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[rainybagel]

2

Extracted from "The world through my hands", a prose series.

I began to draw some time in grade 8. Like every other Viet kid of my generation, I started off with copying manga panels, then painting film stills, then picking and piecing together different elements from those studies to make my own art. It helped a lot with my habit of picking and biting fingers: during hours out of school when my hands were not doing math or writing essays, drawing would tire them out instead.

Tết 2018, my grandma was diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer. Mom scheduled as many business trips in Hanoi as she could. She would finish her work a day or two before it was due so she could fly out earlier, catch a three-hour bus from Hanoi to Haiphong and spend that extra couple of days taking care of Grandma. For months I barely saw Mom, but the fridge and cupboards were never empty. I told her to spend more time with Grandma and that I would be fine going to the exam venue by myself. Regardless, she flew in the morning of my first exam, bought me rice rolls for breakfast, took me to a Buddhist temple in the neighborhood so that I could get my blessings then dropped me off at the venue and waited until I was done to take me home. From the backseat of Mom’s scooter, I looked over her hunched shoulders to see her sun spotted hands. My mom is the best caretaker I have ever known.

Mom stayed home until I finished all of my exams, then asked if I wanted to visit Grandma for maybe two weeks. So I started drawing her portrait. I referenced her photo that Mom took when we went to the beach in Phan Rang, then placed some hibiscus flowers in the background around her. Grandma once said she loved watching the hibiscus flowers in our garden bloom whenever she visited us in Saigon during summertime. On smooth recycled paper, I retraced my grandma’s features with red graphite while the hibiscus petals were harmoniously coated with shades of blue, purple and yellow. My hands were quite tired, they cracked and bled as I tightly gripped the coloured pencils. Mom said that my little hands do great things.

Grandma didn’t recognize me or Mom at first. She seemed small and fragile, and I could tell she was in a lot of pain. It took her two minutes to utter my Mom’s name, and around five for mine. She smiled when I showed her my drawing:

“I still look like this?”

“Yep, even prettier.”

“Obviously.”

We both chuckled. She fell asleep holding my hands just before tears running down my cheeks began to soak the edge of her bed.

I lost my grandma right after graduating from high school. I saw Mom cry for two minutes or so, then she picked up her phone again and started making arrangements for the funeral. Mom said I could keep my drawing, maybe frame and hang it on my bedroom wall, and so I did. When I moved to a basement suite in East Vancouver, I asked my roommate to print a copy of Grandma’s portrait and put it on my exhibition wall in our kitchen.

Once in a while, I condemn myself for not having spent more time or done more things with my grandma. Once in a while, I find it ironic how the portrait of her and the hibiscus flowers captures neither her beauty nor her kindness; in fact, it captures nothing but my fossilized memory of those lovely summers when she was still here with us under the scoring afternoon sun of Saigon. I let my grandma slip away so easily while I bled my hands dry trying to soothe the fear of losing another loved one.

March 2022

[rainybagel]

Borscht

After the end of Viet Nam War, more opportunities for bright Vietnamese youths to enter colleges and universities in the Soviet Union were given out as a way to reinforce Soviet power within the communist allies as well as to help us rebuild our devastated country. Dad was one of those bright students. He got flying colours in the national university examination and a few months later, my dad at the time – a barely 18-year-old teen – first set foot on the unfamiliar land of Odessa without any friend, relative, any acquaintance to keep company. He could not afford to go back home, and so Odessa became his home instead.

During my childhood time, it seemed that I had always known Ukraine. It was through the music on the radio, the stories that were told, the aged black and white photos of Dad submerged in piles of snow that I found while digging through old boxes that I found myself transcending the boundaries of time and space to fall in love with the land of Odessa.

Dad would very often bring home Russian treats he bought from a friend or from local Russian food shops. Smoked salmon, pickled herring, Pirozhkis and black rye bread were very common on our dinner table, and although they strongly clashed our usual culinary taste, me and my sister had learnt time by time to enjoy their estranged presence. We would eventually have pickled herring as essential grocery item on our monthly shopping list, and Mom would fix a simple smoked salmon sandwich with pickles on Vietnamese baguette for me to bring to school every once in a while.

