Leaving Laos

You lived in Laos for one year.

Miracle gift blessing.

Tourist visas last thirty days. In and out tourists do Asia.

Please don't rush. PDR.

You had a one-year multi-entry business visa as a volunteer to facilitate English with 101 H'mong people in Phonsavan. Plain of Jars. Archeologists hypothesize funeral jars. Burn bodies in nearby cave and stash bones in jars. Roll your bones. Bone oracle.

Illuminated ones know they are 4,000 year old drinking vessels of GIANTS.

Visa paperwork said you are a Soap Consultant.

Somebody paid off somebody in the food/money chain.

$500 bones.

How life works. Money talks. Hello. Before speaking put your hand out. A wink will suffice. You know how to play the game. Wiggle your fingers. Here comes the paper, see it. Do the numbers. Enough? No, wiggle again. See the paper. Love the colors. I like doing business with you. Here's the pepper. Thank you.

You dreamed to be a Soap Consultant.

Now you are.

The Phonsavan Ministry of Security requires an audience.

Bureaucrazy stamps, photographs, work permit card, residency permit card, all micro managed by droning gnomes sitting passive, hungry, tired and bored in obscure drab communist rooms inside old decaying cement buildings surrounded by rusting bard wire behind brown shuttered windows against blinding sun held together by corroded grated bars, confronting blaring Thai soap operas, imprisoned below portraits of smiling kings, white goateed Ho Chi Minh painting in his garden of early delights and grim faced suited officers in olive drab wearing burnished medals.

Each person has one job in a compartmentalized system. Only one.

One takes the papers, reads and enters data in a ledger. Passes documents to #2. They read the papers, acknowledge signature and stamp of #1, sign it, enter data on a form, passes it to a woman writing in a ledger. She checks the stamp from # 1 & #2 and enters critical data in her ledger. She hands it to #3 who reads all the names, studies all the stamps and ledgers, smiles, hands it back and says you cannot work here as a Soap Consultant. Thank you it was only a fragrant dream. Bubble drama.

Checks and balances.

You put your time in. You learned this phrase as a soldier in Nam.

Put your time in.

If you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much space. Get out take risks get your shoes dirty.

Phonsavan was dusty, cold and invigorating. Education was fun, helping 10-30 year olds develop courage. Drawing, speaking, chess, teamwork, critical thinking skills.

I need help.

A place to sit down and establish temporary relationships, explore traditional fruit and vegetable markets, process new languages, do street photography, write it down.

Make sense of it later.

After seven months new volunteers arrived. You briefed them.

1. Lao don't plan 2. They have no concept of time. 3. They don't accept responsibility for their actions. 4. Family and farming come first. 5. They are eager to learn. 6. Retention is a problem. 7. Practice meditation and comprehension checks.

Return to Luang Prabang for 90 daze. Sit in herbal steam baths every afternoon clearing accumulated gunk dust from lungs. Polish a new narrative nonfiction book entitled The Language Company.

Shiny. Dented from dialogue, drama, dreams.

All writing is garbage.

A friend recommends an opportunity. You make contact and get lucky finding a p/t volunteer job at an upscale eco-lodge seven hours by boat up the Nam Ou River helping with management and English practice with fifteen staff. Low season. Husband wife and daughter left for a Thai hospital where she will birth Emil.

Stay two months. Facilitate courage with kitchen, restaurant, and housekeeping staff.

Laughter is an effective elective.

Live next to a wide flowing brown river rushing south for 448 kilometers from China to the sea near Nam. Gardens of butterflies, red hibiscus, looming granite mountains, river, forests.

Dancing cloud thoughts.

Calm wisdom mind meditation.

Everything you do is a meditation.

Culture is what you are.

Nature is what you can be.

Linguistic Semantics. The map is not the territory.

Your visa will expire. No new job no chance to renew.

Return to Seems Ripe. Discover a new adventure. Let's go.

Luang Prabang - exit. Kiss your Lao artist lover good eye. You've known each other three years. In out love dialogue. She has the imagination heart. You've encouraged her skill these years providing her with watercolor paper, inks, and pens. She's created a nice portfolio.

You're not saving anyone.

Modern fancy glass and brass empty new LP international airport. On the second floor among rows of empty seats and shops, three steel accordion passenger tubes wait for big planes. Tourism=money=tourism.

The old squat French style fading yellow airport disintegrates down the road. It has character speaking memories. Remember when?

