Giants

“Try this,” said Raymond Carver a famous short story writer. “Write 25 words. Cut it to 15. Cut it to 5. This is what dead editors and hatchet men did to my work.”

Let me try, said Leo  ... here are 25  ... Once upon a time there was a tribe of orphans from Asia who escaped from captivity and abusive life where they were forced to … (haul shit, fuck evil men, work in a factory making electronic gadgets)

Fine. Next? Let me try, said Tran. Here are 15 … A tribe of orphans escaped the tyranny of forced labor and ran away to be.

Good. Next? Let me try, said Rita. Here are 5 … The scared orphans ran away. Precise, said RC, Keep it simple and short. Shorter is better. Less is more. Short, fast, deadly.

Character is action, said Omar. In a novel words reveal a character’s action. It’s internal and meditative. On stage in a play it’s all action.

Writers say what others are afraid to say.

They write naked.

They write in blood.

They write in exile.

See and smell their fear strength and authenticity. Heavy, deep and real. HDR.

Communicate without Voice words. WE sense their sincere authenticity. Writers confront their mental illness every day.

They love SIGN language. Gestures. Their awareness is misunderstood when speaking in SIGN because Speaking people ignore you. Voice Ones are illiterate and interrupt each other. See their fear being alienated, bored and alone. See, taste, hear, smell their fear to BE deaf, dumb and blind.

How do people cope using gestures, said Devina. Gestures control people. Asian Voice Ones talk over each other in their neurotic way. Loud and louder is their mantra. The loudest one is the BIG winner. Congratulations.

Here are my fears said Rita: The fear of living in Cambodia where you are always afraid looking over your shoulder and seeing the past with hard eyes because you have no imagination after twenty years of pure survival instinct with no incentive no initiative facing nightmare futures.

You are afraid someone will sneak up behind you and kill you. You suffer from fear and superstition. 1.7 million hungry ghosts swarm around you. Day in. Day out. We’re talking about some serious long-term trauma with a side order of shame and guilt. It will take another generation or two to clean our consciousness.

Rita: When I grow up, I will be a Fear & Superstition Manager. I’ll have booth on a red dusty road with an F & S sign. People will give me their fear(s) and superstition(s). I won’t say anything  ... I’ll smile and accept it. Thank you. Healed, they continue on their way. I burn it.

For example, they fear someone shows up in the middle of the night while they dream of peace and freedom and kills them. They fear armed strangers raping their screaming wife and daughters while they watch. They fear someone cutting out their tongue. They fear someone in their family not returning from the killing fields.

They suffer the fear of remembering & the fear of forgetting. They fear memory.

They fear losing their children, said Rita. They fear having no imagination. They fear asking why  ... They fear being distracted by stimuli in the environment … They fear controlling their environment … They fear their environment because it controls them … They fear living in Asian countries where, due to circumstances controlled by aliens, parents, teachers and authority figurines they live in perpetual childhood.

Adults keep you there with fake dependency & emotional abuse. They teach you fear. You eat fear three times a day. Delicious fear they say. Have some more. They are the great manipulators. Adults are giants with giant voices and giant control techniques. They threaten you with fear of pain, shame and guilt. It’s a vicious circle.

Life is a circle, a Fibonacci spiral.

The Wheel of Life is the universe.

When you meditate you are free from rebirth. Humans need love. Humans need compassion, kindness and empathy. They need to talk less and draw more. It’s a social and cultural thing. Giants never learned how to read or write. Giants fight, eat, fuck and sleep.

Un Pleasant factoid: 69 million children worldwide of primary school age will not  go to school this morning or tomorrow, next week, or next year.

I fear struggling to join the rising middle class in _______ without political connections and getting a degree in business, said Rita, After authority figures said a business degree was essential thousands got one. Many graduates don’t speak or care to learn English for future opportunities where they need it. They’re stuck working dead-end paper pushing menial jobs, sweeping dreams, chopping vegetables, doing boom-boom, sleeping or slaving in the tourism sector.

