Slices of Life, #12

Always cheerful and optimistic, I’m hoping Israel and America’s collapse will bring sunshine, relief and laughter to not just Beirut, Damascus, Tehran, Caracas and Kiev, but Juarez, Berlin, Paris, Brussels and Belgrade, etc. Nearly the entire world is anticipating.

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

Frantic Noise and Spectacle Utopia — Sep 10, 2025.

My initial visit to Laos was in 2020. That first evening in Savannakhet, I was astounded by how good Beerlao was. In one of the poorest Oriental countries, you can get a much better lager than Bud, Miller, Pabst, Coors, Rolling Rock or Yuengling, etc., and it’s also much cheaper. Laos themselves don’t know this. Many would pay twice as much for a crappy Budweiser, just to experience an American brew.

Three years later in Pakse, I saw Coredo, an Italian, drinking a Beerlao before 6AM at a skanky Vietnamese eatery. Coredo’s Dok Mai Lao Trattoria Italiana had four Belgian beers, plus English, German, Italian and Dutch ones, yet here he was with a tall bottle of Beerlao just after dawn.

Doing the same many times nudged my damaged liver towards the edge. In nearby Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, it finally tipped over, after a deep fried “Western Combo” meal. Aghast, I watched that slimy, bloated blob plunge towards the abyss, with a bitter glare backward, plus an upturned finger. “You will pay!” it screamed.

It was American fried rice I really wanted. This local specialty was concocted for US soldiers during the Vietnam War. From Ubon, Uncle Sam’s planes could bomb Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. General Giap sneaked saboteurs into Ubon, but they couldn’t get pass those mines and barbwires around the airfield.

I’m bringing up Beerlao because it’s actually for sale at a liquor store near me. This is extremely rare. Vietnamese, too, would pay much more for any American beer. Since my liver hasn’t fully recovered, relapsing into Beerlao happiness would be near suicidal, but I’m thinking about it.

Basic foods and drinks honestly prepared are all you need. In 2002, I arrived in Certaldo, Italy. My first morning there, I went to Coop, the town’s only supermarket, to get bread, cheese, butter and other basics. Sitting at my kitchen table, I was amazed, almost shocked, by how good the bread was.

In Norwich in 2010, I had a similar reaction to my first English glass of milk.

With Japanese friends at an Osaka restaurant in 2021, I was amused, at first, at the idea of eating udon with just broth. There was no meat or vegetables. Before this, we had stuffed our faces with plenty of seafood, but now, it was time to enjoy udon as udon. By itself, it was already amazing. This ability to identify and isolate basic pleasures has almost disappeared.

OK, so life is hard, you’re hard, everything is hard, and you’re beyond sick of sucking it up even in sleep while waiting for your tariff rebate checks and Jesus. Somehow, it’s evening again. Sitting at Cóc Cóc with a cappuccino and a full belly, I watch reasonably nourished people roll by, but suddenly, a sallow woman, grayly dressed, is standing just two feet from me. Around 60, she looks dejected. When she begs, no noise comes from her barely moving mouth. In silence, I place some money into her upturned conical hat, all frayed around the edge.

Waking up, I struggled to pick up the threads, so bear with me, man, as I stumble around a bit. Beerlao brought back fond memories of all those bottles of Ur-Krostitzer stashed inside a Leipzig closet. If that city rings any bell in the sub-sub-basement of your alcoholic dementia, it must be because of that Robert Capa photo of an American soldier, dead, just inside a Leipzig balcony at the very end of WWII. In 2016, I wasn’t there to be shot at, obviously, but to teach highfalutin’ classes to clearly brilliant German kids, plus an outstanding Indian student who had lived in Qatar or Dubai. Anyway, I got my own office, dude. Though the Ur-Krostitzer was undoubtedly saved for some future party, I couldn’t help but sneak a bottle or two during late night writing sessions, and just like that, they were all gone in no time.

We’ve lost the ability to simply slow down and enjoy, singly, anything, but if all you’ve known is fake beer, cheese, bread, friendship, sex and conversations, etc., you must compensate by stuffing your dismal face, brain and belly with as much fake shit as possible, because it’s so inherently unsatisfying. That’s why you must watch porn for 24 hours a day, sports for 24 hours a day and TikTok skits with retarded laugh tracks for 24 hours a day. With AI lovers, why have just one and not 20?

