"I swear to god sang can't talk about any topic other than being gay, chemistry, french, or prisons and depressing military/political history for more than 20 minutes"
— a friend of mine after I told her Тёмная ночь is my orgo study music and my favorite artist is edward hopper
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I can't remember when it started—probably when I was in 5th grade or younger—with my crumbled english, I stumbled upon national geographic shows like breakout, locked up abroad, air crash investigation, science for stupid, and discovery show like wicked tuna. I still remember some of the shows' episodes very vividly. for breakout, I watched 3 men's attempt to escape a prison in south africa. for locked up abroad, I watched an episode where a guy wrapped drugs (heroin or cocaine) into plastic wraps, ingested it, and shit it out once he got to the other side and sell it. another guy wrap it around his body, got through security (magically) but got caught in thailand as the officer was tapping him friendly on the back. these shows are wild, and that's probably why I remember them so well. I know what a black box was from watching air crash investigation, and the flight MH370's disappearance in 2014 only makes it more interesting. in one way or another, these shows seeded within me an innate curiosity towards paranormal events, things that people find off or event eerie.
that was the retrospective part that I just remembered. my obsession with prisons is more recent. 2024 summer was an unfortunate summer for me due to many family events. out of boredom, I explore french, chinese, and vietnamese buildings in my city, where I wrote a guide to sài gòn's districts, architecture, and cafés before flying back to the us. this is also when I dived into the crazy lore behind the city's past prisons. being able to see the city's censored history and getting a hands-on exploration was highly touching and thought-provoking for me.
so as I returned to college as a sophomore, most conversations about my summer revolves around... prisons. I didn't go to europe or travel beyond my grandparent's home. both my friends and professors told me to give philly's eastern state penitentiary a go, and I did, with my friend saniya. when we went back to vietnam over winter break, me, saniya, and molly visited hà nội, where we also visited hoả lò prison, where vietnamese political prisoners and later on, american POWs stayed. it's also known as hoả lò - hà nội hilton given how humane the american POWs were treated. winter break was also when I was outlining my blogs for the next months and year, and I came up with an idea to write a guide to prisons. I would have done this much earlier, around march, where I was supposedly going to san francisco for spring break. I decided that this guide would not be complete without the most notorious prison: alcatraz. however, I went to cancún in mexico instead, and it's only a few weeks ago that me and saniya went to alcatraz. and now, I'm writing up this blog to tell you.
I learned about the concept of liminality from hell week. we had a hell task where our hell parents used the word liminal to describe old library bathrooms. I first read it as minimal bathroom, but upon further rereading, I finally saw it as liminal. a quick surf through reddit's r/liminalspace got me fucking obsessed with liminal photography, to such a point that I write an essay for french class in sophomore fall semester on war photography and liminal photography, but I will probably save that topic for another blog. for now, I will roughly discuss the structure of this very long yet interesting blog.
first, I'll be going over prisons that I've visited in chronological order and geographical locations. so far, I've been to 5 prisons: 3 in vietnam (2 in sài gòn and 1 in hà nội) and 2 in the us (1 in the east coast and 1 in the west coast): khám lớn sài gòn, chí hoà prison center, hoả lò prison, eastern state penitentiary, and alcatraz federal penitentiary. with each prison, I'll explain its subtle architecture design and the evolutionary goal of a prison. we'll also be walking over basic concepts like the differences between a prison and a jail.
second, I'll be going over liminal spaces and what does it mean for a space to be liminal. featuring some photos I took here and there, with a big part being (drum rolls) graveyards. we'll be discussing whether cemeteries are liminal, as liminality doesn't simply mean just the lack of people. other spaces also feature bryn mawr's tunnels in old library (uh think of this as where racist people would store their slaves as they don't want to see them in broad daylight yet still want their house clean) and erdman (my sophomore dorm). also, as I'm making my way through wes anderson's filmography right now, I will be talking about the use of liminal space in anderson's movies as an ongoing concept throughout his filmography.
third, we'll be going over some extras like real and fictional prisons I'd like to visit in the future, the best prisons in the world, famous imprisoned figures/works written in prisons, and viral/hottest mugshots in history. so well, an nou ay ! (guadeloupean créole, which means allons-y !, or let's go in french).