They need English to speak with foreigners or to get a job.

A teacher makes maybe $1,000 a month minus bribe fees. They lack initiative. Facing tiny sheep they fear losing control and acting like a fool in the theatre of life.

People fear questioning authority in Utopia before they execute you with a bullet in the back of your brain, said Leo speaking of historical awareness, I dance like nobody’s looking.

Yes, said Rita, I fear meeting my hungry ghost in a country where you:

a) are completely lost

b) have no comprehension what people say

c) suffer paranoia, a terminal disease

d) enjoy tedious ennui boredom carving a niche in your soul and you crave endless electronic distractions and gadget sensory overload

e) need food, water, clothing and shelter from the storm

f) have a humbling life changing experience of magnificent proportions    

g) hear a bell signifying enlightenment and satori, said Omar

Book of Amnesia, V1

Visionaries

The asylum is a prison and a protection. We shelter psychotic misfits, deviants, shamans, tricksters and uninhibited geniuses. The outside is the inside veiled in mystery. We escaped the maddening crowd to be on an island.

You’re either mad or innocent. A polite genius. Madness is healthy.

Do you work from the inside out or outside in? The outside objectivity is an illusion. The inside mind-at-large is flowing chemical and electrical energy.

The asylum is filed with writers, artists, musicians, dreamers, creatives and orphans exiled from many countries. You wouldn’t believe the input, output. In out, in out, click and clack quacks, scribble dribble quibble, maniacs, dancers, actors, poets, musicians, playwrights, and painters with canvases expand their dreams. They create a world of memory using active imagination.

You breathe in you breathe out.

My body, my breath, my practice.

We have dreamers, screamers, singers, schemers and bell ringers. Ding-dong. A monk ringing a bell walks down a Yangon, Burma street at 4 a.m. Everyone shuffles to the meditation hall. Sit in silence. Silence is a great blessing. Silence is the loudest noise on Earth. Deep silence = Deep bliss.

The bell is small brass with a clapper. What is the sound of one bell clapping? Meditators and artists see with their ears and hear with their eyes. Nature abhors a vacuum. Nature is my teacher. I see through soft eyes.

Janitors, Grave Digger and literary outlaws are essential artists. People make a beautiful mess and I clean it up.

 Blade Runner

What do inmates sing about? They sing about identity theories, art, sexual and spiritual love, freedom, addictions, ideas, suicide, hope, light, fragility, strength, integrity, beauty, truth and mystery. They sing the nomadic alliterative alternative.

Zeynep and her friends are visionaries. They are visceral realists. Why does the ONE STATE lock them up? They are a perceived threat to the stability and social harmony of the status quo. They’ve been branded, labeled, categorized, diagnosed, drugged, tortured and incarcerated. Perhaps incinerated. Set yourself on fire.

Burn like the sun, radiant … flame your life.

Give a person a match and they’re warm for a minute.

Set them on fire and they’re warm for the rest of their life.

If you catch on fire jump in the river.

Sounds like fear based propaganda. It is. Clearly. Precisely. Concisely ... Too many adverbs if you ask me, but what do I know, I’m only a word janitor. Every single fucking beautiful day I collect tons of word garbage in a Top Secret BURN BAG. I haul it to a gnat on life’s river, light it and leave it free flowing down the stream of life. Yes, said Death, Flowing.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Flower

process is more alluring then product

Dimmi - tell me your secrets ... fundamental laws of nature ... synthesis ... geometry + shadow + light

Barthes - photographs attract us because they are pensive, they think

ideas in living laboratories

*

History, war, and violence screwed us, said Rita. Human genocide animals massacred 1.7 million out of 11 million between 1975-1979. Millions are subsistence farmers. It is a rural agrarian society. They produce what they need. They eat, sleep, plant, harvest, fuck and sit around.

They are soft and kind. They have a good heart.

As Buddhists they visualize a positive future with good education, health care, quality medicine, job opportunities and community strength.

