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.

inee

Once upon a time Inee was a weaver in Kampot.

She wove cotton and studied English at PTC, a training center. She met Orphan. He was passing though. He helped her with educational resources.

He passed through years later. They met again. They were estatic to see each other. 

She'd graduated from PTC and worked at a real estate company.

I study electricity at a local university, she said. I teach Khmer to foreigners. My plan is to attend university this fall. I will study to be an accountant and a teacher.

Great, said Orphan, I am so pleased. You're doing fantastic. Realize your dreams.

free speech

Grill your usual suspects
while eating chicken with shredded
lettuce not have this conversation in the abstract.

Loudspeakers resembling Lenin Park in Hanoi blare in Giresun, Turkey.
Attention Comrades!
Journalists, lawyers and acti-visits in Turkish jails, prisons and poems file your briefs.
A woman speaks about behavior control systems designed with sparkling syllables.

Children memorize grammar rules. Pass the examination.
Life is the BIG test.
It is multiple choice.

Silverman polishes red stones
semi-precious hands whisper secrets 
a baker removes loaves from ovens 
fish hawkers wash ice
life sea streams.

Bread aromas float past women selling cabbages bigger than lost children. 
A beautiful mute-deaf woman in Cambodia scrubs foreign laundry.
She dances until she dies.
Her life dance is a slow meandering death of loneliness and heartbreak and silence.

It is the dry season in Khmer civilizations as leaders across a porous border
sell forests to Vietnam furniture and toothpick factories.
Chinese developers purchase the country for $16.9 billion and counting
The National Museum in Siem Reap is 50% owned by Thailand.

Buy a ticket.

Black Sea is green and blue.
Eat dreams with fresh yogurt minus anxiety. 
Cultivate silence

Amazon women live on an island off the Giersun coast.
They visit the Turkish residency permit authorities.

If you want to play you have to pay, said Authority.
They cut off their right breast.

Arrows of time.
Bullseye! 
Everything is permitted. It's already happened.

 

there are no rules

I didn't write the rules. Why should I follow them? - W. Eugene Smith, photo essayist.

Lens: Visual journalism.

A Nepalese man breaks rocks in Bandipur.

Music is the fuel at a Tibetan resettlement village outside Pokhara, Nepal.

Gratitude

Gratitude is contagious.

A new year, day and moment allows us to reflect on gratitude.

"It is moving your mind over to this place where I think we should all be, which is to keep our eyes on all that is good, beautiful and possible in the world," said Jacqueline Lewis, a creator of World Gratitude map.

Read and explore map.

Gratitude and positive emotions expand.

If your legs get heavy, walk with your heart.