Refugees
Suffering
Sacrifice
Letting go
Human dignity
Freedom
Brave New World
Memories of WWII
Survival
Beginnings
Life is discovered in a desperate situation
World wakes up from slumber
Heartbreaking nightmare
Humans help humans
Courage
Gratitude
Safety
Iceman rings a bell pushing orange wheel cart down Dream Street in Kampot.
He survived The Dark Years ('75-79)
No one ate ice cream then
They ate death, fear, suspicion, doubt, uncertainty
Rice and fish paste if they were lucky
He is lucky to have survived
Now he wanders the river town
Ringing a bell
Enlightenment echoes through hearts minds souls
Survivors cherish bell’s memory music
Flowers at pagoda whisper laughter
Respect love courage dignity compassion
Meditation
Poem nature symbolic butterflies
Silence
Void wheelchair fate
Wheel of Life eats anger greed ignorance
One Hundred Aspects of the Moon - Yoshitoshi
Clowns live on the moon
Flaneur - the sacred prostitution of the soul
Projections of shadow self
Time
Space
Matter
Energy
Being
You are an experiment of the universe with a free will.
Grow Your Soul - Author page
How about your town, asked Leo.
Red dust roads in Banlung are paved with blue Zircon, Amethyst, and Black Opals (nill) reflecting Ratanakiri, or Gem Mountain. City women of means wear blue Zircon, gold necklaces, rings, bracelets, sparkle bling. Rural women do not wear this wealth. Married women wear strings of red beads. They fashion yellow, red, blue, green, glittering plastic bangles on wrists.
Here it’s about food and honoring Earth spirits. Animists believe taking stones harms the spirits, creating an imbalance in the natural order of things.
Thanks for the education, said Leo. I’m going to have a look-see.
See you later, said Ice Girl, returning to crystals.
Red dust town turned windy. Swirling quality gem stone particles and degrees of indifference spiraled through air. Redwood slats covered open sewer drains.
Locals watched Leo with curiosity and suspicion. They stared from a deep vacuum. When he made eye contact they glanced away with fear, uncertainty and doubt. They didn’t see many strangers here. They listened at 49% saying yeah, yeah with panache. Leo discovered his questions were constantly repeated.
Questions grew tired of repeating themselves. This is so fucking boring, said one question. We are abused. We are manipulated and rendered mute. Useless. Think of it as a test, said another question. Patience is our great teacher. I’ll try, said another question.
Yes, said a question, these non-listeners have a distinct tendency to say nothing and say it louder when they’re leaving, when their back’s turned away from eye contact and potential real communication. Echoes drift around silence and ignorance.
I’ve seen that too, said a question, who, until this moment was silent. My theory is that it’s because of the genocide and fear and ignorance. It’s also a delicate mixture of stupidity or indifference, said another question. Why is the most dangerous question, said one.
Can you explain, asked a question. Sure, people ran away to survive. People started running and others would ask them a question like why are you running, who’s chasing you, where are you going or what’s the matter or when did you become afraid or why are you afraid, or why don’t you stay longer ...
and the one running would keep going trailing abstract question words behind them like memories of dead or missing families or disembodied spirits or hungry ghosts or molecules of indifferent breath. I see, said a question. That explains it. Yes, said a question. Being correct is never the point. I never take yes for an answer.
Ice Girl in Banlung
Twice a week I traversed a rubble path from #187 past plastic bags, small broken trees and rubbish to a hammam. The Turkish styled public bath cost seven dirhams or seventy cents.
Women left. Men right. A shy veiled girl accepted coins. I crammed clothes in a plastic bag and handed it to the smiling toothless attendant. He gave me two buckets made from old tires, reminding me of the souk zone where boys cut the rubber, hammered and sold them.
I pushed open a heavy wooden door. Three low-vaulted white tiled rooms had variable degrees of heat and steam. Men reclined on heated tiled floors or collected cold/hot water from faucets in buckets, soaping and scrubbing themselves.
Entering a heat mist dream of forms, I walked through the first two rooms to a space along a wall. I filled one bucket with scalding hot water, another with temperate liquid. Closing tired eyes I stretched out absorbing heat on my back. It penetrated skin, muscles and bones in a respite from poverty’s chaos and hospitality.
Sweating men scrubbed in steam and water music. Working out kinks an old wiry man bent a man’s arms and legs into pretzels. The skinny bald man worked wrists, elbows, and shoulder joints to the point of snapping them off a skeleton. Rolling a patron over he pummeled a spinal chord, slapped a back and bent knee joints leaving the man spread-eagled on tiled floors. Customers welcomed his torturous attention.
I soaped and scrubbed off layers of dusty skin with a rough hand cloth. Oceans flowed from tiles to drains.
I retrieved clothing, dried off with a sarong, slipped into fabric and gave the attendant a tip. The old man smiled, rolled his eyes shook his head. I dropped more coins into arthritic brown fingers.
“Shukran. M’a ssalama.”
Clean skin felt cool night air. The dusty path was filled with scooters, boys playing on abandoned rusty cars, scavengers probing trash and mothers dragging black gowns on the ground. Yellow slippers slapping earth flashed golden dust particles.
Children sang, “I never promised you a rose garden.”
A one-eyed mendicant looking for alms stumbled past.
Cafe men watched perpetual terrorism reports at full volume on a television hanging from a ceiling.
“Ah, Ahab,” said a smiling young waiter in a purple vest balancing his silver tray of cups and water glasses. “Coffee?”
