three kinds of people

there are three kinds of people in the world, said a boy holding his heart in his hands

sitting on a cambodian tourist town corner disguised

as the Street of Impossible Dreams...

his mother, cut off at the knees cradled an infant.

sex was her DUTY.

she performed well.

she produced more off-spring.

she was well seasoned. 

more tools. economic tools.

daddy was long gone.

it was a 125cc motorcycle culture

putt-putt, zoom, roar, rumble, dance cylinders. grind my hormonal gears, baby.

genius boy said:

people who make things happen.

people who watch people make things happen.

people who don't know what the fuck is going on.

yeah, yeah, yeah is my complete unabridged vocabulary. 

a shift

Elf asked Orphan. Can you tell me in 25 words or less about your brief time in eastern Anatollia?

I can try. I open my head, heart and mouth. Do they count in the 25?

It's ok. 

Their hospitality is sublime.

Below the surface they love guns and passive-aggressive attitudes. Adolescent macho males in black cradle submachine guns. 

You see worried sullen faces. Depression is served cold with anxiety.

We are worried about money, said one citizen. We have BIG shiny watches, fancy clothes, meat and no sex. We live in fear and ignorance. 

Cultures in which food is scarce, people have more open sex, but dream of food. Whereas cultures in which food is abundant, sex is more taboo, and people yet dream of sex.

You exceeded your word limit, said Elf. Cut the shit. Start walking.

a life of purpose

If you’re going to try, go all the way.

Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind.

It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery — isolation.

Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.

If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that.

You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.

- Charles Bukowski

laosattitude

how does it work in laos, said elf.

a frenchman told me this, said orphan. he's lived here 6 years. he has a young son and daughter. he had, past tense, a marriage with a local woman. they met. they married. he invested time and money to develop a guesthouse. they had 5 properties. they had problems. her extended family smelled a huge profit. she threw him out. she wants all the land. 

i saw her one day when she brought their daughter to school. fat and unhappy. both.

so how does it work in laos, asked elf. you didn't answer the big question from a small person.

men make the rules, said orphan. women take care of the home. it's all unspoken subtleties. they do their thing. women worship in the temples. they do their meditation. men sit around getting drunk, discussing new night girls, ethics, morality and behavior.

what happened to the french man and the kids, asked elf.

he plotted a way to get them out of the country. let her keep the land and buildings, he said.

many people here never leave their village. why. everything i have is here. a village maintains the other world.

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.