Fire talks

Greetings,

What's louder than a group of Khmer people? Another group of Khmer people. Get used to it. Volume. Noise. They love distractions. They live, eat and breath distractions and noise. They love talking over each other. Listening is hard work. Silence is known for killing people. Fear of death is a one long conversation.

They've been traumatized by their long past into the immediate present grasping the future. It's a time machine, a time warp, a consciousness warp.

It is curious to see with complete clarity the FIRE inside the cement stove in the simple local java and tea shop at 0615. Orange and bright dancing red flames consume kindling. It heats water for tea and java. Reminds me of a winter stove in Lhasa warming a room with joy.

Words crackle, spit, dance with laughter's sensation of heat.

Piles of kindling are stacked between cement slabs like orphans waiting to exonerated.  

It's a male thing. The men are over 40. They are survivors of The Dark Years.

All the men wear fresh pressed shirts and long pants. They have jobs. They talk about life: business, jobs, paper, kids, wives, weather, facts, opinions, big plans and ghosts. They eat fried bread, drink brown tea and java. Their spoons create music with glass. 

1.7 million ghosts dance through their silent conversations. No one talks about it. They prefer to talk about the now. The future. Ghosts live in the past. Leave it there, said one man. Half our population is under 30, said another man. They have no memory of the past. Education is the key, said another man. Yes, said another man, We missed our chance.

The only chance I had, said another man, Was to run and hide in the jungle. Look at my hands. Now I spend my days rewriting history.

A human is a kind of conversation. Many humans live lives of quiet desperation. Fire knows this fact.

Metta.