Easily amused

Children of all ages are easily amused

by repetition and task-based activities

like sweeping, fucking, eating, sleeping,

milling around and staring at phones with vacant eyes

happy sheep slaves addicted to phones

surrender their consciousness.

Cheap thrills. So it goes.

*

Tribal survivors ate roots and plants garnished with entropy.

Survivors passed through civilizations seeking antiquities. They reported back with evidence sewn into their clothing to avoid detection at porous India-Tibetan borders. They severed small threads along hemlines, Chinese silk gowns and Japanese cotton kimonos. Their discoveries poured light rays into waterfalls rushing over Anasazi cliff dwellings into sage and pinion forests.

Survivors arrived at a mythopoetic part of their journey.

I reflected on the unconscious residue of social, cultural, ethical and spiritual values.

I needed masks. I needed to understand the underlying mysteries inside death masks. I confronted the realm of spirit. I created masks on my pilgrimage. My journey is the destination. Masks signifying the dignity of my intention thwarted demons and ghosts. I became spirits dancing in light.

Everything is light in my shamanistic interior landscape. I released the ego - Ease-God-Out - detached from outcomes, eliminated the need for control or approval, trusted spirit energies and remained light about it.

Inside light with slow fingers and long thin ivory nails I turned clay into pots. Spinning spirals danced on the wheel of time.

I finished throwing them used them for tribal ceremonies and smashed delicate clay pots to earth.

They exploded into the air creating volcanic ash coating everything in a fine dust.

I dug into the soil of my soul.

I scattered raw turquoise stones along a trail of sacrificial tears on a long walk through geography.

Precise

Writers are shamans.

We go into the mountains and we come back with visions for our tribes.

Our holy assignment.

Wolf meets dog. Freedom vs. slavery.

Writing is a river with many tributaries.

Empathy - Cognitive & Emotional

Mushin - no thought, no emotion, no expectation

Kafka - it's about impossible situations and ambiguity

Dialogue with an image. What / why it speaks to us. What does it say to us?

Collecting Dust

I climbed through the center of Bali inside magical light past an extinct sacred volcano at Lake Batur carrying a portable word machine, a map carved on narwhal bone, codices or painted books and texts on bark paper and cactus fiber called Amate including animal skins and dialogue of Mayan origin.

Gathering flames I lit a piece of bark for guidance. My hair caught fire. I mixed volcanic ash with water, creating a thick paste of red ocher, a cosmetic balm rich with antioxidants. I applied this to my skin to gain entry and passage through the spirit world of ancestors.

To become clay I created clay. I needed dust.

I collected dust and minute grains of mica. Teams of gravediggers, weavers, butchers and writers explored rain forests, jagged mountains and impenetrable jungles collecting dust.

Hunters dived into, under and through massive Columbia waterfalls near tributaries where the confluence of Northwest rivers gnashed their teeth, snaking past abandoned Hanford nuclear plants where fifty-five million gallons of radioactive waste in decaying drums left over from W.W. II slowly seeped 130 feet down into the ground toward water tables.

The waste approached 250 feet as multinational laboratories, corporations and Department of Energy think tanks vying for projects and energy contract extensions discussed glassification options and emergency evacuation procedures according to regulations and Robert’s Rules Of Order inside the chaos of their well ordered scientific communities.

Tribal survivors ate roots and plants garnished with entropy.

Survivors passed through civilizations seeking antiquities. They reported back with evidence sewn into their clothing to avoid detection at porous India-Tibetan borders. They severed small threads along hemlines, Chinese silk gowns and Japanese cotton kimonos. Their discoveries poured light rays into waterfalls rushing over Anasazi cliff dwellings into sage and pinion forests.

Survivors arrived at a mythopoeic part of their journey.

I reflected on the unconscious residue of social, cultural, ethical and spiritual values.

I needed masks. I needed to understand the underlying mysteries inside death masks. I confronted the realm of spirit. I created masks on my pilgrimage. My journey was the destination. Masks signifying the dignity of my intention thwarted demons and ghosts. I became spirits dancing in light.

Everything was light in my shamanistic interior landscape. I released the ego - Ease-God-Out - detached from outcomes, eliminated the need for control or approval, trusted spirit energies, and remained light about it.

Inside light with slow fingers and long thin ivory nails I turned clay into pots. Spinning spirals danced on the wheel of time.

I finished throwing them used them for tribal ceremonies and smashed delicate clay pots to earth.

They exploded into the air creating volcanic ash coating everything in a fine dust.

I dug into the soil of my soul.

I scattered raw turquoise stones along a trail of sacrificial tears on a long walk through geography.

Kayapuya

I am an old dialect of Kalapuya tribes. I respect spirit energies.

I hear with my eyes and see with my ears.

I understand your love for the spirit power guardian. I am an ancestor speaking 300 languages from our history. Now only 150 dialects remain.

A hunting gathering people speaking Pentian, we numbered 3,000 in 1780. We believe in nature spirits, vision quests and guardian spirits.

Our shamans, called amp a lak ya taught us how seeking, finding and following one’s spirit or dream power and singing our song was essential in community.

I speak in tongues, in ancient dialects about love. They are dialects of ancestors who lived here for 8,000 years before where you are now. In the forest near the river all animal spirits welcome you with their love. They are manifestations of your being.

I am blessed to welcome you here. You have walked many paths of love to reach me.

