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

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

 

Fear Mentality

People in Cambodia love to look back, said Rita, It is a passionate DNA genetic molecule of fear, doubt, healthy uncertainty, adventure and surprise, a childlike innocent curiosity wanting or needing the past tabla rasa. Yes. Focus on needs, not wants.

Needs manifest desire. A desire for something to believe with clarity. We are all passing through. They look back to see if they see a ghost in their vivid reptilian imagination.

Hungry ghosts of family, friends and lost strangers seek identity. They seek clues and meaning at their personal ground zero. Post genocide reality and perpetual fear of the dead. One point seven million (+-) hungry ghosts wander around looking for relatives, homes, fields and imaginary memories.

They’ve arrived from distant galaxies. Human habitation sites were discovered in Khmer jungles 500,000 years ago. Primitive agriculture began 7,000 years A. Go. So it figures, mathematically speaking with evolutionary premise and factual data, their DNA star chart continues its genetic dance today.

We live in talking monkey zones. They pretend to be exactly who they are. They use their faint star energy to look w/o seeing. All the wondering. 

They look without understanding.

Food is cheap here. Medicine and education are expensive.

This has nothing to do with simians, said Devina in Jakarta. It indicates two women sitting in a neighborhood food joint. Plastic chairs face a tall cinderblock wall. Chickens, goats, cats and orphans prowl, peck and forage through garbage dreams.

One woman sits in a deep meditation. Chattering oral storytellers play Bronze Age drums, pounding out 3rd century you tunes.

Heal the people with music.

Males wash their literary typing machines. They study accumulated grime under long yellow curling fingernails. They play chess at knight along roads waiting for passengers. People eat spicy rice mixed with tofu, chicken, veggies and green and red chilies.

Have you eaten yet is what we ask people first in Utopia, said Leo.

Eat your dreams. Masticate. Emasculate. Procreate. Protect. Kill.

One human creates a Brave New World.

See literary outlaws create new futures with existential joy. It’s their assessment on process in a data based star cluster. Dream mask mirrors swim to Cambodia.

We are Visceral Realists, said Devina, Zeynep, Rita, Leo ToldStory, Tran, Omar, a Grave Digger and Laughter, a reliable narrator. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Barbers

Inside a Bursa barber shop at 9:30 a.m. TV wall news blasted Kabul heavy alliterative artillery literary fire.

Dust explodes. Images flood the consciousness - trains filled with tanks, armored cars, firefights in Iraq and Syria, suicide bombers, machine guns, rata-tat-tat-tat, expose yourself for a flash of sight, aim, fire, reload, as smiling wealthy diplomats shake hands for the cameras and media propaganda value.

They gesture peaceful intentions. We agree to disagree.

Smile.

An old man gets a close shave. The barber is short, white haired with trim black mustache in a white smock, brown loafers, working the silver blade down elastic cheeks erasing yesterday’s growth. The old man closes his eyes, feeling steel blade sensations as lather evaporates his existence in a calm, gentle way.

A small bell rings as a man pedals his portable mango and pineapple fruit cart along a dirt road in Cambodia. Does the sound come to the ear or does the ear go to the sound, asked Rita.

*

One morning Tran and I located a street barber in Saigon. He’s on the corner of Noise & Confusion, a main drag through the heart of a swirling mass of mobile humanity. Beep-beep.

His place was bare bones marketplace essentials. He works a small corner of a cement box surrounded by a wire fence. One old comfortable broken barber chair, a lopsided table and a cracked mirror completes the ensemble. Cheap blades, electric trimmer, a straight razor, comb, and brush.

Cut black hair spills out of a green plastic bag near the gutter waiting for someone to recycle stuffing stuff.

The Dark Years

It was curious seeing the Cambodian barber open on the last day of Khmer New Year. The river town was dead quiet. Merchants and families slept in shuttered shops behind metal gray accordion sheets. A tropical afternoon sun beat down. White cumulus clouds billowed in the east. The barber had a customer. A white haired war veteran. He’d fought against Vietnam, Khmer Rouge, Death and his Ghosts.

He didn’t talk about it. He survived. Silent conversation was his destiny.

He sat in a solid steel chair staring at his reflection. He saw a long thin serene brown face and wavy white hair. A long mole resembling an inverted Buddhist pagoda hung down from the left side of his chin. The mole saved him from Khmer Rouge executioners. They were superstitious peasants. They believed he was the Devil. They released him.