It is odd for the emperor to declare we have too much bread and circuses

— Duncan (@byte_curious_) June 20, 2025

Like the Japanese, Italians can enjoy pasta with next to nothing. They routinely eat it with just enough sauce to accentuate its flavor, then comes the meat, if there’s meat. In Albania, too, you can get very good pasta, nearly naked, for next to nothing.

All slow pleasures have disappeared. Slowly produced oil paintings must be slowly scrutinized. Carefully crafted poems must be slowly read, over and over. Conversations must take place without any distraction, so each word can be heard. Replies must be weighted. Novels must never be skimmed. Even walking, which is how our feet, ears and eyes are supposed to interact with this world, is shunned. Strapped to death bubbles, we jet towards hell, but hallelujah, we’re already there!

Just to get this off my chest, motherfucker, I’m going to squeeze in some final words on French fries. Clearly made with better potatoes and oil, English chips only need salt and vinegar. Smothering them with ketchup is obscene, and yet, it’s already done in the UK.

“Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste, but⁰they detest at leisure.”

– Lord Byron

— • ع • (@albadraniyah) January 25, 2023

To avoid sonic idiocy from cellphones, I finish this at the back of Cóc Cóc, right by the toilet. Increasingly, this world resembles a clogged commode. To survive, you must learn how to wiggle, dodge or slip away. Most people are just trapped. Walking barefoot in the dark before sunrise each day, I know I’ve been spared.

Escaping from hell, they dive even deeper into frantic noises and spectacles.

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Insane, Sick and Slandered — Sep 11, 2025.

Go ahead, ask me anything!

So walking home last night, I paused at the corner of Ba Cu and Lê Lợi. To Coffee House’s security guard, a man past 60, I said, “You hear that?” I meant the obnoxious American music booming from Sophie Restaurant and Cofee, 50 yards away.

Old head just shrugged.

“Sitting here, it’s already driving you mad, yet there are all those people in there. They’re insane! Everyone has gone mad!”

Since it was only about 9, he still had an hour left on his eight-hour shift, all of it spent outside. Though the day-time guy doesn’t have to deal with this insane music, he must endure the heat. There’s a pedestal fan.

Moving on, I was recognized by a masked street sweeper.

“Why are you all masked? Look at you!”

She pulled it down.

“How could you breathe? What are you afraid of?”

“I’m used to it.”

“And your hat, too. There’s no more sun!”

She just grinned.

“You must let yourself breathe, sister! Masked like that, you’ll die soon! Look at me. Even an old man like me isn’t afraid of any disease.”

“I wear my mask to keep out the dust,” which was obvious nonsense. Putting it back on, she resumed sweeping leaves and twigs, mostly, plus some trash.

Exactly a year ago, there was a mudslide that killed and injured a bunch of people in Lào Cai, 1,200 miles away. Sitting on a low plastic stool at a sidewalk café, this street sweeper expressed her distress at seeing an injured boy on TV. She also noticed the sores on my ankles. “What happened to you?”

Everyone is also sick. Before 4AM this morning, I paused to chat with BlueTooth. Finally over Eminem, he’s been listening to “dance” music. Since Vietnamese routinely ignore suffices, Bluetooth pronounces “dance” as “đen,” which means black. We cleared that up.

BlueTooth must drink coffee alone because he’s afflicted with vestibular disorder. Strong coffee as served in cafés makes him dizzy or even nauseated. Though candid, this 42-year-old hasn’t fessed up to me his drug addiction lasting over a decade. He’s lucky to live at home, unemployed. Twice a day, Bluetooth goes swimming in the ocean. Sometimes, he picks up trash on the beach. Even foreigners do that here. Infected by some toxic garbage, a British guy came to Vung Tau to be treated, for free, from the same man who gave me something for my liver.

BlueTooth’s real nickname is Tèo, by the way. It’s very generic. Others are Cu, meaning penis, and Cún, a dog name. Used on boys, it’s more or less “puppy.”

Becoming global, Vietnamese have new nicknames. I know two boys in Saigon called Coke and Pepsi. At Pato’s Bingsu, I heard a boy called Cà Ri, meaning Curry. Pato is also a nickname.

Leaving BlueTooth, I went to Coffee Seven, of course. Today, I snapped a photo of Mrs. Seven, so y’all can see, at last, this legendary figure. I also got a photo of her from the 90’s. She looks tense in this publicity shot for a trip to Japan that never happened. Life here was tense, though, for everybody.

Leaving Coffee Seven, I saw, at a basketball court, a teenaged boy walking with his hands while perpendicular. Right behind him was another boy, to hold his legs. Vietnam’s soccer team is ranked 113, which is bad enough, but its basketball squad is even worse. At 135, it’s behind even the Maldives, but ahead, though, of Bangladesh, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania. You work with what you have. Nations, too.

