carve

in a village
a girl carves
a gourd
she creates
children
families
animals
homes
forests
flowers
skies
rivers
stars
planets
delicate
lines
spirals
universes

marxist elephant control stick

An angry, frustrated, underpaid, undersexed overworked female Vietnamese teacher moonlighting as a paid Communist party member stooge admonishes her pool shark students for breaking the cue ball off green banked walls, Play the angles you idiots! she shouts, elevating her Marxist elephant CONTROL stick, stabbing them, prodding them, driving them forward, accelerating them through educational fields filled with land mines.

She pounds her stick on a bamboo podium to get their attention. She releases her repressed anger and frustration, Your fate is to put up with me! she screams. Students cower behind rote memorization rules named Fear.

Famine survives in green paddies beneath heaven’s gateless gate as emaciated farmers work steaming streaming white oxen past orphaned sex slaves selling bananas, trinkets and skin to lost scared alienated caffeinated satiated rich obese white tourists.

Vegetable lovers sleep on discarded Burmese teak furniture. Across from the restaurant behind a mud spaceship hut is an iridescent dirt playing field and elementary school. Curious disheveled smiling children stare.

In a dusty lot someone squats over a mud toilet. They shit fertilizer 7.5 miles into the center of the Earth creating earthquakes in Christchurch and Japan. Radioactive debris floods the Mississippi Delta singing the blues.

image is everything

once upon a time in cambodia i went to the barber.

i saw some glossy pictures. handsome. beguiling. 

i want to look that man, i told the barber.

do you have any money.

yes. i showed him some paper.

you have to wait.

how long.

years.

ok.

Motivation in China

Please open your creative notebook. Using a simple writing tool like a pen or #2 lead pencil I want you to consider the following questions. Please answer them using your basic English. 

Why am I here? _____ 

Am I a machine, a tool? _______ 

What exactly is a machine? ________ 

What is my motivation to learn English? Money. 

Your supervisor has instructed me to motivate you. She expects me to motivate you to complete the assigned tasks, pass the exams and arrive on time. Her management style instructed me to use fear as a form of discipline with you. We are all well aware how the power and threat of fear motivates humans. 

If I fail to motivate you and pass you I will be executed. Survival is my fear based motivation. 

Fear of starvation. Fear of poverty. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation or shame. Fear of not meeting social expectations. 

Vairochana

Namaste,

Once upon a time he went to Nepal. Specifically Boudhanath. He walked into a cafe.

A woman sat at a table with a lap top. Are you writing a book, he asked. She laughed. No, not really. I'm starting a new Buddhist magazine.

It's called Vairochana. 

Great, he said, Maybe I can help you. Ok, she said, That would be great. They became friends. He helps her with copyediting.

Pasang recently published her second issue. She included something he wrote.

You can read it hear.

 http://vairochana.com/articles/item/24-once-upon-a-time-in-nepal.html

Metta.