Return to Tan Son Nhat

This is about what the Tan Son Nhat airport looked like when I landed in Vietnam in 1989.

And this is what it looks like today, according to the search I did today for images.

I'll be there next Wednesday, so I will be able to report first hand. Yes, there will be pictures.

I'm going to do research for my first novel, which is nearing completion, i.e. second full draft done and editing in process. The novel is set in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bangkok and Vietnam in 1989 and is based on a trip I took there in '89 with a group of American vets who went back to Vietnam to build a clinic with the Vietnamese in Vung Tau, a town on the south coast.

I already know that Vietnam has undergone and is undergoing a sea change from the research I did while writing the novel these last two years. (Google street view can be a very useful scene research tool!) It's the smells, sounds, tastes and first hand sights that I'm after on this trip. And a sense of completion. I don't think I'll feel ready to put this book out into the world until I have been back.

I know that they are doing much better economically, but I suspect that I will be missing the old Vietnam and the simpler life that I found there when I first saw it. I have been inhabiting that world for a good part of the last two years and it has become so real for me again.

Back to revising these last twenty pages.

Bisous for now.

N2

Blessings

Just before the end of December, P, a writer friend, gathered a few people for a day of meditation and writing to say goodbye to the old year and kick off the new. We each brought a couple of writing prompts and something to share for lunch.

P lives in a little house next to the Russian River that has become more and more comfortable and welcoming over the 15+ years that she as lived there.

We started off with a walk along the river, each of us in a different direction, meditating on our own thoughts, focusing on the rocks, the light on the water, the muted colors of winter. Then we went back to the house for lunch, tea and writing.

P brought the exercise that has stuck with me as this first month of 2012 has worn on. She read the Irish poet John O'Donohue's poem "Beannacht" to us. (The title is Gaelic for Blessing -- see the poem here at my friend Elizabeth's blog, where she serendipitously posted it a week ago.) Then we each read it to another person who was sitting in for someone we wanted/needed to forgive -- an exercise which might sound esoteric, but was strangely affecting and has already reverberated into this month, and I suspect may continue to have echoes in the rest of the year.

We did a timed writing after the forgiveness exercise. This poem is what came out for me.

§§§

Blessings

After “Beannacht” (Blessing)

by John O’Donohue

May you know that you are loved for just who you are.

May a witness of your strong heart come into your life.

May the paths that you walk be soft on your feet.

May the people that you meet take joy in your laughter.

May the fruits of your labor support you all the days of your life.

May your family honor their sharing of your blood.

May your journey be filled with wonder and take you to places

where you find knowledge and wisdom.

May the rain quench your thirst and warm winds dry the sweat from your neck.

May the stars spill diamonds into your dreams.

May the moon shine you a path across dark water.

May the gardens you plant give back to you tenfold

for the labor you spend in their tending.

May you die in the arms of someone who loves you or after a night

in the company of good friends.

May your next life take you to the time and place of your fondest reveries.

May you be remembered for being a truthful and giving soul.

§§§

May a blessing of kisses rain down on you this year.

x0

N2

Le Film Noir

Spent Saturday and Sunday evenings at the Castro Theater in San Francisco at the

Film Noir Festival. It gets better every year.

Made even better by the fact that I'm usually there with my son and daughter-in-law, J & K. I don't even care that much about which particular movie we go to see. The gorgeous Castro Theater is packed with SF film fans, some of them dressed in vintage finery.


Festival host Eddie Muller interviewed Angie Dickinson between the films on Saturday night. His knowledge of her films and questions were spot on and she was feisty, funny and still beautiful at 81 years.


Noir City Film Festival runs through this weekend. If you are in the Bay Area you should check it out.

More soon.

Noir kisses for now.

N2

Christmas. Passed. Fast.

I hadn't had a Christmas tree in years, but I couldn't resist

getting a little tree for the little guy this year.

Most of the time I cut button eucalyptus branches at a friend's house and decorate the mantel piece with that, fairy lights and candles. This year we had a formal hanging of stockings as well, like when "the kids" (now in their mid thirties) were little.

But this is what makes Christmas sweet, right?

And this.

And this.

Sid. Open.

That'll be the Corn Tiger. Sid. He knows his name and talks about himself in the third person.

Sid do it. Sid eat. Sid shoes black. Watching him learn how to talk in Nana time is so much fun.

I got the gift of three days and nights with the Daughter and the Corn Tiger at my house over Christmas. It was great to have them around for breakfast, lunch and dinner, for mornings in Nana's bed, walks downtown, splashing in the bathtub, bedtime stories and singing to sleep.

Jooon!

D and CT got to go visit her high school friend and daughter, R & Baby June, down the end of the street and we had R and BJ up here for dinner. So great to see this second generation of friendship forming.

He already knows how to ride his scooter "Fast, Fast!".

Here's hoping there were moments of magic in your holidays

that will follow you into the New Year.

More soon.

Fast kisses for now.

x0 N2

Christmas Corners #2

My yard is still blessed with a few late roses and I have been gifted with some fuyu persimmons and pomegranates, all adding a simple sweetness to our California holiday season.

More soon, sweet kisses for now!

N2

Vrooom!

The Dear Daughter and the Corn Tiger are installed at the apartment down in the City and I am missing the gift of participating in their daily life. He can't quite ride the "scoot bike" I got him for his birthday, but he still likes to take it out. When they were here he would look through the glass panes in my front door before he was even dressed for the day.

"Vroom?"

He would call to his little wooden bike parked on the front porch, asking if it was still there.
"Vroom Walk!"