In an alley next to Coffee Seven, a middle aged man just got injured. Removing a rusty screw with a rotary tool, he was struck in the eye by a tiny sliver. Maybe he didn’t have safety glasses, or just neglected to wear them for a few seconds. In a Saigon hospital for nearly a week, he’s finally home. It appears he will lose at least one eye.

Arriving at Coffee Seven, I saw Mrs. Seven talking to this man’s wife. Of course, I don’t know that couple, but neither does Sơn, the security guard. Even if we did, some joking would have likely slipped in anyway.

Sơn with a straight face, “Blurry vision can be fixed with some sand paper.”

Me, “It must be harder to pick up chicks with one eye, but who knows? Maybe it’s a unique advantage.”

When a drunk driver killed two and injured five last year in Vung Tau, locals thought it’s hilarious that car finally stopped in front of a driving school. God, too, must have an evil sense of humor.

Of course, Mrs. Seven wasn’t entirely happy with her photo, but none of us can tolerate how anyone really sees us. Even those who love, adore or admire us have it all wrong.

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Looks Horrible, Smells Worse, Is Evil — Sep 13, 2025.

Last month, a 38-year-old Israeli official was arrested in Las Vegas for trying to screw a 15-year-old girl. Facing up to 10 years in prison, Tom Alexandrovich spent just one night in jail. Just like that, he’s back in Israel! Of course, Alexandrovich skipped his court date a week later. Randy Tom must get a team of Jewish lawyers to sue Vegas for fucking up his working holiday. Trump should call Netanyahu to apologize.

Netanyahu, “I gave you all those pussies even younger for decades, and this is how you treat a respectable Jew?! You embarrassed him, his family, me and the entire state of Israel!”

When Jewish pimp, child trafficker and child rapist Jeffrey Epstein finally got snagged in Florida in 2005, US Attorney Alexander Acosta secured for this monster a federal non-prosecution agreement. For helping out not just this Jew, but the Mossad and Israel, Acosta became, under Trump in 2017, the US Secretary of Labor.

There’s no special treatment. Uncle Sam is just courteous to all foreigners. He loves them so much, he’s dropped more bombs on them than the rest of the world combined.

It’s no big deal to Americans, but 316 South Koreans were arrested at a Hyundai Plant in Georgia on 9/4/25. They were only in the US to bring jobs to Americans. Jailed for a week, they were released after tense negotiations, so are finally back home. Only under pressure from Seoul did the US agree to let them onto an Air Korea chartered plane without handcuffs. Without apologizing, Trump, at the last minute, said they could stay, after all, to help save his sinking economy. This just delayed their flight for another day.

Landing in Seoul, they were met with tearful relatives. A 58-year-old told the Korea Times he had come to the US on a short-term visa to oversee equipment installation. When masked goons with guns drawn swarmed his construction site, Lee explained he wasn’t illegal, but it didn’t matter. Lee was handcuffed and taken away.

After a Chris Norlund video about this, lycos888 comments, “An engineer who returned to Korea after being released from a hostage situation in the U.S. said, ‘I’ve never stolen a single egg in my life, and I’ve never been handcuffed, so being chained will probably be an incurable trauma for the rest of my life.’ He will never return to the U.S. again. No promise made by the US government can be trusted because what it says in the morning may change in the evening.”

Maryziggy, “They were put in chains, displayed on TV then put into a detention centre. Disgraceful.”

Notoadictator, “Trump’s arrogance is destroying our country. WHY would ANY country do business with the USA?”

Lark Blue, “As a Black American, I want to apologize to the South Koreans who were humiliated this way. Most of my people voted against this vile person who is president, and has filled his administration with fools, crooks, and racists. It’s completely understandable if South Korea canceled all deals with the US.”

It’s not about voting. Trump was installed to destroy the USA. Bankrupted farms and businesses will be bought up for cheap by oligarchs. Plus, it’s just fun to see dumb goyim suffer, kill each other and die. Jewjabs were just one method.

Just now, I quoted “Charles Burgess” being enraged over my take on the Charlie Kirk assassination. In the same email, Burgess said Americans “don’t lose too much sleep” over the murder of 11 Venezuelans. Foreign lives and opinions don’t matter.

