Voices

Greetings,

A man's voice from magnified speakers echoes down river on new year's day. He talks about what ifs and maybes. Exhortations about the dire need for clean drinking water, sanitation, education and medicine.

What is the significance of new year? Another day, another opportunity for talking animals to discuss, share and elaborate on gaseous topics like:

• how to mill around without causing damage to the environment
• how to wear a yellow "HELLO" cell phone t-shirt without a license
• how laughing orphans fill up a wheelbarrow with lost dreams
• how perpetually distracted humans face unpleasant facts
• how loose tongues are required to discuss, share, elaborate or mystify a woman slicing limes
• how three foreign female educators chew nails and contemplate new programs in circular fashion
• how humans will never escape 'art'
• how teams of ants try, try, try to maneuver a large piece of sugar candy up a steep cement mountain
• how an experienced bicycle traveller from Holland named Harold helps at the grassroots level to improve children's quality of life in Cambodian orphanages and Burmese refugee camps. How he eschews large organizations working directly with the people. 

How bullet points fly to a target.

On new year's day, the woman in her blue pajamas decorates the family altar with cans and bottles of soft drinks, coconuts, durian, perfume, two crystal glasses of milk, candles, candy, bread, rice, oranges, apples, water, incense, photos of dead relatives, cockroaches, howling dogs, baboons, balloons, clouds, clones and clowns.

She turns on the TV. She turns it really LOUD. Her daughters, 4, 6, are entranced and captivated by the visual circus. They never read books. The idiot box allows the kids, servants, tuk-tuk drivers, husband and foreign guests to give up their consciousness. Another diversion, another day, a new year day. April Fools!

New day, new diversion, people pretending to be busy.

Angkor Wat Hindu dancers in gold silk lame dresses with towering headdresses perform ancient dances. Apsara fingers, delicate movements. They celebrate seasons, fertility, rice, fish, nature, courtship, and joy. 

She is frail, about 80 with silver hair. She sits in front of her house. Her left hand rests on a cane. She wears a beautiful purple sarong with golden threads and a white lace blouse. Her daughter trims her hair above the left ear with shiny silver scissors. The woman's smile illuminates her tranquil face.

Metta.

Sunset drive

Greetings,

At dusk as an orange flaming ball of gas drifts toward blue mountains, setting trees on fire, painting the sky red, the Kampot river drive comes alive. I sit across the street with an iced coffee at a rolling stall. It costs 1500 Real or 75 sense.

The woman is friendly because I am Mr. Lucky Foot and bring her good fortune. People are curious about the stranger so they visit her and buy something cool and refreshing. They stare. They drink. They mill around. They pay. They leave.

She's been here since dawn. She stakes out the corner across from the Post Office every day. She has everything she needs; a hammock for a mid-day nap, sugar cane grinders, apples, oranges, dragon fruit, mangoes, bananas, java, tea, umbrellas, plastic chairs, folding tables and a fine view. Her husband and two sons help her in late afternoon. 

Fifteen fishing boats return south from up river, chugging through wake reflections of sky. A woman with her daughter perched on the running board of a motorcycle putts past. Men and wives with their kids pass. A man with his dog blowing white hair cruises along.

Blue vans serve as a local buses. They're crammed with millions of humans and their market shopping. The roof is covered with lashed bamboo baskets, boxes, tires, and assorted packages. The open back door exposes material threatening to explode and spill into the road.

Heavy-duty construction dump trucks filled with labor boys blast their horns and spit gravel. 

Chattering Muslim girls in colorful scarves, having finished their day shift at the local P.T.C. weaving center for 200 disadvantaged youngsters from rural areas pedal home. Teams of young chattering cycle boys prowl for girls. Prim girls in blue school uniforms pedal bikes, ride scooters. Blond fat Europeans walk the front as serious local women on a weight-loss program of infinite proportions march along, swinging their gaited arms like puppets in a play.

A man with his rolling cart near the curb pulverizes ingredients with a mortar and pestle. He serves dinner noodles, vegetables and spices to sidewalk lovers, kids, moms and dads cradling infants. A busy woman next door with her rolling restaurant grills meat and fish using pieces of charcoal fired below a clay pot.

Wealthy people blast past in 4-wheel drives. One day I saw a Hummer. It was humming black money. The people inside were invisible. Someone said there are 200 very, very rich people in this country and millions of poor people. How many poor people can fit in a hummingbird? 

Humans trapped inside vehicles scream, "Look at the people outside. They are eating, breathing, living, laughing, talking, dreaming and loving. What if I die here in this cartoon graveyard? Who'll be my role model?"

Accidental children inside rolling machines pound their tiny craniums against reinforced tempered glass barriers yelling, "Look, mom! See the kids by the river. They're playing a game in fresh air. They have air-conditioning. I want to play. I'm hungry!" Mom ignored their plea of temporary insanity.

Dad steps on the gas blasting loose gravel and dust into the air. He wants to get home to his gated house with high fences wearing shards of glittering sharp green glass. To keep them out.

A young boy and and his sister finish eating corn-on-the-cob. He runs to the edge of the world, pulls out his imaginary pistol and fires at the flaming orange sun. It explodes and disappears. He laughs, "Bulls-Eye!" 