1. a guide to prisons
i. khám lớn sài gòn and chí hoà prison center
this part was extracted from my blog on a guide to sài gòn's districts, architecture, and cafés. I added new edits in square brackets.
the most interesting places on my visit turns out to be prisons. I know this sounds weird but I find them very comforting somehow. in hà nội, hoả lò prison also built by the french is now a tourist site. for sài gòn, I feel like they have a difficult time accepting their past, so they often try to erase it or rewrite it in interesting ways. most prisons are also off limit so they give me the highest amount of adrenaline rush exploring them.
[during french colonization,] there are two big prisons built by the french government in sài gòn, khám chí hoà (chí hoà prison center) and khám lớn sài gòn (sài gòn great prison center). although khám chí hoà is finished by the french, it's actually started by the japanese [who were responsible for its architecture] to keep prisoners after rising up against the french, but they left vietnam after finishing the job, so the french government finished it off. khám chí hoà is located in a hidden road. its architecture is stunning: it looks like a giant octagon from above. there is no google maps photo for this place. the closest spot that I could use google maps street view was a field nearby. when I got there, it turned out to be a golf area. the guard looks hostile af but I pretended to be a visitor and he happily let me in to check out facilities. I took a few photos of the golf area to be normal, then I took the time to walk all the way back and got a grand photo of the prison from the outside. it was a very rewarding experience.
khám chí hoà was built after khám lớn sài gòn was closed off. the story about khám lớn sài gòn is even more interesting. it is now repurposed as the city's general science library, but it retains most of the omnious atmosphere. phanh was in there before, and she told me that it was really dark inside. it is located on 69 (lmao) lý tự trọng street (keep this dude in mind). opposite to it is the city's people's court. so, historically speaking, if you were convicted of a crime in the court, it takes you one cross the street to go from freedom to jail. due to the political scene at the time, lots of people that spent their time here were patriots and revolutionaries. lý tự trọng was one of them.
on 9th february 1931, at the first anniversary of the yên bái uprising in sài gòn, lý tự trọng shot le grand, a french spy, to protect phan bôi, who was giving a speech at the time. 9 months later, he was given the death sentence when he was only 17 years old. you can see his statue in the prison, which is now the general science library. the street was renamed to lý tự trọng, right where his life ended. lý tự trọng was heroized in the public conscious and in schools that I attended. I remember a song with a line "anh lý tự trọng yêu nước, vì lý tưởng cách mạng" (lý tự trọng the patriot, for the ideal of the revolution) but I can no longer find the song online.
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| khám chí hoà from afar exuding an omnious presence |
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| the city's people's court from across the street. it takes one cross the street to get from freedom |
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to jail. khám lớn sài gòn is now repurposed as the general science library.
as an chem major I think they are the same. |
ii. hoả lò prison
what makes this visit interesting is how we're in my home country, and I was with my two friends who were foreigners. saniya teared up during the visit, like she also did in the war remnants museum in sài gòn. in the end, she told me that the war remnants museum was the most interesting museums she'd ever been to, and I found that very flattering. as I went to museums across the world after visiting vietnamese museums, I know that we aren't the best when it comes to museums, but upon hearing that, I understood that mr bourke, my high school teacher, didn't lie when he said that the war remnants museum in our city is among the best out there. saniya mentioned how the vietnam war was largely ignored/narrated wrongly in kazakhstani world history books, and molly mentioned how american history textbooks overwrote the vietnam war as "we peacefully retreated" instead of "we fucking lost to vietnam."
on our third day in vietnam and second day in hà nội, we went to hoả lò prison then had lunch where obama and anthony bourdain dined when they visited vietnam in 2016. hoả lò's name means fire oven, with hoả = fire and lò = oven. tickets are pretty cheap (50k đồng max without audio tour, or $2.)
also with parts extracted from my guide to hà nội blog. new edits are in square brackets.
