Visceral Realists

By Rita

We are in a small sleepy river town in southern Cambodia, said Rita. Faded yellow neglected French colonial buildings face a river, corroding iron bridges and green mountains.

A block long incomplete cement shell of a new market to revitalize neglected downtown failed. $70,000 start-up costs. Nada. No takers. It will never be built because of Fear & Superstition & Ghosts.

From 1975-1979 the Khmer Rouge hung severed heads along the walls to teach survivors Life Lesson #1.

Shut your mouth and blend in.

Survivors stir woks and sell the same thing. Boredom.

Don’t speak of gruesome true facts, said Leo, It reminds me of my Chinese atrocious atrocities, genocides, purges and 40 million peasants starving to death. Let them eat grass, bellowed Mao waving his little Red ideological book. Eat my red words comrade. Peasants stole copies from the Friendship Store. This makes great toilet paper, said the proletariat.

Kampot is famous for black pepper, which is nothing to sneeze at, said Rita. The Shakers live in Ohio. One minor quest of the literary outlaws is to get the pepper from Cambodia to Ohio. Buy land. Two buy sea. Water dilutes the effectiveness, taste and aroma. The pepper will need to be grinned down by hand. A Khmer laterite stone pestle and mortar is ideal. Most adults here are confused and sullen and apathetic breeding happy children, said Rita.

For good reason, said Tran. I know how it feels to be an abandoned ghost with a disability in double jeopardy. I’m laughing because I am a survivor … everything is fucking hysterical above ground. I lost my right leg when I stepped on a landmine playing in a field near my village south of Da Nang. I was five. I lost my family in the war. Maybe they died. Maybe they wandered away.

You never know.

The sleepy town, villages and country are famous for people experienced in Milling Around, said Rita. For cultural, historical, educational, environmental, emotional, intellectual and economic reasons milling around is a popular daily activity.

This unpleasant fact cannot be denied or ignored or forgotten like Tran’s missing leg. It needs to be up front because it is a clear immediate fact and way of life.

Limited job opportunities, substandard education, lack of medicine, faint hope and inconclusive futures enhance Milling Around.

It kills time alleviating boredom, the dreaded lethargic tedious disease. Milling Around kills the human spirit. No Initiative. Period. How sweet. How charming. It’ll take another generation to clean it up with high hopes. Cambodia is alive with ghosts.

Zeynep, Rita, Tran, Devina, Leo and Omar are invisible ghosts feeling comfortable with energies, vibrations and frequencies. They are floating experiences.

Immediate and direct, said Zeynep. I am western on the outside and eastern on the inside, a chameleon and a prescient systems analyst.

This is a talk-story.

Impermanence and non-attachment is reality. Movement is my mistress and my meditation. WE are here to go. The deeper the silence means deeper the bliss.

I am the music between the notes. I am the silence between hammer and anvil music. I am the poetry between the lines.

I became my ghost-self in 1970 after 364 days in never-never land, leaving Vietnam in one coherent piece, said a reliable narrator. Where I met Tran in a hospital. He taught me courage. After a war everything is easy.

Z: As a writer and artist I bear witness revealing my imaginary sense data using a Mont Blanc 149 piston driven fountain pen, Moleskine notebooks, watercolors, brushes, and cameras. I won’t go into the technical details about the optical equipment.

I am two cameras said Rita. Kinds?

I am a sweet little Leica D-Lux 6. I am a bulky Nikon D-200 with a 35mm 1.4 lens. Ya gotta Leica the Leica. Play sounds. It’s small with excellent optics. Black with a cool little red circle on the front. Small and powerful like me. One for my left eye and one for my right eye. Dual dynamic visual acuity.

How do we interpret visual sensation? I am chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of my eyes, said Omar the blind seer.

Begin with a telescope then use opera glasses then a microscope.

I am a prime lens, said Z. From the spotlight to the floodlight and back to the spotlight.

I am the truth of your imagination, said Leo.

I am synesthesia personified possessing the ability to hear colors and see sounds, said Tran.

I may grow old, but I will never grow up, said Rita. She shared a story about Cambodia. The kingdom has a long violent history. Remember the Killing Fields, S-21 high school prison, and genocide with 1.7 million people killed, slaughtered, raped, mutilated, gone, erased. Year ZERO. Can you wrap your mind around that factoid?

It was a third of the total population. People don’t talk about it because they are super superstitious. Survivors live with the cold hard unpleasant fact. Old people are rare. It is curious. It’s 2023 in the long now.

Writer: After writing and editing The Language Company in Kampot for five months I moved to Battenbang for three months. A Khmer boy in a Battenbang java & tea joint said the reason everyone stares at me is because all my generation was killed. They see you as a ghost, he said.

I am Happy Ghost.

I am surrounded by happy, laughing, curious, kind, childlike, grateful and beatific humans. Comedic. Sweet. How simple life is. How monosyllabic.

