Tribal Narrator

After they cut out my tongue I started writing script.

I found a compressed black Chinese ink stick with yellow dragons breathing fire. I added a little water to a gray stone surface and placed the ink in the center.

Using my right hand as Master Liu in Chengdu taught me I turned the stick in a clockwise motion. Black ink ebbed into liquid. A drop of water rippled a pond.

I picked up my bamboo brush with pure white wolf hair. After soaking it in water for three minutes to relax it’s inner tension I spread out thin delicate paper.

I placed my right foot at an angle, left foot straight, my left palm flat on the table with fingers spread.

I dipped the brush in the recessed part of the stone to absorb ink then slowly dragged it along an edge removing excess.

I savored the weight and heft. My brush has it own personality character. There are at least 5,000 characters in my written language.

I have much to learn and a long way to travel with this unknowing truth.

I stood up straight, took three deep breaths and exhaled into emptiness.

I centered my unconscious on the paper filled with nothing. My wisdom mind of intent became water. It was quiet, calm and still with concentration and focus.

I listened to brush, ink and paper. I am a conduit.

Be the brush, be the ink, be the water, be the paper.

Each essence is pure, free, clear and luminous.

My useless tongue flapped in the cold December Himalayan wind. Stories and songs were birds. I heard children laughing and singing. Playing with strings of word pearls they greeted each other in the babble of nothing,

They dreamed with eyes open.

When we are asleep we are awake.

I memorize ancient chants with black ink soaking through parchment skin.

I am not of this world.

I sit with a diamond in my mind. It reflects 10,000 things.

It is free of the three dusts: desire, anger and ignorance.

I sing my tongue-less body electric.

Where do I park this empty vehicle?

I have paintings, poems, stories, translations of oral traditions to finish that I haven’t even started yet.

If I had more time I’d make them shorter.

Wat Bo 22 May 2020

Tribal Narrator

After they cut out my tongue I started writing script.

I found a compressed black Chinese ink stick with yellow dragons breathing fire. I added a little water to a gray stone surface and placed the ink in the center.

Using my right hand as Master Liu in Chengdu taught me I turned the stick in a clockwise motion. Black ink ebbed into liquid. A drop of water rippled a pond.

I picked up my bamboo brush with pure white wolf hair. After soaking it in water for three minutes to relax it’s inner tension I spread out thin delicate paper.

I placed my right foot at an angle, left foot straight, my left palm flat on the table with fingers spread.

I dipped the brush in the recessed part of the stone to absorb ink then slowly dragged it along an edge removing excess.

I savored the weight and heft. My brush has it own personality character. There are at least 5,000 characters in my written language.

I have much to learn and a long way to travel with this unknowing truth.

I stood up straight, took three deep breaths and exhaled into emptiness.

I centered my unconscious on the paper filled with nothing. My wisdom mind of intent became water. It was quiet, calm and still with concentration and focus.

I listened to brush, ink and paper. I am a conduit.

Be the brush, be the ink, be the water, be the paper.

Each essence is pure, free, clear and luminous.

My useless tongue flapped in the cold December Himalayan wind. Stories and songs were birds. I heard children laughing and singing. Playing with strings of word pearls they greeted each other in the babble of nothing,

They dreamed with eyes open.

When we are asleep we are awake.

I memorize ancient chants with black ink soaking through parchment skin.

I am not of this world.

I sit with a diamond in my mind. It reflects 10,000 things.

It is free of the three dusts: desire, anger and ignorance.

I sing my tongue-less body electric.

Where do I park this empty vehicle?

I have paintings, poems, stories, translations of oral traditions to finish that I haven’t even started yet.

If I had more time I’d make them shorter.

Baraka

Somebody released mad dogs and they ran howling at the crescent moon. They needed shots. Their remission hung over a small part of the world like a bad smell. It seeped into the water supply, the after taste was bitter and it did not go down well at all.

There was a run on thrift shops singing, “Goodwill to Zenmen and peace on earth.”

Death masks sold out. Humans addicted to chaos and distractions dressed themselves in clothing called Hope, the greatest evil. Torn and patched in places it needed a stronger thread. Someone suggested improving immigration standards, fingerprinting every human on the planet, bard wire and eye scan IT which were rejected with derision and contempt by human rights organizations.

There wasn’t enough wire to go around the tree of life. They’d have to call the exterminator to clean up the mess. They collected carried and exchanged heavy change.

“Get your FEAR here,” yelled unemployed people of all nationalities. “One size fits all.”

People flapped their sugarless gums at unemployed dentists while flapjacks sizzled on the grill. The heat was on. They cooked with expensive imported natural gas.

Advertising promoted: Free Fear For All - Buy 2 and Get 1 - Not Free For All.

It was fear and ignorance. The big “F” in the law of averages. Statistical studies created its own metamorphosis.

FEAR - Face Everything And Recover or Fuck Everything And Run Away.

“The fear beast is big, rambunctious, hungry and never sleeps,” Omar said. “It does not recognize rational intellectual dissertations. It demands more energy. It creates and morphs into manifestations of it’s well defined beginning. It exists in the hearts and minds of the people. The fruit is bitter and destined for export markets with no restrictions on trade barriers.”

Little Nino joined them on the story train. “Imaginary barriers went up toward children flying kites in Central Asian mountain villages at the edge of refugee camps where they received food, shelter, education and medical care.”

“Then what happened?” Point asked.

“Circumstances beyond their control, beyond their comprehension compelled them to spend days and nights watching television, tuning into cable news bulletins and meeting their strange transparent neighbors flying star flags and kites from roofs before subtle frequencies permeated their consciousness. Their daily priorities shifted in the drama of life. Trick or treat played on every corner before a spring war ran through inner city projects. It was the inevitable catastrophic event.

"The towers of Babel and world order monetary power disintegrated. Artificial time collapsed. We are in The Law Of Real Time now. This reality created the fear that people experienced. It’s been well marketed by governments after the fact," said Little Nino.

“The irony was not lost on Point surveying the Rue De Castaella in Cadiz,” Omar said. “He memorized 3,000 years of history for his friends.”

“He sent them gifts,” said Nino. “Mirrors. Mirrors, many blank, others displaying terror faces, words written backwards, images of people, places and things and a box named Pandora. Pandora became one of their favorite things by Coltrane. They never knew, from one exploration to the next what they’d find in the small packages he sent from the way.”

“One thing they knew,” Omar reflected, “was how they communicated via telepathy. They experienced an exotic flow of spirit energies bathing them in a crystal light. They slowed down. They cultivated a diamond in their mind. Baraka and silence.”

“Such a fascinating story,” said Nino. “Could it be true?”

A Century Is Nothing

Khmer new year april 14-16

On Khmer New Year’s day, a bitter mother at a guesthouse wearing blue cotton floral teddy bear pajamas decorates the family altar with cans and bottles of soft drinks, coconuts, durian, perfume, two crystal glasses of milk, yellow candles, red candy, bread, rice, oranges, apples, water, incense, photos of dead relatives, cockroaches, howling vicious fucking canines, balloons, clouds, condoms, clones and clowns. She has a terrible temper.       

“Wake up idiot!” she yells at her infantile hubby.

She is one among millions of sad angry neglected women.

She turns on the Idiot Box. LOUD. Her daughters, 4, and 6, are entranced by the visual Apsara circus. They never read books. This is weird because their father was a bookseller in the capital for six years. What happened to literature, what happened to paper, books, education, and critical thinking wonders Ice Girl.

Now he sleeps alone with Boring, having performed his sexual duty, rents out rooms and roars around the forgotten river town on a souped up 125cc noise machine alleviating suffering, spinning his loss, his intellectual wheels, pretending to be important, stirring up dust.

It’s rare to see anyone in Cambodia reading anything on paper, unless it’s a directive from unaccountable government command and control centers sustaining their economic dominance perpetuating 20 years of passive hopelessness. Or forged land paper deals screwing illiterate peasants. So it goes.

Survivors read empty streets on swivel necks. Survivors read rice. Survivors read (empty) bowls. Survivors read money. Survivors read blank faces in rear view bike mirrors. Survivors fall in love with their reflection pretending it is real. Hello Beauty.

Beauty is the mother of Death.

Leo and Ice Girl turned a page away from morning, away from scattered grains of rice in a broken bamboo basket feeding wild crows.

They are blacker than shadowed faces hiding inside deep dark structures watching the road. Always watching. They stare with hard eyes, said Ice Girl. Their eyes live in the present dancing over flat countryside covering lost forgotten patient rice paddies waiting for a drop of water nourishing green rice, or watching palm groves, coconut, banana trees surrounding thatched bamboo stilt homes as naked children harvest dream kites.

They watch. They never close blind eyes. They watch for invaders from Thailand, America, Vietnam. They wait watching for wives, husbands, children, strangers, soldiers, amputees, and Apsara dancers. Their blind eyes are always switched ON always ready to observe minute cosmic details and subtle movement across miles of land mined flat horizon country penetrating thick green sweet foliage.

Their eyes dance with waiting. Waiting caresses eyes as lovers do: close, feeling fluttering lids, retinas trembling with visual sensory information, data, sensing rational coherent mysteries. Eyes cultivate patience, an essential visual nutrient.

Watching without seeing is their Zen. Living in perpetual darkness they have a small immense critical survival responsibility. They stare far away with telescopic floodlight acuity. This consistent hard eyed vision burns up 85% of their daily energy. The remaining 15% is used for procreation, eating, and speaking.

Eyes practice the eternal art of being silent. They watch past another person during a conversation. They watch each other’s back. They face watching beyond wild where everything unknown matters infinitely. Everything here happens simultaneously.

One anxious dreaded moment in their short sweet life recognizes fear.

Fear is disguised as indecision and loss and ignorance. 

Ice Girl in Banlung

a shift

Elf asked Orphan. Can you tell me in 25 words or less about your brief time in eastern Anatollia?

I can try. I open my head, heart and mouth. Do they count in the 25?

It's ok. 

Their hospitality is sublime.

Below the surface they love guns and passive-aggressive attitudes. Adolescent macho males in black cradle submachine guns. 

You see worried sullen faces. Depression is served cold with anxiety.

We are worried about money, said one citizen. We have BIG shiny watches, fancy clothes, meat and no sex. We live in fear and ignorance. 

Cultures in which food is scarce, people have more open sex, but dream of food. Whereas cultures in which food is abundant, sex is more taboo, and people yet dream of sex.

You exceeded your word limit, said Elf. Cut the shit. Start walking.