Hand Luggage by a Nurse

The Australian nurses prepared to return home to family, friends and medical school after three weeks on Ground Zero living short-term personal evolutionary variables of medical, emotional and scientific truths.

Before leaving one arranged her heavy deep real life changing Cambodian experience in her hand luggage. She wondered, How can I get my entire heavy deep real humbling life changing experience into this very tiny bag?

This serious question troubled her for a second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year and remaining sweet existence. It’s her experience. She knows it’s impossible to check it all the way through. She will have to carry it. 

She assembles it on the floor along with fragrant spices, Khmer cotton cloth decorated with elephants and yellow silk scarves.

Her profound experience is a poor slum village near Siem Reap. She loves everyone there because she lived with them. She took care of the people. She held them. She gave children medicine and water. She cried herself to sleep every night. She suffered from nightmares surrounded by dying crying children, Save me Save me.

One woman in the village takes care of sixteen children.

Thirsty, hungry, exhausted sick children, women and men exist.

She puts the survivors of this one little village into her bag. She discards everything else.

She saves weight because there is no clean drinking water. She throws in handfuls of rice and fried bananas for nourishment during the long flight to Sydney.

She doesn’t know how many will survive. She’s ready to carry her experience home.

She knows it will scare the hell out of her friends, family and colleagues.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

 

Bantey Kdei - Ta Phrom by Rita

Evidence of intelligent life on Earth is exaggerated. It’s a rumor and a myth. Sit still long enough and you’ll see/hear some wild, anxiety filled conversations. Filled with interruptions.

Barbarian Voice monkeys interrupt each other. They cancel each other out. It’s an endemic social disease  ... short attention span? No problem. People love to be understood before they understand. This explains their emotional fear, lack of focus and anxiety. Roll your bones. Love my bones, said a t-shirt in Sapa, Vietnam.

Who’s dragging around this bag of bones, said Leo.

We are a bundle of pure sensations, said Zeynep. It is a path of authenticity.

That’s been the problem on the trip, said an American girl on a work-study NGO program in Cambodia, No one’s giving us change. Hahaha.

Change comes from within.

400 Khmer mothers and their children wait outside the Children’s Hospital to get a free pain killer pill. The placebo is blue and free. Orange pain pills cost $1. Few can afford orange. Life is a painkiller.

Sound-symbol-sign-word.

Rita and storytellers explored Banteay Kdei and Ta Phrom.

Kdei is perfect for walking and swallowing dust. A sun yellow butterfly led the way. It explored the perimeter sensing jungle and stone perspectives. Wandering outside temples gives you the feeling of natural space acknowledging deep green forests, said Rita, I do this at every temple, it’s rare to see tourists explore the outside, because intelligence and curiosity and taking risks on Earth is rare.

Tourist sheep are in a disciplined hurry. They march along following other sheep on broken stone paths. They wander around, make a lot of noise, pose for pictures and march out. The bus is leaving for another temple.

They look serious and sad. Unhappy people in a happy world.

They are controlled by unknown unconscious diabolical forces. It’s the silent ticking mechanism on their wrist near a pulse saying faster.

Leo shared a Tibetan truth  ...  

I would rather be a tiger for one day than a sheep for a thousand years.

Rita and friends explored gentle forest winds. It’s a slow walking meditation.

I engaged all my senses, said Leo.

Thick dust is a welcome relief after stones, said Tran.

I am light and shadows dancing through leaves, said Devina.

All nature all the time, said Zeynep.

Butterfly leads me into interior passages and shadow play experiences, said Rita. Butterfly shows me mysterious art and deep unconscious space, it takes one life to reach the center and then you’re back where you started, amazing  ...  Ha-ha.

It’s a long walk, said Devina.

Prohm is where the most famous photographed tree on planet Earth grows, said Rita. It entwines itself around and through soft stones. It’s a zoo as idiots line up to take a photo, pushing and shoving and jostling to have their picture taken with the tree and roots as Italian, French and German tongues wag like mongrels in heat.

Life is a bitch, said a sad tourist focusing their plastic toy.

The Japanese and Chinese are total image addicts. Obsessed with posing in doorways and passages with carvings, plants, ferns and leaves and tall trees, thick brown, green gnarled roots above the surface, scary monster leaves and yellow, black, red, golden butterflies to be overwhelming.

