blind music

Once upon a story lived a tribe of kids. They laughed and played all day.

Poor ones collected cardboard and plastic water bottles along a red dirt road.

Kids with money went to school.

A blind man played his flute on the street. Memory answered as notes disppeared into the void.

A bird whistled. Poetic interpretation. 

A man without hands, a landmine survivor, blind in one eye stood near a cafe. His one eye smiled, he nodded his head, thank you after a well dressed man gave him money.

The rich man smoked a cigarette as friends discussed new business opportunities. They invested drug and prostitution profits in new glass and brass tourist hotels.

We have to put the money somewhere, said the rich man.

Yeah, said another man, we can't put it where our mouth is.

You can say that again, said his friend, giving a beggar child old notes.

freeze a memory

vote for me. i have power and money.

wear a sad i am lost and angry face. in public.

life screwed me. 

i had no chance.

well i did but i didn't know what to do with it

so, i succumbed to my family and social

lack of inner strength and self determination.

my secret name is passive, beauty and gratitude.

i am a character in an asian play.

ugly chinese trash nepal and elsewhere

In a Bhaktapur, Nepal guesthouse it’s dinner time. Five Chinese aliens appear. Two males and three women. They are in their 20’s. They are armed with laptops, cell phones, and loud discursive language. This is normal.

Noise and confusion and interruptions and arrogant attitudes fit their life style. One girl is dressed like a flapper dancer from the roaring 20’s. Daisy Bell talks with her mouth full of rice. Her red diamond tiara squeezes her frontal lobe into a shucked pea. 

They are lucky to have a passport. Their parents are important Red Party Officials. It’s all about connections. They whined their way out of manners and intelligence in public places. They are the new breed of The Ugly Chinese, the lost, terribly frustrated never satisfied in their exported coddled spoiled youth.

They are the new emperors and empresses of a prosperous, for a minority, rising dynasty. They act like they own the restaurant. They complain about the price of a meal. One girl said in a shrill voice, “Oh, it’s too expensive. I am a poor student.” She is majoring in Stupidity and Callousness at Beijing Normal University. She failed Basic Courtesy 101.

A brat boy chastises the Nepalese waiter about his pronunciation of Menu. The crew cut Mandarin idiot commands the boy to say it again, Menu.

They are living, breathing examples of the spoiled one child political and cultural genocide legacy. It will come back to haunt China. They have the emotional maturity of a 15-year old. They are so busy stuffing their faces and talking over each other all the European guests stare at them.

They don’t care. They act and talk like this at home. A new strain of vociferous Chinese virus has been unleashed on Earth. Hong Kong residents call them locusts. 

Suddenly Flapper Dolly jumped up on the table yelling, Kill the Running Capitalist Dogs! Making Money in China is Glorious!

Everyone threw their steel toed reinforced Everest hiking boots at her. She died of Shame. Her friends dragged her body out, selling the boots to pay for her cremation.

Brick boys in Kathmandu valley.

Twins work in Bhaktapur. 

A story for Grade 4

“Many world tribes love to look back. It’s all passion and illusions of suffering. A genetic molecule of fear, doubt, uncertainty, surprise and adventure. A childish innocent curiosity lives in the present. As people age they want & need the past.”

“Living in the past is time consuming,” said a genius kid.

“Yes,” said a teacher, “Focus on your needs not your wants. Your need for freedom and freedom from need. Needs manifest a desire for a memory or a ghost or a regret. We are all passing through. Humans look back to see if they see in their vivid reptilian imagination their ghost.

"A ghost from a family or friend looks for clues at their personal ground zero. They’ve evolved from distant galaxies. Java man was discovered here 40,000 years ago. Accepting an evolutionary premise, their DNA star chart continues its genetic dance today. Oh, and one more thing. Don’t let school interfere with your education. See you tomorrow.”

A wandering teacher lived in talking monkey zones. They eat rice. They drink water. They fuck. They breed. They wash one set of clothing and hang it on bamboo. They burn down the forest. They breed, work and get slaughtered. They harvest brooms. Shamans bring rain. Tropical downpours allow people the luxury to wash cars. They use faint energy looking behind them wondering, all the wondering and wandering and milling around. 

Food is cheap. Let’s eat mantra. This has nothing to do with simians. It has nothing to do with the two women sitting in a dark warung neighborhood food joint near a private school.

The warung faces a tall cinder block wall. Chickens, goats and cats prowl, peck and forage through garbage. One woman sits in a deep meditation. Her friend parts her hair looking for insects, cleaning her scalp. They take turns cleaning and inspecting. This genetic behavior is repeated in zoos, jungles and rain forests. Chattering storytellers play the gamelan pounding out 40,000 year-old tunes.

Heal people with music. Music is the fuel.

Males wash toy machines and study accumulated grime under long yellow curling fingernails. They play chess waiting for passengers. Checkmate, said Death.

They visit the warung to chat up girls while eating spicy rice mixed with tofu, chicken, veggies, green chilies and deep-fried snacks. One explorer creates a Brave New World. They forge new futures with cold, detached logical intention. They create an assessment on process in a data based star cluster.

Duende

She had duende, a fundamentally untranslatable Spanish word, literally meaning possessing spirit.

It signified a charisma manifested by certain performers - flamenco dancers, bullfighters, shamans and weavers overwhelming their audience with the feeling they were in the presence of a mystical power.

The Spanish poet Garcia Lorca produced the best description of duende: “Years ago, during a flamenco dance contest in Jerez, an old woman of eighty, competing against beautiful women and young girls with waists as supple as water, carried off the prize by simply raising her arms, throwing back her head, and stamping the platform with a single blow of her heel; but in that gathering of muses and angels, of beautiful forms and lovely smiles, the dying duende triumphed as it had to, dragging the rusted blades of its wings along the ground.”

She’d followed a tribal trail to Lacilbula where, after weaving morning pages, she returned to the Rio Guadalete below Grazalema flowing from the Sierras to Cadiz.

The battle of Guadalete was fought on July 19, 711 when 7,000 Yemenis and Berbers led by Tariq ibn Ziyad defeated the Visigoth King Roderick.

Rio needed cleaning. Thick autumn yellow, green and brown leaves trapped between rocks clogged river sections. Liquid backed up to mountains beneath fast gray storm clouds. Using her walking stick, she clamored down a slippery slope and worked her way up the Rio clearing sticks, leaves and stones blocking the flow.

One leaf could do a lot of damage.

There were green maple, silver aspen, brown oak leaves. Old black water logged decayed colors danced with fresh green and orange pigments.

She was the unimpeded flow. A child playing near water in her dream world. Serenity and sweet water music with rock stepping-stones, small pools and meditation zones where she felt peaceful. Bird music darted up the canyon.

She cleared leaves long past twilight, staggered up the muddy incline facing the Rio in silent gratitude and performed healing chants next to a bare Aspen tree. She passed a ceramic Virgin Mary statue behind a locked gate illuminated by melting red candles in a rocky crevice.

Mary’s blood flowed over jagged dolomite gray stones flecked with green moss. She collected a hemoglobin sample for weaving, crossed a stone bridge and returned home. She lit candles, started a fire, enjoying a deep breath before bleeding river words dyeing loom fabric.

The loom was her instrument of transformation and wool the hair of the sacrificial beast which women, by a long and cultured tribal process, transformed into clothing. Weaving skirts the sacred and the violent. 

Her power at the loom was both derided and celebrated, transforming like birth into a language and symbol, a metaphor with new, positive ends and duende.

A Century is Nothing

Subject to Change