My friend's son found a job. He refurbishes pots and pans. It's a dirty, hot, stinking job with great wage slave benefits. His mom is ecstatic to have someone in the family making money. She's addicted to money and the fear of poverty. She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming,"It's economic terrorism! My child is being exploited!"
Must be the season of the witch. He is facing his future with a calm mind. Clearly.
He met Hala who invited him to her home near the mosque in Lhasa for dinner. Her father is a factory worker, her mother a homemaker. One brother is a doctor, married with one child. Another brother is finishing his two year compulsory military service.
A pleasant small place displaying a carpet of Mecca on one wall and a 4x6’ glossy photo of a two-story white American clapboard dream home surrounded by trees and a large green yard.
Ah! No money down. Act now!
It reminded him of the ubiquitous color glossy images decorating simple Chinese and Muslim restaurants here; large strange revolting pictures of Western bread, cheese, wine and gleaming dishes of food as if an advance team from Better & Better Houses & Wild Gardens or Lifestyle Of The Possessed ripped out the advertising and plastered it up for an eater’s dream.
They dined on butter tea, rice, meat, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes as Hala translated conversations about life.
+
The Potala was constructed in 1694 out of stone, wood and mud. It contains 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and 200,000 statues.
He entered through the west gate climbing steep wide stone stairs. The interior passageways were packed with pilgrims filing through rooms and chapels. It was very dark, mysterious and beautiful with yak butter lamps flickering in front of statues, rows of dark texts stacked in cubicles accompanied by mumbling muted prayers from the mass of humans squeezing through twisted corridors and along narrow, steep stairs.
Uneven stone floors were slick with yak butter as pilgrims spooned offerings into thousands of flickering candles on altars. He climbed through a series of temples, past shrines to the roof overlooking Lhasa.
He wandered around the north side of the Potala inside markets fronting the Dragon Pool. He had a noodle lunch, and made images along path and bridge of Potala, prayer flags, mendicants reading sutras, beggars, pilgrims.
Calm mind, slow steps in dust wearing out old boots.
A Tibetan woman selling butter on the street near Ramoche asked him to read some of her English writing. It was a story about someone hiding something behind their back in a classroom. A guessing game. He pointed out a couple of awkward sentence constructions and asked her about her life.
“I stay single because if I had kids they’ll have to go to a Chinese school. They wouldn’t be allowed to speak Tibetan.” Historical shades of American Indian treatment by the white Anglo Saxons.
You'll be happy to know the so-called war on the southern flank is going well. It's actually been going on and on since 1984 when George began screaming about Maoist aspirations and recruiting young naive desperate boys to play with loaded guns. Big Brother came out to play.
He never looked back and now he's living with his mistress in an air conditioned and well fortified cave. Life is sweet when you live in a cave and the monthly maintenance fees are reasonable.One of those no money down, low interest hovel the shovel habitats.
The military dudes, who ran the show at one time because they lost patience with the Suit & Tied guys, are back with a vengeance. They've got the best fighter jet sets, bombers, laser guided precision high-tech toys, tanks, artillery, amphibious landing craft and Death on Wheels money can buy.
It's a numbers game. We know you love numbers. Led by General Incompetent they massed 60,000 well scrubbed conscripts on the border.
Their "enemy?" 3,000 hardened fighters and survivors. 60,000 vs. 3,000. How can 3,000 hold off 60,000? It ain't by talking. They employ tactics and strategy in the The Art of War. Cunning, guile and environmental impact statements. Send in the dummies.
In an unprecedented wave of support, millions of sad, yet strangely serene women facing callously arranged marriages filled with empty hopes and vague promises of love and happiness have enlisted to engage strangers on distant borders.
This wave of support resembled the open handed movement in the moment, the long fare well gesture a mother reluctantly gifted her daughter recently watching her disappear into the teeming stream.
"Be well my love," sang the mother. Her daughter joined a band of women, singing and sighing.
Living their dream, making their sacrifice with clean and clear motivation, determination and focus, the entourage of waving, singing women danced through distant valleys, climbed jagged mountains of regret and entered a no-name village where males hammered war's drums.
Where males argued over a slice of bread, a slice of earth, studied imaginary maps and spit in the dust.
"Where is this place?" said the leader of the women, in a strange village in a strange world.
"It is far away," said a grave digger with vast earth moving experience. "It is a distant land where bronze statues of fallen soldiers, warriors and testosterone fueled fools rust and congratulate each other on their mutual stupidity. Where, if you listen closely to the wind, you will hear it whisper, 'Go home, return to your children, your families and friends. Live in peace with your brothers, sisters.'"
The women listened with the their hearts.
Peace.
It's tough living in a land where the women are beautiful and sad. At the same time. It appears many don't know whether they are coming or going, going, long gone. They've fashioned these really amazing well defined masks out of loss and hopelessness and confusion and serious misgiving doubt using tears, wrapped in silence. Many are waiting for an arranged marriage.
The fathers get together and draw lots. They draw with ink and pastels and charcoal. The charcoal comes from a deep black well where their wives, tired of waiting, sing, "Give us a child, give us someone to love and protect and carry forever and cherish and spoil with benign neglect. Give us your future. We don't really care about love, it's all arranged. It's a matter of principle and practicality. Here, accept this man, this stranger into your heart and just give us a child."
Their daughter wraps their words around her heart. A constrictor in love's tangled jungle.
This explains why you never see women taxi drivers here. It's a male thing, these bright speeding tire spinning toys on wheels. Kinda like a Toy's For Tots game show. Live. Same goes for cafes where retired guys sit around all day long from opening to closing and play backgammon. Little wooden pieces carved from youth's forgotten toys.
Young macho guys spin their shiny yellow taxi wheels and play arranged symphonies in the horn section. The women know better which is why they live longer.
Why they may, given the heart, stand up and say, "I respect your ideas about arranged marriages, however, to be really honest with you, it's old fashioned conservative thinking. This is 2007 not 1987. I am a member of a new free thinking generation. I am not willing to be a victim, a willing victim of your narrow minded attitudes. I will choose my own friends, lover and companion, based on my needs. I know why the caged bird sings."
Share Article