Moon reflection
River crackles
Mountain silent
*
Light of moon
Breaks mountain shadow
Dances on river
*
Crescent sends yellow
Music dancing over river
Flickering into darkness
*
Bamboo baskets across her
Shoulders
Pacing strong
Steady across a long bridge
Toward mountain home
“Beside the rivering waters of, hither and thithering waters of, night.”
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Through the rain drunk meadow
Fat on mountain showers and drowsy
I stitch, in my scissor step, through the long grass
A furrow like a tipsy ploughman
And harvest before my boots
A skittering wake of hoppers blustery
Down to the rocky banks
Under cottonwood shade.
Trout wand in my hand,
A silly baton, slicing the air.
And like a conductor browbeating the woodwinds
I conjure the slipstream.
I come to track this raveling course
And to track the course in me;
To watch the stalking sun crest the canyon wall
And paint the water pewter shimmery.
To wonder too
At the dizzy stones
And mayflies
Clouding the wild roses.
To feel my boy’s old heart thump, still,
When the water piles up
On the sudden shoulders
Of the heavy trout.
To smell the consequence
Of my slippery steps
On the wet and awkward rocks
That bruise the mint and mugwort.
To see silver dimes clinging
To the water-jostled cress -
Glinting coins in the watery sun
That spend well still indeed.
And too there, once,
Gold-spurred columbines
Elegant as shooting stars
On stems impossibly delicate.
To listen to the fluent
Gravel-throated chortling
Of water on rocks
And the dark sluicing soughing
Of wind in the sedge -
Old languages I remember well
Wandering wild within willow banks.
To feel the cold on my wet pilgrim feet,
The chill on my late autumn cheeks
In the weird arctic half-light
As dusk draws down the glen on me
And the stars a sudden swath of sublime.
And to again remember, surely,
That never will I know
The deep watery secrets
In the currents of time
Unplumbed in dark undercut banks.
From Mountain Wizard, by Thomas J. Phalen.
Namaste,
A foreigner put a pile of gold on a table in Laos, turned to the old man squinting through one good eye and said, “I will give you this pile of gold for your daughter.”
“I want more,” said the old man. “Her face and body and heart is Lao. She has Vietnamese blood. It is supply and demand. Business is business. It’s all about user value. It’s about exchange value. No plastic. Cash only. See this machete?”
He waved it in the man’s face, cutting him off.
Nearby, two male tourists hadn’t decompressed. They tried to speak in complete sentences. It was impossible. One started, trying to release sounds, impressive words, phrases, sentences and, like a game of chess, war or conquest wearing stupidity and a clear lack of respect the OTHER one cut him off at the throat with sharp sophisticated annunciation.
A verbal machete.
Frustrated, he grimaced suffering severe brain damage. Short circuit. Transmission lines went down. Thud. Crash. Burn.
In their remote jungle village near the River of Darkness they carved images of their dead.
Metta.
Greetings,
The recent water journey encompassed long musical boats on the Nam Ou River. The Nam Ou flows south from Yunnan, China and meets the Mekong originating in Tibet, near Luang Prabang, Laos. The Mekong continues through Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to the South China Sea.
From Luang Prabang its seven hours to Nong Khiaw. The narrow boat and narrow seats held 15 tourists. Nong Khiaw has 4,000 people and is surrounded by mountains, villages, many guesthouses and eco-tourism opportunities for trekking and home stays with local people.
Neurotic foreigners speak of their angst, anxiety, trembling heart stories. Bye-bye tourists.
The timeless Lao river: a woman breastfeeds her baby, smiling, floating clouds in yellow green forest rising above bamboo homes, cooking fires, women washing clothing and their long black hair in the river. Singing.
In the morning a mother, young boy and husband, with the help of villagers load five bags of cement and 20 sheets of corrugated tin roofing material into a long thin boat for the upriver voyage to Muang Khua. Along the seven hour trip we stop at their small hamlet to unload their building materials.
We are surrounded by rising limestone and karst peaks, diverse vegetation and wild green nature.
Scores of yellow butterflies dance near wet sand. Naked children play, dance and swim in day's heat. Water buffalo wallow in mud. Fishermen cast nets. Bamboo rafts with generators collect rapid wave energy, converting it into electricity through suspended wires to elevated villages.
We ride swirling rapids. The propeller breaks in a series of rapids and we float backwards to a calm area, beaching the boat. The driver strips down, hammers off the bent blade, attaches a spare and fortifies the connection with a nail. We head upstream. Life is but a dream.
Muang Khua is a small river town for tourists arriving or departing by bus from the eastern Vietnam border.
Three of us find a boat driver with a narrow boat willing to take us to HatSa six hours north. By Jan-Feb this section of the river will be too shallow for navigation.
It's all this slowing down, energies and breath. A reconfirmation of the daily flow with mythic extremities. It is clear flowing water, many turbulent rapids, narrow canyons, wind, clouds, forests, and green eyed dragonflies.
Along the way a local man tells the driver to stop near a wide tributary flowing from the forest. He gets out, puts his bag on stones, washes his hands, waves and walks into the river disappearing into deep forest shade.
He is home.
Metta.
Greetings,
Three days and 400 kilometers north on the Nam Ou river into Pongsali province between China and Vietnam were magical and marveLaos.
Serene, wild, majestic rapids and calm zones. Pure nature. Rough, steep, verdant. The river is life's highway providing food, electricity, water for crops, bathing and transport. Images are being processed.
One clear mind-at-large image is of six young naked girls sitting on a sand bank in afternoon sun waving, yelling, dancing, running into the river...Hi! Hi!
Here are a three links to web sites to enjoy.
Elaine Ling is a professional photographer based in Toronto. We met here. She does amazing work and it's well worth a look. She uses a large format. Her recent book is Land of the Deer Stone. Mongolia, Cuba, Baobab trees, Tibet, Chile.
Legend and meaning in Lao textile motifs. Fibre2Fabric Gallery.
Literacy is an ongoing need in Laos. When I lived in Indonesia I met a teacher on Gili Air island off Lombok. She'd travelled by train from England across Russia, Mongolia and down to Laos. She mentioned Big Brother Mouse in Luang Prabang.
It's a well established essential Lao center for local kids and literacy programs in remote villages.
Metta.
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