cement

so, said the seven-year young genius, tell me another story about lazy passive stupid people. 

that's a lot of adjectives, said traveler.

what's an adjective?

it's your father deciding to tear out the garden and plant a cement parking lot at his home-guesthouse along the mekong river.

really? i didn't know adjectives is are was were capable of so much destruction and chaos.

o my yes. your grandmother got down on her knees begging him to save the garden. he ignored her.

ignoring people here is a gentle way of life. subtle and effective. reality therapy.

he shamed her into silence.

i am building a new laos. a new cement empire, he proclaimed.

what did grandmother do? 

she rearranged her remaining trees, shrubs, orchids in a shrinking green corner.

she watered with tears. she got down on knees crying, thanking buddha for good dirt.

 

one chinese girl

One joy about self publishing was selecting the cover photograph.

Her image spoke emotional honesty. She was trapped behind the steel grate, a hard grey Chinese educational formation of her childhood in the poor village of Maija in a remote area near the university. Her eyes held world secrets and potential.

She stared at the man, a stranger, a diversion in her universe. Her sisters and schoolmates pushed against her. She was trapped against the gate. It was locked. He was on the other side.

 He held a small black machine up to his eye. She heard a click. The shutter opened and closed, trapping time, trapping her image on a memory card. He smiled, thanked her and disappeared on his dirty black mountain bike.

She had no way of knowing. Her image finding a book cover. Her child eyes there for everyone to see. Stories about stories and the girl in some alchemical manifestation lived breathing and aware of her immortality. 

He’d visited her primary school to sing and dance. Speaking strange unintelligible words. His laughter and kindness were a relief after the autocratic, punishing manner of bored illiterate women teachers. They didn't want to be here any more than the kids.

No one had a choice here. You did what you were told to do in a harmonious society filled with social stability ordered from Beijing.

A long distant dream far away from a poor village where people tilled soil following oxen in dirt, mud and rice paddies. 

artificial

We decipher riddles, forecast speechless tongues sensing passion.

We accept ignorance in quicksilver’s desperate wandering. Boredom carves a niche in a soul. 

I hang laundry near the street. Memory is tempered by the slow heat of talking monkeys. Two boys walk past harvesting trash. One barefoot boy plays silent music with a long thin bamboo fiber.

The other twirls a walking stick carrying a plastic bag. His stick is used for prodding bags and garbage.

Local people mill around. Bored. They exist in their adolescent immature childlike wisdom. Passive is their inherent religious cultural nature. 

Others voice imaginary alien freedom concepts. 

A sofa attached to a roof towed by a motorcycle carries fat white Europeans to see 9th century temples.

A young man named Eternity wearing his new skin tight artificial plastic leg and artificial plastic left foot shuffles through dust. 

i am a slave

He realizes through my movements I was born to dance. 

My gratitude is stillness. There is a big difference between sitting still and doing nothing. 

I smell roses. I swallow fresh orange juice. I engage all my senses in direct, immediate experience. He cannot save me from my destiny. He can only allow the process to open.

He talks to me with non-speech one overcast day. He brought me apples, oranges and mangoes. He pretends our passion is a glimmer of want’s potential desire in the long now.

Inside my deep eyes, a mischief of strangers comfort each other without discrimination. 

I am a singularity. 

fill in the blank

“We’ve allocated a percentage to Asian sweat shops,” said a textile importer.

“To be specific, China, Thailand, Saipan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Burma and Cambodia — where one-third of the 60 million people make less than 56¢ a day. Laotian factory slaves are working overtime.

"They have absolutely no choice in the matter and a buck a day is a hell of a deal. Once the feds and W.T.O. leave us alone we should realize a handsome profit when all is said and done.”

“That’s nothing,” said an analyst, “it’s a two prong effort. We’ll construct air bases and military installations to control Middle East air space and two, we’ll let American corporations buy all the

(fill in the country here)

assets. We’re sitting on vast oil fields. Sweetmeat.”

“Perfect,” said the V.P. “Where’s my cut?” staring at a fleischer dripping blood.

A security advisor spoke. “Last March we launched the largest psychological operations in our 225 year history. We have eleven Psychological Operations Companies with 1,000 PSYOP personnel working to sway

(fill in the country here)

to join the rebuilding effort.”

“Are the PSYOP leaflets proving effective?” asked Colonel Sanderson with extra crispy clipped wings on his shoulders. He was molting. “We want them to see the democratic side of our occupation and walk on the bright side of life.”

“It’s a fine line, but propaganda is more based on untruth,” said a philosopher. “Their illiteracy rate is pretty high,” snarled a shoeless education major from Oxford.