The big general picture (floodlight)
The small specific picture (spotlight)
Sleeping alone is boring, said Sunflower, a blind masseuse in Kampot.
The blind man plays a flute.
His young son leads him through life.
Music guides their quest.
Mindfulness, breathe, ease god out.
On the meridian of time there is no injustice; there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.
After a year eating Turkey with a side order of Mudanya olives he landed in Jakarta. If you don’t have an onward ticket blue uniformed ones shake you down. You know the drill. Extract a crisp green C note. Insert into a worn passport. Slide it across a counter. Man smiles. His golden shoulder braid shudders. He gestures just a minute.
You stand aside as Europeans and ill-informed internally displaced desiccated immigrants stream past paying with their lives to receive an entry stamp for thirty days before heading to another gold braided computer man.
Your man comes out. He escorts you through The Quest-ion Line. Incoming. Quest-ions screaming help ran for cover. He hands your documents to another gold braided scam man.
He says, Wait outside the NO ENTRY zone. You observe men, women and orphans waiting for one last stamp, one final slim to nil chance for freedom from tyrannical vagabondism a disease with no known antidote.
Computer friend nods, accepts documents and does his thing. Opens removes cash slides passport through a scanner darkly stamps it hands it back. Hands down. Deal. Ace high. Genius returns it to you, Good-bye my little butterfly.
You grab your bag and hit the bricks.
230,000,000 (+/-) humans struggling to survive with a little luck eat you with their eyes.
On one side are 1,001 females with Women For Hire signs. They swing brooms, caress irons, dance with mops, feed infants, hang washrags, burn trash and stir woks. Visual acuity. Rancid re-cycled cooking oil penetrates universal collective unconscious.
On the other side are 1,001 males with I Will Do Anything placards.
Small print reads, “I can clean, drive, escort, bribe, talk, build, hammer, make bricks, carry bricks, stack bricks, break bricks, sleep, eat, pretend I am busy and freelance vaginal come and go construction projects are my specialty.”
A gamelan orchestra of eighteen copper gongs and brass symbols creates a melodic meditative refrain with gentle persuasion. You follow effervescent notes into the dark night of the soul with lost quest-ions whispering to you, The Mark.
Quest-ions tout you:
Want a maid? Want a driver? Want a cleaner? Want a cook? Want transport? Want boom-boom? Want a room? Want a job? Where do you go? Where are you from? Want a quick fix? Want an exit permit? Want a new passport? Want inoculations? Want to get lucky? Want to meet my sister? Want a butterfly? Want to change money? Want to die here? Want to be cremated here?
Want to hang out with talking monkeys near Ubud? Want to eat? Want to meet my friends, liars, cheats and thieves? Want water? Want a map? The map’s not the territory. Want to take a chance? Want an answer? Want a way out? Want love? Want massage? Need AIDS or HIV? Want a friend?
Want boredom and loneliness and alienation your highness? Want a guide? Want a SIM card? Want a taxi? Want ice?
Want to join a Brave New World? Want to be a charter member in a New World Order manipulated by politicians, greedy geo-political banks and fraudulent financial institutions? Want a secret identity theory and off shore tax-free bank account? Want to torture humans with water molecules in a friendly country’s secret black prison?
Want to die before you get old? Want to fade away? Do you have plan tomorrow? Where do you go? Where do you go tomorrow? What’s you (sic) name? Where is this line of quest-ion-ing going? Are you the hammer or the nail? How did you get here? Why, tell me why. What is life?
All the quest-ion words were brought in for interrogation. Zeynep, a savage detective looked for motive and opportunity.
A ghost plays a six-string Kemil instrument in shadows. You follow phantom notes into the night.
Black is the night. Cold is the ground.
Masks hide the consciousness of fear.
Molecular structure.
Reconnected with a beatific shy lover on the edge of town after 17 dazed.
The dirt road is lined with salons, massage parlors brown hearts and shattered dreams.
Her thin gentleness is tempered by the fear of others,
the ugly fat one is disappointed in memory.
No one wants me.
Others eat vegetables.
She has a diamond implanted in a canine.
The two of them stay behind a curtain. Plywood walls.
They have an hour.
She is not impatient. They accept the implied unspoken gentle nature, the infrequent dressing.
All her clothes fit in a plastic box. The mattress is thinner than her. Two pillows.
Her cell phone and used phone cards litter a Boeing 747 used as a table.
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She is 20+ and rail thin. He considered taking her away to the coast. Another poor girl will take her place. They never go. The coast is too far away.
The absurd human condition is illuminated in a nano-second.
To the west a dancing sun burned yellow-orange. It filled the sky shading orange and blue.
The rough dirt street paved in places by jutting stones was crowded with residents staring east.
A billowing black source cloud swirled high into gray wind whipped smoke. Spectators gawked, gasped, and yakked. Speculation, supposition, myth.
Down below, out of sight, out of mind, flames spread from rows of makeshift food zones near the west entrance of Mingalar Market.
A spark? A moment as charcoal embers flamed cloth and wood? An errant signature glowing slow and steady.
Near the narrow food area were fabric shops and plastic food in plastic bags – elements of combustible material.
Women with organic fruits and vegetable piled into mountains scattered screaming grabbed children heading for exits. Two children died of smoke inhalation.
Flames bolted into around and through wooden stalls filled with cloth.
Colors exhaled in the heat.
100 sewing machines glowed red.
Flames indulged their fantasy. Fruits and vegetables fizzled, cracked, exploded. Frenzy of fire.
Street 73 was packed with cell phone amateurs, beeping motorcycles, police cars, fire engines and ambulances all trying to get through…night fell, crashing into waves of volcanic billowing smoke floating north, gaining speed at higher elevations.
A full bone white moon witnessed the spectacle.
Water cannons extended from fire trucks directed streams of life over exterior stonewalls and shuttered shops into the center.
Red flames leaped, licking black clouds.
Firemen scrambled with hoses seeking more H20. Flashing emergency lights illuminated shifting crowds flashing strobes on phones.
White helmeted men yelled instructions to firemen. Sirens roared down streets looking for a source in a sewer drain.
The morning after – lines of police down the middle of 73rd and adjacent streets. Squads of orange vested street cleaning women huddled in groups having tribal discussions.
Fire trucks lined the street blocking off the market.
Vested women hauled out bamboo baskets and lifted them to men in garbage trucks.
Gawkers lined streets.
Firemen rolled up frayed hoses – police cadets marched in formation.
Trucks with armed soldiers left the scene.
Gutted shops, debris, and memories danced near boys leaning against a fence staring at burned mattresses. Salvaged hair dryers on a sidewalk reflected puddles of water.
A medic in a white Red Cross helmet waited for no one.
Two tired firefighters lying on top of a truck closed their eyes.
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