Hello June

Greetings,

May said goodbye. Goodbye. It's been fun hanging out with you for 31 little clicks. Yes it has, said June all bright and beautiful. Now I'm here with the sweet smell of summer. I am filled with destiny and hope.

Hope for what, asked May. See what happens, said June. You are history.

Yes you are, said the Khmer woman with a long dark shadowed shallow lined face slowing crossing the street. She wears a floral sarong, green blouse with a checkered red and white cotton scarf around her neck. She has a walking stick. She hopes for charity. Her hands are pressed together in a sign of blessing, gratitude.

Her age is unknown. Someone gives her paper money. Her dark recessed eyes say thank you. Raised palms say thank you. Her life is a walking meditation. Daily. Two barefoot monks wrapped in bright orange robes pass by. In silence. 

A man rings a bell. 

All the expectations were from the outside. 

Metta.

Art Women

Greetings,

The sewing woman returned to her guesthouse early with her girlfriend to change clothes, spit into red roses and splash water on her face.

She kick started her cycle and they went to the market, deep inside the labyrinth to her corner stall. She unlocked multiple locks, stacked wooden shutters and dragged out her sewing machine, ironing board and iron.

She lined up manikins. They wore her work: exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling faux-paws silver stars, moons, and small round reflecting balls. Her work was for women needing refinement, special elaborate occasions; weddings, funerals and engagements.

She did good work and stayed busy. Serious fittings and adjustments. 

Her sewing universe: process, fabric, measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, sewing machine treadle, edges, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections, ironing.

Inside this slow prism threads of nets flashed light and shadow, needles danced through cloth in endless conversations. The needles talked about traditional values and the opportunity cost. They perform quick precise calculations to establish a stop-loss figure

smashing blocks of ice inside a bag with a blunt instrument creating a symphony of hips rolling outside these unspoken words as a homeless man with a pair of tired brown pants thrown over a shoulder using a solid walking stick sits down to rest and shy women avert their beautiful seductive deep pool eyes

women manipulate stacks of printed government issued paper trusting a perceived value in exchange for goods: meat, fruit, gold, fabric, counting and arranging denominations inside broken beams of light, cracked cement, lost mislaid wooden planks, debris, feathers,

jungles, jangled waves surveying commercial landscapes with the quick dispatch of dialects as Black H'mong girls far away near Sapa rivers and waterfalls express their creation story

Metta.

 

 

S-21

Greetings,

This is from Wikipedia.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. Tuol Sleng in Khmer; [tuəl slaeŋ] means "Hill of the Poisonous Trees" or "Strychnine Hill".

Here are the security rules at the S-21 prison.

When prisoners were first brought to Tuol Sleng, they were made aware of ten rules that they were to follow during their incarceration. What follows is what is posted today at the Tuol Sleng Museum; the imperfect grammar is a result of faulty translation from the original Khmer:

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.

2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.

9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

read more...

Metta.

Volume floats

Greetings,

A Khmer wedding lasts three days. It's LOUD. It's a monster deal.

A company arrives in a dump truck. They set up tents, tables, chairs and huge black speakers in front of an architecturally styled wedding cake home. It's happening all over town.

Speakers blast music day and night. Audible for miles. Volume shudders, shaking the terrain, setting off unemployed landmines, volcanic eruptions and destroying oil drilling operations in deep oceans. Free oil. Oceans of love, oceans of tears.

Animals run for their lives. Birds fill the sky with shrill squawks of pure terror. Panic stricken children suffer unimaginable nightmares. All the trauma counselors are celebrating with copious amounts of food and drink. Another one bites the dust. I am a dust collector.

It costs the groom's boom boom family $3,000 and up. It's a matter of EGO, social standing, imaginary wealth and appearances. They don't send out R.S.V.P. People just show up. Lots of hungry people. Friends, strangers and many animists.

Human speakers drone on and on about marriage, family and society.
Traditional singers and musicians plaintively wail at high decibels about love, suffering, happiness, fidelity, treble and bass. Contemporary hip-hop rappers take the stage with heavy metallic thumping and pumping.

100 monkeys off stage type out Shakespeare. They chatter odes, sonnets and mystifying secrets.

The insane 24/7 volume partially explains why people here speak, or more specifically yell so loud. They don't hear each other because they can't, don't, won't hear. Repeat. What? What? Repeat. Louder!

This is the Flowing holiday. Families with millions of marriageable girls are desperate to get them married. They expect their daughters to produce flowing children. It's a heavy social security reality.

They won't have the money to feed them or house them or educate them or...because those realities are far away, like stars in the sky. They'll worry about essentials later in the long now. Too many poor desperate people will have to sell their children facing immediate financial reality.

As a serious Chinese university student, filled with humility, compassion and serenity said, "Human life here is cheap."

The main problem now is raising $3,000 minimum. If you want to play you have to pay.

No please, no squeeze.

Metta.

Dr. Fish Massage

Greetings,

Have you ever seen a fish that can do massage?

Our shop has amazing and unique fish that can do massage.

This fish eat our dead skin and make our hard skin softly.

So we call this fish as "Doctor Fish."

Please come and enjoy special massage by lovely fish!

Hundreds fish will kiss your toes and suck up all your dead skin!

Wonderful! Exciting! Funny!

New country! New Experience!

Metta.