It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.
- Wendell Berry Read more…
It takes courage to raise kids with integrity, respect, and authenticity.
Dave releases streams of anger, bitterness and frustration allowing him to relax, expend and expand the sound. Dave is startled to hear the sound of his voice ricochet off substandard cold molten gray Hanoi cement block walls. His life is a cold cement wall. Echoes dance through his brain like little sugarplum fairies.
He knows the echo because he made it. He mixed the fine sand and quick dry cement. He slathered it over broken red bricks in circles with an abstract desire to make a work of art lasting for eternity which is how he thought of it the day he trow welled the paste.
Life gave him art and he used art to criticize life.
His voice manifestation expresses human vocal tendencies in a tight enclosed space near a gigantic liquid plasma television permanently implanted on a blank wall blaring news propaganda and perpetual adolescent reality soap shows about life next door where the family sits on cold red floral tile hunched over slurping from cracked rose bowls and shoveling steaming rice and green stringy vegetables into lost mouths yelling over each other in tonal decibels competing with their gigantic plasma television featuring dancing bears and pioneer patriots devouring rubber plantations, beaches for golf courses and farmland for glass and brass designer hotels with a double blade axe singing, in a high Greek-like chorus, their national anthem about greed on land, sea, and air, as water pianos played by a young Japanese wisp, her fingers a delicate blur of incredibly fast incantation musical channels dances near a woman garbage collector ringing a bell at 16:55 alerting people in Dave’s neighborhood it is time for them to bring out their daily garbage.
Remove the evidence. Bag it and tag it. Autopsy material.
"Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you re-read your journal you find out that your latest discovery is something you already found out five years ago."
- Thomas Merton Read more…
An unprecedented wave of egalitarian support featuring millions of sad, serene women facing arranged marriages filled with empty hopes and vague promises of love and happiness enlisted to become engaged to strangers across transcendental borders.
This wave resembled an open hand gesturing in the eternal present of a long now as a mother gifting her daughter a long fare well gesture watched her disappear into life’s teeming stream.
“Be well my love. You are in our hearts.”
Her daughter joined a tribe of singing, sighing women. They were living their dream fate and making sacrifices with clear intention, motivation, determination and focus. The entourage of singing women danced through valleys, climbed jagged Eastern Mountains of Regret and entered a no-name village where males pounded war drums and hammered plowshares into word swords.
Marginalized poor angry males killed each other over pita bread, olives, fresh tomatoes, kebabs and geographical dust while studying imaginary maps.
“The map is not the territory,” said Visualization, a cartographer.
“Where is this place?” said Curious in a strange village in a strange country on a strange planet in a strange solar system in a strange universe.
“It is far away,” said a gravedigger with earth moving experience. “It is a dysfunctional place where bronze statues of fallen soldiers, warriors, corrupt politicians and testosterone fueled fools rust, make millions off the sweat of fools and congratulate each other on their mutual doubts, stupidity and insatiable greed.”
Wind said to women, “Go home. Return to your families and friends. Live in peace.”
Women followed their heart-mind.
“Are you alive?” she said to her cellular daughter.
“I survived,” said a disembodied voice.
“Where are you? When are you coming home?”
“I’m with a tribe of women. We’re breaking down old conservative values. They are so narrow we’ll need a crowbar or acetylene torch or C-4. We’re developing personal empowerment and dignity. I’ll be home soon, dear mother.” Her voice died. Mother swallowing ignorance lapsed into doubt’s quicksand.
At sunset an imam’s recorded voice twittered from a mosque near the private hospital. “Allah is great and merciful. Buy a ticket.”
Push Play.
Hagia Sophia...
One day, Bliss's part-time lover said, buy me a TV.
NO.
You have a job, a TV, a mother, a 12-year old daughter, two brothers, no father and no husband. I gave you money to buy a bike for your daughter and she lost it, money for clothes, money for medicine, money for food, money for temporary naked lust and currency sobriety. You play me for a sentimental fool. You're fucking crazy.
Her arrival was sporadic at best. She visited at 8:37 for a shower, fucking and another shower.
He explored her lips, thin neck, small ears, crest of skin throat, narrow brown shoulders, pinpoint breasts with tongue talk, flat belles letters, long legs and played his way into her valley of potential.
It is a gateway toward isolated animist villages up river. Up The River Of Darkness. Up the Tonle Srepok River. The Apocalypse Now river.
The river overflowed with extended tedious boring years of silence singing a slow meandering song before being punctuated by random acts of violence, gunfire, and exploding land mines swallowing eternal cries for mercy as innocent men, women and children were slaughtered in fields, homes, and villages along twisted dirt jungle paths or murdered inside animist cemeteries wearing crude carved faces remembering the dead with ceremonies, laughter, sacrifice and rice wine, hearing the low dull roar of high altitude bombers releasing enraptured napalm canister lightning bolts through clear skies rendering burning mountains and jungles obsolete, accompanied by the steady rhythm of a girl sawing ice.
Her frozen bright future dream evaporated.
Someone said there was a war, she said. My mother saw a plane. She thought it was a bird. She wove the image into indigo cotton with yellow, blue and red silk thread. All the women weave here. Men don’t have the patience.
They love hunting and killing. She saw a whirling bird, a helicopter. She wove it along with our traditional motifs; weavers, people carrying water, harvesting, dancing, sitting, resting, flowers, fields, cows, chickens, ducks, birds, banana and palm trees, rivers, sky and nature. She weaves our long story.
I weave after ice.
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