1st International Beggar Conference

“We are not here for a long time. We are here for a good time,” laughed Meaning, a twelve-year old survivor wearing a ragged Beware of Land Mines skull and crossbones t-shirt and prosthesis leg scampering her random life pattern across fields near a stilted bamboo home in Cambodia.

  “Are you with us?” pleaded a land mine child survivor removing shrapnel with an old rusty saw after stepping in heavy invisible shit, “or are you against us?”

  She‘s been turned out and turned down faster than a housekeeper ironing imported Egyptian threaded 400-count linen. No lye.

  The thermostat of her short sweet life seeks more wattage. She faces a severe energy shortage if she doesn’t find food.

  She’s one of 26,000 men women and children maimed or killed every year by land mines from forgotten conflicts. Reports from the killing fields indicate 110 million land mines lie buried in 68 countries.

  It costs $3.00 to bury a landmine.

  It costs $300–$900 to remove a mine. It will cost $33 billion to remove them. It will take 1,100 years. Governments spend $200-$300 million a year to detect and remove 10,000 mines. Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan and Laos are the most heavily mined countries in the world.

  40% of all land in Cambodia and 90% in Angola go unused because of land mines. One in 236 Cambodians is an amputee.

  Expanding her awareness, Lucky showed Zeynep a Laos map illustrating Never-Never Land.

  Laos Please Don’t Rush is the most heavily bombed country in history.

  25% of villages in Laos are contaminated with UXO.

  Upwards of 30% of the bombs dropped on Laos failed to detonate. 80 million unexploded bombs remain in Laos.

  More than half of the UXO victims are children.

Meaning hears children crying as doctors struggle to remove metal from her skin. She cannot raise her hands to cover her ears. Perpetual crying penetrates her heart. Tears of blood soak her skin. The technical mine that took her right leg away one fateful day as she walked along village rice paddies expanded outward at 7,000 meters per second. Ball bearings shredded everything around her heart-mind.

  It may have been an American made M16A1, shallow curved with a 60-degree fan shaped pattern. The lethal range was 328 feet. Or maybe a plastic Russian PMN-2 disguised as a toy. She never saw it coming after stepping on the pressure plate. Fortunately or unfortunately she didn’t die of shock and blood loss. A stranger stopped the bleeding, checked her pulse and injected her with 200cc of morphine. Strangers in a strange land carried morphine.

Cut the heavy deep and real shit, said a female Banlung shaman.

Fear is a tough sell unless it’s done well, well done, marinated, broiled, stir-fried, over easy, or scrambled.

Fear is ignorance.

Meanwhile, the 1st International Beggar Conference convened in Toothpick, a wasteland near Bright Hope - a rusting rustic dream of exploratory ways and means with scientific cause and effect and logical rational certainty.

It was chaired by a distinguished group of Cambodian orphans.

 NGO Fascists rented 12,000 orphans out to fake humanitarian organizations. Abandoned youth pleaded with rich donors for marketing and branding money to feed international guilt and shame.

“Let’s eat,” said a fat banker moments before his yacht hit an iceberg in 2008.

“What you don’t see is fascinating,” said Zeynep, “like roots below the surface of appearances.”

“We have so much ice and they have so little,” said an Icelandic chess player attacking Death.

“Everyone comes to me. My patience is infinite,” said Death. "I make only one move and it's always the correct one."

Beggars, land mine victims, survivors and sick and tired dehydrated dying starving neglected humans from 195 countries convened in sequestered committee rooms filled with suits, scholars, academics, UN personnel, CIA analysts, NGO profit motivated scam reps, IMF bankers and plastic ornamental steering mechanisms.

“We agree to disagree,” said Rich Suit.

“The enemy of your enemy is my friend,” said Wage Slave.

Orphans, beggars and children spoke about slave labor, hunger, exploitation, corruption, human trafficking, corrupt police states and the terrorism of economic poverty.

“Bad luck,” said a rich slave. “That’s a you problem, not a my problem.”