Back in high school when I was taking French classes, everyday was triple-shifting from 7AM to 8PM of studying for me, and I barely got an hour in between to eat or rest. One day when Dad was picking me up from school, he asked if I wanted to eat fried rice, Dad style! I was so skeptical, “Dad you barely use the kitchen except for making rotisseries”; of course, I was not vocal with the thought, Dad would have been very upset with the comment, and so I just nodded in approval. After that conversation, Dad would go grocery shopping with Mom during the weekends and everyday I went to school, he would spend half an hour or so, chopping the most tedious, devilish vegetables in this entire world just to make me a box of Salo fried rice with Chinese sausages and veggies. A senior from my French class, whom I usually shared my food with, adored “Vy’s fried rice”, and once she complimented on Mom’s cooking skills. “Mom’s a great cook!” I said, “But it’s Dad who prepares these meals for me.” She looked at me oddly, and also in awe.

It’s funny how now that I look back when I was a kid, I did not understand how the nutritious lunchboxes my parents made for me with love and care, could isolate me from my peers so much.

Borscht used to be my dad’s favourite dish back in the 1980s when he was studying marine engineering in Odessa, Ukraine. An earthy Ukrainian beet soup simmered with veggies and meat, simply served along with sour cream and signature Ukrainian black rye bread was the food that kept Dad cozy during the loneliest months of cold Odessa. Almost forty years later when it was just a couple of days before I set off to study in Western Canada, my dad took me to a niche Russian restaurant near my old elementary school. First time having borscht, slurping on the soup while listening to Dad retelling stories about his college life as a Viet student in the bone-chilling Odessa; I did not realize that forever ingrained in me is the reminiscence for an unknowable yet nostalgic place to which I have never been.

When a new Ukrainian restaurant opened up in the neighbourhood that we lived, I insisted my roommate on checking out the place whenever we could. Vegan borscht was the first thing that I ordered. Being 19 residing on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Canada, I did not feel as such. I was in the shoes of a 18-year-old teen studying on the cold land of Odessa, hundreds of layers of snowfalls in between and thousands of miles away from home; I was my 15-year-old self sitting on the bench in my French school yard, and it was in the embrace of the Indian-almond trees, with the empty lunchbox in hands did I cry for hours because I did not have the courage to tell Mom and Dad I was falling behind in class.

Rarely did I make a random wish, but in that moment, I wished that I could have enjoyed the food with Sis, with Mom, and with Dad.

Vancouver, June 2021.

[rainybagel]

"two" - or - alternative - title - "love"

as the sun blissfully rises

and as my eyes hastily open wide

initiates the day is the sight of two cuddling cats

two hanging hats

two brown bags of fresh summer strawberries

that slowly get emptied in the caressing sunlight.

and in the tight embrace

of two people

two longing shadows

two pairs of flimsy sandals dancing aimlessly on the gravels

that under the candle light, slowly delve into the madness of the night.

all fossilized in my mind,

the memories of a lord melancholically in love with his dame

of a married woman heads over heels for an unresolved old flame

of shame, of engrained pain, of the sane lovers denying their undeniable bond.

all fossilized in my mind,

the visuals of two blind butterflies fluttering around each other

of the silver-lined clouds desperately melt into one another

of the intertwined lovers weeping on the mossed grave of their long gone love.

and all fossilized in my mind

filtered through my naked eyes,

whether agonized, idealized, realized or fantasized,

is the absolute gratitude to be able to witness love.

to witness love.

