Feel Experience With Camera

How many tourists only see through their camera/cell phone? Millions.

According to Rita, They feel the experience of 8th century Angkor artistic splendor with their cold impersonal little tools. Their experience is defined by camera. Obscura.

It’s not about understanding the Khmer people, culture, food, art, music, and language. It’s about feeling with a camera. They are in a big fat hurry.

They’ve learned through hard fast lessons to trust the machine. It is their weapon against mediocrity and boredom and alienation and shallow emptiness. They don’t comprehend the intricacies outside the machine. They believe the machine will save them.

The machine controls them.

They accept this reality. They give up their consciousness.

They press optical machines tight against their faces, piercing retinas, flickering lids. Point and shoot. They lower the device and stare with hard lost eyes at the image of their transient memory. They judge it. Evaluate. Crimp. DELETE.

Shoot again  ... point  ... shoot  ... delete  ... repeat  ... a snapshot  ... snap a shot  ... preserve this moment forever  ...  Quick  ... they must go  ... to the next great big thing  ... they are in a hurry  ... Death is closer than white on rice.

The tuk-tuk driver is a happy man. He waits as they stuff eggs, watermelon and soft bread into tired bored faces. They eat like starving animals.

They run in, around and out of the temples.

They point shoot and delete.

Hurry. They have no time to see their obscurity. This loss and sense of amnesia envelops them. It accompanies them through electromagnetic radioactive meltdowns. It is a dark cloud of forgetting. They remember to forget.

They are on a Homeric quest of infinite grandeur and infinite magnitude.

Their memory card is full. They attach electrodes to a cerebral cortex and press the DownLoad switch. Memories of Apsara dancers, elephants, monkeys, temples and celestial deities flicker on a screen behind their eyes.

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion smiles. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Angkor Wat by Rita

All Angkor Wat material is by Rita, fourteen, author of Ice Girl in Banlung. She is a resident tour guide and archaeological expert. Her food, transport and daily salary was paid by Dancing Mouse, a Khmer curator and art historian.

Angkor Wat – The City of Temples - is the largest spiritual building on Earth. It is a peaceful mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism. This makes it unique. It dates from the 9^th - 13th century.

Most tourists dash in, around and through for 2-3 days of their very short existence. They get to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise with hoards. They climb steep stairs to see the sunset with hoards. It’s a human zoo.

They visit the high points: Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, the interior of Bayon and, depending on time and planning, other temples of interest. There are over 1,000 temples at Angkor. Most people hearing the word Angkor imagine only the main temple. There are plenty of cool uncrowded temples to enjoy.

A day pass costs $37, a 3-day pass is $70 and a seven-day pass $100. The longer pass allows visitors the luxury of time - life’s great wealth - to enjoy the diversity of Angkor over a month.

I suggest you visit The National Museum and galleries around town to learn about Angkor history in advance. Be aware that Thailand owns 50% of The National Museum. Khmer do not go to their museum.

For $25 I hired Pat, a tuk-tuk driver with three kids to feed. We left before dawn. A tuk-tuk is a motorcycle pulling a simple covered sofa carriage. The air was chilly and refreshing. We reached the main entrance. It resembled a well-designed airport immigration office with windows and attendants for the 1-3-7 day tickets. I paid for seven, they took my picture and a girl punched my ticket. Buy a ticket and take the ride. The meter began running.

We drove through deep mysterious forests on empty roads past forgotten shadows and villagers stoking cooking fires near wooden stilt homes. The road skirted a long deep reflecting pool at Sras Srang.

We stopped for a noodle breakfast. A brilliant orange ball of flaming gas rose over flat brown fields. I salute the sun!

We headed for Banteay Srei, 37 km from town. Objective: get there for early light with peace and quiet before buses of sheep.

Srei was built in 987 AD and never a royal temple. Small intimate and designed by women with delicate hands. The carvings of pink sandstone cover the temple. Reliefs are deep and beautiful, the most incredible at Angkor. Covered by forest and earth for centuries, it was discovered by a lost French madman.

After Srei we continued north to Kbal Spean. We climbed through forests for 1.5 km. This is the source of waters for Angkor and the Siem Reap River. Water flows over 100m of carved sacred lingams and Hindu deities, Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.

The Sanskrit name is Sahasralinga, or “River of a Thousand Lingas.”

We headed southeast of Siem Reap to the Roluos Group, a series of three temples: Bakong, Preah Ko and Lolei, dating from the 8th-9th century.

Roluos is a pre-Angkor site.

Bakong was consecrated in 881 AD. The layout follows Mount Meru, with five ascending levels, moats, and ten surrounding temples. It was reconstructed from 1936-1942 under the direction of Maurice Glaize, the conservator of Angkor.

Preah Ko, or Parameswara, “The Supreme God,” or Shiva was built in 880 AD. It contains a stele in Sanskrit with an inscription about war, fearsome action in battle, flashing swords and invincibility - a eulogy to Indra Varman I.

Lolei, 893 AD. Four brick buildings in poor condition sit on an island above a former reservoir. The lintels, doors and inscriptions explaining the construction and divisions of tasks are well preserved.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Poetic Destiny by Coincidence

Coincidence is an event that might have been arranged although it was really accidental. It’s random destiny. Destiny is an event that will inevitably happen in the future like Death.

I was waiting for Christina, a 50-year-old Belgium born French teacher currently teaching at Peter Rabbit in Greenland for a day trip to a floating village and mangrove forest near Tonle Sap Lake. She’d suggested the idea the previous evening after seeing Angkor Wat.

Kun, the owner of Jasmine GH, walked to the table with a man. “He is going with you.”

Great.” We introduced ourselves, “Hi, I'm Brian,” he said.

“Nice to meet you.”

