Leaving Laos

You lived in Laos for one year.

Miracle gift blessing.

Tourist visas last thirty days. In and out tourists do Asia.

Please don't rush. PDR.

You had a one-year multi-entry business visa as a volunteer to facilitate English with 101 H'mong people in Phonsavan. Plain of Jars. Archeologists hypothesize funeral jars. Burn bodies in nearby cave and stash bones in jars. Roll your bones. Bone oracle.

Illuminated ones know they are 4,000 year old drinking vessels of GIANTS.

Visa paperwork said you are a Soap Consultant.

Somebody paid off somebody in the food/money chain.

$500 bones.

How life works. Money talks. Hello. Before speaking put your hand out. A wink will suffice. You know how to play the game. Wiggle your fingers. Here comes the paper, see it. Do the numbers. Enough? No, wiggle again. See the paper. Love the colors. I like doing business with you. Here's the pepper. Thank you.

You dreamed to be a Soap Consultant.

Now you are.

The Phonsavan Ministry of Security requires an audience.

Bureaucrazy stamps, photographs, work permit card, residency permit card, all micro managed by droning gnomes sitting passive, hungry, tired and bored in obscure drab communist rooms inside old decaying cement buildings surrounded by rusting bard wire behind brown shuttered windows against blinding sun held together by corroded grated bars, confronting blaring Thai soap operas, imprisoned below portraits of smiling kings, white goateed Ho Chi Minh painting in his garden of early delights and grim faced suited officers in olive drab wearing burnished medals.

Each person has one job in a compartmentalized system. Only one.

One takes the papers, reads and enters data in a ledger. Passes documents to #2. They read the papers, acknowledge signature and stamp of #1, sign it, enter data on a form, passes it to a woman writing in a ledger. She checks the stamp from # 1 & #2 and enters critical data in her ledger. She hands it to #3 who reads all the names, studies all the stamps and ledgers, smiles, hands it back and says you cannot work here as a Soap Consultant. Thank you it was only a fragrant dream. Bubble drama.

Checks and balances.

You put your time in. You learned this phrase as a soldier in Nam.

Put your time in.

If you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much space. Get out take risks get your shoes dirty.

Phonsavan was dusty, cold and invigorating. Education was fun, helping 10-30 year olds develop courage. Drawing, speaking, chess, teamwork, critical thinking skills.

I need help.

A place to sit down and establish temporary relationships, explore traditional fruit and vegetable markets, process new languages, do street photography, write it down.

Make sense of it later.

After seven months new volunteers arrived. You briefed them.

1. Lao don't plan 2. They have no concept of time. 3. They don't accept responsibility for their actions. 4. Family and farming come first. 5. They are eager to learn. 6. Retention is a problem. 7. Practice meditation and comprehension checks.

Return to Luang Prabang for 90 daze. Sit in herbal steam baths every afternoon clearing accumulated gunk dust from lungs. Polish a new narrative nonfiction book entitled The Language Company.

Shiny. Dented from dialogue, drama, dreams.

All writing is garbage.

A friend recommends an opportunity. You make contact and get lucky finding a p/t volunteer job at an upscale eco-lodge seven hours by boat up the Nam Ou River helping with management and English practice with fifteen staff. Low season. Husband wife and daughter left for a Thai hospital where she will birth Emil.

Stay two months. Facilitate courage with kitchen, restaurant, and housekeeping staff.

Laughter is an effective elective.

Live next to a wide flowing brown river rushing south for 448 kilometers from China to the sea near Nam. Gardens of butterflies, red hibiscus, looming granite mountains, river, forests.

Dancing cloud thoughts.

Calm wisdom mind meditation.

Everything you do is a meditation.

Culture is what you are.

Nature is what you can be.

Linguistic Semantics. The map is not the territory.

Your visa will expire. No new job no chance to renew.

Return to Seems Ripe. Discover a new adventure. Let's go.

Luang Prabang - exit. Kiss your Lao artist lover good eye. You've known each other three years. In out love dialogue. She has the imagination heart. You've encouraged her skill these years providing her with watercolor paper, inks, and pens. She's created a nice portfolio.

You're not saving anyone.

Modern fancy glass and brass empty new LP international airport. On the second floor among rows of empty seats and shops, three steel accordion passenger tubes wait for big planes. Tourism=money=tourism.

The old squat French style fading yellow airport disintegrates down the road. It has character speaking memories. Remember when?

