Fire

Traveling isn't supposed to be fun, said an American father to his whining son sitting on a cafe balcony in Istanbul overlooking the Bosporus. It's an adventure.

I used to be someone else but I traded him in.

Begin this day at dawn.

Pashupatinath Hindu cremation ceremony along Bagmati River.

Shiva is the destroyer and creator.

Wood pyres. A woman kisses her shrouded husband goodbye.

Light his fire.

Fire is the beginning and end.

Fire is your rosé flame.

Stir his bones.

His ashes flutter with death and mortality.

Silence. Solemnity. Serenity. Grounded and transient. Flowers. Offerings.

Glorious color dancing fire.

Return to Source.

emotion expression

Everything going in an ear comes out as language.

A tool for emotion and expression.

The greatest sorrow is the death of the heart.

Life is found in a desperate situation. - Chinese proverb.

All you have to do is take out the garbage, said a writer. Separate the cans, glass, plastic, paper products, adverbs, and adjectives. Editors want it short fast and deadly. They want to feel a character facing obstacle(s) and their motivation. They want characters to reveal themselves through dialogue and action. How is the character living and feeling? Focus the lens through the protagonist’s eye. Live forever.

Make it immediate and dramatic. Show their vulnerability, their worries, hopes and fears. Use active verbs. Be specific so we feel the experience. Clarify the narrator's interpretation.

Please continue with your delightful story, Jamie.

Yes, well, it needs a central character, like Omar here, he's a good one with a woven thread and laborious languorous tension to move it along now doesn’t it? As I was saying before you went off a tangent Point, which I see you are prone to do, he understood their wingspan.

See, one of the largest nesting colonies of tawny vultures in Europe was here. While living and hiking in the region he’d seen several species: the golden eagle, Hieraetus fasciatus, Aquila heliaca, Hieratus pennatus, and Circaetus gallicus. Goshawk and the Egyptian vulture also inhabited the Sierras.

Amazing. I once was a screaming eagle in Vietnam, said Point. Strange place for eagles eh? Remind me and I’ll spin you a tale about them.

Ok. A large vulture grabbed air toward the mountain cliffs, sailed along the rocks and it was difficult to keep it in focus because their brown body blended perfectly with trees and mountains. It sailed, banked, disappearing into cover. Breaking through clouds another vulture flew into the sun splashing hillside and peaks in blazing light. It dropped in elevation, turning, showing quick flashes of golden feathers, brown body, in and out colors as the bird played on the air. Really incredible I tell you.

Then it flew near ridges turned toward his position for a moment, just long enough displaying complete wingspan and I’d guess a good 6-8 feet across, then it blended into the foliage finding its mountain perch.

Excellent. Nothing like a little free form flying exercise in the morning I say. Free morning drafts. Gets the blood flowing, lowers the heart rate and strengthens the spirit, said Omar.

Spirit of flight, flight as freedom the vision they must have, said Jamie. Imagine, if you will, how it feels to be rising on air, feeling the slightest push or pull as wind whips past you and you climb into and through clouds flying past you. You circle through endless space able to maneuver, balance, floating higher and higher. He felt good feeding small birds watching big ones fly. Always maintain your awareness.

History is the symptom.

People are the disease.

Language is a virus.

Weaving A Life, V1

Phonsavan

To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength. - Celine

I facilitate English, the language of barbarians in Yangon, Myanmar.

Ah bliss. I salute the sun every morning from the 8^th floor balcony with twinkling stars flocks of crows and silent burgundy monks clanging gongs.

Wing song.

Bamboo grows strong. Resilient.

Laundry dries faster than a speeding sparrow.

One small life chapter began in Phonsavan, Laos, a sleepy, dusty enclave near Vietnam.

The Plain of Jars wars and scars.

Survivors and archeologists say the jars were funeral containers holding bones of relatives. Jarring fact.

Truth is beyond a shadow of a reasonable healthy doubt they were drinking vessels of GIANTS.

I know. I was there 4,000 years ago.

This is what happened more or less.

