LatinosUSA

1.

That day, the sky was a grey mask. The fog lingered touching everything. The fog hovered as though it was always there. The fog hindered each breath from the soil to high heaven. The main character can only remember that, she can acknowledge nothing else except for the fog, the scale of despicable greyness plagued her to the end of her life. I’m different, I like the fog. But, what I do not like is how vulnerable human beings are when they face a fog, I am adamant that the fog takes its job seriously when it comes to obstructing her vision(or mine). Like darkness. And its eyes included.

What I like people to imagine is exactly that. I can’t be bothered with trying to explain it. Since, it is for the time being the reason for what will soon unravel (or have already unraveled). The not talking wooden bird with a blue beak inside a cage. If only, I could open the cage door and let it go. The filtered light from the outside is just about right to muck around. Since it’s a bird that had never made a sound. The only man in the house not long ago decided to only have the one wooden bird with a blue beak in the house. Not that he is worried about money besides having to open the door to let in enough light for the cage. Light is what he uses to feed his bird. In the past, he had all kinds of birds with skin and feathers. That is, in his youth. After the working hours of a diligent civil servant’s eight hours a day for instance, (or the times he had no patience for the card games, drinking with his friends or colleagues). He takes care of the bird and it is his companion.

His enthusiasm for birds had never been a curiosity of mine. There was a time when the forest were thriving with all kinds of noise and magnificent bird songs in the fog and even when it was completely lit up. To the point where, the tweeting stop because there were no nest left. And yet, each trip to the forest, he would bring home a couple of small birds for his cage. The chirpy bouncing little birds, none of them ever stay with him for too long. I have noticed that, since I was small until he had retired, they, all kinds of birds from sparrow, or black-rumped starling, none of them survived beyond a few days, maximum half a month. Talking about made me a little curious. Often, what was strange was that they would disappear inside the cages. No one in the house understand how or why they had disappeared. I would find them sometimes, perched there quietly inside the cage, like a statue. It makes me think of the dead birds knocked out by a slingshot when I was young. My older cousins said, “they are delicious”. Even now, I can still feel the shiver going down my back, each time they mentioned the delectable taste of their sparrows.

Ever since time the caged birds he had collected continued to disappear without an explanation. He became more introspective and quiet. To the point where I had noticed that he had began to take better care of himself. He spends less time after work drinking and gambling with his friends or work mates. He spends more time in the forest and in the fields, planting more trees and other crops diligently like farmer.

The sunlight was overdue one morning, the mountain , forest and trees were covered in fog. He disappeared somewhere early in the morning coming home with a odd looking brown cage, with the wooden with a blue beak. I burst out laughing, watching the rays of sunlight grazed pass the beak of the wooden bird. A shiny bright blue. The radiating momentary joy invisible to the eye in a glance settled on my cheeks was a thin layer of refreshing dew. A healing omen. But then again, at that very moment, I had to face the truth of the moment, the deliberate dew drops were the stuff of my imagination in the harsh summer light. The wooden bird’s eyes remained unmoving. I’m pretty sure they can not read my meaningful look portrayed by my eyes. Or maybe I have the fog in my eyes, “The misty dewdrops hidden inside a profound sadness of the forest”.

Something I have thought about for a long time now. And yet it is still a fog in my mind.

I entertain no such intention in describing a natural phenomenon like dewdrops. I don’t care much for the colour of the cold and grey dew in my mind. I’m back with my dark mind, searching for that bit of light. And, it’s shadow. I have been aware of it for a while now, but mostly I would ignore it. It’s presence is certainly no different to any other presence, and that includes people.

It is. A wooden bird with a blue beak. Definitely, it has to be blue. (even though, in the sunlight and fog, sometimes I can discern other strange colours). It’s a shade of blue I have loved for as long as I remember. Hence, the wooden bird with the blue beak he had brought home, had the potential to help clear the fog in my mind. I believed that, all one needs to do is to focus on the thought, the spiritual aspect of such desire and it will come true, guarantee certain satisfaction.

My earliest thoughts about it, compared to the birds with skin and feathers and wings, chirping noisily like the birds he used to catch, then died, then disappeared without leaving anything behind. The wooden bird with the blue beak will come with good news not bad. And yet during the pandemic when the deaths were still piling up, January second, that year, the day when humanity was oblivious and unsuspecting, a dangerous entity appeared in the form of Vlad Dracula ordered the firing, rockets and smoke and debris befallen a peaceful city. I truly did not want to know about what ever it is happening around me, but I could not stop myself from feeling the pain of each invisible thorn that had punctured my skin and pierced my flesh. The world is big, the world is small like a clump of hay rolled into a ball. The man who had birds that had died and now he has a bird that will not die, lucky that he is someone who is the instigator of war inside his home, but he had never like the idea of war outside his front door.

2.

Can I portray it in a way everyone can understand the flutter of anxiousness that I live with about whatever it is behind the closed door of my room. Or what is unseen in the corner of my mind? The question of my existence. How I see myself in a better light in another part of the world for instance. And yet, I could never unlock the mystery of the there or not there presence of the wooden bird with a blue beak. I have deceived myself of my own existence instead of the existence of that wooden bird.

I am no different to the wooden bird with the blue beak, except for the fact that an ornament can not utter the pure sound of a bird in the middle of the forest upon the first light of dawn.

The fog turned up on time that following year. The man took care of his wooden bird with the blue beak began to oddly changed. Now and then there was a twinkle in its eyes, it appeared more alive, as though it had a soul. The beak painted blue sometimes moved. Then the tweeting followed. Even though for not more than half a minute, before came the silence. I remember, my mother’s stories about a long house of the Ede people in a dream. Might have been where she was born or where she grew up. Might just be a dream. Dreams and their connections will be forever a way for people to find meaning of some kind in their life. My mother was never bothered with the man’s wooden bird with the blue beak. But, she was always puzzled: “where did it came from?”. Clearly, she was asking, where she came from?

I decided to test out my theory, see if I can turn my mother’s dream can be a reality. First on the list was the long long house that plagued my mother’s dream. I googled a couple key words. The ancient long long houses came in all kinds of colours brown grey, cockroach wings, shiny here and there with the earth red of bazan clay. I showed my mother some of them. My mother said, “that long long house in the fog will be impossible to find”. “Then where mother?”.

(In my mind, I knew I will not give up on this trial)

My mother’s voice continued to grew, ebbed and flowed the same as always, ended far away in a whirlpool of the wind somewhere deep in the jungle. I promised myself that I will continue to coax my mother. The woman who had remained silent for so long. A woman who for a long time had turned her heart into stone. A woman born of the trees, the mountains, the springs, and yet had not once remember the location of her long long house. What I need was an expedition with my mother.

“Without fully understanding our roots, we will be forever lost”. This is what I would often hear people say. We need to go. It was an essential exodus. Perhaps it might be a long trip. Perhaps it might only be for a few days. The way more than once, the man, the owner of those birds used to take my mother every where on the back of his motorbike in their youth. They headed for the sea, then the jungle, in search of delusions and memories lost.

The pandemic two years ago, I can recall clearly the image of how a mechanical horse took away with it five living souls, both human and canine. An expedition like folklore. An expedition chronicled painfully edged into history. I tried to conjure the images of an expedition during a pandemic like that, to find the motivation for my mother and I to head for the jungle to find the actual bird with the blue beak, the long long house in her dream. A mere thought, and yet it gave me a sense of excitement, the joys and laughter of searching for a dream. I heard my my mother singing. My mother love to sing and dance. Dancing is a part of her nature, sixty, in her tradition garment woven with the black and red colours of the jungle I saw her dance to the beat of the copper gongs. My mothers voice was bright and clear like the running water in a brook or a stream. What was she singing about? No doom and gloom bouncing around in the world. My mother has no time for such big words. The lyric she sang came from a dream. Or sometimes she would sing not realising that her life have ceased to move on and she is standing somewhere in the dark, waiting for her home coming to a long long house that had once exist, (or never did). While that man, each morning each night, each time he closes his eyes at night, each morning opening his eyes to stare at the wooden bird with a blue beak as though it is his confidante, his soulmate.

I began to have these dreams about irises. I dreamed about them every night.

Even as my mother’s long long house was yet to be found. Other dreams had turned up, invading what was left of the gaps in my imagination. Because I am young. Because I still have in me the desire for simple dreams, for instant, to lay down on a carpet of green grass large enough to cover my body and the smallness of me. I don’t want anyone to invade or near my world of solitude. If only I had the desire for the loud and noisy places, thumping green and red traffic lights of another life. My addiction is the watchful, adoration, through my eyes take in what I can of my surrounding. Their fondness for display. No matter how extravagant they might be, boredom is inevitable.