Heavy rain, clouds obscure mountains. Smiling security man said, nice hat, real style. It's an Akubra Traveler from OZ you say, showing him the sweat stained interior. Twenty rabbits made this hat. Rabbits love making hats when not nibbling in gardens or making baby rabbits. Wearing this hat brings me good luck. I can't be manipulated, fooled, folded, stapled or spindled. He smiles, have a nice trip.

Fifteen people go to Pakse on a prophet. 1:45 airborne. Clouds, blue sky. Clouds should know you by now.

In transit. 30 minutes. You walk out, free as a bird. A Lao man with a gold watch put his black attaché case down, lit a cigarette, made a call. A man pulls up in a black SUV, walks over to the man, talks and picks up the case. They board a flight to Vientiane.

The bag contains top-secret nuclear vision material and contracts with Chinese/Thailand developers to build twelve dams on the Mekong. Signed sealed delivered. COD.

Carlos and his wife from Mexico sit in 14 A/B. He's a government official. Sleek gray black hair and meticulous bushy moustache. You mention Gabo, yes, said Carlos, he was a great man and writer.

100 Years of Solitude

They're going to Angkor Wat for two days. You give them a quick vision - get a tuk-tuk at 5:00 a.m. Have a noodle breakfast on your way out. Enjoy exploding sun over fields. You get to Banteay Srei early. Before Japanese and Chinese locusts. It has the most intricate hand carved designs by women.

See Preh Khan-hall of dancers, Bayon, Ta Prohm, main Angkor temple. Ramayana story in stone. You show them Srei black and white images. Carvings, monkey guardians, stone stories. Did you take them, she said. Yes. They are beautiful.

Explore the jungle. See how you feel. Meet butterflies. They know the way through mysterious passages.

His questions: currency, safety, cost, typical Khmer food, scams, mosquitos. Brief them. I talk to airborne malaria insects. We speak the same language. They don't bother me. You need a hat, water, open heart-mind. Slow steps.

It's all a spiritual journey, said Carlos. Thanks for your help. 

Wisdom Seeks Wisdom

In Brave New World

You shift from truth and beauty

To comfort and happiness

I ate civilization

Aha ha

A new notebook deciphers emptiness

The fisherman

In a long blue boat

Cuts the engine

Drifting with current

Cool cornflower silk red ink

Slashes memory's fascination

With forgetting

All the letting go

Becoming silence inside the labyrinth

Dancing shimmering red

Blazing wisdom seeks wisdom

In a Lao motorcycle culture

Wats glow golden

A sleeping Buddha

Dreams of compassion

Direct immediate experience

I am twinkling 

Fujian, China

Suicidal Clare

A cell phone played. Omar rummaged in his robes. A depressed suicidal woman named Clare in Washington State was on the Suicide Hot Line. It may as well have been shit out of luck S.O.L. He switched from Arabic to English.

“Yes?”

“I am trying to save my insecure relationship from jealousy.”

“Jealousy’s a disease. It eats people alive. What are you looking for?”

“I am looking for love and meaning. Can you help me?” She had all the questions.

“I am only an emissary between people. Between you and your dream.”

“It’s a nightmare. What’s going to happen to me?” 

“You’d best be prepared for armies of touts, hustlers, beggars, thieves and economically loveless destitute men. They will want to escort, guide, lead, and administer their opportunity,” he said.

“Will they be gracious or benevolent with their tricks, traps, deviations and detours offering fake potential to save me? Will their well formed greed based on my desire, an illness of imaginary needs plead for my attention deficit disorder?”

“Yes. Eight hours on the ground in Morocco will seem like twenty-four. You’ll become a character in your own low budget film. It will open in small art theaters. You’ll be all the characters in the comic tragedy.”

Listening to Omar, I imagined everything as the suicidal woman’s voice assaulted the blind man.

Clare was too poor to pay attention.

She was beat. Omar knew Clare would be an expendable extra in an independent film. If she didn’t get real smart real fast she’d be lost in the drama. She needed a new identity theory. She’d change her name to Clarification.

The story was complicated with many jump cuts.

I remembered Ann, a New York literary agent’s advice. “Keep the big themes in mind and give us strong narrative structure.”

“Why? It’s not linear or logical.”

“I can only represent you if your work has these ingredients. Publishers want books for a general readership. It’s a tough market now. 175,000 books were published in this country last year.”

“I’ve survived markets in many countries Ann. It’s a miracle I’m alive to tell the tale. Traditional publishing is all about marketing, branding, product, price and placement with a hook.”

“True. It’s too disjointed and sporadic as it stands. You need you to express more artistic and emotional beauty. I expected more from your time in Vietnam. I want to feel what you felt. I want you to expose your vulnerability. I want to detect patterns and opportunities.”

