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.

sew

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

A sewing woman returned to her guesthouse. She splashed water on her face, changed clothes and spit into red roses. She kick started her cycle and went to the market inside a labyrinth.

At her corner stall she keyed multiple locks. She stacked numbered wooden shutters. She dragged out her Butterfly sewing machine, ironing board and manikins.

Dummies wore exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling faux-paws silver stars, moons, and small round reflecting balls. Her skill designed fabrics for women needing elaborate sartorial refinement for engagements, weddings, and cremations.

She stayed busy with serious fittings and adjustments. Her sewing universal process was selecting fabric, measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, pushing her machine treadle, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections, and ironing.

Threads inside a slow prism flashed light and shadow as needles danced through cloth in endless conversations. Needles talked about traditional conservative morals and opportunity-value cost.

Thread followed their conversation. Together they measured precise calculations establishing a stop-loss number.

All explanations have to end somewhere.

Sky darkened.

Ceremonial drum thunder sang vocal intensity

Lonely lost suffering foreign tourists in Cambodia shuddered with fear

What if I die here

How will my family and friends begin to realize my pure intention to witness 1,200 years of dancing Angkor laterite stoned history gnarling jungles revealed by natural strobes 

Lightning flashed skies

Giant flashbulbs illuminated petrified children

Buried inside cement caverns

Eyes eating cartoon images on a plasma scream

Skies opened

Rain lashed humans

Some laughed, others cried

Tears dissolved fear

Sweet dreams, baby

Smashing blocks of ice inside a blue plastic bag with a blunt instrument created a symphony outside unspoken words as a homeless man with a pair of brown pants thrown over a thin shoulder sat down to rest. Shy women waiting for Freedom averted black eyes.

Aggressive women manipulated stacks of government issued denominations trusting an implied perceived value in exchange for meat, fruit, gold, and fabric.

Counting and arranging denominations inside broken light beams, cracked cement, mislaid wooden planks covering sewage channels, debris, feathers, jungles, and jangled particles they surveyed commercial landscapes with dispatched dialects near rivers revealing stories with fine stitched embroidery. Needles led thread. 

elemental

Curious beginnings determine her artistic sense of form, coloring stories of her village. Cutting, planting, harvesting, complete slow rhythm of life. Her skill shines with every new expression, her heart sings.

Her simple direct feeling is all sensation.

Art enables her this beauty. She describes what she draws. Her words fly through forests, colorful birds resplendent peacocks birds of paradise.

A blind conversation developed a through line. Turn a blind eye.

Blindness listened. Blindness heard muted laughter before intuition gestured pink floating word worlds.

Laughter danced with exhaled attachment.

Blindness danced on through late yellow faltering light penetrating bamboo leaves spreading themselves over banana baskets impaled on swinging posts. Literally.

A bike bell. A young girl sat quiet watching the V girl do her toenails. Cutting, trimming, lemon/lime soak, cuticles, clear before applying a silver hued glossy glean. Nail by nail.

Blindness solved the mystery of sight crying tears of silence. A van of blank faced white Europeans trapped behind glass held rampant desires and expectations on laps. Fidgeting with uncomfortable languages floating into inner ears. Assaulting their long painful strides navigating tomorrow’s promises.

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

Blindness exchanged blue ink for a dark shade of green. A handheld hair dryer waved hot air over a shampooed head. Mirrors whispered secrets.

Elements of silence said farewell. A series of eyes investigated decompression while swallowing fresh yogurt with peach slices near afternoon’s languishing empty promises intent on discovering new, make it new day by day. Explanations have to end somewhere.

In her village, the other world, Blindness threaded new beginnings as her loom waited for pressure and tightness between notes feeling sunlight dress saliva beads blending a weave, texture, design, saying hello Beauty.

z discovers

Z discovered questions were repeated.

1,001 questions ran around her Bursa 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 loud when they’re leaving, when their faces are turned away from eye contact potential real communication and growth.

Echoes drifted 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.

Why is the most dangerous question, said one. 

downstream

Here's the pitch.

She stayed until 9:45 and left for work at an upscale spa wearing aromatic Grecian urns. He gave her 10 bones. Feed me.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Get out of my life, said Telepathy. You are subservient and I am stupid to put up with this shit. He creased her indifference into a cumulus cloud. It rained goodbye and good luck.

She sat on the bed with her back to him. Sniffle sniffle.

Her fake tears formed rivers named Regret and Hopelessness and Indifference.

Fish behind twelve Laotian dams financed with Chinese capital to provide electricity to Thailand fed 60 million Asians downstream in deltas.