Volume floats

Greetings,

A Khmer wedding lasts three days. It's LOUD. It's a monster deal.

A company arrives in a dump truck. They set up tents, tables, chairs and huge black speakers in front of an architecturally styled wedding cake home. It's happening all over town.

Speakers blast music day and night. Audible for miles. Volume shudders, shaking the terrain, setting off unemployed landmines, volcanic eruptions and destroying oil drilling operations in deep oceans. Free oil. Oceans of love, oceans of tears.

Animals run for their lives. Birds fill the sky with shrill squawks of pure terror. Panic stricken children suffer unimaginable nightmares. All the trauma counselors are celebrating with copious amounts of food and drink. Another one bites the dust. I am a dust collector.

It costs the groom's boom boom family $3,000 and up. It's a matter of EGO, social standing, imaginary wealth and appearances. They don't send out R.S.V.P. People just show up. Lots of hungry people. Friends, strangers and many animists.

Human speakers drone on and on about marriage, family and society.
Traditional singers and musicians plaintively wail at high decibels about love, suffering, happiness, fidelity, treble and bass. Contemporary hip-hop rappers take the stage with heavy metallic thumping and pumping.

100 monkeys off stage type out Shakespeare. They chatter odes, sonnets and mystifying secrets.

The insane 24/7 volume partially explains why people here speak, or more specifically yell so loud. They don't hear each other because they can't, don't, won't hear. Repeat. What? What? Repeat. Louder!

This is the Flowing holiday. Families with millions of marriageable girls are desperate to get them married. They expect their daughters to produce flowing children. It's a heavy social security reality.

They won't have the money to feed them or house them or educate them or...because those realities are far away, like stars in the sky. They'll worry about essentials later in the long now. Too many poor desperate people will have to sell their children facing immediate financial reality.

As a serious Chinese university student, filled with humility, compassion and serenity said, "Human life here is cheap."

The main problem now is raising $3,000 minimum. If you want to play you have to pay.

No please, no squeeze.

Metta.

Brian Turner, poet

Greetings,

I had the pleasure of meeting Brian in Siem Reap in February. We shared the day and stories. more...

His first book, Here Bullet is now followed by Phantom Noise.

Here Bullet has sold 25,000 copies, excellent for a book of poetry. It's available through Amazon.

Here's a link to a recent piece about Brian and his new poetry book published by Alice James Books. more...

"We've reached the line of departure," Turner wrote in one new poem. "So lock and load, man. From here on out we are on radio silence."

Metta.

 Fire, heat, experience, time, memory, write, revise = poem

Dr. Fish Massage

Greetings,

Have you ever seen a fish that can do massage?

Our shop has amazing and unique fish that can do massage.

This fish eat our dead skin and make our hard skin softly.

So we call this fish as "Doctor Fish."

Please come and enjoy special massage by lovely fish!

Hundreds fish will kiss your toes and suck up all your dead skin!

Wonderful! Exciting! Funny!

New country! New Experience!

Metta.

35 years later

Greetings,

Today Vietnam celebrated 35 years since the end of the war.

58,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese were killed. The images are from the HCMC museum in Ho Chi Minh City and Ha Noi History Museum.

Metta.

State secrets - fools

Greetings,

The fat happy alien American tourist is on his cell. Across the street is a river. The town is dead because Bangkok is a no-go zone. The red light district is red. What is red for you?

Thailand has been declared a disaster zone by various countries. They've issued travel advisories. 

"DO NOT travel to Thailand." If any travelers come in now it's from Nam, by boat or bus. Swimmers are more rare than very expensive electricity. The river of tourists has dried up. 

Mr. Shallow is talking. He shares state secrets.
"I can tell you a lot about my life." He lacks hard travel experience.
He's already called all his friends to talk about dental care in Asia. This is his BIG issue.
"I don't want to be walking around Bangkok full of pain killers."

Bangkok is filled with pain killers.
He needs an extraction. The more you drill the more you bill. Down the road.

"I have high blood pressure."
"I'm waiting for the place down the road to open up. They have amazing pork ribs."

He is suffering personified.

Meanwhile, if you are in China you are not reading this. My site is blocked in China. I used a proxy in the heart of Texas. It was blocked when I lived there teaching English to lazy students. They wanted to pass, not learn. 

China is wonderful. Especially the government. They recently announced new measures to control freedom of speech. They have notified all telecom and internet service providers to give them data on users.

It's about government control over private communication. They are tightening the screws, fools.

Their BIG FEAR is losing control. The broad propaganda words are State Secret.

In a related move, the Chinese government on Monday posted on a government Web site a broad definition of what constituted a commercial secret, covering information related to strategic plans, management, mergers, equity trades, stock market listings, reserves, production, procurement and sales strategy, financing and finances, negotiations, joint venture investments and technology transfers. more...

The majority of Chinese use their cell phones to access the internet. It's cheaper than a desktop. They use the internet to: 

• listen to music
• play games
• chat

 "This is perfect," said a Chinese gremlin in Beijing. "The immature masses are like sheep."

"More like perpetually spoiled children," said another gremlin. "This is what happens after 30 years of a one child only policy. This planned genocide will come back and haunt us."

He's one of 50,000 internet Police spending their day surfing, looking for words or phrases like June 4, Tibet, freedom, democracy, Uighar, slavery, reform, literature, human rights, gulag, corruption, nepotism, bribery, unrest, strife, demonstrations, education, scandal, liberty, equality...and so on.

Metta.