He and his sister find their father's comforting hand and they walk.

Metta.

No, thank you

Greetings,

How and why it happened to briefly consider teaching a Speaking-Listening class at a Kampot university. It's existed for three years. 700 students. 

I met a man at lunch. He called his friend the director. I pedaled over at 1430 to meet him. The impatient head of English jumped in, "Yes. We will hire you."

They needed a native speaker for six hours on Saturday and three hours on Sunday once a month. Students also take core, writing, reading and culture classes with local teachers. 

"Do you have books for the class?"

"No. In Cambodia teachers provide the materials."

"I see. What levels?"

"Pre-intermediate to intermediate." The teacher took me to a class of first year foundation students. It reminded me of teaching at the Chinese university. Hopeful, bored, alert, expectant faces. It was a beginning. Introductions, eliciting questions. Exposure to a new tongue with clarity and humor. Simple.

After class I gave the teacher some ideas for textbooks; New Interchange, Cutting Edge, Let's Go.

"Can you find them in Phnom Penh?"
"You should go to Phnom Penh and find them," he said.

I laughed. "That's not my job. My job is to teach. I need materials. The students need books. I will come back next week and see what you found."

Yesterday I returned to see him. "Did you find books for the class?" He showed me a 1-2-3 Listening book with CDs.

"Ok. It's a start. Where are the student textbooks for speaking and listening?"
"I couldn't find them Phnom Penh."
"Why?"
"Not available. We don't have the money."
"I see."

I kept it simple. "I am a professional teacher. I need materials. Students need books. Students are my customers. I'm afraid this isn't going to meet the needs of the students. I understand the nature of education here. How it works. I appreciate you and the director offering me the opportunity. However, I won't be teaching here."

"What! You're not going to teach the class?"

"That's right. Thank you for the opportunity. Please give my regards to the director. Good-bye."

I rode my bike to the river. The situation had offered students and I the chance to learn, play and explore together. Reality check. The system was ineffective. I assembled my small frustration, sadness and disappointment into a collective breath and let it go. It floated away, on, over, around and through a wide blue river. So it goes.

Metta.

International Women's Day

Greetings,

To honor women this day, every day, everywhere, here are some cultural images.

Nature is what you are. Culture is what you can be.

Metta.

The Careful and Amorous Project

Greetings,

We met a guesthouse one morning. She started talking. "Amorous is my husband. He's sick. Something he ate."

Careful is 31. She was born in Xinjiang, China.

In 1991 while working for Ramada International Hotels in Beijing I traveled to Xinjiang to act in a movie about a hero who dies at his post. They needed a foreigner. My Swiss GM said, "Go for it." For ten days we filmed at the Chinese National Petroleum oil fields deep in the Tarim Basin. I wrote about this little adventure in my traveling novel, A Century Is Nothing.

She remembered the film and famous scientist. He developed a new drilling technique. He died at his isolated post surrounded by test tubes, mathematical scribbles, rusty oil drilling rigs and sand dunes. Then the Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Department had to approve film scripts depicting famous heroes. Especially dead scientific-political ones. He's in the Chinese national scientific hall of fame.

She's a freelance magazine editor in Shanghai. Amorous is an engineer from San Detour, California. He designs financial surf boards studying the effects of wave theory using electromagnetic pulse detectors. They met at a house party in Shanghai.

"When he came in I saw a deer," she said. She was the hunter and he was the prey. She is highly talkative. He is brilliant and taciturn. They dated for a year and married last year. First in her home town of Hubai province and then in Tomorrow Land. 

They got her residency card. They returned to China and quit their jobs. They hit life's highway.

Careful remembers everything, especially the long ago past.

"When I was a little girl growing up in Xinjiang, all I wanted was a book. I grew up with mountains and rivers. One day I saw a newspaper floating in the water. I dried it out and tried to read it. I couldn't. Then, when I went to school there was a girl - her father worked with my father as a public servant - and her family was well off. She had books. I didn't like her but I pretended to so I could see her books. That's how I started to read.

"It was a real struggle for me in Shanghai. I had no formal education, but I could write. I forged a C.V. and got on with an advertising company. Good money. I was looking for the perfect love. Then I met Amorous."

"I want a home," she said. "We'll need to make a decison by May," he said. "We either return to the states or find new jobs in China." 

"Look," she said, "I'm in my early 30's. I want to start a family. I need a child."

"First we need a home," he said. "Everything's in storage."

"Ok," she said. "After we're done traveling and doing this project, we'll decided where we want to live."

"Fine."

"It was my idea this project," she said. "Amorous agreed."

The project involves using various masks and props to create mysterious, surreal images around Asia. They plan their shooting schedule, Careful wears the costumes and Amorous makes the images in a raw format.

They won an Oscar this year for:

"Best Supporting Partner While Traveling For A Year in Southeast Asia While Working On A Crazy Yet Meaningful Artistic Project In Diverse Exotic Locations Using Bizarre Masks and Costumes."

Metta.

Careful in Lhasa, Tibet.

Careful in Cambodia.