cement

so, said the seven-year young genius, tell me another story about lazy passive stupid people. 

that's a lot of adjectives, said traveler.

what's an adjective?

it's your father deciding to tear out the garden and plant a cement parking lot at his home-guesthouse along the mekong river.

really? i didn't know adjectives is are was were capable of so much destruction and chaos.

o my yes. your grandmother got down on her knees begging him to save the garden. he ignored her.

ignoring people here is a gentle way of life. subtle and effective. reality therapy.

he shamed her into silence.

i am building a new laos. a new cement empire, he proclaimed.

what did grandmother do? 

she rearranged her remaining trees, shrubs, orchids in a shrinking green corner.

she watered with tears. she got down on knees crying, thanking buddha for good dirt.

 

one chinese girl

One joy about self publishing was selecting the cover photograph.

Her image spoke emotional honesty. She was trapped behind the steel grate, a hard grey Chinese educational formation of her childhood in the poor village of Maija in a remote area near the university. Her eyes held world secrets and potential.

She stared at the man, a stranger, a diversion in her universe. Her sisters and schoolmates pushed against her. She was trapped against the gate. It was locked. He was on the other side.

 He held a small black machine up to his eye. She heard a click. The shutter opened and closed, trapping time, trapping her image on a memory card. He smiled, thanked her and disappeared on his dirty black mountain bike.

She had no way of knowing. Her image finding a book cover. Her child eyes there for everyone to see. Stories about stories and the girl in some alchemical manifestation lived breathing and aware of her immortality. 

He’d visited her primary school to sing and dance. Speaking strange unintelligible words. His laughter and kindness were a relief after the autocratic, punishing manner of bored illiterate women teachers. They didn't want to be here any more than the kids.

No one had a choice here. You did what you were told to do in a harmonious society filled with social stability ordered from Beijing.

A long distant dream far away from a poor village where people tilled soil following oxen in dirt, mud and rice paddies. 

artificial

We decipher riddles, forecast speechless tongues sensing passion.

We accept ignorance in quicksilver’s desperate wandering. Boredom carves a niche in a soul. 

I hang laundry near the street. Memory is tempered by the slow heat of talking monkeys. Two boys walk past harvesting trash. One barefoot boy plays silent music with a long thin bamboo fiber.

The other twirls a walking stick carrying a plastic bag. His stick is used for prodding bags and garbage.

Local people mill around. Bored. They exist in their adolescent immature childlike wisdom. Passive is their inherent religious cultural nature. 

Others voice imaginary alien freedom concepts. 

A sofa attached to a roof towed by a motorcycle carries fat white Europeans to see 9th century temples.

A young man named Eternity wearing his new skin tight artificial plastic leg and artificial plastic left foot shuffles through dust. 

i am a slave

He realizes through my movements I was born to dance. 

My gratitude is stillness. There is a big difference between sitting still and doing nothing. 

I smell roses. I swallow fresh orange juice. I engage all my senses in direct, immediate experience. He cannot save me from my destiny. He can only allow the process to open.

He talks to me with non-speech one overcast day. He brought me apples, oranges and mangoes. He pretends our passion is a glimmer of want’s potential desire in the long now.

Inside my deep eyes, a mischief of strangers comfort each other without discrimination. 

I am a singularity. 

5000

One day she rode her beautiful dirty black Warrior mountain bike to old student street for dumpling lunch. Delicious.

She prefers old student street to boring new commercial student campus street. She enjoys mature green leafy trees filled with small wild sparrows darting down to feed in garden patches. She savors a wide blue sky and orphaned clouds. She swallows sky removed from blaring omnipresent bland Chinese TV soap operas and cell phone addicted youth.

“Text me baby! Reveal your passion in 5,000 characters. Say things with electronic letters and symbols you’d never find the courage to speak out loud. Your silence is deafening.

"Hold my hand. Better yet, my baby, when we walk covered in our innocent adolescent shyness, slowly rub your elbow against my skin so I know you care, reveal your shy desire with deference and longing. Our skin pours hormonal activity into the possibility we may eventually dance naked. Text me baby!”

A boy approached the table. “May I sit here?” 

“Sure.” 

“May I talk with you?” 

“Sure. You talk I listen.” 

“I don’t know what to say.”