HOÀNG-ÂN: STILL WATER RUNS DEEP
The Heart loyally and quietly beating inside the case of my chest and I would be distracting from it; until my head ached and my mind got dizzy that forced me to sit still and still the scattering brain so I can be grounded. Me think my definition for balance is to be absolutely present in the Common Reality, the goal of Zen practioners. These days, however, suffering from a slight attack from the virus that has been transmitting around I have to work extra hard to function like the ordinary majority of the populate do, as if I haven't working hard enough. It is passed noon. The singer rolled with his tongue, "Lollipop. Lollipop. Baby, don't you ever stop." The racer in me understood when the lyrics of the song sang, "Sweet as a midnight drive." I remember when in my younger years I triumphantly crossed to the other side on yellow street lights. I remember those rebellous times of playing music to slightly under maximum volume and driving on though never passing the speed limits. My Friend has to have the television and the light on while he sleeps. I can no longer own the night. Elon Musk works on with eighteen hours. These day, at sixty-five, the doctors gave me medications to force me sleeping at least eight hours a night. I miss burning the midnight oil writing letters and composing my "bad poetry," (he had said). Way back then when I could distinguished memories from frequently visited epiphanies, I loved the recurrence half-dreams of a city park built three levels high, with benches bathed in yellow light from the lamp-posts. I felt the cold dark green rails to climb up and down the city park. In spirit I admire the city creatures whose surroundings are in constant flux with lights and noises whose souls are under eternal loneliness in isolation. All my life for fourteen years in South Vietnam and fifty-one plus years in the United States, I lived near downtowns but pretty much at their brims with peaceful urbans shrouding of fruited trees and verdant fragranted flowers. I am proud still of my teenager years in Iowa and be called a Midwestern rural girl, rough and tough as the stark and miraging farm land lied flat in chess-board formation. I am fascinated with skyscrapers and noted how in central and northern Florida the buildings were no more than fourteen story high molded by the climate of the East Coast. In the one year I made Cocoa, Florida one of my inescapable hometowns, the wildness in nature suited well with colorful fowls and intoxicate sunshine. Plano-Richardson lied in Dallas County, Texas and Shreveport, Louisiana ever since the year 1982 until 2024 were the most productive years of my life being a mother as a displaced housewife. Houston, Texas was the city that embraced my college years of carefree youth and dizzying love for learning. I am now writing this short entry from Lafayette, Louisiana, United States of America two days shied of Tuesday, November 3rd, the Midterm Election of the year 2026. Feeling the weight of disappointment, still I am waiting to see how President Donald J Trumph will lead the United States on into the future with his dedicated and diligent Dream Teams inside and beyond The White House, with the MAGA movement within at least two more years. Go! Red, Go!
