China Street

Here's a passage from an abandoned Moleskine notebook on street life in China.

After a long steady heavy rain

a pregnant woman propped her mop made of discarded rainbows -

as her solemn dispassionate husband shucked peas before removing garlic shells from their protective casing

after sky finished crying

washing student street where parades of disenfranchised youth sought shelter from the storm

open windows released cello notes

as a child sitting rigid practiced tuning their eyes to black notes on white pages

determined to master the instrument to please her parents

another music student hammered piano keys behind locked doors to please his parents

flies gathered around brown sticky paste dripping off a cracked plate

as feelers extended hope toward a thin white butterfly lifting off a green leaf

Type A

Type B

Mindful

Mindfulness gives you time.

Time gives you choices.

Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom.

You don't have to be swept away by your feelings.

You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.

Blindness solved the mystery of sight by crying tears of silence.

A van of sad white Europeans trapped behind glass held repressed rampant desires and expectations in Siem Reap.

Fidgeting with uncomfortable languages floating in inner ears they pretended to be interested in nature's fleeting formless form flashing past starvation's widows.

Assaulting long painful strides navigating tomorrow’s promise they sat stone cold feeling nothing.

Look and leave people.

Blindness resolved to practice the subtle art of Tai-Chi with precision.

Blindness exchanged Midnight Blue ink for a dark shade of racing green in a Mont Blanc 146 piston driven fountain pen.

A handheld hair dryer waved hot air over a shampooed head. Mirrors whispered secret illusions.

A Vietnamese salon owner replaced a straight razor blade. She sprayed water on an invisible traveler's crown. He closed his eyes. She edged her blade over and around his head, ears, down his neck across Buddhist temples.

A 4:00 a.m. gong suspended on a rope carried on a bamboo pole reverberated its magic echo through Yangon stone corridors. A woman flamed incense.

Chattering fish sellers bagged swimming protean.

Elements of silence said farewell.

Random eyes investigating decompression swallowed fresh yogurt with peach slices inside afternoon’s languishing empty promises.

Intention and motivation discovered a new day by day.

Explanations have to end somewhere said a well-dressed mistake.

In her village, the other world, Blindness threaded new rainbows. Her loom experienced pressure and tightness between notes.

Sunlight dressed saliva beads blending a weave, texture, design saying hello Beauty.

Beauty has no tongue.

She whispered, I have been waiting for you.

Adapt. DRD4-7R

Adapt, the balloon man lived below the Bursa hammam. Yes mam.

Adapt, Adjust and Evolve collected everything for a fire. One morning he flamed his life below a stone memory hut where someone - he didn’t remember whom - lived, worked and expired.

Internal passions blazed yellow and red.

Sparking a majestic canvas Adapt carried his bouquet of air-filled flowers across spring fields firing dawn with pink, red, green, yellow, and blue. Dreaming purple violets and daffodils spilled balloon imagery into children’s retinas.

His voice sang across time’s river, Create like a God, order like a King and work like a Slave.

Walking through spring with Courage, a personal pronoun, his flowing mind-stream movie flashed into around through a fine unknowing knowing starlight universe. Pure images were diamonds in his mind.

First thought, pure thought.

Sky mind.

Cloud thought.

His flaming life energy sang, “What is life?”

A game of experiences we get to play. Help others.

Expanding energy waves created screaming eagle dancers.

Two Golden Eagles fought in tall grass to dominate a female. Flashing anger with yellow lightning eyes and striking out with a sharp talon she balanced on a strong extended leg. A curving white tip slashed at males circling with desire, cunning and stealth. Pirouetting she danced between them protecting her flank near a fallen tree trunk. Her wings extended over green forests, Uludag mountain, blue shorelines and across oceans.

Nearby trapped behind high voltage fences on a desolate brown hill studded with boulders twenty wolves died of heartbreak.

One wolf’s eyes were a fluorescent emerald green Aurora Borealis retina patina, refracted surreal prisms.

“I am a lone wolf, like you,” said Lucky. “We share an R7 variant dopamine receptor gene DRD4, a chemical brain messenger for learning and reward. R7 is found in 20% of humans.”

“DRD4-R7 increases curiosity and restlessness,” said Lone Wolf. “Humans with R7 seek out new experiences with known pleasures, take more risks and explore new places, ideas, foods, relationships, and sexual opportunities. They embrace movement, change, adventure, migration and a nomadic lifestyle. I am dying here. I was born free.”

“I feel your pain and alienation.”

Wolves needed mountains, valleys and wild rivers. They were hungry to escape an artificial prison.

Lucky knew why midnight welcomed Howling Wolf.

The Language Company

Weaving A Life (V1)

Bursa, Turkey

Open Hand

Man carries heavy weight scale
Down dusty street
Past women hacking meat
Grilling fish
Hungry children

Slurp noodles

In a motorcycle culture

Silent expectations beep impatient horns

Grasshopper says hello
An open hand holds everything

Grow Your Soul

Laos Poem

The blind man and his daughter.
He wore a felt hat. He gripped a wooden staff. His face was long and sallow.
The girl was 11. Wearing cotton, her face was solemn, shocked.
Both wore plastic flip-flops.
She held his hand.
They came to an intersection. Small buses, bikes, lost fat Europeans, orange robed wandering monks, silver vans. Women carrying bamboo baskets spilling oranges negotiated pavement.
The girl led the man across the street.
Their pace steady, yet hesitant.
She was his eyes. He trusted her implicitly.
A stranger drawing in his notebook watched them.
He pulled a 20 Kip note from his pocket.
He gestured to the girl, Take it.
She froze.
She spoke quick Lao words to her father.
Questioning, doubt, healthy uncertainty in her eyes.
The stranger gestured the 20.
She remained still.
He got up and slowly approached her. His hand extended the money.
His hand said, take it.
Her small hand emerged with caution. Her small fingers accepted the gift.
She smiled placing her hands together.
Her fingertips touched her chin meaning, Thank you.
She whispered to her father, it's 20.
His blind eyes darted back and forth.
He mumbled, Thank you, joining his hands.
His wooden staff hung in the air like a pendulum.
She led him away.

They disappeared.

Phonsavan, Laos