A Stranger - Ice Girl

Chapter 21.

A 53-year old stranger from Washington State arrived in Banlung.

  At Bright Future guesthouse he deftly slipped in his upper dentures with his right while using his left hand to eat soft eggs. It was obvious he’d perfected this gesture with oral flair, the hand being quicker than the eye.

  Gestures use people.

  Balding brown hair, long nose, craggy face and deep wrinkles. He talked about selling his sawmill, distrust in the American way of life, raising two kids, and six months working in a Cambodian orphanage.

  “I liked the kids,” he said. “No NGO’s fucked with us. They are a scourge like the church. Totally corrupt playing on human weakness, false hopes and sympathies.”

  His well-thumbed notebook and pen sat in front of him. He was writing a short story called My Life.

 “I went up The Heart of Darkness,” he said, “and disappeared into the jungle for six weeks. Sat down. Camped. Wrote about it. Now I’m back. Someone stole my wallet. I’m waiting for money. Then I’m getting the hell out of here. What I’m telling you is true, or at least as much of it as I remember. I know I have false memories. Everyone does. Imagine people in a world without memory. No past or future. No objects, no identification or attachment. Only forms and swift sensations like flowing water. Living in an eternal present.”

He talked about his former life delivering cars, planning wood, making furniture, raising kids and getting it down on paper.

“I’m going to put my personal emotions into it, make it heavy deep and real, write numerous shitty drafts, edit the sucker and independently publish this beautiful mess. Yeah, yeah. When I get back to the states I’ll put my heart in it.”

 Ice Girl in Banlung

Red dust town

Namaste,

The machine world in Banlung roared, reversed, revered and resounded with the musical machine opera.

Chugging down the street, old trucks recycled from devastating and catastrophic wars, death and suffering with bombings, genocide, insurrection, forced labor, starvation, land mines and descriptive historical footnotes blended black diesel dust, billowing forgotten memory into the breeze. It danced in swirling red dust.

The remote wild west red dust town, smaller than a city, bigger than a village welcomed smaller. The dexterity and fortitude of thousands in a flip flop world of opportunity, risk, chance, fate, and destiny ate pastries and delicious yoghurt, in many flavors. Ambiguity, contradictions, paradoxes took everything for granted.

Assumptions wore Blue Zircon seeing harlequins.

Destiny rested as noon heat reflected anxieties. A bored mistress washed her red underwear in a river. The exhilaration of washing introduced her to a cloud. Lightning flashed. 

Children in red and white dusted Santa caps dragged their expectant mothers toward dusty chrome plated display cases. 

This one! This one!

On main street a happy girl of 13 sawed ice. She sold blocks of ice from a large portable orange plastic box. Her smile and pronunciation were perfect, I am a seller. 

Metta.

I am a seller, said the Ice Girl

Greetings,

As dawn light savored green jungles along rivers a young Banlung woman-mother, one of many, cut ice. She sawed ice into manageable chunks as glistening elements dripped their moisture into delicious red dust. Red dust is stirred by countless women sawing and sweeping in front of their red dust covered wooden shuttered doors. Up and down the red dusty street.

Ice slides into blue plastic bags. Four foot long blocks of ice are loaded on the backs of antique battered black and red motorcycles driven by delivery boys wearing dusty baseball caps with glittering golden stars. Women in front of their shops open large orange plastic boxes to hold fresh clear frozen ice. 

Ice lives and dies every morning in a red dusty paradise. Sun streaks water. Ice cries.

After school the mother's daughter, 12, saws ice. A man sees her. What are you doing? he asked. She smiled. She is happy. I am a seller, she said. Her English is clear, distinct and filled with confidence. She bags a block of ice and hands it to a cycle man. He hands her crumbled red dusty notes.

She saws ice in afternoon heat. You are a good seller, said the man. Yes, I am, said the girl. I greet the buyer and sell, I cut, I bag, I talk, I sell. Ice is moving.

See you later, she sang playing her saw through crystals inside red dust. 

Metta.