They drift through your sensation, perception and consciousness with the speed and grace of a cosmic Lepidoptera. The lesson is to tolerate with kindness and Patience, your great teacher, the empty-eyed star gazing staring humans. Bored after five minutes they lose interest and leave you be. Zap, like a zigzag lightning bolt. Gone. Zap said Rita.

Let’s pretend to be exactly who we are. Let’s pretend to be someone else in life’s play.

Whew what a mouthful, said Tran, an amputee from Vietnam, Yeah spilling sounds and metaphors, the human condition reads history and weeps, time history is a play, create memory history and re-write it. Your memory is the world, said Omar, And the world is a village.

Everything I need is here.

Cry me a river. Build me a bridge. Get over it.

Question?

What do you recall during the one-hour full body massage with blind Flower at Seeming Hands? Her hands were all. Her hands were water air soft gentle sensations. Learning sensing and feeling is her physical way. She engaged all her senses. Touch is her essence.

She knew your pressure points. Soft, medium or hard, she said. During her meditation we considered this fragment. We discovered immediate direct experience with structure form and literary vulgarity.

We slow down inside a labyrinth contemplating a lotus growing from mud.

A writer is a dwarf, invisible and must survive. They write naked, in blood and in exile.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Burma

Overtime

I shared a fairy tale with 80 freshmen in Utopia. Once upon a time in the long now there was a continent, a landmass floating on water. White barbarians labeled it Asia on dusty maps. Deep inside Asia were vast lands, rivers and mountains.

Overtime, a historical bandit with a reputation for laughter, magic, fear, superstition, and an insatiable appetite for diverse languages, customs and cultures lived in jungles and forests. Others preferred living in remote mountains.

Jingle, jangle, jungle. Using natural materials they created musical instruments, simple weapons, homes, fish traps, snares and tools like looms. The women had babies, wove cloth and prepared food. Men fished, planted crops, domesticated animals. Children in extended families learned life lessons.

One day a boat filled with white men sailed down the heart of darkness to a village deep in the jungle. They wore shiny clothing, spoke a language the people didn't understand and carried weapons that made a lot of noise and scared the people. They pretended to be friendly by offering gifts. The leader of the village welcomed them. They had a party.

Life is a party. Too soon it's yesterday.

Mandalay, Burma

Every day more white people came down the river on boats named Destiny. They were on a quest for gold and slaves. Owning, using and discarding slaves had proven to be an essential part of their historical evolution on other continents. Their mantra was cheap people, cheap labor, cheap raw materials, cheap goods, cheap markets and much Profit.

We are civilized and you are savages, said the white men. We have religion. It is called Greed & Wealth. We are on a mission from the great chief. We control fire. We control time. We control people. We control nature. We have machines. We take what we want.

The village gave them hospitality and shelter and friendship. The white men were greedy. They took control of the village, the people and the jungle.

Every day the white men marched their slaves deep into the jungle singing, we control nature. We shall overcome. They spread diseases. They planted fear. They planted envy and jealousy. They manipulated villages against villages. They divided and conquered, one against the other. History taught them well. They harvested wealth in the form of people, precious stones, rubber and every useful raw material. They were never satisfied. Their appetite grew and grew.

One night a village shaman said, to survive we travel to new jungles. Our dream is to be a free person in a free country.

The 80 applauded. That’ll be the day. Tell us another fairy tale.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Mandalay

Vientiane Kid

Life Lesson #5

What is life, said Lucky.

I’m a big seven as in seven, said an omniscient reliable Lao narrator. Your life is not a test or a dress rehearsal. If it is an actual life your invisible friends protect you from desire, anger, ignorance and fear with courage.

My dad’s not very smart. It’s his DNA, a string theory of letters. Genetics. Gee. Net. Icks. 

Let me give you a kind-hearted example of his stupidity. It’s the rainy season. Slashing squalling delicious rain. Soft, cool, soothing. Like tears. Cry me a river.