Vancouver, June 2021

[rainybagel]

người - nghệ - sĩ - bỏ - đi

từng có con bọ kia sống đằng sau phím đàn dương cầm.

mỗi đêm khi thế giới ngủ say, nó lại chờ đến lúc người nghệ sĩ ngồi xuống.

những dây đàn rung lên liên hồi. nhẹ nhàng như sợi tơ, sự dao động gần cực tiểu ấy đánh thức một khoảng không tĩnh. rồi bụi trắng ngần. dưới ánh nến ngọt lịm, mọi thứ đều lấp lánh.

và con bọ bất đầu nhảy múa. những cái chân nhỏ xíu của nó chạm nhẹ lên những sợi dây đàn. xòe đôi cánh mịn, nó hứng lớp bụi trắng bằng cả thân hình mỏng manh.

có một tiếng nứt trong họng người nghệ sĩ. bản nhạc cứa chảy máu. ánh nến sắc hóa đỏ.

con bọ trong điệu múa mê hoặc, đã bật khóc.

và rồi, đã từng có một người nghệ sĩ bỏ đi.

sau phím đàn cũ, có một con bọ già.

mỗi đêm khi vết thương mờ, nó lặng lẽ chạm những dây đàn.

sợi tơ sắt gỉ sét. lớp bụi dày rụng dần. trong bóng tối, tất cả đều được dặm một màu sơn ma mị.

và con bọ bắt đầu di chuyển. đôi cánh khô rang, hứng lấy màn đêm đặc quánh.

có một tiếng nứt xé tan bầu không gian.

con bọ già, trong chuyển động điên dại, một lần nữa bị nghiền nát.

người nghệ sĩ bỏ đi.

Saïgon, mùa hè 2016.

[rainybagel]

tangerine - sky

there was this intersection that my father, on his then 12-year-old scooter, with me on the back seat, would pass by whenever he drove me home from school. the air was always dusty and humid, the people were always busy and hurried, the afternoon sky was always painted with a mellow, yet so fragile tangerine shade.

seven years he drove me home from school, in that space, in those specks of time when the tangerine sun rays started bleeding, i had always seen only my father's back. he would often wear an old chemise or a second-hand polo shirt that was so ever slightly worn out that the vertebrae on his spine were almost visible. it was fun to look at when i was a kid fascinated with the beautiful grotesque of human bodies, but the more i grew up, the more tangible his backbone became in my own observation.

one day when i was 13, at the red light in the busy street, my father suddenly seemed so thin. he was so small and fragile that even the most vulnerable ray of sunlight i have ever seen could have devoured him with ease. under the tangerine sun, i learnt that i had not done enough to protect my father.

there was this under-construction building at one of the corners of the intersection that had been sitting there for years, since i last saw it. always me on the back seat, always that same heated air, always that same tangerine sky.

through the empty windows on the top stories of that building, the last sun rays always pierced most painfully. but then they slipped away and dried out like spilled water on a sidewalk, just vanished as if they had never managed to suffocate the space. the sun was dying, everyday, but the majority of us, in the majority of time, would blindfold ourselves to not see its perpetual cries for help.

one day when i was 15, at the red light in the busy street, the sun suddenly seemed so small. it is now that i recall memories of the time when i got back home from school to know that my bunnies had been taken away. to understand that i had killed my first love. to accept the fact that my grandmother had passed away and my mother could not shed a tear. it all ties back to that moment when i was 15, under the tangerine sun, i learnt that nothing ever mattered.

nothing, even the tangerine sun.

Vancouver, an early morning in June 2020

[rainybagel]

garden - of - roses

there was this story, once upon a time

about a world contained in the sturdiest of all glass chambers.

the world was nurtured and watered everyday.

the world beheld the sublimity of the aglow sky at dawn,

until they left to chase after the stars.

and in agony,

the world was suffocated in the sturdiest of all glass chambers.

there was this story, once upon a time.

Saïgon, Summer 2015

[rainybagel]

intense - sensation - of - a - fragile - connection

on the verge of affection and protection

where vast sea begins to hold smaller creatures

there we jot down night sunbeams in burnt pictures

to suffocate the space

to not hesitate or wait

to erase his grace.

but then long,

long for the idea of affection and protection

long for the fragile ray of sunlight.

cry, there there, cry more

to see the dead fish

to see the impoverished, the drowned, the unmight

the weak part of us that could not stand the test of courage and time.

as we venture deeper into the abyss

let's vanish before knowing the beauty of the sight.

Vancouver, February 2021