Greetings,
The Secrets of the Silk Road...NYT...read more...
2,000 years ago. 4,000 miles connecting China and the West. Raw materials, goods, inventions, religions, languages, cultures, ideas.
The Penn Museum has a fine exhibit with maps, stories and images. Explore. Penn Museum...
Metta.
Children watched everything from a council bluff where Native American tribes of their nation gathered for a Ghost Dance ceremony. They shared a spirit vision of a Northwest tribe called the Kalapuya.
A hunting gathering people speaking Pentian, they numbered 3000 in 1780. They believed in nature spirits, vision quests and guardian spirits. Their shamans, called, amp a lak ya taught them how seeking, finding and following one’s spirit or dream power and singing their song was essential in their community.
An ancestor spoke to the tribes. “I speak in tongues, in ancient dialects about love. Dialects of ancestors who lived here for 8,000 years before where you are now. In the forest near the river all animal spirits welcome you with their love. They are manifestations of your being.
“I am blessed to welcome you here. You have walked along many paths of love to reach me.
“My dirt path is narrow and smooth in places, rocky in others. I am the soil under your feet. I feel your weight, your balance, your weakness and your strength. I hear your heart beating as my ancestors pounded their ceremonial drums. I feel the tremendous surging force of your breath extend into my forest. Wind accepts your breath.
“I am everything you see, smell, taste, touch and hear. I am the oak, the fir and pine trees spread like dreams upon your outer landscape. I am your inner landscape. I see you stand silent in the forest hearing trees nudge each other. ‘Look,’ they say, “Someone has returned.’
“I love the way you absorb the song of brown body thrush collecting moss for a nest. I am the small brown bird saying hello. I am the sweet throated song you hear without listening. At night two owls sing their distant song and their music fills your ears with mystery and love.
“I am warm spring sun on your face filtered through leaves of time. I am the spider’s web dancing with diamond points of light. I am the rough fragile texture of bark you gently remove before connecting the edge of an axe with wood. You carry me through my forest, your flame creates heat of love. I am the taste of pitch on your lips, the odor of forest in your nostrils, filling your lungs. It is sweet.
“I am the cold rain and wet snow and hot sun and four seasons. I am the yellow, purple, red, blue, orange flowers out of brown earth.
“I am an old dialect of Kalapuya tribes. I respect the spirit energies. I hear with my eyes and see with my ears. I understand your love for the spirit power guardian. I am the ancestor speaking 300 languages from our history. Now only 150 dialects remain. Language cannot be separated from who you are and where you live.
“I say this so you will remember everything in this forest. I took care of this place and now your love has the responsibility.”
greetings,
2% are awake.
98% are asleep.
this is an unpleasant fact.
today is a happy day in paradise. paradise is a country where genocide survivors are happy. they are ecstatic. they are laughing and running and playing and planting and harvesting and breeding and working and dying.
they blast red, green, gold, yellow and white fireworks into a black sky celebrating the end of the genocide regime. someone sings, the wicked witch is dead!
it's a brave new world. except for four old dying relics on a very expensive show trial for genocide between 1975-1979 when 1.7 million people died. they deny their role. not me! i was only following orders. like the chinese gang of four. how quickly people forget. the media likes this distracting fact.
numbed silence. traumatized and anesthetized.
send in the clowns. send in the politicians and bankers. same-same but different.
paradise survivors are happy because they are alive. they started over after Year Zero. everyone now has food, clean water, medicine and socratic educational opportunities in an NGO world to rebuild their culture. it will take another generation, or 60 years given the average life expectancy to recover, revive and renew life.
today alice in slumberland, a human pretending to be an (economically) depressed teacher said, you should just blend in. during a genocide people who asked questions disappeared. they vanished. they became extinct. asking questions was not allowed. asking questions now is seen as strange and startling and dangerous. dangerous people ask questions. people who ask WHY are a clear and present threat to intention and incentive and robotic daily comatose existence.
intention and incentive is rebellious and counter-productive to maintaining the status quo ho, ho.
a priori theory without facts or thought or doubt or wonder or curiosity is a male land mine survivor without legs. they live on ground zero. they sit near a pagoda waiting for random charitable kindness from strangers.
where are the female land mine survivors? maybe they are dead and gone. maybe they live somewhere safe with someone taking care of their needs.
questions are forbidden said asian teachers, officials and social control mechanisms. ask at your peril. anyone in the 2% group raising their hand to ask a question is shamed or silently beaten into silence. fear is a great motivator, forever and a day. conformity breeds conformity.
curiosity is fatal. curiosity kills more humans than war and disease, lack of medicine and starvation.
metta.
mediocrity and cold hard survival
laughter and joy
Greetings,
A Cambodian orphan said the NYT was looking for stories from readers about their worst travel experience in 2010. The kid suggested I send them a memory. Here it is.
This year was all about first class travel. While climbing into a volcano in Iceland it blew up.
I was blasted into the stratosphere where, fortunately, my cargo pants offered me ballast. The jet stream meandered over Europe in incredibly clear skies because there were no planes. Then, south of Yemen, the air pressure dropped and I drifted toward the Mediterranean. Using my polarity navigation device I located a highjacked Russian cargo ship loaded with weapons and landed among Somali pirates. They were very cordial.
We sailed the seven seas. Eventually they transferred me to a Turkish boat heading for Israel. We were forced to divert to an unnamed northern port where I hitched a ride with a camel caravan going to China. We visited markets in Bukhara, Samerkand and eventually reached Kashgar on the Silk Road where we traded with local merchants.
Over butter tea and tsampa (a hard rock cheese) Tibetan traders invited me to Lhasa, so we drove yaks to Shigatse, and then Lhasa.
From there I walked to Yunnan before crossing into North Vietnam to help Black H'mong friends in Sapa harvest rice. Laos was next door and the northern rivers connected with the Mekong, so I sailed south into Cambodia where I volunteered at an orphanage.
I told the kids this story and they were amazed to learn about volcanic activity.
Metta.
Greetings,
The chunchiet animist people of Ratanakiri in remote northeast Cambodia bury their dead in the jungle. Life is a sacred jungle.
Animists believe in the universal inherent power of nature in the natural world. The Tompoun and Jarai, among many animist tribal people in the world have sacred burial sites.
This is the Kachon village cemetery one hour by boat on the Tonle Srepok river from Voen Sai. It is deep in the jungle along the river. You need a local guide and a translator speaking the local dialect.
The departed stays in the family home for five days before burial. Once a month family members make ritual sacrifices at the site.
The village shaman dreams the departed will go to hell. In their spirit story dream the shaman meets LOTH, Leader of the Hell who asks for an animal sacrifice. The animist belief says sacrificing a buffalo and making statues of the departed will satisfy LOTH. It will renew the spirit and return it to the family.
After a year family members remove old structures, add two carved effigies, carve wooden elephant tusks, create new decorated roofs and sacrifice a buffalo at the grave during a festive week long celebration with food and rice wine for the entire village.
New tombs have cement bases and carved effigies with "modern" gadgets like cell phones and sun glasses. Never out of touch. See your local long distance carrier for plans and coverage in your area. The future looks brighter than a day in a sacred and mysterious jungle.
Metta.
Share Article