the world is a village

Your village in Northeast Laos thrives near rivers and pine-mountains.

You plant it.

You nurture it.

You harvest it.

You eat it.

You carry it.

Every day starts at 4:00 a.m.

You put food into a wicker basket, heave it onto your back and either walk to town or ride with other villagers in the back of a small tractor or truck, belching diesel. Perhaps a tuk-tuk overflowing with soil smells, green life talkers. Maybe on a motorcycle as chilly winds blast your face.

It feels good to be alive.

Get there early. Spread your treasures out on a rice sack near the curb. Cold winds refresh the street. Say hello to friends. Broken dawn breaks over eastern mountains shrouded in fast clouds. Mothers and daughters arrange labors of love.

Women arrive and unload bags of corn, dead civet cats, onions, greens, bamboo shoots, apples, and language. They grow rice, ginger, beans, peanuts, peppers, bananas, squash, sugar cane, corn, papaya, cucumber, and sweet potato.

They only leave villages to sell to townies.

A smiling old man crouched on the corner wearing a green army pith helmet from a forgotten war sells bells and musical iron instruments for oxen and water buffalo.

An ancient shaman woman bundled against morning cold displays roots, herbs and small bundles of natural remedies. People trust her innate knowledge.

Her dialect and wisdom is older than memory.

good at two things

“Mind yourself,” Z said in cursive Latin as she and Lucky exploring diverse civilizations cradled a bamboo candle on their quest for an illuminated translation.

One morning while walking to the Bursa Metro he received a rose from a kind Kurdish woman who tended a small grocery below a quadrant of grey cookie-cutter Soviet apartment blocks filled with crying children and sad adults devoured emotional immaturity content in a guilt-based context between a physical object and a precise concept.

“We are good at doing two things,” sang a Turkish man swirling a silver spoon in his tea...'around and around we go and where we stop nobody knows, tinkle, tinkle little star how I wonder where you are, way down in the glass so low with processed sugar’...sitting and singing, here we go.”

“I thought you said reading and writing,” said Rita, the anarchist writer of Ice Girl in Banlung and H20 seller in Ratanakiri. To make ends meet on weekends her family of eleven rented her out to a NGO scam at an artificial orphanage.

Buy her beware.

Rita knew what was what.

“According to UNICEF, there has been a 65% rise in the number of orphanages since 2005. There are more than 300 and yet, only 21 of those are run by the state.”

“Say more,” said Lucky.

“UNICEF estimates that 72% of the 12,000 children in Cambodian orphanages have at least one living parent or close relative. Desperate poverty makes it easy to persuade uneducated families that their kids will be better off in an orphanage.”

Her Banlung machine world roared, reversed, revered and resounded with operatic overtones. Chugging down the street, antiquated ¼ ton trucks recycled from catastrophic invasions, wars, death, suffering, bombings, and genocide carried 1.7 million people dying from forced labor, starvation and execution illuminated by historical footnotes.

Ghosts said we are nothing but historical history. Memory agreed. Voices blended with billowing black diesel exhaust and forgotten cultural memory in swirling red dust.

Two barefoot mendicants walked past Rita. One content in a simple white cotton cloth shirt and pants. A red and white-checkered kroma scarf knotted his head. He carried their possessions in three white rice bags suspended on a bamboo pole balanced on a bony shoulder. A tall gaunt man followed his trail of tears.

Man #1. These bags are heavy. I am tired of carrying them. You carry them. Bags and pole crashed on red dirt.

Startled birds flew. A brown river changed course. A woman stopped sweeping dust.

A rich man getting out of a black SUV smiled at prosperity.

A young boy fondling his fantasy without objection paused.

A prone passive girl suffering from eternal hunger in a plywood room waiting for fake love and an easy ten bucks blinked.

An infant dying of malnutrition cried in its sleep.

A mother begging for fake medicine at a health clinic holding her child shifted hip weight.

A monk in a pagoda turned a page of Sanskrit.

An ice girl massaged cold reality with her sharp edge of truth.

The man walked over to a large water cistern. He splashed his weathered face. He drank deep. His friend stooped over, adjusted bamboo through twine, hoisting bamboo and bags onto his bony shoulder. Where are we going? Muttering to his feet wearing red dust, one said down this endless road.

The Wild West town bigger than a village welcomed smaller. The dexterity and fortitude of millions shuffled along in a flip-flop sandal world filled with joy, opportunity, risk, chance, fate, and destiny.

They devoured French pastries and flavored yoghurt.

Ambiguity, contradictions and paradoxes assumed the inevitable. Assumptions and expectations wearing Blue Zircon saw harlequins.

A boy downstream near Angkor Wat sawed crystals of clarity in his tropical kingdom. He saw but didn’t see standing tall in a blue hyperventilated dump truck holding a rusty trusty bladed saw. Blocks of ice disguised as solidified water were longer than the Mekong feeding Son Le Tap Lake.

He unwrapped blocks. He sawed. He tapped a musical hammer at precise points defining worlds of experience into melting scientific sections. His co-worker loaded condensation on thin shoulders carrying melting weight to a bamboo shack. He dumped ice into an orange plastic box. A smiling woman frying bananas over kindling gave him monetary notes, Thank you for the cold.

Carver carved. Tap-tap-tap.

Rita opened a big orange plastic box. She picked up a chunk of ice in her left hand, cradling it in a blue cloth slamming a hammer on ice. It cracked. Fissures of released refracted pressure, jagged lines and imperfect beautiful white lightning spread deep inside ice. Holding global warming in her left hand she smashed it with all her power and strength fragmenting ice, floe chips and elemental particles.

A sharp piece of frozen ice pierced Lucky’s left eye. The sensation of pain was minimal, immediate and directly cushioned by the delicious cold feeling of ice melting through a retina, cones, rods, a pupil, nerve endings, frontal lobe, cerebral tissue, and layers of perception altering his visual organic sensation as ice light transmitted new electric signals from rerouted optic nerves to the cerebral cortex following a path of synapses. 

Enhanced visual acuity reflected everything. The stimulant was all. The world is made of water seeing crystals shimmering in ice mirror kaleidoscopes. Illusions of truth, pleasure, pain and drama danced. Long jagged beautiful sparkling universes emitted glowing crystal rivers. Everything he saw, heard, touched, tasted and felt was ice.

Sibylline language.

She dropped the block of ice into the box. Collecting chips in a glass, she added fresh thick brown coffee, sweet condensed milk extract, a straw and a spoon. She handed it to him. Here, you look tired and thirsty, I am, thanks, I’ve been walking all day. It’s delicious. You’re welcome.

She assaulted ice with a hammer shattering fragments to refresh java, coconut and sugar cane juice. Ice blocks melted latent potential. She bagged a block of ice and handed it to a cycle man. He gave her crumbled Real notes.

An old woman in pajamas sweeping dust heard ice weep, “Hope is the greatest evil. Her daughter whispered, “Evil doesn’t exist. It’s a myth.”

History, war, violence and predatory politicians screwed Cambodians, said Rita handing Zeynep, Leo, Lucky cold impermanence.

“Reading and writing is for idiots,” a Turkish man said to his attachment’s delight. “I am proficient at eating and fighting. I’ve been killing people for 4,000 years little thing. Nobody knows who the king is.”

Z said: I am a camera. Close my aperture to f/8 or f/11 for depth of field. I am a snow leopard in hot sun on Himalayan ice. I am a human mirror reflecting mud and meadows of reality. I am Winter Hawk winging free. I am resilient Bamboo.

I am love - a blind whore with a mental disease and no sense of humor. Love is in the air. Run for cover. I am Patience, your great teacher.

I am mindfulness.

I am breath.

I inhale life and exhale death in a random universe.

I am blood red ink drawing in dust and unloading words for a book called TLC to be explored, experimented and abandoned.

Wearing a burgundy pashmina shawl from Lhasa before the Chinese invaded in 1959 with Re-Education propaganda/publicity machines of terror, fear, suffering and death I smell like fresh Anatolian laundry in a gentle spring breeze.

