we gave them everything

Two pale female French tourist conspirators plotted their narrative near the Khmer gardener.

Colonizing this hell hole we gave them baguettes, war, illusions of freedom, top heavy dull administrative procrastination tools, fake NGO bureaucracies, wide boulevards, legal beagle systems, an eye for an eye, corruption potential, designs of egalitarian ideals, morals, ethics, principles, values, faded yellow paint and French architecture.

Yes, said her friend, this IS the old brave new world and I am lazy and passive and my stomach comes first. I am starving.

Let’s eat our sorrow and be grateful we don’t live in this depressing country filled with compassionate Buddhist people. I’ll never understand their intention to do nothing with mindfulness.

It’s the hardest thing a person can do.

She was a super thin model of anorexia boned with stellar constellations. Her grim hawk faced rotund lesbian lover had flabby upper arms. She scribbled serious fiction-memory and sense data entitlement in an unlined black notebook with one hand while massaging her forehead to increase creative blood flow.

They examined a microscopic map of Angkor Wat filled with unconscious alliterative jungles,

gold lame Apsara dancers,

232 species of black and red butterflies,

2 million anxious tourists in a big fat fucking hurry,

Chinese, Japanese and Korean robot tour groups,

crying elephants,

super tour buses,

125cc motorcycles,

tuk-tuks,

begging children speaking ten European languages hawking gimcracks

whining predatory adults with an 8th grade education accompanied by miles of flaming plastic garbage,

narrow boned white oxen pulling carts,

14 million attention deficit disordered citizens addicted to simple minded FACELOST entertainment diversionary cell phone adolescent sex text nonsense and 1,001 laterite cosmic Hindu temples stretching across Burma and Thailand into Laos and Vietnam in a circular boomerang dance evolving from the stillness,

letting go of outcomes as the French ladies whispered,

Where have we been,

Where did we go,

What did we see,

Where are we,

How do we feel,

Did we discover the intuitive third eye of enlightenment or any wisdom in this totality of mystery, devotion, and sublime splendor?

They’re trapped in Cambodia.

One described fragments of her short life history with an animist talking stick.

The other cut out brochure glossies, ticket stubs and bleeding hearts to paste in her book. A future visual memory of her ear and snow.

Her attention span was shorter than a tour at the Genocide Museum in Phony Baloney filled with 2,000,000 smiling skulls.

Here we are.

The Language Company 

Writers On Steroids

“Ok,” I said to the Senate Committee investigating Writers On Steroids in Room 2143 of the grand facade off Blue Jay Way.

They stared at me with jaundiced eyes. They shuffled paper. An old tottering fool of a Grand Inquisitor pounded his gavel. I remembered him from the McCarthy Era and feared the worst.

“You are accused of taking steroids to enhance your writing performance. We have evidence from editors, hacks and wan-ta-na-bees that you and perhaps thousands of your ilk slaving away like drones in the dungeons of mediocrity, dreams, illusions and journalistic heaven on word machines have boosted your word output through the use of banned, I repeat, banned substances. Say it isn’t so say its all a lie misconception hearsay. What say you?”

I took a drink of pure spring water from mysterious unfiltered Alaskan lakes. A naked trout started dancing on the table in front of me. I laughed. “Ha, you're joking aren't you?”

I stuttered, spitting water all over the microphone. It shorted out and I was forced to use my voice minus amplification.

“Of course I sue steroids, why, in fact, in truth of fact and fiction I sear the meat on your grill with my defamatory remarks. The pills are beautiful and come in a variety of colors, like rainbows. They open doors of perception with wonder shock and awe. I have irrefutable evidence that your committee grooved the approval of these pharmaceutical delights thanks to the huge financial contribution by multinational drug companies to keep you in office. It's well known this country, let alone sports heroes have been programmed to ingest chemicals.”

I jumped on the table with the naked trout and started yelling. “We are ALL filled with chemicals you idiots. It's the American way of life. It's the new mantra, Run, Read, Write with Greater Efficiency and Prose the Poem with diligence and fortitude using Elements of Style. It’s the style baby, the demolition charge under your hat, Jack.”

“Order, order,” yelled a bailiff approaching me with caution, mace and industrial strength handcuffs. “Down boy!”

They shackled me. The Grand Inquisitor handed down my sentence. It had a noun, verb and object.

“Take the prisoner to Cuba and give him an orange jump suit. Interrogate him and deprive him of his writes.”

I screamed in anguish as they dragged me past a pharmacy filled with promise, hope and salvation.

“You haven’t heard the last word from me. Where’s my trout?”

Travel slow in Burma. You're on the ride once.

Beauty's Mirror

I’m broiling on the balcony of my Oregon tree house.

Getting down and dirty after 1,001 years away from the typewriter.

