Obi

On the week after my aikido belt changed from yellow-stripe to blue stripe, I tried on my new one before class started. Freshly freed from the flimsy paper bands that tied it, the belt uncoiled, stiff as cardboard, still bearing the crease marks of its packaging.

My two Sensei came over to comment. "Now you can recycle the old belt," one said to the other.

A look of protest crossed my face before my other Sensei responded, "They usually want to keep them, though. Daisy, you want to keep your old belt?"

"Yes, Sensei," I responded enthusiastically. "Please."

My first Sensei smiled good-naturedly as she walked away. "I don't know why you'd want them to pile up for."

I wanted to say, "But, Sensei--it means something to me." Where I used to practice aikido at SJSU, we didn't rank. I took those fitness classes over and over, long after my Human Performance units had been fulfilled, impossibly drawn to the art. My belt stayed white for the two-and-a-half years I first trained in aikido.

There are mixed feelings about rank in the aikido community. Some feel it goes against the non-competitive nature of this martial art; others think it's a good way to measure self progress, or for instructors and senior students to gauge skill level when working with a new student. I came in neutral to these arguments, simply accepting that different dojos do things in different ways, and as long as I still had fun and fueled my passion to train, it really didn't matter.

As the other students filtered in, putting on their gi and adjusting their garments in preparation for training, I wrapped the stiff new blue-striped belt around my abdomen, looping it neatly around itself and tying the double knot from years of muscle memory. I looked back on the white days. I looked forward to the days of solid blue and brown and black. I thought about how my basic movements had refined over time, wondered about the techniques and kata I have yet to learn. Lining up in seiza, the obi tight around my center to push my posture straight, I thought about my newly-earned color, and how I'd train going forward to deserve it.

Back to Basics

Once upon a time, I used to be able to do the basic-blend technique of tai-no-henko, a normal warm-up exercise often performed in pairs at the beginning of class to get students into the mindset of aikido's movements. Palm face-up and held near the abdomen; hand pivots on an invisible vertical line; forward foot slides in deep; body blends, and both arms end palm-up. Now, I couldn't control the shape of my hands, or slide deep enough, or take my opponent's balance, or end up quite right.

Re-entering aikido is like going through physical rehab after a major accident has robbed you of the ability to walk. You remember how it's done, and yet it is with the greatest of efforts that, with support and guidance, you begin the painstaking journey of learning how to put one foot in front of the other again. It's painful to see fluidity all around you but not yet attain it. Hard to relax when you're so preoccupied with finding the flow. But I do hope to find my aikido again, dormant within me, rusty from years of neglect. Because when I watch the smoothly-flowing aikido of two senior-rank students during practice, it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life--it is an execution of art, like perfect penmanship across lined white paper, or the foam at the peak of the ocean waves before they break and rush in to meet the sand. It fills me with a sense of inner tranquility even as I seek to unravel the secret behind such perfection, and a feeling wells up from deep within me, akin to love.

This journey strewn with obstacles comes with its little, occasional rewards: hearing the click-clack sound of wooden jo's clanging against each other during weapons practice, executing a perfect pin, and getting that odd sensation of the 20 hot bodies in the room just disappearing so that all that remains is your training partner, you, and the moment. Once in a while, a training partner attuned to my body's movements, or an instructor who was standing by observing, would say to me, "You've done aikido before, haven't you?"

"Yes," I answer them. "Once upon a time."

Gi

For five years, it sat in a dark corner of my closet. When I pulled it out of the bag, it still looked the same--crisp and white, stiff at the seams, crinkled in areas bent over and over from years of use. When I tried it on, it still felt the same--cottony cool and loose for easy mobility, with a belt tied tight around the abdomen to remind me of correct posture, good etiquette, and decorum.

In reality, my body and its limitations become my inhibitions, but in my dreams, I remember how to fly. I am weightless as air, malleable as water, flowing easily over wrist locks and joint holds, taking tumbles and executing standing rolls with barely a skip in my heartbeat. My breathing is rhythmic and not labored as I train--moving in perfect circles, landing soft, lost in the rhythms of my own body, and the techniques come to me as second-nature as the speakings of my own soul.

Now I start at a different school and don a new gi. My belt is white, my mind an empty cup as it seeks to learn again, from the start. Everything in these initial stages feels awkward, awkward; my body struggles to remember how to move, limbs akimbo as they seek the right positions to start off, to end up.

