Hawk Informers

A male street hawker spoke with flair and conviction, If you don't buy my cheap cotton hat with a national flag red star, or a cheap wooden bracelet made by an orphan, then the next time I see you while I am walking hot Hanoi streets in the middle of the broiling day with sweat streaming into my eyes trying to make a living, then I won't know you.

My eyes will be dark and lost in their pitiful future. I won't remember you. Ever.

I will continue to walk. All day. In the heat. No water. No rest. To walk, work, meet tourists. No pity. This is my social and economic reality. People ignore you when they don’t have a sale.

Darwinian logic. Evolution of the species. Survival.

I’m not surprised, said Charlie. This is common throughout the country. The Central Party creates a climate of fear. Fathers report wives. Wives report sons and daughters. Daughters report their fathers. It is an evil cycle.

Charlie is a member of the Shining Path Young. This is our new generation, with a new generation of informers and spies. They make good money. They keep their mouth shut and know their place. Infamy. 

What I do today is important because I'm spending a day of my life on it.

Daffy Gladhafi

Omar the clown was getting a close shave with a bloody sword by his naked Ukrainian nurse in his underwater bunker.

Son #1 came in, O big Daddy of the 41 year glorious dictatorship, we have a small problem.

Tempered steel caressed his neck, What pray tell have the savages wrought? 

They are marching toward the capital. We've lost the East.

1.5 million destitute workers from China, Turkey, Italy, Mali, Bali and inner Mongolia ran away. 

So what. We have 2% of the world's oil under burning sand castles. Oil for guns. Thanks to our Italian and British friends we possess trillions of dollars in high tech weapons and killing machines. We have seeing eye dogs of war.

He turned a blind eye to his son. Ok, here's what I command you to do. Give everyone $400 and a free apartment. Give them a car. Give them empty promises filled with hypocrisy. Give them anti-aircraft guns, nuclear and biological weapons, isotopes, radiation microscopes, saline solution, sunglasses, my Green Book and swords. I will destroy Earth.

Son, historical unpleasant genocide facts and cemeteries will remember me. My idiotic legacy is complete. 

Blood will flow faster than an Austrian named Adolf wheeling his luggage filled with orphans down an endless dirt road in Cambodia. Hunt down the greasy dogs. Kill all the cockroaches. I am the greatest.

Affected

"Keep your hand moving," whispered the writing teacher to 80 robots. 

The foreign teacher wearing Tang Dynasty clothing filled with dragons, yin-yang balance, a Phoenix rising, a crying crane flying through mist covered mountains while emperors danced with concubines inside Forbidden Cities' red lacquered emotional curiosities where visions of detached ebullient phosphorus streams dove into silence beside abstractions of zither tonal quality in extreme bliss was a manifestation of phenomenal superior detective analysis and forty questions of the soul marking marketing examinations at 7:00 p.m. followed by utter exhaustion.

We escaped the sterile Chinese university on mountain bikes, singing, “We know so much and understand so little.”  

“People are more affected by how they feel than by what they understand,” bright star Leo said. “On day one my teacher said, ‘I only want you to bring two things to class. Your ears.’”

We sharpened sticks on stones carving paleo-Leo-lithic cave paintings on soft clay walls. Leo edged circles, rectangles, triangles, curves, lines and dots. He carved his name backwards for future historians and archeologists to get the gist or, as an unemployed academic financial analyst on Wall Street would, could, should declare, “English On Line.”

Being hunters-gathers we salvaged assorted garbage mired in mud. We created a semi-permanent temporary recycled art project on the canyon bottom. 

We assembled statues using sticks, soggy faded purple underwear, a filtered worker’s mask with a broken elastic strap, beer bottles, soda cans, green string, cigarette packages, lost feathers, sharp needled pine cones, coral blue seashells, orange peels, melted candles, dried condoms, fractured leaves, bird calls and worn and torn useful Lung-Tao prayer flags from Lhasa, Tibet.

In nature they drilled for cauliflower.

tomorrows

they laugh.

what do you see? i see a man carrying one red brick. he’s looking for a place to put it down. he is confused. he had no idea his day would involve carrying a brick AND making a decision. 

he needs a woman to tell him what do. this is rare because men, in his culture, are the boss and tell women what to do. usually they tell them to lie down and get ready for the big thing. 

he is confused about loss. his wife wears the pants. she is the now. 

i see an exuberant extraordinary solid particle cow patty land-mine in the middle of sunday’s broken pot holed road. it’s a steaming green mountain. 

it smells like an art project. it will be discovered by a speeding SUV leaving a trace of aroma past sweeping weeping women. it will spread itself over the entire olfactory landscape.

it will create new tomorrows. 

the village barber had a customer. a white haired war veteran. he’d fought against Thailand, Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge. he didn’t talk about it. he survived and that was his conversation. his legacy. 

he sat in a solid steel chair staring at his reflection. he saw a thin serene brown face and wavy white hair. a long mole resembling an inverted Buddhist pagoda hung down from the left side of his chin. the mole saved him from the Khmer Rouge executioners. they were superstitious peasants and said he was the Devil, an evil spirit. they’d let him go.

a housewife in a rural village. her task is sweeping dust into piles of dust outside her bamboo shack. she has all day to complete this arduous task. repeat.

dust to dust. dawn to dusk. poetic ramifications in the theatre of the absurd. a housewife has a house. she is a wife. she has 10 children. having children is her DUTY. sex for her is nothing but a DUTY. she is a duty free outlet. her price tag has expired. everything must go.

many children gives her mother and extended family someone to love and play with and yell at. yelling at kids here is abNORMAL and healthy. it nurtures their self-esteem and neurotic adolescence with punctuation marks.

her husband is sleeping. he loves sleeping, eating and making babies, because he doesn’t have to carry them around for nine months and experience hormonal feelings. he sleeps forever dreaming of a hammock in a bamboo forest.

naked children play with trash. they set fire to the forest.

fire is their great fun and games besides Yelling and Whining. 

one day

One day I went to the market with my brother and grandmother. We scavenged for food. She looked for money. My stomach comes first. I found a rope. It smelled like food. It tasted sweet. My brother found a piece of sugar cane. He is older, smarter and faster and needs the energy. 

My grandmother sat down at life's intersection. She held out her begging bowl. 

At dark we went home.

Thank you for your attention.