My body is a living work of art.
It's for sale but it ain't cheap.
Food is an important part of a balanced diet.
Have ink will flow. Travel makes you.
All the mad ones burning like stars,
Flames of passion and suffering
Savor a visual glance toward endless speculation.
Walk slowly.
Trust your blazing intuition on a hot Saturday after walking along the green leafy river street. Walk down an old familiar broken unsaved path. You know left and right. Go forward. The road is made by walking.
Thread follows needle.
It's a small self-contained place. A room. A bed. Small kitchen.
She is in a plastic recliner watching tv. He has a feeling. It reminds him of the V woman in Kampot, with the massage sign. He stops. Steps past bamboo. She's maybe 30, lipstick, smile, good eyes. They talk money. She locks the glass door covered in old newspapers. Pulls a curtain closed. Kills the tv. She is not a chicken.
They shower. They scrub each other.
Her naked body is white. She caresses him and goes down slobbering, noisy, sensations - she moves so he can tongue her essence. He eats, saliva, lips, long luxurious. He discovers her need. She moves faster. Yes. Yes. Yes. She shudders, releases. He pulls her closer increasing the desire. She can't move, her passion flows again, again, until she's exhausted.
She turns over. He enters her, moaning her lips, her legs up, over his shoulders, her pain pleasure, joy - kissing his ears, cheeks, and he never comes. It's only about her pleasure.
She gives him mouthwash. He swishes it around and spits it out. They shower, dress and he hands her paper. She smiles. He leaves.
Tropical sun penetrates atmospheric conditions.
Trust your intuition. Yum-yum.
Between wild bonsai and Bamboo he regained consciousness at 5:18 a.m. outside Jakarta.
“Twilight in reverse,” sang a full-throated songbird in a Banyan tree stretching gnarled roots, “be diverse and grateful.”
It warbled a short trill, trilled a long solitary note, trilled short and silenced.
Bye-bye blackbird.
He lit Tibetan incense and unlocked the front door. Hearing bolts slide the bird sang. He stepped out. He whistled in return, establishing a connection. Mimicry. White and purple orchids shared aromas. Inhaling petals and bird melodies he scattered breadcrumbs on a path. Black snails snaked through roses leaving slime trails. He watered apple trees, flora and fauna.
His mind reflected a diamond.
Dew on a spider’s web glistened silver pearls.
Villagers awoke before dawn. Girls swept leaves from stones. After wringing flesh fibers dark eyed laconic women wrapped raw silk around female skeletons before hanging laundry on portable stainless steel structures to dry inside gray billowing fumes from fired garbage dancing over a sky high chipped wall decorated with green glass shards and oxidized barb wire.
Plastic bags, banana and coconut leaves, discarded clothing, feathers, Styrofoam happy meal containers, cardboard, chopsticks, plywood, grammar textbooks, comprehension checks and balances and IMF social network addictions LIKE ME burned with ferocious addictive intensity.
Phobia sang a rising middle class song accompanied by an Indonesian servant spoon-feeding Chinese infants before boys were stolen by coastal trafficking mafia retailing for $3,500 - $5,000. Negotiate. Keep talking about price. Always Be Closing.
The one-child family planning genocide policy created a desperate daily search for heirs. Losing face with facile piety meant public humiliation. Shame.
“There are 119 males for 100 females,” said Chinese Statistics at The Office of Mandatory Abortion and Population Control next door to The Morals and Re-Education Office down the street from The Ministry of Truth Myth & The Dark Arts.
“All the A men with a career, condo, cash, credit card and car are taken. Single women will have to settle for a B or C man.”
Millions of women facing single status shame committed suicide to preserve filial family honor. Goodbye cruel world. Good luck to you and your non-family.
Before an Indonesian girl swept she wept. Birds whistled. Humans yapped emotional SOS distress signals as leaves veined. Rats, geckos and butterflies laughed. A faint step slapped gravel. A piano note reverberated. Broom music whisked stone. A crescent moon sex slave on her back massaged ink in sky islands floating on blue water. Awake for the living.
Be a work of art or wear a work of art.
Art is what everything else isn’t.
Lucky survivors composed tongue bone oracles inside Tibetan meditation thangkas creating a Kalachakra ceremony with rainbow sand particles.
Mandala. Center. Release.
Silk weavers fingered golden threads. Miners harvested Blue Zircon near Ice Girl in Banlung. Read everything backwards. Backwards everything read. Write right left to the imagination sitting on a Metro subway sandwich as sensations explored labyrinths without a center. Mystic Arabic dervish dancers spinning on the Wheel of Life rejoiced in ecstasy. Angels danced on a pinhead.
Give female orphans sewing machines training and they’ll change the world with endless job opportunities, low population growth, free medicine, clean water and free education, said The Dream Sweeper.
Your needle leads thread, said Kairos. I am a compass without a needle, said Lucky.
The heart-mind gift of writing allowed Zeynep to meditate in the present as a stranger to herself:Mindfulness gives me time and time gives me choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. I’m not swept away by my feelings. I can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.
I love the crazies, it’s the fools I can’t tolerate.
A Zen writer is an artist, said Z the younger. They love making a big bright, beautiful mess, cleaning it up and making another mess. You are a Lone Wolf blessed with R/7. Free is your quality of life.
The world is a stage and we are but the players. The play’s the thing. A risk taking adventure using asemic language sensing joy and mystery winds down. A poem begins in wisdom and ends in delight. Visionary mystics blossom radiant beauty.
Water-stone. Yin-Yang.
Wear a star on your forehead.
Small powerful stars sing with their light.
Zeynep, a curious star visited a blue marble hurtling through space. What is Earth like? Are inhabitants gentle and compassionate? Do they share calm heart-minds? Do they create archetype wisdom art using multi-colored pigments on cream-colored paper dreaming with their eyes open spilling rainbows in meditative blissful silence?
What is life? Autonomy. Personal growth. Self-acceptance. Purpose. Environmental mastery. Positive relationships. Eudemonia.
“We are the only animals who laugh,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, “and we are the only animals who know we are going to die. We imagine our death, our mortality. This fills some with dread, psychological neurosis, lack of purpose. For others it’s a release, a joy, and a dance. Freedom is unconditional. I was born laughing.”
“I was born dead and slowly came to life. Are you a clown? Perhaps a clown fish?” I asked.
“Look in your dream mask mirror,” she said. “Not all the clowns are in the circus.”
“Under this mask, another mask. I will never be finished removing all these faces.”
“Let’s dance. Let’s meditate on the process of death.”
My name is Beauty. Death is my mother. I have no tongue.
Your mask eats your face.
Asian survivors looked back with reinforced healthy doubt and fear rather than face courageous futures.
In Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia genocide/war survivors said more to a person’s back than their face. Leaving was abandoned. Bye-bye and good luck to your family.
Zeynep and Rita turned a page.
Rice grains in a broken bamboo basket sustained crows blacker than shadow faces hiding inside deep dark structures watching the road. Always watching. They stare with hard eyes, said Rita, their eyes dance over flat countryside covering lost forgotten patient rice paddies waiting for a drop of water nourishing green rice or staring at palm groves, coconut, banana trees surrounding stilted bamboo thatched homes as naked children playing above buried landmines sail dream kites.
They watch. They never close blind eyes. They watch for invaders from Thailand, America, Vietnam. Patient forever they wait watching for wives, husbands, children, strangers, soldiers, amputees and Apsara dancers. Their blind eyes are always switched ON observing minute cosmic details and subtle imperceptible movements across miles of flat land mined country penetrating thick green foliage.
Their eyes dance with waiting. Waiting caresses eyes as lovers feeling fluttering lids and soft retinas tremble with visual sensory information data sensing rational coherent mysteries. Eyes cultivate patience, an essential visual nutrient.
Watching without seeing is their Zen.
Their life is a sitting meditation.
Seeing without understanding is their life.
I don’t know and I don’t care.
Tropical heat destroys my DNA.
Living in perpetual internal darkness they cultivate essential immense critical survival intentions. They stare far away with telescopic acuity. This consistent hard eyed vision burns up 85% of their daily energy. The remaining 15% is used for procreation, eating, dancing making music and singing.
Eyes practice the eternal art of being silent.
They watch past another person during a conversation.
They watch each other’s back.
We survived by paying attention, said survivors. That’s life.
They face watching beyond wild where everything known and unknown matters infinitely. Everything here happens simultaneously.
Everything goes and nothing happens.
Everything happens and nothing goes.
One anxious dreaded moment in their life recognizes fear. Disguised as ignorance and indecision fear asks is it safe?
What if never entered the conversation.
What is the difference between watching and seeing, asked Zeynep expanding passive and active verb signifiers.
Real eyes realize real lies, said Leo.
Survivors read sky for rain. Survivors read mad dogs yapping, growling, fighting and fucking in deserted black broken streets without electricity, said Rita. Screaming yelling male adolescents and genocide survivors read kick boxers fighting on national television every Saturday/Sunday afternoon at 2. It’s standing room only in packed tea/java houses.
KILL HIM!
KILL HIM!
KILL HIM!
Killing as Entertainment. I love this, said Death. They are really into Power, Humiliation and Revenge. Reminds me of millions shouting their anger at killing fields while murdering 1.7 million. If I kill enough maybe I will survive. No one kills the killer. You prove your ability and allegiance by killing. Don’t push your luck, said Authority.
Violence never changes only the players, said Zeynep.
It’s our latent repressed anger gene, said Rita. Denial will kill you and anger is expensive.
Women meditate talk and laugh. They live longer.
Boy men scream at televisions.
Idle youth squeezing pores waiting for Godot read acne in a motorcycle mirror. They haven’t seen the play. They are the players.
No one shows up, nothing happens.
Hungry girls wait for Freedom at night.
Destiny rested as noon heat waves reflected improbable shimmering anxieties. Sad working girls washed beige underwear in a lazy brown river. Water’s exhilaration introduced a cloud. Thunder clapped. Lighting flashed. Tears flooded dirt roads.
Banlung children wearing red and white Santa caps dragged expectant mothers toward dusty chrome plated display cases in the market. This one! This one!
“Your life is an art project. The world is one big art museum. Buy a ticket. Take the ride. Yeah, yeah,” said a UXO worker in a bright yellow Mines Advisory Group (MAG) vest fanning soil with a detector near The Plain of Jars outside Phonsavan, Laos.
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