Children addressing global media held press conferences focusing jaundiced eyes on lenses, recorders and bleeding pens. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Sound bites sang starvation’s misery.

If it bleeds it leads.

Incoming! Bleeding hearts ran for cover.

Orphan motions for adjudication, arbitration, fairness, equality and equity were tabled for further deliberation and discussion nowadays.

The average monthly wage was $37 in a Bangladesh clothing factory. 350,000 Cambodian women making $61/month stitched garments for Korean export companies.

Give someone a sewing machine and with a little luck they’ll feed their family. Let’s Eat.

From a novella to be abandoned.

in transit forever

They gave him a green plastic transit card. He asked about seeing the world through new eyes.

A kind woman showed him how to slip past metal detectors and immigration.

It is a somnambulistic place. People sit whispering. Ten Europeans, couple of Brazilians, a few Lao. 

Outside the terminal are mountains, gray skies, white clouds.

Pakse is a small southern Lao town known for Khmer artifacts and access to dolphins avoiding dam projects. 

Just go. Go as in walk away. Be in transit forever.

It's simple. Just go. Stand up, start walking.

That's how adventures begin.

The only challenge is never leaving Laos. Never going to a border or exit/entry point. Ever never again.

Stay here forever and a day.

The great man belongs to history.

The great artist belongs to eternity.

Mandalay, Myanmar

He's in Myanmar. Opportunity knocked. He answered. 

Hello, said Opportunity. Would you like to help others in Mandalay?

Never been there. It's open now.

Yes it is.

Yes, thanks when?

Next week.

Lets go.

On the ground. Efficient immigration. Business visa at small clean airport an hour from Mandalay.

You need a clean $50.

Myanmar money exchanges will not accept creased folded bills. Get a stack of new $100's.

Pleasant happy people. Smiles. Smiles. Smiles. 

Agrarian. Innate joy. Early stages of expression. Hard economics. Simple life. Street markets.

Pleasant atmosphere. Heart-space. Gentle people. Soft spoken. Light.

on an Irish Bus

I turned the mirror toward them. The women looked into gleaming glass. They saw their past, present and future lives all rolled into one powerful flash of light. It was a vision reflecting their joy, sadness, regrets, hope, charity, wisdom and love. The looking glass showed them their birth, middle age and death.

They saw An Gort a Mor, the great hunger and sat back sucking air.

Carrigart was the edge of their world.

“I see,” Mary said, looking up and straight into my blue eyes. They reminded her of a snow leopard, a wild, sharply focused nocturnal predator comfortable at higher elevations existing in an independent, solitary way.

“Then,” I said smiling, pointing to the red typewriter, “I download the images into this,” sliding the talisman mirror into my pocket.

“Of course, it’s a manual. They don’t make them like that anymore. Better than staring at a small screen full of radioactive electrons and clicking on a mouse.”

“I should say not,” Mary said. She preferred lead sharpened to a point.

I was trapped on an endless ride to the edge of my life. More questions. Where was I from, what’s America like, why did I leave the land of milk and honey as locals so well put it. On and on. Was I married? No. Did I miss my family?

“No, not really. My grandfather, named Malarkey, immigrated from Sligo during the famine, married Hanna Haley in St. Louis, ended up in Colorado Springs where my folks were born and my rudimentary research at Dublin Castle indicated genealogical records burned in a Sligo church fire years back.”

So much for hard circular factual data.

“My family, while emotionally cold, distant and abusive yet well-intentioned, kind and loving were dysfunctional, trying to understand my vagabond spirit nature. They had no choice in the matter and by now they’re used to receiving strange word-strings full of mysterious symbolism and tragic truths from diverse twilight zones. I transmit between crystals and gringsing decorated with universal binary codes.”

“Really now?” said Mary.

