Slices of Life, #7

A long barefoot walk also helped. To recover your sanity, perhaps you should do the same each day?

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/27/25

Incontinent Cartoons Dying Unseen — Aug 27, 2025.

Straggling home, I stopped to buy ten eggs, five tomatoes and four cucumbers for $2.09. I could have bought them for even less, but I’m used to my grocers, a lovely couple who are cordial and cheerful. Sơn the security guard goes out of his way each morning for the same reason. It’s comforting to see Mrs. Seven regularly. They know each other’s history and family situation. Whenever he’s sick, she gives him free pills. She did the same for me recently. Another regular, a retired high school teacher, always brings last night’s leftover for her two dogs.

In more advanced societies, these social oases disappear. Visiting an old Japanese in 2018, I stopped at a convenience store to pick up beer for this retired engineer. There, I noticed a corner with two tables where old farts could sit. If someone hadn’t shown up for maybe a week, the manager had to ask around to make sure he hadn’t died. Often, the only clue was the hellish stench seeping from the mail slot, already useless, since no letters had arrived in years.

On my only visit to a US nursing home, I walked past open doors where pale, corpse like figures lay immobile and expressionless. In an activity room, I was suddenly grabbed by a terrified looking man who thought he finally had a visitor. Since even cute babies are violently wrested from their moms, of course filthy bodies at the end of life must be disappeared. Why not just vaccinate them? That last round sure was fun.

(L): Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, 6/29/10 ; (R): Berkeley, California, USA, 3/8/13

Wretched nursing homes are still much better than homeless shelters or lying on the ground somewhere sick, freezing and incontinent. Seven or eight years ago, I profiled an old white woman sitting on a wheelchair outside a Philly church in the middle of the winter. To my surprise, Unzians came on to mock her appearance, with one adding, “When have you seen an Oriental doing anything for anybody?” I had gotten the Philadelphia Inquirer to investigate if she had been illegally kicked out of her home. With commenters calling themselves Catdompa, Mistah Charlie PhD or Gigolo Joe, we don’t know who’s a chatbot, hasbara or just an asshole.

Trump trimming Medicaid means even MAGA cultists will see their parents or grandparents crapping on sidewalks. To prevent this, they must care for their own seniors. As conservatives, why should they shun such family or Christian values?

Those losing their farms due to Trump’s trade war with China can join their grandparents under the nearest bridge. Shouldn’t it be obvious what US oligarchs are doing? They’re destroying small businesses and independent farms to grab even more of that devastated nation. Vaccine pushing Bill Gates owns the most farmland in the USA! Though not as dramatic as in Gaza, they’re starving and killing Americans too, with Jewjabs, drugs and general hopelessness.

With executive orders as pretexts, there’s no more check and balance. Any American president is a dictator. Trump can just bomb Iran, send an armada to Venezuela or militarily occupy US cities. With each simmering, these troops won’t just confront, but stoke, the coming mayhem.

(L): Savannah, Georgia, USA, 12/8/11 ; (R): Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, 7/12/11

I was only about 19 when I saw in a theater the Ballad of Narayama. The idea that you could just leave old folks on a mountain to die wasn’t just horrific, but poetic and even amusing. The Japanese sure know how to solve problems aesthetically, I thought, and I still do, actually, though it would be me being left in the snow to await Sasquatch, Jesus or Uncle Ho.

Walking home just now, I passed two teen girls in colorful polyester pyjamas sitting on swings. They were too old to giggle so loudly, I thought. I mean, they were ready to fall backward and knock themselves out on sharp rocks, though none was near.

Finally in my room, I had another thought, perhaps my best today, about aging. To caricature someone was to exaggerate his worst features, that is, to age him most grotesquely. Americans, though, converted caricatures into sweet, lovable cartoons, so even giant rats became huggable. In this way, the entire culture is suspended in an eternal infancy. In a Daffy Duck T-shirt, even a splotchy, discolored cadaver appears ready to enter kindergarten.

Eating my made in Vietnam chocolate with suppressed shame, I noticed this coy corporate endearment on the elegant black box, “No sugar needed since you’re already sweet!” Exported to the US, this must be changed to, “As bitter as you!” Only a bitter man would think of something like that, or an American! Even better, I was mostly formed in Philadelphia. You gonna do something about it?

Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/28/25

Suck It Good! — Aug 28, 2025.