A wealthy Lao landowner hired a Burmese management team to build a golf course near the airport.

Golf is good necessary and an important social, cultural and economic improvement in the quality of life when it involves business between two of the most impoverished Asian countries placing a ball on a T.

Factoid. Lao GDP per capita - $2593, Myanmar - $1347

Why drive when you can putt?

They had a meeting. What do we need, asked Mr. Lao? We need a lot of land - grass, trees, sand, water, - irrigation systems, electricity, roads, parking lots, air conditioning, a clubhouse, a driving range rover, range rover can I come over, said the Burmese developer.

We need umbrellas, clubs, balls, toilets, ATM machines, restaurants, capital expenditures for furniture and fixtures, food, napkins, plates, cutlery, lawnmowers and many servants. You build it, said the Lao man and wealthy Asians will come and go.

A ten-year old girl said Laos is divided in two parts. The Chinese own the north and Vietnam owns the south. So it goes.

At the corner he turned into Nham Nham market-street. The U shaped dirt lot market faced 1-D. Tuk-tuk drivers and small pickup trucks waited for passengers to Never-Never Land or distant H’mong villages.

Fifty or more H’mong women selling produce spread out inside the U before dawn. Community.

At 8:30 Mr. Important, an old man in a red coat walked around telling everyone to pack it up and move on. Carts, baskets loaded, wheeled trolleys disappeared. Women unable to rent interior market space stashed baskets of greens near the interior market. They’d set up on stone passageways at 4:30 p.m. for evening business.

The outside edges of the U are lined with shuttered shops.

At a pharmacy he conversed with a happy female doctor who works at the hospital and is pleased to introduce him to her 14-year old daughter who can speak English but is too busy now playing a game on her phone, see you later he said to the pharmacist ... passing wooden shops with sewing men and women, hair salons one in particular where a smiling Vietnamese woman cuts his hair and cleans his ears, rice threshing people working machines, tools and farming essentials before entering twisting narrow cement interior islands of fabric, dresses, shirts, pants, shoes and MSG packaged food stuffs as women converse, watch imported Thai videos and play with curious eyed kids.

The traditional market was covered with rusting PSP sheets and tattered umbrellas along the edge with excellent fruits and vegetables. Carnivores buy buffalo, chicken, beef, grilled bats and fish. Dirt and haphazard cement floor. Watch your step.

How slow can you go?

He never saw foreigners here.

He enjoyed the ambiance, peace and quiet, observing life, mimicking language and eating thick noodle soup with boiled liver slices swimming with ginger, ground red chilies, two boiled eggs. The kind woman gave him a platter of fresh lettuce. $1.25.

An old funny woman doing good business fries small cakes and coconut balls. Early on, after he discovered the noodle place he heard her say loud and clear, I don’t know and I don’t care.

He turned laughing. How and where did she hear and learn this? From my son. Otherwise her English was nonexistent. She badgered him to buy thick sweet milk coffee.

Women chop, cook, chatter in low tones, breastfeed infants, stoke cooking fires with kindling, fry snacks, sell fast food - meat, noodles, vegetables, and fruits to motorcycle helmet shoppers, moms, dads, school kids, shopkeepers from the interior and wandering lookers gossiping, exchanging lives.

H'mong women don’t buy here. They sell on the edge. They grow all the food they need.

Self-sufficient.

A Little BS

I Lost One Day

Crows sang sunrise.

Lucky opened window blinds at the TLC teachers’ apartment. Riding the blinds sang a metaphorical cryptic railroad life. Hop a fright. Get out of town. Hit the highway. Get down the road.

Ain’t nothin’ but da blues, sweet thing.

When you come to a fork in the road take it, said Zeynep.

Sun streamed to pink-red veined orchids in a brushed silver container. Tibetan incense curled into light. Red gladioli, so glad, petaled beginning. Piano Etudes by Glass tinkled. A handful of dust labeled fear celebrated tonal frequencies. Piano fell silent. Violins picked up the slack hemming garments along life’s loom down at the crossroads making a Faustian deal with the d-evil.