Covered in construction dust needing oil it’s a small portable dangerous machine.  It’s capable of transforming life energies and weaving adventures. Threads follow the needle.

I am a peripatetic traveler, literary outlaw, photographer and journalist.

I’m lucky to get it down now and make sense of it later.

I’m a mirror in the mandala of my labyrinth. I am Labrys, from the Greek for a two-headed axe. I write with passion and vision. Short fast and deadly.

Punctuation is a nail.

My mirror reflects everything.

Beauty needs no tongue.

I’m confidant and self-reliant. I explore the human condition. Visual storytelling.

Human energies, frequencies and vibrations reflect languages, lives and attitudes.

I absorb being, joy, anger, jealousy, ignorance, desire, fear, greed, passion and suffering.

Hurl your thunderbolt unto death.

Meditate on the process of your death.

Suffering is an illusion.

The world is an illusion.

Grasping is suffering.

Values, attitudes, joy, belief systems and dreams evolve in my mirror.  

Your mask eats your face.

My mirror is free of dust.

I evolve emotional trust, wisdom, peace and love with truth and compassion.

I experience forgiveness with emotional honesty.

Creativity dances in language.

These truths don’t surprise you after 1,001 years of wandering.

Everything you know is a lie.

Keep a diamond in your mind.

 

Temple of Complete Reality

Zeynep showed Lucky how to swim with gigantic sea turtles off Gili Air is-land.

They did a sitting mediation deep in clear blue water reflecting surface sunbeams.

They practiced a slow walking meditation in soft sand.

They took three slow steps with “in” breath - arrived.

Three steps with “out” breath - home.

If your legs get heavy walk with your heart, she said. Everything we do is a meditation. One is one’s own refuge, who else could be the refuge?

They meditated on the process of their death.

Practice 10,000 times until you’ve got it, she said.

Dive deep exploring underwater life below the surface of appearances.

Let’s have a little adventure.

I wove a magic carpet, Z said. Show me a place you remember. Let’s go.

They flew to The Temple of Complete Reality on Qinchengshan Mountain in Sichuan. It was a series of 2,000-year old Taoist temples in red orange yellow green autumn foliage.

Taoism’s home in China personified balance and harmony. They climbed for 2.5 hours. Cold winds on a clear day. They scampered up mossy stone steps and steep angled dirt paths through primal forests.  

They met Mountain Girl, ten, selling tea where a trail forked into forests. When you come to a fork in the path take it, she said. She joined them. She didn’t want anything. She wasn’t hustling. She lived in the mountain.

She diverted them away from whining obnoxious Han tourists.

She described medicinal plants and herbs. She fed them delicious yellow and red berries. Babbling tales about plants, trees, rivers and animals she shared a story about mountain spirits.

Once three men chased me through the forest. I met a snake. “Please help me escape from men chasing me,” I said to the snake. “It turned into a slim beautiful woman and said, ‘don’t be afraid. I will help you.’ 

“She took me down the mountain, saving me from the bad men. Then she turned back into a snake and disappeared into the forest.”  

They explored a series of temples. Statues, incense, prayers and spirit energies. Inner and outer visions extended in four directions.

They shared rice, chicken, bread and water near the summit. Stone carved twin turtles and dragons guarded the entrance. The main temple was a reddish brown ornate rising sculpture. Crimson incense smoke curled into sky.

Four Chinese characters read:

Clouds circle this temple

Clouds know us by now, said Mountain Girl. 

They circumnavigated rising levels of experience on narrow wooden steps. Below them a golden statue of Lao Tzu rode a wild ox. Yin/Yang.

An old woman offered medallions of the cosmic symbol on red thread. Mountain Girl and Zeynep selected one to wear around their necks. They descended. Mountain girl fingered her threaded talisman.

They stopped at a temple for tea. A young nun washed teacups. “I’ve been here fifteen years. I clean, pray, read, meditate, talk with monks and travelers and do my work. I am focused on my goal.  My goal is to reach the root below the surface.”

Her path was direct with heart-mind intention.

They bought Mountain Girl food to take home and walked to her bike. He gifted her a white khata scarf from Tibet.

Zeynep gave her a hug. “Here’s a poem by Rumi.”

Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky

And you lift me up out of the two worlds.

I want your sun to reach my raindrops,

So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.

“Thanks,” said Mountain Girl. “Every heartbeat is an eternal rhythm of universal possibilities. May you enjoy wonder, health, abundance, gratitude, and contentment.”

Mountain girl and Vivian

Haiku Otres

Life is a beach then you fly.

You sit on a bamboo chair next to bald water sport mannequins wearing snorkeling masks, Lycra shorts, inflatable vests and dusty flippers. They are chained to the wall to prevent mermaids, nymphs and water sprite thieves.

