invent a god

Broken glittering glass edges reflecting an elegant universe magnified the tears of an Iraqi girl burying her parents in a white shroud of cloth, an old flag of final surrender.

Tree leaves blasted green to deep yellow and brown. They flew into a river. They gathered on boulders clogging the Rio Guadalete and dolomite waterfalls. One leaf could do a lot of damage. The river needed cleaning.

"See," said the Grand Inquisitor ringing his broken Spanish bell, "it’s all possible. Everything is permitted if there is no God."

"Let’s invent a God," said a pregnant nun supporting her nose habit. "We need reason and faith to believe in a higher power."

"Reason and faith are incompatible," said a logic board filled with circular flux reactors.

"Look," said Little Nino, "I found a compass and it works. The needle is pointing to magnetic north. This may help us. I am a compass without a needle."

Ahmed the Berber read the instructions. "Great Scott! It says one sharp line of description is better than any number of mundane observations."

"You don’t need a compass in the land of dreams," said a mother. "We need all the direction we can handle."

"Maybe one direction is enough," said a cartographer.

"If you need a helping hand," said a child, "look at the end of your wrist."

"O wise one, tell us another," cried a disembodied voice.

"Ok, how about this," a child said. "Our days of instant gratification are a thing of the past."

"Looks like everything is a thing of the past," observed a child sifting dust particles at Ground Earth on 9/11.

"You’re wiser than your years."

"That’s an old saw with a rusty blade cutting through desire, anger, greed, ignorance and suffering."

"Yes," said a child, "there are two kinds of suffering."

"What are they?" asked another orphan.

"There’s suffering you run away from and suffering you face,” said a child arranging leaves on blank pages inside her black book.

A Century is Nothing

shatter the blindness

"Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself."

 - Thomas Merton  Read more…

"When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, like flute notes rising up, like the words of glass speaking. Then there comes a point when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light."

 - Anne Spollen
The Shape of Water
bufflehead cabin  Read more…

my silent resignation

My sister set up a hair salon business in a tourist temple town. It fell through. Salons are a dime a dozen. Thousands of undereducated poor girls from distant provinces can’t/don’t read or dream. They cut. Do their nails. Digit phones.

Staring at mirrors is their fate.

Some moonlight as beer girls and hostesses. Where is Mr. ATM? Who’s going to save me they cry wearing gloss in the dead of night masking their eternal loss. Unspoken questions and starvation seek short-term financial solace.

My sister put me to work with a niece washing clothes. In reality I am a happy slave. I have my sister, food and a safe place to sleep. I make some money. An Australian girl gave me a scooter. I dress nice.

My sister started selling massage service. If I meet a good man which is rarer than verbal speech I let him touch me because I trust he’ll take care of me. Short term.

I need help.

Massage has no emotional connection. Touch and go. I have the power to say NO. I have a 5th degree black belt.

I’ve killed more men with silence than you can imagine.

I tell aggressive idiots they can get laid somewhere else. Go find a beer girl. Flash your cash honey.

I do all the washing, ironing and massages. I make small tips. My sister pockets the money. She sits around admiring herself in mirrors, playing with her daughter and talking rubbish on her cell.

I am a voiceless voice of quiet resignation. 

Frame life

"The frame is like life. Life too only provides certain opportunities.

Film is like a square of life, it has the same boundaries.

I think film is more honest, because it owns up to being a limited space.

Life pretends to provide more opportunities, that's why it's a bigger lie."

-Fassbinder

brainwashed

One day it happened that a senior female Chinese university student majoring in English found the courage to say, I don't speak-talk English. My English is poor.

I have no self-esteem. I am too shy.

I am afraid of losing face if I make mistakes in front of a foreigner.

My parents, peers and teachers in socialistic group-think (Oh, George Orwell, where art thou?) reality taught me, or perhaps a better word is brainwashed me into believing, heart and soul that if my English isn't perfect I shouldn't try, especially in front of foreigners.

I’ve learned the less I do, the fewer mistakes I make and the less criticism I face.

I feel safer. I am a robot.

Autonomy and independent critical free thinking are anathema in my comfortable world.

On the other hand, give me a cell phone and I can set world records for text dial-a-log.

Especially when I am sad, lonely and bored.

I know people in the West use the Internet to seek information. Here it’s about entertainment.

I love chat rooms and the TV idiot box where I can give away my consciousness.