Trust and smile

Don't you just love the name of a school in Cambodia?

It sings on a clean white sign propped against a brick wall along an endless red rutted swampy road.

Down the road from a pagoda wat where friends and relatives create a cremation. He was 70.

He survived the genocide. That says something. 

The rainy season brings endless pleasure minus pain to natives and aliens.

Milling around is an art form here.

TRUST and SMILE.

Practice with friends and strangers. 

hello june

Goodbye May. Pound out your bright beautiful future. 

A Turkish man with a hammer. Gypsy music. 

Only madmen and pilgrims travel alone.

We began in India. Wandering no name alleys, streets, villages, rivers, valleys, mountains.

Darkness whispers, Who's there?

I received a reprieve from death row one night in Vietnam. My sentence was commuted to life without parole. A South American writer said parole means speech, word, a word of honor.

Parole is the condition under which you are free, with a language and human awareness.

Human freedom is unconditional.

Memory fades into living color remembered with absolute infinity. Desperate hands fold across heaving chests, feeling abandoned sucking air injuries. Stop the bleeding. Start the breathing. 

It rained yesterday. It was long sweet and slow and heavy. Streets became quiet. Everyone huddled in corners of their mind. 

Why is nature so cruel, they cried. Nature laughed, Hahaha. Human tears fell like rain. Tears flooded their memory of nothing.

Today the sun came out. It was hot. Humans cried, Why is nature so cruel. Nature laughed.

 

Scientists say old memory is not destroyed, but that many copies of the same memory could exist in parallel.

They say your memory is only as good as your last memory rather than based on your initial memory.

Speak memory.

“Years ago, I broke a bunch of roses
from the top of his wall.
A thorn from that is still in my palm,
working deeper.” - Rumi 

Brick Boy in Nepal

 

My name is Brick Boy. I live, work and die in the Kathmandu valley. The valley contains hundreds of brick factories. Millions of people like me work here. It's our fate.

A woman I never met carries them at a construction site in Bhaktapur. Exciting.

Labor.

The factories are owned by rich people. We plant, harvest, cull, clean, stack, carry, haul and sell bricks. Bricks are an essential way of life. They get formed, stacked, sorted, assembled, counted, controlled, and used. Like me and the others.

We are a tool of production.

I've got a mind to give up living and go shopping instead.

My future is safe and brilliant.

Chinese Factory School #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 will meet twice a week for two hours. Show up on time, do your assignments and be prepared. Nothing more, nothing less.

We are gathered here today in the glorious Chinese Communist Party People's Appliance Factory #8 to begin our basic simple English lessons. Your supervisor informs me that you are here both 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 since early morning in the factory. It is the end of another long mind numbing grueling tedious day 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 hopefully 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. Writing and speaking are active. Reading and listening are passive in your learning process. 

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 simple sentence. Some have meaning and some are gibberish. Many words are useless idiomatic semantic syntax which is not the same as personal income tax.

Open your head, heart and mouth. Eat English.

a Fable

There is an old fable about a bird and an ogre telling his daughter where his soul lived.

“Sixteen miles from here is a old gigantic tree. Around the tree are tigers, bears and scorpions. On top of the tree is a huge snake. On top of the snake’s head is a small cage and inside the cage is a bird. Inside the bird is my soul.”

hello big brother sings FaceLost in china

losing face in china is a state crime

punishable by death

Myths suggests that behind the explanation there is a reality that cannot be seen and examined.

Myth has been defined as truth trying to escape from reality.

A myth is a story of unknown origins, sacred stories of created religions based on belief, containing archetypical universal truths.

They are in every place and no particular place.