Bell

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

Silent Questions

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

Author Page
 

Hammam

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.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Burma

Fairy Tale

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.

The Language Company

Burma

Children's Conference

“We are not here for a long time. We are here for a good time,” laughed Meaning, a twelve-year old survivor wearing a ragged Beware of Land Mines skull and crossbones t-shirt and prosthesis leg scampering a random life pattern across fields near a stilted bamboo home in Cambodia.

“Are you with us?” pleaded a landmine child survivor removing shrapnel with an old rusty saw after stepping in heavy invisible shit, “or are you against us?”

She’s been turned out and turned down faster than a housekeeper ironing imported Egyptian threaded 400-count linen. No lye.

The thermostat of her short sweet life seeks more wattage. She faces a severe energy shortage if she doesn’t find food.

She’s one of 26,000 men women and children maimed or killed every year by land mines from forgotten conflicts. Reports from the killing fields indicate 110 million land mines lie buried in 68 countries.

It costs $3.00 to bury a landmine.

It costs $300-$900 to remove a mine. It will cost $33 billion to remove them. It will take 1,100 years. Governments spend $200-$300 million a year to detect and remove 10,000 mines. Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan and Laos are the most heavily mined countries in the world.

40% of all land in Cambodia and 90% in Angola go unused because of land mines. One in 236 Cambodians is an amputee.

*

Expanding her awareness of mankind’s genetic stupidity, Lucky showed Zeynep a Laos map illustrating Never-Never Land.

Lao Please Don’t Rush is the most heavily bombed country in history.

25% of villages in Laos are contaminated with UXO.

Upwards of 30% of the bombs dropped on Laos failed to detonate.        

80 million unexploded bombs remain in Laos.

More than half of the UXO victims are children.

*

Meaning hears children crying as doctors struggle to remove metal from her skin. She cannot raise her hands to cover her ears. Perpetual crying penetrates her heart. Tears of blood soak her skin.

The technical mine that took her right leg away one fateful day as she played near village rice paddies expanded outward at 7,000 meters per second. Ball bearings shredded everything around her heart-mind.

It may have been an American made M16A1, shallow curved with a 60-degree fan shaped pattern. The lethal range was 328 feet. Or maybe it was a plastic Russian PMN-2 disguised as a toy. She never saw it coming after stepping on the pressure plate.

Fortunately or unfortunately she didn’t die of shock and blood loss. A stranger stopped the bleeding, checked her pulse and injected her with 200cc of morphine. Strangers in a strange land carried morphine.

*

Cut the heavy deep and real shit, said a female Banlung shaman.

Fear is a tough sell unless it’s done well, well done, marinated, broiled, stir-fried, over easy, or scrambled.

Fear is blissful ignorance.

* 

Meanwhile, the 1st International Beggar Conference convened in Toothpick, a wasteland near Bright Hope - a rusting rustic dream of exploratory ways and means with scientific cause and effect and logical rational certainty.

It was chaired by a distinguished group of Cambodian orphans.

NGO Fascists rented 12,000 orphans out to fake humanitarian organizations. Abandoned youth pleaded with ill-informed rich donors for marketing and branding money to feed international guilt and shame.

“Let’s eat,” said a fat banker moments before his yacht hit an iceberg in 2008.

“What you don’t see is fascinating,” said Zeynep, “like roots below the surface of appearances.”

“We have so much ice and they have so little,” said an Icelandic chess player attacking Death.

“Everyone comes to me. My patience is infinite,” said Death. “I make only one move and it’s always the correct one.”

Beggars, landmine victims, genocide survivors and sick and tired dehydrated dying starving neglected humans from 195 countries convened in sequestered committee rooms filled with suits, scholars, academics, UN personnel, CIA analysts, NGO profit motivated scam reps, IMF bankers and plastic ornamental steering mechanisms.

“We agree to disagree,” said Rich Suit.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Wage Slave.

Orphans, beggars and children spoke about slave labor, hunger, exploitation, corruption, human trafficking, corrupt police states and the terrorism of economic poverty.

“Bad luck,” said a rich slave. “That’s a you problem, not a my problem.”

Children addressing global media held press conferences focusing jaundiced eyes on lenses, recorders and bleeding pens. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Sound bites sang starvation’s misery.

If it bleeds it leads.

Incoming! Bleeding hearts ran for cover.

Orphan motions for adjudication, arbitration, fairness, equality and equity were tabled for further deliberation and discussion nowadays.

The average monthly wage was $37 in a Bangladesh clothing factory.

350,000 Cambodian women making $61/month stitched garments for Korean export companies.

Give someone a sewing machine and with a little luck they’ll feed their family.

Let’s Eat.

Weaving A Life, Volume 1