He and the barber conversed in French. The thin barber had thick black parted hair. He’d lived here all his life. He survived four genocide years by killing his dreams and hiding with his family in mountains where the French later constructed and abandoned a post office, hotel and casino. All bets are off. They were The Dark Years. No one talked about The Dark Years.

The old man closed his eyes. Besides gardening and playing with his grandchildren, savoring blade sensations and ointment aromas with small talk were his simple luxuries.

Using small steel clippers the barber trimmed hair. It fluttered to a cement floor meeting piles of black hair. Electric trimmers with old frayed wires collected dust on a narrow wooden table under a fractured mirror. Hello Beauty.

After trimming neck hairs he adjusted the chair, easing him back. The old man meditated on miracles and impermanence of life.

The barber extracted a thin razor blade from a small piece of paper. He severed both ends into a soda can. Clink. He opened a wooden handled straight razor edging the blade in.

He sprayed water mist around the man’s head. Moisture refracted light prisms and dust. He trimmed microscopic hairs around the outside edge of an ear lobe before shaving above sideburns angling the man’s head with his left hand. The razor slid from temple to temple across the scalp line rasping skin.

He was quick, silent and efficient. Smooth artistic hands shaved skin fast and light. Short, fast and deadly. The blade danced on skin under the eyes. He wiped the blade on a white towel lying on the man’s chest. He shaved lower sideburns. He returned the man to a sitting position. The man smiled at his reflection. Hello Beauty.

The barber snapped the towel across shoulders removing dead cells. The man eased out of the chair. He removed a roll of money hidden near his waist. He peeled musical notes to the barber.

Merci. Au’voir.

He shuffled out. His son waited for him on a motorcycle. He tried to swing his right leg over the rear seat. He hesitated. He couldn’t manage it. His left hand reached for a shoulder. His frail contorted right arm was useless. The executioners broke the Devil’s arm. They wanted to hear the Devil scream.

Bursa barber. Cádiz barber. Hanoi barber. Cambodia barber. Faces shaved, haircut, clip, clip scissors, storytellers all.

All vocal music, choral tales of imaginary love, kindness, forgiveness, journeys, beauty, creativity, travel, adventure, risk, authenticity, truth and maladaptive trust with barbers.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Children of the dust

Omar said, Down on mean street near the Khmer House of Blues filled with wailing songs of loss, betrayal, neglect, abandonment, misery, hope and have mercy on slide guitar backed by a harmonica in the key of C crying in her heart, a girl stared up at a mirrored skyscraper watching the wheel of life flash prisms into the sky.

She’s been turned out and turned down faster than a housekeeper working with imported Egyptian threaded linen with a 300 count. No lye. The thermostat of her short sweet life seeks more wattage. She faces a severe energy shortage if she doesn’t find food.

Like Tran, she is a quadriplegic, an amputee with one good leg after finding a landmine on her way home from school. She is one of 26,000 men women and children maimed or killed every year by landmines leftover from ongoing or forgotten conflict.

Reports from the killing fields indicate there are 110 million landmines buried in 45 countries. It costs between $300-$900 to remove a single mine.

It will cost $33 billion to remove them and take 1,100 years. Governments spend $200-$300 million a year to detect and remove 10,000 mines a year.

Cambodia, Angola, Iraq, Ukraine, Laos, and Afghanistan are the most heavily mined countries in the world.

40% of all land in Cambodia is unused because of landmines. One in 236 Cambodians is an amputee. She hears children crying as doctors struggle to remove pieces of metal from their skin. She cannot raise her hands to cover her ears. Perpetual crying penetrates her heart. Tears of blood soak her skin.

The technical mine that took her right leg off that fateful day as she walked through pristine rice paddies near her village expanded outward at 7,000 meters per second as ball bearings shredded everything around her.

It may have been an American made M18A1, shallow curved with a 60-degree fan shaped pattern. The lethal range is 328 feet. Maybe it was a plastic Russian PMN-2. She never saw it coming. She didn’t die of shock and blood loss.

A stranger stopped the bleeding and shot her up with morphine. All the strangers and happy ghosts carried morphine. Standard issue. Grateful, she speaks the language of silence.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged