Out of Ha Noi train station

Now that I am back I begin at the beginning. A good place to start. I'm not one of those travelers running into guesthouses or hotels to get ON LINE! to post daily. I slow down. I make notes and art in my Moleskine. I doodle. Computers are useless. They only give you answers. I make images. I spend quality time with people I meet along the way. Everyone is an artist.

After returning to my base, I sift through notes, upload images and create a minor masterpiece. So it goes.

I left on the 9th. At the train station near tracks I passed the "Free W.C. House," yes, a free W.C. With WiFi? Electronic crap-a-rama. Go with the flow. Delete from system.

It felt great to put on the pack, walk through the narrow lanes (a la China) get to the street, get a bike, get to the station early, get some green tea, get to platform #7 between trains, get a sleeping berth in a room for four. Riding the rails, this rhythm. Comfortable mid-week - no humanity crush. 

Yes, this pack, the weight and these steps in old Timberland walking shoes bought in Ankara in the fall of 2007. Since then plenty of terrain in comfort; Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam; Ha Noi, Hue, Hoi An and now destined for Sapa, mountains, trails, rocks, water and good dirt leaving footprints on Earth's surface.

It's a walking meditation. All this rapturous joy. This synthesis of love.

Metta. 

Walking home through the maze. She's had along day. Selling.

Riding the rails

Thanks for your patience. The 2015 Lao Cai express to Ha Noi pulled in at 0430. I rested in an crammed narrow upper sleeping berth.

A boisterous group of Thailand tourists on a quick four-day "buy and see," from Elephant Town wrestled impossible suitcases and cheap Chinese appliances into the passageway. Their young leader works for Herbal Life and freelances as a tour guide. He leaned over and with unmitigated glee displayed his lapel pin with the company logo and heart. 

"Wow!" I exclaimed, "It's all natural!"

After brushing aside the Ha Noi taxi touts my dream sweeper collected dreams from the sleeping monkeys.

Sapa was magnificent, just what this little explorer needed for a peaceful, awesome, fresh aired human and nature connection. Bliss. Mountains, fog, mist, clouds, rain, sun, valleys, rivers. Beautiful people. You know you're in the zone when 10 days feels like 10 aeons. 

Armed with my trusty Moleskine, camera tools and an open heart-mind I ventured forth. I will create galleries for your visual enjoyment and share Sapa stories along the way.

Metta.

Passage tell-e-vision

Yes, this is the Truth channel. Do not attempt to adjust your set. Eyeballs perhaps but not the set. Game, set, match. You will be happy to know that television continues to dumb down the population around the planet.

For example, I was walking through the very narrow concrete passageway either to or from the street of dreams where I eat with construction workers, and allow Jasmine to develop confidence with her English for an hour as impatient motorcycle people hurrying home beep-beep-beep negotiating a thin street filled with kids, elderly walkers, young exercise addicts going or coming from the park across from clogged streets,

women carrying bamboo baskets filled with vegetables, bricks, recycled steel, bread and dreams mixed with residents sitting on tiny plastic kindergarten chairs crowding home/store fronts, drinking beer, peeling, peeing, cooking, eating, in brief - living

inside the narrow as I passed numerous open portal homes made of sliding accordion gates nestling motorcycles in the front room, I saw and heard vast volumed images flickering their phosphorescence, their

marketing and economic messages into brain faces of kids, parents, grandparents and ancestors. An old women sat slumped against a door frame staring at the box. She hasn't seen the sky for years. If she looks left and up she can see a slight sliver shiver. That's it.

Let's eat! Let's watch TV! Give me your consciousness. Everyone is happy. Life is good.

Metta.

Authorized to speak truth

According to me, speaking on the condition of anonymity because I am not authorized to reveal the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth:

1. truth is classified. The source of truth concerning Everything is classified. Ossified.

Yes, I am authorized to say, with complete anonymity that truth is filtered, it is compartmentalized, abstracted, excerpted, sliced, diced, parsed, fossilized and classified. It hides inside a deeply buried locked black box. The key is classified. The key is not on a social network site designed to distract.

The key is, for the Time Being, a woman somewhere in India carrying the world on her back. She's the key. 

2. truth is a joke. The source of truth concerning jokes is classified. I am not authorized to reveal the joke. The big joke, the laugh track. Your tears speak streak truth, mangling truth.

3. truth is a myth. The source of the myth is classified. Read it and weep. As Antonio Porchia well said, (he was authorized to speak) - "Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides." 

4. truth is the Next BIG Thing. It will modify seeds providing billions of humans with a genetic food source.

5. truth will provide more than 1 billion people with access to safe drinking water.

6. truth will enable literacy for 850,000,000 million people worldwide who cannot read. Woman are 2/3 of this number.

7. truth will employ 2.8 billion people surviving on less than $2 a day. Truth will employ 1.1 billion people existing on less than $1 a day.

8. truth will assist 70% of the people in the "developing" world having no access to electricity in their homes, health clinics and schools.

Truth is a fatal disease, like love. A sledgehammer.

Metta.

Two Kids

Two kids are talking.

The kid from the West said, "Where did I come from?"

The kid from the East said, "How did I grow?"

Metta.