Postcards from the End of [the] America[n Empire]

[view from veranda of Jenda Cafe in Pakse, 9/23/23]

This morning, Jenda Cafe is blessedly silent, so I’m sitting there again. This is a convenient pit stop on my way to Sacombank, short for Saigon Commercial Bank. Money I make on SubStack, I collect there. At Sacom, there are Vietnamese speaking tellers I can deal with, so I’m at home there.

Though officially named Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon is still Saigon, because its name has been linked to songs, novels, poems and too many memories. “Saigon” resonates. Plus, Saigonese resented having the name of their hometown changed through a decree imposed by outsiders. There was no referendum. After its tanks had rumbled in, Hanoi erased Saigon’s name.

When I told Vietnamese friends I had gotten shit from Americans for calling Saigon Saigon, they were astounded.

“Had these Americans been to Vietnam?”

“No.”

“So why do they talk like that?”

“Because they’re Americans!” I laughed.

With its cluster of sweet, soothing and bitter memories, home is nearly synonymous with normality, so wartime Saigon was normal for me, until I moved away. Barefoot on sidewalks, I played soccer.

Eventually, even Philly became normal, but not quite. My first time in Kensington, I thought the people weirdly ugly, and this was decades before fentanyl and tranc. Becoming so used to Kensington, I would take the L there to booze and blather at Jack’s or Bentley’s Place.

Swallowing whatever just to get by, a person should know there’s something not quite right about his deformed home. To make life easier, most just stifle all doubts and questions. Pity any American born after 9/11 or, worse, after the woke revolution. By six-years-old, he may beg to be castrated.

Those who experienced the world before 9/11 should know it has changed for the worse. This is especially true after the Covid hysteria. Incredibly, there are millions who are perfectly fine with the New Normal. Masked and boostered nearly to death, many demand the rest of us join their death cult.

I prefer Laos’ normality to the US’. Each morning, Laos patiently wait on sidewalks to give alms to monks. When it rains, they sit under umbrellas. Even small children do this without complaining. Everyone smiles often. From afar, monks in orange robes under umbrellas would approach. I saw one pulling a shopping cart. Having endured American bombs, what’s a little monsoon to a Lao?

Inside Jenda, I sip ginger tea. Near death, I finally learn how to be kind to my sore bored cadaver. I hope it’s not too late. Just now, a man under 30 asked if I was a poet. Never before had any stranger say that. Having eaten saner and less for three months, I’ve lost much weight, so resemble some ascetic monk. That’s close enough to his idea of a poet.

We’re in the prehistory of poetry, I’ve suggested. Stumbling over each other, we scratch bullshit onto cave walls. About to end, the world longs for a genuine poem, still millennia away. The authentic has become an impossible concept.

From Quang Nam, the young man comes to Laos for work regularly. Briefly, we chatter about Biden’s recent visit to Hanoi, where he made so little sense, his entourage had to cut him off. With jazz suddenly turned on, this global, historic clown wandered off.

Biden on 9/23/23, “Two of the greatest artists of our time, representing the groundbreaking legacy of hip hop in America. LL J Cool J, uh… By the way, that boy, uh, that man’s got bigger biceps than my thighs.”

After lauding a black person as among the “greatest artists,” Biden had nothing to say about his artistry, but swooned over how huge was one part of his anatomy, and he’s only a boy, no less. Wait until LL J Cool J reaches full length.

Future generations will be aghast at all the vapid clowns leading Western “democracies.” Just as farcical are the morons who voted for any of them.

Landing in Ottawa, Zelensky was embraced by Trudeau. With every other Canadian politician, they honored, with much emotion, a 98-year-old Nazi. Of course, Zelensky already has thousands of Neo-Nazis fighting for him in the Azov Brigade, for his intention, all along, was to get as many Slavs massacred as possible. Even with Ukraine soaked in blood, he’s not interested in negotiating for peace. Plus, he must keep this racket going, for it pays much better than his previous gig as an obscene fool on TV.

