News & Tit-bits from my Life in Vietnam [October 2024]
October was a month filled with travels and time spent with family. My parents visited us from Germany and together we travelled to Bali and to the Mekong Delta. Bali, like most of South East Asia, is a hotbed for tourists. There are too many resorts, too many people and unfortunately, too much trash. It is something which I grapple with on a daily basis living in Vietnam: all the trash which is thrown carelessly into rivers, open plots of land and so on. Sometimes I manage to look past it and other times it touches a deep sadness (and pollution-caused-by-human-activity-inspired rage) within me. I have decided to not add some of the more idyllic photos from Bali to my newsletter, because there are enough of those already populating the internet. And unfortunately most of those photos are taken in such a way that the trash and plastic pollution of the jungles and beaches are just outside the frame of the picture. Where do you place the blame for the global problem which plastic pollution has become? And would it even help to place the blame anywhere? Anyway, enough. I don't have the answers to this problem, other than doing my own little bit in my tiny, tiny corner of the world.
And just on a more positive note, there are also many people and organisations who are doing their best to help. Here in Vietnam we have a couple of organisations driven by young people who are cleaning up the rivers and land. If you would like to see what the Saigon group has been getting up to please visit their Facebook page Saigon Xanh. When my family and I were in the Mekong Delta we spotted one of The Ocean Clean Up's plastic collecting "boats". They are a fantastic company who develop technology to capture and collect plastic from the oceans and rivers. They have begun to target some of the world's biggest rivers, to help collect the trash before it even reaches the ocean. They then re-use and recycle what they have captured. So yes, there is always hope.
Whenever I get confronted by the more devastating aspects of humanity and the impact which our ever growing species has on the planet, a seed of deep despair is touched within me. In practising to embrace my despair so that it doesn't grow into rage and hatred, I have come across my own personal antidote. My method of caring for my despair lies within the walls of my studio. I often find that my body alone is not enough to hold the emotions that arise and so I turn to pen, paper and all forms of colour for help. And curiously enough, what flows out of my despair is not more despair, but instead a subtle form of joy. And so a little bit of my despair is transformed into something delicate and colourful. Into something that might in turn bring a moment of joy and hope to someone else. I have come to realise that there are many ways to help. My way of helping does not lie in a more overt form of activism, and perhaps that's also okay.
My book about Sam is another such antidote. The story is a simple one, it's not trying to teach an important moral lesson, win a prize for the most creative storyline or solve any global issues (which is probably why it wasn't considered for any of the other competitions I entered for). It's simply about the small everyday joys which are so easily missed and mistaken as mundane. Sam reminds me on a daily basis how easy it is to cultivate your own joy through a cozy nap in the sun (unless you live in the tropics, then a cozy nap in the shade will do much better) or a stroll through the park or a bite of a tasty, crisp apple. I have a tendency to overcomplicate matters, to think that I should be doing more than I already am. Thankfully, Sam helps me to keep both my feet on the ground, and to come back and wake up to the life I already have. So if I have any aim or goal with Sam's book, it is perhaps precisely this, a gentle reminder (as much for me as for anyone else who might read it in the future) that the small, everyday things are already enough to help us cultivate all the joy we could ever need. And if we can find joy in the life we already have, then perhaps we will consume a little bit less and have a little bit more capacity to hold and care for our despair and suffering.
There is a beautiful poem by the Canadian Astronomer, Rebecca Elson, titled "Antidotes to the Fear of Death". I have often found solace in her words:
Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
Before I let you get on with your day, here are some images from the last and (maybe) final spread of Sam's book that I have been working on this past week.
All my love,
Nicola
PS. As always, if you enjoyed my musings and know of anyone who might also enjoy my ramblings please forward my blog to them, your support will be greatly appreciated. I would also love to hear from you. So any responses or comments or creative stories of your own that you might have and would like to share with me, please send me an email.
I am currently reading....
44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
A recommendation from my mom who is struggling to put it down (she's already quite far into the series). I'm still just in the first chapter, but I have a feeling that it's going to be fun.
Let me know which book has got you in its grip!
Studio Nicola Fouché. 2024.
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