“Yes, I gave my folks a world map for their anniversary. They loved it, inviting friends, neighbors and strangers over for trivia games using postmarks, stamps, decals, flotsam, thread, needles, bark, cactus fiber, beads, charts of tributaries, topographical maps, animal skins, hieroglyphics, and Tibetan prayer wheels with Sanskrit characters.

“They caressed burned broken shards of Turkish pottery, Chinese bamboo brushes dripping blood, torn out pages from esoteric Runes, Paleolithic fertility symbols, vitreous unusual writing, and one of my favorites, a Quetzalcoatl image full of written narration based on the oral performances of Central American myths.

“Fascinating,” said Deirdre.

“Yes, I gave them Olmec nahuales shamans containing animal powers dating back to 1200 B.C. speaking their wisdom. They blended the spirituality and intellect of man with the ferocity and strength of the Jaguar to create their nahuales. Their soul required an animal medium to travel from the earth to the heavens and into the underworld.

“Additional cultural reminders were beautiful blank black mirrors. Some displayed faces others contained scripts written backwards with stories of people, geographies, forbidden objects, and a box called Pandora.

“This was one of their favorite things. They never knew, from one exploration to the next, what they’d find in the box I sent them from the journey. One realization they experienced with Pandora was how they behaved differently listened more, spoke less, almost as if they were communicating via telepathy or kinesthetic dimensions, within the exotic flow of spirit energies bathing them in a crystal light. They slowed down.

“Yes, they didn’t know what to make of it whenever something mysterious, fascinating, and totally intriguing reached them from General Delivery far away from their daily existence working to pay for a house mortgage, car, food, terrorism insurance and child care.

“You don’t say,” said Mary. 

Excerpt from Subject to Change, A Century is Nothing.

a Century is Nothing - backstory

In 2007, while living and teaching English in China he self-published A Century is Nothing, a literary memoir.

This after receiving fifty rejection letters from literary agents, "No thanks...doesn't meet our needs...it's not mainstream for the general reader...too many characters...too long..."

The first thing a literary agent considers when reading a query, synopsis and the first five pages is, "Can I make 15% on this?"

Traditional publishing is a casino. A crap shoot. 50 Shades of Gravy is a perfect example.

After research he selected iUniverse, a print-on-demand company in the United States of Amnesia.

Print-on-demand offfered publishing packages and he figured, "What the hell. Release the monster." He paid. 

They sent him an eighteen-page critique and structural suggestions. He implemented some and ignored others. He line edited the beast. He submitted a cover image and selected the design.

Six months later he received a hard copy in Turkey where he taught English. He opened the bulky brown envelope. The book slid onto the table. Thump!

The young Chinese girl's curious eyes stared at him from the cover. He'd made the image at a nursery school in a Fujian village. Her eyes said hello, I made it.

He felt grateful and elated. He turned pages, smelling paper, scanning ink. Wow, this is amazing. He also felt detached, knowing it was a deep letting go. It didn't belong to him now. It lived in the world. It was free.

The production company sent his friend in Amnesia 40 copies as part of the publishing agreement. He sent them to friends so they could read adventures. The POD had served its purpose. 

In 2007, about a thousand years ago in the world of technology, E-book publishing was in its infancy. Now it's a viable alternative to POD and traditional publishers.

He canceled the agreement with iUniverse this fall and took control of the book. He printed it. He pulled out a red pen and slashed it. Into pieces.

In the process he created a smaller, lo-fat, slim version entitled, Subject to Change, his original working title. After revising (the party) he printed it, edited it again and published it on Amazon and Smashwords. Wa La.

He turned his attention to A Century is Nothing and repeated the process. Writing is re-writing or polishing.

He created a 2nd Edition with a new cover image and bought ISBNs from Bowker. He published it on Amazon and Smashwords as a paperback and E-book at a reasonable price. It ain't about the money. It's about the journey.

No editor or POD is going to drink champange from his skull. 

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Now you know the process. 

If it meets your read needs review it on Amazon (good, bad, ugly) and drop him a line. Sharing is caring. Thanks!

Happy reading!