Molecules & Alex

"We drove around today seeing places, just following the road. It was really great. This is a wonderful place,” he said glancing over women and men in Ronda drinking at tables along orange walls in candlelight shadows.

“Hey,” he shouted, “I’ll give you something for your tales. Then I’ll be in it.” 

“Ok, however my editor red lines garbage.” 

“You won’t believe it but I work with a multinational company, in one of their Liverpool labs. I use computer programs to create and analyze various molecules in detergent.”

“Detergent?”

“Detergent. This is how it works. Some molecules are attracted to dirt. They adhere to it, they seek it out. Others like water. I assemble various atoms and molecules and see what they do. I introduce them to the materials and see how they react.”

“Fascinating.” 

“Yes and I get paid to have fun. They pay me to create these experiments.”

“So, it’s like you are an artist using the computer to create a canvas, painting molecules?”

“Exactly!” he yelled, blasting enthusiasm over a hip hop rap bass back beat. “You can put that in your story.”

“Perhaps. Readers may find your work interesting, especially the part about Americans being transparent. I worked in Area 51. There was a nuclear reactor. I knew physicists there.

"They were trying to reduce fifty-five million tons of leftover radioactive material like Technetium-99 from seeping through the water table into the Columbia river. Others developed hydrogen fuel cells for alternative energy sources. I’ve never met a physicist working with detergent.”

“Wow, I know TC-99. It’s deadly stuff. They’ll never get rid of it. They’ve created a hell of a problem for future generations. Anyway, yeah it’s pretty cool working with these detergent molecules. And now we’re here.”

He took a breath. 

“Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? Well, the remaining particles of atoms, a very small part, is life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage. Tell your editor to take that out!” 

accept loss forever

He saw his first , or maybe second, it only takes a second, Cambodian woman with a prosthetic leg. The majority minus arms and legs or fingers and hands are men and kids. Kids love to play with buried things. Dirt play.

Today it was her turn. 

It was her gait. How she dragged the drab olive green right leg behind her.

It reminded her of a lost conversation where one whispers more than they know. More than they can reveal. Truth be said.

She was maybe 40. Give or take a moment.

It was a moment years ago when she stepped on the invisible mine. What you don't see is fascinating. Her story evolved into family taking care of her after they heard the explosion. After it rained dirt, rice, weeds, tears, light, broken clouds, false dreams, expectations, celebrations and musical thunder notes.

A doctor. Blood. Pain. Loss. Tears and memory comforted her. She absolved her faint quick belief in Buddha beyond all the mysteries.

After she went to Siem Reap she got her new artificial leg at Cambodian Handicap.

If her husband and family rejected her then she ended up in the city, like today, sitting on a sidewalk offering handmade bags and bracelets or selling her sorrow and loss and smile and understanding among friends and polite distant tourists afraid to look her in the eye. Later, she dragged it through night comforted by the fact it was a long way from her heart.

If your legs get heavy walk with your heart.

 

goodbye July

such sweet sensation
dancing down summer days
turning a page, turning a corner
tuning sensitivity's wisdom into

a person's inability to sit still
long enough
to sense or imagine or know
all the unknowing

known to produce
sharp yellow finch trills 
and thrills
in rain's retrospect

one dawn
a floating red flower

blind sex

i like him.

it's a hungry combustionable combination of lust, loneliness and real.

skin is currency. exchange value and user value.

you can trust maybe 10% in vietnam. they are good at sex. they steal your money.

here it's maybe 50%. we are poor at sex. we don't steal your money.

we steal your _____. down at the crossroads.

he comes to me at mid-day. it is sweltering and sleepy. i welcome him him with fingers on lips...shh.

we go upstairs. we dance naked. when you dance you are truly alive.

we explore geography and invisible borders and silent musical interludes.

i am the silence between notes. harmony, rhythm, and melody.

i am his melody and he is my harmony.

my speech voice is missing. i make rolling guttural sounds expressing metaphors, similes, intonations, frequencies, meaning, sense, time, space, ideas, dreams, relationships, secrets, traditional family values, fear, passion, heart, joy and sadness.

he is blind and i am deaf.

our music is not available for download. 

Dialect of love

“I am an old dialect of Kalapuya tribes. I respect the spirit energies. I hear with my eyes and see with my ears. I understand your love for the spirit power guardian. I am an ancestor speaking 300 languages from our history. Now only 150 dialects remain.

“A hunting gathering people, speaking Pentian, we numbered 3,000 in 1780. We believed in nature spirits, vision quests and guardian spirits. Our shamans, called, amp a lak ya taught us how seeking, finding and following one’s spirit or dream power and singing our song was essential in community.

“I speak in tongues, in ancient dialects about love. Dialects of ancestors who lived here for 8,000 years before where you are now. In the forest near the river all animal spirits welcome you with their love. They are manifestations of your being.

“I am blessed to welcome you here. You have walked along many paths of love to reach me.

“My dirt path is narrow and smooth in places, rocky in others. I am the soil under your feet. I feel your weight, your balance—your weakness and your strength. I hear your heart beating as my ancestors pounded their ceremonial drums. I feel the tremendous surging force of your breath extend into my forest. Wind accepts your breath.

“I am everything you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. I am the oak, the fir and pine trees spread like dreams upon your outer landscape. I am your inner landscape. I see you stand silent in the forest hearing trees nudge each other.

“Look,” they say, “someone has returned.”

“I love the way you absorb the song of brown body thrush collecting moss for a nest. I am the small brown bird saying hello. I am the sweet throated song you hear without listening. At night two owls sing their distant song and their music fills your ears with mystery and love.

“I am warm spring sun on your face filtered through leaves of time. I am the spider’s web dancing with diamond points of light. I am the rough fragile texture of bark you gently remove before connecting the edge of an axe with wood. You carry me through my forest, your flame creates heat of love. I am the taste of pitch on your lips, the odor of forest in your nostrils, filling your lungs. It is sweet.

“I am the cold rain, and wet snow, and hot sun, and four seasons. I am yellow, purple, red, blue, orange flowers from brown earth.

“Language cannot be separated from who you are and where you live.

“I say this so you will remember everything in this forest. I took care of this place and now your love has the responsibility.

“Respect and dignity with mindfulness.”