In a new world order all the police are children.

They know how the world works.

Elegant clouds observed pachyderms and Staunton designed pawns, knights, bishops, rooks and queens fighting to control four center squares.

Look at the board. Absorb all the data. Recognize patterns. Analyze. Develop a strategy. Continually revise and develop that strategy as the game progresses, said Bamboo.

A black knight waving a curving scimitar and a 1* red and yellow hammer sickle flag driving a Turbo-bus filled with Russian baboons passed Hanoi beauty salons and full-body soapy massage parlors.

Girls trimming, buffing and painting cuticles greeted 1.9 million neurotic European tourists and swarming Asian locusts in a fat fucking hurry at Angkor Wats happening?

Bright yellow Turkish taxis idled coughing engines. Arabesque musicians fingered ouds as an operatic Turkish singer in Bursa lamented her melancholic love. Percussionists hammered goatskins.

Singing silver merchants chanted, Mr. Lucky Foot come here. First sale lucky sale make my day.

He joined a Jewish and Turkish man drinking tea at the Bursa silk market in an exquisite stone Caravansary.

I lost today, said the Jewish man.

What do you mean, said his friend. You made 3,000,000 Lira.

Yes, but I lost one day.

Inside a 500-year old hammam, steam rising through rusting metal bars discovered a weak Wi-Fi signal from the Achebadem emergency room staffed by Winter Hawk, Bamboo and heartbroken howling Lone Wolf.

After a sauna Omar and Lucky entered a white marble room with a high vaulted dome. Thirty-two pinpoints of sunlight shafted across blue mosaic tiles. In eight recessed cubicles men soaped, slathered and scrubbed off melting skin in humid heat. A robust masseuse worked sandpaper fibers over a stranger removing dead terrorist cells.

Absorbing musical notes the thermal pool bubbled natural mineral water as the literary outlaws enjoyed a sitting meditation up to their necks. I’ve had it up to here, said Omar clearing his throat.

Renewed, revived and rejuvenated after a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice they stepped into crisp spring air below blue sky.

The Language Company

Frozen Memory

After Saigon, Leo walked to Sapa in NW mountains.

Talking monkey tourists from Hanoi are here to eat, gamble, sing, dance / screw and buy cheap imported plastic products, said Mo and My, H’mong storyteller sellers.

Day trippers are an army in high heels, floppy hats, sunglasses, shiny belts and lost eyes. They run to stand in front of a Catholic Church to have their photo snapped off. Most ignore us.

A woman tourist slows down in her long march toward consumerism to look at my work: a handmade belt, a colorful wrist wearable, a thin wallet. The wallet is thinner than Mo.

She is surrounded by a chorus. “Buy From Me! Buy From Me!” 

The woman faints. Another buyer takes her place near blue tarp patchwork junk dealers selling fake watches, cheap pants, shirts, hats and knickknacks.

Eyes scan colors, fabrics and faces.

A park has baby red roses. A dusty historical statue stares at brackish fountain water.

Red Dzao women have bags and threaded samples spread on the ground.

“Do you want to buy from me?” said one smiling with gold teeth.

“Yes. I want to buy the mountain.” Leo pointed to the rising green western forest, steel gray granite slabs, deep shaded valleys and gray clouds skimming peaks around high deep edges rolling toward them.

“Ok,” she said. “I will sell you the day mountain for 10,000 and the night mountain for 10,000.”

“Ok. It’s a deal.”

School kids in uniformed mass hysteria and deprived of sleep stagger uphill to a bright yellow building where a young boy pounds out a rhythm on a ceremonial skin drum. Come all yea faithful, joyful and trumpet.

Two big brown dogs fuck on the street in front of the church where tourists gather for a photo shoot.

Local women armed with cameras they rent by the day selling images, reflections, memories and dreams poke and prod women, husbands, boys and girls into groups for the moment. The decisive moment they will remember forever.

Their image will collect dust near a votive candle altar and burning innocent incense feeding, appeasing dead hungry ancestral ghosts. Caught in time. Frozen alive.