Spring

One Kampot morning  
Dawn struggles to create music hearing
 Brooms dance with dust as Khmer and Vietnamese women
Bent like branches in strong wind

Hover over leaves, discarded fruit skins
Memories
Bird songs
Night dreams
Sweeping swish a wish
Rain glorious soft smooth clear rain

Cloud tears echo silence
Calm way
Spring speaks laughter
Cool sky jazz

Water imagination seeds with bliss & gratitude

Diamonds reflect a universe on bamboo leaf

In a Brave New World you shift from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness.
I ate civilization.

Breath brain 157 neurons
Attention arousal
Mortar pestle music
Rhythm kids
Chatter with mom on crutches

Reality is a crutch
Steaming gleaming aluminum containers
Meat, eggs, vegetables, soups, rows of BBQ fish, sausage

Smoke curls from charcoal flames
Backpack tourists avoid motorcycle mama mayhem

Little boys with little toys all 125cc
At the speed of light

Be light about it
Blind female masseuse meditates in a green room
A slow steady rain falls
Clean air smells good

A single star,

flickering out in the universe,

is enough to fill the mind, but it is nothing in the night sky.

Grow Your Soul

Author Page

Ice Girl

"We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe." - Upanishad

This is a work of literary journalism.

It’s fucking hysterical.

Now and then mean the same in Ratanakiri, Cambodia animist jungle languages.

Leo is incognito and invisible perusing the Wild West. It is replete with wandering literary outlaws, animists, shamans and 25,000 natives. Rambunctious young Banlung cowboys and cowgirls dance 125cc machines through spiraling red dust.

How long have you been here, asked a 12-year old girl cutting and selling ice along a red road.

All day. I started in China. I walked to Vietnam. Then Laos. I’ll stay here awhile. We can talk.

Ok, she said, cutting crystals. Is a day long enough to process a sensation, form an impression? Is it long enough to gather critical mass data about the diversity of the human condition in this total phenomena?

Yes, said Leo, If you slow down. How is life here?

I work, I breed, I get slaughtered, she said. This is my fate. My fate is a machete slashing through jungles. Fate and random chance are two sides of the same coin. Yeah, yeah are two of my favorite lazy words. Especially when I am talking with illiterate zombies ...

They are same word but I spit them out twice at light speed. You accent the last consonant, drawing it out like a sigh, a final breath, a whisper. Y-e-a-hhhhh. It’s crazy English believe you me. Impressive, eh? I can also say OK twice fast with a rising sound on the k sounding like a which means I understand without admitting meaning or personal truth-value. It’s vague. Why be precise? People love conversations using abstract metaphors. Ok?

Ok. Address the very low literacy rate, said Leo. Hello, literacy rate, how are you? she said.
I am well thank you and speaking with improved elocution. My English is getting better. The more I see the less I know. I open my head, heart and mouth.

Someone said literacy means reading and writing, said Ice Girl.

I doubt it, said Literacy. Who needs reading and writing? Humans need food, sex, air, water, stories and red dust. Hope is in last place. In fact, hope may be the greatest evil because it’s a myth, like evil.

Let’s not have this conversation in the abstract, said Ice Girl, sawing cold.

I thought you said eating and fighting, said Literacy. You must be fucking crazy. My survival depends on eating and fighting. Reading and writing is for idiots. Millions never learn how to read or write, let alone scribble stories. No chance. No money. No tools. Education is a waste of time.

I see, said Ice Girl. When I write my stories filled with immediate sense impressions and precise details they lose their magic. They are like ice. Ice loses its essence. It reverts to a primal form. Existence precedes essence. It’s lost between heart-mind-hand-tool-paper. Spoken stories lose their edge ...

Too many people talk out their stories. Magic is lost in the telling. Lost tales float around looking for ears. Talking kills magic and mystery. Ghost stories. World tribes memorize chants, rhythms, songs, tales and star trails with a side order of red dust. You never hear a kid say, Let’s take the day off and be creative.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Author Page

*

Every photograph has an aura of death.  - Barthes

Grow

draw poem
breathe zen
explore calligraphy line
play shape shadow
imprint experiment
love future

synthesize beauty
form truth dream imagine
creativity
color destiny

adventures
nature sings
ink poetry
adaptation song music laughter
potential

meditation
delight process
weave thread
needle leads a conversation
draw doodle paint

storyteller senses wisdom
focus fate
touch now
jazz improv intensity
emotion

motivation intention
formless
blues spirit intuition

wander
dancing down all the days
live moment

tranquility
salute sun smiling intention meaning
beauty white butterfly sunlight
waves & particles
walking meditation

edges
existential theatre of absurd
stars decorate your hand

flame your life

feeling sensation
meaningless universe
value, quality of life, excellence

calm mind move body
point, line shadow color
wushu movement balance composure
observing vs seeing
Beckett - futility of words

random chance
magic day

Grow Your Soul - Prose and poems from Laos/Cambodia

Simple Voice

After a reliable narrator

established a voice

geography, atmosphere, tone, conflict and cinematic jump cut action

employing minimum wage universal themes

like time, boredom, passion, loneliness and alienation

in an unforgiving universe of meaningless existence

with humor and curiosity holding hands

casting characters like plot

dragging others around

chained to their personality defects and character flaws

wearing original death masks

surrounded by distracted

simple, noisy, gadget addicted

compassionate illiterate peasants

in a play waiting for Godot

no one shows up

nothing happens

writing with a Mont Blanc 149 fountain pen

using Royal Blue invisible ink

on blank parchment

was pure luminous joy

Yangon, Burma

Literary Outlaws

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. UBD.

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

Only the mad ones sing with the fools.

Events, characters, setting, impressions. Energies and frequencies.

Remember Coco speaking in Fujian, China watching 15,000 university students walk past old village people. "They are all peasants."

Years later the rich Chinese man in Laos served you fresh green Fujian tea at the Luang Prabang guesthouse. "Children are tools," he said. He had two. They arrived in a Raging Rover using GPS.

Discernment with sensitivity.

Engaged by a stimulus. Disengaged from a stimulus.

Truth-Force.

Signal-Noise

High season in Vientiane. Perfect for drawing twilight as scooters mumble putt putt exhausted fear based laughter succumbing to circumstance.

Yoke said a verb is a condition.

Her insight was victorious. Word got back that all but three 8th grade students were caught cheating on their Lao exams. No surprise there. Delight in their sly cunning attitude. Oh, to be human.

Determination chopped ice, shifting passive years, gears and fears into a zonal transparency of blank eyes. Is-land tourists became localized stimuli wandering blank.

It's a meaningful coincidence.

We are literary outlaws.

Explanation is a well dressed mistake.

We connect the dots forward. Play an infinite game of chess.

Checkmate, said Death. I always make the correct move.

Existence precedes essence. Flame your life.