Blue eyed ghost

Yes my dear friend it is true, or at least as true as can be for he has returned to the beginning - and this is where his small tale begins.

Rickshaw bells and heavy groaning green and purple pedicabs propelled by thick-legged men prowl through humid traffic air. No one sees him. Everyone stares at the ghost. They are oblivious to his existence.

He walks along a broken cracked sidewalk past hammering men. They build a six-story high extension at the high school. Cement mixers, bamboo scaffolding, emaciated men haul crumbling red bricks. Dancing their future immigrants sing in the rain.. The developer drives a shiny black Benz.

Streets are congested with yellow bulldozers, lorries loaded with dirt and salvaged steel pig iron, City Boat blaring bus horns, small red cabs, and tired students trudging to lessons inside cold cramped cement caverns where teachers arrive late, and leave early after smashing wooden sticks on desks to get their attention; men pedal carts of large blue plastic barrels full of leftover restaurant slop for village pigs and children splash water. It is all play on the streets of dreams.

He passes weathered women in dirty white aprons chopping vegetables with sharp cleavers on scarred wood. Girls mop cement passageways from dawn to dusk.

Dutiful daughters sweep floors or laconically stare at deaf dumb blind televisions stacked on bags of rice, boxes of detergent, hairline fractured straw mattress bedding.

This is the entertainment capital of the world.                   

He passes tables of retired pensioners slapping white marble mahjong pieces into tight manicured rows of strategies as orange vested street cleaning women whisking ornate hard handled bamboo brushes paint the city’s rising dust as a ghost they never imagined dances by, an apparition in their wide eyed wonder.

He speaks the language of silence and this comforts them. His inability to articulate passion and suffering is because, like you, he is a witness, a mirror reflecting reality in humanity’s garden in another incarnation where he trusted you to understand.

Meaning of meaning was obscured by cloudy anger, fear, desire, ignorance and attachment as you waved him away.

You cast him into deep water where he replenished his spirit. His meditation on motivation and intention was clear as he passed through. 

TLC - what is life?

Two Ankara university girls fantasying about sex bought Zippo lighters.

An engraved lighter in a dusty Saigon display case read:

         Once people were born alive and slowly died.

         Now some people are born dead and slowly come to life.

Two high-heeled boys bought flaming gas to impress the girls. “Come next to my fire,” said one. Demurring she said, “I create my own fire. If you come any closer I’ll incinerate you faster than Tarek Bouazizi, a famous fruit and vegetable seller in Tunisia.”

“Amnesia?” said one boy.

“Tunisia, you fucking idiot. Don’t you know anything about the world, geography and Arab Spring dignity, human rights and self-respect? Pay attention shit for brains. Here’s what happened.”

Tarek Bouazizi, 26, sold vegetables on the streets in the small town of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia. The unemployment rate was 30%.

He supported his mother, uncles and five brothers and sisters at home. He loved poetry.

One morning a policewoman demanded free oranges. He said no. She threatened to take everything because he didn’t have a license. He had enough of the endless cycle of poverty, bribery, threats, and corruption and complained at a local government office. They refused to see him. He bought some gasoline. He set himself on fire. He died flaming his life.

Tunisians grabbed their chance for freedom. Their dictator of twenty-three years ran away.

Middle Eastern, North African, Asian despots and autocratic international power hungry madmen went into denial mode.

Oh no, we're next. Needing to maintain power and control, dictators in Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Venezuela, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia among others, gave the military and police free BIG money with strings attached to protect and sustain their intractable insatiable greed.

Contacts = contracts.

They decreased rice prices to appease angry hungry people.

Protect us in our castles and mansions, said dictators. Protect us from educated empowered individuals demanding human rights, social justice, equality, education, jobs, medical care and an end to the charade of our reign of economic terrorism. Protect us from desperate citizens setting themselves on fire. Protect us from the aftermath.

You have to sacrifice the peel to enjoy the fruit, said Arabic Spring. Fear sells.

Hearing this story the boy backed off. Trailing flames the girls departed.

A confidence man, 60, in a worn beige leather jacket entered with his son. A stocky bodyguard with a thick neck, alert steel pupils, and short hair followed them. He was Russian or Tartar sauce. Brown suit, black wing tips. He clasped meaty hands together. He never moved. He watched his boss negotiate with the owner. He glanced at Lucky with meticulous eyes. He swiveled his gaze back to father and son.

The confidence man purchased a lighter and pen. There was a problem with the credit card transaction. He pulled out a cell phone called his bank, slathered words and disconnected. The owner punched in numbers. The sale sailed through.

Taking his purchase he turned to Lucky, “How do you like it here?”

“Everyone is hospitable. Fresh tomatoes are delicious. Anxiety is a national problem. The drug industry is making a fortune.”

“My accountant calculates steady pharmaceutical investment growth in my diversified portfolio. What’s your job?”

“I’m a designer of mysterious linguistic projects. I freelance as a literary prostitute and ephemeral word gravedigger. Alphabets, pictograms and ideograms contain no sound.”

“So I’ve heard. What’s your name?”

“Keyser Soze.”

“Ha. One who talks too much. We have many verbal fools here. Where are you from?”

“I am from the source. We are stardust. I am a stream winner. I don’t belong anywhere.”

“Good luck.”  Clouds opened. The father, son and Holy Ghost disappeared in a flash of blinding light.

“Who do you think he was?”

“Maybe the head of a big organization, maybe a bureaucrat, maybe the Mafia.  Maybe Deep State. Well connected. I never saw him before.”

People entered his shop.

