Vortices

Last year I traveled with my brothers Steve and Scott to Viet Nam. We spent time in and around Ha Noi, out on Ha Long Bay and up in the mountain towns of Bac Ha and Sapa near the Chinese border. Short vignettes below. Also links to Scott’s radio food tips and his recent Rotary video production as well as pictures from Steve.

Scott's Radio Food Tip #1 - Sapa
Scott's Radio Food Tip #2 - Travel
Scott's Radio Food Tip #3 - Coffee
Scott's Video Production
Band of Brothers 2006
Steve's 2005 Makong Delta and HCMC Pictures

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

Between a split of land on the mighty Red River a village was founded. On a shred of land rising above a sliver of marshes a town grew. Skirting a knob of land among title flats, scattered streams and lakes a city occurred. From a network of foot, cow and duck paths to a loose agglomeration of towns and conjoined streets, to an immense estuary with it own ebbs and flows. Partly laid out in geometers, but mostly growing like vines, Hanoi, is the city between two rivers.

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

On the edge of the old quarter of Hanoi, on the banks of Hoan Kien Lake an old "Viet Man" paces reciprocating arcs. On the Red River long-stanchion blades and foot driven oars mint systems of vortices that fall aft tracing out fading and flattening conic sections flailing about one another. Throughout the city, flotillas of bikes and moped, bucket-like cyclos, carts, cafes, streets, push and bump below the rigging and spars of electrical wires and clothes lines and through alleys combining into a tangle as vast and inextricable as characters on a page must do in the eyes of an unlettered peasant…Us.

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

At an intersection a boy smiles. His gums support a rubble of teeth shouldering their way to pink gaps and deciduous ones flapping like brothel signs on skin hinges. Precocious sots peer quick faced as I pass basting their sentences together through white smoke of cigarettes and industry turning the sky into a blazing spark shot. Motorcycles tethered by a traffic light mingle and jostle like a nervous horses heaving at the sound of distant guns. Knees pimple through plastic ponchos draped against a constant rain. The light changes. A red flag with a single yellow star snaps straight with a pop. They’re off leeched against a sky of matted reticule of taut jute.

”The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

Like jumping fish they go about difficult tasks and matters with bloodless ease. As if they were all born knowing things that other people must observe and learn. Given enough time, enough points, one can begin to draw a mental line from the bridges spanning the river, to the wickered and walled gallows of the old quarter, to this street corner. Plotted out one begins to understand a little about what these people fear, whom they love, how they live. And though it is impossible I want to see everything, taste, smell and touch all, and alter nothing.

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”