Bangkok tick tock

Greetings,

Speaking of Earth day and all the planting, reaping and enjoying a bountiful harvest here's a line from a recent NYT piece about the civil disturbance in Bangkok. In context. Down below where it says MORE...

Like more affordable food, clean water, opportunity, health care, fair wages, education, and so forth.

Dancing go-go- girls in the red light district have not been affected. Check your piece at the door.

It has been reported, via movement sensors they dance a little faster as explosions scatter metal, debris and death outside the neon splashed venues. The DJ simply turns the music up a decibel level drowning out the yelling and screaming of red shirts, yellow shirts, polo shirts, ambulances, innocent victims and bass driven hip-hop tick tock.

Red shirts represent the poor people. Yellow shirts represent the middle class.

"Poverty and corruption has absolutely nothing whatsoever to say or do about this issue," said B.S. Sympathy, a well respected scion of foreign banking firms, investment and real estate development companies. She spoke from her heavily fortified villa in an undisclosed location while eating caviar, drinking champagne and petting twin poodles named Lucky and Fortunate. "Let them eat cake."

The Department of Tourism said this will have no effect on:

a) tourists desperate to get out
b) tourists desperate to get in
Ships from England are now standing by in Bangkok sewage canals to evacuate nationals.

"....But taken together, they suggest a campaign by shadowy elements in Thailand to stir fear and create a sense of instability." more... 

It's highly plausible to insert the country of your choice in the aforementioned sentence rather than Thailand. You have roughly 170 choices. Start with the letter A and work toward Z, say, Algeria, Afghanistan, Burma any central Asian country, China, and so on.

Metta.

Earth Day

Greetings,

If you're reading this while flying the friendly skies, Earth is outside and way below. Millions of you are to be congratulated for finally managing to escape the forces of gravity.

You have successfully overcome terminal inertia. You have departed one small place on Earth for another small place on Earth. You deserve a medal.

Step outside your plane for panoramic views of infinity. This may be your last and final chance to be famous.

You hope Earth is there when the machine goes down. If it's not there check the overhead compartment for an instruction manual. Please read the fine print.

Mr. Gripe in seat 23A turned to Ms. Impatient. He talked with his mouth full. "You know, I used to complain about airline food, but this processed chicken is ok." Ms. Impatient, being well lubricated by 90-proof fuel dribbled saliva down the front of her urine stained blouse she'd used as a towel. "Yeah, it ain't half bad. Want my peaches?" They were succulent shock absorbers.

If you're on terra firma, plant a seed, start a community garden, spread manure, water the orchids, smell the roses. Practice a walking meditation.

Nature is your inspirational teacher. Celebrate your daily existence on Earth.

Metta.

Ash's images

Greetings,

Ash has released images of salvation after the volcanic burst of energy.

Millions of humans have never seen an airplane. They've heard it's a very large metal container filled with hot air and nervous humans packed like peasants on a bus in Asia.

They've heard it consumes massive amounts of fuel during the nerve racking period of time called take off when it must achieve a land speed of approximately 150-180 miles per hour. After take off pilots must quickly fly through seven sectors to reach cruising altitude around 33,000 feet. This requires a tremendous amount of fuel. 

Using all the fuel to get up, get off and get going explains why planes fly fast at 33,000 feet. They are now gliding on thermal currents caused by exploding Icelandic volcanoes. It's a cause and effect ratio.

Do a risk assessment. Scientists do not have ALL the answers. They have determined humans cause global warming. They cannot determine the density, volume, location or effects of Ash. Ash is real mystery. It's all hypothetical speculation. 

You are an experienced international long haul pilot. You ask yourself. "Is it better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air or in the air wishing you were on the ground?"

Fly now pay later? Sit it out? File for legal resident status? Ask to be adopted? Immigrate? Stay another day?

Millions of stranded tourists file a claim with the United Nations for reparations from Iceland for:

inconvenience 
misery
lost employment
insufficient scientific data
terrible high fat, high sodium airport food
lousy sleeping arrangements
expensive mood altering medicine
missing spouse
messy divorce
trial separation
lost children
lost sense of humor
family counseling for long term emotional post-tramatic stress disorder  

Start walking. Carry a map, extra water, energy bars, a towel and sturdy walking stick.

Metta.

Headroom in coach. 

A Chinese ticket agent.

 

A departure lounge refugee.

Business class passengers.

Grounded somewhere over the rainbow.

Ash fallout

Greetings,

As hostage travelers get a grip and get a life discovering the diverse thrills of living in airports, bus and train stations along life's tortuous path Ash flies merrily along, singing a song, Blow Wind Blow.

Humans are learning how to mill around. They are learning how to adapt, adjust and evolve in situations and consequences outside their control. Many practice meditation. They know that suffering is an illusion. They make new international friends in transportation hubs. They learn how to share. Some are grateful. They get married, have kids, get divorced and attend correspondence schools in transit lounges. Some mature. A few are beginning to understand that air travel is not so exciting. After all.

