Up River

Banlung is a gateway to isolated animist villages up river. The Tonle Srepok River is the river of darkness. The Apocalypse Now river.

The river overflowed with extended tedious 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 wooden faces remembering the dead with ceremonies, laughter, animal sacrifice and rice wine hearing the low dull roar of high altitude B-52 bombers releasing enraptured napalm canister lightning bolts through clear skies rendering humans, mountains and jungles obsolete, accompanied by the steady rhythm of a girl sawing ice.

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.

Mother saw a whirling bird, called a helicopter. She wove it with our traditional motifs of weavers, people carrying water, harvesting, dancing, playing music, sitting, resting, flowers, fields, cows, chickens, ducks, birds, banana and palm trees, rivers, sky and nature. She weaves our long story. Before writing after cutting and selling ice I weave.

Animists believe in the natural world. Every living thing has spirit energy. A shy woman shaman smiled after performing a family ceremony and healing sacrifice near the river. She smeared chicken blood over a sick infant’s stomach. Villagers are superstitious and trusting.

Bored dead eyed humans wandered red dust.

One prolific business in Banlung is mechanical. Along and adjacent to the single east west paved artery were brown wooden homes and shacks of rusting corrugated tin.

Single men or teams of laborious boys hammered, welded, and pried, manipulating iron and steel, adjusting belts, guided grinding gears, solidifying particles, firing cylinders, filing metallic blisters, reworking tired 125cc engines and formatting hard drives as spokes on crude machines sang.

Repair and restoration work implied basic life skills using eye-hand coordination, communication theory modules with colleagues, decipherable brooms, grease, balloons, laughter and a high degree of universal understanding and empathy.

Freedom worked 24/7. Under a broiling sun tempered by a soft breeze they carried buckets of cement over boards, pouring it on red dirt. Freedom shoveled 21 muscular sandy efforts into a wheelbarrow. Freedom pushed it to a new world order construction site filled with profound expectations and poverty’s paradoxes.

After dark Freedom caressed a hungry $10 passive lover inside a plywood shack along a dirt road removed from neon, Zircon and the tooth fairy. Dirt floor, bed, and OK condom.

Her clothes hung on rusty nails embedded in exploitation. Stale perfume, lip-gloss and mascara sang lost memories. Her dead eyes said, plow my field with no emotional connection. She stared at a brick wall as Freedom assaulted heaven’s gate grinding desire.

After 15 minutes longer than forever she joined five girlfriends sitting around a fire below stars. See who shows up, said one, the night’s young. We are tools, said another. We are fools, said one applying gloss. I don’t give a shit, said a sad one remembering her mother and siblings upriver. Fuck it.

The fat male mafia moneyman slouched in a porch hammock watched reality reruns under a red light special.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Author Page

Buy Low, Sell High

In the Sahara removed from death, chaos, tears and 3,000 funerals I suggested to Omar maybe it was about economic terrorism, poverty and empathy.

He understood the economics of survival, bartering, trade, exchange value, supply, demand and getting the best price. Not too low and not too high.

“A person cannot drink or eat more than they need. It’s about hospitality,” he said.

Omar’s tribe migrated from Mali, Southern Algeria and Mauritania. Prior to 1956 there were six million Touareg on nine million square kilometers of desert with no government borders controlling movement. Now there were 7-10,000 in the Sahara Occidental.

Berbers controlled the Iberian Peninsula as a colony from Marrakech castles. Fierce warriors, they resisted outside control while maintaining their language and culture during Roman, Vandal and Arabic rule.

“Your enemy is my friend,” said Omar.

His tribes conquered and ruled Spain for centuries.

He’d seen boring television images. He preferred human conversation. Omar knew television and cell phones were the most insane consciousness-stealing inventions of all time. They sold desire and greed designed by advertising companies pitching food, sex, self-esteem and illusions of false happy secure lies.

After the successful 9/11 attacks desperate stories, lies and myths evolved, adapted and adjusted like petri dish cultures.

They created new languages, art, music, attitudes, values, principles, weapons of mass distraction and historical chaos in the long now. They took on new fragmented impartial impervious identities.

“Buy low and sell high,” said Omar as sand shifted below a blue sky.

“Simple as ABC,” I said.

“It’s easy to comprehend at the heart-mind level.” He was a man of few words. We contemplated a vast silent world.

“No language, no culture,” he sang as shooting stars played celestial tag.

I visualized elements of fear, disinformation, misinformation, bias, lies, half-truths and paranoid propaganda bloviated by politicians, popes, prelates, mullahs, and animists in every oral language on a spinning blue marble in space-time. 24/7.

Fear sells. People buy.

Human brains overflowed with data and visual distractions. Incoming! Run for cover.

Free medications were administered to seven billion humanoids.

Survivors crammed mountain caves as orphans sang, “A tisket a tasket we need a casket.”

Peaceful people lived wisdom, empathy, and compassion. Meditation, deep breathing, harmony and forgiveness of Spiriti Sanctus were portals into clear awareness.

Arabic speaking scholars recited poetry by Rumi. They shared stories about rising and falling civilizations. Transmitting oral stories they diagramed hieroglyphics, cave paintings, metaphors and unconscious archetypes.

I envisaged historians, political scientists, talking heads, taxi drivers, unemployed fortunetellers and morticians answering suicide hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially.

Governments increased military spending.

They cut education, health care and social programs.

Citizens overwhelmed hospital emergency rooms pleading, “Give us drugs to alleviate our fears and illusions of desire and suffering.”

Fear and Consumption demand outstripped supply.

