Greetings,
May Day. May all the world's workers find their freedom. Create with machines, toil the soil.
A textile factory worker. A carpet weaver and son. Trash collectors. A farmer.
Peace.
Greetings,
I work with my hands. They are my tools. I make balconies and beautiful iron and steel structures. This is my life. This is my job, my work, my passion.
I work in an area of town filled with friends, voices and hammers. Do you remember the ancient dying art of blacksmithing? I come from a long line of blacksmiths. My working environment is filled with the daily music of hammers on metal. Listen carefully to the forging of metal.
Peace.
Hello Earthlings on your amazing little day.
Here's a thought for you when you feel alone.
"Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare...some would say it has yet to occur on earth." - Steven Hawking.
He also said, "Watch out if you meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease with which you have no resistance."
Hmm, a disease. Maybe love, kindness, travel, artistic passion, 1,001 nights and laughter meets the criteria. Insert your disease here __________.
It's snowing flower petals. It's snowing flowers in April.
Or, as the Chinese hunter said to the alien using a photo machine, "You gotta hunt if you want to eat."
So simple. Amazing.
Peace.
I am a Camera.
I am a cool cat in the sun.
I am the cooling love, love shove in.
I am red ink inside dust unloading cans of paint for a project to to abandoned.
Wearing a burgundy shawl found in Lhasa, before the Chinese invaded with their patriotic re-education pogroms, programs and propaganda machines.
I smell like clean laundry’s spring dance.
I am your masseuse. I have been here since 1555. My name is Erhan. I work in a large domed room where, during daylight, rays of sun shaft down at precarious precious angles, slanting along humid walls, glancing off tiled mosaics where blue and green and yellow tiles sing.
At night, stars sing with their light.
The dome has a large central eight-star perfect symmetrical hat. It is surrounded by sixteen more stars in a geometric pattern. And this is where I live. I work here. I raised my family here. I will die here. This was, is and will be my fate.
In the afternoon after noon prayers the men return to the tea house.
Under the muted tones of male stories, gossip and myth, small silver spoons-dance inside glass.
I live in a world of water above ground where the tea and conversations meet in companionship and community.
Someone else is writing this. It is a Friday and he is drinking thick black coffee with a silver glass of water. It is wonderful to be surrounded by strange friendly strangers and people. Long oral music tongues - footsteps, the turning of newspapers - slurping tea and his eyes are heavy, lids of fingers down.
Peace.
Swallow wallow fallow follow.
“You have a criteria for beauty,” said an austere hard nosed, lock-stepped powerless, lonely, angry and frustrated female Chinese university teacher one day, adding, “You should just blend in.”
She was afraid, like 1.2 billion of being singled out, purged, tried and executed for proletarian intellectual ideology in a harmonious Marxist society.
“I’ve learned,” said the teacher, “to keep my sweet delicious mouth shut, unless I’m eating or laughing at the stupidity and laconic narrow-minded ways and means of our leaders, these old stupid despotic men, sitting behind their big blood stained teak desks chopping seals and dolphins and whales without prejudice or malice, to be silent.”
“I see,” said Leo, a 14-year old, one sweet, delicious day when he and a traveler were out exploring on their bikes and stopped in an old query to play in dirt. It was an abandoned foreign country.
The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. Keep it simple. Get to the verb.
They stood deep inside excavated lands. A new planet. High dirt walls bordered by pine, evergreen and blue sky were lined with sharp deep gashes where earth machine teeth had gouged down soft dirt. Workers harvested soil for construction projects at the university where 15,000 trapped, lonely and bored students struggled to survive in a harmonious society.
Where they mastered the art of eating, sleeping and exploring casual sex hiding from security guards wearing olive drab green recycled army uniforms.
They were at the bottom of a large bottomless pit.
“I have a theory they are spies,” whispered a student.
“How do you know this?” said Charlie.
“Because their job is to keep an eye on us. Think about it. We have too any people here and so, to monitor our behavior, attitudes and thinking, they recruit students and teachers to be spies. To be informers.”
“My father was an informer during the Cultural Revolution,” said Shining Star.
“Yes, he was a member of the Shining Path Young. This is our new generation, with a new generation of informers and spies. They make good money. They keep their mouth shut and know their place.”
Leo and the nomad made it into the hills with a diamond in their mind.
Peace.
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