laughing children

maintain their honest true
emotional awareness
in the moment
before artificial social conditioning 
destroys their fragile innocence

humor and curiosity

crimes against humanity

fear is a killer

mai's hearing evaluation -
anthony from NZ came, met, talked,

promised the world, took her out, tried to seduce her, failed, he left
mai has a black belt in karate
she's killed more men with silence than you can imagine
she is resigned to her life

massage and laundry scrubbing under the paternal gaze
of her older sister who sits in perpetual admiration of her mirrored reflection

how does her awareness register POTENTIAL for unrealized dreams
how does her silent resignation
understanding comprehend one single lost chance,

all the complexity w/o expectations

in the false dream of star rain

they moved a wooden toy pawn,
salad bar in silence
welcomed cool air from a brown river,
children pressed noses to a rolling window, laughing

an archeologist skips through star puddles into 8th Century excavations
freedom sings stones,
selling a Blue Pumpkin to a Cambodian land mine amputee
w/o a left leg selling DVDs to fat tourists
talking with their mouths full

an Enfield rumbles in Pokhara
spinning the Wheel of Time
rejoicing in miracles, small ones
sit in meditation 

we do laundry by machine, said language animal

3.8 billion years ago a black hole captured a star the size of our sun
sucked the star into its empty mass the star exploded the black hole
escaping energy created, released streams of light we see today

at that moment 20 raindrops trusted your intuition
to travel is to feel

indonesia asked you to return
two years ago you said thank you to orchids
goodbye to gardens

orchids remember you
the apple tree

you planted at Gardenia

grows strong
roots buried deep below blossoms
fragrant with memory

Street meat in Quanzhou, China

music

i know the music 

but for got the words

he said playing in shadows

at life's little intersection

feeling binary code chords 

as a child

seeing anxiety

carry curiosity

with courage

passed through 

 

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Greetings,

"Artists are magical helpers. Evoking symbols and motifs that connect us to our deeper selves, they can help us along the heroic journey of our own lives. 

"The artist is meant to put the objects of this world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance which is the light of our consciousness and which all things both hide and, when properly looked upon, reveal. The hero journey is one of the universal patterns through which that radiance shows brightly.

"What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss." - Joseph Campbell

Read more...

Metta.

Flowing North

Greetings,

I take a long slow boat north tomorrow to Nong Khiaw and overnight. 

The next day another slow boat north floats to Muang Khua. Then a five hour bus to Pongsaly. In this area are diverse ethnic people. I will trek, explore villages and meet the Lao Sung people before returning south by river in early December.

I imagine there are similar yet distinct ethnic qualities and traditions with the Hmong people I met in Sapa, Vietnam last year. Nomads are nomads. 

Live Forever!

Laos...read more>

Metta.