flowering tears

neurotic tourists leafed temples

flowers waved goodbye

we grow without you

elephant cried

freedom

Big Game, Little People

Centuries earlier or later depending on reference points along Time’s thin line on an event horizon as infinity and eternity played post 9/11 dirges, fugues, and blues with a full orchestra in the pits Ahmed resumed his story in the Sahara.

“Fate bites you when you least expect it,” he said waving his hands like wild kites. “Her appetite is insatiable.”

Leonardo was so far removed from 9/11 reality he took no possession of the event. He read Ahmed’s open palms and eyes. Leonardo’s facility for unspoken tongues was legendary. It was all body language and he was fluent in every language. Gestures were a work in progress. Gestures used people.

Ahmed described airplanes and two tall towers. “I’ve read Superman by Nietzsche in Arabic. He said 'God is dead' and God said, 'Nietzsche is dead.'"

Ahmed waved his arms like a Moroccan eagle condemned to freedom yet a prisoner of the sheltering sky. He raised a hand indicating height and smacked his flying hand into his stationary hand. The impact echoed across caramel dunes. He smiled through black teeth. His dark eyes held all the world’s secrets.

Leonardo had no idea where, who, how, why, or when Ahmed received his information. Perhaps from slave and gold trade caravans, perhaps through osmosis.

“Yes,” Ahmed said, “2,974 people from 80 countries died.”

“I see.” They were just two nomads in the desert. They did not talk about Being and Nothingness. They tweaked reality by breathing.

He handed Omar’s book to Ahmed. “Have a look-see.” Ahmed read Tifignagh words.

“He was not as surprised, stunned and scared as all the well meaning myopic tax paying, allegiance singing populace would have the world’s citizens believe in their us or them attitude. He knew they’d be catapulted into a new heavy deep reality, grounded fast, sifting soil, searching for answers, breathing through death masks, deconstructing and revising history while pleading for meaning to their existence. Postmodern dialectics.

“Now they had to figure out the big answer to the big question. Why? It’d keep them busy for life. Their children taught them to ask why? Being extremely impatient and under extreme pressure to be successful in their all-consuming reality, they became extremely frustrated with the “why” question from their children. Parents wanted to be the boss, the grown-ups in complete control. They figured they had all the answers.”

Whoops!

“In the BIG game people with a long history rolled their dice when it was their turn to play and everyone had to go back to the start. They had to read the rules. They had to read the small fine print. The details they casually accepted carte blanche, data they skipped because they didn’t think it was important, the stuff made in Hollywood, the fictional entertainment stuff with happy endings. They were well conditioned to violence, sex and reality television. Now they digested so-called reality television in real time." 

ACIN

Ministry of tourism

Welcome to The Ministry of Tourism in Kampot.

It's near The Ministry of Fear and The Ministry of Truth.

You can't miss it.

It's next to The Genocide Museum. S-21. 

2,000,000 skulls are waiting for you.

They are delighted to have company in their silent vigil. 

Colonial French buildings will delight your memory of commercial conquest.

It's all a facade. 

Kampot is a sleepy little southern river town.

It is famous for pepper. Pass the sneeze please.

Quack-quack.

Hold hands. Relationships are precious. Life is short.

Let's have a look-see.

Chinese Appliance Factory #8

Good afternoon students. My name is Mr. ON.

It rhymes with song gong, long gone.

         It is 17:10 p.m. If it was 18:01 p.m., I would say good evening, however it is still afternoon. It is late in life. Class meets twice a week for two hours. Show up on time, do your assignments and stay awake. Nothing more. Nothing less. Simple English is good.

         We are gathered here today in the glorious Chinese Communist Party Peoples’ Appliance Factory #8 to begin our simple English lessons. Your supervisor informs me you are here by choice and chance. You have the choice. This is your chance. Am I clear? Do you understand me? Choice and chance. 

         Now. I know. Most of you have been working in the factory since dawn. It is the end of another long mind numbing grueling tedious day down on the killing floor. English has brought us together. You face unique and amazing challenges to acquire a foreign language. To use said target language with meaning. To maybe baby become fluent. It will require your undivided attention, focus and electrical energy.

         You will practice speaking, reading, listening and writing. These are the four basic skills.

Output: Writing and speaking are active.

Input: Reading and listening are passive.

Learning is a never-ending process. Many of you will die before it’s complete.

        Learning occurs in the context of task-based activities. In other words you learn by doing. You do and you understand, as we say, said, did, done.

         We will cover, in exhaustive detail, four important appliances and their English A/C-D/C lets see connections. They are: washing machines, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens.

