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.

How's this compare to where you've been?

Greetings,

That's the question three fat white guys discuss at a garden restaurant on a breezy Saturday. They were dropped off by a van. They meet friends.

One wealthy self assured Arab man with forehead sunglasses and his tall sleek jaguar girlfriend in tight jeans, tighter top and rattling high heels. Her feet are small and beautiful. Coiffeur hair. Originally, "inner part of the helmet." She leaves half her noodles. A Frenchman and his pregnant wife. She laughs a lot.

The weekend escape exercise from the capital. The three amigos booked rooms for their Cambodian honeys coming down from Phnom Penh and now they're drinking beer. The waft of suds and distinct European body odor drifts along the river. Intelligent life on Earth is a rumor.

The answer? "Now we've got women," said one man.

Sounds like a history story about a group of seafaring men who raided a Mediterranean city. They kidnapped all the women. The city men were pissed off and raided another coastal town, kidnapping all the women there. This is how war started. Revenge baby.

One day the women were asked about this event. "No," they said. "We weren't kidnapped. We went willingly."

No squeeze, no please.

This is a five minute free writing exercise. Keep your hand moving. The birds are singing. 

I live at Orchid. Orchid is important because I love orchids. They have many yellow and purple orchids growing, hanging, from planters. I feel great with orchids. I am a traveling gardener with unlimited potentials. Plural.

I remember many orchids in Indonesia. They were cheap. I decorated the front porch with multiple colorful orchids - red, orange, purple, white, and yellow in clay pots with a charcoal base. Orchids took me to the mountains to see my wild friends. (5 minutes)

At 7:30 a.m. the Orchid restaurant is filled with the smell of burning fires from refuse, plastic bags, and organic material. German travelers spit out their harsh dictatorial guttural sense of determination. It is harsh. They are planning to invade, to provoke a war to justify their extreme greed for land and slaves.

Teutonic tongues mix with screeching Khmer tongues. Question. What is louder than a group of Khmer people? Answer. Another group of Khmer people.

Babbling comparisons display firm purpose. They establish their memory-fiction with a drunken slow administrative tone. A singing bird says, "Good-bye, I'm taking wing. The sky is my refuge from description. The divine details create uncertainty in my grand plan."

Khmer children bleed water.

ROUGE: a rainbow with the smell of laughing birds, clouds and rivers. Milling around.

Thank you for your attention.

Metta.

The Temple of Literature, Ha Noi.

Warrior statue, ink. Xiamen, China.

The art of Happiness

Greetings,

Here's the morning view. Clouds commute to another part of the sky. They appreciate wind. 

A day for seeing yellow leaves, yellow light dance free. Water light sparkles diamonds.

Hear with your eyes.

You navigate an old bridge. It is made of industrial strength cement, wire and rusty philosophies.

Five things to improve happiness: 

1. Be grateful. Write letters to someone who helped you in some way.
2. Be optimistic. Visualize your ideal future. Describe the image in a journal entry.
3. Count your blessings. Write down three good things that happen to you every week.
4. Use your strengths. 
5. Practice acts of kindness. Helping others helps ourselves. 

Metta.

Julia writes from Sweden

Greetings,

I received a wonderful email from Julia today to share with you. It's direct, honest and filled with her humbling life changing experience in Cambodia. She's amazing. I'm grateful we met in Siem Reap.

"Home again.

"Time flies when you're having fun and so I find myself back in snowy Sweden a month after I left. I have however, returned a completely different person, one I really like. 

"I have learned to appreciate the value of a pair of Tom Ford sunglasses, $440 - or 2 years of university-tuition for my friend Lina in Phnom Penh. A pair of Marc Jacobs', $325 - or 4 months rent on a decent house for a family on the outskirts of Siem Reap. A pair of seasonal Armanis, $100 - or two waterfilters that will provide 2 families with ten years of clean drinking water. And that's just the shades. Insecurities are expensive. 

"When I changed my mind I also changed my hair. I cut it all off along with enormous amounts of baggage. Turns out, underneath all that hair I'm cute, fun, kind, smart, interested and interesting, generous, loving, caring and very, very happy. Who would've thunk it? 

"Tim has become my mentor and he guides me towards myself. I am writing down the bones. 

"I have learned that in Cambodian traffic one relies purely on the force. Which is easier to locate once all the buzzing stops and you start focusing on the right now. If you try to think about anything in the past or in the future you will get hit by at least one moto. I know, I tried it. Twice. Navigating through the craziest jams becomes easy if you pay complete, relaxed attention. Life is "same, same - but different" as the tourist t-shirt reads. Mine reads "I heart Cambodia". 

"I have learned that a landmine costs $3 to put in the ground. A prosthetic limb on average $3000. 

"I have learned that a government-employed teacher in Cambodia earns about $40 a month, a privately employed teacher can earn twice that. 

"I have learned that with a little help a family can make some extra money raising butterflies. 

"I have learned that papaya and lime is an awsome combination, that amok is delicious and sweet and sour fish soup is even better, that coconutwater is best had out of a newly cracked open coconut after my new friend Mo climbs up the tree to get it for me, that Angelina has good taste in drinks and that Chin's mom can cook a fantastic feast on a nail. 

"I have learned that I can be useful and that I am needed. My life is no longer an empty search for anything to hold on to. My purpose has found me. I am greatful I decided to go to Cambodia. I am greatful I went despite second thoughts. I am greatful to all the beautiful, inspiring, wonderful people I got to meet there. I am greatful that I could be of service. I am greatful for the lessons I learned. I am greatful that this happened at a time in my life when I am open to change. I am greatful that I am out of the dark. My life is the light and I am living it intentionally. 

"All the rest is just detalis. I'll fill you all in when inspiration finds me."

Love,

J

 Julia and her village kids.