Loving August

Namaste,

August may be cruel. She may be kind. 

Here in Coma-Land, somewhere below the equatorial zone it is the rainy season. Coming down. Sheets.

What it is. Two seasons. Dry and wet.

Laundry hangs itself. Why does laundry hang itself? Poverty? Lack of initiative? Boredom? For the same reason the juvenile boy facing glass across the street passively performs circular tedious rag motions on a glass door.

His decrepit grannie living upstairs waiting to die a glorious peaceful death will inspect it. If her old tired gray eyes see one dancing smudge she'll begin screaming, Clean it again, Clean it again. He will hang his head.

In shame.

Listening class is permanently cancelled.

Around and around we go. Where we stop no one knows. If he knew the end game he'd cease breathing. He'd hang with laundry. He'd go to school. Too expensive. Yeah, yeah. 

Dirt roads are now expansive expensive elaborate esoteric lakes. Welcome to the lake district. Take the long way home. Endless landscape shrines are a luminous green. Eat it with your eyes, said Saigon.

Metta.

ice cries

Namaste,

Dreaming of ice a boy sawed crystals of clarity in a tropical kingdom. He saw but didn't see.

He stood in the back of a blue hyperventilation dumptruck with his rusty trusty bladed saw.

Blocks of ice disguised as solidified water were longer than a flowing, overflowing, flowering Mekong river feeding Asian lakes.

He unwrapped blocks. He sawed. He tapped a hammer defining worlds into melting scientific serious sections.

His friend loaded condensation on thin shoulders. He carried melting weight to a bamboo shack. He dumped ice into a waiting orange plastic box. A smiling women frying bananas over kindling gave him some money, Thank you for the cold.

Carver carved. Tap-tap-tap.

The woman assaulted ice with a hammer, shimmering blocks, refreshing beverages. 

Ice blocks in shadows melted latent desire. 

An old woman in pajamas sweeping dust heard ice.

Metta.

  Nam iceman cometh.

SPIRAL

Greetings,

In Hue, Vietnam the Healing The Wounded Heart Shop has colorful woven baskets. Baskets from Nepal are made of recycled plastic food snack wrappers. Brilliant reds, greens, blues, all the hues.

Shop with your heart. Shop to give back.

The Spiral Foundation is a non-profit humanitarian organization working in Nepal and Vietnam.

Spiral. Spinning Potential Into Resources And Love. At the SPIRAL workshop in Hue they make bowls using discarded telephone wires. They work with the Office of Genetics and Disabled Children at Hue Medical College. 

All net proceeds from the handicraft sales are returned to Vietnam and Nepal to fund primary health care, medical and educational projects. Projects employ 1,000 participants with fair hourly salaries not based on piece work. Projects have provided for more than 250 heart surgeries and treatments for children with life threatening diseases.

SPIRAL raised $82,000 in 2010. 

Metta.

Mr. Neanderthal

Greetings,

Mr. Neanderthal swaggered down the middle of a no-name street in a no-name Vietnamese town with his long time little local squeeze. She was smaller than an astroid with long hair wearing charcoal pajamas and low heels. Her face was sad, neglected and resigned to her passionate and economic fate on a fair trade mission.

Mr. N wore flowered bermuda shorts and green flip flops. He was naked from the waste up. Swirling tattoos danced on his dark torso. His arms extended in heavy duty weight lifter macho style like an simian alpha male tribal posture.

Me big. Me strong. Me have woman. Her name Jane. Me her man.

They'd sold their car to buy food, diamonds and extra passports. They were on foot. They needed transport. He whistled for a motorcycle. They went to a haberdasher. They rented clothes. He found a suit of armor. She found a gown.

They went to a history museum. He accepted her arm standing on the stairway to heaven. She was radiant in her expectations. After the reception at sea level they cleaned a magnificent house resembling a wedding cake. They raised pigs and chickens and lived happily ever after. They took out the garbage and the pigs ate well. 

Metta.

Sam and Dave sleep

Greetings,

The bent nail gets hammered down, yelled a Chinese teacher next door to my classroom. 

The Maija artist accepted the photo from the grieving relative set up his easel, using a magnifying glass to see the face, using a pencil to capture the 8x10 likeness. On the chipped plaster walls were examples of his work; peasants, farmers, aunts, uncles, husbands, wives and young and old Pioneer communist members with tight, tight red scarves knotting their necks suffocating their passion. 

Today he was sketching an old unsmiling stoic woman. A sad resigned peasant. These were people who had suffered. They’d suffered at the hands of the nationalists then the communists, then the new economic revolutionaries. The indignities of old age.

An old three-string wooden musical instrument hung on the wall near red streaks of paint inside this fine art museum. A black fly on the left shoulder of the artist rubbed its feelers together. Tasty. 

An old man with his emaciated skeleton face and paper thin arms carefully opened a bag of tea and poured tight compressed leaves into his bony right hand. He dispersed this into an old chipped blue pot and added water. We shared tea watching the artist work. The artist was good. The likeness was close to perfect. The tea was delicious.

The same kind of images decorate the altars in Vietnam. They sit in various temples around the cities. Death is a big deal. Ancestor worship. 

Do all the ancestors hear, understand and acknowledge all the yelling? Yes. Do they open their mouths and request a little peace and quiet? On anniversary death days they meet all the other ancestors inside narrow mazes of alleys where piss, drain water, used cooking oil, daily slop and vicious liquids drain into punctured cement holes flowing along narrow passageways slanted toward the middle where voices become echoes? Yes. 

The dead formed a rubber stamp committee to address family noise. ‘It’s come to our attention dear comrades, dear people, dearly beloved family and friends...that we have a communication issue here in the neighborhood.’

‘Silence! We are trying to sleep. The long peaceful and restful sleep. Leave us be.’

Metta.