Scarcity was thrilled.

“What happens when they run out of CONTROL programs and advertising?” a girl asked her mother, the mother of all answers.

“Don’t worry my sweet,” said her mother living her worst nightmare, “They will invent, fabricate and illuminate something new. The manufacturing sector will rebound when shelves are empty. Advertising and propaganda never dies. We’ll always have sugar and we can always go shopping.”

“How long will it take to reduce these feelings of imaginary fear?”

“Healing, empathy and compassion require our individual intention. Many practice a calm way like there’s no tomorrow,” said her mother.

“Healing energies, peace and love sustain us.”

“There is only F.U.D.,” said the mother twisting her daughter’s hair until it caught fire.

“What is F.U.D. mother?”

“Fear, uncertainty and doubt. It’s part of our DNA since we jumped or fell or were pushed from The Tree of Life 60,000 years ago. FUD evolved with a vengeance as hungry unconscious greedy demons.”

“What about adventure and surprise?”

“They are factors in our adaptation as a species. You ask great questions my dear,” fanning her daughter’s flame. “A long now-time. A century is nothing.”

“It’s good to know some things,” said the girl. “We know so much and understand nothing.”

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I’ve already said a lot.”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Tell me the truth,” mother. “I want to know your truth.”

“It’s a miracle we are here is my truth. It’s a big cosmic joke. Our insecurities are disappearing and our strengths are growing. Consider this. The letters F.E.A.R. can mean face everything and recover, or fuck everything and run away.”

“Life is a magical celebration, mother. We are flukes of the universe. We are miracles. Life is a beautiful short dream. There’s no rhyme or reason. It’s about realizing peace and gratitude in our heart. We connect with family, community and world tribes. Inhale other’s suffering and exhale healing. Cultivate our heart-mind awareness.”

“I love you,” said her mother.

“I will be present and grateful mother. May we go out and play now? May we take the day off and be creative?”

“Yes, let’s invent a game theory my sweet.”

ART

Adventure, Risk, and Transformation - A Memoir

Ice Girl Talks

Banlung is a gateway to isolated animist villages up river. The Tonle Srepok River is the river of darkness. The Apocalypse Now River.

The river overflowed with extended tedious 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 wooden faces remembering the dead with ceremonies, laughter, animal sacrifice and rice wine hearing the low dull roar of high altitude B- 52 bombers releasing enraptured napalm canister lightning bolts through clear skies rendering humans, mountains and jungles obsolete, accompanied by the steady rhythm of a girl sawing ice.

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.

Mother saw a whirling bird, called a helicopter. She wove it with our traditional motifs of weavers, people carrying water, harvesting, dancing, playing music, sitting, resting, flowers, fields, cows, chickens, ducks, birds, banana and palm trees, rivers, sky and nature. She weaves our long story.

Before writing, after cutting and selling ice, I weave.

Animists believe in the natural world. Every living thing has spirit energy.

A shy woman shaman smiled after performing a family ceremony and healing sacrifice near the river. She smeared chicken blood over a sick infant’s stomach. Villagers are superstitious and trusting.

Bored dead eyed humans wandered red dust.

One prolific business in Banlung is mechanical. Along and adjacent to the single east west paved artery were brown wooden homes and shacks of rusting corrugated tin.

Single men or teams of laborious boys hammered, welded and pried, manipulating iron and steel, adjusting belts, guided grinding gears, solidifying particles, firing cylinders, filing metallic blisters, reworking tired 125cc engines and formatting hard drives as spokes on crude machines sang.

Repair and restoration work implied basic life skills using eye-hand coordination, communication theory modules with colleagues, decipherable brooms, grease, balloons, laughter and a high degree of universal understanding and empathy.

Freedom worked 24/7.

Under a broiling sun tempered by a soft breeze they carried buckets of cement over boards, pouring it on red dirt. Freedom shoveled 21 muscular sandy efforts into a wheelbarrow. Freedom pushed it to a new world order construction site filled with profound expectations and poverty’s paradoxes.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Gratitude

In late 2011 in Vientiane, Laos he finished another revision of A Century is Nothing.

He let it rest. He's tired of it. He's been consistent with it every morning and afternoon.

Doing the work. Polishing is the party.

He feels good about the process.

Stories inside stories.

A work of art is never finished. It is abandoned.

The 2nd edition was published December 2012.

After spraying oil on sprocket and chain he rode Mystery the mountain bike.

Slow.

He discovered a woman with her plastic box sitting in the shade doing nails on a quiet side street.

He gestured scraping callused souls. She smiled and finished another woman.

He soaked feet and hands in water. She scrubbed off dead skin.

It reminded him of murdering his manuscript darlings. She trimmed cuticles and skin with a small silver tool. She wrote him into her story and he wrote her into his. They're are mutually inconclusive.

Love is unconditional.

He is open minded, patient, positive, flexible, and friendly.

She is intuitive and creative with empathy, trust, respect and gratitude.

He paid. They smiled.

He rode away protected by a white butterfly ringing a bell.

Present and empty.

warrior attitude

He is open minded, patient, positive, flexible, and friendly.

She is intuitive and creative with empathy, trust and respect. Money.

He paid.

They smiled.

He left protected by a white butterfly ringing a bell.

Music is the fuel.

Welcome to Planet Insane Asylum.

You are released on your own recognizance.

Create a new world. Ride a bike. Explore.

Life is the destination.

Warrior attitude.

Understanding by design.

Your story emerges from nothing. Discover a point of departure, a direction.

Mad ones sing with fools.