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| not the prison, just a building opposite to the hotel we were staying at. you can see the iron cages called chuồng cọp, or tiger cages, where people extend their window with iron bars to get more space in their cramped apartments. this is pretty popular in vietnam and south east asian countries, even hong kong. |
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I'm a sucker for prisons. I love prisons. they always tell you something about the censored part of history and truth about human nature. and people are respectful and mindful in these spaces, unlike other sites I've been to so far, where people are very egocentric. sites like prisons and historic relics teach you to humble yourself.
this is technically the fourth prison that I've been to, and the second prison that I've been to with saniya after our eastern state penitentiary trip. read my guide to sài gòn for more lore on this. |
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| similar to the one in sài gòn, this one is also opposite to the people's court |
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| what color is hà nội? yellow! all the french built buildings are yellow, and our ancient unesco sites, which you'll later see, are also yellow! this one gives me vibes of french high schools in my city. |
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| absolutely sick glowing absinthe tint |
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| tiles from marseille, the south of france. also where hồ chí minh was dropped off as he left vietnam when he left saigon port and worked as a kitchen boy on the amiral latouche tréville ship to france. he was 21. |
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| I'm sorry but these two statues give wyd? vibes |
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| the dungeon (ngục tối, cachot in french) is made to have liminal sunlight and with walls spread by tar. inmates are kept here for a few weeks before execution. they had to piss and shit at the same spot under very poor hygiene conditions. |
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| you're only getting this much light. erdman is similar in terms of the size and the concrete walls, but at least it has bigger windows. |
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| guess what these holes are for! they're for storing your excrements. |
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| famous people that stayed in the cachot: trường chinh (second general secretary of the communist party of vietnam, his name is now named after a road in hcmc that's infamous for crazy traffic jam during rush hours), nguyễn thị quang thái (this woman, wife of the renowned vietnamese general võ nguyên giáp). she's also the younger sister of nguyễn thị minh khai, who's lê hồng phong's wife (lê hồng phong is the second general secretary of indochina). |
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| death-sentence immates used to climb through these underground sewer to get out of the prisons. these were small, cramped, and filled with bugs, excrements, etc. 5 out of 16 of them succeeded and joined the political base. |
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| [this one is bigger than the last one, making it easier to climb through. inmates told stories about how as you kept climbing through, excretion materials and dead bugs kept falling off, but they kept going.] |
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| đồng song (n.) how ex-political-prisoner call his friends in prison, similar to đồng chí (comrade in english, literally means same will) |
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| the souvenir store slaps btw. very reasonably priced too. |
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the dragonflies from the craft village of thạch xá made from bamboo is a must-have souvenir! you can balance them on the tip of your finger by holding their mouth thanks to the magic of air flow and thermodynamics™
the yellow star balm is one of the sought after items for souvenirs for many tourists from (ex-)communist countries like russia and kazakhstan. like look at this ad, they're a sucker for this thing. you can get 3 to 5 of this for 1 dollar in vietnam. if you decide to get it online on amazon, it can cost up to 8 dollars for 3 of it in the us. saniya's mom really liked this but we didn't know she wanted that until the last few days of the whole trip. I love the nostalgia the advertisement evokes:
we all remember the pungent smell that emanated from the tin can. these memories take us back to our grandmother’s house, where whiskey was her cure-all: from headaches to runny noses to pneumonia.
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| [the women of hoả lò] |
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| [and the inhumane conditions that they lived through] |
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| looking at these photos, a thought occurred to me: there are things that these students shouldn't have to know |
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| saniya told me her eyes welled up touring this site. she finds it unfair that we treated the american prisoners so well compared to how we were treated under french colonization. I couldn't find the video that was shown in the prison. however, we treated them so well, that's why they called themselves the prisoners in pyjamas and the prison itself hoả lò hilton. I love seeing footage of american pows being slowly vietnamized: wearing cone hats, doing chores, tending trees, raising chickens, etc. |
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| christmas photos at prisons always struck me. it brings out the human part of everyone, and it makes even the worst prisoners deserving of forgiveness. |
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| if this is not a resort, I don't know what it is. maybe hoả lò was the original scandinavian prison all along. |
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[this is a man that I think about often, especially when I feel like giving up on french in college. it's a nice thing to know that somewhere in history, there was an american pilot learning french when he was jailed in hà nội.]