The biggest joker, though, is Yaroslav Hunka. He can’t be much of a Nazi if he’s backing a cynical Jew who’s wrecking his homeland.

Whatever you may say against Putin and Xi, at least they have gravitas. When they speak, people pay attention, except, of course, those who prefer catch phrases, slogans and sophomoric name calling.

With her nation sabotaged by the USA, Annalena Baerbock decided to pick a fight with China, Germany’s biggest trading partner. Already deprived of Russian natural gas and much else, it will deindustrialize even faster. Those who obey and collude with the USA will sink with it.

With a third of Americans ages 18-34 living with their parents, tent cities sprouting everywhere and the crazed homeless crapping on sidewalks or assaulting strangers, Biden could still declare on 9/3/23, “When I came to office, this nation was flat on its back. I knew what to do. I vaccinated the nation and rebuilt the economy!”

Like Trump, Biden brags about pushing the genocidal Jewjabs, and why not, idiots don’t mind paying $190.99 for the latest booster. With much worse to come, America is already flat on her face.

Halfway through this article, a laughing woman bounded into Jenda. She had gold lettering on her black shirt, “Rainbow / Rainy Days.” Sitting with four men, she kept laughing. So gay this morning, she spoke louder than anyone else. There’s a Vietnamese saying, “He laughs for three months, no one laughs for three years.”

So be it. Though no one laughs for three years, Laos laugh often enough, and so do Thais, Cambodians and Vietnamese. This is an easy going, laughing corner of the world.

Since my interview with Kevin Barrett was finally up at Unz, I checked in on the comments. Unsurprisingly, almost none deals with anything said by me or Kevin. Most graciously, Catdompanj characterizes me as a bug and cat kabob eating pussy living in a $4 a day hut. Since the $4 detail is true of my accommodation in Don Det, +5 months ago, this Angry White Pussy has stalked me onto SubStack! Kevin Barrett, Catdompanj calls a hack and Linh Dinh sucker. As for Unz, Catdompanj is incredulous he has let Barrett feature me. Since Barret is a hack anyway, he shouldn’t be on such a fine site!

Race baiting Jews have gotten Americans across the political spectrum frothing at the mouth. For seven years, I unwittingly was the moustache and trigger for Unz’ Angry White Pussy Pride Parade! Outdoing even the worst Jews and blacks, these cowering nitwits are playing the race card nonstop. To be civilized is to be composed. Incontinent, they shoot shit in full view of the world.

Consider this comment by Sulu:

I can understand why governments want to have the power of censorship. They must have it to keep the unwashed masses ignorant of their nefarious plans. But someone like Linh wants it so he can feel the almost Godlike power of hitting a button and divesting himself of the trouble of answering some one who has posted a criticism of him, valid or not. The guy is nothing more than a little Dink fuck with a word processor and a narcissistic personality. He is a total coward for not having the balls to defend the drivel he writes. He must have been able to do bitch level whining in order to persuade Unz to let him initially censor his critics. With any luck he will visit a country that America is getting ready to bomb and the little fucker will get what he should have gotten back in the 60’s in Nam.

Never in history must sane, civilized men have to deal with triple masked clowns who called themselves Catdompanj, Sulu or Profnasty, etc. Here, Sulu takes it for granted America will go on bombing countries, so it’s not just me he hates, but what do you expect from a population that think this Jewish joke hilarious, “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning”?

An Andrew Anglin fan mocks me for coining “Jewjab,” but citing this, he only dares to spell it as “hewjab.” Unable to help themselves, these commenters reveal the impotent rage which led me to brand them, and them only, as Angry White Pussies.

Since readers’ comments flesh out our understanding of a place in time, I’ve incorporated them into my articles. Gigolo Joe, Catdompanj and Sulu, etc., help define America in 2023.

Suddenly, they turned on some crappy American music, so I had to walk a mile to Amor Fati. It’s also the next day, by the way. I didn’t write the above in one shot.