I know the kanji is different, but I can't help interpreting the first character of "aikido" to mean "love." Five years put on hold as I worked toward my graduate degree and gauged the terrain of the corporate world. Now I go back to one of my first loves. Draping the new uniform over my shoulders, tying the vest in place left-over-right, cinching the belt so the knot sits right above my "hara" center energy, I start to remember why this martial art is built upon the foundation of love. The first time I wore my uniform again, it was as intimate as if I was taking off the layers, not putting them on; I got butterflies in my stomach for all the potential that is to be, and that is love. Meeting a stranger and working that closely with his or her body, taking care to learn in the process an not inflict hurt--that is love. Studying how the body moves and achieving confluence and harmony so that my mind feels linked with all the essence of the universe, that is love. Even the trail of bruises along my forearms and knees from take-downs and blocking shomen uchi strikes, which remind me about enjoying life as a mortal, and that everything worth having comes with a least a little pain . . . that is love.


In real life, I struggle against gravity and resistant forces, but in my dreams, I float on air. My passion fueled once again, I will work to re-learn buoyancy, weightlessness, and flow. This is my "ai," and I will "hajime"--begin again.

Vestiges

When night's shadows slink in and I am lulled to that place between sleep and dreams, I feel I can reach out and touch the memories. They are close by, like strangers on motorbikes sidled up against the side of my vehicle. Suddenly, I am back in a place illuminated by light, the late-afternoon sun embracing me in a cocoon of warmth, shining on my bare arms as I sit at the corner of a tiny metal table on a little plastic chair. The lilting song of the Vietnamese language swims through my ears as all around me, the customers having lunch at Tung's aunt's noodle shop carry on a casual conversation of their simple plans for the day: visiting family, shopping for dinner ingredients, cooking a special meal out of the blue.

An old lady with a poofy white perm and diamonds in her ears leans in to talk to a young lady with a jade bracelet encircling her slender wrist, both of them wearing a simple, light, satiny outfit to keep cool in the humid heat. The ever-present smoky tinge in the air is mixed with the deep scent of broth from two huge vats simmering rich yellow liquid; onions browning in a pan of oil tease my taste buds and make my stomach rumble. A scent of sweet fruits warmed by the sun rides a soft breeze and wafts past my nostrils; I can taste the goods from the nearby market, a memory ingrained at the back of my throat. Distant motorbikes honk, coupled with the jingly tune of a delivery truck put in reverse. I reach my arms up to the blue sky in a stretch, my cotton spaghetti-strap tanktop moving easily with my body.

I blink, and I am alone, once again waiting at an intersection for the light to turn green. The neat, wide lanes are slicked with rain, the road reflecting the soft glow of the traffic lights above. I am wearing slacks and a long-sleeve, button-up shirt, the collar sitting stiff against my neck. I am once again a tech writer leaving work for the day, a young woman set on ambitions of furthering my career, climbing the corporate ladder, testing out new software, saving up to buy a house and start a family. The sense of responsibility once again weighs heavily on my mind, and the carefree euphoria of a simple life in a village or the freedom of riding waves in a salty sea dissipate like fog.

The light changes color, and I take my foot from the brake and ease on to the accelerator, blinking away vivid visions of warm days and warmer company. The heart remembers what it loves, retaining vestiges of memories long after they fade from the fickle mind. I steer the car down the last few blocks, going back to my house while thinking about my once-upon-a-time journey "home."

A Re-Cap of Things I Learned In and About Viet Nam

1. The fanny pack is a lifesaver. I wore it everywhere. We were fortunate enough not to encounter any incidents of theft, but it's like they say: "Out of sight, out of mind."
2. Not toting your camera around makes you appear more like a native and, therefore, allows you to command more bargaining leverage.
3. Swimming a few times in the ocean gives you a good tan that makes you appear more like a native and, therefore, allows you to command more bargaining leverage.
4. $30,000 dong for a pack of postcards is a rip-off.
5. The taxi drivers sign to each other as they pass on opposite ends of the road. They have a system of alerting each other to the presence of cops, which tells them to buckle up or slow down.
6. "Mang cau xiem" are not edible without sugar. "Chuoi xiem" are the best bananas in the world. I could live off them for breakfast.
7. Phan Rang has good chicken rice meals.
8. Phan Thiet is known for producing dragon fruit and salt.
9. Can Giuoc is a great place to eat the "vu sua" fruit.
10. Nha Trang has awesome, fresh seafood, such as crab.
11. Da Lat has awesome weather and a great "historical village" called "Su Quan" that specializes in the making and sale of silk-screen embroidery.
12. Viet Nam has large "fire ants" that pack a mean bite. Their mosquitos aren't too shabby, either.
13. Viet Nam cockroaches are the size of beetles and can fly.
14. Viet Nam mice are the size of armadillos. They don't seem scared coming out at night and take their precious time moseying around. River rats are even bigger.
15. Snakes like to hang their skins on tree branches when they shed.
16. To mentally convert the exchange rate of approximately $17,000 Viet Nam dong to $1 U.S. dollar, it's best to divide by 20.
17. For three weeks, I got to be a millionnaire.
18. Viet Nam vans have musical tunes when put in reverse. This is apparently a popular add-on option when buying a mini-van.
19. In most open-air markets, there is no such thing as a "trash can." They'll laugh if you ask for one.
20. U.S. bills that are torn, have been written on, or have been folded across the president's face are de-valued. You get less dong for them when exchanging currency. Torn Vietnamese dong are not acceptable currency on the street.
    

With Wings Outstretched

Time to take off. We flew out of Viet Nam and had a two-hour layover at the airport in Taiwan. Tung and I wandered around the airport, stretching our legs before the long flight back to the States, exchanging currency to get Taiwanese coins and buying bottled water from vending machines. We played at the huge Hello Kitty store, sporting pastel colors and kiddy, cartoonish decor.





We browsed shelves of intricate, flowery fans and opera dolls.


We looked through the paper cut-out artwork on display.




We visited the potted orchids, hung heavy on their stalks in a wash of pastel colors.



As my travels draw to a close, I think about all the sights, scenes, and people whom I'll miss when I'm back in the States. I am by nature wary of strangers, so receiving such a warm welcome from family whom I'd never met greatly astonished me. They hugged and held my hand and bestowed familial kisses on the cheek as if I were their own daughter, coming home after having spent a long time away.


As I boarded the plane out of Viet Nam, I passed a young woman already strapped into her aisle seat. She was wearing an elaborate traditional "ao dai" and had gold and pearl jewelry around her neck, wrists, and fingers. But what was most striking about this woman was that she held up one hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, trying to contain the tears trickling out of her eyes. Two older people sat to her right, slightly looking away as if to give her time to come to peace with herself. As I took my seat and clicked on the seat belt, I couldn't help thinking about what her situation may be. Perhaps she was scared, having never flown before. Perhaps she was a new bride, leaving behind the country she had grown up in to start a life with a strange husband in a foreign land. Perhaps she was thinking about her family whom she may not see again for a long while, if at all, still standing outside the glass doors of the Tan Son Nhat Airport, peering in at the place they last saw her, trying to memorize the gait of her stride, the scent of her perfume.

There is a Vietnamese song that I really like, "Giac Mo Canh Co," about a white crane that spreads its wings to fly the world far and wide. The lush, golden rice fields of Viet Nam knew the crane when it was young. They throw their longing melody up to the heavens, and season after season, they wonder when the crane would hurdle the obstacles of tall mountains and deep seas, once again flying back to land in fields that it once called home.


Even before this trip, the song brings tears to my eyes, as if I were hearing the whispered longings of some voice that beckons me back to my homeland. There is also a famous Vietnamese saying about rural areas with patches of rice fields, stretching the horizon as far as the eye can see. The Mekong Delta, in Vietnamese known as "Dong Bang Song Cuu Long" (Nine Dragons River Delta), is an area especially conducive to fishing commerce and vegetation growth. They say these lands are where the crane can "bay thang canh"--fly with wings outstretched.

The city is crowded with people, traffic, and dense houses built with barely an alleyway in between, but I've been fortunate enough during my trip to South-Central Viet Nam, to be able to see these fertile, green-and-brown fields marked off like a giant checkerboard. I was born and raised a city girl, but it is there, in that clean air and open space, where my heart felt free and at home, as if it could suddenly sprout white wings and help me soar.

Night

In the morning, Tung went to visit his grandma for the last time, and also to return the wooden placard bearing his family surname because it wouldn't fit in the luggages. I used the cell phone Chu Nhan lent me to call my relations and my parents and let them know I'd be flying home tomorrow.

In the afternoon, Di Oanh took her lunch break off from work to come pick up the cell phone. Today is my vegetarian day, so Di Oanh and I went on a spur-of-the-moment lunch to Viet Chay Restaurant for an unusual vegetarian buffet meal. The place was the ground floor of a temple currently being built, sporting modern design after Chinese decorative influences and a spacious, cool interior with good wood furniture (instead of the more common, low, plastic chairs in cafes and diners). Even with three rooms of tables, the restaurant was so packed that we ended up having to share a long table with two other parties. This is a common scene in Viet Nam, with strangers sharing tables during rush hour, and people hurrying to finish their meal to make room for waiting customers.

I had never eaten at a vegetarian buffet before, and they had such interesting dishes as "banh canh" (fat, round rice noodles in clear broth), "bun rieu" (rice vermicelli with ground "pork" and "crab" cakes), "hu tieu xau" (rice noodles sauteed in garlic), fried "fish" cooked with soy sauce, jackfruit wedges marinated in soy sauce, veggie eggrolls, "ca phao" round eggplants prepared kimchee style, and fried rice. Everything was completely vegetarians and made from either tofu or gluten.

For dessert, there was "che bi" (tapioca-enclosed palm seed kernels), fresh fruits such as pineapples and bananas, and fresh fruit juice. The restaurant was on the ritzy end--right away, you could tell because it cost money to park your motorcycle, the service staff was in full "ao dai," the furniture was real wood, and the decor was modern. It cost $89,000 dong per person for the buffet (around $4-$5: cheap for us, pretty high-scale for Viet Nam). A $10 U.S.-per-person restaurant was expensive-wedding-meal quality. I was really excited to see Di Oanh and ride her motorbike again.

At night, we had our last meal with Co Xuan and an adopted daughter of hers named Phuong. Phuong is a journalist, and she offered to take us on a tour of Downtown Saigon. When people in the city ask, "Have you been to Saigon," what they mean is, "Have you been to Downtown Saigon, where Ben Thanh Market is?" To locals, this area is the heart of the city, and you really haven't visited "Saigon" unless you've gone downtown. At night, it is a whole different place. Familiar daytime cityscape warp into a show of Vegas-like neon lights.





The Cathedral of Notre Dame illuminates in a show of gold, the star in its center pulsating an erratically blinking rhythm.


As we stood in the little square in front of the cathedral, Phuong turned to me and asked, "What do you see and hear around you?" And with those words, from one writer to another, my gawking tourist brain shut off, and on flicked my creative-writing mind. I saw the world around me as only writers could see: everything was sharpened--my hearing more accute, my sight more selective.

I smelled the squid from the little cart as the vendor flattened the pieces between a metal contraption before roasting them on a little burner.



I felt the motor-scooters zipping closely by, a steady emission of honking like the throbbing heart of the city.



I saw youths in hip, trendy clothes, their futures stretched ahead, distant and bright.


I heard the church-goers' chanting prayers, an ethereal wailing sent to their gods upon the air.

I told Phuong all these things, and she told me I was right. She also told me that many of these sights and sounds and smells may not be around for much longer. The government has more than once threatened to shut down street-vendor business in this plaza; under the guise that the food and litter have been making a mess of the city, they wanted all vendors to close up shop. Phuong said countless families had afforded to put at least one of their children through college by hoarding the meager profits from their sales of cuttlefish, fried squid balls, cotton candy. When I asked why the city simply didn't put garbage cans around the plaza and enforce a "No Littering" policy, Phuong smiled at me with a look in her eyes that said, "If only it were that simple."


Phuong continued to guide us around the city, taking us on walks and taxi rides. We saw the magnificent architecture of Town Hall, now called the People's Committee Building, where political leaders gather for meetings.



Five-star hotels decaled their front windows with pictures to welcome the Year of the Ox. Phuong poses in front of one, below:



A woman ran a soup kitchen right in front of her clothing shop, dispensing a warm meal for the poor and homeless once every month.



Young ladies make paper orchid arrangements and sell them to wandering tourists.



The indoor Ben Thanh market closes its doors by evening, and nighttime vendors set up tents outside along the street aisles, selling souvenirs of polo shirts, purses, mother-of-pearl lacquered paintings, and figurines for display. If you didn't know how to drive a bargain, you were certain to get ripped off. Initially quoted prices are usually double or triple what vendors are truly willing to sell at.



I bought Tung a twisted-wire figurine of a palm tree and a siclo, which he made good use of for his iPod: