There's a certain visceral intensity to the images that I take away from Vietnam. Often I'll catch a glimpse of something from my motorbike that leaves a deep impression on me. I don't usually carry a camera or when I do I tend to avoid taking pictures, so most of the clearest images that I take away, I take away as memories.

I was on the back of a motorbike in Ho Chi Minh City a few weeks ago. . .going to visit my friend in a part of the city known as little Hong Kong (part of the massive Chinatown district). We were cutting through narrow sidestreets and I catch a glimpse of this man squatting on his haunches on the sidewalk and shaping some piece of metal. He had a hammer in one hand and a glowing red hot shank of iron in the other. He was wearing an apron and over his face was a demonic, chinese-style silver mask. The mask was made of some varnished, silvery looking metal, with horns and the face of a ferocious looking scowling beast. As I looked down the alley and saw him he looked back at me our eyes met. . .or rather, my eyes met the holes in the mask through which his eyes were, supposedly, looking. The mask was terrifying, but perhaps the most unsettling part of this encounter was the apparently no one else noticed this beast man working metal on the sidewalk. Other than this bizarre mask, there was nothing unusual about the scene. I felt as though I was the only one on the street who noticed.

Yesterday I caught a glimpse of a begger on the street. He was nothing but a skeleton with filthy matted hair and was wearing only a dirty old pair of shorts. He was in front of the market. Evidently he couldn't walk because he was working his way down the side of the street on his back, moving like a worm throughout the crowd of people and motorbikes above and around him. That this man was alive is amazing in itself. That he was on the street trying to make some money to support whatever sort of life he may have is nothing short of a miracle. This haunting image, for me, is the definition of true poverty. It is something we do not have in the United States.

Just this morning as I was heading down a street named after the military genius, Ly To Trong of the 11th century, I looked to the side and between half opened gate of a rusty, tin-walled house, I saw an old, old man who was peaking outside, wearing a pair of shorts and an enormous smile. He was vigorously rubbing, perhaps scrubbing his back with what looked like a rag--half the size of a t-shirt. On either side of this house were new, modern buildings, with this old man standing firm, feet--shoulder length apart, peaking out through the crack in the old door of the middle house, standing guard as if he were an extremely good natured sentinel.