten out working on this series is the fact that my socialization has made it so that i look at the same emotions much differently than some of the women that have written in to me. it’s actually kind of dope to examine these feelings in a different light.

consider an emotion as a many sided object, a rubix cube of sorts. i’ve only seen one side of it, seeing it from another side brings out a completely revolutionary experience. it’s full of epic win.

BUT i need more, many many more. SO PLEASE SUBMIT MORE EXPERIENCES TO ME.

more poems in the series are forthcoming, i promise.

“i’m more than a handful you’ll see, so kiss me, i’m shitfaced

so. the nyu protests were all over the news and all across the blogosphere.

i was actually there. me being me, i was at the bar before hand, but wanted to come out there, like many folks, to see the drama. and maybe get some free quesadillas.

let’s face it, i’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life for the sake of free entertainment. dating women, going to events posted on the internet, antagonizing people, going to nightclubs. a lot of random experiences and events that have become a large piece of who and what i am. so why not right?

but as luck would have it, i actually ended up hooking up with a crew of street medics and spent my night watching their backs, making sure they had space to work and no one fucked with ‘em. not protester, not counter protester, not bystander.

it would figure that when there were three distinct sides and a shitload of bystanders, i’d have to take up a fourth side, one likely to get my ass into a fight, with no back up in sight. after having left a bar no less.

but all in all, it was a great experience, the street medics were great folks.

on to a discussion of the larger implications of the take back nyu action though. let’s face it, it was a failure. there were hella mistakes made. many blogs have already discussed the various problems with the whole thing.

what i just wanted to briefly talk about was the dopeness of the democratic spirit in action. not just in the protesters themselves, who i thought were a little crazy even if goodhearted, but the counter protesters and the folks just screaming out random shit. democracy is not just about the idiots agreeing with you, it’s about screaming at the idiots who disagree with you as well. it’s the discussion that grows out of diametrically opposed theses. it’s the creation of discursive space. and let’s face it, clashing signs saying things like, “we support tbnyu” and “you suck” and “we want quesadillas” are, to me anyways, a sign of democracy in action.

the ability for those three sides to exist in one space is probably the only positive thing i see coming from the entire fiasco. i actually managed to see people who didn’t agree with each other having semi-rational and fair minded conversations about their politics. that’s dope as hell.

of course, there were hella scuffles. but fuck that shit. the voices battling each other, singing freedom songs against oppositional chants, smells like democracy to me.

i do wish there was a little more entertainment and it wasn’t so fucking cold. but hey. ain’t nothing perfect, i should know that better than most.

“can’t make it alone, i built my dreams around you”

i think i’ll be posting nyc moments from now on, just the things i see day to day that warms my heart and reminds me that i live in the greatest city in the world. new yorkisms. moments that are quintessentially urban, and contribute to the mystique that new york has and always had in my mind. will always have most likely.

today, i saw a father playing football with his son on the sidewalk. all i could think of was that it was such a new york minute, to be playing on the side walk, as people walked by. there’s not that much space, so waddya expect?

i love reading new york’s missed connections on craigslist. there’s so much loneliness, yet hope there, that i become addicted to it. the image of a shot in the dark, a chance at love, the ultimate message in a bottle appeals to the hopeless, broken hearted romantic in me.

the sheer variety in them, everything from hipsters and indie scenesters narcissistic enough to realize that folks who are just like them have a bloody good chance of browsing missed connections, because hey they do it too. forreal forreal, the sheer amount of stuff that comes from the L makes me laugh hella hard. i’m really tempted to do ride the L one of these days, dressed hipstered out, smile tentatively at some girl on the train, write furiously in my tiny notebook and get off at the next stop. i figure that’d earn me a missed connection. yes, i just stole that from xkcd. but hey.

old people making a last ditch effort, the last arrow before their quivers are depleted.

folks cussing folks out anonymously. full of teh lulz.

all sorts on missed connections, and every one of them entertaining. so addicting. now i miss get back to it, in the forlorn hope that i’ll get my own. come on, how many mohawked asian boys are there in this city?

actually that kind of reminds me. i have this crazy thing about love and crushes. let’s face it, i’m obsessed with the concept of love, probably more so than most men. i’m not very good at it, i epic fail at relationships. i’m too much of a fuckup, and i admit it.

sooner or later, i’ll get my shit together on it. but for now, i enjoy it.

i like having crushes. they’re fun. even if they usually lead to nowhere. and even when they do, i usually end up getting bored and restless. i guess the unattainable is so much more fun than the real. i like having this image in my head of an attractive woman in my head, attractive for whatever reason and having the hope that she might be the one. whatever that means.

but it’s all so conceptual. i guess that’s the way it is with me and love and relationships. i’m good at thinking about it, dealing with it on a flirtatious level, but i epic fail at maintaining it. im better at writing about it then actually going through with it. i always say i want a relationship, i want what i see that other people have. those folks who are pretty much married make me jealous. but if i can’t get my shit together on the fact, is it fair for me to pursue something like that? especially for the girl?

i guess that’s love and relationships in the city.

or maybe i’m just immature.

