Precise

Writers are shamans.

We go into the mountains and we come back with visions for our tribes.

Our holy assignment.

Wolf meets dog. Freedom vs. slavery.

Writing is a river with many tributaries.

Empathy - Cognitive & Emotional

Mushin - no thought, no emotion, no expectation

Kafka - it's about impossible situations and ambiguity

Dialogue with an image. What / why it speaks to us. What does it say to us?

Quality

Sitting. Doing not doing.

Quality

Past/present/future

Now is eternity

All the unhappy people trapped in vehicles

Laugh with fear, Oh no, you are the teacher (parent #2) we are the student

Forever young

We do our ABCs carefully printing LARGE and small.

Morning light rainbow diamonds dance

On the table

Afternoon light shimmers ice crystals

Lying on broken pavement reflecting

Brilliant light dissolving

Perception

Brain filters sensory data to survive

Is it safe?

Ephemeral data structure dissolves in the wake up

Man becomes rational

Experience primitive rich sparkling flood of senses as kids DO

Until normal training and conditioning closes door on other world for good

Feeling synchronicity

No cause and effect

Eye of beholder becomes an integral part of experiment

Microcosm of entire universe

Man is an atom in a molecule in a fingernail of a giant being

Einstein: see you are all part of a fingernail

Grasp the structure of the entire fingernail

Part of the pattern

It’s a comedy

Quality

Heart-mind

No Matter

Energy

Play chess with a French woman in a bookstore

Burma

*

Grow Your Soul

Mahling, Burma

Learn. Play. Share. 

500 grade 10-11 students live at the school. They’ve come from distant Shan state villages and Myanmar areas. They are their parents’ social security.

The school has an excellent reputation for matriculation results.

Segregated classes. Walking on campus, girls shield their faces from distant boys. No social testosterone distractions. Zero gadgets.

They study Burmese, math, history, physics, chemistry, science, biology and Magic and Potions from 6-11, 1:30-6, 7:30-11 p.m. Sonorous voices echo daily.

They leave school one day a month. Don't let school interfere with your education.

                                    The Wild West Village - 2.5 hours south of Mandalay - pop 10,000

Horse drawn cart traps.
One traffic light. Two motorcycles is a jam.
Green for go.

Twenty minutes away on foot, an extensive traditional market covered in rusting PSP sheets is a delightful adventure  - returning to the source of community, dark-eyed local curiosity, street photography, laughter, and a floating babble of tongues inside a labyrinth of narrow uneven dirt paths.

Footprints on stone and dirt meander through forests and mountains of oranges, apples, bananas, red chilies, green vegetables, thin bamboo baskets of garlic and onions, farm implements, varieties of rice, clacking sewing machines, basic commodities, steaming noodles, cracking fires, snorting horses.

Sublime.

Blindfish heads whisper The Sea, The Sea. Silver scales reflect light.

A woman hacks chickens. Blood streams down circular wooden tree rings.

The gravity of thinking sits on a suspended handheld iron pan scale.

A white feather sits in the other pan. Balance.

Twenty-six varieties of rice mountains peak in round metal containers or scarred wooden boxes.

Horse drawn cart traps unload people and produce. Neck bells tinkle: Star light star bright first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might get the wish I wish tonight. Well. Fed horses paw dirt.

Ancient diesel tractor engines attached to a steel carcass hauling people and produce bellow black smoke.

Old wooden shuttered shops with deep dark interiors display consumables, soap, thread waiting for a conversation, stoic curious dark eyed women, others laughing at the benign crazy traveler. 

A happy ghost-self sits in meditative silence, absorbing rainbow sights, sounds, colors, smells, feeling a calm abiding joy.

