2006: On The Road

I feel like I should miss California but I don’t. I’m in Saigon, and in Saigon the alleys around Truong Chinh have already started to feel like home. Van and Khiem, Huong’s sister and brother-in-law, never met me before I came here but they’ve opened their house to me as if I were a close relative. That in spite of the fact that tourists are not supposed to stay in private homes in Vietnam. My presence has already prompted at least two visits from the police but Van says not to worry about it. “As long as they approve it,” she says, “there’s no trouble.”

I don’t miss my airport. I don’t even miss the smell of my charts. With a few exceptions, I hardly think about what might be happening in California. I care about learning to adapt to the place where I am. I care about developing my ability to tune out noise and pose for endless photographs. Home? One day I was there and now I am here, that’s all. It bothers me that I can detach so easily but if I could not, I probably wouldn’t be here.

Where exactly is here? I don’t even know. Lost at a roadside café somewhere within a labyrinth of suburban alleys off of Truong Chinh, comfortably hidden behind a row of potted bamboo, an overhead fan blowing a rhythmic breeze through the humid air, motorbikes zipping by, sitting in a little plastic chair watching my strong Vietnamese coffee drip slowly into a puddle of sweetened condensed milk. Nobody here can speak a word of English as far as I can tell but they’re kind and helpful people and they don’t hold it against me that I can’t communicate with them. I’ve learned to say “coffee, thank you,” ca phe cam on, and for the moment that’s all I need.

Maybe home is just a concept, already inside me wherever I go like the people I love who are important to me. Or maybe it just is those people. There is a wonderful scene in Taras Bulba when Andrei the Cossack defects to be with his Polish girlfriend. “Our country is what our souls seek,” he tells her. “You are my country.” What a great line. My soul seeks someone too.