| FROM LADY GAGA TO SAIGON AND BACK AGAIN by Bradley Smith for YouTube These are the notes for my YouTube video uploaded onto the Internet on 08 February. Today I'm reminded of a Jackie Gleason sketch I saw only last night on the television from 1957. And I know-glamour photos are not usually associated with serious revisionist work. However. . . . Last night on the television I came across a clip of Lady Gaga doing something on a stage in a costume where she was pretty much naked. I've noted once before that I used to think Lady Gaga was a transvestite, it was all the odd stories about her, but that I had found I was mistaken. Last night I was particularly struck by the quality of her thighs. Beautiful. Anyhow, she had stopped her performance now and was telling her audience to reach for the stars, that only a few years ago she was sitting in audiences like the present one watching the star perform on stage. Now, she meant to say, look where she is. My brain, being the way it is, thought about "fragments." What was that? I recalled that I had recently used the expression "fragments" to refer to the gas chamber story being a fragment of WWII history. Now I saw that each person watching Lady Gaga was one fragment of her audience. In that moment I was one of those fragments. Then the brain left the bed room here and I saw myself in the cafeteria at the VA Hospital in La Jolla, north of San Diego, where I was this past Monday. I was sitting alone at a table with a coffee and a little yogurt. The room was filled with dozens of old, sick, half-sick guys eating breakfast. We were living out our normal, fragmented lives. I thought about how my own fragmented life is focused on work, on money, on health. One day one fragment dominates the life, the next a different one. That morning it was all money. I was worried about the money. Again. Very worried. That morning I would do some blood work, keep an appointment with my oncologist who is tracking the cancer, and after that there was the surgeon who would cut the port out of my chest. It would have been normal for the brain to be focused on the health fragment of the life, but no, it was focused on the money. The anxiety about the money. I didn't have enough to do the work right. To take care of the family, the grandkids. The money fragment of my life had cancelled out the fragments of work and health. I'm not good with the money. I'm not careless with it. I'm very careful about how I budget contributions. But every few months, every few weeks, I am suddenly without any. And then there's the anxiety. The problem is that in some very deep way I am just not interested in the money. There's something missing in me. I don't know what it is or how to fix it. It can be very dangerous when you're not interested in money the way I am not interested in it. There are a number of stories I could tell you to illustrate this. I will tell you the briefest outline of one story that illustrates what I'm talking about. I can't tell the complete story here. Only a few highlights to make my curious point. Okay. In 1968 I shipped out from Wilmington, California, on a tramp steamer headed for Vietnam. The idea was to jump ship in Vung-Tau at the mouth of the Saigon River, make my way to Saigon, get press credentials, and write a book about how it was to be there from my particular point of view, after which I would become rich and famous. After some 20 days on the water we were in the South China Sea when the North Vietnamese launched its Tet offensive. Our ship was rerouted to Satta Heep in Thailand. This complicated my plan. Nevertheless, with a couple hundred dollar advance I jumped ship in Satta Heep and made my way to Bangkok intending to fly to Saigon. The Thais would not allow me to fly out of Thailand because without a visa I was not in Thailand. It was suggested I go to the police station downtown and see what could be done. READ MORE
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