There’s a paper prescription at my bedside. It doesn’t need to be brought to a pharmacy. The medications can be made out of thin air. It’s a magical Rx.
Rx comes from the Latin word “recipe” which means to take. I take them in desperation and quite often.
It is a written list prescribed by Kari, who not only is a psychologist in Norway but is my internet bestie I mentioned a few times here.
I had not yet grasp the physicality of the word “foundations” until 2012, when I sat beside my father at our kitchen bar table. Our finished rice bowls with a few grains were abandoned off to the side, left to dry and stubbornly stick to the bowls. What a fine thought it was, to still have leftovers with a satisfied belly. In other words, we were rich and had more than we needed.
“Here,” he sketches out on a blank piece of paper I retrieved from the printer. He began to draw a simple sketch of man with outstretched arms.
My dad had started losing his vision due to diabetes. And despite his vision loss, his spatial awareness was superior. It was as if he didn’t lose his vision at all.
“Này la Tuong Chua Kito Vua giong trong Vung Tau, hoi sua bo o,” he whimsically lifts up his pen.
He had an art for sketching, so his arms were always loose. Hands soft, yet forearm strong, smooth, and bulged with a muscle from sewing nets and maneuvering heavy things throughout his life. He wrote mostly in all-caps, calligraphy style. He had an artist’s touch. We used to design the identification numbers and boat names on orange buoys for other shrimpers at the Shop. It would be drawn in 3d, two-toned, the alternate color being the shadows of the letters for better visibility and style.
He said, “This is Christ the Reedeemer, just like the one in the town of Vung Tau where I once lived.”
Underneath the little big man with outstretched arms, he added a long, upright rectangular base.
“This is the base,” he adds in another small sandwiched rectangle below.
“A base,” he adds in another one large on the bottom of that, working down to make stairs.
“And another base,” the pencil scritches the table,
“And then,” the artist lifts up his pen with excitement in his eyes.
“Below, long rods,” he whispers, “hurricane-proof. Cylinders, you see?”
“Uh huh,” I followed along, poking my nose down at the paper.
“Yes, and look, guess how it is hurricane proof?”
“Hmm,” I remembered about an article in ScienceDaily recently how bridges and skyscrapers were built, the kind of things I’d share with my dad as I plucked out his beard every other night. “Well, it has to be long enough, those rods. And it must have room to shake, so it won’t crack from the tension.”
“That’s right. So..” he flutes out the cylinder rods at the bottom of which is hidden in the ground far beneath. This base of the base of the base, this trumpet-opening shape will help it stay stable if anything happens.”
“Oh and a few more things to strengthen it — a bar in between the two rods and we’ll use black and yellow epoxy to glue the stones together on top.”
I beamed at my father in that moment because of his ingenuity, his past life as an engineer. It was evident where he got the shapes and ideas from - the trumpet-like shape came from exhaust pipes of marine vessels, reinforced by bolts around its circumference.
//
Hurricane-proof. Foundations. How do we build them? Also how do we maintain them? Allowing us room so we won’t break from the tensions. These are the questions I am asking myself now as I look up to this prescription.
The article with my dad’s commissioned statue can be found here.