one village

He was useful here for thirty-seven days. Passion and compassion. Joy and laughter.

Savon, her husband Savuth and two adolescents have a hard rural Cambodian life.
She sold spices in the Siem Reap market.
She dreamed having a small school at her home where village kids could learn English.
Private schools are expensive.

She asked foreigners if they would visit and teach for a short time. Beginning.
They started the school one year ago. EEC - English Education in Community, an NGO in a dusty village.

They advertised on work-away a site for volunteer ops around Earth.
Volunteers come and go. Children need consistency.

Volunteers visited from Japan, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Ireland, Australia, USA, and UK. 
The majority stay two weeks or longer. They teach and/or build new rooms and prepare the house before rainy season. $5 a day covers accomodation and meals.

Community. 

Kids learn Japanese, English, have fun, how to think for themselves and help each other.
Fifty kids from 3-18, all levels.
Two classrooms - dirt floors, wooden benches, white board. Limited textbooks. Sigh.

One local Khmer girl, 15, showed exceptional progress translating and helping young ones. He suggested Savon hire her. She did. 

Nature is the teacher.

There are two classrooms at a forelorn pagoda three kilometers away. 

Ride a bike through world dust. Mid-day heat burns everything. Water buffalo, white oxen, rice paddies, naked kids, bamboo homes, ancient wooden structures, flat endless horizons, flaming plastic.

Celebrate your existence. 
Rain is coming. Life blossoms this beauty.

Brushes iPad - Lao mountains

TLC - 5

“A human life in China is worthless,” said Leo, 14, born in a Re-education-Through-Labor Reform Camp in Hubei. His mom worked in the empty university library.

After school exploring forested hills on mountain bikes Lucky and Leo shifted gears where the rubber met the road. One day they stopped in an old quarry to play in dirt.

It was an abandoned country, an abstract concept.

They stood in a deep excavated canyon. High dirt walls bordered by pine, evergreen and blue sky wore sharp deep gashes after machine teeth gouged down dirt. Workers harvested red clay for imperial jade tombs at the university where 15,001 students struggled to survive in a harmonious society. Students hiding from recycled Mao-styled uniformed security guards mastered eating, texting and casual sex.

They stood at the bottom of a bottomless pit.

“Everyone is a spy,” said Leo.

“How did you surmise this theoretical fact?”

“Life is my teacher. It’s our 5,000-year history plain and simple. Their job is to keep an eye on us. Think about it. We have too any people here and so, to monitor our behavior, attitudes and thinking, they recruit students and teachers as spies. Informers. Minders. They’re paid with passing grades or cash. My father was an informer during the Cultural Revolution. It’s Darwinian logic, evolution of the species. Survival.”

“I’m not surprised. This was common through dynasties. Perpetuate control and authority. The Central Party created a climate of fear. Husbands reported wives. Wives reported husbands, sons and daughters. Daughters and sons reported fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles. Concubines reported lovers. An evil cycle.”

“Yes,” said Leo, “evil is a myth. Everyone is a charter member of the Big Ears Sharp Eyes No Mouth Society. Our generation of informers and spies make good money. Knowing their place they keep their mouth shut to survive. Creativity is my meditation. I meditate on the comic, the absurd. Don’t take life seriously. It’s too short. If you laugh you last.”

“Thanks for life lesson #5.”

Lucky shared writing-living suggestions with eight new Chinese teachers. Make your characters want something right away, even if it’s a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaningless of life need water from time to time. It’s your job to create conflict so the characters will say or do surprising and revealing things, educating and entertaining us. Characters change/grow. Kill your darlings. If a writer can’t or won’t do that they should get out of the trade. A writer is a hustler.

Write like you’re dead. Someday you will be.

Ah the drama - the unfolding play observing sensational phenomena. 

Entertainment is alive and well in Asia. It’s the entertainment capital of the world. Keep them stupid and happy. Children of all ages stay amused by cell phones, Lose Face social sites and the idiot box. They surrender their consciousness. Watch TV. Miss the show.

 “Keep your hand moving,” he said to lazy Chinese robots. “The hand is directly connected to the heart. You are pure sensation. Be an anarchist. Take risks. Take a line for a walk.”

As a foreign language barbarian wearing a Tang Dynasty five-clawed red dragon, yin-yang symbol, a rising Phoenix and a crying crane flying through mist covered mountains he witnessed emperors screwing concubines inside Forbidden Cities with red lacquered emotional curiosities where visions of detached ebullient phosphorus streams wove silent abstractions of zither tonal quality in extreme bliss. Manifestations of superior phenomenal detective analysis and forty questions of the soul redlined final exams.

“We know so much and understand so little,” Lucky said.

“I don’t understand a thing. People are more affected by how they feel than by what they understand,” said Leo. “On day one my teacher said, ‘I only want you to bring two things to class. Your ears.’” Hear ye, hear ye.

 

Martha's Zen Card

I am a short story.

You are a novel.

It never occurred to Matt to buy indigenous cultural music while traveling.

Martha his girl friend considered it essential.

Music made her edgy and alive.

When she heard music she danced.

She returned to her primitive self.

She danced naked.

Ballet. Flamingo. Tango. Cha-cha. Lambada. Waltz.

He wrote naked verbs. They loved naked. Naked cherished syllable skin music.

They wrote, danced and lived like they were dead.

One day they would be. It's now or never.

They were free. It's the way to be.

Culture is what you are. Culture means you can forget.

Nature is what you can be.

People are nature's tools.

