Tranquility

Sitting in a quiet zone noon hour
Nourishment
Zen equilibrium peace

Overhead fan curls churns air
Grandmother peels purple grapes
Mother waits for noodle soup people

Son plays homework game on phone
Chattering with friends, no TV, no obscure blaring idiot box
Voices from slurping nurses, doctors, poor Lao patients
Wait for a miracle of modern medicine

It's quiet enough for scribbles, a poem story
Tranquility
Stranger sits alone
As whirling fan
Discovers invisible air

Angkor Wat

Knife Sharp Man

One morning after Saigon noodles in a cold alley a man, 60 after wars and cold hard survival prematurely ages humans, sits sharpening a knife for a woman customer, redefining the steel.

No left foot. He curled his leg stump back resting it on a boot.

In the afternoon he walks past with a shuffling gait. He's wearing a green fatigue shirt, hat, motorcycle helmet, carrying his worn red plastic bag of simple tools. Knowing his truth, not knowing his story. A land mine or a stray bullet?

His left boot is an old combat relic, a discarded war object. It is split down the front.

It is brutally hot. The sun is behind him. How does he feel? Where is he going? Home for lunch and rest? Looking for more dull edges.

I am always walking, he said. I stop, find work, sit, sharpen an edge, get small money, put away my tools, put on my fake foot and walk. I eat noodles or rice on the street. I nap. I walk and work until dark. Then I go home. Home is where they have to take you in.

I am a storyteller with tools for sharpening life’s dull imperfections and sharp mirror reflections.

I am surrounded by amputees, he said. They approach me on their crutches, their hands out. They wheel themselves down the street on little trolleys, without legs, low to the ground truth.

A one-armed young man wears an old blue baseball hat. He sees local businessmen approaching. They wear fresh pressed white shirts, leather shoes and shiny silver belt buckles.

He takes off his old hat. Holds it out. It is empty. They ignore him.

He puts it on his arm stump, runs his one good hand through his black hair, puts his cap on and moves down the street. 

I am in the army now, he said, an army of the legless, the armless, armies of physically wounded forgotten humans. They know you and you know them.

Duende

She had duende, a fundamentally untranslatable Spanish word, literally meaning possessing spirit.

It signified a charisma manifested by certain performers—flamenco dancers, bullfighters, elves, seers, weavers—overwhelming their audience with the feeling they were in the presence of a mystical power.

The Spanish poet Garcia Lorca produced the best brief description of duende: “Years ago, during a flamenco dance contest in Jerez, an old woman of eighty, competing against beautiful women and young girls with waists as supple as water, carried off the prize by simply raising her arms, throwing back her head, and stamping the platform with a single blow of her heel; but in that gathering of muses and angels, of beautiful forms and lovely smiles, the dying duende triumphed as it had to, dragging the rusted blades of its wings along the ground.”

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Little Wing followed a tribal trail from Cadiz to Grazalema, named Lacilbula by the Romans where, after weaving morning pages she returned to the Rio Guadalete River below the pueblo flowing from the Sierras to Cadiz.

The battle of Guadalete was fought on July 19, 711 when 7,000 Yemenis and Berbers led by Tariq ibn Ziyad defeated the Visgoth King Roderic.

Rio needed cleaning. Thick autumn yellow, green and brown leaves trapped between rocks clogged river sections. Liquid backed up to mountains beneath fast gray storm clouds.

Using her walking stick, she clamored down a slippery slope and worked her way up the Rio clearing sticks, leaves and stones blocking the flow. There were green maple, silver aspen, brown oak leaves. Old black water logged decayed colors danced with fresh green and orange pigments.

She was the unimpeded flow. A child playing near water and rocks in her dream world.

Serene sweet water music.

Rocks, stepping stones.

Small pools and meditation zones. She felt peaceful.

Bird music darted up the canyon.

She cleared leaves past twilight, staggered up the muddy incline and faced the Rio in silent gratitude. She performed healing chants next to a bare Aspen tree.

She passed a crying Virgin Mary statue illuminated by melting red candles in a rocky crevice behind a locked gate.

Mary’s blood flowed over jagged gray dolomite stones flecked with green moss.

Little Wing collected a hemoglobin sample for weaving, crossed a stone bridge and returned home. She lit candles, started a fire, and relaxed in her chair enjoying a deep breath before bleeding words to dye loom fabric.

The loom was her instrument of transformation.

Wool was the hair of the sacrificial beast which women by a long and cultured tribal process, transformed into clothing.

Weaving skirts the sacred and the violent.

Her power at the loom was derided, dreaded and illuminating.

Transformed giving birth to symbolic language with new positive ends. Duende.

 A Century is Nothing

Mekong Blue - Women's Development Center, Stung Treng, Cambodia

Courage

On his final day in Ankara he shared a Chinese calligraphy poem with adult students.

It was a Qing dynasty gift from primary students in a rural Sichuan school. This visual simplicity symbolized impermanence.

Bright beautiful elementary children in a radiant universe wearing Young Chinese Communist Pioneer red scarves around well-scrubbed necks sitting upright at colorful plastic desks raised hands when he asked questions yelling, “Let me try, let me try!”

Young brave students had the courage to say this.

Older students at a Chinese middle school, Chinese university and at TLC were aged, silenced and dumbed down through tyranny, fear and oppressive parental and educational brainwashed ideological structural systems.

Shame married Guilt, producing twins. The more the merrier.

Adults had lost their instinctual curiosity, humor and enthusiasm. Only primary kids had the courage to say, “Let me try, let me try.”

