(Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, December 30, 2023)
1
It is five days after Christmas and two days before the New Year. I am sitting
on the porch of a tea shop located along the deserted promenade of Ha Long Bay, as contemplative jazz flows through the speakers of my phone.
2
Contemplative jazz reveals the intricacies of human hearts without being overly dramatic, or sappy. It renders a vast array of complex emotions but doesn’t get stuck in any one nostalgic feeling. Scenes from our lives drift through the black and white keys of the piano and the lengthy strings of the upright bass, creating a rhythmic field for our memoirs to stroll in.
3
My childhood memory recalls viewing a vintage slideshow about my father’s time serving aboard the U.S.S. Caliente in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Our friends and family gathered that day in the basement of our home in North Jersey to watch a cylindrical metal reel unravel an exploratory overseas chapter of my father’s now completed book of life.
4
Those still photos of my dad sporting a clean-shaven face and slender military build dressed in a white and blue sailor’s uniform with shiny black deck shoes and his famed green eagle tattoo freshly minted on his right forearm standing arm-and-arm with his shipmates on the polished decks of what seemed to my fledgling mind like a massive floating steel island
set down within an endless watery horizon, will always travel with me.
5
During his sentimental narration that day, I remember my father talking about being in the Straits of Malacca (and I have peered out at that steamy maritime body more than once), but did he ever say the words “Ha Long Bay”?
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Being here now, I sense that he did.
7
The mood of Ha Long Bay in winter is poignant and soothing. Wide café-lined avenues and slender palm-fringed beaches lay bare of autos and people. Glistening marine channels course in between thousands of islands and through ancient sea caves passing into serene jade lagoons sheltered by sheer limestone cliffs. The cool spaciousness allows the mind to empty and drift. It’s like an undulating landscape portrait of the mood of contemplative jazz.
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And this is the gift that Ha Long Bay and contemplative jazz have given me this first holiday season since my dad passed away. A sacred combination of music and place that has allowed a son to recollect and reflect upon his father’s life, and the many distant ports of call that we visited separately, and from time to time together.
9
Our deepest meditations arise in between the low and high tides of our delicate human lives. Within these stirring fluctuations, we can learn how to tread water, swim, and ultimately to glide upon contemplative currents of remembrance.
Photo by Антон Дмитриев on Unsplash
