Palpable and Mute

In 2004-2005, I journeyed back to Viet Nam for my first extended stay (10 months) in my birth country. One excitement of traveling abroad was the challenge of negotiating the differences of languages, cultures, and geographies. I read, speak, and write Vietnamese (though not as fluently as English), but while in-country, there were many encounters throughout those ten months in which I found myself at a loss for words, Vietnamese or English. One such encounter continues to replay in my head with vivid details, generating ever-expanding questions.

I can’t recall exactly when it happened, but it was around Vietnamese New Year, and it was a late night. A family friend had been driving me around Chinatown in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) on a motorbike while I wielded my tourist video camera trying to capture the night life. We were looking for dragon heads – those colorful, intricately crafted dragon heads made of fabric and paint that were used in dances for the Tet festivals in the new year. We didn’t see any, but we did happen across a Buddhist temple in one of the older sectors of town.

I remember standing outside the temple’s wide double-doors and seeing round, red paper lanterns brightly lit and strung across the yard and temple posts. I smelled incense, the fragrance from unseen joss sticks stuck into pots in front of some statue of Buddha, or maybe of Quang Yin. Before I could step foot inside, my friend -- who was a good, kind man born and raised in a strictly conservative, highly evangelical church -- admonished me for wanting to go inside. “God does not reside there,” he said. He quoted several Bible verses and re-emphasized that I should not step into a place where God does not.

That night, I might have said anything in response. My understanding of religious pluralism, my theological background, and my own religious hybridity would have allowed me to say something even as basic as “Jesus is in my heart so I can go anywhere without fear of trespassing on unholy space”. But I didn’t. “How can we tell definitively that God is not there?” I asked my friend.

Peter Phan, the pre-eminent theologian and the only Vietnamese Catholic scholar currently under censorship by the Vatican, and currently the Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University, once said while speaking at CDSP’s Epiphany West Conference that though we most surely cannot say where God is not, we can most likely say where God is.

Perhaps God is where two or more are gathered? Or perhaps “down to the mire” as in the Georgia Sea Island Shout Song (185)? Or perhaps where God is might be in that space in the summer mountains, where Yu Xuanji has gone to the “house of the Immortals” (56). For Gabriela Mistral, that space is in the valley “dancing / in a chorus under the sun” (214). For Sumangalamata, that space is “[no] more tied to the kitchen, / stained amid the stained pots” but it is found “in the shade of [her] own tree” (18). Perhaps God is not in a geographical location at all. There is no question of who or where Lord Shiva is. Mahadeviyakka says in one poem, “the White Jasmine Lord is myself” (84). It is also entirely possible, too, that we cannot say where God is. There is no need for words, or rather, no capability for words or mind or awareness. “I became You, Lord, and forgot You” (83), she confesses.

I have entered into many temples before, and since, that evening. But I have not thought about those temples as much as I have reflected on that one temple in that particular night in Viet Nam. I’ve thought about where we see God and where God resides. I’ve thought about the act of stepping into a sanctuary of a faith tradition different from my own. About our human need to draw boundaries defining what is and what is not holy. The need to name and rename as much as we can in order to lessen the mystery of what we do not know.

It wasn’t until a year ago that I could find the words to describe that incident. The poem emerged out of a complex web of words and memories, an attempt to articulate my sense of where God is, who God is, as well as an attempt to express what I did not, could not, say in that night. The poem currently in revision recalls the images surrounding that evening: the cool air, the bright red lanterns, the joss stick incense, and the wooden temple doors – open temple doors. For me, the poetic form gives me just enough empty space on the page to acknowledge the silence which accompanies that kind of deep grappling. The poem is a vehicle through which I express my lived theology, my lack, my yearning, my faith.

The poem continues to be revised not simply because of word-smithing, but because it touches upon negotiations much deeper, much more complicated than I am prepared to speak. That is my ars poetica – slightly frayed, failed, “palpable and mute”.


(Pages quoted from Women in Praise of the Sacred, ed. Jane Hirschfield)

* These segments were taken from some notes I had written in preparation for teaching my online poetry class for CALL, Holy/Wholly Poetry: Articulating the Sacred in Poetic Form.

Striking a Language Between Us

On Tuesday, my grandmother had a minor stroke. She is currently in ICU in a Denver hospital, and we hope she will get to come home soon. She can't walk, can't even hold a pen, and has lost her speech capability. Actually, she "talks" but because she lost swallowing reflexes, she can't make speech. I still don't know the medical explanation, but this past Tuesday night, I finally understood what they meant by losing speech capability. I called the hospital room, and my uncle put Grandma on the phone. She talked nonstop with great energy, but her tongue could form no words. All I heard were mutterings, high and low tones and sounds uttered without any coherence. She clearly knew what she wanted to say, but the words could not be transmitted through her physically.