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| medals and certificates for revolutionists that was imprisoned in hoả lò |
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| their names were also carved onto these giant gold tablets. it seems like there were a lot of typos as I saw a lot of pieces of metals put on the tablets. |
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| kids taking a message from the bàng tree (banyan tree, tropical almond tree) |
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| mine was confidence |
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| both saniya and molly got resilience |
iii. eastern state penitentiary
opened in 1829 and closed in 1970, eastern state penitentiary is considered the first modern prison in the world. the dude that built this prison, john haviland, is also the same dude that built the franklin institute, philly history museum and walnut street theater. the idea of eastern state penitentiary spawned in benjamin franklin's living room. before eastern state penitentiary, prisons were simply a place to store and punish inmates before their execution days, and rehabilitation was not a goal. ever since its creation, it's been a role model for prisons around the world. according to business insider, these days, virtually all prisons followed either its model, aka the pennsylvania system, or new york state's auburn system.
prisons exist for 4 main reasons, and different prisons have different reasons as their main priorities. the main reasons why prisons exist are retribution (an eye for an eye), deterrence (set an example), incapacitation (confining dangerous people), and rehabilitation (breaking the cycle of crime.) prisons before eastern state penitentiary had the three other goals as their main priority, and benjamin franklin was the first one to revolutionize prisons by setting rehabilitation as the main priority.
there’s a difference between prisons and jails. jails are short-term (sentenced for a year or less), local facilities for holding individuals awaiting trial often for misdemeanors, while prisons are long-term (sentenced for more than a year), state or federal facilities for individuals convicted of felonies.
my first impression of eastern state penitentiary is the resemblance that it bears to a church. the punishment is not physical, but mental, as inmates are forced to spend the majority of their time in solitude for self-reflection.
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| eastern state penitentiary from above. it has an octagonal shape with 7 branches to maximize the distance of prisoners from each other. in the middle is the watch tower. this panopticon (observable from everywhere) design is also known as weaponized architecture |
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| if you have a chance, definitely go here for halloween, it's awesome! I found this photo on google maps |
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| the first prison that me and saniya visited together! |
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| apparently, I somehow magically missed al capone's cell in eastern state penitentiary. from researching, it turns out they moved furniture outside to examine the walls. I don't know if they will ever put them back in, but here's what it looks like from the prison's website. for a prison cell, I think it looks pretty decent. I'll keep that in mind for my next visit. |
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| this is a very nice cell. upon stepping into one, I discover the disturbing fact that it's roughly the same size as my dorm room in erdman, with the almost same lighting and square shape. from looking at the furniture, you can tell that the inmate is a real gent. the second bed is a modern reconstruction detail. he was by himself and didn't have a roommate. the reason behind this lavish decoration is preferential treatment in american prison system due to his notoriety and wealth. |
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| what really struck me about images like this is how it reminds you of a fundamental fact that prisoners are humans too. I felt this most strongly while seeing american POWs celebrate christmas in hoả lò prison. |
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| in his podcast songs of philadelphia, my french professor julien suaudeau once said: "the many buildings that stood there before them, and streets, of course, the ones that we walk today, but also the ones that are gone and the ones of tomorrow. just think about all the remembering and the forgetting that happen here everyday" when he talked about philadelphia. I think the same thing applies to prisons. as we entered the courtyard, we see the prison's ancient structures being plotted against the city's new landscape with skyscrapers and highrises. the prisons of today, the prisons of tomorrow. after the tour, we enter a part where we discuss the prisons of tomorrow. |
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| if you visit around october, it'll be pretty chilly. please do not underdress like I did. thank you saniya for sponsoring me with your sweater <3 |
iv. alcatraz island (alcatraz federal penitentiary)
al capone was first imprisoned around 1929 in eastern state penitentiary, where you already saw his fancy cell. he had periods in and out of prisons, but starting from may 1932, he was transported from one prison to another continuously until november 1939. he enjoyed 7-8 more years of freedom before dying in january 1947 in his mansion in florida. in total, al capone served his time in 5 prisons, with a total serving time of 7.5 years.