He would hold the handles and walk it down the front steps from the porch, with me at his side saying, "Careful. One step. Now careful."
Across the stepping stones in the front walk and right at the sidewalk.
"Stop at the corner and wait for Nana. Look both ways. Anybody coming? Have to be careful of those big cars. OK. All clear. All business in the street."
Once across, we'd turn right in front of the elementary school and he'd take off running beside Vroom.
Those little hips wagging. Those little sneakers pit-patting on the sidewalk.

"I FAST!"

Vroom! The days slip past. And he's only 20 months at Christmas.

More soon. Love for now.

N2

Christmas Corners #1

Early resolution to post more here.

I'm going to start with pictures, always a good way to get me going.

This one is CA seasonal -- sunshine, pomegranates, the last of the hollyhocks, a tiny advent

calendar and a wind up toy from Christmas past who has become a character around the house.

More soon, love for now.

x0,

N2

CCiiff Festival Completed

Saw the last film in the CCiiff Film Festival tonight up at the Abbatiele theater in the Abbaye Ecole. They presented a great range in an intense three-day program of films. I could feel the festival starting to gain traction, building the audience it needs to find the funding to keep going.

There was good dialogue between the directors who traveled here to speak about their films and the audience.

Karl Nerenberg ( Producer, Writer, Co-director of Never Come Back, a film that deals sensitively with the plight of several Rom families and their attempts to emigrate to Canada) standing next to Jacqueline Deloffre, Deputy Director of the festival, as he fields comments from one of the audience regulars.

The audience was so stunned by the high quality of production and level of suspense that Tuyet Le built in her first feature film, Patient 17, "about an unusual patient and uncovering the truth, " that we had a hard time coming up with intelligent questions to ask the director in the Q&A period right after the film. My friend G and I were still talking about the issues the film raised a day later over lunch.

Tuyet Le

Writer, director, actress

Production still from Patient 17.

À la prochaine fois, Denis, Elaine and Jacqueline.

This was a Very Good Year!

Bises,

N2

International Film Festival in Soreze?

El Ambulante – The Peddler, the story of an itinerant movie maker who travels from village to village in Argentina awakening dreams, the first offering of the local CCIF intercultural film festival here in France. A heartwarming small movie that was screened at Chateau Padies this afternoon and was followed up with an al fresco dinner in the courtyard.

Reading Aloud

The other night I was invited, along with Glenda, Anne and John, to Durfort to British Anne and Peter’s house for a “poetry reading”. Hey, I though, I can do that!

There are regular poetry readings in Sonoma County back home in California, where I have read at the Lit Cafe and the Literary Guild's readings in the City Council Chambers at City Hall in Healdsburg, and at the Valona Deli in Crockett. I have read my poetry in locations as various as Shakespeare & Co in Paris, the Café Kafka in Vienna, a family re-union at Roaring River State Park in the Ozarks, and Fort Casey on Whidbey Island.

I am used to keeping to the time limit, to sharing the stage with other writers, to listening respectfully to other people's work and applauding equally for each reader. I looked through my poems and picked out two new ones I was interested in trying on a new audience and an old favorite, requested by Glenda. I pulled out my new, acid green scarf, put on a nicer pair of shoes, fluffed my curls and packed up a chilled bottle of rosé to contribute to the pizza dinner.

We carpooled over; Durfort is the next little village to Soreze and is a lovely walk of an afternoon, but the path is a bit steep and dark to walk home at night. We parked by the church and made our way along the sky blue ribbon of water in the street to the worn, sea green door, rang the old school bell and mounted the double spiral staircase to the second floor.

We were the only literary audience for the evening; it was simply the four of us from Soreze, along with Anne and Peter. They had set up a table facing the balcony and covered it with some twenty-five poetry books that they have with them in what is mostly a summer house for them in Durfort. Peter had put on a pressed white shirt and festive vest, Anne a nice black sweater. We chose numbers out of a bowl to decide reader order, toasted each other's health with a glass of Kir (French cocktail made with a measure of crème de cassis, blackcurrant liqueur, topped up with Blanquette de Limoux, the Lanquedoc region lower cost answer to Champagne) to kick off the proceedings and began the first of three rounds of reading.

John Norton (no relation) read from his poetry book, Air Transmigra, just out from Ithuriel's Spear small press in San Francisco. (click here to read it on Google Books) The painting on the cover as well as the portrait of the poet on the back cover are by Anne Subercaseaux.

I read each of my three poems in turn. Glenda brought a well worn poetry compendium and read selections from it.

Anne and Peter had bookmarked some favorites to share and we each dipped into the books on the table, hearing from Edward Lear, Rudyard Kipling, Shakespeare, James Joyce, Walt Whitman and more.

We ate pizza and drank wine and then went back to reading aloud.

I love sharing books with family and friends by passing them on and/or reading the good parts out to them. I started reading to my kids when they were tiny. My Dear Daughter is reading "Swiss Family Robinson" to the Corn Tiger as his bedtime story, started when he was about a week old.

I think a lot of us who come to this region of France are attracted to a simpler life here. I'll take an evening reading aloud in the parlor with friends over a brain branding session in front of commercial TV any day.

One of the poems I read, which is becoming a crowd favorite and was published this year in CALYX, A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, in their Winter 2010 issue, is "Warm Ripe Figs", which you will find below.

Remember to read aloud, especially to those kids!

Bises,

N2

Warm Ripe Figs

You’ve long been attracted to the young ones

with firm pink flesh, with just a hint of green

so perfect and unblemished there on display

only to taste at first bite the acrid 

bitterness of fruit picked too soon.

When will you learn to reach

for the wrinkled ones

with just a bit of heft

with the right drooping sag

those that have been 

hanging on

soaking up sun

unnoticed by bird or man

until filled with a mature

musky sweetness.

Pluck a warm ripe fig.

Put your nose close.

Pull the flesh open.

Stick your tongue in.

N2

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