Tiger Voice

Greetings,

Tell me about your future
all laid out in perfect reconciliations 
of existence
overflowing with play, discoveries, exploring your labyrinth
rapacious fluidity,
exercising complexity science
where imagination tells the truth
these days before Chinese New Year
and Mr. Murakami sighs,

"Memory is like fiction, or else it's fiction 
that is like memory. Human existence in absurd activities. 
Right and wrong drop out of the picture. Memory takes over and fiction is born.
It is a perpetual motion machine, tottering through the world,
trailing an unbroken thread over the ground."

It is now the Year of the Tiger
believing their strength, solitary nature, nocturnal way,
running to survive
swimming in deep water
leading you into deep forests
when a shadow spirit named The Other
whispers
"It's time to go, it's time to go."

Metta.

 

Passage

Greetings,

People are more affected by how they feel than by what they understand.

When they met she was anxious. Tall and talking fast. She was in a highly frantic state. She was from Sweden. After a couple of days she calmed down. She had a dream after visiting a temple at Angkor.

She said, "I don't know what I'm running away from. I'm traveling for a month. I just knew I had to leave. Now I don't know what I'm running toward."

"Yes," he said, "one door opens and one door closes but the hallways can be a bitch." She laughed. She felt better releasing her anxiety, her uncertainty by laughing. If only for a moment.

She's been here a week. "A week here," she said, "seems like a month. Now I feel like I can be in the moment. It's hard but I'm working on it. I want to cut all my hair off."

"Nothing like modifying your outward appearance to affect your self esteem."

Shy Cambodian girls with straight black hair cut off her long blond movie star hair. They treasured her tresses, wrapping it with rubber bands to decorate their hair. 

"I feel better now," she said feeling the searing heat of tropical sun. "I'm going to begin sketching again. I loved to sketch when I was younger. I lost it somewhere. I'm starting again."

Here's one entrance/exit passage.

Here's one entrance/exit passage. There is NO EXIT.

Metta.

No women in tuk-tuk land

Greetings,

Now here this. The tuk-tuk is leaving in five minutes. Departing for points unknown. A massive celestial event known as YOUR LIFE will depart in five minutes. You are advised to assemble all the necessary documents, certified seals of approval, water, guide books, sunscreen, funny money and so on...you will visit the following areas on your short, fast, easy tour.

Bring your life with you. And a guidebook with heavily creased pages. If you attempt to read while moving at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, you will discover a new sense of perspective.

You may be surprised or traumatized  to realize your experience at Angkor is not about "seeing" the temples. 

Angkor, Bayon and Beyond...

Please conclude various private and group discussions to ascertain your destination. The tuk-tuk driver has his helmet and vest. His vest has a green four-digit number. If he tries to bring you into Angkor without the vest he faces massive problems. For starters he will lose his job and have to return to his small, isolated village where he will plant rice. The biggest dream for many young men is to become a tuk-tuk driver.

If he loses his tuk-tuk job his family will starve to death. This is a common problem here. Death by starvation.

A tuk-tuk river driver has an easy job. An easy life. He drives you to a temple and crashes out. You feed him. He takes you back where you started. He makes $15-20 for the day. The average person's daily wage is $2.03.

Not a single woman in Siem Reap is a tuk-tuk driver. There are 3-4 women tuk-tuk drivers in Phnom Penh. They are as rare as clean drinking water, sanitation, hospitals and schools.

Why? A woman doesn't work as a tuk-tuk driver because: 

1. it's too dangerous
2. it's inappropriate
3. it's foolish
4. they lack the education, intelligence, drive, initiative
5. they haven't broken free of deeply ingrained social and cultural stereotypes: a woman's place is in the home, taking care of kids, washing, cleaning, and cooking.

Thirty years ago a woman was lucky to finish 9th grade. She married and stayed at home. It may take another generation before women become tuk-tuk drivers. So it goes.

Metta.

Lina studies Engineering in Phnom Penh.

Elephant Tears

Greetings,

A girl from Argentina who arrived in Siem Reap after midnight broke down after breakfast. Tears streamed down her face. Her boyfriend stood helpless. He handed her a tissue. He didn't know what else to do. She cried and cried. He suffered in silence.

She blubbered in Spanish. "I miss mama...I miss mama. Where are we? What is this strange place? Everyone is trying to cheat us. The food is terrible. They charge extra for butter. Where's the beef? The bus scam from Thailand was long, bumpy, grumpy, expensive, a drag, a mistake, a terrible tragic drama. I can't understand the people here. O woe is me, us." She discarded a soggy tissue.

Her macho man suffered in silence. 'She's a basket case,' he thought.

They'd argued recently. About their trip, lack of good sex, decent food, hot sticky weather, poor planning, lack of planning, expenses.

'Maybe it all comes down to sex and money,' he thought. Clean and clear understanding. In Spanish or Splanglish or deeper emotional levels of complexity. 

She blew snot into another tissue. She crumpled it into a ball and dropped it on a plate glass table. It shattered under the weight of her sticky mucus. It's not what she thought it would be. Her expectations were shattered by illusionary possibilities. Her life was one big question.

She gradually composed herself. They started to leave the restaurant. They paused at the top of the stairs. It was a long way down. He whispered to her. Calming poetic words. He put his arm around her shoulder. She was frigid. Mr. Romeo had his work cut out for him and there was nothing to fix.

Metta.

Innocence and War

Greetings,

I met Alice last month. She's from England and has visited Cambodia six times. She's worked here as a volunteer at local schools. She recommended two important books. 

The Lost Road of Innocence by Somaly Mam. Her true story of being sold into sexual slavery at the age of five. Heartbreaking. Somaly now runs shelters for abused girls and women in Phnom Penh. She's received international recognition for her work establishing AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances). 

Cambodia Now: Life In the Wake of War by Karen J. Coates. Karen is a freelance journalist based in Thailand. Her book examines Cambodian life in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal regime of 1975-1979. She interviews Cambodians across the country. She details relations with neighboring countries, politics, violence, family, poverty, environment and Cambodia's future.

Metta.

She sells souvenirs to tourists at a temple after school.