We don’t have this beauty at home they lament. We have cement.

Tourists on their great quest feel the experience with their cameras. They behave like the temples are a Dizzy Land amusement park.

Shatter their illusions with the power of laughter, said Rita.

And silence, whispered Omar.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

 

Angkor Wat by Rita

All Angkor Wat material is by Rita, fourteen, author of Ice Girl in Banlung. She is a resident tour guide and archaeological expert. Her food, transport and daily salary was paid by Dancing Mouse, a Khmer curator and art historian.

Angkor Wat – The City of Temples - is the largest spiritual building on Earth. It is a peaceful mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism. This makes it unique. It dates from the 9^th - 13th century.

Most tourists dash in, around and through for 2-3 days of their very short existence. They get to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise with hoards. They climb steep stairs to see the sunset with hoards. It’s a human zoo.

They visit the high points: Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, the interior of Bayon and, depending on time and planning, other temples of interest. There are over 1,000 temples at Angkor. Most people hearing the word Angkor imagine only the main temple. There are plenty of cool uncrowded temples to enjoy.

A day pass costs $37, a 3-day pass is $70 and a seven-day pass $100. The longer pass allows visitors the luxury of time - life’s great wealth - to enjoy the diversity of Angkor over a month.

I suggest you visit The National Museum and galleries around town to learn about Angkor history in advance. Be aware that Thailand owns 50% of The National Museum. Khmer do not go to their museum.

For $25 I hired Pat, a tuk-tuk driver with three kids to feed. We left before dawn. A tuk-tuk is a motorcycle pulling a simple covered sofa carriage. The air was chilly and refreshing. We reached the main entrance. It resembled a well-designed airport immigration office with windows and attendants for the 1-3-7 day tickets. I paid for seven, they took my picture and a girl punched my ticket. Buy a ticket and take the ride. The meter began running.

We drove through deep mysterious forests on empty roads past forgotten shadows and villagers stoking cooking fires near wooden stilt homes. The road skirted a long deep reflecting pool at Sras Srang.

We stopped for a noodle breakfast. A brilliant orange ball of flaming gas rose over flat brown fields. I salute the sun!

We headed for Banteay Srei, 37 km from town. Objective: get there for early light with peace and quiet before buses of sheep.

Srei was built in 987 AD and never a royal temple. Small intimate and designed by women with delicate hands. The carvings of pink sandstone cover the temple. Reliefs are deep and beautiful, the most incredible at Angkor. Covered by forest and earth for centuries, it was discovered by a lost French madman.

After Srei we continued north to Kbal Spean. We climbed through forests for 1.5 km. This is the source of waters for Angkor and the Siem Reap River. Water flows over 100m of carved sacred lingams and Hindu deities, Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.

The Sanskrit name is Sahasralinga, or “River of a Thousand Lingas.”

We headed southeast of Siem Reap to the Roluos Group, a series of three temples: Bakong, Preah Ko and Lolei, dating from the 8th-9th century.

Roluos is a pre-Angkor site.

Bakong was consecrated in 881 AD. The layout follows Mount Meru, with five ascending levels, moats, and ten surrounding temples. It was reconstructed from 1936-1942 under the direction of Maurice Glaize, the conservator of Angkor.

Preah Ko, or Parameswara, “The Supreme God,” or Shiva was built in 880 AD. It contains a stele in Sanskrit with an inscription about war, fearsome action in battle, flashing swords and invincibility - a eulogy to Indra Varman I.

Lolei, 893 AD. Four brick buildings in poor condition sit on an island above a former reservoir. The lintels, doors and inscriptions explaining the construction and divisions of tasks are well preserved.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Poetic Destiny by Coincidence

Coincidence is an event that might have been arranged although it was really accidental. It’s random destiny. Destiny is an event that will inevitably happen in the future like Death.

I was waiting for Christina, a 50-year-old Belgium born French teacher currently teaching at Peter Rabbit in Greenland for a day trip to a floating village and mangrove forest near Tonle Sap Lake. She’d suggested the idea the previous evening after seeing Angkor Wat.

Kun, the owner of Jasmine GH, walked to the table with a man. “He is going with you.”

Great.” We introduced ourselves, “Hi, I'm Brian,” he said.

“Nice to meet you.”

A soft-spoken man with piercing eyes, gentle manner and laughing, Brian told his family history.