Such murderous arrogance is coming to an end. India Today’s Geeta Mohan sums it up on 9/12/25, “Once upon a time, the mere whisper of American displeasure could topple governments, redraw borders, or halt tanks on a dime. Washington wrote the trade routes through the WTO, stared down Moscow in the Cuban missile crisis, bombed Libya into submission, invaded Iraq at will, and treated the world as its playground. Now, in 2025, Donald Trump stands at a podium calling this a new ‘golden age,’ boasting of the hottest country anywhere in the world […] Yet the applause sounds faint. Ceasefires he claims to broker were never his. Allies eye alternatives. Enemies shrug off sanctions. Even friends, if there are any, doubt his word.”

On the same episode of Statecraft, Mohan featured Rick Sanchez, formerly of CNN. Born in Cuba, this American has moved to Moscow. Unchained, Sanchez can now speak the whole truth, “We can’t talk about this without talking about the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem is that the United States is not the most powerful country in the world. Israel is the most most powerful country in the world. Israel runs the United States.”

Canceled by Jews, Chris Hedges had a show on Russia Today, until RT America was banned in 2022. I myself was on Russia Today four or five times, with my last appearance in 2018, when I was interviewed by Chris Hedges in NYC. My dozens of appearances on Iran’s Press TV were also scrubbed by YouTube when Jewish Susan Wojcicki was its CEO. Still stuck in the USA, Hedges must hedge his words.

In that evil system, every politician, general, journalist, public intellectual and even doctor must be a sellout.

Vietnam born Chris Norlund was airlifted from Saigon as an orphan. This American is living in Busan with his Korean wife.

One of the sharpest American minds is Whitney Webb, of course. She probes her lost nation’s byzantine corruption and madness from Chile.

Shit, man, I felt better just crossing from El Paso into Juarez, the “world’s most dangerous city,” according to many people. Had I lingered, perhaps I would have witnessed a head or two tossed into a bar. Instead, all I saw were busy streets filled with lovely people.

Since Americans can’t stand their lives without an endless supply of heroin, coke, meth and fentanyl, somebody must help these suffering souls. That’s the only reason why Juarez is so dangerous.

Always cheerful and optimistic, I’m hoping Israel and America’s collapse will bring sunshine, relief and laughter to not just Beirut, Damascus, Tehran, Caracas and Kiev, but Juarez, Berlin, Paris, Brussels and Belgrade, etc. Nearly the entire world is anticipating.

After giving Trump a $400 million plane, Qatar’s capital just got bombed by Jews.

Kissing America’s ass gets you nowhere. Kissinger, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” Even if he didn’t say that, it’s repeated so often because it rings true.

Serving Jews, just being an American is often fatal

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Checking in with Douglas Larsen, a 73-Year-Old Internal Exile — Sep 14, 2025.

I left the States for good in 2018, but even before that, I lived outside the US as an adult for nearly five years. You, on the other hand, have become an internal exile. Please explain how this happened. What problems have you encountered? What advice do you have for those wishing to do the same?

-First, thank you Linh for inviting me for an interview. Having followed your wanderings and writings for more than eleven years, I feel honored to respond.

I, too, lived outside the US before this internal exile time. In the fall of 1988 after a short stint in rural northern Germany I found myself caretaking a compound in rural southern Spain located on a sere plateau at the end of a dirt road surrounded by crumbling adobe ruins and almond and olive orchards. The nearest human inhabitants lived in a farm village three kilometers distant.

That experience provided some foundations for my current living conditions. Twelve volt solar panels furnished electricity. A tanker truck delivered water to a concrete reservoir which provided gravity feed to the main building, but rainwater collected in a well was the main water source. Clothes were washed by hand outside in plastic tubs. A fireplace was a heat source in the cool months. There was a propane stove, but no refrigeration. Olives, almonds and rice were staples supplemented with foraged greens like wild spinach and nettles and lettuces. I ground my own flour for hearth baked sourdough bread. Vegetables and eggs and cheese and beans came from the village.

After three year of that lifestyle my money dried up and there we were, my wife and I, barely able to eat. Fortunately, I had a good enough reputation in the village that shop keepers and the restaurant extended credit for food and other basics like wine. I found work in the fields doing stoop labor for ten hours under the hot sun for $27 a day, thus enabling me to pay debts. A US friend loaned money to pay travel expenses to Holland where friends would host us but that’s another chapter in a book never to be written.

