The Language Company

“So you should view this fleeting world –
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.” – Diamond Sutra

*

This is what happened, more or less.

One of his names is Lucky Foot. What does that mean?

He elucidates in simple, clear, precise, concise English the language of savage barbarians.

It means, as an experience junky possessing genetic variant DRD4-R7 addicted to new adventures, he brings prosperity to merchants, rest-a-rant owners and nondescript sad, neglected, abandoned and emotionally well adjusted hot to trot red sheen women among humans struggling to survive life’s labyrinth without a center.

He gifts luck to money changers, manicure girls, beggars, banana women, landmine amputee survivors, ice and rice sellers, student-teachers, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, spies, textile merchants, weavers, artistic genius children, orphans, noodle mama, tea and java purveyors, gardeners, gravediggers, literary outlaws and craggy faced Dan, a boat captain in Hoi An who worked as an interpreter at MAC V during the Vietnam War.

Fate chance and destiny.

If he grows up he dies.

Security is an illusion.

He presents good fortune to Rita, author of Ice Girl in Banlung, barbers cleaning his ears, high-heeled sandal ladies, love sock purveyors and rent-a-life companies.

HCE. Here comes everybody.

90% of life is showing up. When he shows up their day, life, fate and glittering fortunes improve. Karmic destiny.

Fate laughed with him in Morocco on 9/11. He was in the Sahara. He did not take possession of that event and perpetual aftermath. Fear sells.

Destiny danced with him on the is-land of Amnesia in Southeast Asia and exploring Turkey, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Before returning to Nam in 2009 he lived on a string of 15,000 archipelago islands between Malaysia and Papa New Genie gathering evidence about the human condition.

Each island is a letter. If you string letters together you create a word. This word depending on your imaginary perception of truth-value may or may not have meaning for you like Beauty - your true reflection in still water.

Beauty needs no tongue.

A small journey expands life’s tapestry.

He’s a needle without a compass. His needle leads a thread. Threads weave a conversation.

Move like a river, rest like a mirror, respond like an echo.

The Language Company

Lao Girl Bubble

Leica Fotographie International (LFI) selected one of my images for their KIDS gallery.

Thanks to them and here she is. Happy, strong and brave. It's good to be alive.

Free Ice Girl 24-28th

Ice Girl in Banlung in e-book format on Amazon is free from 24-28 June.

Ice girl sells in Banlung, Cambodia. It's a wild west town south of Laos. It's near The River of Darkness and animist cemeteries.

She is an independent author/publisher. This is her story with a gonzo attitude.

She meets Leo, a wandering Chinese boy.

After being released from a Chinese Re-education through Labor unit near the Gobi he walked south.

He taught university students in Fujian how to be more human.

He walked to Hanoi, Sapa, Saigon and Laos collecting stories.

Ice girl and Leo share ideas and stories about cultures and the human condition.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Knife Sharp Man

One morning after Saigon noodles in a cold alley a man, 60 after wars and cold hard survival prematurely ages humans, sits sharpening a knife for a woman customer, redefining the steel.

No left foot. He curled his leg stump back resting it on a boot.

In the afternoon he walks past with a shuffling gait. He's wearing a green fatigue shirt, hat, motorcycle helmet, carrying his worn red plastic bag of simple tools. Knowing his truth, not knowing his story. A land mine or a stray bullet?

His left boot is an old combat relic, a discarded war object. It is split down the front.

It is brutally hot. The sun is behind him. How does he feel? Where is he going? Home for lunch and rest? Looking for more dull edges.

I am always walking, he said. I stop, find work, sit, sharpen an edge, get small money, put away my tools, put on my fake foot and walk. I eat noodles or rice on the street. I nap. I walk and work until dark. Then I go home. Home is where they have to take you in.

I am a storyteller with tools for sharpening life’s dull imperfections and sharp mirror reflections.

I am surrounded by amputees, he said. They approach me on their crutches, their hands out. They wheel themselves down the street on little trolleys, without legs, low to the ground truth.

A one-armed young man wears an old blue baseball hat. He sees local businessmen approaching. They wear fresh pressed white shirts, leather shoes and shiny silver belt buckles.

He takes off his old hat. Holds it out. It is empty. They ignore him.

He puts it on his arm stump, runs his one good hand through his black hair, puts his cap on and moves down the street. 

I am in the army now, he said, an army of the legless, the armless, armies of physically wounded forgotten humans. They know you and you know them.

Children's 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 a random life pattern across fields near a stilted bamboo home in Cambodia.

“Are you with us?” pleaded a landmine 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 of mankind’s genetic stupidity, Lucky showed Zeynep a Laos map illustrating Never-Never Land.

Lao 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 played near 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 it was 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 blissful 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 ill-informed 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, landmine victims, genocide 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 my 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.

Weaving A Life, Volume 1