jump out of your skin

backwards

hello soul - dream

a photograph

is a secret

about a secret

Birdsong

A man left his village outside Phonsavan in N.E. Laos. He walked up Street D-1. 

Hundreds of motorcycles raced past taking people to work, the market and schools.

Trucks roared up and down D-1 toward mountains and construction sites.

Dump trucks welded in China belching black smoke zoomed along filled with rocks, gravel and red dirt throwing dust into air. Semi tractor trailers labored uphill toward Vietnam loaded with economic potential.

Antiquated rusty green trucks from old wars carried newly cut massive trees to Vietnam furniture factories.

$10,000 a tree. Chairs, tables, toothpicks. Let's eat.

Rows of silver pickup trucks with tinted windows blasted along D-1. Motorcycles played road tag weaving in and out with tuk-tuks and H'mong women faces creased deep by years of labor carrying fresh vegetables to the market in wicker baskets on their backs.

A black and yellow bird in a cage near motorcycle repair shops whistled to the walking man. He shared whistles, I am a stranger here, there and everywhere.

MK 89

Private Burmese school.

Parents rule fool.

Dr. Scary and Mrs. Marbles.

Ear material.

Mandalay fire department.

Burmese females wear flowers in their hair. Everyday.

shame sings

My name is Li Bow Down.

I am in charge of the Tibetan Monastery Re-Education Through Reform with Severe Consequences pogrom program. My masters called me out of retirement.

I was playing mahjong, screwing concubines and enjoying Fujian tea with friends at the Shanghai-FreeLand resort. Authority ordered me to get my old ass back to Lhasa and take care of THE problem. Back to the future.

They gave me a fire extinguisher to douse flaming monks. Ah, the ignobility. Fire is the essence of life.

Here’s an uncensored image of what we do to people in the program.

Li put an image on a table.

See this woman, he commanded. She is denouncing her family, friends and most important, herself in public. We are big on shame. We are the masters and they are the puppets.

“Shame on you!” yelled 1.7 billion puppet people.

“Shame! Shame! Shame!”

This is one of our more popular and effective methods of creating a harmonious society. It works wonders, because if memory serves me correctly and it does, mind you, serve me well, we’ve been coercing people for 5,000 years. Pick your favorite dynasty.

We used to put them in wooden stocks with their crimes painted on paper necklaces and parade them through town. They confessed. We call it self-criticism (samzen) re-education and reform. Big buzzwords. They were denounced in public. Talk about blatant social disapproval.

Now we just shoot them down like dogs in the street.

Maybe you think I am joking, making this up. Well, I didn't make it to the top of the Commie scrap heap by bowing down to big nosed foreigners telling me how to maintain control in Tibet and keep the monks and serfs in line.

As you know because I say so the peaceful compassionate monks in Tibet provoked the armed, young, naive, scared People's Reactionary Liberation soldiers on March 10th in Year Zero.

The rest is history, well, not real history because we rewrite that when it suits our propaganda purposes.

It’s easy and convenient.

Life is cheap here. More tea?

History is the symptom. Humans are the disease. Mark my words.

treehouse

I’m broiling on the balcony of my Oregon treehouse.

Getting down and dirty after 1,001 years away from the typewriter. Covered in construction dust and needing oil it’s a small portable dangerous machine. It’s capable of transforming life energies and weaving adventures. Threads follow the needle.

I am a peripatetic traveler, literary outlaw, photographer and journalist. I’m lucky to get it down now and make sense of it later.

I’m a mirror in the mandala of my labyrinth.

I am Labrys, from the Greek for a two-headed axe.

I write with passion and vision.

Short fast and deadly.

Punctuation is a nail.

My mirror reflects everything. I’m confidant and self- reliant. I explore the human condition.

Human energies, frequencies and vibrations reflect languages, lives and attitudes. I absorb being, joy, anger, jealousy, ignorance, desire, fear, passion and suffering. Hurl your thunderbolt unto death.

Meditate on the process of your death.

Suffering is an illusion.

I accept universal illusions. Wishes, values, attitudes, joy, belief systems and dreams project perceptions in my mirror. My mirror is free of dust. I evolve discovering emotional strength, trust, wisdom, peace and love.

I experience forgiveness with emotional honesty. I am tired of beating myself up. I know the words limitations,boundaries, vulnerability and creativity in multiple languages. These truths don’t surprise you after 1,001 years of wandering.

Keep a diamond in your mind.

A Century is Nothing