“Vietnam was FUBAR, Ann. like Iraq, like any conflict.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.”

“Oh, I see.”

“This is honest work Ann. Memoirs and stories are about hunger. Some are even about food. This is edgy gonzo shit. It blends creative nonfiction with memoir, travel writing, personal essay, literary journalism, social commentary, magical realism, and ethnology. I’ve asked myself, who or what has come alive? I’ve let it speak. I’m a conduit.”

“Tighten it up and send me your revisions. You can’t be a one-trick pony in this business. I need to make 15% off your genius because I’m the expert. What else are you working on?”

“At the moment I’m traveling with Omar, a blind Touareg Berber from Morocco who lives in a Spanish cave with a tribe of survivors after 9/11. He’s one hell of a storyteller and we’re sharing tales. He’s given me a stack of paper higher than Everest to read and revise. His daughter is a word-weaver of serious renown working on a new narrative structure in an isolated Spanish pueblo. Together we’ve weaved 180,000 words so far. It’s about levels of personal and spiritual awareness, emotional growth, 9/11 repercussions, terrorism, religion, cultural prejudice, and healing.”

“What’s your hook in fifty words?”

“How oral traditions, myths, and truths are passed in verbal form from generation to generation in a highly metaphorical way. Stories are primarily a comic vehicle for moral instruction or spiritual guidance. Tragic narratives have been overused since the Greeks and Europeans. A tribe’s customs and structure...healing, authenticity, awareness, alienation, loneliness, boredom...it’s just a fucking book for God’s sake ...sheets of paper inside two pieces of cardboard...we’re breaking up Ann. I can’t live with him and I can’t live without him, this blind muse of a seer. I’ll call you when I get back to the states of conspicuous consumption. To the states of amnesia.”

Meanwhile, Clare changed long distance carriers to get a better plan. She failed to plan and planned to fail. She whispered to Omar on a tenuous connection, “I played a willing manipulative victim. I wanted to kill myself. I wanted people who loved me to feel guilty and responsible for my suffering. My life is fear and ignorance. I collapsed inside my chaos, fear and grasping. I had to ask for help.”

“I see,” said Omar in a clear clairvoyant voice.

“I tried a walking meditation. It was really hard. I crawled. I walked. I tried to run. I collapsed into the quicksand of my neurosis. I wanted to fly like an eagle. My monkey mind went nuts. I slowed down sensing a new beginning inside me, inside my life. I walked on the curvature of the earth.”

“Marvelous. You have to break down before you break through.”

“I need to see you,” she said. “Where can I find you?”

“At Paleolithic caves south of Ronda.”

Before their connection died Clare related a quick story.

“There was a horrific accident.”

“What happened?”  Omar knew what he didn’t know.

God and Allah and the devil are in the details.

“Crazy men took planes and crashed them into city sky scrapers. The big apple.”

“I see.” He paused to hear more. It was a learning tool he picked up moving through the world’s worst nightmare manifesting historical fairy tales where Poverty and Wealth raised children named Expectations.

“Yes,” she said, “it was shocking.”

“Has the healing started?”

“Healers are working overtime. It’s going to take forever,” she stammered.

“Yes,” he said, “17,000 children in the world starve to death every day. Poverty is the real terrorism.”

“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know that.”

“It’s just a thought.”

She couldn’t believe he didn’t know. Media masters in her right wing country had assembled their militant word/image arsenal and persuaded, cajoled, sold, exchanged, blasted, admonished, punished, harangued and scared them shitless, informing them how it affected their little world.

They ate fear like there was no tomorrow.

She was one weak sister. Being depressed and suicidal didn’t help. Friends, family and media convinced her the world was one huge scary place and she was a small expendable organism. Her habitat was on a well-exploited fault line. They sold her fear, healthy doubt and compassionate uncertainty in a nice neat little package. She consumed the whole enchilada.

“Omar and his friends knew many would remain in their complacent darkness,” said a veiled woman in the compartment.

They turned to her.

“It was very comfortable there. They would always live in shadows, oblivious to historical truths blinded by five senses, colors, sights, sounds, vibrations and frequencies. They were transparent h-saps. It went right through them. Clear through.”

“How do you know this?” said Omar.

“Their world is made of glass, their vision obscured by ignorance and compliant stupidity. They needed a large dose of painkillers and glass cleaner for their belief windows. Tears softened their pain. They wiped down the days of their demise,” she said looking out windows flashing their reflections. She had old deep wise eyes.

“How do you see this prophecy?” said Omar.

“My name is Rose. I am a seer. I was born in the dark of the moon. I remember the future.”

“Where do you come from and where are going?”

