Pack Light

After completing a one-year English teaching-facilitating job with Devina as my mentor near Jakarta, Indonesia in 2009 I returned to Nam.

Farewell to the tyranny of a private school with dusty clanging Catholic church bells. Devina guided the educational program with unconditional love and compassion.

Omar advised: Travelers need to remember when packing for adventures like going to the grocery store or the eye doctor to see clearly, because eyes lie…or walking across rice paddies to see friends  ... break bread, have sex, visit neighbors  ... greet strangers, marry aliens and burn or bury relatives whispering GOODBYE  ... I’m off to join the circus maybe forever  ... because one never knows if they’ll return, to pack their sense of humor.

Why do people look back at their bamboo shack, camp, home, village, invisible city or continent as their stone cold empty lost eyes see & remember with terrible clarity?

They are Visceral Realists.

They need to remember it because they are afraid they’ll never ever see it again.

They need to burn the image into their heart-mind memory in case it’s potentially, probably, possibly their final chance. In other words Don’t Look Back.

Nothing behind, everything ahead.

Are your needs being met, Rita asked Tran.

Yes, I have a prosthetic limb, I get around.

Omar walked the walk and talked the talk. Many travelers forget to pack their sense of humor. Perhaps they don’t consider their sense of humor essential on their super serious adventures into foreign worlds.

Worlds are filled with transcendental borders, beauty, humans, languages, sensations, smells, sights, sounds, dirt, dust, sweat, mirrors, and reflections without a GPS, compass or app.

It’s a long walk.

You’re never lost, there’s only healthy uncertainty about your position, said Rita, speaking of landmines, rice paddies, napalm, orphanages and terrified acid scarred abused girls and women.

Strange, said Omar, You’d think they’d remember to keep it light, stay calm, focused, let go of ego and expectations and enjoy their travails, I mean travels with a sense of humor… packing a sense of humor means less baggage and less fear.

Before you swim past a wand man/woman at airport security you don’t need to put your sense of humor in the plastic box so it can roll through the x-ray machine, said Devina, You don’t see travelers collecting their sense of humor after passing through security, intuitive travelers keep it with them  ... Many forgot it at Home Sweet Home where Serious lives.

After you pack everything cut it in half. Caress your sense of humor. After immigration laugh through the Nothing To Declare green zone, said Omar … Walk into freedom.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Akiko

The fear of living, observing and experiencing in absurd detail where others lack the self-scrutiny or courage to voice them, said David Foster Wallace.

Sheep fear watching other people make things happen and not knowing what the fuck is going on, said Z. Sheep and robots fear taking a risk.

They know it’s easier to do nothing than take a chance, said Leo.

I cut useless meaningless vague words blocking the narrative river. I am innocent, happy, empty and brave. I am not afraid to make wise selections when it comes to editing this massive amount of verbiage, said Zeynep.

Where’s the burn bag, said the janitor.

I fear Room 101, said Winston Smith in 1984.

Leo - In Utopia we learn the less we do the fewer mistakes we make. The fewer mistakes we make the less we are criticized. I remain safe and happy. It’s called THE SYSTEM. Brainwashed. You see this in all Asian education systems. Students shuffle in, remove their brains, soak them in a cleaning solution that is not the solution for fifty tedious minutes and replace said gray matter at the end of class. It’s endemic. Social conditioning.

A teacher is Parent #2.

Big Brother is watching. Save face.

The fear of humiliation is greater than the fear of death, said Death.

Karma is the universal law.

Will your characters discuss moral ambiguities? Yes. They will speak with nouns and verbs and use specific adjectives for description, playing with words like Joyce. They will play with ideas, like Borges, said Zeynep.

Attributes of good ideas said Devina.

a.         Simple

b.         Unexpected

c.         Concrete

d.         Credible

e.         Emotional

f.          Story-containing

Good writing is clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. There are people who talk about things, people who talk about people and people who talk about ideas, said Z. The life of the mind. A wave in the mind.

Is a place a character, asked Tran, Sure, said Devina, A place has character like Kampot, Cambodia, a sleepy river town, famous for pepper, Sunflower’s hands, Milling Around and the SIGN ones, said Rita.

Writers use a specific location in their work, said Omar. Cadiz, Spain worked its way into my morning pages. I traveled with a word butcher after the Spanish Civil War. His laughing axe synthesized metaphors of death sacrifice and letting go. His mirrors became gifts (hello beauty) and gifts multiplied gifts with gratitude.  

The gift keeps moving. It was imperative to leave the united states of confusion and Morocco behind.

Exile suited my spirit. It was the irony of ironies, pressed irons with heavy starch in the collar please I told the world’s dry cleaner. Wash and wear. Dry a tear.

Nothing is true & everything is permitted, Omar said to Akiko, a Japanese fashion designer in Cadiz.

Everything is permitted with fabric and threads she said naked in the dark exploring their personal puzzle maps, tracing contours through the Sierras in Andalusia toward beaches woven with linen and silk. They were two orange and black butterflies dancing in a courtship ritual. They slept together in a Hokkaido love hotel filled with mirrors.

At 2 a.m. Cadiz garbage workers in fluorescent yellow tiger stripes collected discarded words along narrow streets.

Omar wrote the morning down as sky painted orange, pink and cerulean colors. A crescent moon hung in the west. He walked down Benjumeda Street as uniformed school kids gripped parental hands passing veiled grandmothers wearing widow market black at intersections on their daily economic briefing. Roman cobblestones rested in white shadows. Cool clear air dusted lungs.

The Plaza de Falla Moorish red brick extremities shimmered in soft light. Arches formed prayer hands. Golden, cast iron, bronze, brick, tile, and papier mâché arch models in the world prayed for non-violence, dialogue, a ceasefire and arms control. Arms out of control waved goodbye to sanity and millions of orphans.

Weary serious sad med students gripping texts crossed plazas toward class. Matriculation was a fading dream. Two men grimaced a ladder past a hospital and a fortune teller selling lottery tickets. Gambling was a big deal in Cadiz. Machines in bars with three virgin cherries rotated. ONCE lottery tickets bought the population where 40% were unemployed.

Pay now pray later. The best is yet to come, said an unemployed Roma fortune teller. A nurse in white perfection entered a cafe for coffee. Old people hobbled in and out of a hospital. A woman left the hospital carrying one crutch. Needing Grave Digger she walked past an ambulance.

I’m busy, he said, See my calloused hands.

Death stood watch 24/7 in the big leagues.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Question

Question? Is the problem or surprise the form, a formless form or the form of the formless forming sea foaming form? If so, can it be understood by reducing, redacting, paralleling, associating another journey? Can you break the continuity of the journey with memories of an ephemeral I ? Yes … It’s not a problem, it’s a surprise, said Impermanence.

Who am I?

I am a who to what I am.

Why am I here?

How did I get here?

How did I grow?

Q has three parts:

a)  What is an objective, universally acceptable definition of good and evil?

b)   What is the nature of evil? The question is the answer. It is not in this tale, play or manuscript.

c)   What is the relationship between consciousness and matter?

Q. Where does the real end and the artificial begin? I am a superficial person, said Grave Digger … I pretend to be who I am in my future. I know two things. My hands. My work is never finished.

Q? Does fate control our free will? Yes.. Fate cannot lie. If fate doesn’t make you laugh then you don’t get life’s joke, said Laughter Therapy … Ha, ha, ha.

Q? Should we worry about the style? No. Should we worry about the form? No. Worry is interest on a bill yet to come due. No guilt, regret, fear, or monkey mind. Monkey loves the circus of sensory overload. We live in a world of forms.

Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

A C-19 virus transmitted by Asian bats to humans in late 2019 is not a surprise. A pangolin ate bat shit. The pangolin was trapped, died and ended up in a wet market. Consumers bought it, sliced it, cooked it, and served it at parties. Delicious. Infected humans traveled and transmitted C-19 to millions around Earth. So it goes.

Holy bat shit! said Robin a cape crusader wearing a mask practicing social distance.

Q: do we have to capitalize the first letter of every sentence? no is the short answer no.

Q: what is strange? Life is strange, bizarre, comic, tragic and very short … Life is a brief clear precise concise life sentence. How do stories, vignettes, jazz poems, journalism fragments, and system analysis communicate with each other?

A: They walk dirt paths, ford rivers, scale mountains, explore jungles, valleys and estuaries and cross metaphysical existential borders … they build sandcastles near the sea. They practice telepathy … they are time travelers. Aliens.

They meditate on the process of their death.

The dance and dancer are one.

As a mystic and prescient person, Zeynep you have the responsibility to be honest. Be light about it. Think big and stay in the particular. Know what keeps you motivated and happy. Autotelic. 

Next question Z, How do you stay fresh and centered? You make it new day-by-day, said Z, Make it new. A storyteller staying in one place goes blind, we move around before becoming native and dull. Before we think and act like local sheep.

Lost confused passive ones living in Inertia, a state of mind, perfect the art of MILLING AROUND in Country ABC, said Rita, They speak in monosyllables Yeah, yeah. Big vocabulary. 2% are awake. 98% are asleep. The majority are afraid to ask the WHY question.

Fear is a killer. Life is a killer.

People asking questions get slaughtered. See the Killing Fields on page 101 - the last room you want to enter. Keeping your big fat fucking mouth shut is wise and prudent behavior to survive post-genocidal truth ghosts. It is an unpleasant fact. If you open your trap someone cuts out your tongue.

