One Born & One Dies January 2010

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

 

Celebration

In a Hindu cremation ceremony on Bali in an archipelago surrounded by oceans where every day is a celebration I released Martha Ann. She never experienced 14 of anything.

Blessed by her spirit.

Free form, free spirit in a free world,

Where will you finish your journey?

After rubbing you down with holy water, rice flour

turmeric, salt, vinegar, sandalwood

we put shards of mirrored glass on your eyes

pieces of steel on your teeth

a gold ring with a ruby on your mouth

jasmine flowers on your nostrils

iron nails on your four limbs

symbols of your perfect senses

reincarnation will bring you back

stronger, more perfect

wrapped in tight ceremonial fabric

we laid you on a straw mat tied to a bamboo platform         

placed in a tower representing

the underworld, the visible world, the heavens

behind a rattan Black Bull beast

village women

balancing offerings of fruit,

rice, vegetables

led you through the village of Pedang Tagal

carriers laugh, sing, dance, spinning you

in circles to confuse spirit ghosts

crowds throw water on the ancient Bull

they cut the bull open at Monkey Forest

place you inside

Brahmin priest in black cuts

white binding string

pours water from clay pots inside

smashes them on the ground

sprinkles flowers, soil and family items inside

replaces the Black Bull’s back

final fire begins

you float to holy sky united to karmic force!

is it true this maya this illusion

this transformation this celebration

Her spirit dances beyond the great beyond. I spread her floating ashes on the sea.

Accept loss forever.

Grief is the origin of poetry

The Greeks knew the three most dangerous goddesses were the Fates called Moirai.

Homer called them “spinners of the thread of life.”

Clotho the birth goddess spins the thread of life.

Lachesis measures the length allocating the amount of time to each person.

Atropos cuts the thread.

Anyone resisting them faced Nemesis, Goddess of Justice.

Fates spin out our lives fusing art and language.

Fates dance.

Fire spirit welcomes sun, rain, life energies.

WE salute the sun every dawn. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Masks by Omar

Now and future share the same linguistic meaning for storytellers.

Breathe through your mask.

What kind of mask, asked Z, It is hand-carved from tribal forest memories, said Devina.

Yes, said Zeynep, It is a manifestation of archetypal symbols in ancient cultures. It is a shamanic ritual, a dance trance. When you put on the mask you become the thing you fear the most, your deepest darkest shadow. You evolve your essential human nature. You communicate on new levels of prescient awareness. A mask conforms to the context of a social situation, like maintaining physical distance avoiding C-19.

I thought Tran was in charge of symbols and gongs in temples of furious percussion, said Rita.

Yes, said Z, I was only mentioning ideas and Form.

It’s ok, said Tran. Everyone dances with Death wearing masks of formless form.

Does this mean I will evolve my dynamic ability to scheme and deceive, asked Leo. In life’s jungle it is survival instinct all or nothing. 

I trust you will develop infinite compassion with love, said Devina. Transmit this as WE are a highly evolved form of human intelligence.

Do you remember James Joyce, how he went into exile with silence and cunning, said Omar.

Yes. He struggled to put seven little words in order. He was a cunning linguist. Women love a cunning linguist.

Ask Tam, she’ll tell you how her little button in her rose works, how it requires soft attention with a gentle tactile tongue, said Rita.

This ability to scheme and deceive with cunning is instinctual behavior. It separates you from lesser life forms like apes, plankton and sea enemies like anemone fish-eating animals and androgynous androids in your deep unconscious, said Z.

You are a clown fish. Not all the clowns are in the circus, be light about it, said Omar, taking a page out of his book, folding it into an origami crane and releasing it across raked sand to a Zen temple.

Zen - The art of seeing.

Orphan. Amputee. Genius. Artist. Facilitator. Dreamer. Solidified particles hold their space. Storyteller.

Look in your dream mask mirror. Hello Truth & Beauty, said Mirror.

I’m a shark, I never sleep, I will die if I go back. I go forward, said Tran.

Be less write brain. Be your skin drum music. Sincere. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Meditation by Leo

After climbing Qinchengshan where Taoism began 2,000 years ago Leo introduced meditation practice to his Grade 8 students in Utopia.

Mediation is sitting quiet to develop a calm mind, you sit tall with your hands in front of you or on your knees, gently lower your eyes and focus on a single breath, ‘in, out, in, out.’

If your mind becomes distracted by past regrets or future fears you bring it back to your breath, ‘in, out, in out.’ This is your single point of awareness. Be your breath.

You do it for yourself, not your friends, parents or teachers. Meditation allows you feel harmony and balance. You will feel more peaceful and happier than people busy rushing around. Your goal today is to sit for five minutes and sit and practice for five minutes every day before school. You may choose to sit for five, ten or twenty minutes every day, whenever and wherever you like.

He wrote Jing - quiet, stillness, calm and Ding - concentration and focus on the board for the linguistic context.

When you begin to sit in meditation, at first your mind will be very uncooperative. Your ego or emotional mind will fight against its extinction by the higher forces of spiritual awareness.

The ego loves the day-to-day circus of sensory entertainment and emotional turmoil, even though this depletes your energy, degenerates your body and exhausts your spirit. We call the ego the ‘monkey mind.’

They laughed, remembering The Monkey King classic.

When your mind is calm and focused in the present it isn’t reacting to past memories or preoccupied with future plans.                         

These are two major sources of chronic or long-term health problems. People suffer because their monkey mind is busy regretting the past or afraid of the future and it drives them crazy, this little monkey.

Do you want to try it?

Yes.

Ok. Great. No books, papers and pens. If you don’t want to try it, it’s ok. Please sit quietly respecting others sitting in meditation.

See how it feels. Let’s begin. Adjust your posture with your shoulders back. Eyes slightly closed. Relax. Focus on your breath, ‘in, out, in, out.’

He dimmed the lights. After five minutes he rang a small Tibetan bell and they opened their eyes.

How did it feel?

Beautiful, said a girl, I was flying. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged