hello december

tomorrow is national day here in laos, said orphan.

big deal, said a little red rooster. cock-a-doodle-do.

ain't nothing but the blues, said a sallow shallow faced female teacher. a skin teacher.

i dance. i drink beer. i hunt foreigners. it's a job. 

rooster crowed. cock-a-doodle-do.

orphan said, it was blatant child abuse and he was one pissed off kid. i tried to murder his attitude, his free spirit. 

i was trapped in my chair. he was trapped in the relationship. he learned how to be a pain giver, an efficient manipulator. he carried his heavy bag of neglect, emotional pain, shadows and independence into through and out of relationships. he distributed gifts of emotional suspicion. 

he practiced the ancient art of abandonment. loving and leaving. 

i finished doing my wheelchair time. i posted bail. i was released on my own recognizance. i stumbled, adjusted, and found my balance. i renewed my sense of self determination and self reliance.

i walked on the curvature of the earth. a simple walking meditation. a kinhin.

my kensho was a liberation and a loneliness.

ears

I can’t hear them. It’s a blessing. I read lips screaming I want food. I want love. I want education. I want medicine.

I had a dream.

A grandfather in Laos is an idiot. He runs his calibrated truck. It’s his solace. I love the smell of pollution on Sunday morning. His daughter burns plastic trash. Parents and children inhale fumes. Ancestor worship.

In Vietnam it’s incense. In Laos it’s exhaust and burning plastic. In Cambodia it’s cow shit.

Youngsters respect their elders. Shut your mouth. Do not say anything to venerable grandfather. Birds sing with hammers. I feel vibrations.

Their traditional silence kills them softly. Truth is a powerful weapon. Most people are afraid of truth. Hearing, speaking, realizing truth entails risk. Daring is not fatal. Truth is a deaf mute seer in Cambodia.

Everything here is a secret. Shhh fingers on my lips. I am secretly married to a false dream of going to Australia with Thorny. He is 50, married with family there. He works for an NGO in Cambodia. He builds fake bamboo homes. He plays my father figure and rescuer. 

yell louder

Possible signs of intelligent life exist here in Saigon or Ho Chi Minh or Siem Reap or Vientiane or Hanoi. Rumor control reports. Merely existing mind you. ‘Mind yourself, how you go dearie,’ whispered an Irish ghostwriter in Donegal. Well remembered.

Take my neighbors for example. Sam and Dave. Sam is the kid, Dave is the father. These are not Viet names. If they were they’d be named Binh and Thin and New Yen, like new yin instead of old yang. 

Dave had kids so he and his wife can yell at them. It was an arranged marriage. 

Easy to have kids in the 13th most populated country on planet Earth. 85 million hard and fast rules of parenthood. Get married early, the pressure is on. 

You do not want to be unmarried and sad, lonely and well forgotten. Loneliness dramatically increases the chances of heart attacks, strokes of genius, and arterial vestiges of debilitating forms of social upheaval and social instability in a well mannered society. 

Extreme pressure is on the girls to find a husband. Girls in Sapa, which is not part of this tale, only illustrates the way rural girls get married at the ripe old age of 16 and start producing genetic forms of themselves. Petri dish. Wash and tear. 

Takes hard courage to raise them with integrity, respect, authenticity and a low level of pain tolerance.

Dave releases stream of anger, bitterness and frustration allowing him to relax, expend, expand the sound. Dave is startled to hear the the sound of his own particular voice ricochet of cold gray cement block walls. His life is a cold cement wall. Echoes dance through his brain like little sugarplum fairies. 

zero effort

yes, said the seven year young genius. here's another true class tomb saga from Laos. 

it happened like this. a foreign teacher faced 12 seventh grade homonids.

how many of you are afraid to speak? afraid to make a mistake?

12 hands shot into air. trembling arteries and armed veins exploded cortex capillaries.

reach for the sky yelled a thief disguised as an autocratic robotic local teacher. 

memorize the text. keep your big fat mouth shut. class dismissed. zero effort.

it takes 12 years of formal education to beat the spirit out of a child, sighed a genius.

bye-bye said orphan.

cheap food

Food is cheap here in Asia.

Medicine and education are expensive. Favorite sports are: 

1) driving huge 4x4s. gas costs $2.40 a gallon. sitting in endless long traffic jams. paying parking fees to para-military type uniformed men blowing stainless steel whistles.

2) wandering around enormous prosperous numerous say it fast three times shopping centers. a huge playground for brats. where out-of-control rascals expend spoiled energy. where families enjoy A/C and stuff behind glass. museum quality of life. diversionary influences.

3) whining. students know and understand this behavior is boring and useless. some know without understanding.

4) producing more babies.

Bye-bye said the orphan.