free egypt

Greetings,

I ruled for 30 years. The military said, It's time to go, Everyone from Cairo to Greenland has had enough of your senile stalling.

I said, Wait, I need another 30 years. No they said, You have 30 seconds, The Egyptian people have spoken with one voice, You have 30 seconds.

I cried, stamping my feet like a spoiled child. I don't want to go. I don't want to go.

Someone handed me a microphone and a scrap of parchment from the Dead See. They said, Take the paper. Look into the camera and read the script. I trembled with fear and anxiety. I took the parchment. I looked into a blinking red eye. I read the script.

My finally free fantastic fellow citizens. I would like to thank the Academy for this opportunity and all the rich memories. It's been a long strange trip. I wish you all the best realizing your freedom from tyranny, repression and idiots like me. My family and I will now take our immense wealth and retire to our resort villa. We will remember you when we eat caviar off gold plates. Farewell my love.

The red light went off. The paper fluttered from my arthritic fingers. Fireworks and ectoblastic jubilated pandemonium erupted throughout Egypt. Slaves loaded our camels. I led my family across the burning desert toward sand castles in the harsh light of reality.

What a glorious day papa, said my child, one of 80 million, I feel free. 

Metta.

Vice Puppet

Greetings,

Sullyman, the Magnificence, my acting heroic Vice Puppet in the never ending charade of manipulative lies told the people to GO HOME, leave the square, forget your dreams and aspirations, we have heard your voice, we listen with benign neglect, we respect your human rights. However, to prevent a messy democracy totalitarian draconian emergency laws will stay in effect for 3,000 years.

Bait and switch stalling blather. The people don't buy it. We are home, they said. 

What did you expect from a trembling CIA funded friend? Oh, my. He is closer to me than white on rice. Closer than spots on a dice. I am the dice man. I am the dealer and the house always wins, my friend. My house is crumbling down around my deaf ears. When 80 millions citizens begin yelling and marching and singing and dancing demanding freedom and democracy I change the channel. Denial is bliss.

I sit behind my ornate golden desk trembling with fear. I am worrying out my worry beads. I am a fractured remnant of my old stubborn self. I am an old man. I am 82. I have sacrificed my life for Egypt.

I have amassed $70 Billion dollars in a small tidy personal fortune over 30 years of graft, corruption, business manipulation, Pentagon contracts and plain theft.

I am really an honest man. Believe me. I have wives and rich children to support. I have outstanding mortgages in Geneva, Paris, London, New York, Shanghai, Jerusalem, and a million destitute Egyptian villages.

It ain't nothing but the blues.

Being a corrupt dictator is a pain in the oligarchy. 

Metta.

SPIRAL

Greetings,

In Hue, Vietnam the Healing The Wounded Heart Shop has colorful woven baskets. Baskets from Nepal are made of recycled plastic food snack wrappers. Brilliant reds, greens, blues, all the hues.

Shop with your heart. Shop to give back.

The Spiral Foundation is a non-profit humanitarian organization working in Nepal and Vietnam.

Spiral. Spinning Potential Into Resources And Love. At the SPIRAL workshop in Hue they make bowls using discarded telephone wires. They work with the Office of Genetics and Disabled Children at Hue Medical College. 

All net proceeds from the handicraft sales are returned to Vietnam and Nepal to fund primary health care, medical and educational projects. Projects employ 1,000 participants with fair hourly salaries not based on piece work. Projects have provided for more than 250 heart surgeries and treatments for children with life threatening diseases.

SPIRAL raised $82,000 in 2010. 

Metta.

it's all mine

She wore a permanent tear imbedded on her left cheek. She is not smiling.

She said, Here I am. I communicate my reality to the world. Do you like my shirt?

Can you read words or do you need a picture? How about a picture of a picture? I don’t know how to read so I like to look at pictures. My country has 11.5 million people and maybe 6-10 million land mines.

Adults say there are 40,000 amputees in my country. Many more have died because we don't have medical facilities.

Mines are cheap. A mine costs $3.00 to put in the ground and $1,000.00 to take out of the ground. I'm really good at numbers.

Talk to me before you leave trails to explore the forest. It's beautiful and quiet. I know all the secret places. I showed my picture to a Cambodian man and he didn't like it ;-( They call this denial. He said it gave him nightmares. He’s seen too much horror and death in one life. So it goes.

My village is my world. Where do you live?

On the mean old street near the Khmer House of Blues filled with wailing songs of loss, betrayal, neglect, abandonment, misery, hope and mercy on slide guitar backed by a harmonica in the key of C crying in her heart, a girl stared up at a mirrored skyscraper watching the wheel of life flash prisms into the sky. 

She’s been turned out and turned down faster than a housekeeper working with imported Egyptian threaded linen with a 300 count. No lye. The thermostat of her short sweet life seeks more wattage. She faces a severe energy shortage if she doesn’t find food.

Metta.

face dust

Greetings,

Walk outside, feel the dust beneath your feet.  Walking is a luxury.

The street blends into the prayer circuit. Two large chorten furnaces breath fire, sending plumes of gray and black smoke into the sky. Figures of all ages and energies, sellers of juniper and cedar. Buyers collect their offerings, throwing sweet smelling twigs into the roaring fire, finger prayer beads and resume their pilgrimage. They flow and shuffle. Feel the softness being with the ageless way of meditation, a walking meditation.

It is a peaceful manifestation of the eternal now. The sky fills with clear light. 

A Cambodian man sits in his WW I wheelchair. His torso ends with two mid thigh leg stubs. 

A young boy in tattered clothing stands on a log. He throws a large girl doll in the air. It spins, performing somersaults. It crashes in the dust. 

He poises on the log, flexes his muscles and jumps. He lands on the doll's face. He smashes his feet dancing on the face, laughing in rising dust. 

At a different ground zero called Tahir Square a young girl referring to Egypt's backward pubic education system that depends so much on repetition holds a sign urging Mubarak to leave quickly, "Make it short. This is history, and we have to memorize it for school."

Metta.