S-21

Greetings,

This is from Wikipedia.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. Tuol Sleng in Khmer; [tuəl slaeŋ] means "Hill of the Poisonous Trees" or "Strychnine Hill".

Here are the security rules at the S-21 prison.

When prisoners were first brought to Tuol Sleng, they were made aware of ten rules that they were to follow during their incarceration. What follows is what is posted today at the Tuol Sleng Museum; the imperfect grammar is a result of faulty translation from the original Khmer:

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.

2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.

9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

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Metta.

Egyptian Art

Greetings, 

These images are from a mural at an Indonesian school where I had 100 ten-year old teachers a year ago. They graduated to Grade 5 and I graduated back to Vietnam and the University of the Street. The kids said, "there's book learning and there's street learning."

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Metta.

Ash alert

Greetings,

One cool reality being pure wind is the stuff you get to get to blow around. Like kites.

Like toxic ash from exploding Icelandic volcanoes. This natural event traps silly humans on planet Earth. They become anxious, distraught and unreasonable. Especially when they prayed in vain to take a plane on vacation. Planes never get to go on vacation. Machines grind it out, 24/7.

Wind plays. Machines, animals and humans work. They trade their time for a handful of dimes.

What people don't see is fascinating.

People don't see the beautiful cumulus clouds of flying, swimming ash. It's 20,000 - 32,000 feet above their tired misaligned necks. Many assume it's a government plot to limit their freedom of escaping villages, towns and cities. They suspect travel and ticket agents, airlines, security screeners, dead relatives and orphans in Cambodia are all conspiring to prevent their freedom.

Humans are full of hot air. Talking heads prove this unpleasant fact. Their hot air contributes to the reality. Desperate scientists want to solve the natural ash conundrum along with other absurd activities to be famous and remembered by history.

History and Wind and Nature laugh. "HA, HA, HA."

Ash has no passport, nationality or identity theory. Ash is a gypsy. Ash is not discriminated by Europeans because they originated in India in the 9th century, speak Roma and love to sing and dance and tell stories.

Ash is an illiterate traveller. Ash does not bore humans with reminiscences.
Ash is free to sing, dance and go wherever they want.

Blow wind blow, blow my baby back to me.

Metta. 

Voices

Greetings,

A man's voice from magnified speakers echoes down river on new year's day. He talks about what ifs and maybes. Exhortations about the dire need for clean drinking water, sanitation, education and medicine.

What is the significance of new year? Another day, another opportunity for talking animals to discuss, share and elaborate on gaseous topics like:

• how to mill around without causing damage to the environment
• how to wear a yellow "HELLO" cell phone t-shirt without a license
• how laughing orphans fill up a wheelbarrow with lost dreams
• how perpetually distracted humans face unpleasant facts
• how loose tongues are required to discuss, share, elaborate or mystify a woman slicing limes
• how three foreign female educators chew nails and contemplate new programs in circular fashion
• how humans will never escape 'art'
• how teams of ants try, try, try to maneuver a large piece of sugar candy up a steep cement mountain
• how an experienced bicycle traveller from Holland named Harold helps at the grassroots level to improve children's quality of life in Cambodian orphanages and Burmese refugee camps. How he eschews large organizations working directly with the people. 

How bullet points fly to a target.

On new year's day, the woman in her blue pajamas decorates the family altar with cans and bottles of soft drinks, coconuts, durian, perfume, two crystal glasses of milk, candles, candy, bread, rice, oranges, apples, water, incense, photos of dead relatives, cockroaches, howling dogs, baboons, balloons, clouds, clones and clowns.

She turns on the TV. She turns it really LOUD. Her daughters, 4, 6, are entranced and captivated by the visual circus. They never read books. The idiot box allows the kids, servants, tuk-tuk drivers, husband and foreign guests to give up their consciousness. Another diversion, another day, a new year day. April Fools!

New day, new diversion, people pretending to be busy.

Angkor Wat Hindu dancers in gold silk lame dresses with towering headdresses perform ancient dances. Apsara fingers, delicate movements. They celebrate seasons, fertility, rice, fish, nature, courtship, and joy. 

She is frail, about 80 with silver hair. She sits in front of her house. Her left hand rests on a cane. She wears a beautiful purple sarong with golden threads and a white lace blouse. Her daughter trims her hair above the left ear with shiny silver scissors. The woman's smile illuminates her tranquil face.

Metta.

Away

Greetings,

Turn the page away from morning, away from scattered grains of rice in a broken bamboo basket feeding wild crows. Blacker than faces hiding inside deep dark passages watching the street. Always watching. Staring with hard deep black eyes.

Their eyes, when they lived in the flat countryside covered in lost forgotten patient rice paddies waiting for a drop of water near groves of palm, coconut, banana trees surrounding bamboo thatched homes on stilts and naked children playing with dreams, watched deep shadows.

They watched. They never closed. They watched for enemies, invaders from Thailand, America, Vietnam, wives, husbands, children, strangers, soldiers, Apsara dancers. They were always on always ready to see the smallest cosmic movement across horizens, miles of land mined country or inside thick foliage.

Their eyes danced with waiting. Waiting held their eyes as lovers will, close, feeling fluttering lids, retinas trembling with visual information, data, mysteries. They cultivated patience, a necessary food. They comprehended their essential visual priorities. Watching, a national sport, is their universe.

They had a small vital responsibility living in perpetual darkness - seeing far away with telescopic acuity. Their constant vision burned up 85% of their daily energy. The remaining 15% was used for procreation, eating, speaking and laughing. Laughing burns up calories.

Eyes practice the silent art of being silent, watching past another person during a silent conversation watching each other's back being the other. How they face the other watching beyond where everything matters infinitely. For one moment in their short sweet life. 

Metta.