Two Days in Mui Ne

SEA AND MEMOIRS

This is our third time in Mui Ne and definitely not the last. It is my favorite escape point in Vietnam. Not too far from HCMC, not too crowded, not too dirty and of course not too expensive! The fragrant breeze from the sea is good enough for me to forget the hectic days of the city and shake off the monotone rhythm of my daily life. Actually, I again planned to do things I do daily but so far not much I have achieved. I was planning to write at least 2,000 words during my stay for my ongoing novel. Last two days I could not even open the file. However I do not feel guilty as I usually do when I ignore my daily work. I am here for vacation and it is fun to spend my time swimming, sleeping, reading and eating. I also have wireless internet at my room so I can check e-mails, write e-mails and read the news.

Our journey started yesterday morning. One night before I was with R, drinking beer and talking about funny adventures of our common friend A. I laughed a lot because most of the stories are worth to be written, almost incredible. I am sure I will use them in different occasions to ease the tension in the scene. In the morning, still hanged with the alcohol in my blood, I could not wake up at 6 am to do my daily writing. When we woke up, we needed to hurry up to catch the bus. Then 5 hours later, we were here, in Mui Ne, watching the sea and facing the centuries-old winds…

Unfortunately the address written in the receipt was not right so we got off the bus a few kilometers after the hotel. Then we took two 'xe om's to get back to hotel. Other than this, nothing worth to mention happened in the bus. It was a comfortable trip for me. For J, she hates to be supposed as a Vietnamese person. People usually speak with her in Vietnamese until they find out that she does not understand them. Then they apologize and smile. But still this thing sometimes repeats so many times that she gets crazy. This somehow forces her to make comparisons between Thailand and Vietnam. In any case, Thailand wins and she is happier… Sometimes these comparisons transcend the limits of the rationality. However the important thing is not to be objective, it is to be subjective and have a sufficient reason to be happy. She does this in her own way and the result is usually successful.

I did not swim yesterday. It was enough to sit on the bench and watch the immense blue before my eyes. Then just before the sunset, we walked on the beach. The wind was fresh and carrying the fragrance of the evening. The kids were still playing in the water, reluctant to leave it despite their mothers’ repetitive calls. It is also nice to feel the moving sands under my feet. It is like being dizzy, feeling that the earth is moving together with our bodies and everything else. While walking, we saw a giant jellyfish on the beach. It was as big as my head and apparently it was dead. I tried to touch it but J did not let me to touch as if it was a snake or an unknown creature. I looked at this transparent animal and thought about its life story which will never be written. In fact, most of the people in this world share the same destiny with this jellyfish in terms of their silent life stories. How would it be nice if every one of us is given a chance to write our life stories before we give our last breath? Lonely, desperate jellyfish was lying on the sand, looking so feeble, so bleak! Where was it born? When did it start to move independently? How did it come to this beach? Did it feel loneliness or homesickness? Do jellyfishes have feelings like us? It would be anthropocentric to think the opposite… It is interesting that in Turkish, we call them “denizanasi” which means “mother of sea”. I have no idea what they did to deserve such a name in Turkish. However, they have some strange looking, a bit scary I might say. Dying like this is not anyone wishes for. I kept walking and made myself busy my own drawings which I call “Beach Art”.

I drew a few geometric pictures on the sand, a few tessellations, a few curves and a few graphs… I gave them names like “the eye”, “fade away”, “isomorphic” “norm” etc… Most of them were mathematical pictures since I feel more confident when I work with mathematical concepts. Then the waves came stronger, wiped some of them off. I fixed the erased parts but it was impossible to fight against the waves. At the end, I told myself that the real art is the only one which expresses the truth by its nature. My little beach art exhibition was showing the impermanence of being with very simple effects. Nothing is permanent as Buddha says. The waves resembled the time which wipes out everything. The lines were our personal experiences, our happy and sad moments, loves and cries. No matter how much effort we exert to keep them alive, time is the best interpreter of the world. Those lines which are drawn deep in the sand will stay longer but not forever… Nothing is forever… Neither this beach nor the people playing on it. Even the sun sinking in the water as if a red orange is floating at the horizon line is not forever despite its promise for a rise in the next morning…

In the evening we went to a nearby restaurant to have dinner. It was not fantastic but for the standards we presume to accept, the food was palatable and the service was ok. After the dinner, we went to watch the darkness of the sea. The voice, the breeze, the darkness, the mysticism were all together. There was something secret about the sea and this only was enough to allure me. It was so big, so mighty! I, as a little man on the beach was nothing comparing the size of the sea. It has a big memory of human history, beneath the surface, in that darkness where only fish and other sea animals can enjoy. I was ready to stay there all night, just smelling the odor of the sea. J was lying beside me on one of the deckchairs, watching the stars. When I told her that there are so many stars in the sky, she replied without thinking much: There are more in Thailand… I laughed! Then we both went to our room to sleep…

Today morning we woke up around 8. The sunlight was so strong on the east side that I thought it is going to burn the curtain. It was like a wild animal, not enjoying to be caged. Our room, like all the other rooms in the resort is looking at east, embracing the sunrise and mourning for the sunset. The mornings are inevitably glorious, evenings are poignant. After having our free breakfast, I went to swim. I use the word ‘swim’ but actually I should not call it swimming. I walk towards the deep part of the sea till water hits my neck or chin. I am afraid to go further. I am afraid of losing the ground under my feet. At that point I looked at the sea which actually looks very flat because my eyes are so close to the surface. Like a large piece of fabric spread over the earth lies before my eyes and I am the camera floating on the surface, dipping my lenses in the water now and then. I turn my face to the beach and start swimming. Basically what I do is imitating other swimmers. I use my hands and legs to push myself while trying to keep my head above the water. It is more difficult than saying for me since I have never learnt swimming from a trainer or from a family member. That is actually why I feel a bit jealous when I see kids playing in the water with their parents. This also explains why despite my age, I am still not able to swim properly.

Once I swim to the shallow part, I walk back again to the deep point. Then swim back again. It is a shuttling action of a man who does not take risk in his life. It is also what I have been taught by my family. Do not take risk, live peacefully. I do not blame them for not teaching me how to be braver! It is the way they lived as immigrants from Northern region of Turkey to Istanbul where they were nobody. I did some crazy things in my previous years but still most of them are innocent-looking, simple things comparing the stories of real risk-takers I see or hear time to time. How many times I got drunk? I mean really drunk! Not more than 5! How many times I did a thing which no one else wanted to do? Admittingly I am a man of reading, writing and mathematics. All these three are safe shores. I cannot drown in books, I cannot die in numbers, I cannot harm myself in writing. Life is flat for me. I see either numbers or words when I look at things. In both ways, it is harmless, riskless. Therefore, it is also rewardless! A swim tube J is using in the water is a torus (cushion in Latin, it is a geometric shape of doughnut, a three-dimensional figure we can get by vector multiplication of two circles) for me. When I saw it first, I thought I can take it to school and show my students how we can draw K5 on a torus while it is impossible on Euclidian plane or how we can color it with 7 colors while 4 was maximum number on a plane. That is it! When some students ask me ”How come you write! Math and literature are opposite things”. I guess it is how people approach to these two disciplines in developing nations. It is the same thing in Turkey. People have to choose either science or humanities at high school. The separation is like a razor’s cut. If you choose A, then forget B or vice versa… But for me both Mathematics and writing mean the same thing. I need to escape from the reality, from the painful truth of dukkha (suffering). Both numbers and words are perfect shelters for a lonely refugee like me. Numbers easily create another consistent world in which I feel safe and comfortable. To work with words is a bit more difficult but soon I sit for writing a piece –either fiction or non-fiction- I am not in this world any more. It is a therapy worth to millions…

We went to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. It was hot but food was fantastic. We ate outside, beside the main road which goes through the beach, watching big foreigner guys driving small motorbikes. After the lunch, we came back to our room. I slept for a few hours. After waking up I checked e-mails. There were so many e-mails from students for the challenging question I have posted on BB a few days ago. I asked them this question so that they will try and see how little they learn in the class and how much more is left behind. But apparently some of them got the right answer. I guess I have underestimated their math skills. It is good though! I like challenging them and there is nothing worse to scream to an empty wall and looking forward to hear your own echo, but nothing else. I did not check all the solutions because the internet connection is slow and downloading files takes time. I will check them when I get back to school. I hope at least one of them is right so that I can give Pamuk’s “Ten Toi La Do” to a smart student.

Afternoon passed in the water. Swimming parallel to the shore is another safe way. Then the silence of the evening drooped, leaving only the sound of waves hitting the beach. I was tired so instead of looking for another restaurant for dinner, we stayed in the resort and had dinner here. After the dinner, I took my tea cup and went to watch the sea again. The same darkness with small white waves approaching to the beach to hit hard was there like a repeating scene of a movie. I watched the waves, thinking about my own life, my own routines… The white foamy line in the absolute black appears from nowhere and gets larger within a second. In the distant horizon, the lights of fish boats were visible. On the left side, the city was breathing with their simple lives.

Once I finished the tea, we started to walk on the main road to see the life in Mui Ne during the night. Left side of the road –we are going upward- is full of resorts and a few small houses. Right side has little stores, internet cafes, restaurants. I even found a bookshop beside the road and bought a copy of Graham Greene’s “The Honorary Consul”, a tragicomic story about an abduction of wrong man by revolutionaries. After getting tired of walking and looking around the same pictures of the night, we returned to our resort. At the lobby, the old guy was watching football. I looked at the screen and saw that it was Chelsea against Middlesbrough. I do not have interest in either of them but Chelsea is the team which will be playing against Fenerbahce this week for the UEFA Championship Cup and Middlesbrough the team where ex-Fenerbahce player Tuncay is playing now. I sat and watched. Chelsea won the match 1-0 although three balls of Middlesbrough hit the pole very unfortunately. Tuncay left the pitch at 70 min. but I kept watching. It is odd enough that I am watching a football match just because there is a Turkish player in one of the teams. But soon I saw a Turkish flag behind the corner flag. A Turkish flag in a premiership match! I was not alone at the end, felt a bit justified with the conformism. The last whistle is blown and I went to my room to write these lines…

The end of the day and the end of my little vacation! Tomorrow we will be taking the bus at 2 pm. We will arrive home around 7-8 pm… Then Tuesday morning I have a class at 7:30 am. The worst thing about the vacations is to have the obligation of getting back to work. Wouldn’t it be nicer if we have a vacation which makes us to forget all the responsibilities beyond it. You do not think about the future, you do not regret the past. Left and right on the time line fell into deep oblivion such that there is only present, only sand and sea, only books and coffee… Like all dreams, I know it is irrational and inconsistent, but at least it is pleasure to have a bit incoherence in one’s life, ignoring the paradoxes… We all deserve it, right! We all deserve to be drunk once in a while because the true happiness can be obtained only by ignoring the rules of reality, neglecting the rigid forms of humanly-created social norms… Vacation is a sort of drunkenness in which past and present does not exist. Especially vacation in a tropical country helps more because time here does not seem to exist. Everyday is another day from heaven, every night brings the sweet smells of distant lands. Then what is the point of remembering old days and feeling like a cornered mouse! Or is it just a fake face we make up to cheat ourselves? The cat is there, ready to punch (a bit Kafka). If there is no way to escape, the little mouse should shut its eyes and start dreaming about sea, sand and sun…