Regarding my internal exile, some background and description about where I live and how I got here is useful. So, let’s take a little trip. Whether driving from the north or south you will have left the last traffic light fifty miles behind while driving through vast open space with jagged mountain ranges both east and west. There are some scraggly habitations scattered about in the High Sonoran Desert landscape which seems to stretch forever. But you finally hit the turnoff from this two-lane highway and head east for ten miles toward the mountains where you come to a fork in the road. Skirt the quirky mountain village by taking a right and proceed three miles or so and take a turn toward the mountains where the road will end at a gate. I’ll meet you there and guide you up a steep mile long rutted dirt road. Then it’s a ten-minute uphill hike on a rock strewn trail bordered with cedars, pines, currant bushes and wildflowers.

The cabin is a modest green stucco affair with decks and picture windows front and back. Inside the studio size space is the main kitchen and living area, which is outfitted with cupboards, a four burner propane counter top stove and an under the counter utility refrigerator. There’s a wood burning stove, a wooden table and stool on a white stone tile floor. There are a couple of large framed calligraphies on white walls. Two windows and a skylight provide illumination along with three ceiling lights. All solar powered.

It’s an uplifted space. A sliding wood door leads to my sleeping area which features a 5×6 picture window with a panoramic view that looks out across a ridge and forty miles over a flat valley floor to a western mountain range. There are people who would pay big bucks for such a view if they could even find it, although my rent is rather modest as I do some work exchange.

This cabin, built into the side of a steep mountainside, lacks plumbing so I’ve become a master of water conservation. I get by on two or three gallons a day to cook, wash dishes, wash my body and mop the floor. Water is heated in a stock pot for such purposes. The water is sourced from a well near the trail head and hauled to the cabin in gallon plastic bottles.

I pee in a bucket or more often off the deck in all seasons. Solid waste is managed with an improvised compost system, but yeah, I shit in a bucket. In the winter l haul wood daily on a pack frame as it’s my primary heat source. There’s a wall mounted propane heater in the sleeping area, which stays at the lowest setting because propane costs money.

Winter presents its own challenges with snow and ice removal. The road is privately plowed, but I have to clear the trail with a snow shovel, or a broom depending on the type of snow. I also have to get up on the roof to clear the solar panel, which entails climbing up the mountainside, holding onto a tree limb and making a big stretch and hop to land rooftop.

OK, so how did I get here? I came to this area in the mid-90’s to help set up a residential education program for a university. I fell in love with the vast open space and landscape, which reminded me of my beloved rural Spain in so many ways. When I returned home I told my wife we’re going to move there and she was like, “are you out of your fucking mind? I’m not following you to the middle of nowhere again.” As a university administrative director, she was finally fulfilling her career goals.

I was like, we’ll see. In the event, when we visited that summer she immediately contacted realtors and started looking for land, and I was the one saying not so fast.

We ended up buying a parcel of land with the intent of building and relocating, but there was the sticky issue of livelihood in the middle of nowhere. I came up with the brilliant idea of starting a restaurant, because that’s what I know. Forget that there were already two existing eateries to serve a population of maybe a thousand, nobody knew then or knows now the exact number. I was confident if foolhardy.

The business served as an introduction to the community and provided employment for five people including myself and wife who kept her university job and came down for weekends until she quit that job and moved here for the long haul. Anyway, the dishwasher/prep grunt and waitresses took home more money than us. It was a subsidized operation, which has characterized many of my endeavors. We made our customers happy and established a good reputation.

That operation met a sorry end after a bit more than a year, but I soon started another restaurant with the same crew. I pulled the plug on that eatery after some months because the physical plant couldn’t sustain the business volume. First time I closed a business because it was too popular.

After that I did everything and anything to stay afloat: caterings, cleaning construction sites, tutoring, reporting on the political beat for the local paper, teaching part time, dog sitting, you name it. I’d need an accordion business card to advertise my offerings. It was all hand to mouth and hard scrabble, and it still is. At the same time there’s a contemplative quality to the experience.

Lack of economic viability was always the greatest obstacle to living here. By 2008 my marriage had crashed along with the economy. I had some part time gigs but living on credit cards, I was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy. Searching online I landed a well-paying summer cooking gig for an outdoor education operation in Montana, which provided adequate savings to get me through the winter, but beyond that I’d be broke and stuck again.

Returning to my mountain home, I visited my online chef buddy’s website where I’d found the summer gig and there was a posting for Costa Rica. Reasoning that the monied class will always travel and has to eat like everyone else, I’d might as well give it a shot. It was more a lark than anything else, and I didn’t expect a response but one came within hours. There followed some weeks of queries and back and forth as I agonized over making the leap and leaving my dog and community and home behind for an uncertain prospect.