Ice Girl in Banlung

The Language Company

Burma Commander

In Shan State, Burma once upon a time there was along running insurgency- people fighting and dying for territory, freedom, opium, jade, and blood red rubies - golden triangle profit.

A shiny green army pick up truck pulled up at the New Sign Moon Bakery in Lashio.

A soldier in green jumped out and opened the door. The fat wife got out – black hair decorated with blue sapphires in a white and silver long dress, designer purse, serious face.

Six soldiers exited the back of the truck. They were on a mission to liberate cakes, cookies, sweets from a glass shrine.

The short commander wore a camouflage jacket with depressed green pants and black shiny shoes. He had epaulets on his shoulder.

His sharp black eyes stared at a stranger sitting at an outdoor table bleeding ink.

Zero expression. His buried eyes were recessed emptiness. His camo boonie hat at a rakish angle was decorated with a golden military symbol of happiness, compassion and love.

His life climbed steps into a New Son. Her husband uttered quick syllables to number two.

Number two wore military bearing without a care in the world. He barked into a walkie-talkie.

A military policeman guarded the front of the truck. Soldiers stood around smoking as motorcycles loaded with fresh strawberries streamed goodbye.

She exited followed by a salesgirl trundling bags of roles and buns. A soldier put them in the truck. She spoke to her husband knowing words were unnecessary. He followed her to the market. Soldiers marched behind singing, I love a parade.

Years later they returned with bags of strawberries, apples and bananas. They loaded everything into the truck.

Someone called the commander. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. He opened his mouth. Perfect white teeth. If you knew words. He smiled.

A soldier open the door for his life. She got in. He got in took off his party hat and slicked his hair. The military police whistled traffic.

They drove into a dream come true.

Real–not true

True–not real

Mahliang, Burma

Pop: 10,000

2.5 hours south of Mandalay, another village.

Namaste Storytellers,

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

Fog shrouds trees before dawn on a chilly morning. 

Mornings are fraught with mist as an orange burning orb rises over forests and rice paddies. Crows caw sing wing wind songs above monks chanting sutras at a pagoda. A bell reverberates.

Leaves dance free from The Tree of Life.

This raw, direct immediate experience reminds a traveler of Phonsavan, Laos, near the Plain of Jars, long ago and far away in the winter of 2013. A Little BS came of it.

At 5:45 a.m. below trees with yellow leaves, 100 grade ten female students with dancing flashlights trace a dirt path. They've escaped the comfort of hostel dreams.

They dance toward classrooms and a cavernous dining hall for rice and vegetables. Hot soup if they are lucky. Mumbled voices scatter singing birds.

Thirty-five grade ten female student voices reciting scientific lessons at 6:15 a.m. echo from classrooms at the Family Boarding School.

Dystopian wrote memorization. Utilitarian. Repetition.

Learning by heart.

It’s not about learning. It’s about passing the exam and marks.

Vomit the material.

The wisdom of the heart is deeper and truer than knowledge in the head.

They drone on huddled, hunched over wooden benches in jackets and yarning caps with swinging tassel balls. A bundled teacher scratches white words on a blackboard – Today is the day of my dreams.

A narrow garden of hanging pink, orange, purple, white orchids reflect shadows before scattered light sings. An office girl sprays H20 diamonds on petals and green leaves.

A distant solitary bell reverberates.

Monks chant sutras at a pagoda.

A thin stick broom sweeping world dust cleans perception.

Two doctor brothers own the fifteen-year old school. They speak good English and are friendly, resourceful and gentle. Their parents are also doctors.

Zones are under construction - new rooms and a kitchen for foreign teachers near the dining room. A gym, library and science labs are being built between long two-story buildings with eight classrooms per level.

Old trees prosper. Crows and dogs scavenge garbage.

Men and boys hammer, saw, dig, carry lumber, bricks, and rebar iron and mix cement. Boys shovel dirt from trenches. Women shoulder excavated dirt in bamboo baskets.

In the shade of 300-year old trees girls sort piles of plastic water bottles and Styrofoam containers. Crows watch with disinterest.

Kitchen women sitting in a sacred circle talk about life, love and their emotional wellbeing while peeling onions. They live longer.

Uprooted bamboo is planted against cinder block walls decorated with brown and green broken glass shards to prevent education from escaping.

Tree branches hacked into rough art forms pierce blue sky.

Fear & Curiosity converse with gestures. Do something you've never done before.

Trust, love, friendship.

Communicate. Learn. Imagine.

I am a rainbow.

This school reminds a ghost-self of rural schools in Sichuan, China. Broken windows, trash, rough cement passages where sewage smells like success.

Painted platitudes and Odes sing on the roof.

Learning in Paradise

Cement shells, paper exams plastered on windows.

Faded green paint. Wooden benches.

Worn wooden floors. Blackboards. Chalk n' talk.

Cover your mouth when you erase the past.

Ghost-self meditates with sleeping tigers.  

An eight-car train from Yangon to Mandalay rumbles past. Lonely whistles blow. Ain’t nothing but the blues sweet thing.

Horse cart traps jingle jangle hoof tarmac music, prancing and dancing along dirt paths - On Comet, On Cupid, Dasher and Dancer.

The peripatetic facilitator of English, Courage, Creativity and Fun is here until 12 February on a three-teacher team from Mandalay.

He arrived in early December to prepare the program before two teachers arrived for four weeks and then two new teachers. He’s here for the duration.

His sleeping room is spacious, light, leaf shadows. He salutes the sun and burning stars every morning through leaves of time.

Food in the family kitchen prepared by a smiling auntie is delicious; spicy curries, chicken, fish, pork, fresh veggies, soup, rice, fruit. Everyone is soft and attentive.

Native barbarian speaker focus is English exposure with Listening and Speaking for 365 G10 high school students with respect enabling Courage. 

In addition to text stuff  - artists, writers and dreamers explore and discover their infinite beauty and potential with Creative Notebooks. SOP. Mind map your self.

How to be more human.

How did I grow?

Chess lessons, strategies, and tactics, improves their critical thinking skills, planning, logic, accepting responsibility for their actions, visualization, time management, and teamwork.

Learn. Play. Share. 

500 grade 10-11 students live at the school. They’ve come from distant Shan state villages and Myanmar areas. They are their parents’ social security.

The school has an excellent reputation for matriculation results.

Segregated classes. Walking on campus, girls shield their faces from distant boys. No social testosterone distractions.

Zero gadgets.

They study Myanmar, math, history, physics, chemistry, science, biology and Magic and Potions from 6-11, 1:30-6, 7:30-11 p.m.  Sonorous voices echo daily.

They leave school one day a month.

The Wild West Village

Horse drawn cart traps.

One traffic light. Two motorcycles is a jam.

Green for go.

Twenty minutes away on foot, an extensive traditional market covered in rusting PSP sheets is a delightful adventure  - returning to the source of community, dark eyed local curiosity, street photography, laughter, and a floating babble of tongues inside a labyrinth of narrow uneven dirt paths.

Footprints on stone and dirt meander through forests and mountains of oranges, apples, bananas, red chilies, green vegetables, thin bamboo baskets of garlic and onions, farm implements, varieties of rice (a huge business), clacking sewing machines, basic commodities, steaming noodles, cracking fires, snorting horses.

Sublime.

Blindfish heads whisper The Sea, The Sea. Silver scales reflect light.

A woman hacks chickens. Blood streams down circular wooden tree rings

The gravity of thinking sits on a suspended hand held iron pan scale. A white feather sits in the other pan.

Balance.

Twenty-six varieties of rice mountains peak in round metal containers or scarred wooden boxes.

Horse drawn cart traps unload people and produce. Neck bells tinkle: Star light star bright first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might get the wish I wish tonight. Well. Fed horses paw dirt.

Ancient diesel tractor engines attached to a steel carcass hauling people and produce bellow black smoke.

Old wooden shuttered shops with deep dark interiors display consumables, soap, thread waiting for a conversation, stoic curious dark eyed women, others laughing at the benign crazy traveler. 

A ghost-self sits in meditative silence, absorbing rainbow sights, sounds, colors, smells, feeling a calm abiding joy. 

Wander and wonder. 

Two teachers arrived for three weeks. One tall relaxed American male and serious eyes. His Irish female’s unhappiness confronting the hardship assignment masked emotional distress and deep bitterness.

She lived at the girl's dorm fifteen minutes away by dusty footprints. I feel isolated.

Cry me a river, said human nature. 

Hardship and deprivation develops character, said an Asian child.

Don’t give me that crap, she said. I have twenty years of teaching experience and this is hell.

Hell is other people, said Sartre.

Be a good Catholic girl and make a confession, said Personal Problem.

It’s life lesson #5, said the child.

Yeah, yeah, said the whining adult eating her frustration and anger garnished with succulent tomatoes.

The world is a village. 

Mindfulness.

Mindful seeing.

Mindful attention.

Mindful presence.

Calm abiding.

Check in with your breath.

 

Engage senses. Visual epiphany between what is and what will be.

Yellow leaves flutter from trees. Thanks for growing me.

Brown birds with white wing markings sing on a branch. I feel free, what a glorious day.

Laborers pound nails and pour stones and sand into a cement mixer. Women shoulder baskets of dirt.

Angel choirs chant lessons; Life isn’t easy. Life is good.

On Friday at the end of week número uno the ghost-self carried a bag of colored chalk and a yellow daisy to a class of twenty-five girls.

Standard white chalk dusted world’s education. It dressed the stage and the brown raised platform where wooden faced esoteric teachers lectured, droning absolute physic computations dulling hearts and smiles. 

It reminded him of a previous incarnation in Room 317 at

Yang-En University in Sichuan, China in 2006 (A Century is Nothing).

We see through our eyes not with our eyes.

See with soft eyes.

How is you, said ghost-self?

I am a creative genius, they laughed.

Don’t let school interfere with your education said Laughter Therapy. Ha. Ha.

Please open your creative notebook. Free writing.

He wrote, “Love is...” on the green blackboard.

Five minutes. Write fast. Do not go back, erase or cross out. Keep your hand moving.

Classical violin music by Hillary Hahn echoed through the room.

They meditated on the process of hand - heart connections.

Be the ink. Be the paper.

They shared writing with partners.

 Students drew a floor plan of their favorite room. They practiced tragic English target language - using “There is...There are...” describing furnishings.

They practiced prepositions of place. I am on Earth. I am sitting between friends.

He divided the class into three teams and partitioned the BB.

He opened the bag of colors. Draw your dreams.

Laughing and chattering they created rainbows, rivers, moons, suns, people, mountains, trees, birds, and flowing gardens.

After fifteen minutes they wrote about their art experience in creative notebooks. You created a masterpiece, he said. See you Monday.

Good news here? Democracy and Hope for 55 million Myanmar people after free elections. People waited fifty years for this opportunity. They shared their joy and ink stained finger. Look! I voted.

Myanmar is the most generous country in the world, USA #2.

I am riding a beam of light through space.

Feel free to touch in.

Enjoy making sand castles with gratitude. 

one door opens - TLC (end/beginning)

He escaped Turkey after fifty-one days of learning and enlightenment. He’d returned because he was curious about Trabzon. He appreciated the hospitality and kindness of strangers at ground zero.

He discovered he was too sensitive to Turkish suffering and repressed aggression.

A little luck goes a long way.

One door closes one door opens.

He felt tranquil seeing red and green-checkered diamond and rectangular Cambodian earth patterns. Small human habitats with flickering candles in windows illuminated manuscripts.

Let's go home, said a grateful cloud passing by. We know you by now.

Decompress language and your quality of life with slow steps and smiles.

Laughter and curiosity joined simplicity sanctuary and serenity.

Veni. Vidi, Vinci.

He came, he saw, he lived.

Good-bye and good luck to you and your family.

The Language Company

Zeynep the heroine of The Language Company