A strip mall passage to Asia
"Come on, come on, come on, come on ... "
Yesterday, Saturday 2004, I drove past Jack in the Box and thousands of nail salons to get to Pho Bac 54 - An Authentic Vietnamese Restaurant. Jim Morrison sang from the dash that he was going to love me "until the stars fell from the sky." I thought about how thirty years ago soda shop soldiers were flying to Vietnam to the same soundtrack.
At Pho Bac 54, I watched CNN on a big screen television while eating a pork and egg quiche dish. The French influence, I assumed. A headline about six bird flu deaths in Vietnam scrolled across the news ticker. Five were children. A family at another table had soup and spoke what I guessed was Vietnamese. I later learned that Pho Bac is soup.
Two nights ago, my Korean friend said she had a dream about me. In the dream, she drove to my house and knocked on the door. A stranger answered. He said I was asleep, but he would wake me. I came to the door groggy and rubbing my eyes. I told her that I needed more sleep. She said ok and goodbye then drove away.
Tonight I had Thai food at a place called the Orchid in a strip mall between a Radio Shack and a furniture store with $800 lamps. I ordered the Orchid duck, but they were out of duck. I settled for the Orchid chicken. This dish came out flaming. I expected my waiter to extinguish the fire after the presentation, but he just left it burning. So I let it burn. It wasn't long before the fire went out and I felt a little more relaxed. An older couple, an American man and an Asian lady, came in and sat at one of the low tables. He seemed nervous. Happy, but tense and chatty. He asked the lady to order for him. I thought about how the menu had detailed descriptions in English of every dish. I heard them plan to order the Duck. I wanted to warn them that there was no duck, but I let the scene play out.
Who was that stranger in my friend's dream? I've regularly had dreams and have been told about dreams where there is someone unfamiliar, often a peripheral figure who does little. What if this background player is actually the same presence in all our dreams, kind of an extra whose role is to hold together our collective dreamscape? When the scene unfolds and there is a lack of needed continuity or symmetry, this extra is there to connect and balance. An every-synapse with an unfamiliar face and a knack for blending in.
What if the extra decided it was time to headline, to be remembered from dream to dream? What would happen if he no longer wanted to speak lines only for cohesion or eavesdrop from another table only to patch together images, but longed to say and do things that would bend the course of the moment, change the way the scene would be remembered and would stain his presence into future scenes?
Maybe there would be no more duck orders.
"Come on, come on, come on, come on ... "
Yesterday, Saturday 2004, I drove past Jack in the Box and thousands of nail salons to get to Pho Bac 54 - An Authentic Vietnamese Restaurant. Jim Morrison sang from the dash that he was going to love me "until the stars fell from the sky." I thought about how thirty years ago soda shop soldiers were flying to Vietnam to the same soundtrack.
At Pho Bac 54, I watched CNN on a big screen television while eating a pork and egg quiche dish. The French influence, I assumed. A headline about six bird flu deaths in Vietnam scrolled across the news ticker. Five were children. A family at another table had soup and spoke what I guessed was Vietnamese. I later learned that Pho Bac is soup.
Two nights ago, my Korean friend said she had a dream about me. In the dream, she drove to my house and knocked on the door. A stranger answered. He said I was asleep, but he would wake me. I came to the door groggy and rubbing my eyes. I told her that I needed more sleep. She said ok and goodbye then drove away.
Tonight I had Thai food at a place called the Orchid in a strip mall between a Radio Shack and a furniture store with $800 lamps. I ordered the Orchid duck, but they were out of duck. I settled for the Orchid chicken. This dish came out flaming. I expected my waiter to extinguish the fire after the presentation, but he just left it burning. So I let it burn. It wasn't long before the fire went out and I felt a little more relaxed. An older couple, an American man and an Asian lady, came in and sat at one of the low tables. He seemed nervous. Happy, but tense and chatty. He asked the lady to order for him. I thought about how the menu had detailed descriptions in English of every dish. I heard them plan to order the Duck. I wanted to warn them that there was no duck, but I let the scene play out.
Who was that stranger in my friend's dream? I've regularly had dreams and have been told about dreams where there is someone unfamiliar, often a peripheral figure who does little. What if this background player is actually the same presence in all our dreams, kind of an extra whose role is to hold together our collective dreamscape? When the scene unfolds and there is a lack of needed continuity or symmetry, this extra is there to connect and balance. An every-synapse with an unfamiliar face and a knack for blending in.
What if the extra decided it was time to headline, to be remembered from dream to dream? What would happen if he no longer wanted to speak lines only for cohesion or eavesdrop from another table only to patch together images, but longed to say and do things that would bend the course of the moment, change the way the scene would be remembered and would stain his presence into future scenes?
Maybe there would be no more duck orders.
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