Birds twitter in hydra grandma trees. Slow gentle blue-green waves brush a long empty shore day after day.

Across a red dirt road are bamboo, wood and fancy shacks disguised as guesthouses and restaurants.

Signs litter little red road: Island Tours, Laundry Service, Boat Trips, Late Night Pizza, Sand Removal Renovation, Transport & More, Green House Effect (with excellent bookstore), Mushroom Villas, Dance Until You Die, My Kind of Place, Sandy Crotch Heaven, Barefoot Only the Lonely, European Spoken Here, Massage To Go, WE Serve Sad Depressed Super Serious Fat White Rich Humans Like Russian Mafia and Rude Pushy Inconsiderate Chinese, We Are All Refugees When Everything IS Said and Done 24/7.

Digs run $15-100 a night. Gypsies, Backpackers, Europeans, Japanese and Chinese.

Selfie nirvana.

Here I am on the shore with arms raised. Here I am drinking beer with friends. Here I am all wet. Here I am doing absolutely nothing in particular and everything in general. Here I am in a sitting meditation zoning into universal mindfulness. Here I am in a net of light. I am a rainbow.

Ice coffee runs $1-1.50.  Pay For View. At an upscale Italian joint a ravioli dinner of spinach filled pasta smothered with carbonara sauce, side of garlic bread, tonic water and espresso is $12.65. Smiles are gratuitous.

Cheaper eats decorate red road. Rice is nice.

At 6:15 a.m. you stash your bags in a simple bamboo room, cut through a distorted distracted disrupted deserted zone of empty rattan chairs to the beach. It stretches from northern Sin City to expensive southern resorts. Local m/f teams rake mourning sand.

Sand complements musical melodic waves breaking on the shore day after day. You enjoy a slow walking meditation on a long empty beach. Breathing in - out. Water music laps ankles. Yellow dawn streaks sky. You salute the sun. Celebrate another day of living.

Three green islands float long ago and far away on an event horizon. Bright red, blue and yellow tourist boats plant anchors.

Engines hum.

Day unfolds as a lotus grows from mud.

International couples stroll sand staring inland at strangers staring back. Shades of ignorance.

The majority of walking eyes survey tables, chairs, people and eateries. Strangers all. Scarce few see sea.

No drugs. No weapons. Leave your ego at the door.

Sweating runners with pulse armbands tread grains.

Workers set up beach lounges, switch on expresso machines, fire up kitchen stoves, hack ice, replenish beer supplies.

Waves erase footprints. Sleeping dogs cur into sand.

The beach orchestra builds its daily tempo.

A young Italian woman unfolds a blue towel on sand. She lies face down. Pushing up with her arms she assumes a yoga posture eyes straight ahead on a blue green sea. Her spine weaves vertebrae like a wave. Calm and focused.

Visitors stagger from beds, walk foam, eat, stare at waves evolving from a flat lined horizon holding green island hideouts. People plan to sit or go. Yes go. Go for a walk, a swim, adventure. Discover reality below the surface of appearances. Dive deeper than unconscious.

Nail girls protected by large floppy hats seeking cuticles needing trim canvass sand sun lovers.

String theory bracelet girls traverse grains of the universe. Boys ply sunglasses. The future is bright.

A girl balancing a bamboo platter of pineapples, mangoes, bananas, paring knife, plastic bags and sharp sticks prowls sand from dawn to dusk.

People watch people watching people. It's the thing - look without understanding.

A narrow blue and white boat arrives on sand. A boy throws out a rusty anchor.

Backpackers from islands unload kilos of memories, dreams and reflections. Boatman throws five large empty water bottles toward land grab.

Mid-day sun shimmers above shaded tables as massage clients smothered with oil feel muscled women knead bronze skin tone epidermis as children laugh, run and play in surf near extreme serious a-dolts and retirees wondering how they ended up in paradise removed from frozen Europe hearing dulcimer hammers at a nearby five-story cement project.

Swimmers plunge into H2O covering 70% of Earth.

Couples embrace cold drinks behind mirrored sunglasses.

Fat white Russians slobber UV 30 on skin and drink cold beer.

99.9 % of beach people stare at phones.

Strangers accustomed to cement pavement feel sand. Danger. Watch your step. Cautious sensation.

Babel languages whisper a Sappho wind singing iambic pentameter odes with save face time.

Spit in the ocean.

Restless orange diamond light crashes into sunset.

Red sun, white waves, blue sky, green islands. Floating world.

Silver waves lap shore.

White crescent moon hangs by a thread.

Stars sing with their light. I am twinkling.

Create your sandcastle.

Rinse and repeat.

A brown butterfly dances with green waves singing sand.