My dirt path is narrow and smooth in places, rocky in others.

I am the soil under your feet.

I feel your weight, your balance - your weakness and your strength.

I hear your heart beating as my ancestors pounded ceremonial drums.

I feel the tremendous surging force of your breath extend into my forest.

Wind accepts your breath.

I am everything you see, smell, taste, touch and hear.

I am the oak, the fir and pine trees spreading like dreams upon your outer landscape.

I am your inner landscape. I see you stand silent in the forest hearing trees nudge each other. “Look,” they say, “someone has returned.”

I love the way you absorb the song of brown body thrush collecting moss for a nest. I am the small brown bird saying hello. I am the sweet-throated song you hear without listening.

At night two owls sing their distant song and their music fills your ears with mystery and love.

I am warm spring sun on your face filtered through leaves of time.

I am a spider’s web dancing with diamond points of light.

I am the rough fragile texture of bark you gently remove before connecting the edge of an axe with wood.

You carry me through my forest. Your flame creates heat of love. I am the taste of pitch on your lips, the odor of forest in your nostrils filling your lungs. It is sweet.

I am the cold rain and wet snow, hot sun and four seasons.

I am yellow, purple, and red, blue, and orange flowers from brown earth.

Language cannot be separated from who you are and where you live.

I say this so you will remember everything in this forest.

I took care of this place and now your love has the responsibility with respect, dignity and mindfulness.

Ice Girl in Banlung - Chapter 9

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 while the men fished, planted crops, domesticated animals. Children played in extended families learning life lessons. 

  One day a boat filled with white men sailed down the river 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.

  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 material, 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 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 had 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 walk to a new jungle.

  We are here to go.

  Eighty applauded. They cried, Tell us another.

  Ok, I said. Maybe you will see a connection. In Turkey divorce is seen as a failure. It’s a schizophrenic country where women know their role and stay in it. A place where mothers control and manipulate their daughter’s behavior, attitudes and imaginary freedom with a heavy dictatorial hand called love. Chains of love are heavier than the gravity of thinking.

  One woman I knew was different. She confided in me. I listened. After seven months of marriage she’d decided to leave her husband and filed divorce papers.

  “I feel so much better,” she said. She had a lot to say. She’d believed her husband in the beginning.

  “He lied to me. He courted me with sweet words and I thought, or believed I thought or thought I believed he had an open mind but I was disappointed because he wasn’t honest...so after some time measured in weeks then months I saw his, how do you say, irresponsibility, how he wouldn't contribute his heart to me, to our relationship and then, when I tried to talk to him he was closed to me, he shut down emotionally and I was working and trying to keep the flat up and work on our relationship but I saw it was difficult, then really, really impossible to live with everything in my brain and heart. Now, when he saw my action to end the marriage he was filled with remorse and regret and apologies. But it’s too late. I told him to move out. He returned to his mama. He tries to bother me every day in his childlike whining way but it’s over. I can handle it. I am strong and know what I want in my life. My family is very supportive of my decision.”

  “In China it’s always about saving face,” I said. “Appearances. In Anatolia, it’s about your self-respect, growth and personal dignity. Some grow, some die day by day.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I am not living the lie anymore.”

  “Now your heart is calm. You’re taking responsible for your life. I am happy for you.”

  “It’s tough,” she said, “living here where women are beautiful and sad with synchronicity. They’ve fashioned these well-defined skin-tight PERSONA masks out of loss, hopelessness, confusion, and serious misguided misunderstood maligned relationship blues using tears wrapped in self-pity, shame, guilt and silence.

Millions of us wait for an arranged marriage at a fake bus stop to deter male Alzheimer patients from wandering off."

  “Here,” ordered the Byzantium Great Father Authority Figure disguised as a religious or political fundamentalist zealot, “accept this man, this stranger into your heart of hearts and give us many poor deprived children. He bought you. Produce more.”

  A gravedigger blessed their union. Dearly beloved, an unpleasant global fact is unregulated population, no medicine or education and lack of job opportunities.

  That could never happen here, said a Chinese female student. I was born to pay for my parent’s sins.

  Yeah, yeah, said another. My mother was appointed to have me. Eighty applauded.

  Yes, and one more thing ladies, said Leo. After graduating, while living at home and trying to find a job along with six million recent college graduates, if you consider marriage you can forget the A men; the ones with cash, car, career, credit cards and condo. They are taken. You’ll have to settle for B or C quality.

  A feminine sigh ran through the room and jumped out a 10^th floor window. Goodbye cruel world.

  I’ll kill myself first, said one girl. It’s an honorable alternative to facing family shame and humiliation.

*

In the Under Story, fire from burning bamboo, coconut leaves and plastic garbage in world jungles circled its veins through a heart’s four clamoring chambers. Smoky love echoed from the Forest Floor to the Understory, rising to the Canopy emerging through the Emergent. Bird of Paradise, Eagles and Macaws took wing.

*

  Monsoons arrived. Ice Girl played her unpublished symphony for children under 100.

Shaman: Monsoon’s intention is to clean air, turn dusty red rutted ragged roads into quagmires and provide essential moisture to roots below the surface of appearances.

What you don’t see is fascinating.

Unpleasant facts on life’s road of eternal suffering are more plentiful than 14.7 million forced abortions in China, universal health care, education or clean drinking water. Twelve million stateless humans live on Earth. 17,000 children die of starvation every day.