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Entries in fear (117)

Wednesday
Dec042019

Fairy Tale

I am sorry are our three favorite words in Cambodia.
It’s the last thing 2,000,000 genocide victims cried out before a complete stranger slammed a
shovel against their skull. I am sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

One survivor said to another survivor, what a beautiful fucking mess. Help me drag this one away.

You either let go or get dragged along, said a Buddhist monk lighting incense for world peace.

Same in China said Leo, We learn life’s hard bitter lesson to accept loss forever, I am sorry. What is the most beautiful word you know Zeynep?

Freedom. And yours? Food, said Rita and Leo.

Less talk and more drawing are essential in life, Z said. Experiment with circles, dots, triangles, squares, lines and curves to reach existential levels of realization. Connect the dots forward.


The asylum is a prison and protection, said Rita.

You create art to explore your sense of self and find out how you feel you are, rather than whom you think you should or ought to be, Z said, drawing her future.

Make the right choice for the wrong reason, Leo said.

Make the wrong choice for the right reason in the right season, Rita said.

Z discovered questions were repeated. 1,001 questions ran around her Turkish restaurant looking for answers. Questions grew tired of repeating themselves. This is so fucking boring, said one question. We are abused. We are manipulated and rendered mute. Useless.

Think of it as a test, said another question. Patience is our great teacher. I’ll try, said another question. Yes, said a question, these non-listeners have a distinct tendency to say nothing and say it louder than empty silence when they’re leaving, when their faces are turned away from eye contact, potential real heart-mind communication and growth.

Echoes drifted in through around silence and ignorance. I’ve seen that too, said a question, who, until this moment was silent. My theory is that it’s because of genocide, fear and ignorance. It’s also a delicate mixture of stupidity or indifference, said another question. I suggest it’s their innate Buddhist belief. They suppress their ego. Non-self.

Why is the most dangerous question, said Lucky addressing questions. Remember Leo asking why and ended up carrying shit at the Reform Through Re-education Labor Camp near the Gobi before becoming Chief of the Cannibals wearing an alarm clock around his scrawny neck reminding everyone of Time?

Yes I remember said a timeless prescient question. Leo was one smart cookie, whatever that means. He figured out unique survival skills in a desperate situation. He knew the fundamental difference between book smarts and street smarts. Anyway before we drift off the subject, how do you explain fear, asked a question.

Rita (author of Ice Girl in Banlung) - Fear is a basic instinct. It’s in our DNA. It’s in the amygdala. Flight or fight? Is it safe, eyes say scanning a potentially dangerous environment since Day One. You see it everywhere, all day, everyday all the scared uncertain eyes asking is it safe?

They peek left, glance right, double check. The coast is clear. Let’s go. People ran away to survive. Instinct.

People had a panic attack, started running and others would ask them a question like why are you running, who’s chasing you, where are you going or what’s the matter or when did you become afraid or why are you afraid, or why don’t you stay longer and the running one would keep going trailing abstract question words behind them like memories of dead or missing families or disembodied spirits or exploding landmines or molecules of indifferent breath.

I see, said a question, that explains everything. Yes, said an open-ended question. Being correct is never the point.

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. We are assassins.

The Language Company

Burma

Saturday
Nov162019

Shanghai Interrogation

The boy soldier was silent.

“What’s that for?” said the female Public Security Bureau official pointing to the typewriter on the table. 

“It is for writing letters.”

They have reservations about letters. Letters, they wonder, looking at each other with jaundiced eyes. Black eyes streaked with exploding blood vessels full of fear and suspicion.

Letters indicate political insurrection, dissent, forced labor, mandatory abortions, propaganda, civil unrest, turmoil, revolutions, tanks in the street, torture, solitary confinement and executions.

They see party leaders wringing pale hands pacing forbidden cities past stone lions, conducting top-secret meetings trying to figure out what to do, how to put a face on all this. How to manage and manipulate dis-information rivers controlling floods.

The boy soldier and his comrade save face by maintaining blank, stoic expressions. They suspect I have connections.

Maybe I am a plant, a party member sent to check their unit. Assigned to monitor their methods, their questioning tactics, their subtle use of intimidation, their implications to control and influence people’s lives with fear for the good of the state.

For all they know I am a subversive. A word terrorist.

“Letters. We will keep an eye on this one,” she said to the soldier.

They're thinking: We have ways to make you talk. They don’t say this but I know how it works. I’ve read Tu Fu and Li Po's work. I’ve digested their bone dust history through dynasties.

“Yes, well, we’ll see,” she said. “We need to remind you to remember this very carefully.” Her voice gained an octave.

The bent nail gets hammered down!

“Just because you speak our language doesn’t mean you are special. We can revoke your visa and force you to pay a fine. We can put you away where no one will ever find you. We will discuss your situation with our leaders. We have driven the talented people abroad. Some went into hiding but we know where they are and we find them. We always do. We find them in their homes, schools, and jobs. Some accepted positions at foreign universities where they form counter-revolutionary groups bent on overthrowing the state by writing articles, stories and books critical of their motherland.”

Her face resembled nuclear fission as she pounded the table. “They are a disgrace! They are running dogs!”

“I see,” I said, dropping my eyes saving face.

Downstairs, my warrior team armed with tools made on slave labor production lines financed with western capital, are busy. They laughed, sang and danced knocking holes in theories, lies and deceptions. They built facades, charades, fast food outlets, dream machines, and ignominious pious grandiose standards of living faster than joint venture ink dries on thin rice paper.

The authorities are momentarily appeased.     

I understand they are following orders.

To the letter.

I am well aware, remembering letters, if they execute me with a single bullet to the back of my head my family will have to pay for the ammunition. My family will be very surprised when they get a bill in a letter from kow-tow authorities for a round. They will have to buy a round and will never meet the last of the big time spenders.

To make matters worse, the authorities, after executing me, will disembowel me and recycle internal organs seeing profits to be made from a used, well traveled perfectly functioning heart, lungs, kidneys, pancreas, eyes, ears, hair, genitals, spleen and assorted by-products. It will be a beautiful fucking mess.

First, they will need impossible to find International Reply Coupons and second, the post office glue made from horses is a disaster. Gets all over the wooden counters and fingers of rude, impatient people because they are slobs. After smearing glue everywhere they push and shove toward the sullen postal clerk thrusting mail in her face.

If she didn’t have guaranteed sticky white rice three times a day my grand inquisitor would be home knitting a sweater and gossiping with neighbors. They’d be discussing vegetables, weather and roving demolition crews with bulldozers wondering when, not if, their ancient hutong neighborhood would come tumbling down and they’d be forced to move to bland housing tracts on the edge of the Gobi desert.

They will be the last to know. Earth trembled as blades sliced dwellings in half sending clouds of green tiled dust spiraling into a polluted sky.

Not only will the officials need IRC coupons to bill my next-of-kin for the bullet, they will require hand carved marble chops with ideograms and delicious red ink to verify and administer their official proclamations and imperial judgments.

They will chop and stamp my passport until it bleeds. EXPIRED. They will chop every single page.

They are important cogs in the wheel of the law grinding themselves down into the dust of ages.

Their looms spin out broken threads faster than they can weave them into their tapestry. If they make one mistake they will answer to the authorities.

They examine my passport with filthy greasy fingers. They turn pages, looking at visa stamps, examining strange forbidden exotic designs. They see rainbows and a rising phoenix. They hear drums from Amazonian rain forests while savoring fruits from lush gardens filled with crow and raven songs. Eagle feathers drift out of the pages.

On one page they explore meadows illustrated with roses. Thorns dive out of the sky piercing their hearts. A river of blood from Tibet breaks through dams flooding their ancestor’s graves. Names, histories and corpses float toward Seas of Memory.

Turning another page they scamper on frayed rope bridges above raging gorges screaming, “Help us. Save us!”

They keep going. The other side of the gorge is dark and dangerous, full of Black Mambas, vipers, pythons and fear bred demons slithering out of the ground, evaporating into rivers of sound, twisting forms dancing through their eyes, weaving into their heart.

Blind, they struggle through fog and hail storms into blizzards toward mountains. They are stranded inside the discursive circular logic drowning in a river of tears inside a river of dreams on the River of Time.

“We’ve gone too far,” the boy yells to the PSB woman. “Turn back!”

“It’s too late.” They began seeing with their ears and hearing with their eyes.

Turning a leaf they dived into the ocean of their love below the surface of appearances.

In deep turquoise waters they discovered a secret spirit cave pulsating with a heartbeat and magical sources of inspiration and beauty.

She handed the passport to the boy. “What do you make of this?”

He took off his military party hat and scratched his head.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Appears to be some fable, a fairy tale, a mysterious rambling incoherent story. Never seen anything like this before.”

His comrade grabbed it back.

“Yes, strange indeed,” she whispered. “Where did you get this?” She held up a page of a butterfly sitting on a pure white lotus flower growing from mud.     

“My girlfriend sent it to me. It’s a dream.”

“Where did she get it?”

 “Along the Tao.”

 “What Tao?”

 “She collects dreams from people along her journey.”

 “Where is she? Laos? Bhutan? Burma? Tibet?”

The interrogator is suspicious. She knows primitive mountain people are animists, superstitious types. Their Dongba ancestors in Yunnan created a written language 1,000 years ago using pictographs and worship nature of all things. They have powers like levitation, lowering their body temperature, running for miles above the ground, transcending their physical bodies.

“She is everywhere.”

“I don’t believe you."

She skipped a few pages and started reading.

“They floated through caves into Greek and Roman civilizations. Inside a huge cavern flooded with celestial starlight were halls filled with world art. It was arranged in a form of a historical magic time circle. They admired fabulous paintings of strange beauty. They cried tears of happiness. Their tears created the beginning of the ocean.”

She handed the passport back.

“It appears authentic. But, I must say, parts of it are rubbish. Pure imagination. Your girlfriend will have to account for this. She’s crazy and needs medication. She needs to be somewhere safe for the sake of her emotional health. We have ways of dealing with these people. She’s clearly a threat against state-controlled propaganda laws and social stability. We can’t allow lunatics to just go roaming around the country writing this stuff. She could be in serious danger.”

She rattled on in her well-rehearsed monotone.

“There are immediate restrictions on your travel outside Shanghai. You are required to check with the local Public Security Bureau if you want to leave yourself, if you need to transcend this impermanent state of being.”

“Yes, I know. Existence is suffering. Thank you. I am rainbow of Light. Will you have more tea?”

“Yes.” She handed me a cracked cup. I poured tea.

She doesn’t want to lose face with this foreigner. Not in front of her comrade. He might talk at headquarters. Her superiors will question him. Her comrade is young and vulnerable to new ideas. Like free will and free choice.

She’s afraid if he has the chance to escape he will visit new lands, meet people, see their art and absorb their music and stories and be free.

She finished her tea gave me a withering look and left.

Before leaving the boy soldier ripped Psyche out and put it in his pocket. He smiled.

“You have been very cooperative. We will keep an eye on you.”

Weaving A Life V4

Sunday
Oct062019

Pollatomish, Ireland

The view from the one-story grey stone hostel in County Mayo was exquisite, the Atlantic Ocean all blue-green opening up its long voyage.

A terrible sad beauty recognized the spirit of the young girl who killed herself in a room upstairs years ago.

She visited often, looking for her love, looking for meaning. It took a long time for us to trust each other.

She visited at night, her spirit roaming upstairs.

It took courage for her to trust me.

I practiced silence. Listening.

She told me stories.

She opened her windows to let darkness invade her privacy. She took comfort in the stillness. Her heart was pure but her spirit was restless.

She told me what happened in this dark place when she was a child. She grew up fast and sure of herself before they took the key away. She was a prisoner of memories, dreams, and reflections.

She had few if any friends. Her school was Nature. She was trapped in time, a circle of guilt, punishment, suspicion and neglect. Her mother died of a broken heart.

She was the daughter of a priest. He wouldn’t let her out. He locked her up. He taught her fear. He carried a big black heavy book full of fire and brimstone with him forever and ever and ever.

She died for his sins or so he wanted to believe. He wanted the scared primitive narrow-minded simple village people to believe. He ordered them to believe he sacrificed his love for her out of anger at his wife because she was weak. He taught her to be weak and when she became weak he loved her. She was vulnerable and he worshiped a book of prayer. The Word.

His daughter’s silver eyes were chained to her destiny, her fate. Her heart was stained with blood.

Local people had a real fear about the house. You can feel it when they see you coming up the narrow road. They think they know who you are, who you might be, but they are not sure. They know you are not one of them. This fact ensures they remain suspicious and guarded. You are an outsider. They remain uncertain about you being here in this sad, lonely desperate place.

They are blind in one eye. They want to live in your pocket and know your past, present and future.

Knowing and understanding are two different things.

Suicide was not a viable option in their cloistered world of saints, superstar nova and bursts of gamma rays. They were illuminated manuscripts on vellum.

They congratulated themselves with a real superstition about her death. It carried them through hard times. It gave them the will to live, the will to accept their destiny without questioning autocratic authority. They kneaded, rolled, basted, baked, sliced, and buttered hope.

After the girl vanished they huddled around peat fires wrapped in her death late at night speaking in mute whispers. Her death became their perpetual source of gossip and innuendo. Her iconic free spiirit confused their sanity, sense of purpose and sacrifice.

The house was a heavy stone fortress in the middle of nowhere facing east. No trees, no flowers, shrubs. Living, growing thing were cut down, burned down, and destroyed by hysterical madness.

Estranged distant provincial neighbors still talked about her in hushed quiet scared tones. She was the young vagabond spirit and cheated old age with her eternal restless way. She saw through their hypocrisy, mediocrity, piety and failures.

They never figured her out. Her father was the command and control module in their economically and geographically distant distinct world. They were lost sheep wandering heather ridges and he was given the mandate to drive out imaginary snakes.

The small cemetery off the path of lonely planets was overgrown with wild waving weeds, tall Timothy grass and broken purple heather in harsh winds. Gray stones whispered hand chiseled names, ages, dates. The rusty iron gate hung on a broken hinge at a precarious angle.

400 million year-old orb weaving spiders created their magic. Dew diamonds danced and sang along strong supple silver amino acids mixed with protein in wind rushing from the sea.

Two mute men dug a new grave on the gentle sloping hill surrounded by heather and wild flowers. Their tools bit hard soil. They’d finish their labors and retire to the warmth of a peat fire, cold whiskey and gossip. They’d toast the passing of another soul gone to the greater glory as tongue flames leaped and danced.

Dance and melancholy music, a common ancestor, integrated the community. The keener wailed her banshee oral tradition and they blessed themselves in the silence of accepting what they couldn't see.

“A shudder passing through your body means someone has walked over your grave,” I said.

“Grief for the dead was the origin of poetry,” said the girl's spirit.

Weaving A Life (V3)

 

Writing in Burma

Tuesday
Mar122019

Take Amazing Risks

After Ankara he’d accepted a new adventure in Bursa. This shocked everyone in the capital lower case. They assumed he’d stay with them forever. Students and teachers celebrated his transition with a sparkling cake. Women cried sadness and joy.

“We are not here for a long time, we are here for a good time,” said Sappho the poetess.

One adult student who’d articulated her desire to move to Constantinople during the Ottoman Empire seeking an educational engineering job in a quality control factory school producing obedient robotic idiot children and live with her boyfriend cowered behind her futile quest for independence from over-protective parents. “My father won’t let me.”

“Take control of your life. Get a grip. Let go. Jump. Discover courage and your wings on the way down.”

*

“To do amazing things you have to take amazing risks and suffer greatly,” said Zeynep, his five-year old genius friend in Bursa, Turkey.

 “Here,” she said, “many a-dolts stay with their mothers forever and a day because they are afraid of freedom and accepting responsibility for their lives.

“They eat fear morning noon and night. They are afraid to speak their honest feelings, to express their innate desire for independence.

“They are willing victims of traditional conservative attitudes and values. Free will is a foreign language. They are scared of taking risks, letting go and growing. I may grow old but I’ll never grow up. If I grow up I die.”

“I feel the same way.”

One day while sharing lunch and drawing in notebooks, he said, “When I was 9 I was going on 50. Now I am 50 going on 9. I exist outside adult time.”

“We are passing through,” she said, lighting a candle in darkness.

Weaving A Life (V4)

The Language Company

Northern Laos

Thursday
Jan032019

Be Human

"Then we’d get to wondering about the billions of other minds at work just like ours, like the mind of a stockbroker in Tennessee and the mind of a toddler in Costa Rica and the mind of a mother in the Congo and the mind of a construction worker in Lebanon, and we’d imagine how all their thoughts are knit together in the same way ours are.

"And we’d think, “Isn’t this whole thing miraculous, the fact that we can share all this stuff and the only thing we’ve got to do is be human? Now this is one hell of an idea. This is something I can really get behind! What’s the point of hermiting yourself in your own brain if there’s a whole world out there full of love and fear and pity and compassion?” - David Foster Wallace