It’s pouring like honey. What’s dear old dad do? He washes his silver passenger van in a downpour. Smart eh? Yeah, he’s trying to impress a dry writer polishing words by using his intelligent hose running wealthy water over rain. Cleaning. He gets a free shower.

He ignores me. I am a tool.

Grandmother sits on our austere 1924 colonial dark-brown balcony folding banana leaves for a ceremony. Every morning at dawn she walks to the muddy road near the Mekong offering Buddhist monks handfuls of rice. She burns incense at the family altar. She nurtures her shrinking garden after her son decided to plant a cement parking lot. What a clever little man.

My grandfather stares at rain, forming lakes.

Daddy’s very busy. He disappears for hours drinking beer with friends. Playing around with a secret squeeze in dark places. She’s starving for cash. A poor girl from a poor family in a poor country needs to make a living poor thing.

My mom’s also smart. What’s the difference between smart and clever? Maybe that’s the answer to your life quest-ion.

Survival with a capital S.

After the rain when it's dry and the smallest full moon of the year rises above the Mekong before a river festival filled with floating orange flowers and burning candles she incinerates plastic garbage. Yeah. Yeah. Burn baby burn. Light my fire.

It's a sweet smell let me tell you. Like when Duvall in Apocalypse Now said, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. That smell. What's the word? Acrid. 

When she’s not burning plastic trash she sweeps. Broom music. Stone cold. She cooks. She pretends to be busy. She’s a baby delivery service. What’s another mouth? She manages home, kids and cash. I’m worth $3,500 on the stolen kid market in China. My older sister would’ve been aborted. Bad luck for her.

Mom ignores me. I am a tool.

She’s super busy doing her gentle mother routine. Later, she squawks. She's a soft kind later.

Parents and teachers and millions of lazy humans here love to pretend to be busy. I guess it gives their short life value.

Milling around is an art form with style. Art transforms life.

Lao are soft and kind. We have a good heart. We are not as mercenary as the Vietnamese. We drift through your sensation, perception and consciousness with the grace of a cosmic Lepidoptera in a gentle breeze.

The trick is to tolerate with kindness and Patience, your great teacher, the empty-eyed star gazing starers and hustlers. Bored after five minutes they lose interest and leave you alone. Zap like a zigzag lightning bolt. Gone.

Vietnamese plant rice.

Cambodians watch it grow.

Laotians hear it grow.

Nature’s a great teacher. We are nature’s tools.

For cultural, historical, educational, environmental, emotional, intellectual and economic reasons milling around is a popular daily activity. This unpleasant fact cannot be denied or ignored or forgotten like a missing leg after discovering a landmine in paradise. 

Limited opportunities, unregulated population growth, substandard education, no medicine, no hope and inconclusive futures enhance Milling Around.

It kills time alleviating boredom a dreaded lethargic tedious disease.

Boredom is fear’s patience.

Milling around kills the human spirit. No initiative. Period. How sweet. How charming. It’ll take another generation to get a life and accept personal responsibility for choices and consequences.

Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam are alive with unexploded ordinance, amputees, superstition and ghosts.

Existence is one long perpetual distraction. Say what?

You may as well do what you love because you're going to spend most of your life doing it. We breed, work, get slaughtered and mill around. We are told to blend in to survive. My mom taught me this hard cruel life lesson. She reminds me every time I open my mouth to express an original free thinking idea. That’s what parents and teachers teach us by example and they have extensive Life Experience - another amazing teacher.

If you ask why they cut out your tongue.

I’m too young to know much. I know what I don’t know. Anyway, I need to finish my school paper on developing moral character with social intelligence, courage, self-control, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity.

How do you develop self-control and courage?

By failing. Fail better. There are two kinds of character.

What are they?

Moral character is fairness, generosity and integrity.

Performance character is effort, diligence and perseverance.

Kids need challenges to grow. Like hardships and deprivation. Life is trial and error and taking risks. Daring is not fatal.

Thanks for life lesson #5. You are the future of Laos.

You’re welcome. I have my junior philosopher’s badge.

Weaving A Life, V1