“This is the short version of a long story. My grandfather’s father came from Switzerland. He was a preacher. He was persecuted and escaped to Italy. He returned and was beheaded. His son took up the cause and was also persecuted. He escaped to Holland. His family eventually moved to England, then Scotland then Ireland. During the potato famine they managed to get to New York and settled in Arkansas. It was the Civil War and life was hard. They moved west and eventually settled in Fresno, California where I was raised.”

We rolled through dry flat countryside to the end of a long dusty road. We jumped on motorcycles to reach small boats moored in shallow water. We left land gliding through marshes toward the Kampong Pluck Village. Christina asked Brian about his life.

“I am a poet traveling the world for a year on the Amy Lowell Traveling award.”

I turned in surprise. “What is your last name?”

“Turner.”

Mr. Brian Turner.

I laughed. “Sure. I know you. Last October when I lived in Hanoi with a family of bats in a palm tree I read your “Home Fires” essay in The New York Times after you visited the Bedlam hospital in London. I wrote a piece about becoming a ghost after returning from Vietnam. Your essay generated many comments from diverse voices, veterans, health care professionals and the general public. It was great.”

“It's important to give these people voices,” he said. "I wrote seven poetry books before submitting Here Bullet.”

Over lunch he talked about his book, Here Bullet published by Alice James Books. Brian served in Bosnia and a year tour in Iraq before returning to the states in 2004.

“I wrote the poems in Iraq. I worked from my notebooks to create the manuscript from November through March 2005. I submitted it. It won the Beatrice Hawley Award. Later, an anonymous person nominated me for the Amy Lowell award. There were 360 poetry books in the competition. One day I received a phone call from the law offices representing the estate. They said my book was selected for the Amy Lowell Scholarship. I was amazed.”

Brian received his MFA in writing from the University of Oregon, my alma matter.

“You’re a famous poet. Congratulations. And here we are, two writers, two veterans and UO graduates meeting on a small boat near a floating village in Cambodia. Long live the creative geniuses.”

Brian reached Cambodia via England, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey and Thailand. He’d travel to Vietnam, Morocco, Portugal, Ireland and Bosnia.

His second book of poetry, entitled Phantom Noise, was published in April 2010 and shortlisted for the T.S. Elliot Prize.

The three us shared stories, explored a village, a local primary school, enjoyed seafood along the river and traversed the amazing mangrove water world forest, ala Monet.

Joyful destiny smiled.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

One Born & One Dies

One death. One birth. This happened in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Jasmine gave birth to a baby boy at 12:30 a.m. 3.9 kilos. It’s her and Kun’s third child.

I am on the balcony at 6 a.m. hearing him cry. Tears and lungs, breath, release. Sleeping after his nine-month water world journey. Every day is a celebration.

I walk a dusty path and across the Highway of Death to Jasmine Lodge. People gather to celebrate the passing of Jasmine’s grandmother. She slipped away during the night after eighty-four years.

She was healthy and happy.

Friends and relatives gather under a pavilion to pay their respects. They visit the frail Buddhist monk with a monetary gift. He ties a red piece of yarn around their wrist.

The ceremony lasts three days. Women teams prepare vats of soup releasing vapors. Grilled meat and fish aromas curl through bamboo meeting music and the melodic chants of singing, chanting monks.

Tomorrow is a procession to the pagoda for her cremation.

Led by six monks in orange robes 200 people followed the rolling wagon carrying the wooden casket in blazing heat along The Highway of Death. After two kilometers we entered the pagoda.

A bus of kids and nuns arrived.

  

Her casket was carried up the stairs and placed on a metal platform. Her husband led a procession of monks and family members around the tall tapered white and blue building carrying her picture and yellow flowers. They stepped back to allow attendants access. They opened the casket so family members could leave something personal inside.

On a pavilion monks chanted. A man read a final tribute about her life. The family expressed their love. Men put small logs into the casket. They closed it, rolled it inside and piled more wood around it. They lit the fire and closed the metal door.

People sat silent, whispering, drinking water. They observed the top of the tower with four serene Buddha faces and exhaust pipes. A wisp of black smoke escaped into clear blue sky followed by heavier billowing gray and white snow.

Everything burned for three hours.

Her bones were collected, placed in a family urn and returned to her room. They created a human figure on banana leaves. After 100 days her bones will rest in a family stupa at the pagoda.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged