Ephemeral

Red sun white waves

blue sky green islands
Floating world - Ukiyo-e

Imagination

Observation
Experience
Posture
Attitude

Instinct
Star trails
Moon
Dancing ocean waves

Orange sun crashes into blue green
Infinity whispers WHAT IF
Orange processes earth's rotation

Puppy shits in sand
Serious Chinese eyes study sand footfalls

Distant white sail
Water glistens light ephemeral
Twinkling

Grow Your Soul - Prose and Poems from Laos & Cambodia

Passing Through

Smiling makes you happy

Diamond mind wisdom

Women lay out golden chains

Men yak in phones

Gleaming significance weighs inlaid rubies, sapphires

Black Nil stones harvested from deep Earth

Glitter like 1000 stars

Path leads past mannequins

Wearing fashionable silent plastic splendor 

Unloading facsimiles of threaded prayers flowing from a woman’s mouth

Answer stirs ice

Question stabs ice

Scientific dissolution in liquid’s formless form

Shy beyond description

-    a girl weighs lettuce hills

-    cucumbers whisper adjustments

-    cell phone eliminates an old man's loneliness

-    a sharp hatchet congratulates bloody meat

-    a woman stabs ice memories

-    dead dog’s head rests on a counter

 Ice coffee is bitter sweet my sweet

Hammock infant swings high/low

Contemplating an old woman

Stepping through puddles carrying a plastic bag with two tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, daily bread

Eye contact dissolves in the wake up

Sing song chopsticks carry an infant

Wide-eyed catastrophic entropy factoid

Coconut, sewing machine, hyena laughter

Small talk, broken light vegetables green life

Where do you stay, asked man.

I stay in blue sky

Is it a hotel? A guesthouse? No it is blue sky.

Pure land poetry

Jazz poem

Visuals

Passing through

Professional stranger

Ghost Other

Eye hand heart – two won’t do

Show up sit awhile smile draw meditate on emptiness

Witness point line shadow less form

Imagination

Observation

Experience

Rhythm of place

Grow Your Soul

Uncertainty Principle

The world gave me a strong sense of querencia, a Spanish term for homeland, “a place - like a bull facing death in the ring -  where you feel comfortable dying.”  - Lorca

"I am a character in my own story," said Omar, "a hakaawati, a professional Persian storyteller inside the shadow of my imagination. I manifest an oral way of transmitting khurata, fanciful stories, inside the ocean of stories."

"Wonderful, said Jamie. "I like the part about the sacred wisdom circle. It’s a magic story. Reminds me of a woman talking about her Ghost Dance. In her wishes, lies, dreams, memories and reflections she is a Wovoka, a Paiute weather doctor with power over rain and earthquakes. Her Ghost Dance magic is destined to return souls of those who have died. Is it my turn?"

"Sure Jamie, just keep it shorter than life because a reader doesn’t want to struggle if the narration is hard to follow."

"Yeah, said the kid. "This twisted tale may have too much Zen for some readers to wrap their head around. You become the thing you fight the most. Let’s see all the beauty and ugliness without hope or fear."

"Ain’t that the truth. What is the sound of one hand laughing?"

Someone in the tribe asked Point to tell them about the beginning of his wandering ways. Omar wrote it down and translated it into new languages for historians.

“Fly, fly. After a steady heavy rain a pregnant peasant woman regretting the instant she spread her legs out of loneliness and desperation to have a child and anchor a man to her with birth weight, propped her mop made of strands, discarded rainbows, as her solemn dispassionate morose husband shucked peas and removed garlic shells from their protective casing.

"After the sky finished crying and washing student street where parades of disenfranchised spoiled adolescent Chinese youth sought shelter from the storm and well after open windows released cello notes from a child sitting upright tuning her eyes to black notes on white pages with a determination to master the instrument as another music student hammered piano keys behind locked doors, flies gathered around brown sticky eggplant paste slowly dripping off a cracked plate with feelers extending their appetite toward a thin white butterfly leaving a green leaf."

“Food,” said the fly, “I love leftovers. Delicious. I survive on garbage.”

A speeding silver water particle whistled past mirrors at 186,000 miles per second. It collided with correlation. Speed and spin are mutually exclusive. The uncertainty principle. If you know the velocity you don’t know the position.

“It meets my needs. It’s not easy to find work in this country.”

“Hey, tell me about it. Have mirror will travel. Maybe you could write something like Mirrors For Dummies - could be a market niche, you know, for stressed out A-type personalities. The kind with too much dinero and way too much time. Reminds me,” the fly continued, “my ancestor said, ‘We’re not here for a long time but we’ve been here long enough.’ Know what I mean?”

"Years ago, a counselor in a room of Oregon veterans said,  ‘After a war everything is easy.’"

 A Century is Nothing

Write on your hand in Burma.

Bliss

Rose knew it’d be a beautiful decision putting the disability act in their short sweet Ghost Dance - maybe in the rising action leading to an epiphany or in the falling action with heart-breaking catastrophic transformational awareness. Cut. The end. Cue applause.

“How can I know what I think until I see what I say?” said a child with reported speech. Their wheel of life played tag with crazy wisdom.  Mu-shin, their state of “no-mind” blossomed where thought, emotions and expectations did not matter.

Who’s dragging around this bag of bones? Where do I park this empty vehicle? I have poems and stories to finish that I haven’t even started yet.

“To sleep, perchance to dream.”

“A dream is an unfulfilled wish,” said a kid with a Ph.D. in Psychoanalysis from the Jung Institute in Zurich.

“What else did he say?”

“He said, ‘There is no royal road to wisdom. To arrive in the future I must journey to the past. To attain the sanity with the One, I must risk the whirling madness of the possessed. One must confront their shadow or be crushed by it.”

“I like it,” said Rumi. “What else?”

“Well, here’s another cool thing he said. “‘I liken the formation of a character to weaving fabric. You know what happens when you make a mistake? The whole pattern is spoiled. You have a choice. You can finish the garment, however it will always be botched and ugly or you can unravel the weaving back to the mistake and start again. That’s basically what analysis is about. It’s a tedious job. The patient is scared and hostile. The analyst lends patience, honesty and courage.’”

“Excellent,” yelled kids, “here’s to our being patient patients with honesty and courage.”

“Speaking of courage, I’m looking for someone who knows reading and writing,” said Rose.

“I can read and write,” said the children. "We also love drawing, singing and dancing.”

“Reading and writing is power. Dance is life. Perfect. Let’s go together,” said Rose.

Downstairs at Sacred Heart Hospital a translucent mother saw her grief reflected in Beauty’s mirror. “This is my worst nightmare,” whispered her heart-mind.

Rose said, “Afraid to face the truth adults run away. They run away carrying their fear like a heavy bag of bricks. They are afraid to see the beauty, strength and dignity of Death and letting go.”

“Why?” said mother.

“They stay away because they are afraid of saying the wrong thing. The child’s spirit is pure energy. They have the strength to let go. Adults find Death a scary thing so they run away.”

“I see,” said a gardener trimming thorns below a tree house. “I know Death’s beauty and wisdom. Metaphors and mortality exist with initial memories. Memories are figments of our imagination. I am a dreamer in nature, bigger than the universe, in never-never-cuckoo land. I am a witness collecting evidence that tells no lies. The deeper you go the deeper the bliss.”

ART

Dance - TLC 86

“We climbed up. We descended,” said Zeynep breathing through her shamanic mask.

“Is it carved from tribal memories?”

“Masks are symbolic manifestations in diverse cultures. Mask dance is a ritual, worn in a dance trance. Wearing a mask you become the thing you fear the most, your essential nature. Masks hide a human’s consciousness of fear.

“Dance is about process, becoming from stillness, from nothing. Shiva symbolizes the union of space, time and destruction. Dance is ancient magic. People seeking transformation wear masks representing gods or demons. Dance is the incarnation of energy from the source. We are from the source. Have courage to wear your natural face mask. The entire universe is a vast theatre. Death does not exist.”

“Humans evolved their ability to scheme and deceive behind masks,” said Lucky. “How do they manifest compassion and love without projecting guilt and shame on others while wearing their mask?”

Lhasa, Tibet

“That's an eternal life quest,” said Z. “It requires daily practice and letting go of ego. Cogito ergo sum. They think their mask is reality. It's not. It’s artificial, an illusion, a myth, a projection of their fear.”

“What's your greatest fear is an essential quest-ion. We become the thing we fight the most. Our true self,” said L.

“My greatest imaginary fear is not experiencing truth and bliss beyond the self, passion and cravings,” said Z.

“That’s Nirvana. You break down before you break through. Authentic people confront their shadow. They evolve as a higher being. Scared, conditioned masked ones project their fears and insecurities onto others. It’s a survival behavior, a defense mechanism to avoid being honest and real. To avoid facing their mortality their darkest fear in room 101 the last room you want to enter, they deceive themselves. They lie to themselves and others avoiding the truth. They mask their pain. Truth is painful. Pain and suffering are different. Pain is a sickness leaving the body. Existence is suffering.”

Desire - Attachment - Loss - Suffering

Desire creates suffering. Kindness is a healing energy.

Your mask eats your face.

“Two critical elements of social intelligence are humor and curiosity. Do you remember James Joyce going into exile with silence and cunning?”

“Yes. He knew how to put seven little words in order. He was a cunning linguist. He said, ‘everything I do is an experiment,’” said Z. Exile is a form of suffering.

“So it is. Survival and creativity are raw instincts. Self awareness separates humans from lower life forms like apes, plankton and sea enemies-anemone fish eating animals and androgynous androids in the deep subconscious.”

“Writers lie for a living. We make stuff up. We write it down. We treat our mental illness every day. We have stories, poems and adventures to finish we haven’t started yet.”

“Imagined or invented conversations and episodes,” said L.

“Literature is a tool for unveiling, not obscuring the truth. It’s the best way to make fun of people.”

“Literary fiction expounds historical truth.”

“I prefer healthy doubt to certainty. I am more interested in traces than object. My notebook is essential,” said Z.

“We are the only animal who laughs and the only animal who knows they will die. We die every day. We imagine our death, our mortality. This fills some with dread, psychological neurosis, paralysis and lack of purpose. For others it’s a release joy and a dance. To live one has to die at least once. Once you die you realize how to live. Freedom is unconditional.”

 “Freedom is an absence of choice. Are you a clown? Perhaps a clownfish?” L said.

“Look in your dream mask mirror. You get the face you deserve. Not all the clowns are in the circus. Let’s dance.”

“When you're looking good you're feeling good and when you're feeling good I just live to see your face.”

“We are wise calm lunatics whether we dance or not so we may as well dance. Let’s invent the world. Let’s invent reality. Wisdom-mind of intent not the emotion mind of fire & water.”

 “I’m with you. We were born dead and slowly came to life.”

Flame your life.

The Language Company

Bhaktapur, Nepal