khmer new year

14-16 April

Wiki data.

Maha Songkran 

Maha Songkran, derived from Sanskrit Maha Sankranti, is the name of the first day of the new year celebration. It is the ending of the year and the beginning of a new one. People dress up and light candles and burn incense sticks at shrines, where the members of each family pay homage to offer thanks for the Buddha's teachings by bowing, kneeling and prostrating themselves three times before his image. For good luck people wash their face with holy water in the morning, their chests at noon, and their feet in the evening before they go to bed.

Virak Wanabat

Virak Wanabat is the name of the second day of the new year celebration. People contribute charity to the less fortunate by helping the poor, servants, homeless, and low-income families. Families attend a dedication ceremony to their ancestors at the monastery.

Tngay Leang Saka

Tngay Leang Saka is the name of the third day of the new year celebration. Buddhists cleanse the Buddha statues and their elders with perfumed water. Bathing the Buddha images is the symbol that water will be needed for all kinds of plants and lives. It is also thought to be a kind deed that will bring longevity, good luck, happiness and prosperity in life. By bathing their grandparents and parents, children can obtain from them best wishes and good advice for the future.

A Cambodian woman waits for alms in a market.

memory 3

then what happened in the plotless point, asked elf.

a young smiling cambodian man without hands smoked a cigarette.

he held it between stubs.

his rolling cart held genocide books and angkor aspara dancers.

he left a fractured conversation with a friend in expansive green shade near a brown river. 

hi mister, want to buy a book? a dancer? cheap. good morning price. brings luck.

no thank you. reading history is destined for marvelous suffering memory.

dancers live forever, he said, dancing to the sea. waves turned a page.

beauty

This is my Beauty.

Fear and trust dance in stillness. I meditate. Calm. Centered. I am a stone cold Apsara silent dancer dancing inside my revolutionary soul. 

I feel like screaming.

The dancing hall at Preah Khan is where dancers don’t smile. They dance. They are slave dancers. They dance for the king.

He is the god-king. He resurrected his desire and fury creating new customs and new decrees for dancers. They dance for the mighty and powerful. They dance Khmer stories about war, conquest, harvests, seasons, sun and moon. 

They are submissive dances of life/death. They dance to celebrate life. They dance the celebration of tranquility. They dance or die. They wear tinkling bands of gold around wrists and ankles. Diamond diademed crowns and shimmering silk clothing. They do not smile. Their faces are frozen in the trance of dance. 

I dance to escape the tyranny. I’ve danced all my short, sweet life. The hall of dancers is surrounded by columns, portals and broken jumbled green moss stones. Stones whisper dance.

Thick gnarled silk-cotton tree roots crawl toward dancers. They dance through exposed roots, past Shiva and Vishnu. The preserver and destroyer of life. Dance movement is motivated by emotional expression. Dance is about itself. The freedom of creation. A playful existence. Life is a silent dance.

 

sun dance

I dream the Sun Dance of the Plains people.

Nations gather in late spring celebrating a four day cycle of rituals and creation dances.

Dancers choosing self torture will have their chests pierced by skewers.

They will hang under the weight of buffalo skulls for 24 dances.

Their sacrifice will be successful if they have a vision during their trial.

The sun is going home to the earth.

 One vision is all you need.

rhythm

Namaste,

when I learned the alphabet
late in life toward primordial birth

infinite moment before now and then

air whispers sang
from my trash collector’s plastic bottle
pulling my rolling cart filled with cardboard
singing a muscular rhythm
stirring sonomulent dust on broken stones

in a deep forest

Metta.