Yellow Butterfly Guide

Greetings,

Evidence of intelligent life on Earth is greatly exaggerated. It's a rumor. A myth.

I recently wandered Banteay Kdei and Ta Phrom.

Kdei is great for walking through the dust. A sun yellow butterfly was my guide. It led me around the perimeter for a feeling of perspective. Being outside gives you the feeling of space acknowledging deep green forest. I do this at every temple. It's rare to see others explore the outside. Intelligence on Earth is rare.

Tourist ants are in a highly disciplined hurry. They march in, follow others, follow the stone path. They wander around, make a lot of noise, pose for pictures and march out. Their time is limited. Many look serious and sad, especially the Europeans. They are clearly controlled by forces unknown to them. It may be a silent ticking mechanism on their wrist near a pulse. They are little robots.

I remember a Tibetan saying, "I would rather be a tiger for one day than a sheep for a thousand years."

I explored outside slowly inside gentle winds from the forest. It's a very slow walking meditation. I engaged all my senses. Thick dust underfoot is a welcome relief after stones. I am surrounded by light and shadows dancing through leaves. All nature all the time.

Butterfly leads me to interior passages and shadowed experiences. Butterfly shows me mysterious art. Deep interior space. It takes ages to reach the center. 

Prohm is where "possibly the most famous photographed tree on planet Earth exists." It entwines itself around and through soft stones. It's a zoo. Human hoards line up to take a photo. They push and shove and jostle so they can have their picture taken with this tree.

Italian, French and German tongues wag like mongrels in heat. Life is a bitch. The Japanese, as I mentioned in an earlier post from The Silk Worm Farm are total photo freaks, obsessed with posing in doorways, passages, with carvings, plants, ferns and leaves. They feel the experience with their cameras. They behave like the temples are one gigantic amusement park. 

Here's the tree. No humans. Actually there is a tiny tourist sleeping inside the third root from the center.

Banteay Kdei and Ta Phrom galleries.

Metta.

Beng Mealea

Greetings, 

The mysterious and magical temple at Beng Mealea is wonderful. Dating from the 12th C., it was built to the same floor plan as Angkor Wat. At one time it was connected by 10 bridges through the jungle to Angkor Thom and Preah Khan. Nature owns it.

You climb over huge piles of stones between hanging vines, exploring a well preserved library, impressive carvings, destroyed central tower and deep dark passageways. Perfect for exploring. An elevated wooden walk way allows for a higher perspective. 

Metta.

Beng Mealea images...

At breakfast

Greetings,

I'm sitting in the lodge. People eat breakfast and chat. They remember last night. They plan a new day above ground.

There's a super serious Danish family of four. Sad blond dad and morose mom resigned to her fate. Two young boys about 10. They love to play pool, run around and make noise. A lot of noise. They need a behavior modification lesson for public places.

They're slamming balls around the table using their hands. Suddenly the young one blasts off into a terrified shriek of pain. It wakes up the eaters. His right hand was inside the cushion and brother's ball caught him squarely on the fingers. 

Dad rushes over. He cradles his son, escorting the bellowing child back to bread and eggs. Mom looks bored. She's dreaming of ice crystals in Copenhagen.

Three middle aged Americans and two 28-year old girls arrive and sit on soft cushions. One is the niece of the man. They've just arrived from a horrendous scam-filled long bus ride from Bangkok. 

The man is soft spoken. He's an Asian tour guide. He reminds me of Robert Thurman, the Tibetan scholar. His wife is an attorney in Portland, Oregon. She deals with suits. No one at breakfast is wearing a suit. I know her job because of the way she cross examines the two girls. An older woman with regal bearing is with them, perhaps one's mother. She is patient, kind and asks intelligent questions.

She lives in Eugene, Oregon as does one of the girls. The older woman grew up in Eugene, attended Portland State College and loved languages, especially Italian. She moved to Rome for six years. She came back and got her M.A. in Italian and Foreign Languages at the University of Oregon. She taught Italian until retiring. 

The attorney and the woman talk about growing up. The attorney is from Michigan.

"I was only able to get away for two weeks. My boss said, 'What happens if someone sues someone and you're not here to handle the case?'"

The older woman said, "It was just coincidence I ended up back in Eugene. It was hard growing up there."

"Why," said the attorney.

"It was the late 40's. We didn't have enough to eat. It was only steak and they cooked it to a cinder. It was that and potatoes. One brand of rice. I remember my mother and father loading us in the car and we'd drive to San Francisco to buy food."

"To sell?" asked the attorney.

The older woman looked at her. "No. To eat." I hear her thinking in Italian, "Mama mia! What a crazy question!"

The group talks about the bus, lodgings, cost and border hassles. The girls are dead tired. They compare travel stories. One girl has just completed a month teaching English in Burma. She says she managed to find a job through a foreign woman running a tour company.

"Yes," said the man, "there are people there who know the system. Where did you teach?"