Yeah, yeah. Let’s dance, said a survivor.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Process Not Product

Give the gentle reader saatch aur himmat, Z said in Turkish.

Translation please, said Devina.

Truth and Courage.

Keep them engaged, said Tran. Be gentle with the dear reader. They are educated. Challenge them.

What’s a word doctor, said Leo.

Someone who fixes manuscripts with a sharp axe, said Tran waving a Mont Blanc 148 piston-driven fountain pen splattering blood red ink on everyone in his radius. The pen is mightier than the sword. Edge focus. WE, you and I, them, he, she and us aint going anywhere. We live forever.

In your dreams, yelled Devina. Everyone’s doing hard time. It aint nothing but the blues sweet thing.

Have mercy.

Rita, an orphan and independent visionary writer from Banlung chimed in with a voice sweeter than a Buddhist bell, I’m going to be an English facilitator and historian. I’m going to stand on a street corner begging people to give me their wasted hours.

Where have I heard that before, asked Leo, an activist in exile from an orphanage on the Yangtze, heavy with silt and six trillion cubic meters of garbage flowing to the South China Sea.

What will you do with collected time, said Tran, Visit sick children in hospitals where they do DNA evolutionary experiments to stem the cells, can you sell the stems?

Speaking of stems, I’m moonlighting as a gardener, said Omar, There’s nothing more beautiful than nurturing nature in this impermanent life. We plant seeds for trees we will never see mature. Another leaf leaves life’s tree.

If you plant roses and need someone with experience to take care of the thorns give me a shout, said Tran, a one-legged Vietnamese child wearing his heart on the sleeve of a ragged 101 Screaming Eagle t-shirt.

A bird pressed its breast against a thorn singing, O what a beautiful morning o what a beautiful day.

A poet, like a chef or gardener, needs everything because they love everything.

I’m going to study Donatello, said Devina.

Who’s he?

He was a great Renaissance artist. He was born in 1386 in a place called Florence, Italy. He was honest had integrity and was super original. Technically he worked with anything. You name it: wax, bronze, marble, clay, all kinds of rocks, wood and glass. He raised the status from someone who created beauty to a craft, a real artist.

Painting with smoke and mirrors, said Tran.

Hey, that’s what the Greeks said. They believed everything was beauty and order, said Rita. Order, structure, design, form, function, oratory, mathematics, musical notes, all the beauty originated with them didn’t it?

You got it, said Tran. Hey, you know what, I think I’ll take the day off and be creative. Ha.

This present instant contains all reality, whispered Zeynep. We can call this experiment The Theory of Z, about a young precocious girl, her friends, artists and seers. Why not?

I taught a blind nomadic gardener/janitor/gravedigger and kid friends about emotional life in an alien schizoid civilization called Turkey, said Z. We shared values, stories and art with a free spirit.

I’ll tell you a secret. There’s two of me. One young and one old. The older is Kurdish and plays a cello in a cemetery. Can you dig it?

Aliens and fantastic probabilities said Rita. Tell me the difference between possibility and probability. It’s about process not product. Whew, now that’s deep.

Yeah, said Devina, We’re all in the shit, it’s only the depth that changes. Yeah, if it’s not one thing it’s something else speaking in the abstract.

Let’s not have this conversation in the abstract, said an authoritarian demanding Realist vomiting contrarian hypotheticals, truth, logic, verifiable data based evidence, scientific facts, precise specifics. We must ascertain the immediate personal moral and ethical values with lofty principles and assistant principles on principal.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

16

My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse.

*

Give the gentle reader saatch aur himmat, Z said in Turkish. Translation please, said Devina. Truth and Courage.

Keep them engaged, said Tran, Be gentle with the reader. They are educated. Challenge them. What’s a word doctor, said Leo. Someone who fixes manuscripts with a sharp axe, said Tran waving a Mont Blanc 148 piston-driven fountain pen splattering blood red ink on everyone in his radius.

The pen is mightier than the sword. Edge focus. WE, you and I, them, he, she and us ain’t going anywhere. We live forever. In your dreams, yelled Devina. Everyone’s doing hard time. It ain’t nothing but the blues sweet thing.

Have mercy.

Rita, an orphan and independent visionary writer from Banlung chimed in with a voice sweeter than a Buddhist bell, I’m going to be an English facilitator and historian. I’m going to stand on a street corner begging people to give me their wasted hours.

Where have I heard that before, asked Leo, an activist in exile from an orphanage on the Yangtze, heavy with silt and six trillion cubic meters of garbage flowing to the South China Sea.

What will you do with collected time, said Tran, Visit sick children in hospitals where they do DNA evolutionary experiments to stem the cells, can you sell the stems?

