shatter the blindness

"Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself."

 - Thomas Merton  Read more…

"When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, like flute notes rising up, like the words of glass speaking. Then there comes a point when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light."

 - Anne Spollen
The Shape of Water
bufflehead cabin  Read more…

my silent resignation

My sister set up a hair salon business in a tourist temple town. It fell through. Salons are a dime a dozen. Thousands of undereducated poor girls from distant provinces can’t/don’t read or dream. They cut. Do their nails. Digit phones.

Staring at mirrors is their fate.

Some moonlight as beer girls and hostesses. Where is Mr. ATM? Who’s going to save me they cry wearing gloss in the dead of night masking their eternal loss. Unspoken questions and starvation seek short-term financial solace.

My sister put me to work with a niece washing clothes. In reality I am a happy slave. I have my sister, food and a safe place to sleep. I make some money. An Australian girl gave me a scooter. I dress nice.

My sister started selling massage service. If I meet a good man which is rarer than verbal speech I let him touch me because I trust he’ll take care of me. Short term.

I need help.

Massage has no emotional connection. Touch and go. I have the power to say NO. I have a 5th degree black belt.

I’ve killed more men with silence than you can imagine.

I tell aggressive idiots they can get laid somewhere else. Go find a beer girl. Flash your cash honey.

I do all the washing, ironing and massages. I make small tips. My sister pockets the money. She sits around admiring herself in mirrors, playing with her daughter and talking rubbish on her cell.

I am a voiceless voice of quiet resignation. 

Frame life

"The frame is like life. Life too only provides certain opportunities.

Film is like a square of life, it has the same boundaries.

I think film is more honest, because it owns up to being a limited space.

Life pretends to provide more opportunities, that's why it's a bigger lie."

-Fassbinder

echo

New music echoed. Everyone ran to a window. 

Across the street an Indonesian boy sat on a piece of plywood in the shadow of a long tall Sally art deco three story building. It towered above a gated Jakarta community filled with designer homes, wild tropical blossoming fruit trees, displaced dysfunctional spoiled offspring spinning yo-yo’s and orphans sleeping on broken bamboo bed springs or swimming to Cambodia through flooded dreams. 

In his left hand he held a shining silver chisel. In his right, a flat edged hammer. He slammed metal against metal on a bronze bridge between the Stone Algae and the Iron Algae.

Between knowledge and wisdom.

Between an object and a concept.

Tap-tap-tap. Music flaked dust. His chorale was a tribal creation song remembering family and soft rice paddies feeling wind carry his song.

A Cambodian slave girl in the background using a brothel broom of thinned tree branches whisked a gentle rhythm. She created her symphony of sadness and neglect waiting to be abandoned like a manuscript.

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.