Their beautiful pictographic black ink calligraphy read, “One day a man climbed into the mountains and reached a hut. He met some children.”

“Where is the teacher?” he said.

“They pointed up the mountain covered by clouds. ‘He is not here, he’s gone into the mountains to look for herbs.’”

He folded the poem creasing Chinese ideograms where latitudes and longitudes met horizons.

His linguistic healing efforts departed Ankara with Bamboo.

The Language Company

China

Yangon, Burma

The English facilitating opportunity in Yangon met his needs for five months. He and four other teachers were downsized by Mr. Money, CEO when he lost a building lease.

Let’s have some language fun in Utopia. Open your head heart mouth. Dream big draw big.

Create a new photo book, entitled Street 21 documenting Yangon, Myanmar.

Until nationalism in 1962 English was taught in schools.

Bye-bye British. Now it’s Burmese. Many people here speak the language of noble barbarians. Hello, what’s your country? God bless you, said a smiling man.

Everyone is friendly gentle and kind. Buddhist nature.

Myanmar has seven states and 135 ethnic groups. 55-60 million.

His Yangon neighborhood reminded him of China in the 90’s. Tight narrow dwellings.

He lived 114 steps up from ground Zero. He salutes sunrise. Crows say hello. Caw-caw, look a stranger. Their wing music is soft. Feathers glide through air with the greatest of ease.

Train whistles, click-clack music street sellers sing dawn food wares, bird songs.

Two yellow bamboos, one green bamboo and a red and white flowering thick-stalked plant in green and blue containers absorb balcony sun.

Joy is growing, nurturing a small garden. The weather is cool and mild through March - then big heat for three months followed by the rainy season. Sky tears.

He takes a taxi to work/home for $1. Horrendous traffic jams. I’ll race you 10’. Ok. Creep and stop. No motorcycles are a quiet blessing. Banned after an assignation attempt.

Get to the verb. I am a camera. Hunt, freeze, shoot.

Have ink will travel.

Bleed words.

It’s not about you.

It’s ten claws scratching at twenty-six letters.

This is a letter.

He traverses 114 steps, open the large lock on the sliding gate, passes through life, slides it locks it and walks down the street passing men frying dough, tea drinkers eating noodles, women selling fruit and veggies from bamboo baskets, people staring at cheap phones asking relatives are you still alive, where are you, when are you coming home, I miss you as he passes through a narrow alley with 3-4 story apartments, balconies spilling flowers, grateful sliding gates, passive dogs and pedestrians.

The path leads past wooden and bamboo homes where people cook outside corrugated bamboo shacks, bath from large cisterns, kids play, women cook/sell street eats, people chat, walking to the large local market overflowing with colorful nutrition. Fresh cut flowers in 1001 varieties for sale are ubiquitous. Home décor. Bouquets say hello. Women wear sweet smelling white flowers in their hair.

He reaches the small local train station.

Red brick, oval shaped entrance. Barred ticket window. Friendly man helps negotiate a ticket into city center. 200 Khat (20¢).

Four tracks, discarded cars lie on abandoned ways. People burn trash along tracks. Bamboo shacks. PSP mansions. Women dry sardines on pavement.

Waiting seats are iron-rails glued to cement pedestals. Men spit out red betel nut juice. Betel sellers are everywhere. Big business. Cheap buzz. Cancer of the mouth.

Push and shove to get on. Get going. Get real. Get out.

Get is the joker word in English.

The southbound engine pulls six yellow and brown cars packed with humans going to work, school and town.

Women balance watermelon slices on heads selling red juicy slices, men hawk DEMOCRACY newspapers and boys proffer water.

Down the line they jump off and grab a train going north. The majority of passengers stare at cell phones. The real world is boring enough as it is.

Traveler hits the bricks doing documentary street photography, exploring narrow streets filled with Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Chinese, Burmese, street stall food smells, buyers and sellers, meat, fruits, vegetables, hard survival jingle-jangle life. Pulsating vibrancy.

He feels alive here.

Every week he visits a new barber in town for a head shave. Indian. Chinese. Burmese. Travel taught him to trust a man holding a straight razor against his throat.

Sitting meditation.

This is the perfect place to gather raw poetics about the human condition.

A lapidary man has an extensive operation cutting/polishing stones from a jade quarry. He explains qualities and examples of mounted ruby, blue sapphire and jade pieces. A huge business considering northern slave mines, Chinese demand and international markets.

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Traveler smells like garlic after preparing his lunch of sardines, broccoli, spinach, pasta, carrots, tomato, avocado, garnished with oregano, curry spice, saffron and olive oil.

Teak chopsticks will travel.

He eats in the upstairs staff dining area with female Customer Service Officers. They bring rice, small bags of spicy add-on juices and portions of pork or fish in shiny round aluminum stacked containers. Mommy makes my lunch, they murmur.

They shovel it in with aluminum spoons. They talk with their mouths full. Traveler shares veggies. Hot green Nara tea is delicious. Leaves float on the surface.

One CSO girl said, the CEO is mean and selfish. Yes, said traveler.

The other native teachers devour fast food from the hamburger joint at the nearby shopping center while sitting at their desks staring at computers or yakking. Exciting. 

Teachers fly to Bangkok every seventy days on a visa run. HR provides holding company business documents for re-entry into the gravitational field. Forms, a smiling photo and a clean $50. Old money is not accepted. No creased, folded currency. So it goes.

Longyi is the traditional sarong-like apparel for men. He discovered a fine silk cotton blend in Mandalay at a weaving village way back when. Ventilation.

Needle leads thread. Threads lead a conversation.

Weaving A Life (V1)