Ice Life

Here’s my secret. I’m looking for a literary agent. Someone said they help writers. I sent one a query. She wrote me a letter with ideas. I will share it with you down the road. I write at night. During the day I’m busy with school and selling ice. If she asks me I will send her this manuscript. Maybe she will love it. Maybe she’ll find an editor and publisher with a big marketing budget, global distribution, readers and the rest is history, as they say ...

If not I’ll be independent and publish it myself. Ice is my life. I will never give it up. Besides writing, weaving, laughing, loving and living, it’s my life. Writers have homework every day of their lives.

Wow, that’s lovely, said Leo. You perceive and transform the world.

Yes, she said, I follow my bliss. If it’s not in your heart, it’s not in your head. I recombine world elements fusing images and dreams.

A man arrived on a broken motorcycle. She handed him a blue plastic bag of ice. He gave her Real currency.

I follow my blisters, laughed Leo.
Where are you staying, she asked.
I don’t have a home. I live in small houses along the road. I’m passing through. For now I sleep at Future Bright.

Everyone’s passing through. I know it. The woman owner smiles and lies at the same time.

What’s the difference between hearing and listening, Leo asked.

98% are asleep with their eyes open, she said. They don’t care.

She opened her notebook and spilled red ink on white paper. Red is a lucky color. The color of wealth and prosperity. Living in a red dust town brings everyone good luck.

Tell me about your visionary skills, said Leo.

I am ahead of the future. Like you. The day after tomorrow belongs to us. We are healers. I practice detachment with discernment. Not too sentimental and not too cold, like ice. It’s the Middle Way ...

My job is to pay attention, get it down now and make sense of it later. I treat my mental illness everyday. I say what others are afraid to say. One surprise here is how people live in a perpetual disconnect. They are talking accidents looking for a place to happen. They don’t know how to focus. Their attention span is ZERO. Like Year 0 in 1975 before I was born. No attention span? No problem.

Ice Girl in Banlung

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