Waking up this morning, I thought I should clarify what I meant by samsara in my last article. Three years after death, the Bodhidharma returned to this life in the same body, so he rejected, I posit, being recycled into the next realm.

Moreover, he decided to walk home after a life of wandering. Inside his coffin, the Bodhidharma longed to recapture, somewhat, his oldest sensations. He missed his earliest immersion in normality.

To Buddhists, samsara has six posthumous realms: gods, human, demi-god, animal, hungry ghost and hell, all temporary. Since we have to use this realm as referent, all hypothetical ones are variations of our life on earth, so as a “god” in samsara, you don’t have to work your ass off, just to end up in some freezing mobile home or under a bridge. As a “hungry ghost,” thus disembodied, you’ll still have a tiny mouth with a vast stomach. Insatiable appetite is hell. Seeing that everything harked back to this life, the Bodhidharma said, “Fuck it, I’m going home.”

Oh, how I suffer! Flies are an unavoidable plague, menace, curse and horror of sitting outside at Amor Fati. Most reluctantly, I have migrated into its air-conditioned confines. Jazz is playing.

Listen, man, if I want to hear Django Reinhardt, McCoy Tyner or Art Pepper, I’ll turn on each masterful solo myself, but not more than a few times while here on earth, lest I trivialize their art. Reincarnated as a cockroach, I’ll listen to them some more.

The Farnese Bull, I admired but once, in Naples. Its most astounding detail is the bull’s asshole, for it’s sculpted with tremendous love, like everything else on that hard-to-fathom masterpiece.

All of life is sacred, this earth is sacred and normality is home.

[shrine to the Bodhidharma at Long Vân Vietnamese temple in Pakse, Laos on 9/19/23]

For two weeks, I had gone to Jenda Cafe, because it’s a large, airy space with no music, so ideal for writing. Yesterday, though, I had to sit through some muzak. Perhaps it’s just a one-day aberration, I hoped, but this morning, I was greeted with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird,” so I didn’t even bother to walk in. Again, unoccasioned music cheapens it and deadens our minds.

You can gauge how stupid a man is by how much canned music he needs. The braindead can’t be wrested from their thumping earphones. Driven from the tactile, fragrant, windblown and heat blasted, cursed generations withdraw into the virtual.

There are those who have never known silence, another voice heard clearly or even their interior monologue. Now, they’re even afforded speech without consequences, so hit-and-run idiocy or snarkiness has become nearly universal. Nameless and without history, they stink up the universe.

From Jenda, I walked to Dee Coffee, a mile away. I passed where I had seen a monkey on a power line, then a dead snake ran over. Needing to be petted, a red dog followed me, but when I smilingly talked to him, he hesitated. Nervous, he hid behind a car.

At Long Vân Vietnamese temple, there’s another dog who can’t decide if he wants to befriend me. Old and slow moving, he has this world wearied face. You don’t know what I’ve seen, his eyes tell me, and why should I trust you?

Speaking of eyes, there’s a shrine to the Bodhidharma at Long Vân. Tired of the world’s bullshit, he stared at a cave wall for nine years. To keep his eyelids from closing, he sliced them off. Like Jesus, the Bodhidharma rose from the dead.

Uncertain about returning to this shitty realm, he did wait three years. Back in this heaven or hell, the Bodhidharma decided to walk home. He got at least as far as Pamir Mountain, 3,400 miles away.

To achieve Buddhahood is to be free from the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Why, then, did the Bodhidharma choose to, again, be among us assholes? Perhaps this earthly normality, with all its flaws and horrors, beats any hypothetical or real alternative, so no samsara, heaven, utopia or Great Reset for the Bodhidharma, thank you!

At Dee Coffee, a man approaches my table to shake my hand. In his mid 50’s, he comes to Dee each day. The first time he saw me, he asked, “Japan?”

“No, Vietnam!”

"Chào ông!" he greeted me. Then he showed me photos of his trip to Da Nang and his two daughters graduating from a Vietnamese university. One daughter was working at the radio station in Pakse. He had a brother who had also studied in Vietnam.

Seeing my open laptop and Canon 80D, he asked if I was a journalist. No, a writer, I answered. As if to dispel his doubts, I pulled up the cover of my Postcards book, then an image of Chris Hedges interviewing me.

“I spent many years in the US,” I explained. “This was on Russian TV.” Since his English was very limited, I had to articulate each word slowly and distinctly. Still, I had no idea if he understood. “This was in New York,” I continued.

“Ah, New York!”

I might have said I had gone to the moon! Not even London, Paris, Tokyo or Shanghai can cast a similar spell. Even after it has been conquered then abandoned by apes, there will still linger residual magic. Buried to her tits, the Statue of Liberty reaches for the sky.

In Pakse, the Vietnamese tend to patronize their own coffee houses, but Dee Coffee is a Lao one. That is telling. People naturally prefer to converse in a language they’re most comfortable with. No one is equally at home in two languages.

Even in a tiny country like Laos, there are dozens of indigenous languages, so national cohesion must be encouraged, if not enforced. What Laos doesn’t need is the importation of radically alien populations, so sensibly, it keeps them out.

Unlike Western countries, Oriental ones are remarkably homogeneous, and this, I will insist, is to their advantage. Diverse populations often clash, with even the most minor accommodations fought over.

Jews and Muslims won’t touch pork. Hindus shun beef. Orientals, though, tend to welcome any source of protein. If all their kids go to the same school, no one will be happy, for chicken, real or fake, will be the only option.

Consider the beginning of the Thai national anthem, “Thailand unites the flesh and blood of Thais. / The land of Thailand belongs to the Thais.” On their flag, red, blue and white represent nation, king and religion. During morning assembly at Thai schools, kids salute the flag then pray to the Buddha. Of course, many Thai citizens are not ethnically Thai, and there’s also a large Muslim minority, plus some Christians. Nationalism, though, is Thailand’s strongest bond, as it is for every other nation.

With its idealism, the United States provided a striking alternative, but since the US Constitution’s most important provision, free speech, is dead, the US is a bloated corpse. Singly or collectively, Americans are mute. Instead of spreading freedom and democracy, Uncle Sam pushes war, censorship, shameless lying, naked corruption, cross dressing freaks and child mutilation.

A few days ago, I did an interview with Kevin Barrett. Having just escaped the imploding madhouse, Kevin is already much happier in Morocco.

You can judge the health of any society by how its children behave, I said. In Laos, the kids are often playing outside, unattended. At Jenda, a four-year-old boy decided to share my table, because why not? At 3839 Cafe, I carried the owner’s one-year-old son out the door, to take him for a walk. The baby was happy, and so was his dad. Laos is still a trusting society.

To Kevin, I mentioned a recent incident in Las Vegas. In a stolen car, two teenagers intentionally struck two elderly bicyclists, killing one. Not only that, they filmed the murder to upload online. With outrageous incidents occurring daily, Kevin had no idea what I was talking about. Since this couldn’t be used to advance any of its pet agendas, the US media ignored it.

Those without a meaningful existence can only feel alive virtually. In Japan, a very ugly American who calls himself Johnny Somali has finally been arrested. For months, Somali roamed Japanese streets to antagonize and insult locals.

Since each society has its preferences, standards and taste, each must lock up or keep out barbarians, if it wants to survive. Several, though, are determined to commit suicide.

With my visa about to expire, I will likely head to Cambodia. There, too, the adults are pleasant, the children carefree and the streets perfectly safe, unlike in the US and South Africa.

Dishing up banalities, I will keep sketching your paradise lost. On this darkening earth, there are still oases of sunshine, laughter, smiles and frolicking kids, no matter how skinny. Once, even your world was normal.

