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A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
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Subject to Change Subject to Change
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Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
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Entries in China (137)

Thursday
Feb102022

Rice

“Writers are shamans. We go into the mountains and come back with visions for our tribes. Our holy assignment.”

*

A Turkish train chased moon, seawater and oil freighters. Two veiled lovers held hands at a station. Heavy green and purple grapes draped fences around barbwire stations. A sad man waiting for his life to unfold stared at the ground.

He’s married to his mother and her tomato-based history of love, regret, unemployment and zero opportunities.

A commuter ferry sailed across the Bosporus in elemental light. Visions of a Blue Mosque, spires and silver domes sparkled as blue waves swelled hearing artists carve Churning The Sea of Milk at Angkor Wat in the 9th century.

 

 

A heavy Chinese rain mutes voices with refined elegance. Moisture softens edges where words slash and stab, committing heinous crimes inside the imagination of lovers stranded in the long sad misfortune of falling water.

The moisture is a blessing for farmers huddled below brown and yellow ponchos planting rice in geometric rows as shallow water stalks reeds.

Rice steams in cauldrons being stabbed by steel spatulas as 15,000 university students stare at empty bowls. Farmers don’t know them, see them or begin to imagine the spoiled ravishing eaters with heads bowed over chipped white rice bowls, not in gratitude but in hunger’s anger being never satisfied and talking with their mouths full spilling grunts of MORE.

 

 

The farmers plant rice. They walk along brown dirt dikes inspecting a precious state owned agrarian middle kingdom as pouring rain music bounces off the surface, slides down leaves, collating green feathers.

Twilight’s heavy mist collects in thick clouds rolling over green forested Utopia mountains caressing valleys, streams and rivers, layering fields where silent men and women plant rice stalks one by one becoming invisible. It’s a poetic Tang landscape painting.

 

Book of Amnesia V1

Monday
Oct042021

spill ink

Writers and artists know it's all about choosing your tools wisely.

In our case it's a well traveled 15-year old Mont Blanc Meisterstuck 149 piston fountain pen, with a 14K gold nib and platinum inlay. The art of writing. Language, writing, culture and civilization.

Been with us since passing through Hong Kong en route to a hotel management gig in Beijing. It's the feeling, joy of heft, ink distribution and quality. The edge on Moleskine paper, touch, sensory stimulation. Slowing down.

If you use a fountain pen you know what we mean. These days people crank out material with anything handy. Just a small suggestion to test out a fountain pen next time you're in the market for a quality writing instrument. Savor the precision.

Many Chinese students learn writing using them, especially at the pre-university level. Maybe it's the ancient influence of calligraphy and the fine arts. Before ball points and gels become ubiquitous in their lives.

An Edinburgh, Scotland school teaches students how to use a fountain pen.

"The pens improve the quality of work because they force the children to take care, and better work improves self-esteem," principal Bryan Lewis said. "Proper handwriting is as relevant today as it ever has been."

 

Let's have a meeting! Yes. English teachers unite!

Let's get dressed. Pack our Moleskine notebook filled with poetry, drawings, dreams, stories and visions. Let's collect one fountain pen filled with green racing ink. Remember water. You've gotta have H2O where you go. It's gonna be a hot one. Seven inches from the mid-day sun.

Let's go to a class tomb on old campus surrounded by luscious green trees straining to light. They are a canopy of welcome relief. Rose petals wither on the ground.

Smile and greet your compatriots, your stalwart educational guides. Take a seat. Look around. Engage your senses.

Gaze out the window toward the lake. It is shimmering. You hear scraping. What is it? Local workers are building a wall. A new Great Wall. Exciting. History in the making. How do they do it?

It's simple. Materials and raw labor.

Ten local village men and women - who do most of the heavy lifting - bags of cement, trowels, shovels, a few plastic buckets, water, piles of gray bricks, empty drums for support, some boards, and a couple of wheelbarrows.

