Mr.Tuk Tuk

A metallic Cambodian loudspeaker spoke, Now here this, The tuk-tuk is leaving in five minutes, Departing for points unknown, A massive short celestial event known as YOUR LIFE will depart in five minutes. 

You are advised to assemble all the necessary documents, certified seals of approval, water, invisible guide books, sunscreen, funny money and so on...you will visit the Mind-At-Large on your short, fast, easy tour.

Bring your life with you, And a glossy greasy Laughing Planet guidebook with heavily creased pages. If you attempt to read while moving at the speed of light or 186,000 miles per second you will discover a new sense of perspective.

You may be surprised or traumatized depending on your perception to realize your experience at Angkor is not about seeing the temples. You will DO Angkor. Get the t-shirt. Check it off your list. Less is more.

Please conclude all private and group discussions, disagreements or arguments with your fellow travelers to ascertain your destination. Talking time is finished. 

The tuk-tuk driver has his helmet and vest. His vest has a green four-digit number. If he tries to bring you into Angkor without the vest he faces massive surprises. For starters he will lose his job and have to return to his small distant isolated village where he will plant rice and provoke white cows with socialist Marxist production tools to pull the plow through mud.

The biggest dream for many young Cambodian men is to become a tuk-tuk driver. If he loses his tuk-tuk job his family will starve to death. This is a common problem here. Death by starvation. If you survive you win. 

If he dies you will be held in escrow. (Old French; a scrap, a roll of parchment)

A tuk-tuk river driver has an easy job. An easy life. He drives you to a temple and crashes out. You feed him. He takes you back where you started. He makes $15-20 for the day. 

The average Cambodian’s daily wage is $2.03.

Not a single woman in Siem Reap is a tuk-tuk driver. There are 3-4 women tuk-tuk drivers in Phnom Penh. They are as rare as clean drinking water, sanitation, hospitals and schools. Women work in massage parlors, restaurants and guest houses. They are the guest and you are the house. 

Your house has many symbolic rooms: the basement is where your unconscious lives breaths-laughs and dances where it reveals inner vision. Clean all your rooms. Take out the garbage. Explore your diverse rooms. 

Don’t sweat the small stuff, it’s all small stuff. You are the housekeeper of perception, sensation, form, symbols and nothing.

A woman doesn't work as a tuk-tuk driver because: 

-it's too dangerous

-it's inappropriate

-it's foolish

-they lack the education, intelligence, drive, initiative

-they haven't broken free of deeply ingrained social and cultural stereotypes: a woman's place is in the home, producing offspring, taking care of kids and the elderly, washing, cleaning, and cooking

-their family will kill them with love and affection

Thirty years ago a Cambodian woman was lucky to finish 9th grade. She married and stayed at home. She produced children in assembly line operations with the highest quality control standards known to modern medicine and umbilical chords.

It will take another generation before women become tuk-tuk drivers. Tisk, tisk, tuk, tuk.

Your mother was appointed to have you.

Polyommatus Blue Butterflies

Greetings,

In a series of evolutionary waves over millions of years, Nabokov theorized they started in Asia, flew over the warm Bering Strait and down to Chile. It wasn't chilly in Chile. It was warm swarming with butterflies. 

His passion as a self-taught lepidopterist into their 10 million years flight has been vindicated by gene-sequencing scientists headed by Dr. Naomi Pierce, curator of lepidoptera at Harvard. She was captivated by his idea of butterflies coming from Asia. “It was an amazing, bold hypothesis,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, my God, we could test this.’ ”

NYT, read more...

Metta.

China blue

Greetings,

Ah, what a beautful winter in China! I don't make much money as a university teacher you understand, so I use it carefully and wisely. Family is big deal here and to avoid relationship clashes of dynastic proportions, I shelled out roughly $200, or a third of my salary, for a round trip train ticket home.

After paying my totalitarian university an exorbitant rental fee for my drab, empty apartment plus electricity and water, I barely had enough left over for soggy onions, fresh spinach, tofu, rice and fruit.

Home is where, they say, the heart is. Well let me give you a little advice about that. I left my heart in San Francisco, ha. Singing, living and playing the blues, which is life's way of talking, I dutifully lugged my broken suitcase home to hearth and kin.

So much guilt, inherent DNA shame and Duty. I am overwhelmed by the heavy burden of my family's expectations.

After fulfilling all my academic responsibilities meaning pass all the students or face the dire consequences given to me by the University Authorities who, will for the sake of Social Stability and Harmonious Educational Reform Committees, remain faceless, nameless and totally obscure, I escaped from my prison.

It took twenty-two long, boring, tedious endless hours sitting in hard seat with three transfers before I reached my province near North Korea. Coltrane train stations were packed out with millions of homeless migrants, laborers and naked freezing prostitutes looking for a John and some of my favorite things like humans without a wing, hope, prayer or a lay text raincoat. The ancient Oracle predicted this reality.

Mothers and fathers formed concentric protective circles around their children to prevent thieves from stealing them. Stolen kids are a HUGE underground economy here as you may or may know. People will gladly pay large sums for a boy because they have a higher value in our free vibrant economy.

Human life is cheap here. Stealing, Selling, Trading and Buying children is how things work.

Speaking of work, I've gotta run because I must help mother with the cleaning, shopping and endless chores. If I don't perform my filial duties she may threaten to sell me. I'll be returning to my other life as a teacher after I report back for Duty and will file another report using a proxy to evade the Great Wall firewall gremlins and spies.

Metta.

 

Chalk it up to experience in a Chinese classtomb.

Taxi Girl

Where are you from?

Vietnam.

I am from here. This is my country. I am a rich businessman. You are very beautiful.

Thank you.

How much for one hour?

I played stupid. What do you mean? 

He laughed. Are you stupid? I said how much for an hour. With you.

I looked at my girlfriends. One raised her right eyebrow. Go for it.

How much are you willing to pay?

$50.00.

This was the most money I’d ever heard of. I gambled. Make it $500 for one night. I’ll take good care of you all night. Maybe you can help out my friends.

He looked at them. Five hundred is easy money, he said. Let me make a call and have another drink first.

Ok, take your time. He bought me a whiskey talking about making money, exploiting the poor, twisted business deals using connections, property development. I pretended to be interested. It was getting late. I gambled. Time’s up, I said. Are you going to help my friends? If you want me it’s $500. All night.

Ok, he said. He called someone. I have some chickens for you. He laughed and hung up. I have a place near here. Get me a taxi.

We went through dark streets and stopped at a house. Inside were two older men, drinking. They looked at the girls, paired off and disappeared. 

I was a virgin and he was my first man. It hurt like hell, he was rough but I handled it and didn’t cry in front of him. I swallowed all my bitter tears. He fucked me all night. It was brutal.

In the morning I could hardly walk. He paid me in cold hard cash. Five clean crisp hundreds.  I couldn’t believe it. I gave Miss Tan her cut and she was very happy.

The pain will pass, she said. Get used to it. I was in business. Easy. Turn on the charm, smile a lot, dress up, be smart, gamble, be open to suggestions, don’t drink too much and be ready, willing and able. Be a passive machine. Close your heart. Pretend you’re somewhere else.

That’s how I became a taxi girl. I was beautiful and tough. A girl has to make a living. 

open 3rd eye

 

open your third eye

see more
be more
direct perception
imagination
breath

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_eye

Metta.