To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond’s edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and sweet to lose everything.

Donald Hall

Last night, we went to a Chinese buffet for dinner. We had five adults and two kids. Xuân, our third kid, had mac and cheese, fries, and toasted bread. I had a plate of snails, two plates of crawfish, and some steamed fish. I ordered a bottle of Tsing Tao to wash down and seafood. The beer cost $9 for a bottle. The bill was about $140. With tip, I dropped $170 with an instant regret. Damn! I need to stop spending money like this. Should have just go home to eat leftovers. I said that every time and I always caved in when the kids wanted to go out to eat.

Trưa nay nhã hứng thiết kế lại “Tình thư thứ ba” của nhạc sỉ Vũ Thành An. Cho phần hậu cảnh, tôi chọn hình mẫu giấy và phong bì cũ để thiết kế tựa lá thư xưa. Để tạo lại cảm giác như viết bằng tay, tôi chọn bộ phông Bad Script của Gaslight. Mẫu chữ này đã thiết kế dựa theo cách viết của chính người thiết kế Roman Shchyukin. Tuy phông chữ lả lướt nhưng cũng đọc được không khó lắm. Mời cả nhà đọc thử.

I didn’t blog much last week because I was busy renovating 9 pair of skis and refreshing 5 pair of ski boots. For the skis, I cleaned them up, glued all the dings, sharpened the edges, p-texed all the scratches on the bases, checked the bindings, greased the groves, tightened up the screws, and finally waxed the bases. I even install two sets of bindings with my wife’s help.

I enlisted Đạo to help me filming the products and taking the photos so I can list them on Facebook Marketplace. I am not sure how many pairs I will sell from now until the ski season begins, but I am already out of steam. It was a lot of work. This is not a viable side gig if I want to make extra money.

I’ll just stick with skiing and snowboarding. I can’t wait for the winter to come. Snow god, please give us snow this year.

By the way, here’s my Marketplace profile.

I am no longer interested in politics unless it affects my livelihood. The Trump administration is attacking my institution and my president. After trying to investigate our president without success, the Trump officials now demand an apology from our president over diversity. I am glad our school and our president are standing up to them to keep our independence. Please don’t budge. We are the last institution to fight against their bullies. Fuck them!

I haven’t blogged about politics in a while, which is a good thing. I just can’t follow the news anymore. It is too depression and not good for my mental health at all.

In recent weeks, I have come to the point where I just leave politics out of my social life. I have been hanging out with people who support Trump. As long as we don’t get into politics, we are fine. I don’t want to get into it either. If they are cool with me then I am cool with them.

I also avoid putting my head on the chopping block between the Vietnamese Americans and Vietnamese communists. I have heard enough from both sides. I don’t want to be part of the controversy.

I have too many things to worry about.

The name Vũ Thành An is synonymous with “Những bài không tên,” a series of untitled Vietnamese love songs. Because these songs were written about his past lovers, the famed Vietnamese musician and composer didn’t want to reveal their names. The first ten songs in the series had been covered countless of times by several generations of Vietnamese singers. The rest hadn’t been recorded much; therefore, I would like to put together a collection so the pieces can be read as poems. Even though the series has 112 songs, many of them are missing. I collected as many of them as I could find. For typesetting, I selected NaN Druid and Nan Druid Sans, designed by Anna Khorash and Reymund Schröder. Enjoy reading!

I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish you sat on the sofa
and I sat near.
The handkerchief could be yours,
the tear could be mine, chin-bound.
Though it could be, of course,
the other way around.

I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish we were in my car,
and you’d shift the gear.
We’d find ourselves elsewhere,
on an unknown shore.
Or else we’d repair
to where we’ve been before.

I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish I knew no astronomy
when stars appear,
when the moon skims the water
that sighs and shifts in its slumber.
I wish it were still a quarter
to dial your number.

I wish you were here, dear,
in this hemisphere,
as I sit on the porch
sipping a beer.
It’s evening; the sun is setting,
boys shout and gulls are crying.
What’s the point of forgetting
if it’s followed by dying?

Joseph Brodsky

There’s a black bear
in the apple tree
and he won’t come down.
I can hear him panting,
like an athlete.
I can smell the stink
of his body.

Come down, black bear.
Can you hear me?

The mind is the most interesting thing to me;
like the sudden death of the sun,
it seems implausible that darkness will swallow it
or that anything is lost forever there,
like a black bear in a fruit tree,
gulping up sour apples
with dry sucking sounds,

or like us at the pier, sombre and tired,
making food from sunlight,
you saying a word, me saying a word, trying hard,
though things were disintegrating.

Still, I wanted you,
your lips on my neck,
your postmodern sexuality.
Forlorn and anonymous:
I didn’t want to be that. I could hear
the great barking monsters of the lower waters
calling me forward.

You see, my mind takes me far,
but my heart dreams of return.

Black bear,
with pale-pink tongue
at the center of his face,
is turning his head,
like the face of Christ from life.
Shaking the apple boughs,
he is stronger than I am
and seems so free of passion—
no fear, no pain, no tenderness. I want to be that.

Come down, black bear,
I want to learn the faith of the indifferent.

Henri Cole

I love you like ladybugs love windowsills, love you
like sperm whales love squid. There’s no depth
I wouldn’t follow you through. I love you like
the pawns in chess love aristocratic horses.
I’ll throw myself in front of a bishop or a queen
for you. Even a sentient castle. My love is crazy
like that. I like that sweet little hothouse mouth
you have. I like to kiss you with tongue, with gusto,
with socks still on. I love you like a vulture loves
the careless deer at the roadside. I want to get
all up in you. I love you like Isis loved Osiris,
but her devotion came up a few inches short.
I’d train my breath and learn to read sonar until
I retrieved every lost blood vessel of you. I swear
this love is ungodly, not an ounce of suffering in it.
Like salmon and its upstream itch, I’ll dodge grizzlies
for you. Like hawks and skyscraper rooftops,
I’ll keep coming back. Maddened. A little hopeless.
Embarrassingly in love. And that’s why I’m on
the couch kissing pictures on my phone instead of
calling you in from the kitchen where you are
undoubtedly making dinner too spicy, but when
you hold the spoon to my lips and ask if it’s ready
I’ll say it is, always, but never, there is never enough.