“I’m like you and your companion here. Passing through.”

 The three of us were very comfortable with the dark arts, shifts, universal frequencies and manifestations.

The Heart Sutra said, ‘emptiness was form and form was emptiness.’

A Century is Nothing

Yin & Yang in China

I have paintings, poems, stories, translations of oral traditions to finish that I haven’t even started yet.

If I had more time I’d make them shorter.

I stepped outside of myself and saw a blind man going down life’s street. Neither of us had seen each other before.

Dressed in rags, he stooped under the weight of a torn shouldered bag. He had no left hand. His right hand stabbed cracked cement with a crooked staff. In the middle of the sidewalk he stumbled into a parked motorcycle, adjusting his way around it. Chinese schoolgirls eating sweet junk food on sharp sticks whispering silent secrets about his stupidity passed me with empty black wide eyes.

I remembered...if a man wants to be sure of his road he must close his eyes and walk in the dark, and a blind man crossing a bridge at night is a perfect example how we should live our lives...the enlightened mind.

I followed him. I sensed a lesson in existence.

He continued scraping his staff against steps leading to shops and worked his way along a long concrete wall.

At the far end sat a beggar in rags made from boiled books. His skeleton supported a battered dirty greasy cap, threadbare jacket, no socks, broken shoes. He struggled to light a fractured cigarette. His cracked begging bowl was empty.

The blind man ran into him.

“Go around” screamed the beggar. “Can’t you see I’m here you idiot!”

“Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

“This is my space. Pay attention. Keep moving you fool.”

“Sorry to bother you. Maybe you’re a little sad, angry or lonely? Maybe I can help you.”

“What! Are you completely crazy as well as blind? I have no wife, no children, no parents, no friends, no home and no job. I live here hoping people will take pity on me.”

“I see. I know the feeling. I’m on my own. Maybe we could work together, be a team.”

The beggar rubbed his stubble. “Hmm. Let me think about it.”

“Take your time. Knowing our destiny means there’s no hurry.”

“Really? How can you be so sure?”

“Call it a hunch. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”

The beggar laughed. School kids passed them. One dropped a coin into the bowl.

“Thanks kid. Good luck on your exams next week.”

“I hate school. Too much homework. It’s so boring and tedious. I’d rather be home playing computer games or chatting online with my friends. I am an only child. I am a little Titan in my universe of want, want, want.”

“Your attitude sucks. Only 5% of the Chinese population has a university degree. Did you know that every June, six million students graduate from a university and 60% will not find work. They will wander the street like us. Your society faces hard cruel lessons, a reality outside your textbooks. Your people have fucked up your environment. Do you sleep where you shit? Sixteen of the most twenty polluted cities in the world are in this beautiful country. You sound like one of those single pampered little emperor kids I see every day. Busy, busy, busy. Get used to it or you’ll be out here with us.”

“A fate worse than death,” said the kid walking away. “My father owns a factory. He is rich man making huge profits off the sweat of poor illiterate fools and idiots like you, you bum. My future is filled with lots of money, a big house and a new car. Thank God for the one-child policy. I will buy a trophy wife. I will give her blood diamonds imported from mines in Africa or Burmese rubies. My country is investing huge amounts of capital all around the world to export raw materials. We feed our machines of consumption 24/7. As you know our country was squeezed, manipulated and exploited for years by big nose foreigners. Now it’s our turn to cash in billions of T-bills and let them dance to our sweet tune. And my family has a multiple-entry visa for Macau so we can leave whenever we feel like it. So, fuck off beggar man.”

“Yeah, begging isn’t a job, it’s an adventure.”

He looked back at the blind man.

“A team, eh? What’s your name?”

“My friends call me Yin. And you?”

“I don’t know my name. What’s a good name for a beggar?”

“How about Yang.”

“Does it mean anything? I’d like my name to mean something.”

“Why does it have to mean anything?”

“Well doesn’t a person’s name mean they have an identity, you know, like it defines their character, personality or something in the abstract?”

“Well, Yang symbolizes many things. For example, it stands for original integrated knowledge that has become buried by mundane conditioning.”

“You don’t say.”

“Real knowledge tends to become submerged in the unconscious.”

“Well, all I know is that my real knowledge says I’m hungry. If I don’t eat soon I’ll be unconscious. So, let’s say I take this Yang name. How will it help me realize my true nature?”

“It will give you dignity. Self-respect. Everything has already happened. We just need to experience it. Experience is the greatest teacher. A name like Yang will give you strength.”

“I need some of that. Ok. From now on you can call me Yang. Shake on it.” He reached out taking Yin’s dirty right hand. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Let’s get some money and buy some food.”

