Leo & Charlie

Greetings,

We stood deep inside excavated lands. A new planet. High dirt walls bordered by pine, evergreen and blue sky were lined with sharp deep gashes where earth machine teeth had gouged down soft dirt.

Workers harvested soft red clay soil for construction projects and imperial jade tombs at the nearby Chinese university where 15,000 trapped, lonely and bored students struggled to survive in a harmonious society.

Where they mastered the art of eating, sleeping and exploring casual sex hiding from recycled security guards in olive drab green army uniforms. We were at the bottom of a large bottomless pit.

“I have a theory they are spies,” whispered Leo.

“How do you know this theory?” said Charlie the Clown an imaginary friend.

“Because their job is to keep an eye on us. Think about it. We have too any people here and so, to monitor our behavior, attitudes and thinking, they recruit students and teachers to be spies. To be informers.”

“My father was an informer during the Cultural Revolution,” said Leo, a Shining Star.

“Yes, he was a member of the Shining Path Young. This is our new generation, with a new generation of informers and spies. They make good money. They keep their mouth shut and know their place. We don't talk about June 4th. It's the kiss of death."

"Creativity is my meditation," said Charlie. "Don't take it all too seriously. The one who laughs lasts."

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Soldier Artist...

Metta.

Before

Before planting MK 69

between a wild bonsai and bamboo he regained consciousness around 5:18 a.m.

The village was dark. "Twilight in reverse," sang the full throated song bird. It was in a large tree nearby. It cautioned him to be diverse, peaceful and open. It warbled one short trill, paused, trilled a long solitary note, paused, trilled short and silenced.

He heard it. Clearly. He lit a stick of Tibetan incense. He unlocked the front and back doors as a floor fan fanned new air. The bird trilled, hearing bolts slide open. He stepped out. A series of open white and purple orchids shared their aroma dream. Inhaling smells and bird songs he scattered bread crumbs on a path.

He whistled in return, establishing a connection.

People in the village woke before dawn. Young servant girls swept leaves from stones. Dark eyed laconic girls wrapped linens around skeletons, wringing their flesh, their fibers before hanging them on portable stainless steel collapsable folding structures to dry inside gray flowing fumes of billowing smoke from burning trash dancing over a chipped sky high wall decorated with gleaming shards of green glass and rusty barb wire - plastic bags, boxes, banana and coconut leaves, clothing, feathers, Styrofoam happy meals, cardboard, plywood, textbooks, comprehension checks and balances, monetary social addictions and so on.

Fear sang her song accompanied by a young girl spoon feeding Chinese children before they were stolen by a gang of traffickers from the coast. A young boy's value was between $3,500 and $5,000. Negotiate.

The one-child policy created a desperate daily search for heirs. Losing face in the village was tantamount to public humiliation.

Before a girl swept she wept.

Metta.

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A Griot

Greetings,

One day I write “Blues Music Story” on the board. I discuss the African Diaspora, history,slavery, working on farms for little money and how they gathered to make music at the end of long hard days.

How the blues manifested as men and women left home on an economic migration for better jobs just like China now. How the blues allowed them to express their feelings about loss, separation from family and friends. How it's a “feeling, emotional, deep in your spirit soul,” music.

I pulled out my blues harp and they said, “Oh it’s a chochin,” in Mandarin.

“Want to hear some blues?”

“Yes!”

I blew some sweet slow stuff and then picked up the tempo and blasted rifts and wailing train whistles. Gave them a real sense of the music.

When you're a wandering minstrel or a Griot - a West African performer who perpetuates the oral traditions of a family or village by singing histories and tales; considered by musicologists to be a link with the acoustic blues - or a Seanachai - a traditional Irish storyteller of myths and legends - or a magician, soothsayer and Adept this comes naturally.

“You see. I am merely a conduit for music. It comes through me.”

Then we did a lesson about how to make a sandwich.

How to assemble the ingredients; bread, tomatoes, mayo, relish, turkey slices, mustard, onions and lettuce.

Suddenly, new music began. Everyone ran to a window.

Across the street an Indonesian boy sat on a piece of plywood in the shadow of a long tall Sally art deco three story building towering above a gated community filled with designer homes, wild tropical green blossoming fruit trees, displaced dysfunctional spoiled offspring spinning yo-yo's, sleeping on broken bamboo bed springs and swimming across flooded streams of dreams.

In his right hand he held a shining silver chisel. In his right, a flat edged hammer. He slammed metal against metal. He was on a bridge between the stone age and the iron age. Tap-tap-tap. Music flaking dust. He started singing an old village song remembering his family and rice paddies, feeling the wind carry his song.

A young girl using a broom made of thinned tree branches whisked a gentle rhythm creating a symphony.

Metta.

My Chinese home

Greetings,

Heat. Love and interior wisdom. All the dirt, construction, heavy equipment

and the digging

filling old blue dump trucks with musty Stalinist leftovers.

Riding motorcycle vegetables, women waiting

behind baskets of produce. Produce.

Fields are eternally productive,

Patient greens turn down the sun.

Educational catastrophe inside the machine.

"Text me baby. Consume my voice, eat delicious 'what if's' and 'maybes.'

Metta.

Walk to Hospital #8

The gap between rich and poor in China - such is the reality in developing countries - is becoming more apparent.

Recent figures speak. Average city wages - $2,300 a year. Rural wages - $690 a year.

The central party hopes their economic stimulus will encourage rural people to buy appliances and cars. I need a 4x wheel drive washing machine so I can I take my family on weekend excursions to the beach, the Himalayas and deep tropical jungles where life is simple. Yeah!

The process evolved like this. I walked. I saved and eventually bought a bike. A Flying Pigeon. Black. One speed. It got me from home to the village rice paddies.  

We had a radio in the work unit. The local propaganda machine blasted revolutionary worker party anthems day and night. We got one for the home. My wife was happy. Then we had the required one child. We wanted another one but the forced abortion committee and local officials said, NO! you do not qualify for two children.

Then my wife wanted a TV. Ok I said, let's get a 24" flat screen with a remote.

What about a new rice cooker? Ok I said.

How about a used refrigerator? What's wrong with the box of ice? You shop for fresh vegetables at the market every morning. Why do we need a refrigerator? Because the neighbors have one.

Oh, I see. I scrounged around and traded rice for some chickens and traded the birds for some used teak wood smuggled in from Burma. I developed some connections. One trade lead to another and I eventually found a well used fridge. My wife was happy. Then we filled it up with baby formula.

The formula was tainted with a chemical to increase the protein. We didn't know this small fact.

Our little girl became sick. The Worker's Hospital #8 said I had to pay them a lot of money for medicine or she would die.

I sold my bike to buy medicine. Now I walk to the hospital to see my daughter. It takes forever and a day.

I want to move to a big city filled with neon and food smells and construction projects and appliances hoping against hope to find a job but party leaders say millions of unemployed workers are returning to their villages for Chinese New Year.

The radio and flat scream tell us to stay home. Be quiet. Don't worry. Practice social stability and harmony. My future opportunities look precarious.

I have to go now because they will cut off the electricity soon and I need to get some candles.

"Sometimes life is found in a desperate situation." - Chinese proverb.

Metta.