Heavy rain, clouds obscure mountains. Smiling security man said, nice hat, real style. It's an Akubra Traveler from OZ you say, showing him the sweat stained interior. Twenty rabbits made this hat. Rabbits love making hats when not nibbling in gardens or making baby rabbits. Wearing this hat brings me good luck. I can't be manipulated, fooled, folded, stapled or spindled. He smiles, have a nice trip.

Fifteen people go to Pakse on a prophet. 1:45 airborne. Clouds, blue sky. Clouds should know you by now.

In transit. 30 minutes. You walk out, free as a bird. A Lao man with a gold watch put his black attaché case down, lit a cigarette, made a call. A man pulls up in a black SUV, walks over to the man, talks and picks up the case. They board a flight to Vientiane.

The bag contains top-secret nuclear vision material and contracts with Chinese/Thailand developers to build twelve dams on the Mekong. Signed sealed delivered. COD.

Carlos and his wife from Mexico sit in 14 A/B. He's a government official. Sleek gray black hair and meticulous bushy moustache. You mention Gabo, yes, said Carlos, he was a great man and writer.

100 Years of Solitude

They're going to Angkor Wat for two days. You give them a quick vision - get a tuk-tuk at 5:00 a.m. Have a noodle breakfast on your way out. Enjoy exploding sun over fields. You get to Banteay Srei early. Before Japanese and Chinese locusts. It has the most intricate hand carved designs by women.

See Preh Khan-hall of dancers, Bayon, Ta Prohm, main Angkor temple. Ramayana story in stone. You show them Srei black and white images. Carvings, monkey guardians, stone stories. Did you take them, she said. Yes. They are beautiful.

Explore the jungle. See how you feel. Meet butterflies. They know the way through mysterious passages.

His questions: currency, safety, cost, typical Khmer food, scams, mosquitos. Brief them. I talk to airborne malaria insects. We speak the same language. They don't bother me. You need a hat, water, open heart-mind. Slow steps.

It's all a spiritual journey, said Carlos. Thanks for your help. 

Sewing in Kampot

A sewing woman returned to her Kampot guesthouse. She splashed water on her face, changed clothes and spit into red roses. She kick started her cycle and rode to the local market inside a dirt labyrinth.

At her corner stall she keyed multiple locks. She stacked numbered wooden shutters. She dragged out her Butterfly sewing machine, ironing board and manikins.

Dummies wore exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling silver stars, moons and small reflecting balls. Her skill designed fabrics for women needing elaborate sartorial refinement attiring engagements, weddings and cremations.

She stayed busy with serious fittings and adjustments. Her universal process was selecting fabric; measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, pushing her machine treadle, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections and ironing.

Threads inside a slow prism flashed light and shadow as needles danced through cloth in endless conversations.

Needles talked about traditional conservative behaviors, attitudes and opportunity-value cost.

Thread followed their conversations. Together they measured precise calculations establishing a stop-loss number.

All explanations have to end somewhere.

Sky darkened

Ceremonial tribal drum thunder sang

Vocal intensity

Lonely lost suffering

Foreign faces

In Cambodia

Shuddered with fear

What if I die here?

How will my family and friends realize my intention to witness 1200 years of dancing Angkor laterite stoned history in gnarling jungles revealed by natural strobes? 

Lightning flashed skies

Giant flashbulbs

Illuminated petrified children

Buried inside cement caverns

Floating bamboo homes

Eyes

Eating cartoon images

On plasma screams

Skies opened

Rain lashed human crops

Rice blossomed green

Cloud tears cleaned earth

Sweet dreams baby

Rita, Ice Girl in Banlung smashing blocks of ice inside a blue plastic bag with a blunt instrument created a symphony outside unspoken words as a homeless man with a pair of brown pants thrown over a thin shoulder sat down to rest.

Shy women waiting for Freedom averted black eyes.

Aggressive market women manipulated stacks of government issued denominations trusting an implied value in exchange for meat, fruit, vegetables, gold, cotton and silk.

Counting and arranging denominations inside broken beams above fractured cement and mislaid wooden planks covering sewage channels with debris, feathers, jungles and jangled light particles, financial dealers surveyed commercial landscapes with dispatched dialects near rivers revealing stories with fine stitched embroidery.  

Lucky and Zeynep played a musical interlude in Bursa, Turkey.

“I know the music but forgot the words,” said an adult swallowing Xanax.

“Music is the fuel,” said Zeynep spinning her Sufi dervish trance dance.

An Anatolian mother intent on cleaning disorder - afraid of losing control of chaos because nature loves a beautiful mess - on her apartment balcony after shaking out wet underwear, dish towels and frayed family threads, hung them in shameful angry regret and slammed her door on dervish music, It's the devil's music. She loved sitting in dark rapacious self-pity waiting for a jingle jangle phony tone.