“I’ve been here all morning,” said Yang, “and all I have to show for it are a couple of Yuan. How about you? Any luck today?”

“I’ve been collecting old plastic bottles from trash containers,” said Yin shaking his bag. “I know a man who’ll give us some money for them. He’s not far from here.”

“Ok,” said Yang, “let’s go. Maybe we can get some spare change along the way.” He struggled to his feet and took Yin’s stub.

“What’s across the street?” asked Yin.

“A bunch of cheap restaurants for the high school kids,” said Yang. “Let’s beg there. People are happy to share their change when they have a full belly.”

“Good idea. Life is change. Can you help me get across?”

“Sure. We have to be careful, it’s busy - lots of pedicabs, trucks, buses, bikes. Let’s go.” Yang guided him across the river of traffic dodging bells.

“What fine music!” yelled Yin.

“It’s incomprehensible to me,” hollered Yang.

“It sounds like an angelic orchestra rehearsing for a play.”

“You are one strange animal.”

Yang stationed Yin outside a place filled with tongues and food smells. “This is a good spot. Do you have a begging bowl?”

“Sure. Doesn’t everybody?” He fished it out of his bag. It reflected 10,000 things.

“Wow! It’s beautiful. Where’d you get it?”

“From a kind stranger in Tibet.”

“I’m impressed. Never been there. I wonder how beggars survive at high altitude. May I see it?”

“They practice compassion and meditate on the process of death. Here,” said Yin. “Take it. See if it brings you good fortune.”

Yang accepted the gift and gave Yin his wooden bowl.

“Good magic. You stay here and face this way. I’ll go next door and beg in the kitchen where they sell mutton. See if they’ll give me some scraps.”

“Ok,” said Yin. “Good luck. See you later.”

He stood silent inside the swirling chaos of humanity and took three deep breaths. He meditated on a single breath, a point of awareness. In-out, in-out. The emotional monkey mind loving the circus of sensory entertainment fell asleep.

He felt still, calm, quiet, focused concentration. He returned to The Temple of Complete Reality at Qinchengshan.

It was a clear above the mountain as wisps of white clouds circled the temple. Autumn colors exploded red, orange, and green near turtle and dragon gate guardians. Streams of life danced around rocks.

Feeling balance and harmony he meditated on the root below the surface of appearances.

A coin played in the bowl.

“Thank you very much.” 

Give Blood

Experience, a wonderful little teacher nowadays said, giving blood helps someone who needs it more than you. Survival luck. Giving blood gifts life.

Living safely is dangerous.

Lucky had rare A-. He donated after receiving permission from Ankara medical authorities. Yes you may, blood is no argument.

The blood bus sat near a busy downtown intersection. He walked past pretzel sellers, cascading water fountains and shit covered statues of hero soldiers firing rusty guns into cobalt skies.

Paying attention he heard imprisoned Turkish journalists crying, begging, and pleading for free speech in a totalitarian Deep State of Fear.

A voice in the wilderness cried out, “The application of Articles 6 and 7 of the Anti-Terror Law in combination with Articles 220 and 314 of the Turkish Criminal Code leads to abuses. In short, writing an article or making a speech can lead to a court case and a long prison sentence for membership or leadership in a terrorist organization. Together with possible pressure on the press by state officials and possible firing of critical journalists, this situation can lead to a widespread self-censorship.”

Dissent is terrorism, said the angry frightened Prime Minister, slapping a Soma miner for booing him in public. Oh the shame.

Lucky climbed on the bloodmobile express.

A smiling Bulgarian nurse asked health questions in broken English. Another nurse took blood pressure. She attached a tourniquet to his left arm. “You have excellent veins.”

She swabbed one and slid a needle in. “Open and close your left hand.” Blood river flowed.

Outside tinted windows in blinding sun Turkish, Armenian, Kurdish and Syrian parents gripped children’s wrists. Fingers never touched. Scraggly half-starved men unloaded boxes of tomatoes from a truck. Light reflected off cheerless sunglasses. Savage salivating salvage teams folded and loaded crushed cardboard boxes into metal carts.

Sad affective-disordered businessmen spilled black market Iranian nuclear fission material and Syrian VX chemical liquids into Ankara’s water supply. Sharing is caring.

Suchness, a heavy responsibility weighted lives.

Nurses waved goodbye, “You brought someone luck by donating life.”

“It’s a small powerful gift. One stranger helps another stranger.”

101 people lined up to donate platelets. “This should be fun,” said a girl to her mother, “I love needles.”

Tears flowed into The Dream Sweeper.

The Language Company