My New Life

Whew, what a first week it was for my little existence, my little humanoid welcoming. I began a new strange scary awkward weird and totally transforming experience in a couple of human’s lives.

I begin at the beginning.

I fell out of my mom, a female production company last week. She was big and fat and she dropped me out, pushing and pushing and exhaled with joy an infantile projection of freedom from pain and pleasure and I came slathering, slipping through some universal ectoplasm fluid, like a gusher, whoosh, into millions of bright shining suns. A crescendo of angels, luminous spirits, formless forms and shapes spun & danced, swirling like whirling Sufi dervishes along light waves and particles. Such amazing splendor. My last nine months did little to prepare me or allow me to know anything.

It’s all sensation.

My tiny black eyes welcomed light energy into my being. I saw galaxies. It was awesome and mesmerizing. I saw an Eagle nebula, a gathering of space dust melding, morphing into a solid state, a unified field theory. I was beside myself with wonder and delight. I joined 7 billion others. I am an-other in the stream of life.

Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? The remaining particles of atoms, a very small part, is life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage.

Existence precedes essence.

Molecules & Alex

"We drove around today seeing places, just following the road. It was really great. This is a wonderful place,” he said glancing over women and men in Ronda drinking at tables along orange walls in candlelight shadows.

“Hey,” he shouted, “I’ll give you something for your tales. Then I’ll be in it.” 

“Ok, however my editor red lines garbage.” 

“You won’t believe it but I work with a multinational company, in one of their Liverpool labs. I use computer programs to create and analyze various molecules in detergent.”

“Detergent?”

“Detergent. This is how it works. Some molecules are attracted to dirt. They adhere to it, they seek it out. Others like water. I assemble various atoms and molecules and see what they do. I introduce them to the materials and see how they react.”

“Fascinating.” 

“Yes and I get paid to have fun. They pay me to create these experiments.”

“So, it’s like you are an artist using the computer to create a canvas, painting molecules?”

“Exactly!” he yelled, blasting enthusiasm over a hip hop rap bass back beat. “You can put that in your story.”

“Perhaps. Readers may find your work interesting, especially the part about Americans being transparent. I worked in Area 51. There was a nuclear reactor. I knew physicists there.

"They were trying to reduce fifty-five million tons of leftover radioactive material like Technetium-99 from seeping through the water table into the Columbia river. Others developed hydrogen fuel cells for alternative energy sources. I’ve never met a physicist working with detergent.”

“Wow, I know TC-99. It’s deadly stuff. They’ll never get rid of it. They’ve created a hell of a problem for future generations. Anyway, yeah it’s pretty cool working with these detergent molecules. And now we’re here.”

He took a breath. 

“Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? Well, the remaining particles of atoms, a very small part, is life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage. Tell your editor to take that out!” 

Metis

As an entomologist, a hunter-gatherer with Metis, a cunning intelligence, seeking visual epiphanies, he opened his aperture to f/1.4 and let in light. All of it. Blinding light, prisms of kaleidoscopes, muted spectrums in waves and particles guided his vision to see and stop time. 

Manipulate a tool. A well designed black foreign range finder. A camera obscura. It had the finesse of a magnifying glass, a Hubble telescope looking into an expanding infinite universe, illuminating distant black holes sucking matter into a void. He couldn’t see the black holes but he knew they were there.

It was one thing he carried. He started carrying it in Nam.

It was just a tool. It allowed him to stop time. Divide time in two.

The kairos of his eye allowed him to discriminate intuitively. An eye and a mirror. It refined his being, one with the subject, how silence worked, a detached observer, a photojournalist. How to disappear inside the scene, move with the quickness of a wild animal, see, visualize, anticipate the impending decisive moment stalking his prey with cunning. How to freeze, compose in the viewfinder, breath, squeeze, advance with a quick flick of the opposable thumb, load, unload, develop, fix, print, label, and file his work. Film was his prayer wheel.

family stupidity

Ok so I'm a big seven as in 7.

My dad's not very smart. It's probably his DNA. A string theory of letters. Genetics. Gee.  Net. Icks. 

Let me give you a kind hearted example of his stupidity. It's the rainy season here in Laos. Slashing squalling delicious rain. Soft, cool, soothing. Like tears. Cry me a river.

So it's pouring like honey. What's dear old dad do? He washes his silver van in a downpour. Smart eh? Yeah, he's trying with intention, to impress dry watchers with his intelligent hose running water over rain. Cleaning.

He ignores me mostly.

He's very busy. He disappears for hours. Drinking beer with friends. Playing around with a secret squeeze in dark places. Starving for affection and cash. A poor girl from a poor family needs to make a living poor thing.

My mom's really smart also. After the rain, when it's dry and the smallest full moon of the year rises above the Mekong before a river festival filled with floating orange flowers and burning candles she burns all the plastic garbage. Yeah. Burn baby burn. Light my fire.

It's a sweet smell, let me tell you. Like that Duvall character when he said, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Kinda like that. Smell. What's the word? Acrid. 

When she's not burning plastic trash she sweeps. Broom music. Stone cold. She cooks. She pretends to be busy. She's a baby machine. What's another mouth?

She ignores me mostly.

She's very busy. Later, she squawks. She's a soft kind later.

People here like parents and teachers and lazy passive humans love, and I mean love to pretend to be busy.

I guess it gives their short life meaning.

Their existence is one long perpetual distraction. Say what?

As Jobs said, You may as well do what you love because you're going to spend most of your life doing it.

Well, I gotta go. Feed the sparrows. Crumbs. They sing. They fly down. They eat. They fly away.

I'm too young to know much. Ain't nothing but the blues. Dust my Broom.  

Firefly

Greetings,

Culture is what you are. Nature is what you can be. 

I faced a challenging ethical decision at the Chinese steamed bun and iced java joint. I pulled up on my little simple blue bike. There were three HUGE extraterrestrial vehicles parked on the sidewalk. A group of men were having a morning snack and discussion at round tables. They were the economic Knights of the Round Table. 

All the men wore buttoned down long sleeve shirts except for the leader. How did you know he was the leader? When he spoke all the men at his table listened. He wore a striped short sleeve shirt. He wore a gold watch and a big radiant red ruby stone set in a gold ring. He looked well fed and rested. 

His driver held the keys to a big black Caddy. It looked like a tank. I showed him my bike. Want to trade your bike for the Esplanade? he asked me. No thanks, my simple bike meets my needs. It's really efficient. Ok, he said, just asking.

The leader shifted in his plastic chair. He got up. Everyone got up. He walked out. Everyone followed him. The driver opened the back door. He got in. Let's go for a drive through luminous green country, he said. The driver gunned the engine making powerful noise. His friends followed him down the broken rutted dirt road.

There are no stop signs or traffic lights here. Everyone operating a moving vehicle trusts everyone else. This is fair. 

Cambodian children, like children everywhere love to play. They have a game called Kick The Sandal. They use their sandals. They take turns kicking a sandal on uneven cement pavement to see who can reach the goal. It''s exciting and fun. The cement comes from Siam.

A firefly named July zoomed around my dark room one night. The yellow flickering light was illuminating, mesmerizing and hypnotic. A multi-facted dancing yellow white gemstone. It was looking for a way out. I opened the door so it could live in nature.

Metta.

My girlfriend is smart. She wears a helmet. We are happy. We are going nowhere fast. Passengers wearing a helmet here is almost as rare as clean drinking water.