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Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.50)

The Language Company The Language Company
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

Subject to Change Subject to Change
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
ratings: 2 (avg rating 3.50)

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Thursday
Jun172010

Sam and Dave Part 2

Greetings,

It takes hard courage to raise kids with integrity, respect, authenticity and a low level of pain tolerance.

Dave releases stream of anger, bitterness and frustration allowing him to relax, expend, expand the sound. Dave is startled to hear the the sound of his own particular voice ricochet of substandard cold molten gray Ha Noi cement or is Ha Noise the block walls? His life is a cold cement wall. Echoes dance through his brain like little sugarplum fairies. 

 He knows the echo because he made it. He mixed the fine sand and quick dry cement. He slathered it over broken red bricks in circles with an abstract desire to make a work of art lasting forever which is how he thought of it the day he trow welled the paste.

His voice, this manifestation expressing human vocal tendencies in a tight enclosed space near the gigantic liquid plasma television permanently implanted on a blank wall blaring news propaganda and perpetual adolescent reality shows about life next door where the family sits on cold red floral tile hunching over chipped slurping from cracked rose bowls shoveling

steaming rice and green stringy vegetables into lost mouths and yelling over each other in tonal decibels competing with their gigantic plasma television featuring dancing bears and pioneer patriots devouring rubber plantations and farmland with a double bladed axe singing, in a high Greek-like chorus, their national anthem about land, sea, air, water and

pianos being played by a young Japanese wisp, her fingers a delicate blur of incredibly fast incantation channels near a woman garbage collector who rings a bell every day at 16:55 alerting people in Dave’s neighborhood it is time for them to bring out their daily garbage. Remove the evidence. Bag it and tag it. Autopsy material.

Mrs. Pho hears the bell. She’s ready. She’s carefully arranged her family’s daily consumption waste into two plastic bags. One pink. One white. Orange and yellow fruit rinds went white, everything else pink. Like shreds of fat. She didn’t waste a thing. No one did. 

Life is a nasty, brutal short struggle, she reflected bowing in front of her parent’s images, dead and gone  remembering forever with their stoic black and white ghost faces above the eternal red glowing neon flickering pulsating red, green, blue, and white electric bulbs on the family altar. Plastic flowers, fruit offerings, burning incense - spirit food -  hearing her father whisper in her burning ear as he carried her away from the burning village. 

‘Remember where you came from.’ She never physically returned.

It didn’t really matter which went where because after she’d taken it down the high walled alley blocking all but the most sincere light of fading day, she casually tossed plastic bags into a rusty gray rolling cart with plywood boards reinforcing the height because the massive accumulation of garbage was tremendous. Growing day by day it became part of the collective mess, this collective consciousness. Garbage in-garbage out was everyone’s mantra.

She was content knowing her contribution was not extensive. Just enough. Just enough to get her away from walls where she’d gossip with her neighbors as white twilight cracks filtered past musical hammers, creaking wheelbarrows pulled by skinny boys, incessant motorcycle horns echoing through tight chambers with floating dust particles

breaking the light into a magical sense of mystery for her tired eyes marveling at this visual epiphany as exactly 21 emaciated shovels of earth were being moved and manipulated this way and that by young desperate hungry boys and girls with limited educational opportunities from villages poor and very far away laboring their wheelbarrows filled with sand, gravel, bricks, mud, sludge, wood, dreams, their bodies caving in from exhaustion, heat, H1N1 virus, mortar attacks, suicide dreamers,

young homeless Sapa H’mong children speaking excellent English with no further hope of an education being reduced to selling handicrafts to tourists, all their bright beaded bags, the embroidery stitches, indigo blue staining their hands through long dark cold endless winters as storms howled, ‘Have mercy, Have mercy’ on the war weary logic infested objectivists, the towering inferno of their eternal nightmare reduced to self-pity, no exit and dust inside infinity’s spiral. A shattered mirror reflected her face.

Metta.


