Lost and Found...and then Freaking Lost Again

A thought that I've been having quite frequently over the past few days is how glad I am that I was not born a car. It's an odd thought and one that I have definitely never had before, but I keep having this experience - like a bad recurring dream - of having my elbows knocked very hard by people here (I have a tendency to place my hands on my hips, which pokes my elbows out beyond the reach of my shoulders). This has never posed a problem for me in the past, but in Vietnam, I am constantly having my elbows run into by people passing me by. So, you see, if I had been born a car, I wouldn't have doors any more.

It's frustrating. Before, I would have been able to eloquently pirouette my way through these congested narrow settings, and yet now I can't even go to the bathroom without hitting my head on doorways. Even yesterday, maneuvering my way through a crowded supermarket with my roommate, I could only watch helplessly as he weaved seamlessly through the massive crowd of people, while I clumsily found myself running into dead ends and gridlock.

I'm almost inclined to use the image of literally being a big fish in a small pond, but that's not right. The pond is not small. Instead it's quite big and even spacious in comparison to places I have been before. I think it's just overcrowded.

This morning, Kelsey told me that she read my blog and said that I sounded unhappy - which was terrifying the more I thought about it. Am I unhappy? I hope that all of you with your wonderful comments (they're really great and I truly enjoy reading them so much...thank you thank you) will let me know if I start sinking into some mopey-toned memoir. That said, I don't think I'm unhappy. I just feel lost. A big fish, sure, but in an enormous ocean full of so many fish (and fish driving motorbikes) that I can hardly see my own nose when I'm making my way about the city.

In talking with the other folks on this trip with us, many have shown frustration with the time we're spending here. Some are afraid that their internships aren't worth anything and that their contributions are almost insignificant here. Some of us wish we had more time in the city or more time with our internships - time enough to make some type of ripple (or just a bubble) in this ocean. I've even had moments where I wonder if I REALLY have to go to Vietnamese class in the mornings if I'm only going to be here for a few weeks.

I guess my question is how do we make our time (short as it is) meaningful in a place (large as it is)? Beat our tails as hard as we can and hope that our little ripple will be distinguishable in the waves above?

I promise that most of my posts will not be like this, but it's been a question that's been on my mind since we arrived in Saigon and that finally boiled over yesterday when I was having coffee with my roommate.

The moment itself was rather ordinary. We had come to this neat coffee shop called Cafe Take (Japanese for "bamboo") and were sitting, innocently enjoying our coffee when the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" came on the speakers. It's a song I have never thought myself as having many emotional connections to - especially in comparison to the feelings of love and absolute hatred that my parents have for it. But nevertheless, I felt myself something stir around inside me and suddenly I was taken back to the first play I was ever in (surprisingly not the Wizard of Oz) where "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" would play right before the curtains opened and the lights came on. I can clearly remember sitting nervously on stage in complete darkness - speedily whispering through the monologue I was about to say.

Moments later, B.B. King came on the stereo, and I briefly snapped out of my flashback only to transfer into another moment brimming with emotion. I excitedly told Phat (my roommate) how the blues were born in Mississippi (my home) and was able to tell him about some of its history.

Then, finally, the song "Danny Boy" came on the stereo, and I was vaulted again back into a high school choir concert where we stood singing "Danny Boy" for the last time to our beloved choir director who was leaving us to go to another school. His name was Ben, and we should have sang "Benny Boy," but we didn't. That was all I could think of.

The combination of these three songs and the memories associated with them gave me this tingle at the bottom of my spine that slowly moved up my back into my neck (standing the hairs on end) and then finally concentrating itself in my eyes in the form of burning tears not of sadness - but of joy.


I've found myself on multiple occasions needing to listen to my iPod - listening to songs I haven't listened to in months (or in some cases, years). From time to time, I just get this urge where I feel as though I won't be able to move if I don't hear some familiar song to give me that sense of place - of home - that I need so desperately at times here.

One of those songs has been "Seasons of Love" from the musical Rent. I think we were in class the other day and were learning about how to say "Today," "Yesterday," and "Tomorrow."

I don't remember quite who it was, but someone started to sing "Yesterday" by the Beatles, and in turn we thought of what other songs we could sing that fit with these time words. Anyway, Rent came up with "Today" and then inevitably, "Seasons of Love" was sung. Ever since, I've been singing it non-stop...until last night, when it stopped.

We had been warned that we were going to have to sing a song, but somehow we had been able to put off the reality until an hour before we were to sing in front of a crowd of some 500 Vietnamese youth at a Party Youth meeting. At 5:30 - one hour before we were supposed to be ready to perform - we started practicing "Seasons of Love." When 6:30 came, we could only cross our fingers that we were in good shape.

As we filed into the enormous auditorium filled with Vietnamese students, we had the first inkling that we didn't want to sing. Our attitudes didn't improve when the Korean students, who came on just before us, performed a 3 song fully-coreographed dance show - full with lights and deafening bass beats. (We didn't know we could have requested the lights...or the techno backbeat).

Watching, with mouths slightly open and eyes full of bewilderment, we could only form one small thought into my mind.

"Well, shit."

We watched as the lights went out and the auditorium filled with crazy applause. We excused ourselves from our seats in the auditorium and began to shimmy through the aisles and then up onto the stage. Rob introduced us and with every shred of confidence that we had left, we sang our hearts out for the audience, who, thank God, really liked us.


I write all this, because I think it fits well with what I'm trying (in such a long-winded way) to say about finding meaning (and direction) in an overwhelming ocean that feels like it is swallowing you whole, because when the Korean dancers came on last night, we all looked at each other with that "oh shit" look and yet together, we were somehow able to get through their performance AND ours.

"Seasons of Love" goes, "525,00 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes, how do you measure a year in the life?"

The song suggests daylights, sunsets, midnights, and cups of coffee before finally settling on love as the best way to measure one's life, and truly it's hard to argue that the feeling we had right before going on stage last night or right before taking a bite into a piece of unknown meat at a dirty noodle shop, was and is not love. It might not be love in that conventional sense, but there was something about that shared humiliation and frustration that we share about the food or about our soggy toilet paper, that I hope - when this summer comes to an end - may serve as a true measure for what made this time truly extraordinary.

No more of these kind of posts, I promise. Just needed it out.

Hope y'all are doing great.