NOWHERE-NOW HERE, HECTOR CASTELLS TRAVEL JOURNAL – CAPSULE XVI

VIET AGAIN

Hoian, Now Here, April 2025

The Oracle is rolling his crystal blue eyes. It is as mesmerising as contemplating Dostoyevsky dreaming about hope. Then he inhales deeply, smiles and releases a wail of vague pleasure.

“Memory is the jungle where the stripes of the Tiger vanish,” he says.

It could be a Borges quote, the end of an everlasting oblivion.

I would only know whom he really is slightly later than expected.

Kyoto, Japan, October 2024

The grandmother of Martial Arts is standing outside Kyoto’s smallest temple quietly smoking a menthol cigarette. She can’t bear the pronouncement: she has walked away from it. She is devouring the fag like a hungry wolverine. Inside the temple, her granddaughter is marrying the man with a scar on his left cheekbone.

As soon as they kiss, she inhales with greed. Next thing, an armoured vehicle pulls in and four men get out. She exhales very quietly. They are all sporting balaclavas and wielding sub-machine guns. As they open fire four ravens emerge from the barrels, reverse the bullets and lodge them inside their eighth murderous eyes. Granny does not move an inch, she sighs, and the men start frantically grasping, and collapse: their fingers beaked, their pupils devoured.

Granny walks towards my closed eyelids and says, “Protect your sockets and unfold the eight answers,” and kisses my forehead.

Hoian, Now Here, April 2025

Only then I open mine.

I see the beak of a seagull going for my left socket. I dodge it and shake the bird off before it shits itself all over my torso and face. Pollock would be proud.

The nightmare is less revolving than waking life. I’m covered in diarrheal toothpaste. It is not pleasant. But then again, I have just realised that I’m back in Viet land, the closest to a home I have found in the last decade, and no matter how many doves could lose their shit over my skinny frame, I would be nothing but grateful. It would be handy to find out how did I get here. I remember nothing but Japan’s last shrine and 1000 Thousand Moons, my virtual mother, command: “you must be relocated.” I also remember Binh, the coconut bowl sailor, who vanished after leaving me here.

Life After Japan

Life outside Japan feels like time travelling: I kind of miss the 22^nd century, its immaculate toilets.

I walk dazed through the dunes, my toes covered in sand and darkened with petrol waste. My phone is inactive and my obnoxious backpack feels heavier than ever.

The beach is a massive dumpster bursting with psoriatic doves shrieking like hell. Their yelling is like Sigur Ros on Valium compared to the karaoke parlours surrounding me, unleashing pumped up local house music, the proverbial Vina House.

I try to walk away from the acoustic clamour only to find an alignment of sewage outfalls opening their pastoral mouths, and releasing yellow foam and solid chunks in deafening fashion.

Loudspeaker as a Weapon

I wonder how many Japanese got killed with a loudspeaker during the bloody lustrum they spent (1940-1945) invading this prodigal, butchered land.

I have read that the amount of deaf babies born here during the 19^th and 20^th century’s amounts for half of its population. Viet land has been one of the most helplessly shelled countries on Earth over the last two centuries, the easiest, largest target in the increasingly influential Southeast Asia. They have beaten Mongolians, Chinese, Japanese, French, and North Americans barely using their hands, with a 100 thousand times less of a budget and/or an army.

The moral of the story is that you can’t beat togetherness.

The Irish are prone to claim the same when playing international sports that are not rugby: their chanting goes: “You’d never beat the Irish.”

Nobody has ever beaten the humblest; they might have been defeated, but never beaten.

The Question Is

My phone flashes up again halfway through a collapsed building and a group of palm trees dancing punk.

“If you can’t find the pianist or the fiddler, just look for whoever is capable of providing answers. You know how it works.”

I do: most of us are looking for them forever. If we could only understand the question…Then the world would be Japan.

And almost nobody except the Japanese can survive and thrive in such a perfectly organised and quiet OCD land.

No noise, no waste, no outdoor living, no messing with nature. They work as long as it takes and they drink as fast as they can, for only going back to business to redraw the scales of belonging without words, but with swords.

If the current population of Humanity would try to become Japanese, I reckon half of them would die of multiple seizures and strokes; incapable of keeping up with the seamless, quiet cut of the sword slicing procrastination, and turning it into a restless, lonely job devoted to efficiency. A sudden life devoid of outdoor noise, filled with inside silence and long working hours, where you are expected to leave no trace or waste, where you never disobey crosswalks or godfathers, bosses or snakes.

