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Entries in environment (168)

Saturday
Dec032011

dead sunday

I learned from Ankara students how they were tired.

They loved being addicted to their phenobarbital phenomenon reality altering life, taking anti-depressants by mouth. I processed their fear and anxiety. 

A national Turkish problem according to a psychiatrist I met one day by chance on purpose my second week is anxiety.

It was a dead Sunday.

Clinking a small musically inclined silver spoon dissolved square sugar cubes made in a factory where the hygiene conditions were abysmal.

I sat in a tea house filled with artifacts. Iranian carpets, blue amber oil paintings and thick deeply embroidered cushions near a well thumbed Tarot deck. Fortune telling is an art and science depending on the suspicious, auspicious way. I gifted them the State of Relaxation. The Zen Tarot. Reading, feeling, absorbing the future.

We are all extras in someone's film, said Sappho.

Saturday
Nov122011

yell louder

Possible signs of intelligent life exist here in Saigon or Ho Chi Minh or Siem Reap or Vientiane or Hanoi. Rumor control reports. Merely existing mind you. ‘Mind yourself, how you go dearie,’ whispered an Irish ghostwriter in Donegal. Well remembered.

Take my neighbors for example. Sam and Dave. Sam is the kid, Dave is the father. These are not Viet names. If they were they’d be named Binh and Thin and New Yen, like new yin instead of old yang. 

Dave had kids so he and his wife can yell at them. It was an arranged marriage. 

Easy to have kids in the 13th most populated country on planet Earth. 85 million hard and fast rules of parenthood. Get married early, the pressure is on. 

You do not want to be unmarried and sad, lonely and well forgotten. Loneliness dramatically increases the chances of heart attacks, strokes of genius, and arterial vestiges of debilitating forms of social upheaval and social instability in a well mannered society. 

Extreme pressure is on the girls to find a husband. Girls in Sapa, which is not part of this tale, only illustrates the way rural girls get married at the ripe old age of 16 and start producing genetic forms of themselves. Petri dish. Wash and tear. 

Takes hard courage to raise them with integrity, respect, authenticity and a low level of pain tolerance.

Dave releases stream of anger, bitterness and frustration allowing him to relax, expend, expand the sound. Dave is startled to hear the the sound of his own particular voice ricochet of cold gray cement block walls. His life is a cold cement wall. Echoes dance through his brain like little sugarplum fairies. 

Thursday
Nov102011

calm joy

My lover-friend brought me pineapples, a yellow mango and passion fruit.

He was away for six weeks. I wash clothes in my silent world.

My hair is tinted golden hued now. I am ebullient. He touched my spine. Soft. I turned, smiling. 

My silent world and calm joy are disguised potentials. We share a silent clear understanding.

Our private time has no fear, no hurry. It is a gentle passion. This is my awareness of our connection on a heart-mind level of trust and authenticity. I am resigned to remembering. 

I paint my nails a shade of red-pink.

My old thin brown fingers are tired after a day washing clothes. My infinite silence no voice is all. He watches my intense angelic face focus on nails. One by one. My heart understands his sense of loss. Accept loss forever. 

Tuesday
Nov012011

cement

so, said the seven-year young genius, tell me another story about lazy passive stupid people. 

that's a lot of adjectives, said traveler.

what's an adjective?

it's your father deciding to tear out the garden and plant a cement parking lot at his home-guesthouse along the mekong river.

really? i didn't know adjectives is are was were capable of so much destruction and chaos.

o my yes. your grandmother got down on her knees begging him to save the garden. he ignored her.

ignoring people here is a gentle way of life. subtle and effective. reality therapy.

he shamed her into silence.

i am building a new laos. a new cement empire, he proclaimed.

what did grandmother do? 

she rearranged her remaining trees, shrubs, orchids in a shrinking green corner.

she watered with tears. she got down on knees crying, thanking buddha for good dirt.

 

Saturday
Sep172011

in tone a tion

ideogram letter symbol
inside a series of interlocking blades

is a Cambodian

land mine museum displaying geiger counters
radiation blast suits, screwdrivers, shovels, hi-tech sensors

fertile green rice paddies, farms, fields
1,000 Angkor temples built with laterite stones

pachyderms, topographical survey maps
statistical graphic charts
rainbow amputee refugees

relocation centers rehabilitation
co-pay deductible insurance policies
cremation ceremonies

bereaved starving relatives

curious strangers
spilling

desire fear and regret

rappelling through nouns
verbs and ideas with bamboo shacks

submerged mangrove forests
hammocks, charcoal cooking fires
naked children, amputees

short term Australian nurses
laconic teachers
269 orphanages
12,000 orphans

a butterfly farm
a silk worm weaving center
empowering singing women
threading thin and thick yellow

salvia protein based fibers
on spindles and looms
near Son Le Tap lake