Future

Namaste,

Once upon a time there was a rural village. One hour from town.

There was a primary school. The kids were antsy, it was hot, they waited for vacation. Their families needed them to plant rice.

There was a teacher in the school. She graduated from a university. She graduated from a government pedagogic school. She found a job teaching 6th grade.

This is how it works, said the boss of the teachers.

You are new. Your salary is $40 a month. You teach for eight months with no salary. After completing eight months you receive 70% of your salary until you complete one year. After five years you get a raise. 

I'm going to have a find a part-time job to feed my family. 

Vacation arrived singing, No more school! Go to the fields and plant rice. 

60 students finished grade 6. We are free. Let's run, play and sing. 

Of the 60, only ten would attend 7th grade in the fall. Rural opportunity cost.

The other 50 played, planted, harvested rice and worked at local brick factories for $1.25 a day.

Metta.

Chase

Namaste,

There was a man in a poor village.

Everyday he went into the mountains searching for gold.

Everyone said he was crazy.

After 40 years he found gold, returned to the village, exchanged the gold for cash, bought a rope, tied the money to one end and tied the other around his waist.

He ran through the village dragging it behind him and everyone said he was crazy. 

 “What are you doing?” they yelled at him. 

 “For 40 years I’ve been chasing money and now money is chasing me.”

Metta.

food

Namaste,

65 million people in Asia
live in a village called Poverty
surging oil prices, production shortfall from bad weather, export restrictions
by food producing countries

food is a weapon

poor Asian families spend 60% of their income on food
600 million
2/3 of the world's poor
live on less than $1.25 a day
wealthy countries spend 15% of their income on manufactured food

Metta.

Volume floats

Greetings,

A Khmer wedding lasts three days. It's LOUD. It's a monster deal.

A company arrives in a dump truck. They set up tents, tables, chairs and huge black speakers in front of an architecturally styled wedding cake home. It's happening all over town.

Speakers blast music day and night. Audible for miles. Volume shudders, shaking the terrain, setting off unemployed landmines, volcanic eruptions and destroying oil drilling operations in deep oceans. Free oil. Oceans of love, oceans of tears.

Animals run for their lives. Birds fill the sky with shrill squawks of pure terror. Panic stricken children suffer unimaginable nightmares. All the trauma counselors are celebrating with copious amounts of food and drink. Another one bites the dust. I am a dust collector.

It costs the groom's boom boom family $3,000 and up. It's a matter of EGO, social standing, imaginary wealth and appearances. They don't send out R.S.V.P. People just show up. Lots of hungry people. Friends, strangers and many animists.

Human speakers drone on and on about marriage, family and society.
Traditional singers and musicians plaintively wail at high decibels about love, suffering, happiness, fidelity, treble and bass. Contemporary hip-hop rappers take the stage with heavy metallic thumping and pumping.

100 monkeys off stage type out Shakespeare. They chatter odes, sonnets and mystifying secrets.

The insane 24/7 volume partially explains why people here speak, or more specifically yell so loud. They don't hear each other because they can't, don't, won't hear. Repeat. What? What? Repeat. Louder!

This is the Flowing holiday. Families with millions of marriageable girls are desperate to get them married. They expect their daughters to produce flowing children. It's a heavy social security reality.

They won't have the money to feed them or house them or educate them or...because those realities are far away, like stars in the sky. They'll worry about essentials later in the long now. Too many poor desperate people will have to sell their children facing immediate financial reality.

As a serious Chinese university student, filled with humility, compassion and serenity said, "Human life here is cheap."

The main problem now is raising $3,000 minimum. If you want to play you have to pay.

No please, no squeeze.

Metta.

Opportunity Cost

Greetings,

The opportunity of being on location, scouting film destinations is how you become native. You speak in mono-syllables and sleep forever as long as forever is. Be resilent, strong, cunning, exiled in cast off pajama clothing with floral designs and cartoon characters from dead regimes.

Especially on a Sunday near blue flowing rivers wearing tattoos along its arms climbing over sun burned shoulders as a tall Jaguar reveals her skin song. Her French big game hunter takes his time scaling long limbs, drowning inside wild black eyes exploring a thin Apsara dancer neck smelling desire unlike pleasure, a source of suffering, pain and hatred hearing rainbow heartbeat, exploring mountains, clearing brush, lighting a fire as his dogs flush prey.

What you don't see is fascinating.

Orange sun fires trees. 
Six people on a cycle pass. 
A voice asks for help. 
A woman desperate for love/security frames her vision through SLR optic glass. 
Before and now mean the same.
A neglected girl learns how to sew in a safe environment. 
A silver spoon decorates glass with music. 
A young girl draws portraits with poise and serenity. 
A gardener waters yellow and purple orchids at dawn.  
A stranger sits in a local market.
Cui Weiping, a female Chinese literature professor prevented from attending an international poetry conference as punishment for believing in free speech.

Read more... 

Metta.