"I didn't teach school. I taught teachers."

The man knows Burma. "I see. The authorities are very suspicious of foreigners. It's difficult to really get to know the people."

"I hoped to spend time with the Burmese in their homes but it was forbidden," said the girl.

I see the girl teaching a class of Burmese "teachers."

Half work for a government agency designed to acquire western educational pedagogical plans. The other half work for the secret police. One is a real teacher. Can you find the real teacher?

Metta.

A teacher.

Ta Som & Preah Khan

Greetings,

Ta Som is a compact temple, with a laterite enclosed wall, well preserved gopuras or entrance buildings. The feeling is intimate. I wander quiet and peaceful. I evaporate into deep meditative silence. Birds sing through shadowed light. Pure magic.

Preah Khan, constructed in 1191 is wonderful. Inscriptions refer to a lake of blood; a story about a battle when the Khmer people killed the Cham king and expelled them. It became a religious university with 1,000 Buddhist monks.

It is one of the largest and most lightly visited temples at Angkor. It is a fusion temple - Mahayana Buddhism features equal sized doors and cardinal directions. The Hindu deities, Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma are present and it feature successfully smaller doors emphasizing unequal nature. It has four main long corridors, a central shrine, ancient columns, libraries, numerous hidden treasures, delight light play, and apsara dancer carvings.

I am a dust collector. I wander quiet and peaceful inside ancient stone stories. Where people made their life, using their energies. Sacrifice. Prayer. Celebration. Ceremony. These carved dancers, dancing images transported by inner visions. Perceiving beauty, celestial serene wisdom. The nature of the process.

Integrate the unconscious into your life.

See more...Ta Som and Preah Khan...enjoy.

Metta.

Coincidence Plus

Greetings,

Coincidence: an event that might have been arranged although it was really accidental.

Two days ago I was waiting for Christina, a 50-year Belgium born French teacher currently teaching at John Hopkins in Baltimore for a day trip to a floating village and forest near Tonle Sap Lake. She'd suggested the idea the previous evening before returning to ice and snow with limited visibility after visiting her daughter in Laos and seeing Angkor Wat.

Kunn, the owner of Jasmine Lodge, walked up to the table with a man.
"He is going with you." "Great," I said, and we introduced ourselves, "Hi, I'm Brian." "Nice to meet you."

A soft spoken man with piercing eyes and gentle manner, laughing, Brian explained his family history. "This is the short version of a long story."

"My grandfather's father came from Switzerland. He was a preacher. He was persecuted and escaped to Italy. He returned and was beheaded. His son took up the cause and was also persecuted. He escaped to Holland. His family eventually moved to England, then Scotland, then Ireland. During the potato famine they managed to get to New York and settled in Arkansas. It was the Civil War and life was hard. They moved west and eventually settled in Fresno, California where I was raised."

We rolled through the flat countryside and reached the end of a long bumpy dusty road where we jumped on motorcycles to reach boats moored in shallow water. We left land, gliding through marshes toward the Kampong Pluck Village. Christina asked Brian about his life.

"I am a poet," he said, " and I am traveling the world for a year on the Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship award."

Hearing this I turned in surprise. "What is your last name?"

"Turner," he said.

Mr. Brian Turner. I laughed. "Sure! I know you. Last October when I lived in Ha Noi I read your Home Fires blog post on The New York Times after you visited the Bedlam hospital in London. I wrote a piece about my becoming a ghost after returning from Vietnam. Your essay generated many comments from a diverse range of voices; veterans from all the wars, health care professionals, and the public. It was great."

"It's important to give these people voices," he said.
"I wrote seven poetry books before submitting Here Bullet."

Over lunch he talked about his book, Here Bullet," published by Alice James Books. Brian served a year tour in Iraq and returned to the states in 2004. "I wrote the poems in Iraq. I worked from my notebooks to create the manuscript from November through March, 2005. I submitted it. It won the Beatrice Hawley Award among others. 

"Later, an anonymous person nominated me for the Amy Lowell award. There were 360 poetry books in the competition. One day I received a phone call from the law offices representing the estate. They said my book was selected for the Amy Lowell Scholarship. I was amazed."

Brian received his MFA in writing from the University of Oregon. I also graduated from the UO. Another small coincidence. 

"You're a famous poet!" I said. "Congratulations! And here we are, two writers, two veterans, both graduates of the University of Oregon, meeting on a small boat near a floating village in Cambodia. Long live the creative geniuses!"

Brian reached Cambodia via England, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey and Thailand. His second book of poetry, entitled Phantom Noise, will be published this April.

The three us enjoyed a fine day sharing stories, exploring the village, local primary school, delicious seafood along the river, and gently traversing the amazing water world forest. 

So it goes in the world of joyful coincidence.

Metta.

Brian Turner, right. Two traveling writers and explorers in Kampong Pluck village, Cambodia.

  Explore a natural Impressionist painting.