Journeys
Images
Cloud
Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.50)

The Language Company The Language Company
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

Subject to Change Subject to Change
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
ratings: 2 (avg rating 3.50)

Amazon Associate
Contact

Entries in travel (552)

Monday
May312010

Tell me a secret

Greetings,

Ostim: an industrial wasteland manufacturing zone near Ankara.

It's time to go a wandering...inside the reality magic show, welcoming the opportunity, the gift as it is to receive, shifting into another zone of influence and experiential discovery. (Bursa)

As they know you are leaving, this distant. Perhaps they have repressed, regressed into their real way. I appreciated seeing, knowing, understanding how it is, how some people feel, O so sad and withdrawn in their personal way. Their Zen: Awareness. Moment. 

As usual my ghost moves through a transparent knowing. Tell me a secret. Screwing up is a virtue.

Sit by the cafe window. Sky, clouds filled with light: gray production pollution, dust, winter icicles, vapor, yellow haze, solitary birds on wing, rolling and tumbling...this small cafe and sky window, the kind Kurdish woman's hospitality, her delicious manta, a sanctuary from the chaos.

Take the 1310 metro to Ostim. Strange industrial landscape where men cannot afford gloves inside childhood's winter. Remove their hats and make monkey groom females in exchange for sex, and all the capital people slog in their struggle

remembering Rumi, how a human being is a kind of conversation, dancing down all the days of early winter clean cold silent

The art and elements of a Japanese folding placemat: shapes, designs, edges, art. Free form, free spirit. Play.

Draw, paint, sing, dance, disappear. Seize the day.

love the smell of garbage in Cambodia.

Metta.

Human business plan.

Nature's business plan.

Sunday
May302010

Drone on

Greetings,

After class I am walking on green carpeted space (imagining I'm in a small sleepy Cambodian river town) listening to two Frenchmen talk about their boring travels using a Lonely Planet book,

ok, it's a lonely planet, it's Earth after all, understanding how their experience contains all the wisdom of the same-same but different philosophy - what did they expect on a beautiful blue marble dancing in space

droning on like a Predator drone zeroing in on Afghan mountains where shrouded cloth covered humans cowering on THEIR lonely planet inside remote mountain caves near impossible borders

wait for the droning tourists to assault their position with illiterate guides: Sleep here. Eat here. Go here.

Armed with the sharp attentive diamond eyes, a precious precocious girl wrote words with red ink using a new Chopin piston fountain pen on this onion skinned Moleskine paper. It is a medium. M. It has a weight, a heft, a thick solid feel to its base, the black resin manifesting the ink, visceral realists. 

Savoring a feeling of tactile sensation - this nib, this edge of finding small joy seeing ink flow, this tactility, this delightful smooth flow, she dances a singularity.

It was a joy, slow and precise dancing ink on paper. The Art of Writing.

Simple on lonely planet.

Metta.

The library at Beng Mealea on a living planet.

Sunday
May232010

Sign 101

Greetings,

As I've said before in the long now, this is the land of MILLING AROUND. You are an object of endless fascination. A stranger in a strange land. 

Five boys stand around watching with their curious eyes. They are polite and friendly. They SIGN to speak. Their hands are wings in space. They are from Epic Arts

A boy signs to his friend, You only take this ride once.

His friend signs, Stay well grounded and do not fear risk.

Her friend signs, If you want to do amazing things you have to take amazing risks.

Her friend signs, Reveal. Bear witness. Be honest. Be visible.

His friend signs, Honor the muse in whatever way she comes.

A girl signs, They stare at you from the vacuum of their eyes and say would you like to make a deal?

He signs, Buy a ticket take the ride.

She signs, Can we find inside of us a source of inspiration?

He signs, My path is Light.

She sings, Phenomena is ambivalent.

A sign land of vacant hope. A sign people of broken distractions. Where attention span is limited to the stimuli of elastic necks. Life is an accident. A cruel joke. Riders slow down on bikes, motorcycles to survey the disaster in a clean 360 degree arc. 

What is louder than a group of voiced Khmer people? Another group of voiced Khmer people. It's a small miracle anyone can understand anything when they, Voiced Ones, are so busy all talking, speaking, asking at once. Because they are more interested in what THEY have to say the volume naturally increases exponentially. 

They don't get it. Cognitive dissonance.

Someone wants to understand before they are understood.

Two kids are talking. One from the west said, "Where did I come from?"

The kid from the east said, "How did I grow?"

A writer said, Your potential will always go unfulfilled unless it is accompanied by the daily grind of back breaking labor. Nobody wants to hear this. It is not a cheerful message. Writing is a disease. Either you can't stop it or in another case you can't start.

See with soft eyes. Signing off.

Metta.

 

  

Saturday
May152010

Feng Shui

Greetings,

Wind and water. And then she ran across the stream of broken stones. She drew in her book. Mind maps, star maps, life maps. She dreamed of new beginnings, new futures. Harmony. Balance.

This dream incorporated all her past present and future dreams. It was a simple village dream where a fan methodically played circular logic inside a rhythm of the saints, this blend of light, color, dancing children and escape from the tyranny of mystery inside and outside space.

Dancing ink. A well worn page of laughter on a hot, humid overcast afternoon in Amnesia. Amnesia is a chain of 17,000 chained green islands surrounded by clear blue sea. Life underneath.

Tartaros - Chaos. Primordial darkness. Cosmos birth. Gaia - Earth. Eros - Love.

The voice of water played forever. Be a rag and bone merchant of your heart-mind.

Metta.

 

 

Thursday
May132010

Gin and tonic for breakfast

Greetings,

This isn't about the spoiled girl-child across the street yelling and stamping her feet and bawling her poor little eyes out as her mother tries to sell junk to schoolgirls or yellow gas from bottles to trucks, meteor cycles, broken terrific anxieties and terrorized spoiled childhood raising her hand threatening to strike the girl down, down, down. The girl cowers. Fear is a great motivator.

The woman's mother sits smothered in grief listlessly counting shredded money. Money smelling of petrol. Petrol cash.

No, it's about the Australian tattooed dude on a visa run with his comatose overweight and terribly unhappy illiterate Thai girlfriend, also heavily tattooed with flowing black lines, playing her hand held computer game at breakfast as he drinks a gin and tonic at 7 a.m. They are leaving by bus for a swinging coastal town.

Do you want some breakfast? he asks. She says no. I want to play my game. Do you want a drink to get your day started? No. Have an egg. It will give you protein for energy. No. I want to play my game. Do you have my medicine he said. She gives him pills. He washed them down with G&T. Breakfast of champions.

Metta.