The way thunder trails lightning
As I was scanning photos from my days in the US Navy. I came across one that was neither a plane nor warship, but rather a small battered fishing boat with around 42 people on board. There was a period during the USS Ranger cruise where we encountered a number of such vessels, dozens. I recall we had orders to offer assistance but to not to rescue them. Vietnam, where they were from, lay 300 miles to the west, the Philippines 300 miles to the east. This was the spaces between wars, following wars. These were the severed, men women and children not all survivors, whose homeland was lost to them. Our Captain made the call that if their boat was seaworthy, if we could get their engine started, if there was other shipping in the area we would let them be. If not we took them on board. 
Rescuing refugees March 1979. Looking at this picture I can only tell you what I see now. I can only ask what, has changed, where is the change. Does the world's heartbreak only move from asia to africa and on. And I think about Tran, Tran's Family. Her brothers tried this twice during this period. The whole family tentatively would test the coast for patrol boats. I showed her this picture and we talked about it. I asked her what about this period had caused this wave of what were called 'boat people' After the fall of Saigon the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were weakened themselves. South Vietnam's urban population was dispersed to rural areas. Four years of placement, preparation, and power consolidation followed. Quiet and hidden tyranny. After the brief Sino-Viet war earlier that year. The Hanoi regime possibly became worried about Vietnamese of Chinese ethnic origin, and of a possible uprising in the south. This lead to the crackdown of 1979, which she recalls lasted until 1982 or so. Since Vietnam secured its bid to enter the World Trade Organization and normal trade status with the United States they have again slide
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Vietnam dissident priest detained towards the familiar rigidity of police state crack down
NPR : Rights Advocates Disturbed by Vietnam Arrests. Even as they celebrate the frisian of nostalgia
Will urban growth trample Vietnam's charm? | csmonitor.com.
Sitting in Logan Airport at the very end of 1977. Waiting for the plane that would take me to Chicago - to boot camp at Great Lakes. Anticipating the next four years, based on no clue whatsoever. Listening to a Tom Petty song on some airport PA. Breakdown (it's allright): it was the only song he had at the time. A year latter I was still that person. I can't imagine what this meant to me. Even if you can't throw an opinion around something at the time, You can always simply watch and remember. Tend to a garden of awareness. Most of my dreams, to the extent I can remember them are dreams of silence. Not utter silence, but more observation, listening, than talking. I never remember enough to recall what is happening (they invariable are of extraordinarily normal days) there is always the pervasive sense of just waiting.
The fisherman's mesh net of rationality is cast into the sea of our experience. Much of what pours out small and palatable, tame and pet-like is understood. Dreams contend with what presses and thrashes in the net. Which even yet only hints at what remains in the depths of the dark sea. You leverage experience to make sense of things. You leverage your sense of things as you move to courses of action. I did not concentrate on college after I got out of the Navy with the energized determination that would lead anyone in the worlds of state university government and politics degrees to care what I think or what acts are considered. It wasn't much. I knew little other than the college radio of the day. Tom Petty called his band the heartbreakers. But everyone knew that Johnny Thunder's band were the real Heartbreakers, and when Westerburg sang 'Johnny's gonna die' we knew that too. What we liked about punk was that it did something that should not have been possible. That it reached through the radio to break your heart. Where radio and radio acts should never do more (should never be able to do more) than place a vague hue of mood upon the walls.
I find myself hesitating at times when I know something, but I do not know what it means. It is not to know completely that counts. To insist on a lightning-struck sense of the absolute, like some politicians claim to possess. I care about what Tran thinks and feels, I care about what would make her happy. I know enough.
11:47:27 PM  ;;
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