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

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

Animist Cemetery - Ice Girl

Chapter 20.

Ice Girl said: North of Banlung in a remote jungle village along the Heart of Darkness they carve images of their dead.

  The Chunchiet animist people bury their dead in the jungle. Life is a sacred jungle. Animists believe in the universal inherent power of nature world. The Tompoun and Jarai, among animist world tribes have sacred burial sites. 

  The Kachon village cemetery is one hour by boat on the Tonle Srepok River from Voen Sai. It is deep in the jungle.

  The departed stays in the family home for five days before burial. Once a month family members make ritual sacrifices at the site. The village shaman dreams the departed will go to hell. In their spirit story dream the shaman meets LOTH, Leader of the Hell who asks for an animal sacrifice. The animist belief says sacrificing a buffalo and making statues of the departed will satisfy LOTH. It will renew the spirit and return it to the family.

  After a year family members remove old structures, add two carved effigies, carve wooden elephant tusks, create new decorated roofs and sacrifice a buffalo at the grave during a festive week long celebration with food and rice wine for the entire village. New tombs have cement bases and carved effigies with cell phones and sunglasses. Never out of touch.

  See your local long distance carrier for plans and coverage in your area. The future looks brighter than a day in a sacred jungle.

  Fascinating, said Leo.

  Walking is the best form of travel, said Ice Girl. Take your time quickly.

  The paved road from Pakse, Laos to NE Cambodia is made for tourist buses, said Leo.

  A rusty red and white metal border bar weighted by rocks in a bucket netted by twisted wire hangs suspended. The VIP double-decker candy cane colored bus is packed with babbling European flash packers destined for the 9th Century at Angkor Wat. They have a long way to go to get back in time. They are doingSEA.

  The more they see the less they know, said a shaman.

  The efficient busboy hands out departure and arrival forms, collects passports, a $2 Lao departure fee, a $25 Cambodia visa fee and $2 entry fee. He takes everything to a Lao shack. The border bar goes up. The bus rolls through no-man’s land at the speed of a snail. 

  Being landless is fun, dramatic and exciting. No country, no documents, no money, no food, no medicine, no family, no friends, no chance. Abandoned on a strip of soil.   

  A female Cambodian health care worker wearing a facemask and official shirt patch gets on the bus. Pointing a small medical toy gun into each face, she registers body temperature.  

  Someone said, “If you’re sick you stay here.”

  “On the bus?”

  “No. Between countries. On the road.”

  Sounds like a novel.

  Crossing a border is a transcendental act.

  On the C side it’s business as usual. Immigration shacks, money changers, women hustling fried food, beverages, fruits, naked children, scavenging emaciated dogs, ripped cell phone umbrellas and haggard tourists drinking H2O waiting for the boy to return with passports.

An incomplete grandiose empty glass and brass Cambodian immigration building with fake Angkor temple motifs surrounded by landmines signifies exotic investment.

  Money = tourism and tourism = money. 

  Stung Treng in Ratanakiri province is 87 clicks south along the Mekong. Tourists pass through this small faded colonial town. They have a schedule. Time chases them, Hurry up! Hurry Up! You’re going to be late for an important date. Get a move on.

  Leo visited Mekong Blue, the Stung Treng Women’s Development Center. Fifty women are trained in a six-month silk weaving course. They harvest, dye and create silk textiles. It is a UNESCO award winner for superior quality, creativity and originality. 

  They have Mulberry trees for leaves. Worms eat the leaves. Their saliva makes yellow cocoons. Saliva becomes a protein and stronger than steel. They boil silkworm cocoons to extract raw yellow silk. One thread is 300 meters long.

  It is separated into soft and fine threads. Women dye the threads using natural materials: banana (yellow), bougainvillea (yellow), almond leaves (black), lac insect nests (red and purple), prohut wood (yellow and green), lychee wood (black and gray), indigo (blue), and coconut (brown and pink).

  Women also weave Ikat, a technique creating patterns on silk threads prior to dyeing and weaving. It is called HOL with 200 motifs.

  The center improves the women’s standard of living. It breaks the cycle of poverty through vocational training and educational programs. They have a primary school with thirty-five kids and two teachers. Everyone receives lunch. It is the single biggest employer in town after the government.

That’s so cool, said Ice Girl.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Sewing - Ice Girl

Chapter 12.

Across town a sewing woman returned to her Kampot, Cambodia guesthouse.

She splashed water on her face and changed clothes. She spit into red roses. She kick started her cycle and went to the sprawling market inside a labyrinth.

  At her corner stall she keyed multiple locks. She stacked numbered wooden shutters. She dragged out her Butterfly sewing machine, ironing board and manikins.

  Dummies wore exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling faux-paws silver stars, moons, and small round reflecting balls. Her skill designed fabrics for women needing elaborate sartorial refinement for engagements, weddings, and cremations.

  She stayed busy with serious fittings and adjustments. Her sewing universal process was selecting fabric, measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, pushing her machine treadle, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections and ironing.

  Threads inside a slow prism flashed light and shadow as needles danced through cloth in endless conversations. Needles talked about traditional conservative morals and opportunity-value cost. Thread followed their conversation. Together they measured precise calculations establishing a stop-loss number.

All explanations have to end somewhere.

Sky darkened.

Ceremonial drum thunder sang vocal intensity.

Lonely lost suffering foreign tourists in Cambodia shuddered with fear.

What if I die here?

How will my family and friends begin to realize my intention to witness 1200 years of dancing

Angkor laterite stoned history

gnarling jungles revealed by natural strobes? 

Lightning flashed skies.

Giant flashbulbs illuminated petrified children

Buried inside cement caverns eyes eating cartoon images on a plasma scream.

Skies opened.