I often think about colours. The colours that had powered my dreams in the oddest manifestations, unfurled light in my consciousness, my body. The colour I dreamed about it is, flower of the genus Iris. Fleur-de-lis, sounds noble in French. Or diên vỹ, more demure in my language. The colours that had saved me from innumerable despair, the unpredictable modern day disease of anxiety and depression. It’s symptoms, mostly nothing to worry about. Unbeknown to a number of my friends who had to live with it. I am on the other end, I am fully aware of this darkness. I would find myself drowning in the chaos of my thoughts. I want to feel everything and be present at all time to see what is happening around me. The world. Humanity. Major and minor events. Including the constant thoughts on the appearance of the swarms of ants. Where did they came from, why are they here or there? Why are they coming in hoards crawling around back and forth in front of me, from light till dark? Some in fact, crawl around in my clothes, on my skin as though it was where they are meant to be. It’s crazy. If only my thoughts were more disciplined and useful so I can affectively apply them. Instead, I am always sitting in the dark exhausted with these convoluted thoughts about this, and then that, or why people have to die?

And, not once did I stop thinking about it, not once did I stop asking all the questions, not once did I stop connecting with everything that was happening around me. Each time I’m sick off what is in my head, I find myself outside. Sick of the world outside, no matter how difficult I would wiggle my way back into my head, since it’s not easy living with the chaos, undefined between two worlds – dark. I forced my grey matter to work harder. I forced my self down a deep dark pit of illusion. The deeper I am in my the head the more I am lost in that expand universe. There was only one way, I’m still alert enough to know that, I have to find the right hue of the iris. Because in itself, that shade of the sunset had saved me from all the earth moving fear, inside me. Silence is a game. But, it is also a pitiful state between light and darkness. I would close my eyes, conjure a private domain, allow the colours and shades I love to spread and invade all areas of my spirit, allowing me to enter deeper into a constantly shifting, evolving dream. Oddly like magic, that crazy sickness would disappear.

A temporary manifestation is each moment in time.

After sometime, stepping out of a room, wall, or door, the movement outside is as familiar as a friendly ghost. The same sickness makes a joke out of me. I think a lot about things that are locked up in a cage. Not all of them are birds. And yes, most impressive is the wooden bird with the blue beak that can not talk, locked in a cage. With it, is an image of a long long house. These streams of thoughts takes up all the space in my mind. They shift in sections back and forth. I wish, often I would wish that they would completely disappear from my mind. All I need are the hues of the iris, they will help me unravel the knots and sort out the messy thoughts in my mind. I get it, it’s not easy to find, any where in this jungle. It’s beyond the door. A different door. A door where not just anyone could open. It’s beyond this world, a world far beyond geography. Hence, I must dream, I need these dreams to confirm that I am truly alive.

My mother, for the moment suffers depression like me perhaps? Clearly the sickness plaques her. I would often find her hiding in the corner of one room or another busying herself with something or another. while the only man in a women’s world obsessively take care of a wooden bird with a blue beak and talks of wars. He dislike the instigators of war beyond his door. Yet, the other night, the other night. Including all the other nights long gone, he was the one wearing the ashes of a silent war he lit within his own house.

The unmoving wooden bird with the blue beak inside the iron cage oddly disappeared suddenly one day. Overnight it grew wings and flew away? Flooding my mind were the thoughts and images of him. No. It’s best that I shouldn’t name such an undeserving name.

The iris is gorgeous. It has a refreshing liberating hue like the kind of cool light mixed with a dreamlike magical purple the colour of the universe. Yet still, because of a happy memory I find myself talking about him. When I do not want to spare a second on him. Yet again, the same irises, they made me think of him, a kind of self inflicted torture. But, what’s certain, I am always in full control. My problem has nothing to do with him, nor is it the heart break because of a boy in my youth. I just want to highlight the situation of the man and his wooden bird and a woman with her constant search for lost time in a long long house not the one she’s current living in.

In the poor light, the iris I had dreamed about bloomed.

It’s very obvious. That it did not, bloom for my eyes to see. It is a flower of the imagination. The kind of colour I have dreamed of being a part of, fully immerse. Or perhaps for instant the other way around, it becoming a part of me. My dreams are often no different to the other two in the house. But, in truth, I know they are very different. My dreams are a lot brighter. My dreams have the possibilities of becoming realities. Because I believe, the man who had a passion for birds, hates those who causes war beyond his front door, what he really wants for his wooden bird with a blue beak is a voice. While the woman obsessed with the long long house, definitely do not know how to find all those lost memories.

Just passed in the dark was the severed prayer in the middle of the night.

What I do know is, beyond that door is war unraveling in real time. The man with the wooden bird did not want to discuss it. He has no positive affinity toward those who instigates war outside of his door. His battle inside his home diminished in time. He prays in secret. (Like his mother, when she was alive).

It was a surprise, catching him pray in secret like that. In the past, he looks down on such acts. “Women are always weak. They are always fearful of the worst, no wonder they pray”, you would find him mumbling something like that now and then. For instance, I remember, his mother, she used to tell war stories in the middle of the night, the chaos. Before praying quietly, she would repeat over and over again the same thing, “the bombs and bullets dear God, husband, for how many decades have they taken you from me” (like the lyric of a song, when she was alive). She would often pray quietly in the early morning light, a rosy pink.

Fallen is blood on the soil. Clearer coming into view slowly were the form and eyes full of darkness of the butcher.

The man who loves birds had made early prediction about the war beyond his door. Hence, when came the fire and explosions, blood falling over the destruction, he was not surprised. The war brewing at the foundation of his home slowly lost its heat. All members, all entity seemed to suddenly learn how to make each other smile, even though it was still rather awkward. Except for my mother who was completely isolated when it came to the exchanges about the war behind doors. All she wants was to find the long long house. It is some thing that has been sustained by a memory that had left mark in the pad of her palm.

Me and a dark corner stared at each other. My willful nature found various crazy way to play with the dark. But when I do play with the dark often I would choose to sit and imagine other worlds inside the walls. In the dark right now, there is only one living thing I want. It is the iris. An image that could make me truly feel. In the dark, it shimmers, mysteriously. In the dark, it calls upon my childhood, the passions of my formative years. And yet, when I want it to be my childhood, it would turn into something laughable and ridiculous.

Presently, I’m of two minds about what is and what is not; between existence and non-existence. The butcher’s eyes and my visualization of blood spatter in the dark. Find at all any sign of life. Or may be the gentle whisper of the iris breath in the dark. The colours not of war. And just like that, times like that, my mind would have enough clarity to continue to give more thought on the man who loves birds who now prays in the middle of the night, or help look for the long long house lost the memory of the woman living with me. And that includes why for no reason at all, the wooden bird with the blue beak had suddenly disappeared?

3.

Continuing my dream, I imagined the blue iris blooming until the moment the sky is pink with the first light. I am fiddling in the dark, playing with the walls and shadow. Since, after the fights under one roof, the headaches remain. Me residing in stillness, as the air of those around me continues to rise through the blanket of the night, the breath of the imagination. Me, dreaming. The dream of a fresh new world, genteel, tranquil. Me, dreaming. Dreaming of the possibility of the wars behind doors will never happen again.

The early mornings, the sun bursting with light slips in aiming directly at the bed head, it feels as though I’m waking up in Van Gogh’s lonely private space. I am obsessed with this room, and the river reflecting a sky full of twinkling stars. It is a beautiful dream. To the point where, I can no longer recall the iris with its purple hues, a flower that demand my attention, complete immersion in the illusion. If I could only live in reality, immerse myself in the simple colours all around me, then I wouldn’t have the trouble of having to search for what isn’t there. I dream still of other strange flowers in other places even though I know that, dreams are not easily attainable.

The man who likes to take care of birds, detest the beginning of the clear changes in the wars beyond his door.

On face value. Rarely do I give myself permission to entertain incidents with the slightest hint of mystery. In the past, in his eyes were the reflection of the terror of my fears. And I would hide. The others in the house, they too, would run and hide. The moment the bird showed any sign of life death showed up in throes. The moment the bird with the blue beak disappeared. The moment he began to pray like his mother in the pinkness of first light. There was a shift in the intensity of the energy in his eyes, the dark clouds has disappeared. When enough light residing in the eyes, the face will be the same. They light up gracefully in contrast to those darker days.

Now there’s only me. A knotted complicated living breathing being, full of contradictions drawn constantly to what isn’t real. My dream remain unresolved. And, that includes my mother’s dream. I woman who had lost her memory of a long long house.

By Trần Băng Khuê

---

Trần Băng Khuê

---

Trần Băng Khuê, born in Vietnam in 1982, lived for a period in Auckland, New Zealand. A talented writer and an aspiring artist who currently lives and work in Huế, Vietnam.

Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm, the blogger, poet, and translator, was born in 1971 in Phu Nhuan, Saigon, Vietnam. The pharmacist currently lives and works in Western Sydney, Australia., born in Vietnam in 1982, lived for a period in Auckland, New Zealand. A talented writer and an aspiring artist who currently lives and work in Huế, Vietnam.