Speaking of stems, I’m moonlighting as a gardener, said Omar, There’s nothing more beautiful than nurturing nature in this impermanent life. We plant seeds for trees we will never see mature. Another leaf leaves life’s tree.

If you plant roses and need someone with experience to take care of the thorns give me a shout, said Tran, a one-legged Vietnamese child wearing his heart on the sleeve of a ragged 101st Screaming Eagle t-shirt.

A bird pressed its breast against a thorn singing, O what a beautiful morning o what a beautiful day.

A poet, like a chef or gardener, needs everything because they love everything.

I’m going to study Donatello, said Devina. Who’s he? He was a great Renaissance artist. He was born in 1386 in a place called Florence, Italy. He was honest had integrity and was super original. Technically he worked with anything. You name it: wax, bronze, marble, clay, all kinds of rocks, wood and glass. He raised the status from someone who created beauty to a craft, a real artist.

Painting with smoke and mirrors, said Tran, Hey, that’s what the Greeks said. They believed everything was beauty and order, said Rita, Order, structure, design, form, function, oratory, mathematics, musical notes, all the beauty originated with them didn’t it?

You got it, said Tran. Hey, you know what, I think I’ll take the day off and be creative. Ha. This present instant contains all reality, whispered Zeynep. We can call this experiment The Theory of Z, about a young precocious girl, her friends, artists and seers. Why not?

I taught a blind nomadic gardener/janitor/gravedigger and kid friends about emotional life in an alien schizoid civilization called Turkey, said Z. We shared values, stories and art with a free spirit.

I’ll tell you a secret. There’s two of me. One young and one old. The older is Kurdish and plays a cello in a cemetery. Can you dig it? Aliens and fantastic probabilities, said Rita, Tell me the difference between possibility and probability.

It’s about process not product. Whew, now that’s deep. Yeah, said Devina, We’re all in the shit, it’s only the depth that changes. Yeah, if it’s not one thing it’s something else speaking in the abstract.

Let’s not have this conversation in the abstract, said a demanding authoritarian Realist vomiting contrarian hypotheticals, truth, logic, verifiable data-based evidence, scientific facts, precise specifics. We must ascertain the immediate personal moral and ethical values with lofty principles and assistant principles on principal.

Z said, Speaking of aliens do you know about Iranian culture? They live south of us in the Middle Beast. It’s a violent repressive dictatorship. They have a VICE squad to control sheep behavior. Weird shit. Their oppressive culture keeps women in perpetual childhood.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Blossom

Attention Ladies & Gentlemen!

Civilization is sterilization - an agreement to avoid the abyss. You look into the abyss and the abyss looks back at you.

History is the symptom and people are the disease.

This is a long dream sequence, said Zeynep, author of The Language Company. Mirrors are metaphors like Banlung, Cambodian nill gemstones of the Mind-At-Large. Keep a diamond in your mind, reflecting 10,000 points of light.

WE create myths and stories … We build sandcastles … We used to be someone else and we traded them in.

Hold a mirror to the sky reflecting Beauty. Hold a mirror to the ground reflecting a muddy path. Hello Truth. Hello Beauty. See all the Beauty without hope or fear. Life is sad & beautiful.

It’s a long walk. Walking makes the road. Nothing more. Nothing less. Less is more. We play with reality, impermanence and illusions of reality. We cultivate ambiguities, create imaginary identities and play with fact and fiction. We use lies to tell the truth. Fast, short and deadly. In the future more than five words is a run-on sentence. A life sentence ran away.

What’s the next question, said Grave Digger. I love good dirt. I know two things. Look at my hands.

I know the solution and wait for the problem, the opportunity, the big SURPRISE, said Leo, Chief of Cannibals. Can we know death, said Leo, Good question, said Z. One should die at least once to appreciate life. One must die before they live. Most people are born alive and slowly die. Born dead we come to life.

Kill the Buddha. Kill yourself. Suicide is an honorable Asian way of saying goodbye with honor, dignity and respect.

Buddha said, I show you sorrow.

A blossoming voice has purity, love and truth. We know illusions of desire, anger, and ignorance. Pain, suffering, fear, loneliness and alienation kills the spirit, said Rita, author of Ice Girl in Banlung.

Alienation embraces uncertainty … Embrace the chaos.

A heartbeat contains a universe of infinite possibilities, said Zeynep, What is the difference between possibility and probability, asked Tran, polishing his prosthetic left leg.

How do we we dissolve monkey mind thought clouds and fleeting sensations to enhance our awareness and potential, said Omar a blind Tuareg Ghostwriter. Let it go, said Z. What does it mean to be a human being? Are you a human being or a hungry ghost? The reader completes the work of art. Yes, said Devina, Buy a ticket take the ride.

We are in exile with stealth and cunning.

Book of Amnesia, V1

direct

ever changing impermanent reality truth

path of awakening is simple & direct

but steep and difficult

as we journey from ego to self