Train to Lashio

Ride the rails sixteen hours north

click clack click clack click clack
nature visions bamboo forests
silver rivers
feeling fresh air

hanging out the door of a rock’n roll train
rail alliteration starts at 4 AM.

Stars open sky

A red shaped leaf
fields of lilacs purple black and gold, butterflies,
sense of stillness, renewal of the free rolling spirit,
yellow bamboo leaves at lower elevations, then green exploding higher lush gardens, fir, pine..

Fields being planted
Women and men and children hoeing,  watering, turning soil
Say yes to everything.

The hard scrabble reality similar to northern Laos, oxen, weathered faces,

wood homes thatch, small train station shops in the middle of nowhere,

women loading loading baskets of greens vegetables,

men timber and iron on board
teens shuffle loads of wood from dirt into a train car door
Spaces race long lonely whistle blasts.

20 German Italian Japanese Australian tourists & senior citizens – ugly idiots on train platforms snap Burmese people no interaction real true relationship
attitudes behavior selfish selfies T Bow exit. 
Farewell my lovely.

The lone stranger rides the last four hours to Lashio. 

take amazing risks

More Cambodians and Burmese own a cell phone than have a toilet.

Welcome to the entertainment capital of the world!

The science of imaginary solutions that regulate exceptions.

To do amazing things you have to take amazing risks.

Bolano: "he didn't believe in countries and the only borders he respected were: Borders of dreams - musty borders of love & indifference."

Borders of courage or fear - golden borders of ethics.

"To never be polite again." Camus on outrages we inflict.

Acting as a fundamental form of existence.

To be natural with a mask. My mask is eating my fAce.

The entire universe is a vast theatre.

"Black and white are the colors of photography." - Frank

happy language animal

Your nature is to be happy.

I am a needle. Words are the threads.

Metaphors. Neologism - (new word phrase)

Where are you from?

I am from the universe, said the blind man.

During the day I am a gravedigger. At night, a prostitute.

It is the endless story.

I am in the world but not of it. 

I am a lone wolf. Predator. Instinct.

A language animal. Meaningless.

illusion of truth and drama

The big general picture (floodlight)

The small specific picture (spotlight)

Sleeping alone is boring, said Sunflower, a blind masseuse in Kampot.

The blind man plays a flute.

His young son leads him through life.

Music guides their quest.

Mindfulness, breathe, ease god out.

On the meridian of time there is no injustice; there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.

Beatific Shy Lover

Masks hide the consciousness of fear.

Molecular structure.

Reconnected with a beatific shy lover on the edge of town after 17 dazed.

The dirt road is lined with salons, massage parlors brown hearts and shattered dreams.

Her thin gentleness is tempered by the fear of others,

the ugly fat one is disappointed in memory.

No one wants me.

Others eat vegetables.

She has a diamond implanted in a canine.

The two of them stay behind a curtain. Plywood walls.

They have an hour.

She is not impatient. They accept the implied unspoken gentle nature, the infrequent dressing.

All her clothes fit in a plastic box. The mattress is thinner than her. Two pillows.

Her cell phone and used phone cards litter a Boeing 747 used as a table.

O

She is 20+ and rail thin. He considered taking her away to the coast. Another poor girl will take her place. They never go. The coast is too far away.

The absurd human condition is illuminated in a nano-second.