Tell me a secret

Greetings,

Ostim: an industrial wasteland manufacturing zone near Ankara.

It's time to go a wandering...inside the reality magic show, welcoming the opportunity, the gift as it is to receive, shifting into another zone of influence and experiential discovery. (Bursa)

As they know you are leaving, this distant. Perhaps they have repressed, regressed into their real way. I appreciated seeing, knowing, understanding how it is, how some people feel, O so sad and withdrawn in their personal way. Their Zen: Awareness. Moment. 

As usual my ghost moves through a transparent knowing. Tell me a secret. Screwing up is a virtue.

Sit by the cafe window. Sky, clouds filled with light: gray production pollution, dust, winter icicles, vapor, yellow haze, solitary birds on wing, rolling and tumbling...this small cafe and sky window, the kind Kurdish woman's hospitality, her delicious manta, a sanctuary from the chaos.

Take the 1310 metro to Ostim. Strange industrial landscape where men cannot afford gloves inside childhood's winter. Remove their hats and make monkey groom females in exchange for sex, and all the capital people slog in their struggle

remembering Rumi, how a human being is a kind of conversation, dancing down all the days of early winter clean cold silent

The art and elements of a Japanese folding placemat: shapes, designs, edges, art. Free form, free spirit. Play.

Draw, paint, sing, dance, disappear. Seize the day.

I love the smell of garbage in Cambodia.

Metta.

Human business plan.

Nature's business plan.

Drone on

Greetings,

After class I am walking on green carpeted space (imagining I'm in a small sleepy Cambodian river town) listening to two Frenchmen talk about their boring travels using a Lonely Planet book,

ok, it's a lonely planet, it's Earth after all, understanding how their experience contains all the wisdom of the same-same but different philosophy - what did they expect on a beautiful blue marble dancing in space

droning on like a Predator drone zeroing in on Afghan mountains where shrouded cloth covered humans cowering on THEIR lonely planet inside remote mountain caves near impossible borders

wait for the droning tourists to assault their position with illiterate guides: Sleep here. Eat here. Go here.

Armed with the sharp attentive diamond eyes, a precious precocious girl wrote words with red ink using a new Chopin piston fountain pen on this onion skinned Moleskine paper. It is a medium. M. It has a weight, a heft, a thick solid feel to its base, the black resin manifesting the ink, visceral realists. 

Savoring a feeling of tactile sensation - this nib, this edge of finding small joy seeing ink flow, this tactility, this delightful smooth flow, she dances a singularity.

It was a joy, slow and precise dancing ink on paper. The Art of Writing.

Simple on lonely planet.

Metta.

The library at Beng Mealea on a living planet.

Art Women

Greetings,

The sewing woman returned to her guesthouse early with her girlfriend to change clothes, spit into red roses and splash water on her face.

She kick started her cycle and they went to the market, deep inside the labyrinth to her corner stall. She unlocked multiple locks, stacked wooden shutters and dragged out her sewing machine, ironing board and iron.

She lined up manikins. They wore her work: exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling faux-paws silver stars, moons, and small round reflecting balls. Her work was for women needing refinement, special elaborate occasions; weddings, funerals and engagements.

She did good work and stayed busy. Serious fittings and adjustments. 

Her sewing universe: process, fabric, measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, sewing machine treadle, edges, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections, ironing.

Inside this slow prism threads of nets flashed light and shadow, needles danced through cloth in endless conversations. The needles talked about traditional values and the opportunity cost. They perform quick precise calculations to establish a stop-loss figure

smashing blocks of ice inside a bag with a blunt instrument creating a symphony of hips rolling outside these unspoken words as a homeless man with a pair of tired brown pants thrown over a shoulder using a solid walking stick sits down to rest and shy women avert their beautiful seductive deep pool eyes

women manipulate stacks of printed government issued paper trusting a perceived value in exchange for goods: meat, fruit, gold, fabric, counting and arranging denominations inside broken beams of light, cracked cement, lost mislaid wooden planks, debris, feathers,

jungles, jangled waves surveying commercial landscapes with the quick dispatch of dialects as Black H'mong girls far away near Sapa rivers and waterfalls express their creation story

Metta.

 

 

S-21

Greetings,

This is from Wikipedia.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. Tuol Sleng in Khmer; [tuəl slaeŋ] means "Hill of the Poisonous Trees" or "Strychnine Hill".

Here are the security rules at the S-21 prison.

When prisoners were first brought to Tuol Sleng, they were made aware of ten rules that they were to follow during their incarceration. What follows is what is posted today at the Tuol Sleng Museum; the imperfect grammar is a result of faulty translation from the original Khmer:

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.

2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.

9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

read more...

Metta.

Sign 101

Greetings,

As I've said before in the long now, this is the land of MILLING AROUND. You are an object of endless fascination. A stranger in a strange land. 

Five boys stand around watching with their curious eyes. They are polite and friendly. They SIGN to speak. Their hands are wings in space. They are from Epic Arts. 

A boy signs to his friend, You only take this ride once.

His friend signs, Stay well grounded and do not fear risk.

Her friend signs, If you want to do amazing things you have to take amazing risks.

Her friend signs, Reveal. Bear witness. Be honest. Be visible.

His friend signs, Honor the muse in whatever way she comes.

A girl signs, They stare at you from the vacuum of their eyes and say would you like to make a deal?

He signs, Buy a ticket take the ride.

She signs, Can we find inside of us a source of inspiration?

He signs, My path is Light.

She sings, Phenomena is ambivalent.

A sign land of vacant hope. A sign people of broken distractions. Where attention span is limited to the stimuli of elastic necks. Life is an accident. A cruel joke. Riders slow down on bikes, motorcycles to survey the disaster in a clean 360 degree arc. 

What is louder than a group of voiced Khmer people? Another group of voiced Khmer people. It's a small miracle anyone can understand anything when they, Voiced Ones, are so busy all talking, speaking, asking at once. Because they are more interested in what THEY have to say the volume naturally increases exponentially. 

They don't get it. Cognitive dissonance.

Someone wants to understand before they are understood.

Two kids are talking. One from the west said, "Where did I come from?"

The kid from the east said, "How did I grow?"

A writer said, Your potential will always go unfulfilled unless it is accompanied by the daily grind of back breaking labor. Nobody wants to hear this. It is not a cheerful message. Writing is a disease. Either you can't stop it or in another case you can't start.

See with soft eyes. Signing off.

Metta.