Conversation Dies

"He didn't believe in countries and the only borders he respected were: Borders of dreams - musty borders of love & indifference. Borders of courage or fear - golden borders of ethics.” - Roberto Bolano

The beauty of travel is the anonymous sensation in a crowd.

On a Sunday all the Khmer men gather for coffee, tea and stories.

Do you take milk with your stories, said one. No, straight.

Some study another's face and words.

The majority study cell phones or a Thai music TV video.

I love my phone, said one, it allows you to give up your consciousness.

Others study a conversation disguised as a peddler pulling his trash cart

down a street squeezing air out of a worn plastic bottle to summon the attention

of a survivor waiting to hear the air

knowing they can pawn junk,

perhaps an old family heirloom or weaver's word loom

in a Lao village along a river stream of consciousness.

No one bothers the stranger writing or drawing in a notebook.

He's been here many times, many places on Earth.

Men sit and stare. Trembling eyes pursue the endless stream of life.

When a face-to-face conversation dies someone picks up their phone to call another conversation.

I just called to see if you're alive. Amazing.

Have you eaten?

Yes. Today was eggs and rice, tomorrow it's lobster. Ha ha ha.

Beatific Shy Lover

Masks hide the consciousness of fear.

Molecular structure.

Reconnected with a beatific shy lover on the edge of town after 17 dazed.

The dirt road is lined with salons, massage parlors brown hearts and shattered dreams.

Her thin gentleness is tempered by the fear of others,

the ugly fat one is disappointed in memory.

No one wants me.

Others eat vegetables.

She has a diamond implanted in a canine.

The two of them stay behind a curtain. Plywood walls.

They have an hour.

She is not impatient. They accept the implied unspoken gentle nature, the infrequent dressing.

All her clothes fit in a plastic box. The mattress is thinner than her. Two pillows.

Her cell phone and used phone cards litter a Boeing 747 used as a table.

O

She is 20+ and rail thin. He considered taking her away to the coast. Another poor girl will take her place. They never go. The coast is too far away.

The absurd human condition is illuminated in a nano-second.

tears & laughter

today is the day of my dreams, laughed elf.

you are always laughing, said serious orphan. are you sick.

a momentary loss of a reasonable hypothesis minus fear and regret, said elf, laughing.

we are the only animals who weep and laugh.

tears=relief, laugher=release

we know so much and understand so little, sighed orphan.

the more we see the less we know, said elf.

yes, said serious orphan, we need love and understanding.

passion and desire creates suffering, laughed elf.

let's have a little explore.

what we don't see is fascinating. wired brains desire meaning. 

Passage tell-e-vision

Yes, this is the Truth channel. Do not attempt to adjust your set. Eyeballs perhaps but not the set. Game, set, match. You will be happy to know that television continues to dumb down the population around the planet.

For example, I was walking through the very narrow concrete passageway either to or from the street of dreams where I eat with construction workers, and allow Jasmine to develop confidence with her English for an hour as impatient motorcycle people hurrying home beep-beep-beep negotiating a thin street filled with kids, elderly walkers, young exercise addicts going or coming from the park across from clogged streets,

women carrying bamboo baskets filled with vegetables, bricks, recycled steel, bread and dreams mixed with residents sitting on tiny plastic kindergarten chairs crowding home/store fronts, drinking beer, peeling, peeing, cooking, eating, in brief - living

inside the narrow as I passed numerous open portal homes made of sliding accordion gates nestling motorcycles in the front room, I saw and heard vast volumed images flickering their phosphorescence, their

marketing and economic messages into brain faces of kids, parents, grandparents and ancestors. An old women sat slumped against a door frame staring at the box. She hasn't seen the sky for years. If she looks left and up she can see a slight sliver shiver. That's it.

Let's eat! Let's watch TV! Give me your consciousness. Everyone is happy. Life is good.

Metta.