Frozen Memory

After Saigon, Leo walked to Sapa in NW mountains.

Talking monkey tourists from Hanoi are here to eat, gamble, sing, dance / screw and buy cheap imported plastic products, said Mo and My, H’mong storyteller sellers.

Day trippers are an army in high heels, floppy hats, sunglasses, shiny belts and lost eyes. They run to stand in front of a Catholic Church to have their photo snapped off. Most ignore us.

A woman tourist slows down in her long march toward consumerism to look at my work: a handmade belt, a colorful wrist wearable, a thin wallet. The wallet is thinner than Mo.

She is surrounded by a chorus. “Buy From Me! Buy From Me!” 

The woman faints. Another buyer takes her place near blue tarp patchwork junk dealers selling fake watches, cheap pants, shirts, hats and knickknacks.

Eyes scan colors, fabrics and faces.

A park has baby red roses. A dusty historical statue stares at brackish fountain water.

Red Dzao women have bags and threaded samples spread on the ground.

“Do you want to buy from me?” said one smiling with gold teeth.

“Yes. I want to buy the mountain.” Leo pointed to the rising green western forest, steel gray granite slabs, deep shaded valleys and gray clouds skimming peaks around high deep edges rolling toward them.

“Ok,” she said. “I will sell you the day mountain for 10,000 and the night mountain for 10,000.”

“Ok. It’s a deal.”

School kids in uniformed mass hysteria and deprived of sleep stagger uphill to a bright yellow building where a young boy pounds out a rhythm on a ceremonial skin drum. Come all yea faithful, joyful and trumpet.

Two big brown dogs fuck on the street in front of the church where tourists gather for a photo shoot.

Local women armed with cameras they rent by the day selling images, reflections, memories and dreams poke and prod women, husbands, boys and girls into groups for the moment. The decisive moment they will remember forever.

Their image will collect dust near a votive candle altar and burning innocent incense feeding, appeasing dead hungry ancestral ghosts. Caught in time. Frozen alive.