         These machines are now essential in everyone’s life. You know this because it is your job to put them together. It’s like English. Putting words together makes a phrase. A short, simple sentence. Some have meaning and some are gibberish. Many words are composites of useless idiomatic semantic syntax that is not the same as income tax however both are expensive.

         Write this down.

         English in. English out.

         Open your head, heart and mouth. Eat English.

         Please open your creative notebook. Using a simple writing tool like a pen or #2, get the lead out fast pencil I want you to consider the following questions. Answer them using basic English.

         How did I get here? ______ 

         Why am I here? _____

         Am I a machine? _______

         Am I a tool of the factory? _______

         What is my motivation to learn English? (Secret answer - MONEY)

         No money, no honey.

Here’s the equation. No English = no job. No job = no money. No money = no food = starvation.

         Your supervisor has instructed me to motivate you. She expects me to motivate you to arrive on time, complete the assigned tasks, and pass the exams. Her management style ordered me to use fear as a form of discipline with you.

We are all well aware how the power and threat of fear motivates humans in our society. If I fail to motivate and pass you I will be executed. Survival is my fear-based motivation. You WILL pass because my little short life depends on it.

         Fear is a funny word.

Fear of starvation. Fear of poverty. Fear of losing face. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation or shame. Fear of not meeting family expectations. Fear of speaking in public.

         Fear of  ______  (free choice).

         Thank you for your short attention span. Next lesson we will discuss parts and functions of a washing machine cycle with elocution about a Turkish woman using sharp word shears down on her killing floor.

ah blood

Operatic actors offstage fashioned masks for their performance in a funeral formula.

         “This is not a fucking rehearsal,” directed the director. “Just get to the verb.”

         “Arrive on time, know your lines and wait for the check,” Leo sang as clouds shafted sunlight across mountains.

         Rational, thinking, speaking animals mumbled sounds, words, coalescing consonants, vowels and syllables. Etyms and atoms and axioms of choice.

         The logic of pain met pain’s tolerance, pain’s loss, pain’s memory, and pain’s fascination. The awareness of pain danced, creating itself, developing a heavy lidded dull throbbing sensation with kindness, a specific joy of pain pulsating through exposed jaw nerves sliding along invisible blood red threads you can’t see, dare to see or acknowledge, all minute tentacles of laughter. You know they are there. 

         Roots of pain bellow below the surface of appearances, in cold-hearted tissue. It needs a biopsy. What’s that? A lab techie’s evaluation analysis under a microscope, in a dust free, germ free sterile environment.     

         Tissue in the same sentence after five days of Bursa whiteout blizzards is the perfect moment to sit drinking iced coffee at dusk near a water fountain pen resolving a molar pain issue tissue, having had it yanked out after inserting 3-4 needles filled with antiseptic solutions into pink red gum soft pliable tissue.

Doctor Death massaged tissue preparing it for a needle, a heavy- duty stainless steel syringe cast in Turku, Finland, with a perfect circle for an index finger. The downward thrust of pressure was constant and bewildering. This is what happened and it didn’t take a well trained discerning eye more that a Nano-second after the partial was removed to see the tooth witnessing interior monologues, dialogue, and soliloquies of red stormed flesh dancing with pain - a sickness leaving the body - as Winter Hawk flew free from pain winging one true sentence.

         The old recalcitrant reclusive tooth had to come out. It had served it’s animalistic purpose dancing with food and multiple labia, clicking gum lined oral stories dazzling extreme pleasures of pain with comforts worth nurturing as a heartbeat’s death defying rhythm pulsated, vibrating faster than shadows divorcing themselves in blind love’s labyrinth. In theory.

         Ah, donating blood.

         Traveling is giving. Giving blood gives the gift of life. Experience, a wonderful little teacher nowadays said, Giving blood helps someone who needs it more than you. I have rare A-. I donated yesterday. Turkish medical authorities permitted a donation. The blood mobile bus sat near a busy intersection. I walked past pretzel sellers, cascading water fountains, shit covered statues of frozen WWI soldiers firing rusty iron guns into cobalt skies and climbed on the bloodmobile express.

         A smiling Bulgarian nurse asked health questions in broken English. Another nurse took blood pressure. She attached a tourniquet to a left arm saying, “You have excellent veins.”

         She swabbed a vein and slid the needle in. “Open and close your left hand.” Blood rivers flow.

         Outside tinted windows in a blinding sun immigrant parents gripped children’s hands. Scraggly half-starved men unloaded boxes of fresh red tomatoes from a white truck. Light reflected off sunglasses of cheerless pedestrians. Salvage operation boy teams folded, crushed and loaded cardboard boxes into metal carts. Recycle sales potential.

Sad, oh so seriously affected disordered businessmen carried battered brown briefcases filled with top secrets and nuclear fission material. Suchness is a burden and moral responsibility.