Saturday
Jun052010

Publish it

Greetings,

A new article link and ideas about the world. The world of self-publishing. You write for an audience of one. You write with passion, authenticity and humor. You write with a light heart. You are hopeful. You expect the worst.

You play the publishing game. Every fall you buy a copy of Writer's Market, the bible. You research markets. You craft a query letter and synopsis. You send the query letter, synopsis and first five pages to a literary agent. You wait. You write. 

The agent reads your synopsis. They thumb through the five pages. Their first thought is, "Can I make 15% on this?" If the answer is no, you get rejection letter wallpaper to decorate your room. If you take the rejections personally and bang your head against the wall all the letters become wild word birds and fly away.

Or, you consider self-publishing. This is what I did in 2007 while finishing a teaching job in China. I researched options and purchased a publishing package with iuniverse. It was a good choice. A viable option considering my work was experimental, non-linear and filled with nomadic storytellers and their adventures.

You have many self-publishing options now. Look around. See what meets your needs.

A Century Is Nothing...

Few have read it. Fewer have understood it.

read more...

Metta.

Wednesday
May262010

Art Women

Greetings,

The sewing woman returned to her guesthouse early with her girlfriend to change clothes, spit into red roses and splash water on her face.

She kick started her cycle and they went to the market, deep inside the labyrinth to her corner stall. She unlocked multiple locks, stacked wooden shutters and dragged out her sewing machine, ironing board and iron.

She lined up manikins. They wore her work: exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling faux-paws silver stars, moons, and small round reflecting balls. Her work was for women needing refinement, special elaborate occasions; weddings, funerals and engagements.

She did good work and stayed busy. Serious fittings and adjustments. 

Her sewing universe: process, fabric, measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, sewing machine treadle, edges, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections, ironing.

Inside this slow prism threads of nets flashed light and shadow, needles danced through cloth in endless conversations. The needles talked about traditional values and the opportunity cost. They perform quick precise calculations to establish a stop-loss figure

smashing blocks of ice inside a bag with a blunt instrument creating a symphony of hips rolling outside these unspoken words as a homeless man with a pair of tired brown pants thrown over a shoulder using a solid walking stick sits down to rest and shy women avert their beautiful seductive deep pool eyes

women manipulate stacks of printed government issued paper trusting a perceived value in exchange for goods: meat, fruit, gold, fabric, counting and arranging denominations inside broken beams of light, cracked cement, lost mislaid wooden planks, debris, feathers,

jungles, jangled waves surveying commercial landscapes with the quick dispatch of dialects as Black H'mong girls far away near Sapa rivers and waterfalls express their creation story

Metta.

 

 

 

 

  

Monday
May242010

Egyptian Art

Greetings, 

These images are from a mural at an Indonesian school where I had 100 ten-year old teachers a year ago. They graduated to Grade 5 and I graduated back to Vietnam and the University of the Street. The kids said, "there's book learning and there's street learning."

 

read more...

Metta.

Tuesday
Dec292009

Prom Rath Wat

Greetings,

I've been sitting down in Siem Reap for a week and it's delightful after the hysterical hustle of Saigon in particular and Vietnam in general. 

I've been exploring Siem Reap on foot, hearing and speaking with a variety of tourists and travelers and settling into the pace and rhythm. I will visit the Angkor Wat site and multitude of 7th-16th C. history, art and spiritual wonders down the road.

 

An orphan girl at a Christmas party.

Siem Reap population is about 130,000, a far cry from the 8 million in Saigon so you can appreciate the lack of motorcycles, noise and chaos as previously written. There are also 7.99 million fewer hustlers.

Minus small guesthouses and hostels there are approximately 110 hotels and 10,000 beds. Inflated stats say there is a 60% occupancy rate. Tourism is down due to world economics, tighter travel money, and small yet significant regional internal and border troubles. So it goes.

The Angkor National Museum was amazing. An excellent introduction into the Khmer culture. 

Angkor National Museum...

My first Cambodian photography gallery is of Prom Rath Wat, a serene temple complex in Siem Reap. Enjoy.

Metta.