Immortal, the Bodhidharma still wanders. Unfazed, he might even be found in Philadelphia, Chicago, St Louis, New Orleans, Oakland or Seattle. Every so often, if only for a few seconds, he can’t help but mumble to himself, “Shit man, I wish I had sewn my eyes shut!”

[“I Lost My Virginity in a Burning Hummer,” 2009]

Being not only a writer, but also a photographer, in your interviews you mentioned that photography influences your writing, helping you see better and be more social. Could you talk more about this influence? Does your writing influence your photographs as well?

-For just over a decade, I tried to become a painter, but that’s a very expensive pursuit. Oil paint, canvas and stretchers cost a lot of money, but the costliest is maintaining a studio, which also keeps you stationary. A successful painter can leave his base and travel, but I wasn’t one. I had a live-in studio over a print shop. Its toxic fume seeped through the floor and, worse, my space was unheated, which forced me to buy a kerosene heater. This just added to the damage to my lungs and, perhaps, brain. My first week there, I had no shower, so I bathed myself by standing in a trash can.

Trying to eat, paint and write, I spent much more time house painting than oil painting or writing, and I was so exhausted, I could barely think, so I stopped oil painting. Even years afterwards, I had dreams where I was still painting, or I could not find canvases I had made. These were minor nightmares of losses. I even had dreams of starting over again, with a gallery show happy ending. Ideally, we should have many lives to fulfill our wishes, but the vast majority don’t even have one life to adequately do anything. Just think, for a moment, of all the dreams being wrecked in Ukraine via a war ochestrated by the US, with Victoria Nuland its mastermind.

With photography, I’m still a visual artist, and this has helped me as a writer. Though I’ve always liked to walk, photography forces me to roam much more. Always prowling, I’ve become a hunter, stalker, lurker and gate crasher. There’s a photographer, Francesca Woodman, who only shot herself, nude, but I don’t think that’s an option for me. My late friend, Mack, was a midget. He used to joke, “Maybe I should enter the freak porn business.”

I’m sitting in Jenda Cafe, my 8th in Pakse, and I’ve taken photos in each one. Lingering in these spaces, I’ve also talked to or watched people. Without photography, I wouldn’t have this modus operandi. I’ve photographed and chattered with people in countless bars across the globe. In Prague, I yanked on a locked bar door, so they had to buzz me in. Of course, I was the only non Czech. Though I couldn’t talk to anybody, just observing people taught me a lot. There was a photo of Kim Jong Un behind the bar, so I photographed it. Noticing me staring at it, the bartender thought I was offended, so looking alarmed, she flipped it around, but I indicated, No, no, leave it there! Seeing my big smile, she also laughed. Many Czechs have these intense, philosophical faces, so it was fascinating just seeing them engage in sustained conversations, but who knows, maybe they were just talking about football.

Yesterday in Jenda, there was a Vietnamese woman who was masked. Her husband and three kids, though, didn’t cover their noses and mouths for no good reason. Watching this mentally ill person was fascinating. Only when her noodle soup came out did she stop suffocating herself. I imagine she’s adverse to travel and strange food. With the slightest discomfort, she pops pills. Watching TV news, she believes each word.

Alla Kotova: In your interview for Leafbox, while criticizing Western intellectuals, you mentioned that “People in the mainstream can’t say anything nice about Putin”. At the same time, I, as a Russian, can hardly say anything nice about him. He kept stealing my votes each time we had elections. Due to his regime, a friend of mine has been detained for 3.5 years for getting in the way of a police officer beating people lying on the floor during mass protests. He made it dangerous for me along with many other Russians to stay in our own country. What nice could be said about him? Also, you refer to the USA as an empire, and the war in Ukraine has a lot to do with the Russian empire ambitions. Do you see any difference between the empires?

-Regarding what’s happening inside Russia, I must defer to you, since it’s your country, and what occurs there affects you and those you love directly. The West’s caricature of Putin as a new Hitler intent on conquering Europe is patently false, however. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, NATO had 16 members. Now, it has 31. Expanding eastward, it has nuclear missiles arrayed across the border from Russia. Is that not a threat to your native country? Putin’s war against Zelensky’s Ukraine is a reaction against this encroaching threat. He’s certainly not trying to take over Europe. Since NATO has waged war against Russia, Putin may be forced to take this war beyond Ukraine. Waging this war, Putin hasn’t bombed Kiev the way the USA bombed Hanoi, Belgrade or Baghdad, etc. When US attacked Libya, a desert nation, it attacked its water infrastructure. The fact that Western politicians and celebrities are still flying into Kiev shows Putin’s restraint. He’s held back so much, some people even claim there’s no war in Ukraine!

Whatever Putin is doing in Russia can’t be worse than what Hanoi regime has done to Vietnamese dissidents, but does that mean I would support a US backed war against Vietnam? Of course, not. Earlier this year, a Western friendly Lao dissident was shot at a Vientiane cafe. Miraculously, he survived and is in a Thai hospital. Most Laos wouldn’t use this incident to call for US intervention! That would be madness. Whatever you think of Putin, make sure you’re not on the side of those trying to destroy Russia.

Keep in mind the US doesn’t stand with anybody but Israel and war profiteers, so a key aim of the Ukraine conflict is to fatten Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon, etc. American politicians are also not shy about their hatred of Russia and Russians. In March, Lindsey Graham exclaimed, “The Russians are dying… Best money we ever spent!” Imagine if he had said that about Jews.

Though Russia has created one of the greatest Western civilizations, Western idiots still refuse to see Russia as Western. This led Alexander Blok to write “Scythians,” which has this at the beginning, “We are hordes and hordes and hordes. / Try and take us on! / Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, we are Asians— / With slanted and greedy eyes!”

Napoleon famously said, “Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tartar.” Added to this prejudice is the Jewish hatred of Russia, but they despise everyone they’ve had a long history with, Persians, Egyptians, Americans and, now, all white people. Demonization energizes Jews. The people behind this Ukraine war want as many Slavs killed as possible.

Due to their listings and enumerations, your poems provoke quite a claustrophobic sensation of being trapped in a room full of scattered random objects. It feels so crowded and tight, fragmented, and overwhelming. Quite often, lists provoke the opposite feeling of order and peace. In your poetry, object seem to be aggressive, displacing humans from their own lives. What’s behind that?

-Wow, I’ve never thought of my poems like that. I’d like to think that all of my objects are inserted for a reason, that nothing is random. I can’t say, though, that order and peace is a conscious objective in any of my writing. When asked by a woman in a Philly bar what I was trying to achieve with my poems, I said without hesitation, “Kill you!” But only from an excess of happiness, of course. After this poem, your life is complete, so why go on?

Let’s approach this another way. In still life painting, the artist would insert a skull to suggest death, or a clock to indicate the passage of time. Wilted flowers mean, before you know it, you’re old, ugly and stinky, with horrible skin and teeth. With photography, there are always random objects, however, despite the photographer’s deft framing of his meaningful or resonant scene. Perhaps some of my poems are like that.

I’ve written so many poems, I don’t even recognize some shown to me, but when you said “list,” I immediately thought of one. At least here, nothing is random:

Guide to Odors

Vinegar: fresh guilt; your mother-in-law; mature love; patriotism.

Sewage: scurvy; old men; solitude; sainthood.

Turpentine: young men; a sweaty upper lip; vesicles.

Cinnamon: sudden shame; a half-remembered dream; a strange bed; a town of 5,000.

Urine: a city of 100,000; bar conversations.

Garlic: attentive listening; a bus ride; a ridiculous hat; a drowsy face in a rain-flecked window.

Canned tuna: the soul; menopause; foreigners.

Acrid: pink, mottled flesh glimpsed through clear plastic; a genius.

Ammonia: accolades; a high-speed crash on a deserted highway.

Note: With livestreaming conversation coming right up, I must cut this short. Part 3 will be posted soon.