In the end I convinced myself that I could do six months there and six months here and have the best of both worlds while leaving winter behind. However, leaving my beloved canine friend behind was a heartbreak on top of all the others. I sublet the house, put my car in storage, and found a temporary home for my dog.

That Caribbean restaurant job lasted just five days before I retreated to the highlands with my tail between my legs and ended up landing in a hostel just around the time Obama got elected. I spent hours scouring the internet looking for some kind of livelihood, but no dice. Resigned, I tried to book a flight back to the States but technical glitches thwarted my efforts. In the middle of this a message arrived from my online chef friend who said, I’ve got a gig for you on the north Pacific Coast. I called and talked to the American owners of a boutique hotel with a restaurant and bar.

Two weeks later I was cooking my first Thanksgiving dinner in Costa Rica, thus kicking off what would be a five-year tropical journey living in remote beach towns and working not just as a chef, but for my last year as a language arts instructor for some international students. I might add that living in paradise is not all it’s cracked up to be, but that’s yet another story.

Since returning from Costa Rica 12 years ago I’ve survived by my wits, the grace of friends and a small fixed monthly income. For five years I took care of a friend’s house and animals while he and his family lived in Europe. A few paying gigs came my way as well.

With my friend’s return imminent and no options apparent, I seriously thought I would be homeless. I was scoping out potential camp sites and trying to figure how I could possibly survive. I thought about Mexico. In the end I was offered this option.

I am fortunate to have a couple of benefactors, the biggest being my ex-wife, who help with clothing and other necessities. I also cook, garden, do food shopping and other activities, in exchange for which I receive services and favors, not money, although some occasionally comes my way.

A few words about who lives in the area are in order. It’s ag country but up here against the mountains there’s a mix of Texas transplants, techies, trustafarians, and artists and new agers along with spiritual seekers, healers, cranks and bums, and back to the earth alternative builder types, although the latter not so much anymore with the Texans being on the ascendant. A lot of people I wouldn’t want as neighbors. Good thing my neighbors are deer and rabbits, ravens and blue jays, chipmunks and the occasional wildcat. We seem to get along.

I should add that while this is desert country, it’s not a food desert. Local ranches and farms provide organic beef, bison, lamb and elk along with free range chicken and eggs in addition to grains and seasonal fruits and vegetables. There’s seafood, both fresh and frozen. The two local stores stock a wide array of food products, mostly organic with fresh vegetables year round. Every supplement you could want is available. Craft beer, too. It’s amazing for such a remote location. Still, it’s a hundred-mile round trip for many goods and services.

For anyone seeking internal exile, I can only say good luck. Where are you going to go? All desirable locations have been gentrified it seems. Of course, with enough money you can go anywhere you like, but only church mice seek cloister.

Assuming you find a desirable location where you can integrate it’s useful to be resourceful, skillful, flexible, tolerant, quick on your feet and possess a life of the mind, and be willing to learn and adapt while dealing with adversity. Such qualities are useful anywhere and everywhere, but it takes a certain mindset to go rogue and make it. I send moral support to anyone making the endeavor.

Like me you started out wanting to be a writer, correct? We probably have mutual literary friends. Why did you sour on being a writer? What’s wrong with that scene? Have American writers failed their audience, not that there’s much of one to begin with?

-I first aspired to be a writer as a teenager when I mostly wrote verse and some satirical prose, which gained me the position of high school literary journal editor. That writerly aspiration has remained throughout a long and tumultuous life, with many detours and modifications along the way. There was less a souring than a resignation that I would never make it my livelihood or break through the class and cultural barriers along the way.

It’s funny, I always remember a friend saying, sure you can write, but you’re too quirky, nobody wants to read that stuff. You disprove her words, because while anything but mainstream, you have a following and patrons, even. It’s interesting, when hanging out in the company of Beat poets like Gary Snyder, Amiri Baracka and Cecil Taylor I realized that they all had their fans and well-to-do patrons, and I would never realize anything remotely close to that, let alone their level of creative accomplishment.

But, all right since I dropped those names, and there are others I could name, I have to tell a tale or two. Hanging around the Naropa University School of Disembodied Poetics scene in the summer of 94, it fell upon me to be a hand holder and water carrier for Gary Snyder as well as Amiri Baracka.

I met Amiri on a soft and gentle summer afternoon. He had a swollen black eye from a softball accident. Anyway, we made ourselves comfortable sitting on lawn chairs in the shade, and he asked if I could get him some beer, which I did, and then he asked if I knew how to contact his old friend avant-jazz pianist and MacArthur award winner Cecil Taylor who he heard was in town. I called the Hotel Boulderado where Cecil was ensconced.

