Silent Questions

How about your town, asked Leo.

Red dust roads in Banlung are paved with blue Zircon, Amethyst, and Black Opals (nill) reflecting Ratanakiri, or Gem Mountain. City women of means wear blue Zircon, gold necklaces, rings, bracelets, sparkle bling. Rural women do not wear this wealth. Married women wear strings of red beads. They fashion yellow, red, blue, green, glittering plastic bangles on wrists.

Here it’s about food and honoring Earth spirits. Animists believe taking stones harms the spirits, creating an imbalance in the natural order of things.

Thanks for the education, said Leo. I’m going to have a look-see.

See you later, said Ice Girl, returning to crystals.

Red dust town turned windy. Swirling quality gem stone particles and degrees of indifference spiraled through air. Redwood slats covered open sewer drains.

Locals watched Leo with curiosity and suspicion. They stared from a deep vacuum. When he made eye contact they glanced away with fear, uncertainty and doubt. They didn’t see many strangers here. They listened at 49% saying yeah, yeah with panache. Leo discovered his questions were constantly repeated.

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 when they’re leaving, when their back’s turned away from eye contact and potential real communication. Echoes drift 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 the genocide and fear and ignorance. It’s also a delicate mixture of stupidity or indifference, said another question. Why is the most dangerous question, said one.

 Can you explain, asked a question. Sure, people ran away to survive. People 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 one running would keep going trailing abstract question words behind them like memories of dead or missing families or disembodied spirits or hungry ghosts or molecules of indifferent breath. I see, said a question. That explains it. Yes, said a question. Being correct is never the point. I never take yes for an answer.

Ice Girl in Banlung

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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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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

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Every photograph has an aura of death.  - Barthes

Free Ice Girl 24-28th

Ice Girl in Banlung in e-book format on Amazon is free from 24-28 June.

Ice girl sells in Banlung, Cambodia. It's a wild west town south of Laos. It's near The River of Darkness and animist cemeteries.

She is an independent author/publisher. This is her story with a gonzo attitude.

She meets Leo, a wandering Chinese boy.

After being released from a Chinese Re-education through Labor unit near the Gobi he walked south.

He taught university students in Fujian how to be more human.

He walked to Hanoi, Sapa, Saigon and Laos collecting stories.

Ice girl and Leo share ideas and stories about cultures and the human condition.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Seamstress

Away from ice girl’s eyes wet season life shimmered in green rice paddies. Beauty, creativity, dance, and music described sensations. Sensations rested between an object and a concept. Stimuli engaged disquiet.

How do you manifest this waking dream, asked ice girl.

It’s all process, said Leo. Any explanation is a well dressed mistake.

Across town a seamstress returned to her guesthouse. She splashed water on her face, changed clothes and spit into red roses. She kick started her cycle and went to the market inside a dark labyrinth.

At her corner stall she keyed multiple locks. She stacked numbered wooden shutters. She dragged out her Butterfly sewing machine, ironing board and manikins.

Dummies wore exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling faux pas silver stars, moons, and small round reflecting balls.

Her skill designed fabrics for women needing elaborate sartorial refinement for engagements, weddings, and cremations.

She evaluated serious fittings and adjustments. Her sewing universe process was selecting fabric; measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, pushing her machine treadle, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections, and ironing.

Needles inside a slow prism flashed light and shadow as threads danced through cloth in endless conversations. Needles talked about traditional conservative morals and opportunity-value cost.

Thread followed their conversation securing 1,001 small mirrors. Together they measured precise calculations establishing a stop-loss number. All explanations have to end somewhere. Cut.

Ice Girl in Banlung