“Goodbye,” said Lucky, “thanks for the tea and hospitality. Suited me to a T. Oh, and one more thing, what is life?”

“Excellent quest-ion. There are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. Let me guess. A bitch? A miracle? A dream? Paranoid attachment? A meaty meal with black and green olives smothered in red chili powder? Getting laid? Randomized coalescing atoms forming cytoplasmic hysteria? What you make it? How you grow? A beautiful mystery? An experiential game we get to play? Answers seeking/discovering quest-ions validating cosmological and deep philosophical significance? I give up. All I know is that you brought me good luck today. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. It’s my fate. I show up, sit a spell, strangers visit and look around. Some buy some don't. I go. The journey is the destination.”

The Language Company

The World is a village

Your village in Northeast Laos thrives near rivers and pine-mountains.

You plant it. You nurture it. You harvest it. You eat it. You carry it.

Every day starts at 4:00 a.m.

You put food into a wicker basket, heave it onto your back and either walk to town or ride with other villagers in the back of a small tractor or truck, belching diesel. Perhaps a tuk-tuk overflowing with soil smells, green life talkers. Maybe on a motorcycle as chilly winds blast your face.

It feels good to be alive.

Get there early. Spread your treasures out on a rice sack near the curb. Cold winds refresh the street. Say hello to friends. Broken dawn breaks over eastern mountains shrouded in fast clouds.

Mothers and daughters arrange labors of love.

Women arrive and unload bags of corn, dead civet cats, onions, greens, bamboo shoots, apples, and language. They grow rice, ginger, beans, peanuts, peppers, bananas, squash, sugar cane, corn, papaya, cucumber, and sweet potato. They only leave villages to sell to townies.

A smiling old man crouched on the corner wearing a green army pith helmet from a forgotten war sells bells and musical iron instruments for oxen and water buffalo.

An ancient shaman woman’s deep lined face bundled against morning displays roots, herbs and small bundles of natural remedies. People trust her innate knowledge.

Her dialect and wisdom is older than memory.

 

TLC - Ankara Knife

“You are the director, audience and players,” said the owner.

Inside another series of interlocking blades was a Cambodian landmine museum. It revealed Geiger counters, radiation blast suits, screwdrivers, shovels, hi-tech metal sensors, fertile green rice paddies, farms, fields, 1,000 Angkor temples built with laterite stones by 300,0000 slaves in the 9th century, 6,000 starving overworked broken hearted pachyderms, topographical satellite survey maps showing extensive ancient agricultural irrigation systems, statistical charts, refugee relocation centers, rehabilitation co-pay deductible insurance policies, cremation ceremonies, and bereaved starving survivors accepting the loss forever of two million genocide family members.

1.5 million lost strangers disguised as tourists talking with full mouths spilled desire, fear, regret, ignorance and superstition while rappelling through nouns and verbs near stilted bamboo shacks inside submerged mangrove forests resembling Monet paintings replete with jungle vine hammocks, floating villages in a floating world, charcoal cooking fires, naked begging children, amputees, short term Australian nurses discovering dehydration in Siem Reap slums, laconic robotic Khmer teachers making $40 a month, 269+ orphanages with 12,000 orphans, a butterfly farm with 232 species and a silk worm weaving center in Stung Treng, Ratanakiri empowering fifty singing women threading thick and thin yellow salvia protein based fibers on spindles and looms near Son Le Tap Lake, the largest in Asia.

shake your moneymaker

Vietnam is a woman.

Men come and go. Men left me all my life, beginning with my father. I never knew him.

As I was growing up I asked my mother, Where is my father? He’s gone. I never asked again.

I finished 9th grade in my village school and lived at home helping my mother with chores; feeding chickens, shopping, cooking, and cleaning.

She beat me. You are a worthless daughter. You have no future, she screamed at me. I took it silently. I served my older brothers. They were strangers. Little kings.

Growing up I heard stories about making money in Cambodia.

When I was seventeen I packed a bag and crossed the border. I went to Phnom Penh, the capital. I met Vietnamese working girls. They helped me find a simple room in a house for $25 a month. We shared a toilet and kitchen. We became friends. They were my first teachers about life in Cambodia.

I needed a job.

You’re good looking, one said. They gave me advice. You can make good money here. Always look your best and wear high heels. They make you look taller. Men like tall girls. Always negotiate their offer. Get the most you can. Save it. Let them do what they want with you.

Many will be rough and try to hurt you because they think you belong to them. They bought you. You are a money machine. They hate their wives, all their women and will take it out on you. Woman are objects, things to be abused. Learn to be passive. Accept what happens.

Close your eyes, pretend you feel pleasure and learn to close your heart. Close it tight. Don’t become soft and weak and open it for anyone.

The only pain you will feel is physical. It will go away. Always make the men wear a condom. We have local doctors who understand our life and help us. You can choose to be either a bargirl and entertain customers at the bar or a taxi girl. They go to homes and apartments. They make more money but they service more clients. Always give Miss Tan the owner her percentage or she will throw you out.

My head spun from all this.

One night I put on my best red and green dress. I applied makeup and went to the Hello bar with two girlfriends. It was loud and crowded with men and girls. We bought cheap drinks and sat at the bar. My friends introduced me to Miss Tan, the owner.

Her diamond ring flashed. So you’re the new girl. Vietnamese? Yes. You can demand more money. Your skin is pale. Men will want you. You work here as a taxi girl. You go out, you come back. You give me 70%. If you cheat me I kill you. I know everything. Understand?

Yes. We shook hands. Hers were soft.

Get to work girls.