nam Nam village

Away from the Nam Ou River down long dusty roads is a village of 100 people.

Forests, bamboo thatch homes, basket makers, mountains, rice paddies. 

Wild open and inviting.

Women weave. 

Every Day

The world is a village.

Your village thrives near rivers and pine-mountains.

You plant it. You nurture it. You harvest it. You eat it. You carry it.

Every day starts at 4:00 a.m.

You put food into a wicker basket, heave it onto your back and either walk to town or ride with other villagers in the back of a small diesel belching tractor or truck. Perhaps a tuk-tuk overflowing with soil smells, green life talkers. Maybe on a motorcycle as chilly winds blast your face. It feels good to be alive.

Get there early. Spread your treasures out on a rice sack near the curb. Cold winds refresh the street. Say hello to friends. Broken dawn breaks over eastern mountains shrouded in fast clouds. Mothers and daughters arrange labors of love.

Women arrive to unload bags of corn, dead civet cats, onions, greens, bamboo shoots, apples, and language. They grow rice, ginger, beans, peanuts, peppers, bananas, squash, sugar cane, corn, papaya, cucumber, and sweet potato. They only leave villages to sell to townies.

A smiling old man crouched on the corner wearing a green army pith helmet from a forgotten war sells bells and musical iron instruments for oxen and water buffalo.

An ancient shaman woman with a deep lined face bundled against morning displays roots, herbs and small bundles of natural remedies. People trust her innate knowledge. Her dialect and wisdom is older than memory.  

I want More

Namaste,

A foreigner put a pile of gold on a table in Laos, turned to the old man squinting through one good eye and said, “I will give you this pile of gold for your daughter.”

“I want more,” said the old man. “Her face and body and heart is Lao. She has Vietnamese blood. It is supply and demand. Business is business. It’s all about user value. It’s about exchange value. No plastic. Cash only. See this machete?”

He waved it in the man’s face, cutting him off.

Nearby, two male tourists hadn’t decompressed. They tried to speak in complete sentences. It was impossible. One started, trying to release sounds, impressive words, phrases, sentences and, like a game of chess, war or conquest wearing stupidity and a clear lack of respect the OTHER one cut him off at the throat with sharp sophisticated annunciation.

A verbal machete.

Frustrated, he grimaced suffering severe brain damage. Short circuit. Transmission lines went down. Thud. Crash. Burn.

In their remote jungle village near the River of Darkness they carved images of their dead. 

Metta.

rest

Namaste,

Once upon a time there was a small village in Nepal. It rested on a mountain ridge between Kathmandu and Pokhara. Before the highway was built people walked from one city to another. It took seven days to reach the village from K, another two to P.

One day, everyday in the village a man carried a wicker basket full of rocks down a mountain to a construction site. A new kind of back breaking site with no connection to a spider's social network web.

He walked and walked. He dumped the rocks. He climbed the mountain and filled his basket.

In a noisy city filled with silent yellow temple candles a tired girl near her green vegetables and a lock fell asleep. She dreamed of education, clean water, friends and play in shadows. Where is her key?

Metta.

Bone script

Once he started, establishing a voice, setting and characters in the human condition on paper surrounded by illiterate simple, loud, noisy, volume addicted humans with royal blue ink it was a joy.

He sat at a warung, a cheap food place - plain white virgin rice, spicy chilly, egg, green veggies, tempe, tofu, deep fried crackers - on the other side of the Berlin Wall. He'd escaped from the tyranny of noisy educational sad robots trapped in their expectations of perpetual childhood.

A village woman piled her trash near a grove of banana trees and lit a fire. Roosters, hens and chicks scattered. Smoke curled around a man pushing his chipped blue plywood cart loaded with plastic dishes, cheap cloth, simple tools, brushes, mops, bags, hats, and basic household goods. Rolling the wheels through neighborhoods.

Cumulus clouds gathered momentum.

Nearby were the yelling village people. A tall thin woman with her 3-4 year old, monkey boy child. Pregnancy was her ticket out of hell, loneliness and misery. In a village you traded sex for security.

She and her mother tormented the kid. He cried. They laughed at him. They created a mini-monster. A boy who hated women now and later. He was dependent on them for food and affection. Mother and daughter uttered primal grunt sounds. The mother combed her daughter's hair scavenging follicles for nits and lice. Protein.

Crying children. Perpetual distractions.

Time-death.

The primordial darkness. Cosmic birth. The cave of inner being.

He saw her through a window when the metro pulled in.

Alone and cold, she waited for the green metro door to open.

It was late. She wore a thin black sweater and long gray skirt.

She was slight...olive pale skin, black hair pulled back, around 45.

She limped into the car dragging her right foot. Her left foot was normal. Her right foot looked like a case of elephantiasis. She sat twenty feet away.

She bent over and slowly raised her skirt from around her ankles. The burned and bloody skin damage ran three inches across and ten inches high. Either first or second degree burns. A layer of skin was exposed, red, lined with white. Bare and exposed. She needed medical attention.

Two men across from her stared and diverted their eyes.

She sat, fingered a phone and grimaced. No tears, just a stoic face.

The metro rolled through night. It passed a river, a neon bright Everest furniture store, fast food emptiness and an expensive private hospital filled with antiseptics, bandages, lotions and potions and patients with money.

She inspected her ankle, touching an edge of fried skin with a white tissue. Clear cold air sent shivers through her central nervous system shutting down pain receptors.

Two old women balancing collected piles of scrap wood on their heads took a shortcut through village mud.

A perfect white and yellow winged butterfly danced in a slight spring breeze.