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| visuals created after me deepthroating chatgpt with prompts corrections |
al capone was first imprisoned in eastern state penitentiary in pennsylvania for 10 months, from 17 may 1929 to 17 march 1930. after 441 days break, he return to cook county jail in illinois for more than a month from june to july 1931. he took 291 more days off prisons, only to come back into it like a wrecking ball from may 1932 to november 1939 at three different prisons: us penitentiary atlanta in georgia for 2 years and 4 months from may 1932 to august 1934, alcatraz in california for 4 years 4 months from august 1934 to january 1939, and terminal island in california for 10 more months from jaunary to november 1939. that reads like an artist giving tours around the us for an extended amount of time. I want to rock hard to al capone in cell 181 of alcatraz island and party like it's 1939.
alcatraz was a maximum-security federal prison from 1934 to 1963. it is considered inescapable due to icy waters and strong currents... until 1962, when frank morris and the anglin brothers escaped from the prison. alcatraz is also famous for the native american occupation from 1969–1971, a major event in indigenous rights history. its legacy blends crime, punishment, protest, and American history.
the american indian occupation of alcatraz (1969–1971) was a pivotal protest by native activists who claimed the island under treaty of fort laramie, which allowed unused federal land to revert to native ownership. led by the group indians of all tribes, the occupation lasted 19 months and brought national attention to indigenous rights, broken treaties, and federal neglect. though eventually ended by federal authorities, it sparked widespread activism and policy changes, including the end of the us government's indian termination policy. today, it’s remembered as a powerful symbol of native resistance and self-determination. btw, this paragraph and the paragrap above is written by chatgpt, my co-author, as I can't bother to read the entire wikipedia article as you know what? I'm human too.
alcatraz was famous for being inescapable, and also for... its good food. this is quite unexpected as right now it really gets me wondering if that can outplay dining hall food.
after eastern state penitentiary in pennsylvania, hoả lò prison in hà nội, me and saniya visited alcatraz island one chilly day at the end of may, which marked our third prison together. as saniya had a day job and I'm gone by the weekend, we did the night tour on thursday. it was pricey ($60), but it was totally worth it. consider this your built-in ferry experience in san francisco too. depending on your speed, the tour could last around 3 hours. we came back earlier around 2 hours as we were tired. we didn't have time to check out the lighthouse, but you should have an in-depth tour if time allows. unlike what I thought, there isn't really any time limit, just go back on whatever ferry that you want.
the tour at night is cold, with strong winds on the ferry deck. however, if you go during the summer, it's absolutely glorious to watch the sunset over the golden gate bridge and admire the city's skyline at night. it was definitely worth it for me. saniya was not as impressed as she preferred eastern state penitentiary to alcatraz, and told me that alcatraz was only cool because of its location, and that the audio tour for alcatraz was so slow that it put her to sleep.
the road to the prison on alcatraz island was absolutely glorious. it felt more like a honeymoon spot more than a prison, and I'm not kidding. you don't know it's a prison until you walk up there. great biodiversity and lots of seagull friends around. after this trip, I came back and changed my profile pic to monsieur mouette, or mr seagull. I also agree that the architecture was less impressive than eastern state penitentiary, but I also see that it's on an island and you can't ask for too much.
I took too many photos of seagulls than the prison itself. but you know what, that's okay.
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| oh seagulls, the natural wardens of the alcatraz island |
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| a distant dream of san francisco through the prison's blurry and scratched windows. the same resolution that you'd get from sitting on an airplane. something barely within view, but entirely out of reach. what are we searching for? an airplane just passing over freedom, never landing. |
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now we're getting to 35mm film level deep of nostalgia, if you can ignore the scribbles that freaks left on the glass. the frosted glass, the faint sunset's afterglow, the soft silhouettes of land and water, and the etched noise of one's utmost boredom or despair — it’s all there. [but maybe don’t ignore them. maybe those scratchings are the last way anyone knew they were here. their version of a signature, a scream, or a shrug.] square brackets = chatgpt's recommendations
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inmates were even offered university courses like animal husbandry via correspondence. suddenly, taking an exam in your cell hits kinda hard
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| this is my favorite photo from the whole trip (besides the bunch of seagull photos and our selfies), I liked it so much I made this into the blog thumbnail. the man stepped into the silhouette just at the right time, with the haunting yellow of the golden hour glazed onto the walls, in contrast to the cold fluorescent shades of the ceiling, felt like a haunting memory of alcatraz inmates. the vanishing point? where limits, infinity and eternity met. where a moment lasts forever, and forever lasted only for a moment. I will meet you at the crossroads of time. |
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| the sunset is beautiful, but also heartbreaking, if you think about how little freedom these people had, and how a cement courtyard was considered a luxury and the most pleasant place to be in their time. |