“Are you alive?” she said to her cellular daughter.

“I survived,” said a disembodied voice.

“Where are you? When are you coming home?”

“I’m with a tribe of women. We’re breaking down and breaking through old conservative values. They are so narrow we’ll need a crowbar or acetylene torch or C-4. We’re developing personal empowerment and dignity. I’ll be home someday mother. I’m doing my healing work.”

Her voice died. Swallowing ignorance mother lapsed into healthy doubt’s quicksand.

At sunset an imam’s recorded voice twittered from a mosque near Achebadem, “Allah is great and merciful. Buy a ticket.”

Push Play.

Eudaimonia

Dream Sacrifice

Humans dreamed their language acquisition cycle. They desire clarity and kindness with meaning.

Ironic beauty shared languages.

Hot and cold tongues rolled, spitting, parsing, and ejecting sounds from vocal chords forming English.

My 5,000-year-old Mandarin language of emperors and dynasties was filled with peacock thrones, concubines, courtiers, Forbidden City intrigue, conquest and opium warlords’ gesturing life or death with fingered deftness.

Gestures use us.

Mercenary survival skills allowed me to breath, absorbing death free from fear. Free from the small fear.

I am one with the sky.

I trimmed my claws, flaying skin from bones, grinding bones for a potion. I drank from deep unconscious wells. Hearing Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons my animistic archeologist recovered fossils with a brush.

I dreamed the Sun Dance of the Plains people. Nations gathered in late spring celebrating a four-day cycle of rituals and creation dances. Dancers choosing self-torture have their chests pierced by skewers. They hang under the weight of buffalo skulls for twenty-four dances.

Their sacrifice is successful if they have a vision during their trial.

The sun went home to earth.

One vision is all you need.

I spin, dive and dance through inner and outer landscapes. My transparency is automatic. A rock n’ roll manifesto shuttles my kairos through bark, indigo, camphor, jasmine and juniper fire inside nebulous gases of dancing electron particles and energy waves.

Meditating, my head is held by a string. I transfer delicate weight from cloud to cloud, disengaging from the stimulus. Incense rises from flames.

My muse spirit guide joined The Department of Wandering Ghosts. We design mysterious projects. We sharpen rose thorns. I felt sorrow and joy seeing two drops of blood on a finger after brushing a rose thorn. A thorn embedded in my finger flesh dissolved at dawn.

A bird pressed her breast to a thorn to sing.

A beautiful rose creates a sharp thorn.

My thorn is a claw, a sharp definitive talon for tearing meat from white bones. Satisfying my hunger.

I track rabbit’s form blending into underbrush. Floating on evergreen peak winds, I wheel. My eyes see a path you are destined to follow across helter-skelter earth. In, out, in, out, breath flashes fur. I circle above your feeling fleeting form. One eye sees where you’ve been the other knows where you are going past volcanic boulders, through valleys and dry riverbeds where you never sleep. Latent fears harbor your grieving desire. Your shelter search takes on immediacy as your energy adrenaline wanes. Wings fold with forgiveness. I dive. You take evasive action among wild berries. Their sweetness is a faint taste. My sharpness tears you from soil into air.

I rest with death. Claw thorns at your throat.

A drop of blood splatters. Pure red life floats to the surface. A finger smears one drop from skin. Small swift red rivers trickle. Veins release blood volcanoes. Red-hot meteors explode through space.

After Nam I became a regular blood donor.

“Are you allergic to pain?” asked a nurse in a mobile blood unit parked at Sunnyside Beach south of Tacoma.

“Only to pleasure.” A needle slid into a vein drawing A-.

“Writing is easy,” said Hemingway, “just open a vein. The secret is that it is poetry written into prose and it is the hardest thing to do.”

An earnest man discovered right words. Put them in the right order.

Squeezing the plastic handgrip pressure pump at the blood bank I bantered with a mother of five. Blood escaped arms down into plastic tubes out of sight out of mind into clear plastic liter bags with an identification number. Hugs from thank you clown.

I donated blood into sky.

On the shore four young men and a woman stood silent on wet rocks. One man held an earthen urn vase. He handed it to the woman. It was large and awkward. Dust and death are awkward.

Cradling it, she tipped toward water. A river of brown ash flowed over the edge. A fine dust mist dressed liquid. Her dancing arms scattered a dust trail of someone’s life. She handed the urn to a companion. He poured ash into miniature tides.

A bouquet of red, yellow and white roses with freshly cut long green stems flew from the woman’s hand into Puget Sound. The urn was offered to another man. No thanks, shaking his head.

A Vietnam veteran in shadows wearing a faded boonie hat played his weeping guitar. Seven lingering faltering notes ran through sand past an elderly couple staring at seas beyond life’s horizon. A playful father and son threw seaweed at each other. A crow’s shadow landed on a dead tree branch.

My blood flow created a cataclysmic flood. Cold mountain poems melted snow, painted forest trails, seeping to sleeping roots. Meadow petals opened to moisture. Earth lava blood carved canyons. Tributaries branched out from the Tree of Knowledge and Tree of Life.

Blood gouged out rock, cleaning earth, transforming stone to sand, to dust, erasing river bottoms, collapsing banks, overpowering everything in its path, forming new microscopic celestial arrangements.

Fingers painted blood on lips and threads. Luminous light illuminated weavers, diggers and fleischers. Shuttles click clack.

Blood dyed threads loomed stories.

Diggers rattled their blood. Brushes exploded seeds into rain. Laughing bones excavated histories.

A laughing axe split clouds into letters.

Alpha, Beta, Omega.

A thorn allows a ghost to realize a life principle.

Eudaimonia ‘human flourishing’ from the Greek means a good life.

A Century is Nothing

I am twinkling...

Mandalay to Lashio train. 16 hours of rock n' roll elevations. 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sublime.

Ride the rails 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.

Stars at 9 pm open the sky

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

Fields being planted.

Women men children hoe plant water.

Say yes to everything.

The hard scrabble reality similar to Phonsavan in northern Laos, oxen, weathered fases, wood/thatch homes, small train station shops in the middle of nowhere.

Women logged in loading baskets of green vegetables, men wrestle iron timber on board, teens shuffle loads of wood into a train car door space racing long lonely whistle blasts. Here we go.

German Italian Japanese Australian senior citizens on train platforms snap Burmese people with no interaction projecting real true attitudes behavior at the T Bow exit.

Farewell my lovely.

A lone stranger enjoys the final four hours to Lashio.

Sublime beauty near and far butterflies, homes rolling hills golden rust colored labor in fields raving children urination copious food sources.

Staring at a writer sitting in market tea place morning broken lights curious faces, voices whispering is doing this being flowing “pen fountain” said the laughing boy standing on a cement slow all the men staring at this transitory process.

The expansive tradtional market is excellent. No foreigners in a chilly hilly labyrinth of morning. A source of fascination. Zen of sitting nourishment. Monks barefoot meditation an open hand holds everything. 

Burning coals. Tea.  Fractured light flowing energies.

Lashio artists

Character is action.

Tell me a story. The train stopped in TiVo where 24 nurses pulled on their acts wasted away onto shoulders descended to the platform took selfie declined images unloaded packs into tuk-tuk took off for Golden Dragon hotel. 

Lone traveler stayed on the train. It slowly rolled north. The conductor walked through the empty car. He stopped at an empty seat, collectived empty plastic water bottles, chopsticks, food wrappers, Styrofoam containers, dreams, nightmares and fantasies mixed with rising expectations, desires and needs.

He dropped everything out an open window. The train rolled through starlight.

The Commander’s Wife Buys Confectionery

In northern Shan State once upon a time there was along running insurgenc over land, freedom, natural resources, gold, rubies, star sapphires, opiates all golden triangle profit.

A shiny green army pickup truck pulled up at the New Sign Moon Bakery in Lashio.

A soldier and green jumped out and opened the cabinet door. The wife got out–longhair, white and silver dress, designer purse, serious face. Six soldiers exited the truck. They were on a mission to liberate cakes, cookies, sweets from glass shrine.

The commander got out. Short wearing a camouflage jacket like a forest with depressed green pants and black shiny shoes. Epaulets on his shoulder.

His sharp black eyes stared at a stranger scribbling at an outdoor table.

Zero expression. His eyes lay buried in his face of recessed emptiness. His commander war camo boonie hat sat a rakish angle crashed in front. Decorated with a golden military symbol of happiness compassion and love.

His life climbed steps into a new son. Her husband uttered quick syllables to number two.

Number two had war military bearing without a care in the world. He barked into a walkie-talkie.

A military policeman guarded the front of the truck. Soldiers stood around smoking as motorcycles loaded with fresh strawberries streamed goodbye.

She came out followed by a salesgirl trundling bags of roles and buns. A soldier put them in the truck. She spoke to her husband. He knew words were unnecessary. He followed her to the market. Soldiers marched behind.

Years later they return with bags of strawberries apples and bananas. They loaded everything into the truck.

Someone called the commander. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. He opened his mouth. Perfect white teeth. If you knew words. He smiled. A soldier open the door for his life. She got in. Commander got in and took off his office party hat. Smoothed his hair. The military police stopped traffic and they drove into a dream come true.

Real–not true

True–not real

Elemental. You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

Painting with light shadow sky sunset relationship based in market.  Wonder and wander free-spirited in a free world. Absorbing the energies. Innocent child-like play. See with soft eyes. Gratitude. Abracadabra.

Sitting inside sun street morning surrounded by women voices asking who is the stranger? Noodle mama. Voices of laughter. Kerry roses smell fragrance. Tea house people stare smile forget. Spiderweb sparkle diamond radiant from the center. Process Tibetan - Burma language.

I am a rainbow. I am twinkling.

old woman
deep lined face
gray hair pulled back
empty begging bowl

woman without arms
sits under umbrella
empty begging bowl

Loving their phones
Market people laugh
Selfies, games (easily amused)
Wicker basket on her back
Silver coins jingle jangle
Light passage humor
Red thread solid black background

How’s it feel this magic show

meditation caught in the quiet
absorbing diversity wandering
sitting visual symphonies
zones of cement shells
steel shutters, mercantile commerce
set it up…sell…tear it down…go home.

transition images
light shadow
adjust to eternal flow
energies

senses whisper confident poems easy.

Conversation's Dexterity

Dawn’s orange lightness spread over the Black Sea.

Curious enrolled in a Push Them Through English School. I need vocabulary and the courage to use it with meaning, dexterity and humor. I know my English is not grammatically perfect but I know my English is fluent, said Independence.

Casablanca

I know what I don’t know, said Z. The more I learn the less I know. Real eyes see real lies.

You are the teachers, Lucky said to Turkish beginners brain-washed by parents, media and education system. I am a student.

They expressed fervent Denial, an Egyptian river. No, you are the teacher. We have no free choice or logical imperative to accept responsibility for our learning. If we accept responsibility we have to accept the consequences and do the work BUT we are lazy. We live in a never-ending existential crisis. We are conditioned to sit, listen and memorize. We blend in, like Leo's history teacher warned. We just want to pass the fucking exams. It’s your job to create a facsimile of grammar book learning.

The less I do the fewer mistakes I make, said one smiling with cunning social intelligence. The fewer mistakes I make, said their twin with cunning social intelligence, the less I am criticized.

You got that BS write, said Lucky.

Light my fire, said Jim Morrison trying to impress two girls.

Feed me, said another. I am not a participant. I am a victim.

I know what you mean, said another SAD student. It’s fun being a victim. We can blame everyone else with our projected fears and loss for our failure to be real, human and brave.

See with soft eyes, said Lucky. We see through our eyes, not with our eyes.

Thanks for life lesson #7, said a past tense grammar addict injecting a lethal dose of acquiescence into their heart-mind.

You’re welcome. Next.

I have two scissors and one brother.

How are you? I am 21 and you?

How old are you? I am fine and you?

Speak memory.

Oh yeah? The safest memories are those you never remember.

Memories are all you have.

Are your needs being met?

That’s a fundamental quest-ion. Right there with the What Is Life quest-ion.

You get one chance with dignity and grace. Get is the joker word in English.

I am Curious. It’s a pleasure to see you again. Go with the flow. Flow with your glow. Flow and grow is an honorable quest. I sing and live in a flow state in Giresun, said Lucky. So I heard.

A traveler passing through brought good luck to silversmith, cook, baker, candlestick maker, fish hawker, cheese seller, broom maker men, women sewing cloth, merchants selling knives, banging copper, punching leather, women brewing tea, men cutting roots, laughing children and students saying yeah, yeah we’ve heard all this before, as singing musicians overcoming temporary anxieties with flowing confidence speaking in tongues wandered narrow alleys of becoming.

Poetic inspiration. Short, fast and deadly.

A wandering minstrel in Trabzon played his Kemil with love inside shadows of tolerance and charity. His broken orange shoebox collected currency from enamored strangers. A young girl turned to her mother, you know the words mama and I know the music - he plays loss, hope and memory. It’s our cultural history sweetie.

Crystals reflected an island where Amazon women warriors took no prisoners. They had sex once a year and abandoned males in pine forests.

A busy busboy checked his obsessive watch. Out. Pulsating tick-tock. Big time waits for no one.

Office hysterics. A young English teacher from Plymouth expressed his quest. I need empathic accuracy. Look it up, said Lexicon opening his heart.

The Language Company