A soft-spoken man with piercing eyes, gentle manner and laughing, Brian told his family history.

“This is the short version of a long story. My grandfather’s father came from Switzerland. He was a preacher. He was persecuted and escaped to Italy. He returned and was beheaded. His son took up the cause and was also persecuted. He escaped to Holland. His family eventually moved to England, then Scotland then Ireland. During the potato famine they managed to get to New York and settled in Arkansas. It was the Civil War and life was hard. They moved west and eventually settled in Fresno, California where I was raised.”

We rolled through dry flat countryside to the end of a long dusty road. We jumped on motorcycles to reach small boats moored in shallow water. We left land gliding through marshes toward the Kampong Pluck Village. Christina asked Brian about his life.

“I am a poet traveling the world for a year on the Amy Lowell Traveling award.”

I turned in surprise. “What is your last name?”

“Turner.”

Mr. Brian Turner.

I laughed. “Sure. I know you. Last October when I lived in Hanoi with a family of bats in a palm tree I read your “Home Fires” essay in The New York Times after you visited the Bedlam hospital in London. I wrote a piece about becoming a ghost after returning from Vietnam. Your essay generated many comments from diverse voices, veterans, health care professionals and the general public. It was great.”

“It's important to give these people voices,” he said. "I wrote seven poetry books before submitting Here Bullet.”

Over lunch he talked about his book, Here Bullet published by Alice James Books. Brian served in Bosnia and a year tour in Iraq before returning to the states in 2004.

“I wrote the poems in Iraq. I worked from my notebooks to create the manuscript from November through March 2005. I submitted it. It won the Beatrice Hawley Award. Later, an anonymous person nominated me for the Amy Lowell award. There were 360 poetry books in the competition. One day I received a phone call from the law offices representing the estate. They said my book was selected for the Amy Lowell Scholarship. I was amazed.”

Brian received his MFA in writing from the University of Oregon, my alma matter.

“You’re a famous poet. Congratulations. And here we are, two writers, two veterans and UO graduates meeting on a small boat near a floating village in Cambodia. Long live the creative geniuses.”

Brian reached Cambodia via England, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey and Thailand. He’d travel to Vietnam, Morocco, Portugal, Ireland and Bosnia.

His second book of poetry, entitled Phantom Noise, was published in April 2010 and shortlisted for the T.S. Elliot Prize.

The three us shared stories, explored a village, a local primary school, enjoyed seafood along the river and traversed the amazing mangrove water world forest, ala Monet.

Joyful destiny smiled.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

One Born & One Dies

One death. One birth. This happened in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Jasmine gave birth to a baby boy at 12:30 a.m. 3.9 kilos. It’s her and Kun’s third child.

I am on the balcony at 6 a.m. hearing him cry. Tears and lungs, breath, release. Sleeping after his nine-month water world journey. Every day is a celebration.

I walk a dusty path and across the Highway of Death to Jasmine Lodge. People gather to celebrate the passing of Jasmine’s grandmother. She slipped away during the night after eighty-four years.

She was healthy and happy.

Friends and relatives gather under a pavilion to pay their respects. They visit the frail Buddhist monk with a monetary gift. He ties a red piece of yarn around their wrist.

The ceremony lasts three days. Women teams prepare vats of soup releasing vapors. Grilled meat and fish aromas curl through bamboo meeting music and the melodic chants of singing, chanting monks.

Tomorrow is a procession to the pagoda for her cremation.

Led by six monks in orange robes 200 people followed the rolling wagon carrying the wooden casket in blazing heat along The Highway of Death. After two kilometers we entered the pagoda.

A bus of kids and nuns arrived.

  

Her casket was carried up the stairs and placed on a metal platform. Her husband led a procession of monks and family members around the tall tapered white and blue building carrying her picture and yellow flowers. They stepped back to allow attendants access. They opened the casket so family members could leave something personal inside.

On a pavilion monks chanted. A man read a final tribute about her life. The family expressed their love. Men put small logs into the casket. They closed it, rolled it inside and piled more wood around it. They lit the fire and closed the metal door.

People sat silent, whispering, drinking water. They observed the top of the tower with four serene Buddha faces and exhaust pipes. A wisp of black smoke escaped into clear blue sky followed by heavier billowing gray and white snow.

Everything burned for three hours.

Her bones were collected, placed in a family urn and returned to her room. They created a human figure on banana leaves. After 100 days her bones will rest in a family stupa at the pagoda.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

 

Perception by Zeynep

I patrol a new planetary manifestation. Compassion discovers abstract letters expressing the madness of art. A work of art is never finished. It is abandoned. A wild ink master.

Being correct is never the point. I’d rather be real than right. Be sincere.

Humans take themselves too seriously. They need to play more. It is impossible to take anything seriously. Hang around listening/observing anxiety, fear, loss, beauty and truth and  ...

How do you express a sensation a gesture, a fleeting impermanent lapse of consciousness, a smile, a tear, asked Rita, manifesting as a young singing girl waters dust in Cambodia as sunlight filters through palm trees casting golden rays and long shadows.

I am a dust collector, said Tran. I’ve collected dust in Vietnam, the Sahara, in Ulus, Turkey with Errol the antique dealer and the carpet man teaching his son thread repair. While climbing toward Drepung monastery near Lhasa one brilliant frozen morning. In Korla, an oasis along the Silk Road where yellow is the original color produced by the silkworm’s saliva.

One thread is 300 meters long and stronger than steel.

Swirling dust in Cambodia is a deep rusty red, said Rita. My path is a watercolor pigment traced by footprints grooving new tributaries of passage.

Walk softly as if your eyes are on the bottom of your feet, said Tran. 

If your legs get heavy walk with your heart, said Devina.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged