Girl

The girl and her blind father. Music on the street. We met in 2017 and 2020.

Now he plays laments on a broken street hoping foreign eaters will put money in her orange plastic pail.

She positioned him touching the rear of a parked motorcycle for security and trust where he'd be safe.

We made eye contact, she smiled, radiant, older now, taller in a simple blouse, shorts, flip flops, smiling, Thank you.

She moved from table to table. He played a haunting refrain on his simple long neck three-string instrument.

She returned and took the strap from his waist as he played. She led him past hair salons, a closed bookstore, a high end seafood and pepper restaurant, a bar filled with drunk European males.

Music faded in the night.

Canvassing the old market.

Death wish

Greetings,

Speaking of a driving school, educational malaise and general laconic ironic bubonic atomic plagues, here we are. In paradise.

The public's death wish is prevalent, precarious, precocious and precious. You see it, taste it, hear it, smell it and touch it. In other words you feel it. Fear cannot mask, hide, avoid, escape, deter, ignore, deny, lie, or try to fly. It is an integral essential element in the genetic strain, a strained well trained artificial injection of reality.

Paradise is the perfect place to pretend you are a crazy English teacher.

"Feed me," yell the adults and children. "Give me the fish. Push me through the system. I secrete sadness."

"Sorry, you need to learn, understand and comprehend the value of learning how to feed, educate and care for yourself and others in your community."

"Are you a lunatic? For decades, for generations we've had foreigners (NGOs) giving us money, medicine, education, food, condoms, handouts, free stuff.

"There's no way we (the majority) are going to begin accepting responsibility for our country, our people, our lives."

"Have it your way. Here's a free ticket to the new entertainment toys."

"Wow! Thanks."

Metta.

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.

Blog dance

Greetings,

Let's dance. To the sound they're playing on the radio. Under the serious moonlight. Let's blog to the dance of letter-words.

There are 30 million bloggers in the states. Various states of confusion. Let's be various. Young people prefer social networks like Facebook (Fabulously Boring) and Twitter. Faster, shorter and easier. It's so exciting to live fast, short and easy. If I suffered from Attention Deficit Disorder, and everyone suffers from something because existence is suffering, I'd be a bird practicing social twittering. Kiss and type. 

Anxiety meets the tourist. They whisper, "I'm behind in getting my images up on Where Is My Face?" Once upon a space-dance there was a humbling life changing experience. Laughter was life learning dialogue.

I arrived hoping to teach at an isolated rural school 50km from Siem Reap. HOPE, the U.K. based charity organization sponsors the proposed school; My Grandfather's House. They require volunteers to have a criminal background check. As everyone knows, all-knowing, all powerful authorities do not issue this bureaucratic paper to aliens, nomads, misfits, vagabonds, itinerant weird genius teachers or other highly dubious life forms. So it goes.

I exist outside adult time.

Metta.