A virus has no social affiliation, race, religion, gender, nationality, bias, prejudice, expectation, politics, economy or wishful thinking.
Humans have love, respect, tolerance, patience, curiosity, courage, grit, perserverance, loyalty, forgiveness, compassion, authenticity, nature, art, creativity and a sense of humor.
Life gives you the test first and lessons later. So it goes.
Burma
After Nam I spent a month with my family, did the DOD School and went to Germany to finish my military time.
My sister, Martha Ann, 13, developed a cold that winter. My father wrote letters about her condition. Her energy dropped. She became weak. He took her to doctors for a diagnosis.
She had a rare form of AML leukemia and started chemotherapy. She needed bone marrow transplants in her short future. The prognosis was maybe five years for a complete remission.
She prospered in school and Girl Scouts with a positive mental attitude.
Neighbors had horses and she formed a loving relationship with them.
Her long blond hair flies in wind. She embodies a strong discipline in the saddle. Her back is straight. Approaching a jump over an abyss, fear is defeated by her courage.
She leaves the stable leading a Palomino. She wears tall black boots, riding pants, and a stiff white shirt buttoned at her frail neck. Only I know she is sick and dying. It is our secret. She smiles at me.
She whispers magic words and you know by the animal’s response they love and trust each other. She rides in green pastures under a bright blue sky. Her face is serene.
Her sickness was a long slow meandering journey. She maintained her optimism, smiling, laughing, and doing excellent in school. She knew she was sick. She was a warrior girl child.
Horses gave her freedom and passion. She rode every day after school. Weekends were cleaning, grooming, laughing and loving her relationships.
She had a clear spirit. No fear.
Her pain was a sickness leaving her fragile body.
Doctors tried every experimental drug on the market. Drugs made her long blond hair fall out. She wore a wig. She tolerated inane questions and insinuative cruel bullying from classmates. She maintained her dignity and integrity.
“Dad, what happens when they run out of experimental drugs?” she asked at dinner. He had no answer.
The broken-hearted man brought his daughter home from Children’s Hospital in Denver for her last Christmas. She enjoyed snow, a warm fire, magic tree, cats, presents and love.
Her heart gave out three days after Christmas, 1972.
I received the expected phone call at the Kassel Field Station.
“Martha is gone,” said my father’s cracking voice.
“What happened?”
“I went to the hospital on my lunch hour and she was lying there and she looked so beautiful yet so weak and she said, ‘Dad, hold me, I’m going to faint,’ and I did and then her heart stopped. It just wore her out.”
I cried, “I’m so sorry dad. I’ll get a flight out.”
“You will always remember her as a happy little girl.”
Angels and peace welcomed Martha Ann.
She never saw fourteen of anything. She never went to high school or college, fell in love, worked, lived, laughed, traveled, explored future worlds or experienced a longer life with her vibrant trembling spirit.
Her existence was all wrapped up in one tight package with an expiration date.
Cold winter was her refuge and now.
Her childlike joy and spirit energies soared away from her labyrinth. She evolved on her path of light, love, and perfection. No longer a human on a spiritual path she was a spiritual being on a human path.
On her brief sojourn before crossing time’s river she demonstrated tolerance, integrity, kindness, tranquility, dignity, empathy and truth.
Martha Ann validated her authenticity. She hurled her thunderbolt.
Burma
After 364 days an officer pinned red and yellow campaign ribbons on me. I caught a freedom flight from Saigon to Alaska, ran across a frozen tarmac in thin khakis for java and flew to the City by the Bay.
“Anybody want a steak?” said a sergeant processing arrivals.
“Screw the steak. Give me a new dress green uniform. I’m out of here for a flight to Colorado.”
I became a ghost in exile. No one spoke to me. I understood their reticence, fear, guilt and awkwardness seeing me in a military uniform.
Passengers were anesthetized by their life and media propaganda and TV images seeing the dead come home in black body bags. Prime time madness sold soap.
I remembered Samuel at the 265th, “Better than going home to abuse, derision, scorn, apathy and unemployment.”
I’d seen things they would never believe. They averted their eyes with social indifference and I understood. They’d remained static in their work, eat, and sleep routines.
I’d shifted my consciousness with quantum precision. I survived a transforming life experience.
You die twice. Once when you’re born and when you face death.
Surviving a year in a macabre police action zone where an imperialist government tried to impose a Catholic leader on a Buddhist people gave my life new meaning.
It taught me impermanence.
One life - no plan - many adventures sang with clarity and awareness. I create or destroy my freedom.
In my dream I hike past a crude sign hanging from rusty concertina wire at a deserted firebase:
Normal is a cycle on a washing machine.
I locate normal in my portable lexicon.
Normal is someone you don’t know very well. Like yourself.
I used to be somebody else but I traded him in.
The narrator, a soldier, talks to a priest while serving in Vietnam.
"The histories speak about humans shedding old habits, attitudes, values, and beliefs and loved ones to go on journeys with new opportunities and compassion.
"How they renewed their spirit with pure gratitude and joy. It’s amazing. I mean here I am sacrificing my youth, desire, ignorance and anger to be cleansed, to be made whole, to integrate my unconscious into oneness with the ALL as an authentic being. We are stardust. We are one third the life of the universe.”
“Yes, my son, using religion I sacrificed bodies and souls. I created sorrows and depravity. I wandered through Sumerian, Greek, Roman, and Spanish villages where I administered suffering, pain and death. I burned 12,000 innocent men, women and children at the stake during the Inquisition. Ah, such a time I had condemning heretics to damnation and life everlasting. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”
“Did you record these events?”
“I dictated my myths, legends and story-truth to Omar, a blind Touareg scribe. My amanuensis. You’ll meet him in Morocco on 9/11. You will combine stories and adventures in this tale. Anyway, to continue my little saga, I licked civilization’s fire. As a fire-eater in a traveling carnival I blessed sinners with ashes on Palm Sunday. I drove a tank through Middle Eastern deserts converting the heathen with fire and brimstone. I kneeled and prayed in mosques facing Mecca five times a day.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yes. I survived in Afghan caves near destroyed statues of Buddha hearing Taliban confessions. I tended to suicide cases in GITMO. I meditated in Tibetan caves for three centuries, three decades, three years, three months, three weeks, three days, three minutes and three breaths. Ah, the blessed trinity. At Tibetan sky burial ceremonies north of Lhasa after flaying skin off bodies, I ground human bones to mix with blood for vultures so the departed spirit could, would, should be reborn. Karma and reincarnation.”
“You did all that?”
“Yes. I walked the length of the Silk Road from Venice to Guangzhou bringing comfort to the lame, blind and destitute. I traveled with Italo Calvino from Italy a scribe blessed with magical realism insight when he created Invisible Cities in Kublai Khan’s court. Perhaps you know of it?”
“Yes, he and the great Khan played chess.”
“Ah the great game and a metaphor of life. Castle early. Control the center. Divide and conquer.”
“Checkmate,” whispered Death.
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, songs, dance concert
celebrations in narrow park garden
red bunting where loud happiness
spills into a brown river below a green silent mountain
Funky second-hand shop discovers Burmese cheroot
aha flashback to Mandalay market purveyor of rolled leaves
Dancing possibilities at dawn
Delicious stream-of-consciousness
Be invisible little angel of light
Have mercy
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
Songlines
Optical Delusions
Illusions of separateness
No time
No space
Singularity
Life adventures – plot is a character looking for an author
Share Article