“i’m lucky to have been what i have been, lucky to be coming home again”

more than that, i wanta tell all of you that the chapbook is back on. in lock step with the children’s book i’m working on. i am inundated with work of all sorts these days, but i NEED to get this ish done for the sake of my sanity. especially since i haven’t gotten a chance to go to jits nearly as much i want to. it’s full of epic fail.

my webguy, i36, will be revamping my page a little bit, updating it to make it more efficient, easier to use and spoofier. i’m eventually hoping to get a gallery together where i can post pictures that i take with yall. you’ll notice that the blog is the first page you see when you get to vinh-hua.com, which is the first of the changes.

i will also be bringing more people onto the blog team. while this is my personal website, considering how much i ruminate and touch on all sorts of artistic and philosophical topics, i figured it’d be appropriate for me to bring more people in. and i think the cross pollination of ideas would be good for all of our creativities.

i’ll be announcing acquisitions to the team soon. if you’re interested in joining the team, hit me up.

life is a woman, you should be able to love her with or without her makeup.

and with that opener, let me be cheesy and say that the soundtrack to this blogpost will be Jason Mraz’s We Sing, We Dance, We Steal. it is valentine’s day after all, if i’m ever allowed to be saccharine it should be today.

but to get back to our regular programming, let me reiterate.

i fucking hate valentine’s day.

it’s not just the rampant, disgusting commercialization. or the fact that you have to have a special day to be romantic with whoever your s.o. is. or even because it marginalizes single people even more than usual (thankfully i gots me a date, suckers).

more than that, there’s an emotional weight to the whole concept of valentine’s day that offends the romantic in me.

let’s face it boys and girls, i’m a romantic of almost-korean-drama proportions. out of my top three movies evar, two of them are stories of boy meets girl, boy and girl fall for each other, boy fucks it up by being a loveable fuck up, boys make up for being a fuck up, profit!

dedication which i am forever quoting from and have seen WAY too many times, is a love story of truly human beauty, even if it follows the above formula because you can see how affection can grow, even within the most misanthropic heart, even from the greatest difference.

there’s the rub of it, i’m a fan of that ‘authentic’ romance, whatever it may be. i feel like valentine’s day puts such an emotional burden on people in relationships to try to artificially create this emotional connection that may not be there, or may not be right at that particular time. the beauty that comes from the meeting of two beings should be organic, should arise from the whimsy and wiles of the spirit and the heart, not be driven by the weight of some holiday. and considering st. valentine WAS a saint, the fact that hella folks use vday to get laid has a vicious irony all its own.

btw, one of my friends is breaking up with his long term girlfriend today. which is epically fucked up. and funny. hey, at least he didn’t do it on her birthday.

to all the folks in relationships, don’t let valentines ruin yo’ shit. sometime’s the bond can’t carry that pressure yet, cuz like all things in life, it grows, it gets stronger.

to all my single folks rebelling against it all, yall are dope. and more likely than not considering the fact that i have absolutely no idea of what i am going to do on my date tonight, i’ll probably see you at the bar.

to all those folks who are celebrating SinglesAwarenessDay and going to hook up randomly tonight… more power to you, may you find someone who’s GGG, may you find the chance and may you wake up on the morrow std free.

tune in next time for a treatise from me about communicating through damage.

to end…

life is making love even when the world is trying to fuck you.

and as a final middle finger to the artificial, diabetes inducing sweetness of vday… a love poem in the style of bukowski.

—————————————–

the most imitated poet in america

i may cheat on you

i will certainly drink too much
swear too loudly, smoke like i don’t deserve you
and you will taste cigarettes on my skin

des autres petite mort

i will treat you badly,
myself, worse
forget your birthday
call you only when it is convenient

my laughter will cut you
the jokes always at our expense
an embarrassment to your parents, mine
friends, yours. my hangers-on
already used
to the antics

they know me.

you will curse, throw dishes
and maybe pull a knife
you will question my genealogy
my manhood, more than likely my sanity

i will talk you down
and we will fuck, our anger
narcotic, ecstasy
addictive
or
we will walk out, names
like curses, tear-sealed oaths
vows of celibacy, as if

you will call me a fuckup
i will heartily agree, buy you a drink
for finally noticing

but you will believe me
when i tell you

i love you, maybe more even
than the bottle

and for that, you will forgive me
my many penny sins

furthermore, the twins can write. really well. they have a blog called mousybabe that i’ve only recently discovered but will be a regular reader of from now on. between their ability to bring observational and self-deprecating humour together and their penchant for taking really great pictures, they’re one of the better personal blogs i’ve seen. they also have a conversational tone that i like, but without bordering on the inane that i have a bad tendency to do. c’est le vie. and yes, i think i’m in love,

———————————–

so tonight was yet another sleepless night… or at least one that was full of teh undersleep. i hit 4 hours and woke up automatically and couldn’t fall asleep again to save my life. it’s getting epic, as i’ve tried everything from that ole loveable standby – whisky, to concoctions of a more chemical nature, like benadryl and sleeping pills.

nothing seems to work for more than a night. which is becoming a problem because i’m getting run down here folks.

school is kicking me arse, as it is meant to do. there are wayyy too many things to get done and too little time to do it, especially while trying to remain sane. but that’s the game, and if nothing else, i’ve always been a player.

i just wish i had more time for jits. haven’t played in too long and that’s taking its toll, both physically and spiritually. but again, sacrifices must be made.

which is what i want to talk about on some level, the idea of sacrifice and its relation to love.

my father told me that ain’t nothing in life free, nothing freely given except among family, that life is obligation. one must always be willing to sacrifice in order to fulfill one’s obligations – as a man, as soldier, as a student, as a son. furthermore, implicit in this is an understanding that all of this must come from love, that all sacrifice, at its heart is about love, be it for community, for country, for flag, for family or for lady love.

i have my issues with che guevara, quite a few actually. i don’t idealize or valorize him like so many young twenty something new yorkers do (knowingly or not), but the man did have a gift for words, so i’ll quote him here. i’ll quote a few others as well, because i’ve always been one obsessed with the idea of love and all that comes with it.

“At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by feelings of love.” – Che

““Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” – Neil Gaiman

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” – Mother Teresa

Three extraordinarily disparate sources, three different angles on the concept of love. And in my estimation, all of them completely right. love is that fundamental human force that allows us to be more than ourselves, that can build us to our greatest height and bring us to our knees and even lower.

love exists at the locus of almost every action and is the source of some humanity’s ability to renew its faith in itself. there are such moments of nobility and grace within the human creature, driven by this existential phenomenon we like to call love, that maybe, just maybe, it makes up for all the ugliness that is exists like a rot at all of our cores. and beautifully enough, one of the things that i feel is most noble about the human beast, its ability to willingly sacrifice itself and its interests for others is motivated by nothing else but love. or maybe i’m just a wild eyed idealist.

———————————

taking care of some biz, i wanted to shout out my homegirl in michigan, stephanie nguyen, a dope person and a talented artist. she introduced me to this entire world of asian beauty blogs and networking that i will eventually end up writing something about. as is, i’m still too tripped out by the whole thing to completely process it.

as an artist, she works in crystal and metal, making jewelery including necklaces and earrings that are really gorgeous stuff. you should check her out, especially boyos looking for last minute valentine’s day presents. she’s also sponsoring me and i’ll soon be rockin’ her gear.

———————————–

finally, i just want to give yall a heads up that i will be changing up some of the poems soon, as i realized that a lot of these are old and not representative of my newer body of work.

oh and anyone who is interested in a kind of semi-critical discussion on hipsterism should go here.  i will be addressing that in a future blogpost, sooner or later. i agree with some of the points therein, disagree with many more, and personally see it in a much more hopeful manner than the author does. then again, i’m more than willing to admit i’m hipster scum. c’est le vie.

oh, and keep those ASIAN/AMERICAN WOMAN EXPERIENCES AND STORIES COMING.

peace and love.

life is a hundred loves, a hundred broken hearts and the songs we sing in between.

ps. i know i need a digi camera. if anyone has a lead as to a cheap but decent one, hit me up homies. oh and if anyone knows how to replace a laptop keyboard… cuz mine’s fucked and as a writer, it’s kicking me arse.