Rice

“Writers are shamans. We go into the mountains and come back with visions for our tribes. Our holy assignment.”

*

A Turkish train chased moon, seawater and oil freighters. Two veiled lovers held hands at a station. Heavy green and purple grapes draped fences around barbwire stations. A sad man waiting for his life to unfold stared at the ground.

He’s married to his mother and her tomato-based history of love, regret, unemployment and zero opportunities.

A commuter ferry sailed across the Bosporus in elemental light. Visions of a Blue Mosque, spires and silver domes sparkled as blue waves swelled hearing artists carve Churning The Sea of Milk at Angkor Wat in the 9th century.

A heavy Chinese rain mutes voices with refined elegance. Moisture softens edges where words slash and stab, committing heinous crimes inside the imagination of lovers stranded in the long sad misfortune of falling water.

The moisture is a blessing for farmers huddled below brown and yellow ponchos planting rice in geometric rows as shallow water stalks reeds.

Rice steams in cauldrons being stabbed by steel spatulas as 15,000 university students stare at empty bowls. Farmers don’t know them, see them or begin to imagine the spoiled ravishing eaters with heads bowed over chipped white rice bowls, not in gratitude but in hunger’s anger being never satisfied and talking with their mouths full spilling grunts of MORE.

The farmers plant rice. They walk along brown dirt dikes inspecting a precious state owned agrarian middle kingdom as pouring rain music bounces off the surface, slides down leaves, collating green feathers.

Twilight’s heavy mist collects in thick clouds rolling over green forested Utopia mountains caressing valleys, streams and rivers, layering fields where silent men and women plant rice stalks one by one becoming invisible. It’s a poetic Tang landscape painting.

Book of Amnesia V1