Still in awe of how improved My An Beach is compared with 2019. Back then, we alternated between two, maybe three different restaurants with decent food. Today, there are at least a dozen places. One of the best so far is Patakka, a beautifully decorated Indian restaurant a few doors down from our hotel. The owners, a sweet Indian couple from the UK, guided us through their menu’s various options, and, then while we waited for our delicious meal to arrive, they shared their inspiring story about how they ended up in Da Nang which you can read about by visiting their website here.

Photo: Matts René.

Sunday. Evening. Da Nang. Drizzle.

On June 6, 1942, barely half a year after the Japanese Air Force left Pearl Harbor in a hellish inferno, my father was drafted into the U.S. Army with serial number 13073307 stamped on his shiny Dog Tag.

After a few months of boot camp in Baltimore, Maryland, the 21-year-old Private Ernest Raboff was shipped to Europe. For the rest of World War II, my father was a war reporter for “Stars and Stripes,” the U.S. Armed Forces’ daily newspaper.

On August 24, several weeks after D-Day, Paris was liberated from the German occupation. Among the 800,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers, not to forget the French resistance “Free French 2nd Armored Division,” was also a skinny journalist from Philadelphia, Private Ernest Raboff.

My father stayed in Europe after the end of the war, and in the spring of 1946, he sat with some friends in the bar at Café de Flore in Paris. On a barstool a little further away sat a couple of young Swedish women who had recently arrived in town.

Just like many other Swedes after the war, the girls had traveled from Sweden to Paris to be inspired by the various creative expressions of French culture. Perhaps they were also looking to meet a handsome partner in uniform.

Before the evening was over at Café de Flore, one of the girls and my father had taken a liking to each other, and eventually, they became a couple.

After some time in Paris, the newly engaged traveled to the Swedish capital and lived there for a few years. In Stockholm, my father wrote a lot of poetry, perhaps to process all that he had seen and experienced during the war. In 1950, N.O. Mauritzons published his poetry collection, “The Bridge Across Turbulent Times.”

A few days ago, I received an unusual email from an American woman. In the email, I learned that she was in the process of going through her deceased brother’s estate in the house where he had lived in New Hampshire.

Among her brother’s belongings was a collection of books from the time when their mother, Countess Nahida de Comminges (1864-1960), had lived in an apartment just a few blocks from Café de Flore in Paris.

Among all the books was the poetry collection, “The Bridge Across Turbulent Times.” The book was dedicated to the Countess and signed by my father.

The Countess’s granddaughter, the woman who contacted me the other day, and who is also named Nahida, wondered if I wanted her to send my father’s book to me.

Why am I mentioning all this?

Well, because this story nicely highlights why I am so obsessed with making books. A book is a bit like a message in a bottle. Suddenly, it appears on some unknown beach, discovered by some unknown person.

Right now, I am working on a book about what it’s like to turn 60. Yes, about everything that entails both emotionally and physically. It’s as difficult as it gets but no less exciting to sort thoughts and structure them in essay form.

Just the thought that this new book (or any of the others) will continue to live on long after my time on this planet is kinda cool.

Think about it; someone in the future might contact Elle’s children or grandchildren and wonder if they are possibly related to the author of a book they found in a creaky drawer, on a dusty bookshelf, or in a moving box that was never unpacked. That thought warms the soul.

It also makes me want to continue making more books!

I am easily distracted and this seems to be getting worse as I get older. This is not just a little ironic as I’m currently writing a book about how life changes when you’re over sixty and how easily distracted I’ve become.

When I’m sitting and writing in a busy café, like the one above where I was earlier today for several hours, there’s always a plethora of potential distractions (guests, music, food, staff). Yet oddly enough, I found that I was still actually able to focus on writing there – even for stretches that are several minutes long.

Wait, only for several minutes, you ask?

Well, yeah, as what I’m writing constantly takes me places that need to be investigated, researched and cross-referenced before being added to the book’s pages. At some point within the next two months, I’ll be able to spend most of my time editing, which I’m very much looking forward to.

Here’s the yummylicious Sunday eveniung dinner I had at our favorite restaurant in Da Nang at the plant-based, health-focused Roots:

Japanese Nori Bowl: veggie nori roll, wakame, edamame, shiso, grated dikon, pickled ginger, turmeric tofu, mushroom, pumpkin seeds, cucumber, sesame, garlic black rice with ginger & sesame dressing.

We’re once again finding our way into an everyday groove here in Vietnam. Just a few short steps from our hotel we found a laundry service and there’s a plethora of restaurants within a five minute walk that serve delicious and affordable meals from almost any conceivable cuisine.

If I had to bet, I’d wager that our combined expenditure for food and beverages doesn’t exceed SEK 200/USD$18 per day. And I am confident that if we only ate at local Vietnamese restaurants and didn’t splurge on fancy coffee, we’d easily get by on half that much.

Our favorite dinnertime place today, as back in 2019, is the plant-based eatery Roots. So far, we’ve not found a better alternative where the food is so consistently well-made and tasty.

Wherever we travel, I rely on Charlotte’s ability to hone in and suss out which cafés that offer a) stable and fast Internet connection, b) good food/coffee and c) reasonably comfortable seating.

Like most days back when we were here in 2019, between 6:00-7:00 am this morning, I practiced Tai-Chi and Qigong together with Garry and his regulars on the beach. Then I headed to the My An Sports Center for a 1000 meter swim.

After getting in my morning exercise, I’ll spend most of this Sunday writing and editing a chapter in my book. That is, unless we decide to go to Da Nang’s war museum which we missed last time around.

Perhaps I shouldn’t even mention it. When compared to someone like my dear sister-in-law, who has managed over 30 years, my 50 days of sobriety seem almost negligibly insignificant.

Yet, this little milestone is important to me. Especially now while we’re in Vietnam and observing “Sober October.”

Every evening that I resist the temptation to order an ice-cold beer or a shot of bourbon (or both) at one of the restaurants where we dine here, my determination grows stronger.

With each passing day, the idea of drinking anything other than a glass of dull sparkling water or lime juice that is brought to our table seems more and more distant. As long as I don’t have to sip water through a straw, I’m fine.

I’m not overly fond of alcohol-free alternatives, but I can certainly appreciate washing down my throat with an ice-cold, zero-percent beer without feeling much repulsion. Yet, despite the taste that alcohol-free beers do have, it was that temporary euphoric feeling – the release – from a tall, strong one that I was truly craving.

In the late 1980s, I discovered the boozy, writing poet Charles Bukowski. Like many other young, lost men with artistic ambitions, I was captivated by how he managed to be so damn creative and productive despite leading such a tough life.

As I read Bukowski’s unfiltered descriptions of the squalid, impoverished life he lived in the Los Angeles slums during the 1960s, he became a sort of Californian version of the other broken artist I had long admired, Vincent van Gogh.

When actor Mickey Rourke landed the role of Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s literary alter ego, in the noir film “Barfly” with Faye Dunaway (and Sylvester Stallone’s younger brother, Frank Stallone), I already knew even before the film premiered that it would be a brilliant success, at least in my cinematic universe.

Today, I’m equally fascinated by how Charles Bukowski survived as long as he did as I am astonished at how I, coming from a family where alcoholism has wreaked so much havoc, could glorify his life in that way. C’est la vie.

One of Bukowski’s most honest and perhaps most accurate quotes goes like this:

“That’s the problem with drinking…If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget. If something good happens you drink in order to celebrate, and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”

Just fifty days today, but one day at a time…