nicholas in vietnam

This was horrible. Extracted more or less from my notebook on the 29th of Jan.

Bồ Hòn village, Thừa Thiên Huế.

My tongue still tingles from the touch of another. We were in the house of an oldish man who handed us a saola horn to hold. This one was worn smooth towards the tip and a cluster of tiny mahogany stars, the end of some deep grain, showed in the onyx-shined surface.

Rượu (rice spirits) came in plastic bags and was transferred to a big plastic jar stuffed with old black leaves and a rubbery thing which, we were told, was the penis of a serow. From there it was served into tiny cups for us to drink. We groaned, having only just escaped from a wedding party. We groaned, having just escaped from a wedding party and I thought it was the last thing I wanted.

It was a long interview and our host seemed glum. He said at first he’d only seen the one saola but much later admitted to having caught two in 2000. We went to see the saola head in his son’s house and, when we returned, we were served food. A frilly little plastic plate was placed on the floor bearing what I thought at first was the head of a dog. With some relief I noticed the herbivore’s molars and heard them tell me it was a goat. The black flesh crisped off the kid’s white bone like the skin on the 30 year old saola head next door.

 I’d already eaten more meat at the wedding than I ever want to eat in a day ever again – although truth be told I quite enjoyed most of it, especially the little peppery-acid nem chua sausages all wrapped in banana leaves. This was different, though and this was going to be one time when I wasn’t going to be polite, where I would think of some excuse – my stomach was protein-strained – and refuse the food. I was thinking this until the young man wrenched apart the skull and jaw, ripped out the little goat’s tongue, trailing grey gristle, and handed it to me with a smile.

I sat for a long time with the rubbery little thing in my hand, wondering if I could slip it into my pocket unnoticed but there was an odd little man sitting on the concrete floor outside our circle. He was never introduced and never fed but he directed an unwavering grin obliquely across the space infront of me and would see whatever I did. I put the goat’s tongue into my mouth. It went from one cheek to the other via an experimental chew or two; it was nothing if not chewy. The seeping juices tasted how meat tastes. I was mostly angry, feeling that these people had no right to make me eat this; but then I hadn’t known how to say no. 

Then, when I was changing cheeks, the tongue in my mouth rolled over and the dead little papillae brushed over my own. It was a horribly familiar feeling – a kiss. For a moment the animal I was eating wasn’t dead. And then, for some reason, my mouth had to bite and I felt my incisors slice through the other tongue. [I can still feel it when I look back]

Eventually Nam threw a bone out the door and a dog materialised from nowhere and snarfed it up. Gratefully I took the tongue out of my mouth and tossed it after, hoping the people would think it was just some final unchewable residue I was throwing away.

I made sure they bought me peanuts to eat in the forest after that but it’s not possible to be vegetarian (or teetotal) in the villages. When I feel that I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing Buddhist friends often reassure me saying that this work is about compassion. But the fact is that the number of animals which will be killed to feed me over the course of this work will probably be greater than the total world population of the saola.

I suppose that I have to come to terms with the fact that I’m not going to write one supercharged post laying out everything I felt about my third survey. It was intense and, more than a week after getting back and relaxing over the Tet holiday, I still don’t feel near an official statement of any kind. I suppose it will come out in dribs and drabs.
We have two new prospective housemates, Nathan and Vi, who are also raring to set up a creative writing group. The group – just four members so far – met for the first time on Wednesday in our ludicrous pearl inlay and sausage curlicue Chinese living-room. Understanding Nathan and Vi’s approach to poetry is a bit of a headshift for me. They are fresh out of studying it in the States and Nathan, at least, is deeply into meter and stuff which I like the sound of but am clueless about. Basically what strikes me is that they have been writing about funny, absent, imaginary or nonsensical things, writing a poem a week about whatever.
It’s liberating to write nonsense with a rhythm and I do so, sitting at the big wooden desk, working through the unruly tower of scrap paper created by redundant saola datasheets. Some cool-sounding lines emerge.
To start with it’s gibberish:

Moon is sailing in the egret water
People in the shallows follow after
Brains are seeking silence in the garden
Elves remain ecstatic in the arbour

Then later:

Hawk that grasps the wire and falls away
Falls into the closure of the day
Endless rides of mist and broken trees
Memory returns to what it is.

Which kind of sounds like something

And I start getting fired up. It doesn’t take long before I’m full of emotion and I can’t write just anything any more. Facing me on the desk are two pictures, one on the computer screen and one on the wall. They are beautiful pictures which I selected for their beauty and their meaning and somehow the fact that they’re both there, and that they’re both pictures seems to demand of me something. Well, not demand, that long avocet-smile on what looks like an ultrasound screen, is somehow welcoming…
But I’m not able to write a poem about these pictures, or to do anything other than describe them and make bland statements. And I think that perhaps I should have written a poem a week about nothing at all, perhaps that would have – bit by bit and as things surfaced – given me the capacity to hold the force that would come later. I wish I could go back and say to myself ‘Write now while you have nothing to write about in preparation for the time when you have too much!’
Anyway here are the pictures. We need more pictures on this blog.