With the connection made, Amiri and I knocked on the hotel room fifteen minutes later to be greeted by a lanky gray longhaired black dude dressed in a bathrobe, with silver jewelry hanging from wrists and neck. In short order room service delivered champagne for Cecil and beers for me and Amiri. Then another poet showed up, a NuevoPuertoNewRican dude whose name eludes me. Anyway, words hit the air hot and lively. I pulled out pen and paper and scribbled furiously as stories and memories flew back and forth. (Still have those writings and others that followed over the next few days in a storage locker gathering dust and mouse droppings.)

At some point it was decided that ganja was needed. I had some at my place so we all piled in a car and drove to my condo and piled out to be met at the door by my blonde, busty and stunned wife. Cecil looked her up and down, sniffed and said, “Who’s this Brunhilde?” Then, where’s the bathroom?

After smoking a bowl we headed to Boulder High School where Amiri delivered a KO performance to a full auditorium. I sat crossed legged on the stage edge throughout his reading and afterwards collected money for CD’s and chapbooks while fans filed by to pay homage. Everything sold and I collected a big pile of cash. Later a floating party ensued long into the night.

To skip back, a writer possesses a love of words and language and reading, which came naturally to me from age five when I first learned to read, and which sensibilities survive into old age, with some modifications such as I mostly read non-fiction now and don’t keep five books bedside.

A writer is a writer whether published or not. While perhaps even more difficult to break into the market in these times, it was never easy. I received almost as many rejections as unsolicited manuscripts submitted, although I scored here and there in niche magazines and journals, none of which provided recognition or much recompense beyond beer money. Hardly a matter of pride, I did get accepted by the New Yorker. It was a letter to the editor. No idea what I said.

Nonetheless I continue to write daily without expectation of being read. While the digital age enables self-publishing, and there’s the wonder of SubStack, I’m not much interested in taking advantage of the opportunities presented. Partly it’s the effort involved. I have the required discipline, but I lack sufficient motivation. I’m an old dude now, and I mean, my god, the internet is cluttered with a surfeit of writers pounding their puds along with their keyboards. Having said all that, I still tinker with the idea of opening a SubStack account and busting it out. I still have something to say and may need to crank up the motivation.

So, what’s the motivation to write? To inform, persuade and entertain. To increase awareness. Is that a losing game in these times when few even read or listen anymore? People have a gnat’s attention span. Relay information to someone, repeat it three times, receive a blank look. Nobody’s listening, nobody’s home, lost in their heads and their self-absorbed story lines. Huh? What’s that you say?

Writers and artists of all stripes maintain sensory awareness. They listen and observe and process what’s happening all around, both consciously and subliminally. That’s how they create and explain the world. Writers listen to others, hear the cadence, the between the line meanings, the subtlety, the irony and nuance, which is often lost when processed, digested and transmitted to their intended audience. Subtlety? Nuance? Irony?

Yeah, there are writers and readers out there sending and receiving messages as your blog proves. Thank the deities that be. Not all is lost. The creative spirit cannot be repressed, however much it might seem otherwise in these times.

I don’t think American writers have failed their audience so much as their audience has failed them for all the reasons listed above along with social media, smart phones, deliberate dumbing down, debt burden and myriad other distractions. There’s no Cormac McCarthy or Don DeLillo on the horizon to call bullshit through literature. The money’s in bodice rippers and the equivalent and has been for a while.

You mention having mutual literary friends, which we probably do, although with few exceptions most of those I’ve known are deceased. I first dialed into your writing and photography through mention of Anselm Hollo. Since you taught some workshops at Naropa we certainly know Anne Waldman, whom I’ve always admired for her gutsy poetry and performances, her style and humanity. I found the female Beat poets more accessible in some ways than their male counterparts. Joanne Kyger who was married to Gary Snyder is a good example. Powerful poet, warm and witty person, now deceased as well. Lyn Hejinean married to Phil Ochs, a great translator, poet and person. I don’t see anybody filling those shoes anytime soon. Maybe, though. I don’t get around much.

While scanning memory about writers I have known, a forgotten name came to mind: Ray Mungo who started Liberation News Service a book about a Vermont commune called Total Loss Farm, which nailed the wavy gravy woo woo way gone nature of an alternative experimental community. He also wrote of his experience traveling on a tramp steamer to Japan. Dude wrote about a lot of things.