I talked to her about all sorts of things, and hoped that she will not want to say anything requiring me to respond. Still, she tried and tried. I couldn't find anything -- not in the inflections, not in the intonations, not in the pauses -- nothing to help me understand what she was willing me to comprehend.

Our conversation was interrupted by the doctor who entered the room to give Grandma some tests. Thankfully, too. I'm not quite sure I could have found the right language, neither English, neither Vietnamese, to communicate with her.

Chocolate: The Consuming Passion

I have found a most fabulous book. I know not how I've managed to live almost 30 years without knowing that it exists. This book which according to the cover was written, illustrated, and over-researched by Sandra Boynton is indeed the most thorough guide that "answers every intelligent question about chocolate." The book is populated by cute hippos, rabbits, bunnies,piggies, and very helpful little charts, graphics, and myth-debunking data that are perfect for the Chocolate Elite -- "the select millions who like chocolate in all its infinite variety, using 'like' as in 'I like to breathe.'"

In the effort to share with you unfortunate souls who have not seen this book, I will try to post images and excerpts from this book. You will love this as much as I do.

The true connoisseur of chocolate shuns all chocolate novelty in favor of the uncompromised bittersweet experience. This is the gourmet.

At the other extreme is the individual who will embrace chocolate in any form: the gourmand.

And right in the middle of the field is she who is partial always to the gentleness and variety of milk chocolate: the gourmoo.

Some of the great research data presented in Chocolate: The Consuming Passion include the presentations and debunkings of a variety of myths about chocolate. I present to you, here, now, Myth No.2

Myth No. 2: "Chocolate is Fattening."

A crucial factor has been overlooked in this widespread condemnation of chocolate: Most chocolate eaters tend to supplement their chocolate intake with other foods. By what right, what logic can chocolate be singled out as the cause of plumpness? How can we be certain, say, carrots are not a catalyst to weight-gain when chocolate is present?

And there is empirical evidence that also raises serious doubts about chocolate's fatteningness: Few chocolate lovers can simply lie back and wait for chocolate to come to them. For most, getting and keeping chocolate often requires strenuous physical work.

Selected Average Caloric Expenditures Related to the Routine Pursuit and Maintenance of Personal Chocolate Resources

Activity: Carrying seven pounds of chocolate from store to residence
Caloric Expenditure: 359

Activity: Hiding all chocolate before answering door when company drops by unexpectedly
Caloric Expenditure: 744

Activity: Swimming to Switzerland
Caloric Expenditure: 497,562 (approx.)

More to come. Next week: How to Make Chocolate Stains Disappear

One Look Back

On the day of the finals for men's road cycling, the sky was a cloudy gray. The bystanders already lined the length of the concrete highway snaking it was way around the area of the Great Wall near Beijing. As the people were cheering on each bicyclist weaving their way toward the finish line, the competitors were heading into the last 200m of their arduous ride.

On the t.v., I could see the leader out front, a 22-year old racer from Luxembourg (I think) who was favored to win, and win by a large margin. The commentators on the t.v. remarked on his maturity, noting that even as a young twenty-something competiting for the first time in the Olympics, he had comported himself with great poise and demonstrated a lot of potential.

Yet, as I watched the t.v. screen, seeing those cyclists racing at lightning speed along the road, I witnessed this young athlete prove the commentators wrong. As he and his followers reached the 1.6meter mark, the racer favored to win began looking back. Perhaps he was seeing the shadowy figures inching forward on his left and his right. Perhaps he was sensing their raspy breaths on the back of his neck; perhaps he was feeling their sweat, smelling their frustration and hope and drive. Perhaps he was listening to their heartbeats reaching past him toward the finish line, toward the gold medal, toward that elusive podium where they might possibly stand listening to their national anthem blaring into the gray skies.

Regardless of what he was listening to, he was not concentrating on the finish line. Instead, he kept looking back at the other athletes approaching at his heels. For each glance backward, he lost what little edge and advantage that he had gained throughout the race. He lost the drive, and momentum when his concentration was distracted for one look back.

As the young athlete crossed the finish line, his clenched fist banged the handlebars of his bike in frustration and in acknowledgment of his loss. And it was not a loss of the gold, silver, or bronze medals, but of whatever confidence, faith, and hope that he had in himself.

What else has been lost for one look back, I wonder?

Nothing Twice by Wislawa Szymborska

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with exactly the same kisses.

One day, perhaps, some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

- from Nothing Twice: Selected Poems, selected and translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 1997