Branch Out

My Planet is asking for images of trees.

Explore a floating mangrove forest. Before 9 July. 

I will never see
A poem as lovely 
As a tree.

The sky is Falling

On an edge of planet Earth spinning in a galaxy,

Countries adjusted advertising concepts of insecurity.

They sold Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, Adventure and Surprise.

Consumers washed it down with a super-sized sugared sixteen-ounce big gulps.

Populations accepted multiple real and imaginary nightmares of unknown caloric proportions.

The sky is falling. Love is in the air. Run for cover.

Really? 

 The Children's Hospital in Siem Reap has 22 beds in one room. They are full. They are filled with infants and children wearing air hoses in their nose. They suffer from pneumonia and tuberculosis. This is common in Cambodia. A parent holds a tiny hand.

 I.C.U. has five beds. They are full.

400 mothers cradling kids wait to see a nurse. The nurse can dispense five medicines. Cheap generic pain killers.

Life is a pain killer.

Two drugs are generic placeboes. The mothers are happy to get SOMETHING, anything. They have no knowledge about medicine.

One effective pill prescribed by a doctor costs $1.00. Parents need to buy 15. 

$15.00 is a fortune. Out of the question. Parents accept cheap ineffective drugs.

Parents need a miracle.

How much does a miracle cost?

Trust and smile

Don't you just love the name of a school in Cambodia?

It sings on a clean white sign propped against a brick wall along an endless red rutted swampy road.

Down the road from a pagoda wat where friends and relatives create a cremation. He was 70.

He survived the genocide. That says something. 

The rainy season brings endless pleasure minus pain to natives and aliens.

Milling around is an art form here.

TRUST and SMILE.

Practice with friends and strangers. 

Checkmate

Fingering her Tibetan ivory prayer beads, death heads shook, rattled, and rolled.

The mother’s fingers caressed life’s thorns. Nothing happened completely by random chance, by accidental predetermined random fate in her life. Life for her in America or Amnesia if you will was free will versus determination confronting ambition, privacy, isolation, and community in a corrupt, violent cynical society.

People wanted to control their Fear. They believed in fear.

They worshiped fear and consumption.

They were afraid of being poor and lonely. They were willing victims of their fear, uncertainty and doubt. They switched on their amygdala — a small almond shaped brain structure — validated to be involved in fear and emotional response.

Manipulated by the insatiable invisible insolvent propaganda system, by socialization control mechanisms and the subtle power of right wing conservative propaganda persuasion, they either wanted control or approval facing daily choices.

They struggled, suffered, dancing discovering gratitude and forgiveness in their heart-mind. Living and dying. Dying once while you’re alive is necessary. Get’s it out of the way early.

You die twice. When you are born and when you face death. Inscribed on a Zippo lighter in a dusty Saigon museum case.

Were you born laughing or crying?

“Checkmate,” said Death.

Animist cemetary, Ratanakiri, Cambodia

Skylight

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 witnessing 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 cavern 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 pedal 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.

Go up.

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.