A Saigonese Night.
‘Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’ — T.S. Eliot.
This evening I take you to a city in Southern Vietnam, the largest in the country: Ho Chi Minh City; or, as more commonly known on the streets, Saigon.
My focus is not to inform you of the historical or political context of the place; not to simply regurgitate easily-accessible and ultimately dull, lifeless information regarding a factual conceptualisation of the place — a mistake all too often made in the art of travel writing; effectively nullifying all magic, intrigue and novelty that so entices the reader to explore for themselves.
I wish to give an experiential, subjective account of a certain capsule of time and space in which I aim to express how a place made me feel; what it made me think; its ambience, the unique quirks that can not be defined analytically, but only through experience — the poetic flavour of the place, beyond objective rationality.
So then, loosen your analytical mind; and behold the story in which we are about to embark on as if listening to a new piece of music, tasting an exotic flavour—immerse yourself!
Behold, for we have transported ourselves deep into the mysterious backstreets of this vast asian metropolis!
Let your sense perceptions awaken gently, for there is a sweet musky scent in the air; some foreign herbs, perhaps — the heightening fragrance of incense.
And, oh, listen! The simmering ambience of this alien world pervades. The echoes of barking street dogs, boiling broths, the echoes of young children; their soft evening sobs.
Light cuts down at strange angles into these narrow winding corridors; and the air is thick, humid.
Beads of warm sweat weave their way down the curves of my neck, I walk slowly; listening, watching. Each turn I make leads me to some odd new scene in this unnavigable maze.
Avast! Her careful attention fixates upon these precious boiling dumplings, another little fragment of life peppered throughout these streets; presenting itself to me, an intriguing spectacle — a window into another world, another life, far away in some distant land, it feels; though I am here, watching it unfold before me. She seems not to notice this foreign boy observing her, and so she continues her gentle prodding motions; she tends to her unhatched hatchlings as a mother geese to her babies — such an admirable care, such unhurried cultivation of those simple joys; a nest of dumplings!
Compare her tender, noble care then, to those slapstick meat throwers behind the fast-food joints of our familiar world; such polarity, such mechanised nullification of the art of cooking, eating, of nourishment. I dare not even talk of our industrial supermarkets! For whom of us pays such attention to what enters our bodies today — but should we not all deserve quality, thoughtful nourishment? As such, we pay a great premium for what should be a given; as we observe this fine lady, who no doubt earns far less than you and I — and yet, she doth make the time and attention for these precious little fundamentals of human life which are pushed to the periphery in our world of automation, mechanisation, speed, efficiency — quality being an afterthought, a deluxe premium for the wealthy; for whom of us has the time to pay to these slow, organic processes of healthy, conscious living?
Then, stay on this stream of contemplation as we look upon yet another most common scene among the suburbs of Vietnamese urban life.
Ponder the above photograph, and answer this: on the streets of England — or anywhere else in western civilisation, for that matter — how often, on our western streets, does one observe a collection of neighbours; relaxing on a calm afternoon, in gentle, unhurried conversation? How often are the men of your home neighbourhood (not to exclude women), found chilling out on a street corner; doing quite nothing at all, nothing but enjoying each-others company?
Why, I may go further with this point; by ascertaining to the probability that — especially in our big cities, that our neighbouring families may well be hard pushed to recall each-others names! This observation, of-course, will have plentiful exceptions; but these anomalies do not subtract from the stark contrast in cultural-social norms now made visible — when I do inform you of the complete normality of such a communal sense of living that is present on the streets of this Southern Vietnamese city.
It is a joy to watch these men, so blissfully at ease in each-others presence — probably talking of nothing of substance, but simply watching the day stream by in its own mild rhythm.
And on the clinical streets of London, how we hardly acknowledge the presence of human beings of whom we are not previously acquainted; how cold, hostile, how efficient!
The late evening simmers into the depths of another humid south-asian night.
Television sets reverberate their gentle melodies; I infuse myself into the street-life as a ghost; peering into such homely scenes. Shrines under musky lights; dim little capsules of rich traditon.
Old wiry men, a soft contemplative air.
Enraptured in the comings and goings of the outside world; the screen, a gift from the West, supplies these isolated homesteads with a new wealth of information. Is this good? Is this education? Or distraction, perhaps?
As such, we see here that our culture of immediate entertainment and media forms now perpetuates itself across geographic and linguistic boundaries — a foremost potent sign of the globalising West.
I think, perhaps, before this mans introduction to such forms of instant media technology; that he may well be spending his time on this calm Saigonese night enveloped in a stimulating board-piece game, the fresh aroma of a green herbal tea; the soft murmuring of the night beyond his walls.
Again, the younger generation; entranced by a melody of screen-life; tablets, television — and without them, what to do with our precious time?
We now turn our point of observation on its head; for within this seemingly exotic landscape, note the effects of our imbedded technological permutations spreading themselves non-differentially.
And what are the effects of such advancements?
Through insight into these alternate paradigms of life; through the observation of the cultural relativity of existential and social ideology— and yet, the trends that permeate throughout all modern human domains, I only hope that we, as a now-globally connected species; may come to appreciate our brotherhood, and moreover, what we may come to learn as a result of these critical and poetic observations.
For, perhaps the most potent and striking observations are made, I think, from the traveller — for if he may open his perceptions of foreign environments as to lessen the restricting eye of his own cultural conditioning, he may well perceive the vast expanse of the human experience that is left behind by his own familiar language domain.
As such, I offer a window of comparison, and I leave conclusions to be formulated by you; the observer.
Throughout history; if seen as a temporal longitude of cultural paradigm in perpendicular nature to the latitude of spacial relativity, the human race has continually undergone strange and peculiar evolution; and revolution — on many levels of percieved reality.
And yet, though I possess no time machine, I do utilise the ability to travel beyond my own cultural domain; and as such, peer into the infinite potentiality of human existence, and even if for just a moment, allow myself to imagine a world in which we understood the conditioning nature of our own social system; and through this insight into the relativity of our own ideological perspective, come to acknowledge the freedom we have to dream of other profoundly alien structures; other mediums of existence.
This, I think, is the realisation of the radical freedom of humanity to reform, revolutionise, and evolve beyond socially established realms of possibility for the enterprise of our species as a currently disparate, divided, hierarchically corrupt civilisation.
Axle.
