Silent Questions

How about your town, asked Leo.

Red dust roads in Banlung are paved with blue Zircon, Amethyst, and Black Opals (nill) reflecting Ratanakiri, or Gem Mountain. City women of means wear blue Zircon, gold necklaces, rings, bracelets, sparkle bling. Rural women do not wear this wealth. Married women wear strings of red beads. They fashion yellow, red, blue, green, glittering plastic bangles on wrists.

Here it’s about food and honoring Earth spirits. Animists believe taking stones harms the spirits, creating an imbalance in the natural order of things.

Thanks for the education, said Leo. I’m going to have a look-see.

See you later, said Ice Girl, returning to crystals.

Red dust town turned windy. Swirling quality gem stone particles and degrees of indifference spiraled through air. Redwood slats covered open sewer drains.

Locals watched Leo with curiosity and suspicion. They stared from a deep vacuum. When he made eye contact they glanced away with fear, uncertainty and doubt. They didn’t see many strangers here. They listened at 49% saying yeah, yeah with panache. Leo discovered his questions were constantly repeated.

Questions grew tired of repeating themselves. This is so fucking boring, said one question. We are abused. We are manipulated and rendered mute. Useless. Think of it as a test, said another question. Patience is our great teacher. I’ll try, said another question.

Yes, said a question, these non-listeners have a distinct tendency to say nothing and say it louder when they’re leaving, when their back’s turned away from eye contact and potential real communication. Echoes drift around silence and ignorance.

I’ve seen that too, said a question, who, until this moment was silent. My theory is that it’s because of the genocide and fear and ignorance. It’s also a delicate mixture of stupidity or indifference, said another question. Why is the most dangerous question, said one.

 Can you explain, asked a question. Sure, people ran away to survive. People started running and others would ask them a question like why are you running, who’s chasing you, where are you going or what’s the matter or when did you become afraid or why are you afraid, or why don’t you stay longer ...

and the one running would keep going trailing abstract question words behind them like memories of dead or missing families or disembodied spirits or hungry ghosts or molecules of indifferent breath. I see, said a question. That explains it. Yes, said a question. Being correct is never the point. I never take yes for an answer.

Ice Girl in Banlung

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Passing Through

Smiling makes you happy

Diamond mind wisdom

Women lay out golden chains

Men yak in phones

Gleaming significance weighs inlaid rubies, sapphires

Black Nil stones harvested from deep Earth

Glitter like 1000 stars

Path leads past mannequins

Wearing fashionable silent plastic splendor 

Unloading facsimiles of threaded prayers flowing from a woman’s mouth

Answer stirs ice

Question stabs ice

Scientific dissolution in liquid’s formless form

Shy beyond description

-    a girl weighs lettuce hills

-    cucumbers whisper adjustments

-    cell phone eliminates an old man's loneliness

-    a sharp hatchet congratulates bloody meat

-    a woman stabs ice memories

-    dead dog’s head rests on a counter

 Ice coffee is bitter sweet my sweet

Hammock infant swings high/low

Contemplating an old woman

Stepping through puddles carrying a plastic bag with two tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, daily bread

Eye contact dissolves in the wake up

Sing song chopsticks carry an infant

Wide-eyed catastrophic entropy factoid

Coconut, sewing machine, hyena laughter

Small talk, broken light vegetables green life

Where do you stay, asked man.

I stay in blue sky

Is it a hotel? A guesthouse? No it is blue sky.

Pure land poetry

Jazz poem

Visuals

Passing through

Professional stranger

Ghost Other

Eye hand heart – two won’t do

Show up sit awhile smile draw meditate on emptiness

Witness point line shadow less form

Imagination

Observation

Experience

Rhythm of place

Grow Your Soul

Ice Girl Talks

Banlung is a gateway to isolated animist villages up river. The Tonle Srepok River is the river of darkness. The Apocalypse Now River.

The river overflowed with extended tedious years of silence singing a slow meandering song before being punctuated by random acts of violence, gunfire and exploding land mines swallowing eternal cries for mercy as innocent men, women and children were slaughtered in fields, homes and villages along twisted dirt jungle paths or murdered inside animist cemeteries wearing crude carved wooden faces remembering the dead with ceremonies, laughter, animal sacrifice and rice wine hearing the low dull roar of high altitude B- 52 bombers releasing enraptured napalm canister lightning bolts through clear skies rendering humans, mountains and jungles obsolete, accompanied by the steady rhythm of a girl sawing ice.

Someone said there was a war, she said. My mother saw a plane. She thought it was a bird. She wove the image into indigo cotton with yellow, blue and red silk thread. All the women weave here. Men don’t have the patience. They love hunting and killing.

Mother saw a whirling bird, called a helicopter. She wove it with our traditional motifs of weavers, people carrying water, harvesting, dancing, playing music, sitting, resting, flowers, fields, cows, chickens, ducks, birds, banana and palm trees, rivers, sky and nature. She weaves our long story.

Before writing, after cutting and selling ice, I weave.

Animists believe in the natural world. Every living thing has spirit energy.

A shy woman shaman smiled after performing a family ceremony and healing sacrifice near the river. She smeared chicken blood over a sick infant’s stomach. Villagers are superstitious and trusting.

Bored dead eyed humans wandered red dust.

One prolific business in Banlung is mechanical. Along and adjacent to the single east west paved artery were brown wooden homes and shacks of rusting corrugated tin.

Single men or teams of laborious boys hammered, welded and pried, manipulating iron and steel, adjusting belts, guided grinding gears, solidifying particles, firing cylinders, filing metallic blisters, reworking tired 125cc engines and formatting hard drives as spokes on crude machines sang.

Repair and restoration work implied basic life skills using eye-hand coordination, communication theory modules with colleagues, decipherable brooms, grease, balloons, laughter and a high degree of universal understanding and empathy.

Freedom worked 24/7.

Under a broiling sun tempered by a soft breeze they carried buckets of cement over boards, pouring it on red dirt. Freedom shoveled 21 muscular sandy efforts into a wheelbarrow. Freedom pushed it to a new world order construction site filled with profound expectations and poverty’s paradoxes.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Ice Girl

  Red dust Banlung town turned windy.

Swirling quality gem stone particles and degrees of indifference spiraled through air.

Redwood slats covered open sewer drains.

  Locals watched Leo with curiosity and suspicion.

They stared from a deep vacuum.

When he made eye contact they glanced away with fear, uncertainty and doubt.

They didn’t see many strangers here.

They listened at 49% or less saying yeah, yeah with panache.

  Leo's questions were constantly repeated.

  Questions grew tired of repeating themselves.

This is so fucking boring, said one question.

We are abused. We are manipulated and rendered mute. Useless.

It's a test, said another question. Patience is our great teacher.

I’ll try, said another question.

Yes, said a question, these non-listeners

have a distinct tendency to say more

and say it louder when they’re leaving,

when their back’s turned away from eye contact and potential real communication.

I’ve seen that too, said a question, who, until this moment had remained silent.

My theory is that it’s because of the genocide and fear. It’s also a delicate mixture of stupidity or indifference, said another question. Why is the most dangerous quest-ion, said one.

  Can you explain, asked a question.

Sure, people ran away to survive. People started running and others would ask them a question like

why are you running, who’s chasing you, where are you going

or what’s the matter or when

did you become afraid or why don’t you

stay longer and the one running would keep going

trailing abstract question words behind them

like memories or disembodied spirits or molecules of indifferent breath.

I see, said a question.

That explains it. Yes, said a question. Being correct is never the point. Tell me why oh my.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Take The Orange Pill - Ice Girl

Chapter 22.

Another brilliant Banlung day bloomed bright. Infinitesimally small intense waves and particles traveled at 186,000 miles per second.

  What you don’t see is fascinating, said Ice Girl. She and Leo heard the clatter of tourist utensils singing near dumb thumbed Angkor Wat guidebooks dancing with dusty beggar children hawking vignettes at a medical clinic.

  The Angkor Children’s Hospital in Siem Reap has 22 beds in one room. They are filled with infants wearing air hoses in their nose. They suffer from pneumonia and tuberculosis. This is common. A parent holds a tiny hand.

  I.C.U. has five occupied beds.

  400 mothers cradling kids wait to see a nurse. She dispenses free orange generic pills.

  Life is a painkiller. Life is a generic placebo.

The mothers are happy to get SOMETHING, anything. They have no knowledge about modern medicine.

  One effective blue pill costs $1.00. Parents need to buy 15. $15.00 is a fortune. Out of the quest-ion. Parents accept free ineffective orange drugs. Parents need a miracle.

  How much does a miracle cost?

  Mothers are hopeful. They wait. They have ridden on the back of cycles from distant villages. Everyone there had an answer for the child’s sickness. Babble voices of genocide female survivors sang remedies. Men pounded drums. Relatives prayed and burned incense. A shaman dancing with death smeared chicken blood over a tiny chest. Another healer waved smoking banana leaves over a child running a fever. 400 mothers waited forever to see a nurse and get an orange pill.

Ling's art in Laos.

*

  Mr. Money talked in the Battenbang market. He’s 30, well fed and garrulous. He stood near a shop holding a pile of 500 Real notes. 500 = 25 cents.

  I am rich, he said waving money.

  I am the President of Earth, said Leo.

  He came over and collapsed in a red plastic chair. Southeast Asia is filled with red plastic chairs. It’s one big kiddy class for humans with an emotional IQ of -7.

  He put the money on the table. See, he said, I have a lot of money. Real notes were old and faded.

  Yes, you do. Where did you get it?

  I collect the money from the shopkeepers. It is their daily cleaning fee. But, I am a poor man. I only make $50 a month. Food is cheap. I have two wives and two kids. Wife number 1 is mad at me. Why? She saw me with wife number 2. I screwed wife number 1 one day and then I went over to see wife number 2. Wife number 1 saw me with her and now she's angry, ha, ha, ha.

  I have lots of energy. I can screw three times a day. Do you want to go with me to a nightclub? I can show you around. There are many girls looking for some action. Their boyfriends are poor at sex. The girls are poor and need money.

  Leo smiled. Sounds like a diabolical combination. Not today. You can only trust 10%.

It’s easy, he said, I know everybody, waving his arms around the market. People slurped noodles. Women negotiated prices, haggling, chopping vegetables, stoking cooking fires with kindling, manhandling blazing woks, nursing infants, wiping counters, sewing cloth, selling gold, trimming nails, cutting and shampooing hair, cleaning oranges and sitting with begging bowls as hungry eaters stuffed faces.

  Eater’s eyes were either buried in bowls or scanning desperate hungry faces in a life of perpetual distractions.

  Eat fast or someone will steal it from you. It’s not about taste. It’s about filling your stomach.

  Between slabbed meat and fish an old woman with her begging bowl sat on cracked pavement waiting for kindness.

  Save the strong, lose the weak, said Mr. Money.

  Yes, I’m sure you know everybody, Leo said.

  Are you really the president?

  Yes, I am.

  I think the president is a joke.

  Many people would agree with you, Leo said. It’s a lonely thankless job being responsible for the entire human race.

  Yeah, yeah. Well I gotta go make some collections. See you later.

  The machine world in Banlung roared, reversed, revered and resounded with operatic overtures.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Banlung market