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| I promised that we'll discuss more about weapons when we get to the kitchen. see the knife rack? each knife has a silhouette, that way the wardens can tell immediately if any of them is missing, making stealing knives impossible for inmates. that's why they have to be more creative with tools like spoons and turning them into makeshift digging tools. it's the same lore how the prisoners from the natgeo's breakout south africa episode used tools they had from the woodcutting craft to make master keys, alcatraz prisoners used papier-mâché dummy heads with real hair (from the prison barber shop) to fool the guards during head count. |
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| my alcatraz fit: a poncho I got near the ferry building for $50. I would've died without this shit as it's cold. I underestimated how much it would blow as wind hit on the ferry's deck. |
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| besides the institutions rules and regulations handbook, they even sell an alcatraz cookbook for the same price (not this one lol). |
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| I would've gotten a shot glass too if they had one |
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| heraclitus: no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man. that might not even literally be the same seagull. and maybe the wonderment of whether that's the same seagull or not, that vague line of possibility, is what renders life beautiful and makes it worth living. |
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| there are so many of them |
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| we didn't have time to check out the lighthouse </3 this is the watchtower btw, not the lighthouse |
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| the stuff higher up there, IS the lighthouse |
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| probably my second favorite photo from the trip |
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| the city's skyline as viewed from the ferry's deck |
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| dress warm! don't freeze to death like me and saniya did lol |
2. liminal spaces. are graveyards/cemeteries liminal spaces?
i. liminal spaces
when I think of liminal spaces, images that immediately spawn to my minds are empty malls, hotels, and recreation centers. things that are solely created to serve and fulfill the need of human's pleasure. hollow buildings without any historical values but are purely commercial, these places would haunt the most. or more natural ones, like beaches at night, especially a touristic ones. or the path that's less travelled by during snowfall. empty phone booths. yada yada yada. schools, hospitals, and cemeteries/graveyards are trickier places, as whether they feel liminal or not varies greatly. for cemeteries, the lack of people doesn't make it empty but further enhances a sense of being and presence, so it's tricky. but before we dive into that, let me show you one of my proudest photos that I've taken that falls under the liminal photography category/umbrella. I'll save the second part (2ii) exclusively for graveyards.
honorable mention: erdman, my dorm in sophomore year.
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| this is in a car park of a mall that my family goes to all the time for me to take english lessons and for my mom to do groceries. I've often dreamed about climbing that ladder to watch sunsets with loved ones. |
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| on clear days, you can see landmark 81 (far right) from afar. in real life, they're 16km away, and it being visible in hcmc's air quality is impressive. |
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| taken inside the classroom where I had english lessons at ILA |
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| an abandoned air france that's now nameless on google maps. I locate it by locating côn sơn restaurant on google maps. it lies at the interesection of đoàn công bửu and lý chính thắng road. a forgotten colonial dream. scars of colonialism that won't heal. |
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| from my trip to the midwest with molly and emma. this photo was taken on manistee beach in michigan. |
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| a modern reconstruction of bryn mawr's old library tunnels. to know what the tunnels system is, read on. |
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bryn mawr tunnels, or the plantations/prisons of the past. back in the days, white people were allowed to have slaves, including the president herself. m carey thomas was an intelligent and well-educated woman, yet also an excruciatingly racist one. she designed this library for herself, and her dream was for her ashes to be burried at its heart, or the cloisters. the tunnels were designed so that black people can withdraw into them after they're done with all the hard work of cleaning and maintenance, as she... simply didn't want to see them. she hated black students so much that she rejected all of them whenever possible (when she was still president) and for jessie redmon fauset, she even funded her transfer to cornell with her own money. despite her efforts, enid cook was the first black student to graduate from bryn mawr in 1931. yet only 15 years after her graduation, or 1946, were black students allowed to live on-campus. during her time at bryn mawr, enid cook had to live off-campus at a professor's house instead.
today, thomas library is renamed to old library, and enid cook has a dorm building named after herself to support our black students. old library is a controversial building due to history, but continuous efforts have been made to narrate its story truthfully. from carpenter library that was built utilizing a section of the tunnels as a unique entrance to the new project called don't forget to remember (me) and the renaming of the library has been helping us change the course of history. however, some parts of the building remain off-limit, like the tunnels. photos I took here were not legal, but I think it's important to show you what I saw and what these people lived through.
this place gives me strong déjà vus from eastern state penitentiary. |
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| I think parts of the tunnels were still in use until 2004 |
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it's always the oppressed that had to live with their face to the ground and literally underground. this reminds me of the củ chi tunnels that we had a chance to visit in vietnam. for our footage of củ chi tunnels, read day 6 of this blog.
I remember one night getting out of old library past midnight during finals' week, as it closes much later than most libraries, and my nose was bombarded with petrichor as it rained. it smelled damp and it reminds me of that suffocating feeling that I had in the củ chi tunnels. I still find it crazy how the littlest smells, hints, and scents can hit the closest to home of our relevant memories. like that smell of the burning incense that my aikido teacher used, or a very specific detergent that my kindergarten used but my family didn't, etc. little things like that. |
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| I wonder what those cages were for. do I wanna know? |
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| these septa stairs look extra liminal when you're getting back to school after a night out for french class's film screening. they look evil when you're 0.00001s close to missing the septa train. |
ii. cemeteries/graveyards
in total, I've been to at least 4 cemeteries in my life. I'm sure there are more than that, if we count the ones I went to as a kid and only had very vague recollections of. as of right now, 3 of them are in bryn mawr and philly, and the remaining one is my grandpa's resting place 2 hours drive away my home in vietnam.
I went to the first two cemeteries with pascale, my hell father. we are fond cemetery goers. the first one was right next to park science center building, or the graveyard of lower merion baptist church. the second one, also pascale's favorite, is the graveyard of church of the redeemer. it has a very cool opening that looks like a time travel portal. once you enter, time stops. pascale joked about how they'd love to move here so that they would never have to worry about deadlines anymore. the third one was palmer cemetery in fishtown, which was close to my friend lily's house. we visited it as lily knew I was a cemetery enthusiast when I visited lily over spring break during sophomore year of college.
when I'm with pascale in a cemetery, we talk about many things. like how adolf hitler could be an artist in another universe. and how hitler himself laid on cemetery walls at night and gazed at the stars, grieving for the death of his little brother. how much time has passed? I don't know. hours, probably, but we just went on wandering and talking about many different topics. because they really love lord of the rings, whenever I go anywhere with pascale, I get that feeling that I'm in lord of the rings. in an overstimulated world of college and adulting responsibilities, sometimes a chill walk in the woods is all I ever needed.
so what I experienced, is it a liminal feeling? no. it's a simple, yet complex, feeling. both me and pascale agreed that graveyards and cemeteries are not liminal spaces, as the lack of people doesn't signify absence, but further amplifies presence. liminal is the lack of meaning, the transitional state, while simplicity is demolishing things so that meaning can be ever present in everything we do in life.
the last cemetery that I'm gonna mention is where my grandpa now rests. it's a 2-hour drive from the city. I think this was the only instance where I visited cemeteries and graveyards to see someone. the other times, I just wandered off, as the people lying in the three graveyards above, they are strangers to me. there's a ritual in vietnamese culture, where you'd clean the grave of a loved one every beginning of april. in the process of cleaning up, you also get your soul cleansed that way. when I see him, I give him life updates. I thank him for blessing me on my journey. I came out to him (that didn't go very well,) but i think he was just trying to protect me by not giving me a girlfriend just then before I can tell green flags away from red flags. I speak to him in vietnamese, english, sometimes french or a mix of both or all of them. I hope he'd understand.
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| cross the street from park in bryn mawr and you'll be at lower merion baptist church. we first went to this place in the spring last year. |
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| the entrance to the church of the redeemer, we first went here in the fall |
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where the priests of the church are burried
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| we went the second time in early spring with our second generation of hell family, or my new hell sisters |
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| "sunshine almost always makes me cry" |
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| the chinese character 愛 means love |
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on our way back to erdman after the cemetery trip
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| palmer cemetery visit with lily |
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| I will die for my country philadelphia taken to the next level |
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| his altar (to the left) next to his dad (my great grandfather, to the right) back at home |
3. further exploration
as promised, we'll be going over extra content like real and fictional prisons I'd love to visit in the future, the best prisons in the world, famous imprisoned figures/works written in prisons, and viral/hottest mugshots in history.
