Nan In Heaven Quotes

In Heaven you forget everything. In Hell they make you remember.

One pound fifty pence for mushy peas. Our shopping done, we climb a flight of stairs to the fish market, then the stall that smells of vinegar. Two orders of mushy peas slathered in tangy mint sauce, bright green heaven in Styrofoam cups. We walk through the old market square, Nan and me window shopping. We eat, never thinking this is the last time.

On his coronation in 1802, Gia-long wished to call his realm ‘Nam Viêt’ and sent envoys to gain Peking’s assent. The Manchu Son of Heaven, however, insisted that it be ‘Viêt Nam.’ The reason for this inversion is as follows: ‘Viêt Nam’ (or in Chinese Yüeh-nan) means, roughly, ‘to the south of Viêt (Yüeh),’ a realm conquered by the Han seventeen centuries earlier and reputed to cover today’s Chinese provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, as well as the Red River valley. Gia-long’s ‘Nam Viêt,’ however, meant ‘Southern Viêt/Yüeh,’ in effect a claim to the old realm. In the words of Alexander Woodside, ‘the name “Vietnam” as a whole was hardly so well esteemed by Vietnamese rulers a century ago, emanating as it had from Peking, as it is in this century. An artificial appellation then, it was used extensively neither by the Chinese nor by the Vietnamese. The Chinese clung to the offensive T’ang word “Annam” . . . The Vietnamese court, on the other hand, privately invented another name for its kingdom in 1838–39 and did not bother to inform the Chinese. Its new name, Dai Nam, the “Great South” or “Imperial South,” appeared with regularity on court documents and official historical compilations. But it has not survived to the present.’3 This new name is interesting in two respects. First, it contains no ‘Viet’-namese element. Second, its territorial reference seems purely relational – ‘south’ (of the Middle Kingdom).4 That today’s Vietnamese proudly defend a Viêet Nam scornfully invented by a nineteenth-century Manchu dynast reminds us of Renan’s dictum that nations must have ‘oublié bien des choses,’ but also, paradoxically, of the imaginative power of nationalism. If

Heaven is clear and calm; earth is stable and tranquil. Humans who reject these virtues perish, while those who adopt them thrive.

Not as sure as you are. But it’s okay. Either way it’s okay. I like the world with all its faults. It was an honor to have a place in it. But going where Nan went is an appealing option, too. Whatever

Even if your heart is loftier than Heaven, you are but a caged bird at present.

people think their problems aren’t important enough. I mean God already has a lot on his plate, right? World hunger, war, getting the Red Sox into the World Series . . .” He grinned. “I’m just kidding on that last one. But folks think that just because we humans can only handle one or two crises at a time, that’s how God works too; but it’s not. He can handle all problems—no matter how big or small—and he can handle them all at once. I’m sure you’ve heard the verse: ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.