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Entries in attitude (41)

Sunday
Mar102024

Fly

Ireland.

One night a Donegal fly arrives while I’m typing.

It lands on the lampshade.

A muse watchdog fly, one eye, many eyes.

It rubs its feelers together in anticipation of finishing off someone’s meal. Flies have lived on Earth for 93 million years. They symbolize death and decay.

There is no food lying around, only papers, magnifiers, books and clothing.

The fly’s aware of magic power and pure intention drawing it to the writer. The lamp is hot. The wind is cold. The fly reads my mirror mind, sees bleeding fingers, feeling the loneliness and freedom.

Fly appreciates and comprehends this must go down just as it must land to rub it’s feelers together sitting on the precipice of light beams with wonder, fury, delight, ramifications, responsibility and repose. Karmic fate.

-I saw you from a foreign window, said fly. -You were on a path.

-True. Suffering is an illusion. It’s a grand precious adventure. The road is made by walking. It’s a long walk.

-Seems full of fools, dead ends, bookends, trails, trials, tribal ramifications and tribulations. Where is the beauty and truth in this tale? Where is the narrative structure? Where is the plot of formless form?

-We live in a world of forms. It’s in the exposition. The big show. It’s in the thread of fates’ fabric. How do I know where it will go? Part of my job is to gather material, get out of the way and allow a writer to organize it. I’m lucky to get it down and figure it out later. I’m a conduit. I’m a figment of your imagination.

-So it would appear, said fly, -who lives it, writes it, rewrites it, polishes it, reads it, kills it, ignores it, abandons it. I am a drop of water on your mirror. Feed wild birds daily crumbs. Water flies from sky. It explodes into earth. I disappear into dust. Burn baby burn. Cry baby cry.

-You’re a fly. An insect. Short attention span, like some humans I’ve met. No attention span? No problem.

-Hey. Take it easy. Listen. Stay focused. Stay on task. You were in the jungle, the real deal amigo. You were dazed and confused, stupid, naive, dressed in green, following blind orders. Blind led the blind. You were the willing doing the ridiculous for the ungrateful. You survived to tell the tale. Give me a break. Start with one true declarative sentence. Punctuation is a nail. Write what you know. Write the ending and work backwards. Center ripples out. Use verbs and nouns. Murder adjectives and adverbs. Use active tense. Give me dirty realism. Surface. Write with passion. Keep it simple. Seduce the reader.

-It was hot and humid. It was November. I was a climatic cinematic spotlight-floodlight focus. I was a thick stream of gracious fear, healthy doubt, glorious uncertainty, wild adventure and unlimited surprise. 

-How did you feel?

-Shit, I was young and scared. Apprehensive. We were all young and petrified & naive packed into a tin can flying low over green jungles. I smelled the green lieutenant’s shit next to me skimming jungles before they opened the doors, before some sergeant got on yelling at us to get out and get going. We walked down the stairs into heat exploding off pavement. A brown and white striped tent waved in the distance. We walked toward it. There were hundreds of guys yelling and screaming at us.

-So what. Kinda Blue by Miles Davis

-Man it was weird, I gotta tell ya. All these guys in earth  brown uniforms, caked with dirt laughing, smiling, yelling, crying, taunting us, thanking us for bringing in their plane, yelling “man we’re going home, what’s your honey’s name jack and I’ll take good care of her, man am I short,” all kinds of verbal incantations.

-So what. (take 2)

-You don’t get it do you? Man we were just getting there and I said, shit here I am at 19 and I’ve got 365 days to go. These guys are done, finished, out of here and it was the biggest longest looking instant of future time in the immediate present tense sense you could imagine. I couldn’t even begin to see it, 365 what? Are you kidding me? Others went into shock knowing they had no idea what was in front of them, only seeing 365 days staring them in the face. You knew life expectancies disappeared fast being a numbers game maybe, at the most six months if you were lucky and then after surviving 180 days you stayed on edge trying to make it through the rest. We swallowed salt pills three times a day. The weak dropped like flies.

-Not funny.

Weaving A Life V1

Director of Brooms

Thursday
Jan262023

Whine Me

Greetings,

The 1st Provincial Whiner Convention got under way today, hey say children, "Can you whine with the best of them?"

"Yeah man, I started whining when I found out, being an only child in a one-child takes all crap game, that whining is a fantastic way to get things you want," said Faceless. "I wanted a lot then and I want more now."

"That's nothing," said Insecure, another whining contestant. "Whining is a fine art in my book. I've never read it because I'm lazy but I know how to whine with feeling. I've had practice. I practiced on my parents, practiced on my grandparents and now I practice on my friends. A little whine here and there works wonders. You ain't never get any good at whining in life without practice."

A whine went up from the crowd.

"We want a REAL whiner. These are fakes. They have no skill, ability, creativity or enthusiasm for whining. Send them back to Whiner Elementary. They are whining failures. Poor."

"Ok, ok," said Maladjusted, a whiner with a degree in Manipulation.

"How's this?" and they started yelling and screaming, contorting their face into tears, stamping their feet demanding instant gratification.

"Give it to me now! 
"Give it to me now! 
"Give it to me now!
"I will whine until you give it to me!"
"I am a spoiled brat and I demand you to give it to me NOW!

The crowd gratefully swallowed the passive-aggressive whining performance.

"Not bad," one whiner said to another whiner. 
They voted with their feet to Whiner Street to practice whining in public.

 

Street Eats

Friday
Jan202023

Kid Teaches

South of Mandalay.

Two teachers arrived for three weeks. One tall relaxed American male and serious eyes. His Irish female’s unhappiness confronting the hardship assignment masked emotional distress and deep bitterness.

She lived at the girl's dorm fifteen minutes away by dusty footprints. I feel isolated.
Cry me a river, said human nature.

Hardship and deprivation develops character, said an Asian child.

Don’t give me that crap, she said. I have twenty years of teaching experience and this is hell.

Hell is other people, said Sartre.

Be a good Catholic girl and make a confession, said Personal Problem.


It’s life lesson #5, said the child.

Yeah, yeah, said the whining adult eating her frustration and anger garnished with succulent tomatoes.

The world is a village. 

Mindfulness.
Mindful seeing.
Mindful attention.
Mindful presence.
Calm abiding.
Check in with your breath.

Engage senses. Visual epiphany between what is and what will be.

Sunday
May222022

Fat talk

Big fat American sits down to interview a young Khmer man for a one-hour teaching job with blind / deaf students ... he talks, talks, talks about his degrees and extensive teaching experience in states and China ... his attitude about China is condescending.

Shit government school, big money, I don't need the money.

His sister is a doctor in the states. She told him, "Don't come back here. You will die."

He tells the potential teacher, "If I give you all my money I will be poor and you will still be poor."

Fat man is a sad broken record. He needs more compassion.

 

Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance.

*

Badkhenim: poet jesters. we cheer up the sad. the world to come, state of joy

*

I am that.

*

Everything we see hides another thing

we always want to see what is hidden by what we see

the interest can take the form of an intense feeling

sort of conflict

between the invisible that is hidden

and the visible that is present. - Magrittte

Saturday
Oct022021

Dialouge

Panda talks about freedom, family and her attitude. Willing to share honest truth & emotions.

Unname the present to see visions of the future, said a prophet.

The army of trees, river saga, roots.

How much are you willing to give up to play this music?

What I want to hear is what you don't know.

I'm just a beginner.

Transcendent function brings opposites together.

Memory, logic, imagination.