Step 1. Build rickety scaffolding using drums and boards. Remove the old steel fence. Discard to side.

Step 2. One team mixes cement and water. Shovel into buckets. Another team puts bricks into a wheelbarrow and pushes it to a dumping area.

Step 3. Men wait for women to hand them bricks and buckets of cement. They slather on the goop and align bricks. Brick by brick the wall goes up. It blocks the green sward, blue lake and wild flowers.

Only the sky is safe.

Step 4. Another team coats the exterior with a bland gray mixture.

It's never going to be finished. Art is like that. It's so beautiful we feel like crying.

Someone steps to the podium and starts speaking - using exquisite language - about the value of education. Cost benefit analysis. Profit and loss statements. How we have a huge responsibility to our shareholders.

During a brief moment of silence you hear a shovel, a trowel and laughter.

Another day dawns in paradise.

Monday
Jun222020

Free Ice Girl 24-28th

Ice Girl in Banlung in e-book format on Amazon is free from 24-28 June.

Ice girl sells in Banlung, Cambodia. It's a wild west town south of Laos. It's near The River of Darkness and animist cemeteries.

She is an independent author/publisher. This is her story with a gonzo attitude.

She meets Leo, a wandering Chinese boy.

After being released from a Chinese Re-education through Labor unit near the Gobi he walked south.

He taught university students in Fujian how to be more human.

He walked to Hanoi, Sapa, Saigon and Laos collecting stories.

Ice girl and Leo share ideas and stories about cultures and the human condition.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Wednesday
May272020

Experiment

Create like a god, order like a king, work like a slave

Work like you don’t need the money

Love like your heart’s never been broken

Dance like nobody’s looking

I am a short story

You are a novel

 Her Zen like awareness

Stoic serene

Shamanic wisdom seeks wisdom

Wabi-sabi

Everything I do is an experiment

Create happy little accidents

There are no mistakes in art

Art is what everything else is not

Laughter medicine

Spill letters words phrases sentences

Chinese financed damns block flow

(One damn on the Nam Ou River north of Luang Prabang)

+

Sell electricity to Thailand

Lights are on and nobody's home

Lao suffer land fish loss

Environmental damage, economic stress

Downstream in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam

60 million people struggle to survive

Rapid spray...fresh air skin laughter

After she stopped crying

The lonely woman

Killed herself

Where is my face, said her mask

Eating her face


Waif on her own walks along Mekong

In a flow state

Bare structure angular momentum

Ballet dancer on point

Permanently poised

Dance energy sways hips

Shift down all the days walking a gentle rolling

Wu-Wei

    Live your story

Welcome to Earth

Grow Your Soul

Saturday
Mar142020

Virus Life

A short story with universal repercussions.

Once upon a time (for 10,000 years) a Bat lived in Human Province. 

It carried a disease in its small black body. 

Bat shit landed on the ground. 

Another animal named Pangolin ate the shit.

A starving hunter trapped Pangolin. 

He sold it to a woman working in the Human Wet Market.

She killed it. She cut it up to sell.

Hungry customers bought Pangolin parts. 

They took it home, cooked it and served it at parties.

Everyone who touched and ate the Pangolin became sick. 

Their sickness infected their communities.

A doctor at a Human Hospital diagnosed a patient with a strange disease.

He notified other health care workers about his discovery.

Police came to the doctor’s house. They said, “You are spreading rumors. This is not allowed. It is harmful to the people. Sign this paper saying you were wrong and repent your actions.”

The doctor signed.

He became sick. He went to the hospital. He died from a virus called Corona. 

Some citizens said he was a HERO. Big Brother said, he was not important.

Big Brother made 11 million Human people stay indoors until the end of time.

More died. 

The virus escaped and infected many humans on Earth. Some lived, some died.

Big Brother said, “We are victorious. We have eliminated the virus.”

"Holy Bat Shit!" said Robin.