In this peculiar particular situation expert scientific witnesses have proven beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt and doubt has a shadow with logical coherence … that WE, being expert witnesses, reliable narrators and noble natives living with our DNA genius bear witness to alienated, lonely, bored, listless, passive Earthlings meandering with no purpose, lost, unimaginative having zero curiosity and staring with blind eyes - due to severe emotional, mental, physical traumas with memories of suffering, genocide and ghosts.

They remain childlike, tender, sweet, kind, and hospitable with a terminal case of confusion and loss forever, hiding in deep shadows, addicted to dumb phone entertainment boredom.

Their beating hearts caress resignation, despair, depression, lack of initiative or incentive based on fear of punishment, or loss of face or humiliation with hard-wired SHAME. They live a meditative Buddhist spiritual way of identity and culture.

They are easily distracted. Kids play. Forever young. Adults have perfected the art and style of Pretending To Be Busy.

What art. What beauty. What style. What form. What context. What a formal pertinacious way. What objective truth. What verisimilitude.

Here are some true facts, said Rita an orphan and independent author. Unpleasant facts are littered in this epic like lovers, countries, butterflies, social systems, food and transformation.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Create

The Play Begins

Attention Ladies & Gentlemen!

Civilization is sterilization - an agreement to avoid the abyss. You look into the abyss and the abyss looks back at you.

History is the symptom and people are the disease.

This is a long dream sequence, said Zeynep, author of The Language Company. Mirrors are metaphors like Banlung, Cambodian nill gemstones of the Mind-At-Large. Keep a diamond in your mind, reflecting 10,000 points of light.

We create myths and stories. We build sandcastles.

We used to be someone else and traded them in.

Hold a mirror to the sky reflecting Beauty. Hold a mirror to the ground reflecting a muddy path. Hello Truth. Hello Beauty. See all the beauty without hope or fear. Life is sad & beautiful.

It’s a long walk. Walking makes the road. Nothing more. Nothing less. Less is more. We play with reality, impermanence and illusions of reality.

We cultivate ambiguities, create imaginary identities and play with fact and fiction. We use lies to tell the truth. Fast, short and deadly. In the future more than five words is a run-on sentence. A life sentence ran away.

What’s the next question, said Grave Digger. I love good dirt. I know two things. Look at my hands.

I know the solution and wait for the problem, the opportunity, the big SURPRISE, said Leo, Chief of Cannibals. Can we know death, said Leo.

Good question, said Z. One should die at least once to appreciate life. One must die before they live. Most people are born alive and slowly die. WE are born dead and come to life.

Kill the Buddha. Kill yourself. Suicide is an honorable Asian way of saying goodbye with honor, dignity and respect. Buddha said, I show you sorrow.

A blossoming voice has purity, love and truth. We know illusions of desire, anger, and ignorance. Pain, suffering, fear, loneliness and alienation kills the spirit, said Rita, author of Ice Girl in Banlung. Alienation embraces uncertainty ... Embrace the chaos.

A heartbeat contains a universe of infinite possibilities, said Zeynep.

What is the difference between possibility and probability, asked Tran, polishing his prosthetic left leg.

How do we dissolve monkey mind thought clouds and fleeting sensations to enhance our awareness and potential, said Omar a blind Tuareg Ghostwriter.

What does it mean to be a human being? Are you a human being or a hungry ghost?

The reader completes the work of art.

Yes, said Devina, buy a ticket take the ride.

We are in exile with stealth and cunning.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

BS

where are we going

trust me kid and stay close

*

“To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength.”- Celine

*

There was a traveller. He was invisible.

IT - Invisible Traveller not Internet Technology.

He wandered Earth helping people discover their English courage, doing street photography and writing.

In April 2013 while polishing a new book, The Language Company in Cambodia with eagle-eyed daily discipline from 6-10 a.m. to be independently published in late 2014, he applied for a volunteer teaching position with Buffalo Strange (BS) an English school and Cuban charity in NE Laos.

He communicated with Dark, the co-founder.

The traveller had first visited Laos in 2010 for a month, sailing north up the Nam Ou River for three days from Luang Prabang to Phongsali in the wilderness bordering China and Vietnam before wandering south to Pakse and Ratanakiri, Cambodia.

He met Rita, author of Ice Girl in Banlung. They collaborated life stories forming the frame of a self-published novella.

He returned in 2011 helping grades 6 & 7 develop character and critical-thinking skills with curiosity and humor at a private school in Vientiane before graduating to a Montessori School in Luang Prabang to practice ABCs with new young friends.

In May 2013, before going to BS he went to Mandalay, Myanmar for ten weeks with Montessori kids at a private school. Ineffective management. It didn’t meet his psychic needs. Burmese children taught him see say understand I am a miracle.

He learned. He wrote it down. He did street photography work. He returned to Dream Land.

Dark contacted him in June 2013 in the off chance he was still available and interested. They talked specifics. IT went to Never-Never Land, Laos in August.

19 degrees 27’ 36” N, 103 degrees 10’48” E

A Little BS