Ice please

In another incarnation they were naked in a meadow. I am blind. He is deaf. Millions have Usher syndrome.

We hold hands. Skin is our unified quantum field theory of tactile language. Beyond feeble illiterate words. Fate introduced us at an NGO charity ball, Save The Children Now & Forever.

Deaf is a famous concert pianist. Blind is an Angkor Wat explorer. She scaled 88 keys seeking tonal quality, perfect pitch and frequency. He explored her twin peaks, smooth geography, labyrinths, valleys, hall of dancers and thick topographical jungle foliage.

They had a tacit agreement to be gentle and kind together. Peel my skin like sweet aromatic fruit, she whispered. I am your skin mistress. One must sacrifice the peel to enjoy the fruit. Play my flute, he moaned.

*** 

Remember this, Leo said to Ice Girl in Banlung. In China we learn the less we do the fewer mistakes we make. The fewer mistakes we make the less we are criticized. I remain safe and happy. It’s called THE SYSTEM. Brainwashed. You see this in all Asian educational systems.

Students shuffle in, remove their brains, soak them in a cleaning solution, which is not the solution for fifty tedious minutes and replace said gray matter at the end of class. It’s endemic. Command and control procedures. Big Brother is watching you. Save face. The fear of public humiliation is greater than the fear of death. Karma is the universal law.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Flower's Hands

“What do you recall during the one-hour full body massage with blind Flower at Seeing Hands?”

”Her hands were all. Her hands were water, air, earth and fire. Soft gentle sensations. Learning, sensing, feeling her physical sense. Engaging her senses. Touch was her essence. She knew all the pressure points.”

“Soft, medium or hard," Flower asked.

During her therapeutic touch and go he discovered ideas and structure and form and literary vulgarity. He slowed down inside the labyrinth.

A writer is a dwarf, invisible and must survive.

Flower whispered, “I don’t like sleeping alone. It’s boring.”

It’s easy to remember loving Flower’s soft, deep real tactile sensations. She knew how to please a stranger’s skin. She lived in the middle way. Her middle way was breathing, and awareness. Her middle way was acceptance and loving kindness. Wisdom, patience and gratitude. Non-attachment.

“Eat the world with your blind eyes,” she said.

“Yes my Flower, yes.”

“Dead or blind, there’s no difference," Flower said. “People who cause you difficulties, you should think of them as very valuable teachers because they provide you with the opportunity to develop patience.”

flowering tears

neurotic tourists leafed temples

flowers waved goodbye

we grow without you

elephant cried

freedom

Ministry of tourism

Welcome to The Ministry of Tourism in Kampot.

It's near The Ministry of Fear and The Ministry of Truth.

You can't miss it.

It's next to The Genocide Museum. S-21. 

2,000,000 skulls are waiting for you.

They are delighted to have company in their silent vigil. 

Colonial French buildings will delight your memory of commercial conquest.

It's all a facade. 

Kampot is a sleepy little southern river town.

It is famous for pepper. Pass the sneeze please.

Quack-quack.

Hold hands. Relationships are precious. Life is short.

Let's have a look-see.

Lao kid

I’m a big seven as in 7, said an omniscient reliable Lao narrator.

Your life is not a test or a dress rehearsal. If it is an actual life your invisible friend will protect you from ignorance and fear.

My dad's not very smart. It's probably his DNA. A string theory of letters. Genetics. Gee. Net. Icks. 

Let me give you a kind-hearted example of his stupidity. It's the rainy season here in Laos. Slashing squalling delicious rain. Soft, cool, soothing. Like tears. Cry me a river.

It's pouring like honey. What’s dear old dad do? He washes his silver van in a downpour. Smart eh? Yeah, he’s trying to impress dry watchers with his intelligent hose running wealthy water over rain. Cleaning. He ignores me mostly.

Grandmother sits on the faded 1924 white austere colonial dark brown balcony folding banana leaves for a ceremony. Every morning at dawn she walks to the muddy road and offers wandering Buddhist monks a handful of rice. She burns incense at the family altar. She nurtures her shrinking garden after her son decided to plant a cement parking lot. What a clever little man.

Grandfather stares at rain on flower petals collecting in pools.

Father's very busy. He disappears for hours. Drinking beer with friends. Playing around with a secret squeeze in dark places. She’s starving for affection and cash. A poor girl from a poor family needs to make a living, poor thing.

My mom's also really smart. What’s the difference between smart and clever? After the rain, when it's dry and the smallest full moon of the year rises above the Mekong before a river festival filled with floating orange flowers and burning candles she burns all the plastic garbage. Yeah, yeah. Burn baby burn. Light my fire.

It's a sweet smell let me tell you. Like that Duvall character saying, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Kinda like that smell. What's the word? Acrid. 

When she's not burning plastic trash she sweeps. Broom music. Stone cold. She cooks. She pretends to be busy. She's a baby machine. What's another mouth? She manages the home, kids and cash. In China I’m worth $3,500 on the stolen kid market. My sister would have been aborted.

Mom ignores me mostly. She's very busy doing her humble mother routine. Later, she squawks. She's a soft kind later.

People here like parents and teachers and lazy passive humans love to pretend to be busy. I guess it gives their short life meaning.

Milling around is an art form with style. Hemingway had style. Fitzgerald had style and class.

We are soft and kind. We have a good heart. We are not as mercenary as the Vietnamese. We drift through your sensation, perception and consciousness with the grace of a cosmic Lepidoptera in a strong wind. The trick is to tolerate, with kindness and patience, your great teacher, the bland empty-eyed star gazing starrers and hustlers. Bored after five minutes they lose interest and leave you be. Zap, like a zig-zag lightning bolt. Gone. Zap.

Vietnamese plant rice.

Cambodians watch it grow.

Laotians listen to it grow.

Ain’t nature a great teacher?

For cultural, historical, educational, environmental, emotional, intellectual and economic reasons milling around is a popular daily activity. This unpleasant fact cannot be denied or ignored or forgotten like a missing leg.

It needs to be up front because it is a clear immediate danger and way of life.

Limited opportunities, unregulated population growth, substandard education, no medicine, no hope and inconclusive futures enhance Milling Around. It kills time alleviating boredom, the dreaded lethargic tedious disease.

Milling Around kills the human spirit. No initiative. Period. How sweet. How charming. It’ll take another generation to clean it up. Cambodia and Lao and Vietnam are alive with ghosts.

Their existence is one long perpetual distraction. Say what?

You may as well do what you love because you're going to spend most of your life doing it. Breed and work. That’s what I say.

I’m too young to know much. I know what I don’t know. Anyway, I need to finish my school paper on developing moral character with social intelligence, grit, self-control, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity.

How do you build self-control and grit?

Through failure, said the boy. There are two kinds of character.

What are they?

Moral character is fairness, generosity, and integrity. Performance character is effort, diligence, and perseverance. Kids need challenges to grow. Like hardships and deprivation. Yeah, it’s trial and error and taking risks.

Thanks for the life lesson. You are the future of Laos.