Post Number 76: An aria. A requiem. A dream

In the midst of packing for my vacation, I wondered which books I should carry. I couldn’t be thoughtless and grab whatever was nearby. Picking vacation reads requires alchemy. It must complement your mental state, your expectations from the vacation, and if you’re not already there, should put you in the mood to unwind. I was feeling very stuck in life; the December air seemed to thicken the sense of stagnation and melancholy around. I woke up sensing the onset of winter and wishing for it to end before it even began. The sun no longer shone through my window with a blinding sharpness. I ached for summer, for warmth. Cloaked under quilts, I reached for my bedside books, opened a page in Patti Smith’s memoir, M Train, and read…

“…a looming continuum of calamitous skies that subtly permeate my entire being. Without noticing, I slip into a light yet lingering malaise. Not a depression, more like a fascination for melancholia, which I turn in my hand as if it were a small planet, streaked in shadow, impossibly blue”

I knew exactly what I wanted to read on my vacation.

I first read M Train in 2021, and felt something in myself shift as I found a kindred spirit in Patti. M Train is a meandering meditation on an artist’s life that features lots of coffee, reading, napkin scribbling, trips around the world to honour literary greats, and daydreaming. In Patti’s fondness for retreating to an inner world, I saw myself reflected. I sensed a deep need to bring her with me as a travelmate.

I stood outside the Airport Terminal with Patti in my carry-on bag as I awaited my friend’s arrival. My thoughts went into observing the people around me. I saw a big group arrive to send off a solitary member. There were hugs and some tears, the kind that come on their own. I saw that expression in the traveler’s face that I’ve come to recognize, a hardened confidence that comes with living alone. Perhaps I’m making it up. Perhaps it’s what I wished for him. Will I be headed somewhere like that? But where? Karan soon arrived and this line of thought fell apart.

Anytime I decide to step away from life as I know it, and vacation, I notice a few things. First, I discard my job like a blanket. It falls away from the periphery of my mind into a vacuum. Second, I step away from my phone. Messages pile up. Conversations collapse. Tethers of connection slack. “I will get back to you” I find myself saying when I wish to say “I will get back to life when I must”. Third, I feel my mind relaxing. I let it wander on tangents it doesn’t when dealing with regular life. I sit in cafes and ponder about the life of the busboy. I think of the man who asked me to switch seats on the plane and wonder if he’s taking the trip only for debauchery. I bask in pointlessness.

On the flight, an overnight one, I wished for sleep but couldn’t find it. I flipped open the book. Much like a sequence inside, I was struggling to read but I read enough to be lulled into that semi-conscious state where you can’t separate dream from fact. I lingered in that suspension until we landed.

Back on the flight, I felt the games physics plays on a body. I felt space-time collapse. I felt the time zone difference acting on me. It was comforting to enter a new land, a new language, a new space, and feel both lost and found, although the internet has made it much harder to be lost anywhere, something I’m glad for.

I landed in Hanoi and found my way to Cafe Mayfair by sheer chance. Flags of countries hung on a string that flew in the cool breeze. We sat outside because I wanted to look at life on the street at 8 in the morning. The proprietress was a busy lady who had not more than three seconds to spare at any spot; who moved in a hurried yet efficient manner, doling out phở, cups of coffee, and also correcting my usage of chopsticks in successive trips. It was oddly nurturing. I realized once the coffee was served that I didn’t specify I wanted mine with milk. It was too late. The lady was off catering to others. I stared at my espresso and felt this is exactly how Patti would have hers at Cafe ’Ino. I clicked a picture of the book with my coffee. Welcome to Vietnam, Patti.

We had time to kill until our place was ready so we walked around the central lake, and later, to the Fine Arts Museum where we bought the audio guide but let our instincts guide us to what drew us. The sleeplessness was catching up to me. On the short taxi ride, I drifted off to some pop record playing, and once at our apartment, I fell into the dreamless sleep of the exhausted. 

Well rested, I was glad to begin my exploration with a renewed spirit. Patti assented. “I was glad to be going somewhere else. All I needed for the mind was to be led to new stations. All I needed for the heart was to visit a place of greater storms”. We reached this cafe, Bancong, coloured yellow that overlooked the road that led to the Beer Street. We clicked some pictures outside its fairy-light lit, plant covered walls, and sat on the open rooftop for dinner. Later, we went through the Beer Street where a man, clearly drunk, bumped into me and fell down, dazed and open-eyed. The loud, energetic street was far too much for both Karan and me, and we tried to walk out of it as quickly as we could, only paused by a bunch of pimps en route who offered us “boom-boom”, as they delicately phrased it. In the cab, I thought of how a solitary wall on the street hid an underbelly of sex, and no doubt, drugs, behind it. 

The next evening, we headed to the famous Train Street. Though it was closed to tourists, you could let any cafe owner take you inside. The owner of Cafe Van showed us a menu on her phone and we agreed, the only ones there. She lived exactly opposite, her door and kitchen in full view. Kids ran around the track, and a chubby one sat slouched on a chair, watching something on his phone. There were two confused dogs in the house next door, and the house to the left chained a brownish-white cat with a jewelled leash. We waited for 40 minutes while I remembered being taken to watch trains by my grandfather when I was three. It’s a mystery which childhood fascinations survive and which are lost to the vagaries of adulthood. We noticed a few Indian couples on their honeymoon posing on the tracks. The train passed with little fanfare. We paid the cafe lady and left. 

The following morning brought unexpected drama. While booking a cab, my bank decided to conduct its maintenance operations. As a result my card shut down for a good hour. By the time we figured out what was happening, we were late enough to have missed our bus to Ha Long Bay. The tour operator arranged a backup though it involved us being packaged into a black SUV with tinted windows and exchanged in the middle of a highway like kidnapped bait onto a bus whose driver drove with the engine check light on all through the journey. Karan and I looked at each other and hoped to reach alive. We did. On the cruise with us was an old Indian lady in her 70s, being taken around slowly by her son. She reminded me of my grandmother. At that moment, I wanted to tell her how great it was that she was exploring another country. I decided against it. Sometime before sunset, we sat down at the beach. As Karan attempted handstands, I wet my feet in the sea, and sat down to read a bit. I felt Patti’s bohemian spirit infuse in me. I observed people on the beach as the orange-gold light dipped below the horizon, colouring the canvas an orange-gray. 

A lot of M Train occurs in Patti’s dissection of her dreams. She has the uncanny ability to remember what she dreams of. I share her ability to dream but not her recall. Nevertheless, I woke up from every sleep and nap on the trip, vaguely cognizant of how I felt in my dream even if the plot eluded me. One day I dreamed of a friend whom I had met a month ago. Perhaps my subconscious was calling out to him because I woke up to a text from him. It’s one of those things that make sense in Patti’s world. 

The morning started in languor. We went to Bookworm, a bookstore where I spent a good amount of time sifting through their second-hand books, settling on a Gore Vidal and Annie Proulx title each. There was nothing of Patti’s. We walked to a nearby pagoda where a man asked his picture to be clicked, which I did. I noticed that inside the pagoda, offerings to the deity included soda cans too. I guess it helps to be updated. As we walked out, the man wanted to click our picture on his phone. We smiled back. And with that gesture, we became a documented part of someone else’s vacation. 

We kept walking around and ended up purchasing some souvenirs. I bargained with the shop owner and got the price I wanted but it pinched my conscience. I could have afforded what she quoted. Part of me looked at her courteous smile and manufactured a struggle to make a living. I wanted to give back the extra money but this moment passed. What about her wan smile had touched me so? I clicked a picture of her standing in her shop as I left. The next morning, I slept for longer than planned, and woke up having dreamed of bonhomie among friends and family.

We were flying to Saigon, and the barrage of Vietnamese coffee was taking a toll on me. I felt over-caffeinated and antsy. I spent the flight reading and transcribing the trip while the man next to me seemed indifferent to all my scribbling. I was grateful. I landed in a warm city and was sweating from the get-go. I felt myself coming down with an illness and slept off. 

In the days at Saigon, I was mostly out or resting, leaving Patti on the back-burner. “Life must defer to dream”, she writes, and it did. We went to Bui Vien which was a sensory overload. Loud music neon lights tons of people half-clothed dancers smoke alcohol sex families walking around beggars requesting brash agents pushing. And sudden silence at the end of the street. We walked to a nearby cafe that was open all day and settled down to talk at 1 AM in the night as friends pow-wowed and lovers met for a date. A cab driver with blaring techno music drove us back.

We spent the next afternoon having a sumptuous brunch at The Workshop Coffee. Across the street, I saw two girls having a photoshoot. For the entire duration of our meal, one clicked the other in every conceivable pose on the five benches that were placed on the balcony. We walked to Ben Thanh and haggled over tea and coffee. We went to the Skydeck to catch the sunset. I saw the city descend into evening as the dusk colours exerted their magic on the sky. On the street we found a couple singing Lobo’s “I’d love you to want me” in a harmony so melodic, it ordered us to pause and admire. As we headed to a restaurant for dinner, I felt the table next to us comment something about me. I didn’t know for sure so I let it slide. At the end of the meal, the guard came over to open the door for our cab. We took a minute to realize it was just his kindness and not an attempt to fish for tips. We were both touched. We stopped at Buddha’s pagoda en route to our apartment. It was brightly lit and burning incense flavoured the air. 

Sometime the next day, we were sitting at The Coffee Bean in complete silence, Karan flicking through his phone and I, reading. I could hear the table next to me speaking in Russian. I could only make out repeated usages of я знаю. I made a mental note to get back to revising my rusty Russian. In the book, Patti had lost her copy of Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I made another mental note, to buy a copy as soon as I landed home. 

On the flight back home, I had planned to read and bask in Patti’s essence but a sinus infection kept me inconvenienced throughout. The last 40 minutes of the flight turned into a painful experience. My body could not adjust to the pressure difference and my left facial nerve throbbed ceaselessly. I returned home feeling unwell.

Perhaps it would have made for a nicer ending had I finished the book en route. The wheels of the plane hit the tarmac as I flip the last page. A nice, timely quote to bookend the journey. I could have written it so. But it wasn’t to be. Not all vacations have to serve a purpose. Not all essays have to have a point. Sometimes, a verbatim retelling is all there is. 

Days after my return, after having recovered, I set out to finish M Train. Ensconced in the final pages was her dreamy declaration, “I’m going to remember everything and then I’m going to write it all down. An aria to a coat. A requiem for a cafe. That’s what I was thinking, in my dream, looking down at my hands.”

And this is what I have written down as well. An aria. A requiem. A dream.