Cam on Jenny va anh Dan,
The idea of a blog during our time is much like Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where "tener un arranque de cólera," literally means to have an attack of cholera, but like French colera (cole`re, en colere) also could be construed as being angry at the social irresponsibility of the world.
It is a refreshing glass of water in a parched world thirst for love, where love is perennial as the grass, but anger and disappointment in love is a disease that afflicts us all (at least me!) We are lost in time of great troubles and so love will always hide in our otherwise noble social endeavors. i remember this great line from Dr. Zhivago: "Happy men don't volunteer"!
So what would we do in a time of uncertainty such as this? We hope for a deluge, a torrential rain as big as the story of Son Tinh-Thuy Tinh where we - like the lovers - are locked up (in an eternal embrace) forever on our mountain of love while the world is drowning around us. Earthquake in SiChuan won't do! The drying up of oil won't do! Rising prices of Rice and foodstuff won't do! Rising love and mountain do!
Put up a flag of cholera, let me forever float of my ship, my mountain of love!
Thanks again Jenny and Dan, you can add my cholera ranting on your blog, if you please/s'il vous plait!
Nguyễn Khoa Thái Anh
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Blog in the time of cholera
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1 comment:
Anger and disappointment in love? My dear sir, you are forever a hopeless romantic. It shows that you are very young at heart. A quality that most of us no longer have.
We often define abstract concepts by their failure to achieve our expectation. And so we mold love from anger, jealousy, and disappointment. Let me copy Dr. Zhivago: "Happy men don't love." Or at least they don't know how to define it. They simply "float on their ship" and hide in their "mountain of love" (let me borrow your words).
And why do we have to be angry and disappointed in love during the time of uncertainty? The earthquake in Tứ Xuyên, the cyclone in Burma (Myanmar) are natural disasters that humans have experienced since the beginning of their existence. Nature has never been kind to humans, and it does not discriminate in its selection of victims. The Tao Te Ching said: "Thiên địa bất nhân, dĩ vạn vật vi sô cẩu". Nature is cruel, it treats all beings like straw dogs! Katrina reminds us that even a powerful country like the US cannot escape the wrath of nature.
Man-made disasters are different in that they require justifications (at least humans still pretend that they need such justifications). The Hiroshima bomb was dropped to prevent further casualties! The Vietnam war necessary to prevent the expansion of communism. The Iraq war to eliminate the threat of WMDs. And oil and food prices have risen to the degree that we become angry. I am sure that our historians will find a justification for this disaster. The problem is we don't always agree with the explanations given to us.
Thus we become angrier. And we KNOW that our anger is justified (If we are not right, who is?). We need to be angry against those who inflict (man-made) disasters on us. We have suffered enough because of Nature. We cannot allow Men to cause us more sufferings. Let those who wronged us feel our anger. Let our anger spread like cholera. After all, we need to find a cause for our existence.
But sometimes, we suddenly realize that cholera is an unpleasant disease.
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