World as illusion

Kampot ceremony
70,000 years of pointillism
 
Walking makes the road
 
Khmer wedding music clanging symbols
Yellow silk accompanies jackhammers
In a brave new world

Mawlamyine, Burma

*
 
Pure mind Buddhism - world as illusion
 
How’s this for coincidence chance fate
You walk to market
Past a massage place greeted by seated smiling woman named Cosmos
Connection strong married two kids 14/5

used to run her own place until husband said no

now p/t for sister needing help
Delight intensity oral pleasure friendly and communicative
 
A few poetic words about Kampot morning
Energies
Frequencies
Transmissions
Cool fresh dawn breeze
Swift lets in kitchen prepare bird nest soup using saliva
 
Boys tear down wedding celebration immaterial
after food conversations song dance concert
celebrations in narrow park garden
red bunting where

loud happiness

spills into a brown river below green silent mountains
 
Funky second-hand shop discovers Burmese

cheroot aha flashback to Mandalay market purveyor of rolled leaves

Mawlamyine, Burma

*
 
Dancing possibilities in Kampot dawn
Delicious stream-of-consciousness
Be invisible little angel of light
Have mercy becoming Wushu meditation
Comedy
 
Chanting monks flame orange voices
Ageless Vietnamese woman pushes wheeled trash treasures
Her spine curves toward tomorrow’s promise
Mystery light
Sensation perception intuitive
 
Line
Shape
Shading
Discernment
Detachment
Calligraphy
Breath
Line pressure
Sign language

Riding the rails in Burma - 2015

Grow Your Soul - Poems and Prose from Laos & Cambodia

Going To Graz

“Take a good look at me! 

I am an idiot, I am a clown, I am a faker.

Take a good look at me!

I am ugly, my face has no expression, I am little.

I am like all of you!”

-  Tristan Tzara

*

After a month in Cadiz I needed solitude for winter writing. Patricia opened a provincial map. She pointed out coastal towns. “Villages full of Germans this time of year. It depends on what you want.”

She highlighted areas and small towns north of Cadiz like Arcos de la Frontera, Bornos, Villamartin, and Prado del Ray.

She pointed to a village named Grazalema. It was in the Sierra National Park and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve with 146 species of birds, tracts of Pinsapar Fir and climbing opportunities. “This is also a beautiful area. One of my favorites but it will be cold there this winter.”

“Thanks for your help. I like the sound of Grazalema. I’ll live there for three months before returning to Morocco.”

“My pleasure. Good luck.”

One Romani said adios to another Romani. I carried my pack and word machine past the San Francisco cathedral where men fitted fragmented dolomite stones into puzzles.

Tanned people drank coffee or red wine watching muscular workers string plumb lines and hammer beat up rocks into passive submission. A priest in religious shadows fingered rosary beads waiting to hear sinners release imaginary guilt.

Hammer music faded as I traversed passages to a park where a bronze Spanish hero on horseback waving a sword dripping blood proclaimed freedom and a constitution in 1812.

Transatlantic shipping vessels with the word FAST loaded at a dock. The Canary Islands were two days away.

 A harbor billboard extolled CONSUME.

 Adjusting my antenna I heard Sonny Boy blowing his harp, “If you don’t help me darling I’m gonna have to find me somebody else.”

The COMES bus wound north passing olive and cork trees, crumbling stone homes disintegrating to earth, tilled soil and walled estates. Giant black steel bulls advertising local sherry guarded hills overlooking highways. Bulls, sheep and cows grazed in fields. Moorish castles hovered above old Roman roads.

Men manipulated shovels, small dump trucks, cement mixers, wheelbarrows, chisels and hammers. They heaved, hauled and sweated as homes and businesses consumed fields. They attached stones to existing structures. Roman stonewalls married Moorish stonewalls.

Adults were big kids assembling life projects to authenticate their being.

Bread, water, lentil soup, ham, cheese and olives dressed mid-day tables with a siesta for dessert.

Yangon, 2015

In Algodonales I negotiated a ride past Zahara de la Sierra into rising mountains. The abandoned castle sat on a pinnacle above fields and three lakes.

The Almohads, a strict Berber sect from Morocco, built Zahara in the 8th century. It fell to Castilian prince Fernando de Antequera in 1407 and was recaptured in a night raid in 1481 by Abu-al-Hasan from Granada.

Spanish anarchists, bandits and literary outlaws in exile used it as a hideout in the 19th century.

The high vertical mountain pass at 1300 meters was Puerto de los Palomas or Dove Pass. Doves did not live there. Egyptian vultures ruled skies.

The narrow hairpin mountain road wove through clouds, rain and snow as plateaus, rivers, lakes and forests disappeared in fog. A disembodied spirit floated.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Yangon, 2015