Ice Girl

"We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe." - Upanishad

*

This is a work of literary journalism.

It’s fucking hysterical.

Now and then mean the same in Ratanakiri, Cambodian animist jungle languages.

Leo is incognito and invisible perusing the Wild West. It is replete with wandering literary outlaws, animists, shamans and 25,000 natives. Rambunctious young Banlung cowboys and cowgirls dance 125cc machines through spiraling red dust.

How long have you been here, asked a 12-year old girl cutting and selling ice along a red road.

All day. I started in China. I walked to Vietnam. Then Laos. I’ll stay here awhile. We can talk.

Ok, she said, cutting crystals. Is a day long enough to process a sensation, form an impression? Is it long enough to gather critical mass data about the diversity of the human condition in this total phenomena?

Yes, said Leo, If you slow down. How is life here?

I work, I breed, I get slaughtered, she said. This is my fate. My fate is a machete slashing through jungles. Fate and random chance are two sides of the same coin. Yeah, yeah are two of my favorite lazy words. Especially when I am talking with illiterate zombies.

They are same word but I spit them out twice at light speed. You accent the last consonant, drawing it out like a sigh, a final breath, a whisper. Y-e-a-hhhhh. It’s crazy English believe you me. Impressive, eh?

I can also say OK twice fast with a rising sound on the k sounding like a which means I understand without admitting meaning or personal truth-value. It’s vague. Why be precise? People love conversations using abstract metaphors. Ok?

Ok. Address the very low literacy rate, said Leo. Hello, literacy rate, how are you? she said.
I am well thank you and speaking with improved elocution. My English is getting better. The more I see the less I know. I open my head, heart and mouth.

Someone said literacy means reading and writing, said ice girl.

I doubt it, said Literacy. Who needs reading and writing? Humans need food, sex, air, water, stories and red dust. Hope is in last place. In fact, hope may be the greatest evil because it’s a myth, like evil.

Let’s not have this conversation in the abstract, said ice girl, sawing cold.

I thought you said eating and fighting, said Literacy. You must be fucking crazy. My survival depends on eating and fighting. Reading and writing is for idiots. Millions never learn how to read or write, let alone scribble stories.

No chance. No money. No tools. Education is a waste of time.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Blindness

"We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe."

- Upanishad

 

Curious beginnings determine her artistic sense of formless form, coloring stories of her village, the other world.

Cutting, planting, harvesting completes slow rhythm of life. Her skill shines with every new expression. Her heart sings.

Her simple direct feeling is all sensation.

Art enables her this beauty. She describes what she draws. She creates what she sees. Her words fly through forests with resplendent peacocks, birds of paradise.

A blind conversation developed a through line. Turn a blind eye.

Blindness listened. Blindness heard muted laughter before intuition gestured pink floating word worlds.

Laughter danced with exhaled attachment.

Blindness danced through late yellow faltering light / penetrating bamboo leaves spreading themselves over banana baskets impaled on swinging posts.

A bike bell rang. A young Lao girl sat quiet watching the Vietnamese girl do her toenails. Cutting, and trimming, lemon / lime soak, cuticles, translucent before applying a silver hued glossy glean. Nail by nail.

Blindness solved the mystery of sight crying tears of silence.

A van labeled UNIVERSE filled with blank faced white Europeans trapped behind glass holding rampant desires and scared expectations on laps turned into a blind alley.

They fidgeted with uncomfortable languages floating into ear canals assaulting long painful strides navigating yesterday’s regrets / tomorrow’s fear / today’s dead lines.

Blindness practiced Tai-chi with precision.

Blindness exchanged blue ink for a dark shade of green.

A handheld hair dryer waved hot air over a shampooed head. Mirrors whispered empty secrets.

Elements of silence said farewell.

Eyes investigated decompression while swallowing fresh yogurt with peach slices near afternoon’s languishing empty promises intent on making it new day by day.

Explanations have to end somewhere.

In her village, the other world, the one she never left, Blindness threaded new beginnings on her loom of time feeling pressure and tightness between notes.

Sunlight dressed saliva beads blending a weave, texture and design, saying hello Beauty.

Beauty has no tongue.

Weaving A Life V1

Live the dream

"We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe."

- Upanishad

 

Beauty of travel

The beauty of travel is the anonymouse sensation in a crowd.

On a Sunday all the Khmer men gather for coffee, tea and stories.

Do you take milk with your stories, asked one. No, straight.

Some study another's face and words.

Others study cell phones or the unposed their music video on a tv.

TV is great, said one, it allows you to give up your consciousness.

Still others study a conversation disguised as a peddler pulling his trash cart

Down a street squeezing air out of a worn plastic bottle to summon the attention of a person waiting to hear the air knowing they can pawn some junk, perhaps an old family heirloom or weaver's word loom in Lao village along a river stream of consciousness.

Or a real loom with or without threads of a dangling modifier; cotton or silk having created clothing for relatives now since gone.

The silence of conversations attracts flies.

No one bothers the stranger writing or drawing in a notebook.