Finishing my second article yesterday, I was making faces and emitting guttural noises that would have alarmed anyone, but thankfully, I was alone. Finally I persuaded myself to calm down. “You’re cracking, dipshit,” I had to growl. A long barefoot walk also helped. To recover your sanity, perhaps you should do the same each day? Unless you’re dwelling in lovely Gary, Camden or Jackson, walk barefoot for at least half an hour daily through your neighborhood, and without your Satanic phone, of course. I haven’t used mine in over a year. Even in Jordan, I didn’t have it activated.

If you’re in the sticks, run naked through the fields for an hour or two. Leap over barbed wire fences and wade through polluted streams while screaming in fake Chinese or Albanian. Diving into mud, you’ll see epiphanies splattering out.

Waking up with a slight headache, I couldn’t make it to Coffee Seven by 4AM, so decided to walk two or three miles to straighten my life out while solving every problem in the universe, more or less. Passing Hùng sleeping in his pedicab, I noticed he had scrawled, “USA Number 1.” There’s also a couplet about Mr. Sky, i.e. God, being in charge of his precarious fate.

Bụi đời, literally “dust life,” is as much “adrift” as “homeless,” with even a hint of adventure. You’re blown about like a speck of dust. Homeless for over four decades, Hùng sees the USA as an unreachable heaven. After the Fall of Saigon, his ARVN dad was dumped into a reeducation camp, thus sending his entire family into destitution. My drifting from hotel room to hotel room across national boundaries is also bụi đời, perversely enough.

In an alley, a women riding by on a bicycle said, “I haven’t seen you in a while, brother!” She was heading to her café. Since it would have taken her 20 minutes to set up, I had to move on.

Despite my efforts to escape, Mr. Sky steered me right back to Mrs. Seven, so there I was, again, but at 5AM. After Hùng’s USA Number 1, this proved fortuitous.

“Come here!” she said after a while in a hushed tone. “I want to show you something!”

Standing over her behind the display cabinet, I was shown some of her dad’s documents. A green ID said, “STANDARD PASS—US ARMY VIETNAM.” It was issued on 7/9/70. Another, yellowed and falling apart, had the seal of the United States Agency for International Development. Most fascinating was a handwritten letter he sent to the US Embassy in 2004.

After introducing himself as a security guard at an “American store” in the US Embassy in Saigon, he says he hasn’t received his salary and benefits since 1975. “Từ đó đến nay tôi chưa lãnh được lương và tiền trợ cấp việc làm của tôi.” From that point until now I haven’t received my salary and aid [or benefits] pertaining to my work. It’s beyond weird. Does he mean half a month of missing wages from three decades ago, or is this supplicant expecting a pension? People not used to writing often adopt an overly formal tone, especially in a petition addressed to any omnipotent. For many in this earthly realm, Uncle Sam qualifies. Of course, nothing came of this abject missive.

From 1975 to 1990, Vietnam suffered endless horrors, with wars against China and Cambodia, concentration camps for ARVN soldiers, waves of boat people fleeing, with hundreds of thousands robbed, raped, killed or drowned, scarcity of all basic goods and pigheaded rules that made day to day living nearly impossible. Though life was much improved by 2004, memories of so much trauma continued to haunt. An influx of tourists and businessmen from the West, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea also reinforced the near universal perception of the Capitalist outside as obscenly wealthy, so why not beg for a few coins, especially if you’ve served that system so well, including, let me remind you, by selling pot to American soldiers?

(L): Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/28/25

Sucking up isn’t reserved for those who have spent many months barely eating. Even suited millionaires in air conditioned offices know how to swallow each dewy drop with their eyes dreamy. Trump’s latest cabinet meeting was such a sumptuous suckathon. Though it’s hard to know who or how much to quote, I’ll give you three brownnoses.

Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer, “If you all haven’t stopped by the Department of Labor, Mr. President, I invite you to see your big beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor because you are really the transformational president of the American worker […]”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, “Mr. President, it’s pretty great to celebrate Labor Day with a builder who loves labor, who loves the men and women who have built this country, the people that sweat, that have great skills, they have grit. They do the dirty jobs of America that have made this country great and you know them very well, because you have worked with them.”

Special Envoy the Middle East Steve Witkoff, “Mr. President, working for this government for you is the greatest honor of my life. I tell it to everybody and I really do feel that way, and I thank you, because it’s a privilege to go out there and represent you in your humanitarian effort, in your goals of solving conflicts all over the world […] I sometimes wish that I had a cam recorder with me and I could put you right there as I listened to it. I was in Gaza, the first American diplomat on your behalf. And as we delivered food and aid pursuant to your new aid initiative, pushed forth by your great Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who it is a privilege for me to work alongside, the people were applauding you, the signs were up […] There’s only one thing I wish for, that that that Nobel Committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace, this Nobel Award, was ever talked about.”

There are still millions of Americans who agree with everything just quoted. In Gaza, Palestinians are cheering Trump because he’s, how can you doubt it, the greatest candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize ever! When asked about another Gaza hospital being bombed, Trump said he had no idea, just as he barely knew Jeffrey Epstein. Let’s not be distracted by child raping rumors or fake news about Americans skipping meals. Across the USA, factories are being built and there’s no inflation.

Ăn Chơi Vũng Tàu model at Salt Water

Savage Among Desperate Angels — Aug 29, 2025.

Clearly, I have no business being here. Since arrival, I’ve felt nothing but the deepest shame and discomfort, bordering on terror, for this place, being so carefully furnished, lit and curated, is meant only for clean, fresh smelling bodies, with wings, most likely, tucked under their elegant tops, bought at the finest stores. Here, anything remotely foul to anyone’s nose or eyes can only come from me, so it’s a miracle I haven’t been booted out, with my cheap sandals thrown at my bowed head. “Don’t ever come back!” I’m truly sorry.

Just from my table, I can see four chandeliers with glass bulbs shaped like bowls, bonnets or twats, festively flared. Within grabbing distance, two impossibly pale girls are getting ready to take selfies, so they can boast to all their Instagram or FaceBook friends about their casual visit to Salt Water.

Before this brave intrusion, I had passed it dozens of times, but nearly always before dawn. Though a cappuccino here is only 55K [$2.09], so less than a small crappy coffee at any US Dunkin’ Donuts, Salt Water looks very elegant and imposing from the outside. This century old villa must have been owned by some French guy, then a South Vietnamese big shot. Whoever possesses it now is selling black and white postcards of Paris, rather crappy photos, really, from one of his vacations.

Salt Water in Vung Tau on 8/29/25

For at least half an hour, two girls at the next table have been busy with their makeup. One holds a compact mirror, the other has a plastic framed one measuring 5 by 7 inches. They apply primer, foundation, eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara and lipstick, all for those killer selfies to destroy all their rivals. While y’all are sweating at shit jobs, I’m looking so glamorous at Salt Water!

Their cotton dresses are definitely Western, as is every last detail of this joint. In the display case are New York Cheesecake (with slices of kiwi), Chocolate Beer Cake, Carrot Cake, Apple Cake and Banana Chocolate Cake, with all signs in English.

Across the Orient, to be high class, elegant or cool is to be, nearly always, Westernized. There are all these restaurants, cafes and even theme parks designed to evoke a fairy tale West, so without its crimes, homelessness and, yes, cultural dilution and confusion. These Oriental goofballs would be shocked at the actual state of Paris, Brussels, London, New York or San Francisco, etc.

Salt Water in Vung Tau on 8/29/25

This Westward orientation isn’t harmless, for it’s paid in self-pity if not self-hatred. Millions of South Koreans disfigure themselves to have their eyes and noses appear more Western. Culturally, too, Orientals overvalue whatever comes out of the West, and they look towards whites for approval. Why shouldn’t Japan, China or Singapore have a literary prize more prestigious and lucrative than what’s granted by Sweden, a country of just 10 million people?! Why shouldn’t La Biennale di Venezia be equaled or supplanted by something organized in Osaka, Jakarta or Bangkok?

After an hour of prettying themselves, those two girls at the next table got up for selfies, then sat down to apply more makeup, for their next round of self promotion. Another girl had this on her tank top, “WITH HARMONY ROCK SPIRIT.” She obviously didn’t go to an international school.

Though Salt Water is within a five minute walk of Coffee Seven, it’s an entirely different universe. Here there’s no frog behind the cooler, tailless dogs running around or a Minnie Mouse crudely painted six decades ago. Still, Mrs. Seven did go through a period when she had to, as best she could, maximize her sexual allure. We all did. Today’s emphasis on self branding or self glamorizing is at an unprecedented level, however, for each dork or ditz can broadcast himself instantly to the rest of the world. He even feels he must. With images cheaper than ever, everybody is pushing his.

Having long ago spent my sexual capital, all 15 cents of it, I can look at these young ’uns with amusement. They, in turn, can simply ignore that stinking old creep typing away in the corner. Enough already for this foray! Now, I will run back out into the sun and be a liberated savage again!

About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):

‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’

AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks