Feed Love

“Years ago, I broke a bunch of roses

From the top of his wall

A thorn from that is still in my palm

Working deeper.”

- Rumi

“I almost wish it were true,” said my father in our final visit, April 1999. He was 77.

I opened a bedroom curtain so he could see a radiant blue sky and free birds.

Sitting in the garden I burned incense and fed sparrows as green spring blossoms gestured beginning. Calm non-attachment. No desire. Breathing in – out with diamond mind clarity. Love and letting go.

“May I have more ice please?” he said.

I needed to break it up. In his red tool box under the yellow shelf in the kitchen where I was half-beaten to death by a crazy woman in a wheelchair were steel crescent wrenches.

I selected the heaviest one with the widest aperture. It was well oiled and ready. The small wheel turned slow scraping my fingers down to the bone. I rolled destiny’s wheel closing the vise, narrowing space with bleeding fingers. Rolling The Wheel of Time.

Turning the cold steel wheel I remembered ceremonies in Bali: Painters creating on canvas, wood carvers chipping at unexplored rough textures and a wife weaving an intricate basket of reeds into an offering filled with sweet smelling jasmine flowers surrounding a mountain of rice. Lighting incense, she placed her daily ceremonial devotion in family compound corners to thwart demons and appease gods.

I absorbed daily acts of creativity and love in Bali. Everyday was a celebration in magic light. Twilight faded dark blue below pregnant skies. Rain slashed across jungles blasting calm surfaces of rice paddies. Runoff music exploded soil. A farmer stood in the deluge. His misty figure raised a wooden heirloom hoe into the sky. He released human thunder into wet soil. He turned over an exposed part of the planet. Rain slowed.

Shadow figures evolved from jungles chopping off paddy edges, hoeing soil, gathered dry wood and dead brush. Children sang on a dirt path going home from school.

Across a ravine on a mid-level terrace a farmer trailing oxen yanked iron in an arc turning beasts in a slow slog through mud. Flocks of white herons layered sky.

I dumped ice from a plastic tray on a small towel. I folded cotton threads as if folding a love letter, his bone white dress shirt and monogramed handkerchief. I curled fingers around the cold heavy wrench. I smashed crystals of frozen water into diamonds.

Everything collapsed. My daily celebration felt the heaviness. My heart accepted the doing and being. I hammered down, folded cloth, pulverizing cubes. I wiped blood on cloth streaking red. I funneled ice into a blue ceramic bowl. I put the wrench down and selected a small silver spoon.

I fed my father spoonfuls of clear white ice.

I fed him love. 

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Laos

Twinkle

Dive deeper than subterranean unconscious dreams.

Nail girls protected by large floppy hats seeking cuticles needing a trim canvas sand sun lovers.

String theory bracelet girls traverse grains of the universe. Boys ply sunglasses. The future is brilliant.

A girl balancing a bamboo platter of pineapples, mangoes, bananas, paring knife, plastic bags and sharp sticks prowls sand from dawn to dusk.

People watch people watching people. It's the thing - look without understanding.

A narrow blue and white boat arrives on sand. A boy throws out a rusty anchor.

Backpackers from islands unload kilos of memories, dreams and reflections.

Boatman launches five large empty water bottles toward land grab.

Mid-day sun shimmers above shaded tables as massage clients smothered with oil feel muscled women knead bronze skin tone epidermis as children laugh, run and play in surf near extreme serious a-dolts and retirees wondering how they ended up in paradise removed from frozen Europe hearing dulcimer hammers at a nearby five-story Chinese hotel cement project.

Swimmers plunge into H2O covering 70% of Earth.

Couples embrace cold drinks behind mirrored sunglasses.

Fat white Russians slobber UV 30 on skin drink cold beer discussing nuclear options against NATO.

99.9 % of beach people stare at phones.

Strangers accustomed to cement pavement feel sand. Danger.

Watch your step. Cautious sensation.

Babel languages whisper a Sappho wind oracle singing iambic pentameter odes with save face time.

Spit in the ocean.

Restless orange diamond light crashes into sunset.

Red sun white waves blue sky green islands. Floating world.

Silver waves lap shore

White crescent moon hangs by a thread

Stars sing with their light

I am twinkling

Create your life sandcastle

Rinse and repeat

A brown butterfly dances with green waves singing sand

Grow Your Soul

Girl

The girl and her blind father. Music on the street. We met in 2017 and 2020.

Now he plays laments on a broken street hoping foreign eaters will put money in her orange plastic pail.

She positioned him touching the rear of a parked motorcycle for security and trust where he'd be safe.

We made eye contact, she smiled, radiant, older now, taller in a simple blouse, shorts, flip flops, smiling, Thank you.

She moved from table to table. He played a haunting refrain on his simple long neck three-string instrument.

She returned and took the strap from his waist as he played. She led him past hair salons, a closed bookstore, a high end seafood and pepper restaurant, a bar filled with drunk European males.

Music faded in the night.

Canvassing the old market.

Process

Foreign couples wearing polarizing shades of ignorance incredulous doubt and wonder stroll sand staring inland at strangers staring back.

Walking eyes survey tables, chairs, people and eateries.

Strangers all. Scarce few see sea.

No drugs. No weapons. Leave your ego at the door.

Sweating runners with pulse armbands tread grains.

Workers set up beach lounges, switch on espresso machines, fire up kitchen stoves, hack ice, replenish beer supplies.

Waves erase footprints. Sleeping canines cur into sand.

Beach orchestra builds its daily tempo.

A young Italian woman unfolds a blue towel on sand. She lies face down. Pushing up with her arms she assumes a yoga posture eyes straight ahead on a blue green sea. Her spine weaves vertebrae like a wave. Calm centered grounded and focused.

Visitors stagger from beds, walk foam, eat, stare at waves evolving from a flat lined horizon holding green island hideouts. People plan to sit or go. Yes go. Go for a walk, a swim adventure.

1) kick boxers attack mangoes, chop ice while shifting gears after school in the wind

2) six month cradle infants wail at the hospital for a blue placebo pill

3) oven fired waffles scrapes a boy pedaling his bike seeking recycled trash before wicker baskets say hello

4) spare change searches for user value collecting cardboard images in a squall

5) red ink meets onion paper at an intersection whispering secrets without speaking sparrows

 “I want to know the truth mother. Living safely is dangerous.”

“The truth,” she said, “is that life is an absurd comic process. If you laugh you last. Our illusionary insecurities and real authenticities evolve. Life is a celebration, a dance and process of becoming. It is a beautiful harsh short messy dream come true. It’s magic. We adapt, adjust and evolve. There’s no rhyme or reason. Life is not a career, it’s a game.

Celebrate

I just want to celebrate
Another day of living

Vocabulary of touch

Pleasure principle sensuous femme fatale guide

Mutual satisfaction
Release tender tension

You stash your bags in a simple bamboo room
cut through a distorted distracted disrupted deserted
zone of empty rattan chairs to the beach
It stretches from Sin City to expensive southern resorts
M/F teams rake mourning sand

Grains complement musical melodic waves
breaking the shore day after day
Enjoy a slow walking meditation on a long empty beach

Breathe in - out
Water music laps ankles
Yellow dawn streaks sky
You salute the sun

Celebrate another day of living

Three green islands float long ago and far away on an event horizon
Bright red, blue and yellow tourist boats plant anchors
Engines hum fuel songs

Day unfolds. A lotus grows from mud.

Angkor Wat