Anyway, I met him in Seattle in my late twenties when I was a temporary rock star in the culinary world and wow, it was like meeting an idol. I didn’t bow down and kiss his feet, but after hanging out with him for a while I realized he was gay and wanted me to bow down and kiss something else. That aside, scribes such as Ray are rare these days.

What’s out there now is A.I. which is no more than a giant search engine scooping up the talents’ work and burping it up sans credit or payment. Hey, fuck you screen writer’s guild, the ((suits)) finally got their way and you don’t matter anymore. The La Brea Tar Pits are just a toss away.

Still, interest in the writing life continues. MFA programs are ever popular, or so I’m told by young people. I have one of those degrees, so endured many a writing workshop, which I found as unproductive as my expensive degree is worthless. Long ago I thought interacting with a community of writers would provide stimulus to the creative process. Not really, but a summer fellowship at Breadloaf School of English really did inspire and ignite my writing. Alas, that was a short lived high. Returned to cowboy country and a meat and potato world. Not hanging out with playwrights and highbrows now, just magpies and squirrels. Pissing in the dark against the wind.

I have the bleakest view of the US. Are you as pessimistic? How do you envision the US in five years? In ten?

-Don’t know where I fall on the pessimism scale as the regards the land of the free and home of the brave, but like you, I’d say it’s around ten and a half on a scale of ten. Where to begin? To quote a 10^th century Indian pandita named Shantideva, to see where you’ve been look where you are now. To see where you’re going, look where you are now.

So let’s take a look at where we’re at in the good old USofAssholia, without a glance in the rearview to see how we got here. The patient known as USA is in terminal decline. Here is a list of symptoms.

Unprecedented levels of greed and corruption. Crumbling infrastructure, hollowed out institutions, universities in ruin. Vapid and debased entertainment along with massive propaganda machines masquerading as news media. Pervasive nihilism and narcissism in a population of provincial self-absorbed unhappy angry and fearful people. Did I miss something? Genocide, war, armed masked goons wandering the streets and smashing car windows for the crime of driving while brown? Militarized police? Rampant authoritarianism?

How about Silicon Valley transhumanists with their Dark Enlightenment movement? These fundamentalist crypto fascist types like Peter Thiel, Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin who have the ears of Trump and Vance and others in power. All a bunch of Satanists. Think that’s too conspiratorial and out there? Too obscure, perhaps? Look it up sometime if interested.

OK. Back to the mundane suffering of daily life. There’s ever increasing homelessness, poverty, social and economic inequality along with an increasing quantity and intensity of outrageous destructive behavior. Or take two of my major grievances: the carceral state and for profit prisons, along with nursing homes where hundreds of thousands suffer neglect while stacked like driftwood in corridors sitting in wheelchairs and often their own waste while waiting to die and never receiving a visitor let alone a kind word. USA USA USA!

We can expect increasing environmental, social, economic and cultural degradation. I’m no prophet or seer, but it doesn’t take a weatherman to see which way the wind blows as some Jewish kid from Minnesota once observed. More repression, more untimely and unnecessary deaths from increasing mutant diseases, more rats running down the alleyways.

Some doom forecasters see nuclear winter on the way. I don’t discount it, but in my moments of optimism, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Some speak of civil war and secession. I doubt it. That requires a degree of organization and mobilization that a cowed and chaotic populace lacks. Although, the intermountain West is filled with armed and angry mouth breathers with toxic agendas. Eastern Oregon has long wanted to merge with Idaho.

The success of armed insurrection presupposes support from the military and enforcement class. Not gonna happen. Those types know from whence their butter comes. Also, what happens afterwards? What’s the governance model and who’s going to lead? Assholes all along the spectrum. A dystopia similar to that depicted in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is more likely. But I don’t think it will go that way either, not entirely.

There will remain pockets where sustainable resources and knowledge are available. The usual view is that those who enjoy any bounty and sustainability will have to defend themselves against savage invaders. Maybe. I think people are generally too punk to go marauding, no matter how many steroids they inject. Supply line on that shit’s not gonna last forever either.

It’s going to be ugly no matter what. Whatever I’ve mentioned here, and I’ve left out a lot, could be expanded upon at great length. You, Linh, frequently touch on these topics as have many others. Such voices are reaching a limited audience, but that they’re reaching any audience at all is cause for hope.

Having said all this downer stuff, I still believe in the revolutionary spirit. As Che used to say, Hasta la Victoria! Right on revolutionary brothers and sisters. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Paz y amor.

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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.’

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