Passing through Body Sat Quiet in Asia on a three week, “Look, don't think” holiday from frozen Europe they happened into an 8th century tourist town music repository.

They smelled music before they saw it. Seeing music is an art form. Synesthesia.

In music like life, the end of the composition is not the point.

A music boy handed Matt an orange book. Write your melodic request here. Matt opened the book. A vignette floated free.

A Cambodian orphan girl popped out of blank pages: I am sorry. Goodbye and good luck to you and your family. These are our famous words. Big vocabulary. Tongues speak. Small life. Big chance. Yeah. Yeah.

Hunger Angel watched 24/7 in the big leagues.

Sanitation workers in green environmental vests with broom music swept streets for the New Year. Make it new. Make it new.

We should be so lucky to have crystal clean sheets.

Every day is anew year.

One day is like a minute.

One minute is like a day.

That's relativity. All my relatives are dead.

Never trust an atom. They make up everything.

When you know what you don't know you realize moral character with social intelligence, integrity, and courage.

Courage is an unknown word in our head and heart. Running away is our way. Everyday I have the blues. No one loves me but my mother and she could've been lying too.

You absolve in the rhythm when you have adequate life experience.

Silence and hunger are identical naked twins.

Fear and Ignorance produced Expectation & Greed.

I am good at two things:

Eating and sleeping.

Fighting and fucking.

Laughing and crying.

Reading and writing? That's for idiots.

The less I do the fewer mistakes I make, said Insecurity.

The fewer mistakes I make the less I am criticized, said Fear.

We know the essence of survival. Keep your fucking mouth shut.

One day, Bliss's part-time lover said, buy me a TV.

NO.

You have a job, a TV, a mother, a 12-year old daughter, two brothers, no father and no husband. I gave you money to buy a bike for your daughter and she lost it, money for clothes, money for medicine, money for food, money for temporary naked lust and currency sobriety. You play me for a sentimental fool. You're fucking crazy.

Her arrival was sporadic at best. She visited randomly at 8:37 for a shower, fucking and another shower.

He explored her lips, thin neck, small ears, crest of skin throat, narrow brown shoulders, pinpoint breasts with tongue talk, flat belles letters, long legs and played his way into her valley of potential.

He loved giving her oral pleasure.

Edging rose lips, long and deep. Slow and sweet.

Little man in a boat sang, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

She reciprocated playing his bone flute.

Riding the pony, priming her G spot grinding hard and fast she exploded with precision and extra ambition whispering, Give me a baby. Give me a baby.

He deferred chromosomes. Fat fucking chance, there's no way under the tropical son I'll give you anything but short time, small money, temporary love and the high hard one in your strike zone with runners in scoring position.

Here's the pitch.

She stayed until 9:45 and left for work at an upscale spa wearing aromatic Grecian urns. He gave her 10 bones. Feed me.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Get out of my life, said Telepathy. You are subservient and I am stupid to put up with this shit. He creased her indifference into a cumulus cloud. It rained goodbye and good luck.

She sat on the bed with her back to him. Sniffle, sniffle.

Her fake tears formed rivers named Regret and Hopelessness and Indifference.

Fish behind twelve Laotian dams financed with Chinese capital to provide electricity to Thailand fed 60 million Asians downstream in deltas.

His NO created black-eyed daggers. They stabbed him with hatred, loss, self-pity, violence and starvation. Revenge is best served cold with DNA.

They put on death masks.

Your mask eats your face.

They walked out into tropical heat. Separate directions.

Waves of loneliness shuffled down a broken street. Children dying of malnutrition at a health clinic on the coroner of Hope cried as desperate mothers received free blue placebos.

The day after tomorrow belonged to orphans and lucky losers with Wabi-Sabi.

Wabi - the beauty of the most ordinary circumstances and objects.

Sabi - to feel one's own sharp existence.

Martha and Tolerance danced through life. 

Everything you know is a lie.

TLC - Ankara Knife

“You are the director, audience and players,” said the owner.

Inside another series of interlocking blades was a Cambodian landmine museum. It revealed Geiger counters, radiation blast suits, screwdrivers, shovels, hi-tech metal sensors, fertile green rice paddies, farms, fields, 1,000 Angkor temples built with laterite stones by 300,0000 slaves in the 9th century, 6,000 starving overworked broken hearted pachyderms, topographical satellite survey maps showing extensive ancient agricultural irrigation systems, statistical charts, refugee relocation centers, rehabilitation co-pay deductible insurance policies, cremation ceremonies, and bereaved starving survivors accepting the loss forever of two million genocide family members.

1.5 million lost strangers disguised as tourists talking with full mouths spilled desire, fear, regret, ignorance and superstition while rappelling through nouns and verbs near stilted bamboo shacks inside submerged mangrove forests resembling Monet paintings replete with jungle vine hammocks, floating villages in a floating world, charcoal cooking fires, naked begging children, amputees, short term Australian nurses discovering dehydration in Siem Reap slums, laconic robotic Khmer teachers making $40 a month, 269+ orphanages with 12,000 orphans, a butterfly farm with 232 species and a silk worm weaving center in Stung Treng, Ratanakiri empowering fifty singing women threading thick and thin yellow salvia protein based fibers on spindles and looms near Son Le Tap Lake, the largest in Asia.

Ice Girl in Banlung Chp. 12

Across town a sewing woman returned to her Kampot guesthouse. She splashed water on her face, changed clothes and spit into red roses. She kick started her cycle and went to the 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 universe 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. The 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.

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.

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