i. real/fictional prisons I'd love to visit in the future
so far, I've visited the most influential and tourist-attraction kind of prisons. however, I'd still love to visit a couple more, namely west virginia penitentiary to learn more about the misunderstanding in mental health treatment in the past, yuma territorial prison as it has a desert setting and very spacious cells, and ohio state reformatory as its exterior looks more like a hotel or castle than a prison itself, you don't know that it's a prison until you step in it. other than that, most prisons look the same as our blueprints like alcatraz and eastern state penitentiary. I'd also love to visit ADX florence to see how brutal it is, the current most notorious one in the us, but they don't admit tourist and it's still in operation, so it'd be actually creepy, and actually disrespectful to look at people in there.
I also want to visit vietnamese prisons like côn đảo prison (famous inmates like võ thị sáu, tôn đức thắng, nguyễn an ninh, lê hồng phong), sơn la prison, phú quốc prison, etc. to learn more about political figures in my country's history.
in the fictional world, I'd love to visit azkaban, whose name is inspired by alcatraz and is a wordplay on the word abandon.
ii. best prisons in the world
the list of best prisons in the world can be found here. they're generally known for humane conditions in which inmates are treat and a strong emphasis on rehabilitation. in this list, the top 2 are bastøy and halden prisons in norway. when it comes to prison and education, scandinavian countries peak the list. however, these prisons are not open to casual visits, only professional ones. an interesting case is cebu prison, which has interesting dance programs for inmates. aranjuez prison is known for its top-tier program that allows an imprisoned parent to still take care of their kids.
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| bjorn, sentenced to five-and-a-half years for attempted murder, watches television in the living room of the wooden cottage where he lives (bastøy prison) |
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| an inmate who only provided the fake name of Niels, sentenced to 16.5 years for murder and narcotics-related crime, sunbathes in front of the wooden cottage where he lives (bastøy prison) |
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| this church serves as both a school and a place of worship for the inmates of bastøy prison |
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| not halden prison cell looking better than my college dorm that costs 20k a year |
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| halden prison facilities |
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| cebu's dancing inmates in the philippines |
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| aranjuez prison in spain |
iii. famous imprisoned figures/works written in prisons
if you're political figure back in the day, chances are, you'd spend parts of your life in prison because of your revolutionary thoughts. like mandela (27 years!), aung san suu kyi, gandhi, martin luther king jr, che guevara, fidel castro, malcolm x, and ho chi minh themselves did. if you're a writer, chances are, you did too. like socrates, oscar wilde, fyodor dostoevsky, jean genet, and antonio gramsci did. add exile and you have james joyce, alexander solzhenitsyn, victor hugo, ovid, trotsky, dostoevsky, voltaire, bonaparte, etc. being imprisoned is a pretty fundamental human experience.
in prisons, martin luther king jr wrote letter from birmingham jail, mandela wrote parts of long walk to freedom, and primo levi (holocaust survivor, chemist, partisan) wrote if this is a man. austin kleon once said that he found alcatraz very ideal for a writer as it has a scheudle. confinement sometimes can lead to artistic liberty. ho chi minh also wrote a ton of sino-vietnamese poems in prison diary when he served his time in china and hong kong. even cervantes's don quixote was written in his prison days.
iv. viral/hottest mugshots in history (in my opinion)
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| david bowie, of course. he was arrested for marijuana possession together with iggy pop. he was in his thin white duke era, where he survived on just red peppers and milk. and drugs, of course. I first knew about this painting as my french prof julien has a mega big poster of this in his office. |
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| al capone smiling in his alcatraz mugshot |
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| jeremy meeks was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm. ever since his mugshot, he was often referred to as the "hot felon." his mugshot became so successful that he would land a career in modeling. |
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| to this date, trump is the only us president who had ever taken a mugshot. he was arrested in 2020 for truying to overturn the 2020 election in georgia through racketeering and related offenses. it's now gold framed in the oval office. |
epilogue
and that's it! thank you for embarking on this journey with me! hope you've learned something interesting along the way. I would've also included war photography but that may be pushing the scope too far beyond what I want for it to be meaning ful. I will hopefully do a blog about that at some point, but for the time being, you can also visit this link to read my essay last semester. click here for the photos.
so long, and thanks for all the fish.
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