Rain lashed humans. Some laughed, others cried. Tears dissolved fear.

Sweet dreams, baby.

Dawn.

Two arrived. A boy is cutter. He carried rope, ladder, small axe and machete.

Helper friend is coconut palm tree scout.

Here and there, he said, pointing.

Go up.

The boy shinnied up a narrow palm.

Transferring to the towering 2’ diameter palm he climbed higher.

Roping his tools.

How’s the view, asked helper.

Sublime. A wide brown river lined by cauliflower oaks reaches bamboo huts.

Orange sunrise severs cumulus wisps.

A market woman has her nails done in blue glitter.

A boy saws crystalized ice on a red dirt road.

Girls in white cotton pedaled to school.

A woman grilling waffles along a road buys bundled forest kindling.

Saffron orange robed monks sit in meditation at Naga Wat.

One plays a drum. A heartbeat of possibility.

He climbed higher.

He chopped. Long thin heavy branches weighted by freedom danced free.

Helper dragged branches past advertisements for temples, orphanages, river trips.

He chopped.

He dragged.

He chopped.

He dragged.

He secured rope to the top. Blossoming.

He chopped.

Coconuts, leaves, bark danced down.

White interior life dust snowed.

Tree crashed.

Light escaped. 3 hours. $20/2.

Smashing blocks of ice inside a blue plastic bag with a blunt instrument created a symphony outside unspoken words as a homeless man with a pair of brown pants thrown over a thin shoulder sat down to rest.

Shy women waiting for Freedom averted black eyes.

Aggressive women manipulated stacks of government issued denominations trusting an implied perceived value in exchange for meat, fruit, gold and fabric.

Counting and arranging denominations inside broken beams of light, cracked cement, lost mislaid wooden planks, debris, feathers, jungles, and jangled light waves they surveyed commercial landscapes with dispatched dialects near rivers revealing stories with fine stitched embroidery. Needles led thread.

Ice Girl in Banlung

One Sunday Song - Ice Girl

Chapter 11.

cambodia is a funny place. ha, ha, ha.

what do you see, asked Leo.

i see a man carrying one red brick. he’s looking for a place to put it down. he is confused. he had no idea his day would involve carrying a brick AND making a decision. he needs a woman to tell him what do. this is rare because men, in his culture, are the boss and tell women what to do. they tell them to lie down and get ready for the big thing. he is confused about accepting loss forever. his wife wears the pants. she is the now.

i see an exuberant extraordinary solid particle cow patty land-mine in the middle of a red road. it’s a steaming green mountain.

it smells like an art project.

it will be discovered by a speeding SUV leaving a trace of aroma past sweeping weeping women. it will spread itself over olfactory landscapes.

it will create new tomorrows.

welcome to a new reality game show called

Watch Women Work

or evolution of the species and social organization (+-).

log on, log in, log the forest. yeah, yeah. i am mr. monosyllable, your crème-filled hostess cupcake for this week’s exciting program. yeah, yeah.

contestant #1. a housewife in a rural village. her task is sweeping dust into piles of dust outside her bamboo shack. she has all day to complete this arduous task. repeat. dust to dust. dawn to dusk. poetic ramifications in the theatre of the absurd.

contestant #2. a housewife. she has a house. she is a wife. she has 10 children. having children is her DUTY. sex for her is nothing but a DUTY. she is a duty free outlet. her price tag has expired. everything must go. many children gives her mother and extended family someone to love and play with and yell at. yelling at kids here is abNORMAL and healthy. it nurtures their self-esteem and neurotic stunted emotional prolonged adolescence with punctuation marks.

her husband sleeps. he loves sleeping, eating and making tool babies. he doesn’t have to carry them around for nine months and experience hormonal feelings. he sleeps forever dreaming of a hammock in a bamboo forest. their children are naked. they play with trash and sing a song, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. they burn down the forest. fire is their funny game besides yelling and whining, feed me, feed me.

contestant #3. a housewife. she mills around without attention, focus, plan or direction. she teaches by example. she hopes lazy boys and girls grow up with initiative. she knows many won’t and don’t. she pounds an anvil all day. she is a worker, a tool of production in life’s assembly factory. a simple person, she spits out many well educated clever children. this is her duty.

contestant #4. a housewife. she works. her lazy adult son watches her. he is bored watching her. he stares at the long winding dirt road feasting his small beady soul window on dirt. his eyes are pure clean red dirt. she sweeps him into the river. swim, little fish. bye-bye baby, bye-bye. he floats away.

contestant #5. a housewife. she has a diamond in her mind. she is calm and focused. she exhales beauty, truth and love. she sings all day long.

pick one to emulate with incentive and initiative and win BIG prizes.

what’s the prize? a broom, a brick, an SUV smashing a green cow patty and a garish monster home shaped like a wedding cake surrounded by a moat, walls, silver barb wire and iridescent colored candles.

anything else?

a year’s subscription to your favorite illustrated color glossy advertising magazine: “Dreams, Lies, Wishes, Hopes, and Great Expectations While Driving a Blue Dismal Diesel Dump Truck Loaded with Ice Needing an Overhaul.”

cool prizes. let’s play.

Offstage Socrates said, my quest-ion is:

How do you live a good life?

Quest-ions gathered to discuss this.

destiny’s child disguised as a black and vermillion butterfly nurtured red and orange hibiscus above a wide flowing river.

see you next week on watch women work.

*

  Away from Ice Girl’s eyes new wet season life shimmered green rice paddies.

Beauty, creativity, dance, and music described sensations.

Sensations rested between an object and a concept.

  Stimuli engaged disquiet between notes.

  How do you manifest this waking dream, said Ice Girl.

  It’s all process with mindfulness said Leo.

Ice Girl in Banlung