conversations at the lake

During my recent visit back to Đà Lạt with my father, water has been a focal point, or location rather for both conversations and sightseeing. Đà Lạt, if not mentioned previously elsewhere, is a city in which much family history has taken place—my father spent his childhood summers here at his father’s house overlooking Hồ Xuân Hương daydreaming down at the docks about could have been in days past. A few months prior, I walked the circumference of this very lake developing and expanding on individualistic thoughts of my own about what could be.

In a sense, this is a city which links the past to the near present to the not too distant future. The air is still chilly during the later hours of the day, but not to the frigid severity my father describes when recalling the days when lit coals in metal pans were placed under the bed at night for heat—it is amazing carbon monoxide poisoning did not occur. The bullies of my father’s youth no longer stroll along the lake in numbers looking to pick fights for pocket change; nowadays, locals pedaling by on two-seater bicycles are common along with the occasional nighttime middle-aged man on a motorbike asking the visitors if they would like to get some coffee (local slang for: care for a prostitute?). The lakes and waterfalls of my father’s youth are still where they were left last—except now, these locations have been turned into unnaturally structured, and sometimes restricted, tourist hot spots.

The point of divergence from all this reminiscing, however, is that one probably should not continue to live in the past, but must look forward to what the future may bring as my father said during this trip. True, the past is a foundation for the development of a person, but it should not necessarily hinder who a person shall become in his or her future (tương lai). Continual movement, flexibility, fluidity, and functionality in terms of contributing to the development of and understanding the changing world seem more pertinent in this regard.

On another note, this recent visit to Đà Lạt has given me a new business/non-governmental organization idea involving art.