6.- 

It was still very early in the morning. Soft white fumes covered the ground of the enormous landfill site. From time to time, large trucks or pick-ups loaded with garbage came and parked at a designated place. The driver and his helpers jumped out, and hurried to shovel the unwanted items from their vehicle down to the disposal areas. Strong odors were exhumed, and the smokey clouds surfacing from the ground were the result of rotten materials being decomposed. 

I have been standing here since dusk last night. My son and his friend have loaded the extra large U-haul truck with all the books, papers and documents that I have gathered since my first days in exile. I have written a number of books on a variety of interests. They were in the form of Poetry, Prose, or Fiction. There were also more than a dozen unpublished manuscripts. 

My wife’s destiny was settled at the nursing home, and the process of discarding this truckload of books, considered no less than garbage, was inevitable. The bookshelf was the first thing to go. Large chunks of dark wood were thrown out one after another. The breaking of this shelf, once my treasure, cracked my heart. 

Next were thousands of loose papers. Every time the hands of the two young men lifted up and released their fingers, sheets of paper full of words fell like leaflets scattered from an airplane. Oh please look, words from those papers were flying out in the space like zillion tiny butterflies. Darling butterflies flopping their crippled wings... Amazing me! Amazing zest of divine separatio! Sure, romance was still in me in this time of pain. The image of thousands of uniform papers flying down the immense deserted field, dancing in the weak orange golden sunset light, was heavenly fantastic. All of a sudden I found myself so excited, so overwhelmed. I felt exhilarated. There was definitely life in death, however fragile. 

David stood on the floor of the truck, using his strength to kick out one box after another. Each time a cardboard container broke apart, dozens of hard copies flew like a current. Books poured down continuously and magically in strands of purple and pale orange light, while dusk went dimmer and dimmer. It was a stream of books! Stream of murmuring fantasies, stream of palpitating reveries. … My heart cried out to the very end of the horizon. I soared to the highness of the nowhere. I plunged deep into holy awesomeness. The miraculous-lonely-me melted splendidly in great mercy and with a zap, my soul merged into that extraordinary stream, staggering.... 

The dumping job was done in a short period of time. The engine of the truck came to life again. In a blast and without a backward glance, my son ran away as into hiding. 

I walked to where the U-Haul truck just left. On the ground still laid some copies of my writings. I bent down to pick one up. An unexpected freezing wind blew me backward. Scattered materials were swirling, swirling, swirling around me. The book was shaking fiercely within my grasp, but I managed to keep it tight. The spirit of my being was defensive at its best: I am poetry. I am passion. I am beauty. I am the nocturnal melancholy. The universe is in me. I am the universe. 
The wind yielded. Harmony resumed its toll. 

The soft breeze of midnight slowly turned one page after another for me. Under the mystic blue light of the crescent moon, I went over my poems. In the background, the silhouettes of the bulldozers were listening to me chant my verses. 



7.- 

During the daytime, it was really noisy at the landfill site. There were so many activities. A convoy of trucks, one after another, kept coming to dispose garbage. Disgusting odors were dominated the whole area. Dusty clouds floated high. Dozens of busy tractors and tanks, all painted solid yellow, and armed with huge spades, scrapers, buckets, and forks, moved slowly back and forth to work on the newly dumped waste. Iron, steel, wood, tree limbs, old furniture, sheet rock, clothing, kitchen trash, all were ground instantly. My eyes blurred to watch Destruction. Each day, along with waste, all the refuse or outdated items would rest here. In the same space, at the same time, I witnessed the presence of Past, Present and Future. I saw Life and Death. They went along with each other, mixed in with each other, twisted around each other, and disappeared into one another. 

Again, the sunset was back, shedding its strange pale orange light on Earth. Hundreds of birds with metallic-white flopping wings flew over the immense garbage field. I directed my gaze to the wild iron-made animal, which was crawling to the place where my books and materials were dumped last night. The bulldozer lifted its long arms. Its hands, armed with claws, violently grabbed a great number of books. The ferocious animal captured a big chunk, and threw it aside. Going down again, it threw another load aside. Again and again, until it reached the rotten layers underneath, it dug. Another tractor with a huge circular blade came to do the mixing. Once the task was done, it moved on. Immediately, flocks of birds headed down to pick worms creeping over my beautiful verses, on my splendid prose, through my flesh and heart, into my whole life that I had sweated over too hard to accomplish. 

Suddenly strong waves of energy were moving towards me and besieging me. They became more and more frightening. Flames of audacity, heat of merciless urgency, momentum of fiery crush?! A tremendous burning force was devouring me. The non-stop bizarre refrain: “Recycle. Recycle. Recycle.” was repeated over, over, and over. This refrain pressed me almost into a stage of insanity. 
I listened and tried not to collapse. I heard within me a yearning to amplify divinity. 
Someone patted my shoulder. A voice from nowhere whispered into my ear, “Your physical body has been decomposed for so long. It’s time to go on”. 
I said, “No, I do not want to go. I still feel a heart beating in me. All my accomplishments are still here. With all the dedicated work I have invested in this life, how can I go on?” 

A voice as soft as a breeze poured into me, “The ME that you talk about no longer exists. So many times you have gone back to that garage, trying to cling to things you thought were your fulfillments. The play is over, the curtain is already down and cleansing time is on its way… Old stuff needs to be recycled. New ones will take a turn to become old. That cycle will never end and there is no immortality. Whatever is left behind belongs to no one…" 


HKKM



----------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Hong Khac Kim Mai is a Vietnamese woman. She came to the United States as a boat person in December 1977. Her artwork includes poetry, fiction, oil paintings and lyrical music.


Full story here :

http://www.chotnho.us/showthread.php?t=30018