The soul travels at the speed of a camel. Walking is the way.

Such a terrible hard unpleasant fact. Life goes on. Nature loves the drama. Especially at the expense of humans. 

Comments from the ground echo through thin atmosphere. Ash is all ears. 

It's a crying shame how Nature does this to us. 
It's all about money and greed, citing airline, hotel and food suppliers. It's about supply and demand. It's about taking advantage of the situation. It's about PROFIT.
People scream, "I hate the government." People cry, "I want my government to save me, to get me home, to get me out of this horrible mess."

Artists slow down and create masterpieces.
Sue Iceland.
Throw all the bankers into the volcano.

Sam, an African farmer from Kenya believe it, drinks a Bloody Merry in Asia and yaks on his cell phone to friends about his boat and how difficult it is here to live and get decent food and how he's not REALLY interested in the 19-year old bar girls.

He is surrounded by smelly containers filled with rotting fruit and wilting flowers destined for white rich folks in Europa, a brand of Confusion. He leaves messages on answering machines. He orders another bloody drink.

Old frail Sam wobbles away on thin legs thinking, "I don't get home until the 3rd. I'm going to die before I see my boat."

He's one of those terribly sad rich men reading the fine print, NO EXIT. Lost and alone he strums his sad guitar. "I look at the world and see it is sleeping while my guitar gently weeps." Ash understands with empathy. Empathy is a circle. 

The reality on the ground is that international travelers are not starving. They are not homeless. They are not begging in the streets. They are not whining, sniveling idiots. No. They are learning a hard fast lesson about the vagaries of travel. They are learning why it is important to always have a supply of energy bars and a towel.

Lost and alone in a vast empty Departure area is a little girl in a white dress. She wears bright red shoes. She clicks her heels together three times and says, "I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home."

Fly the friendly skies. They call it ADVENTURE TRAVEL. 

Metta.

Ash China

Greetings,

Ash heard two jokes in Iceland.

After Iceland caused a financial meltdown in 2008 Europeans wanted cash not ash.
Icelandic people don't want their ashes spread all over Europe.

Europeans, rather than accept accountability, escape the responsibility by blaming someone, somewhere, somehow for this beautiful majestic natural mess.

According to Mr. Bisignani of the International Air Transport Association, "This is a European embarrassment and it's a European mess. The decision that Europe has made is with no risk assessment, no consultation, no co-ordination, no leadership," he said.

"Europeans are still using a system based on a theoretical model which does not work... instead of using a system and taking decisions on facts and on risk assessment."

Ash currently holds 6.8 million travelers hostage around the world. It is the largest hostage situation in the history of mankind since Red China held 1.6 billion citizens hostage in the spring of 2010. 

Ash flew to China to verify this unpleasant fact. Ash rested inside 1.6 billion pairs of ears.

Easy to say and hard to do they say in China.
Speaking of China in Mandarin, you can get your ears cleaned there.
What! Really?

Yes. Now it happened at the empty Chinese opera one afternoon in Chengdu, you sit down in a wicker chair and give the girl in a blue uniform 10Y or slightly more than a buck. A group of Chinese men in wicker chairs drinking tea stare and laugh at you. Everyone stares at you in China because it is a zoo and you are an exotic humanoid species of endless speculation.

Look at the funny foreigner! He’s going to get his ears cleaned. Boy is he in for a surprise!

You sit back and close your eyes. She has all the tools; long steel wires, cotton swabs, some ointment, a microscopic spoon on a post and a pair of stainless steel tongs.

She probes into your right ear with the spoon and digs out hard brown wax. She flicks it on the ground where it becomes part of Ear Wax Mountain, a new wonder of the World. She swabs and cleans out your ear with a small cotton ball on a thin wire.

While this is buried in your ear she taps the tongs creating a vibrating frequency. She touches the steel rod in your ear and you hear the WHIRLING BUZZ BUZZ as 1,000 bees and cicadas invade your consciousness with a deafening crescendo.

She has opened your aural chambers big time taps the tongs again, and you receive the echo chamber canyon of sound, the WHIRLING BUZZ like sandpaper being rasped against old fibers of skin or yes, the fast centrifugal centrifuge of heartbeat reactors, roaring rivers inside a galaxy of weightless streams. BUZZ!

So she eases it out, massages your temples and your eyes are closed and you are dreaming you are in a Chinese opera playing the role of an old dramatic hero dying at his post after proclaiming his undying love for family and harmonious social order and stability in the country.

She attacks and cleans the other ear and the vibrations take you away.

BUZZ, BUZZ, BUZZ! Far away. She caresses your ears with something soft, massages your temples and scalp and when she finishes you no longer have a hearing problem. It’s all in the listening. You’ve been buzzed back to clarity.

Everything that goes in the ear comes out as language. It becomes a tool for emotion and expression.

Metta.