spread your wings

Butterfly rests on forehead
Feelers probe eyebrow
Scalp
Ear
Touch
Sit as a mountain

clouds

morning
east clouds
sing with pines
evergreens
afternoon
clouds dance west
through forests
granite 
old mountain
new clouds
river flows

from nature

A mountain loses its spirit without cloud, loses its peculiarity without stones, loses its elegance without trees, and loses its life without water, and in painting, one should concentrate the mind, and hold the breath, with concentration of the mind, serenity is maintained, with the breath held up, preciseness is attained. 

One should be as serene as an old monk in meditation and be as precise as a silk worm in spitting silk.

The spirit and real fun of painting are from nature and beyond brushes and paints. 

Up Nam Ou river

After polishing a manuscript for three months in a Lao garden he shifted north to familiar terrain.

Now he helps others develop English courage in a village along the Nam Ou. 

The world is a village.

Mountains, earth, sky and wide brown river. The rainy season means fast clouds, rising water.

It flows.

Life is a river. You cannot step in the same river twice.

laughing children

maintain their honest true
emotional awareness
in the moment
before artificial social conditioning 
destroys their fragile innocence

humor and curiosity

crimes against humanity

fear is a killer

mai's hearing evaluation -
anthony from NZ came, met, talked,

promised the world, took her out, tried to seduce her, failed, he left
mai has a black belt in karate
she's killed more men with silence than you can imagine
she is resigned to her life

massage and laundry scrubbing under the paternal gaze
of her older sister who sits in perpetual admiration of her mirrored reflection

how does her awareness register POTENTIAL for unrealized dreams
how does her silent resignation
understanding comprehend one single lost chance,

all the complexity w/o expectations

in the false dream of star rain

they moved a wooden toy pawn,
salad bar in silence
welcomed cool air from a brown river,
children pressed noses to a rolling window, laughing

an archeologist skips through star puddles into 8th Century excavations
freedom sings stones,
selling a Blue Pumpkin to a Cambodian land mine amputee
w/o a left leg selling DVDs to fat tourists
talking with their mouths full

an Enfield rumbles in Pokhara
spinning the Wheel of Time
rejoicing in miracles, small ones
sit in meditation 

we do laundry by machine, said language animal

3.8 billion years ago a black hole captured a star the size of our sun
sucked the star into its empty mass the star exploded the black hole
escaping energy created, released streams of light we see today

at that moment 20 raindrops trusted your intuition
to travel is to feel

indonesia asked you to return
two years ago you said thank you to orchids
goodbye to gardens

orchids remember you
the apple tree

you planted at Gardenia

grows strong
roots buried deep below blossoms
fragrant with memory

Street meat in Quanzhou, China