“Yes, no sugar please,” gesturing I’d sit at a table outdoors on cracked pavement away from media. Dejected shoeshine boys tapped wooden boxes as their dark unemployed eyes inspected shoes of chronically unemployed men drinking endless tea.
Another waiter cut mint tea leaves, crammed them into a silver plated kettle, dumped in a brick of sugar, closed the lid and poured a light brown steady stream of tea into a small embossed glass. He poured it back into the pot. He put the pot, glasses, spoons and sugar cubes on a tray to be delivered to patrons.
A subtle red sunset spread across adobe walls. Atlas snow patched mountain ranges on the southern horizon turned pink. Women in billowing blue cloth tread sand from clustered stone villages to take a local bus to the shimmering Red City or sit on broken cement talking with friends.
Dusk and twilight married, creating night children. More field hands, more economic resources and more offspring futures destined for trades making $1.00 a day. Women sat talking on fractured pavement surrounded by trash. People discarded their lives going through it.
A small single tree in a patch of dirt epitomized local life. People had stripped off branches and leaves leaving a sharp broken piece of wood sticking out of the ground.
People wandered aimlessly or sat on hard packed earth. Unemployed men on haunches stared at dirt.
A fruit seller with green grapes on a rolling cart waved at flies circling a light bulb. A young man in his wheelchair poured bottled water over a handful of grapes. Water disappeared into dust around his wheels of fate. Savoring one grape at a time he observed boys weave past on broken bikes.
A bearded man paced the street collecting discarded cardboard in his recycled life. Cardboard made excellent cheap sidewalk seats, foundations in rolling carts to keep stuff from falling out, sun hats, beds and shop doormats after infrequent deluges.
Shredded telephone wires dangled from the wall of a telephone office as men lined up to make calls on the single working phone while holding mobile phones and punching digits.
Disconnected grease covered boys with their tools spilling into the street manipulated mammoth truck tires along broken sidewalks. The area buzzed as people with survival instincts scrambled to make a living.
On a side street two men unloaded shoes from the trunk of a car. Location - location - location. One seller spread a bright blue tarp on the ground anchoring it with bricks. His partner arranged cheap running, dress and casual shoes. No Adidas Berber shoes for these guys. They fired up a propane lamp.
After a day of oppressive heat residents prowled looking for a bargain and telling stories.
Adventure, Risk, Transformation
Burma
I am sorry are our three favorite words in Cambodia.
It’s the last thing 2,000,000 genocide victims cried out before a complete stranger slammed a shovel against their skull. I am sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
One survivor said to another survivor, what a beautiful fucking mess. Help me drag this one away.
You either let go or get dragged along, said a Buddhist monk lighting incense for world peace.
Same in China said Leo, We learn life’s hard bitter lesson to accept loss forever, I am sorry. What is the most beautiful word you know Zeynep?
Freedom. And yours? Food, said Rita and Leo.
Less talk and more drawing are essential in life, Z said. Experiment with circles, dots, triangles, squares, lines and curves to reach existential levels of realization. Connect the dots forward.
The asylum is a prison and protection, said Rita.
You create art to explore your sense of self and find out how you feel you are, rather than whom you think you should or ought to be, Z said, drawing her future.
Make the right choice for the wrong reason, Leo said.
Make the wrong choice for the right reason in the right season, Rita said.
Z discovered questions were repeated. 1,001 questions ran around her Turkish restaurant looking for answers. Questions grew tired of repeating themselves. This is so fucking boring, said one question. We are abused. We are manipulated and rendered mute. Useless.
Think of it as a test, said another question. Patience is our great teacher. I’ll try, said another question. Yes, said a question, these non-listeners have a distinct tendency to say nothing and say it louder than empty silence when they’re leaving, when their faces are turned away from eye contact, potential real heart-mind communication and growth.
Echoes drifted in through around silence and ignorance. I’ve seen that too, said a question, who, until this moment was silent. My theory is that it’s because of genocide, fear and ignorance. It’s also a delicate mixture of stupidity or indifference, said another question. I suggest it’s their innate Buddhist belief. They suppress their ego. Non-self.
Why is the most dangerous question, said Lucky addressing questions. Remember Leo asking why and ended up carrying shit at the Reform Through Re-education Labor Camp near the Gobi before becoming Chief of the Cannibals wearing an alarm clock around his scrawny neck reminding everyone of Time?
Yes I remember said a timeless prescient question. Leo was one smart cookie, whatever that means. He figured out unique survival skills in a desperate situation. He knew the fundamental difference between book smarts and street smarts. Anyway before we drift off the subject, how do you explain fear, asked a question.
Rita (author of Ice Girl in Banlung) - Fear is a basic instinct. It’s in our DNA. It’s in the amygdala. Flight or fight? Is it safe, eyes say scanning a potentially dangerous environment since Day One. You see it everywhere, all day, everyday all the scared uncertain eyes asking is it safe?
They peek left, glance right, double check. The coast is clear. Let’s go. People ran away to survive. Instinct.
People had a panic attack, started running and others would ask them a question like why are you running, who’s chasing you, where are you going or what’s the matter or when did you become afraid or why are you afraid, or why don’t you stay longer and the running one would keep going trailing abstract question words behind them like memories of dead or missing families or disembodied spirits or exploding landmines or molecules of indifferent breath.
I see, said a question, that explains everything. Yes, said an open-ended question. Being correct is never the point.
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. We are assassins.
Burma
Share Article