It sounds way too advanced for most of us.

Right now, now here, in the heat of the deafening dunes, my earpiece goes conveniently on. Roxy Music “More Than This,” pops up and claims the soundtrack of this moment. It never fails to provide answers.

“As free as the wind/Hopefully learning/Why the sea on the tide/Has no way of turning.”

This is the first answer: whatever you left behind, you are never going to run away from it.

I must enjoy the unexpected return to my beloved shore.

22^nd century I don’t miss you anymore.

Magic Brush

At the end of the beach, there’s an old lady sweeping the floor of a cracked path. Upon seeing me she asks if I need a place to stay, a very appropriate question, Vietnam is never short of them.

I follow her along the path. She points at a derelict wall on our left hand side. I can make the shape of little wood cabins spread through the pine forest shielding the shore. She smiles, climbs a couple of broken red bricks and asks me to follow her. We stop outside the first cabin, in front of a blind woman sporting a white headband and a drum. She is playing very softly and smiles upon hearing the old lady voice.

The Guardian

“She is the guardian,” says the old lady.

“Get in there,” says the guardian.

I open a curtain and find myself inside a windowless room where an old man is chanting under an altar arranged with candles, fruits, chocolate bars, blinking lights, cans of beer, and a copy of “Into the Silence,” by Wade Davis.

The old man asks me the worst question of the world, but he does it in Catalan:

“D’on ets?”

A shiver

His neck is long and straightened towards the back wall at a 90 degrees angle, so I can see his pointy chin, massive smile and nostrils, and even the white of his eyes: he has them rolled. He is wearing a monk robe and he is the spitting, castaway image of Delphi’s Oracle.

The walls are covered with red velvet drapes, more candles and a number of photographs, including the portrait of the dead hero and prophet of the country. He used to be a baker in Paris before coming back from self imposed exile, and liberate all his fellow surnames from the usual invader.

Repeater

I bow at him, and next thing I encounter the sharp glance of another old woman inside a wooden frame. Her features ring a thousand million bells, but none of them answers my desperate call.

I stare at her. She is wearing a purple handkerchief that I also know but fail to identify. She is smirking, and yet her expression could not be sadder

“I don’t repeat my questions,” says the Oracle in perfect Catalan again.

“Gràcies,” I answer. 

He is also smirking, although there is no sadness in his face. I’m staring at his rolled eyes; I can make a tiny blue at the rim of his socket.

“That blue you are staring at is the crown of the world. Would you like to climb it?”

I instantly know that the answer is “my knees are fucked,” and also know that I really want to engage with anything he has to say.

Rateta

“Do you remember the tiny mousse that swept the floor of your youth?” he unexpectedly asks now.

I look up and the Oracle is reclining his heavy head towards me, eyes still rolled. He is speaking spotless Catalan again. I say “eternal sunshine” and he smiles. I’m trying to understand the question, although what I need is another answer. “You can’t beat togetherness,” it is definitely one hell of an answer.

Lying

I remember the story of the tiny mouse. My granny used to sing it to me.

The little mouse is sweeping the floor, finds a very respectable amount of money, gets herself a nice lace for her tail, and sets off looking for a husband. After disregarding a number of candidates, including the rooster, the dog and the duck for their painfully high-pitched barks, she gets married with a cat. The mouse neighbours, an all the folk around, try to warn the mouse to marry anyone but the cat.

I wonder how the Oracle knows.

“At this stage there is nothing more confusing than explaining. You can rest your strange injury in the next cabin for as long as you need. Will feed you twice a day, me and the 33 mothers I work for, and we will do it for free.”

I’m overwhelmed. This is what happens around here. Opportunities open up like lotus flowers as soon as you need them.

I have so many questions now, and vaguely an answer, but I don’t need them around the Oracle, since he has them all. Then he asks:

“This is a country of mothers and I’m a devotee of their love. You are a devotee of freedom, that’s why you got fixated with the tiny blue rim of my sockets. I was showing you what you were seeing and you were seeing the Himalayas.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’m the Oracle, I’m just saying Nepal appears to be your next destination. In the meantime, though, you should explore Peanut Island, 5 hours south from here.”

I look up closer with my Borges eyes and then I see it: he has a scar running from his eyelid to his cheekbone like a crooked question mark.