The Faux Pas Press #8: Vietnamese Vegan Lady

THE FAUX PAS PRESS #8

A Weekly Thought

By JASON SCOTT CHAMBERS

20 SEPTEMBER 2009

Vietnamese Vegan Lady

Sometimes, when I’m alone so no one can tell I’m crazy, I consider all that I am. I consider that, perhaps, I knew or was someone important in a previous life. Maybe, I knew Moses or that guy who played Captain Nemo in the first 20,000 Leagues under the Sea movie. Is it possible that I sowed bountiful seeds that have paid sonic dividends, planting and harvesting the soil of this Earth? Did I make miracles with my own Grandfather Chambers on the Pacific Ocean during World War II? Was I someone important? Maybe, I was worthy of all the intensity of this Universe like my Great-Grandfather Christiansen. He worked diligently on a plot of land in Southwestern Minnesota all the days of his life before he was buried in the soil he’d known so well. Or, what if I only had the use of one eye like my Grandfather Carroll? The swelling question in my heart, even as I write this, is what I have done? All of my weak attempts at immortality will, at some distant point at least, come to not. Also, why do I deserve the intense goodness of this Universe? And what makes my life worth a damn? The questions consumed me this week.

So, I ran into this messenger, a Vietnamese Vegan Lady. This was a visit to a local whole foods store called Down to Earth. (Didn’t you know? I’m totally Vegan now. I know. It’s crazy. Maybe I’ll decide to be Vietnamese next. I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how the vegetable binge works out first. We’ll try a new nationality after a few weeks of the new diet – not too many changes at once.) Actually, I just really enjoy eating good, clean whole food in between a regular diet of carbs and fast food. So, I’m wandering around the amazing store looking for eats, but what I’m really looking for is a kindred spirit to teach me something. I’d like a visitation from the resurrected version of Michael Jackson but a friendly messenger will do. The questions of my own existence are ever-present, and I am thinking. I look at a salad bar filled with pleasant things. I think some more, and then, it happens. I’m taken into what my people call a vision, and not to some far, surreal time and place like when I get steamed on Diet Pepsi and do a ton of sit-ups. No, not like a drunken voyage with Bob Rose where I wake up on someone’s kitchen floor wearing nothing but a toga.

The year is 1992, and I’m 12 years old. The Chambers Family lives together in North Dallas suburb of Richardson. I have a 14 year-old brother, a 4 year-old sister, and a reputation to uphold, that of being young, athletic, and annoying. I’ve got a cast of friends whose reputations require effort and hopeless desires for importance. I see a hard-working father who is often away. I see a mother who seems stressed and annoyed for no reason. I see them apart more than together. I see the aforementioned cast, a popular kid named Stephen and his sidekick Shake. They’re both in our family’s living room both enjoying the benefits of snacks from a loaded pantry (a common staple for any Mormon family preparing for the end.) My father comes home on this day from his first job and is preparing to go to a second one, a job as a security guard shift worker. I’m embarrassed. In the mold of North Dallas expectations, income levels equating a person’s importance, I’m embarrassed in this moment. My own father is a security guard, and wouldn’t you know it, Stephen’s dad owns a paper company, and damn it, that is really important.

What is the problem? What is it within the heart of society that mocks another’s valiant efforts? And why do we strive for importance at another’s expense? In this vision, I see clearly. I know that I am not the roles I play and that no one owes me a damn thing. My father is not a title, he is not a security guard, he is not a computer programmer, he is not the president of a paper company, and shit, he really is not even my father. Nope. He just IS – just like the red onions I had been staring at during my visitation to 1992.

Vietnamese Vegan Lady is smiling at me, holding out a sample of raspberry sesame tofu salad dressing for me to try. She is not a grocery worker. She just IS. She wants to know why I’m crying, but I just take the salad dressing and smile back. She assumes the worst about me – probably on drugs.

Have you ever seen the Presence, an angelic messenger? (Does it make you uncomfortable that I speak of angels? Not a problem I’m too concerned with.) I have. And she wasn’t important to speak of, she wasn’t a manager; she was stillness. She was not Vietnamese, she was not a Vegan. She was Aphrodite, a goddess in human form. She was not her job, not a grocery worker, not her products; she was a smile that, for a moment, showed me how small I am, and I am grateful.

This week’s thought comes with an ugly assertion. Listen. She says, “There is no need to explain yourself to anyone – what kind of job you do, why you do it, or why you matter, no need to feel ashamed for working at Taco Bell or that you clean up shit for a living, no need to feel great that you speak 12 languages or that you wrote a book.”

So, remember this thought the next time you consider listing failures, the next time your embarrassed by someone’s integral efforts or feel great about your accomplishments, the next you feel like explaining your failures away. Remember. You are not your job, you are not your rank, or your income tax bracket. You just ARE and that is enough.