Lao Girl Bubble

Leica Fotographie International (LFI) selected one of my images for their KIDS gallery.

Thanks to them and here she is. Happy, strong and brave. It's good to be alive.

Mahling, Burma

Learn. Play. Share. 

500 grade 10-11 students live at the school. They’ve come from distant Shan state villages and Myanmar areas. They are their parents’ social security.

The school has an excellent reputation for matriculation results.

Segregated classes. Walking on campus, girls shield their faces from distant boys. No social testosterone distractions. Zero gadgets.

They study Burmese, math, history, physics, chemistry, science, biology and Magic and Potions from 6-11, 1:30-6, 7:30-11 p.m. Sonorous voices echo daily.

They leave school one day a month. Don't let school interfere with your education.

                                    The Wild West Village - 2.5 hours south of Mandalay - pop 10,000

Horse drawn cart traps.
One traffic light. Two motorcycles is a jam.
Green for go.

Twenty minutes away on foot, an extensive traditional market covered in rusting PSP sheets is a delightful adventure  - returning to the source of community, dark-eyed local curiosity, street photography, laughter, and a floating babble of tongues inside a labyrinth of narrow uneven dirt paths.

Footprints on stone and dirt meander through forests and mountains of oranges, apples, bananas, red chilies, green vegetables, thin bamboo baskets of garlic and onions, farm implements, varieties of rice, clacking sewing machines, basic commodities, steaming noodles, cracking fires, snorting horses.

Sublime.

Blindfish heads whisper The Sea, The Sea. Silver scales reflect light.

A woman hacks chickens. Blood streams down circular wooden tree rings.

The gravity of thinking sits on a suspended handheld iron pan scale.

A white feather sits in the other pan. Balance.

Twenty-six varieties of rice mountains peak in round metal containers or scarred wooden boxes.

Horse drawn cart traps unload people and produce. Neck bells tinkle: Star light star bright first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might get the wish I wish tonight. Well. Fed horses paw dirt.

Ancient diesel tractor engines attached to a steel carcass hauling people and produce bellow black smoke.

Old wooden shuttered shops with deep dark interiors display consumables, soap, thread waiting for a conversation, stoic curious dark eyed women, others laughing at the benign crazy traveler. 

A happy ghost-self sits in meditative silence, absorbing rainbow sights, sounds, colors, smells, feeling a calm abiding joy.

World as illusion

Kampot ceremony
70,000 years of pointillism
 
Walking makes the road
 
Khmer wedding music clanging symbols
Yellow silk accompanies jackhammers
In a brave new world

Mawlamyine, Burma

*
 
Pure mind Buddhism - world as illusion
 
How’s this for coincidence chance fate
You walk to market
Past a massage place greeted by seated smiling woman named Cosmos
Connection strong married two kids 14/5

used to run her own place until husband said no

now p/t for sister needing help
Delight intensity oral pleasure friendly and communicative
 
A few poetic words about Kampot morning
Energies
Frequencies
Transmissions
Cool fresh dawn breeze
Swift lets in kitchen prepare bird nest soup using saliva
 
Boys tear down wedding celebration immaterial
after food conversations song dance concert
celebrations in narrow park garden
red bunting where

loud happiness

spills into a brown river below green silent mountains
 
Funky second-hand shop discovers Burmese

cheroot aha flashback to Mandalay market purveyor of rolled leaves

Mawlamyine, Burma

*
 
Dancing possibilities in Kampot dawn
Delicious stream-of-consciousness
Be invisible little angel of light
Have mercy becoming Wushu meditation
Comedy
 
Chanting monks flame orange voices
Ageless Vietnamese woman pushes wheeled trash treasures
Her spine curves toward tomorrow’s promise
Mystery light
Sensation perception intuitive
 
Line
Shape
Shading
Discernment
Detachment
Calligraphy
Breath
Line pressure
Sign language

Riding the rails in Burma - 2015

Grow Your Soul - Poems and Prose from Laos & Cambodia

Lacibula Bells

“Those who dance are considered insane by those who can’t hear the music.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

*

A church bell tolled four. I paused writing in mid-sentence, threw on a jacket, locked Moorish doors and walked down a cobblestone alley.

A black Mercedes hearse covered with flowers waited outside a small church. Pueblo men stood with friends across the street. The bell was all. Black mourners escaped religion. Women and children scattered home.

Six men carried out a simple brown wooden casket.

He was forty and single.

They fed the hearse.

The bell ceased.

Flashing red lights, the village Guardia led the procession down a narrow winding road. 200 men followed the hearse. They crossed a small bridge above the Rio Guadalete River and past fourteen golden Aspen trees saying farewell by waving leaves.

Solemn men passed grazing sheep, horses, wildflowers and winter orange trees. They stopped at a small white church in a grove of palm trees. Pallbearers carried the casket past a black rusty gate and into a long white crypt zone. They slid it into an empty cement slot. The parish priest whispered final prayers.

Men paid their last respects and returned to cafes for sherry, thin sliced ham, coarse bread and conversations about the man who died alone.

Laughing, singing children played soccer or skipped rope in front of the main Grazalema church in the plaza. Heavy wooden doors were locked tighter than a coffin.

ART - A Memoir

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Write

“Write naked. That means to write what you would never say.

“Write in blood. As if ink is so precious you can't waste it.

“Write in exile, as if you are never going to get home again and you have to call back every detail.”

-    Denis Johnson

22

Out past massage girls waiting with white sheets on brown tables under red umbrellas resting on golden sand as floppy hatted cuticle management women walking sand looking for needy nails,

lost fat White Russians slathered on UV 30+ staring inland at young backpackers their eyes down on phones fingers flying TEXT ME lonely baby of my heart soul mind rapture

one lone swimmer back strokes in calm blue green water as a small boat engine hums toward a green forested is-land floating away on the surface of reality inside a dream bubble laughing in the divine mystery

Imagination

Observation

Experience

Present moment

Ink me laughter

Waves light nature's song

Riding a beam of light through space

Tribal energies

1 M

Magic wave light

Wushu movement

Yangon Burma brass bell

Signifies

Present Moment

7

Otres to Kampot adventure

Memory of old yellow hospital

Slow easy corroding iron bridge connects land

Between an object and a concept

Between knowledge and wisdom

French architecture remembers history, families, whispers eyes

Stories inside stories

Where I polished The Language Company at Epic Arts (9-12 a.m.)

& Bliss guesthouse (3-6 p.m.) daily for five months once upon a time

Zen butterfly in slow river town

How's it feel this gentle Tao?

Karen’s touch with conversation’s widow

Splits profits with mama san running the game near old market

Fancy pants decor, tourist souvenirs

Abandoned Art Deco movie theatre

Ha

Feels good exploring Kampot dust

Sensing the transitory beauty

Peace

Secret

Strength

Life

Love

Sorrow

Multiple Selves - We

Keep your own counsel

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can

It’s what you find in the corner

Circus people live on the edge

Sunset swift lets fill orange sky with magic

Mental hypothalamus

Unconscious

Grow Your Soul - Poems from Laos & Cambodia

How many more full moons will you see?