Burma Isotope U-235

An emaciated bald mad broken toothed male junkie in relapse approached me on a Hanoi street.

He was on his personal quest for salvation. I am from North Korea. I spent seven years as political-economic prisoner in Burma, he postulated after dawn prowling Old Quarter needing a permanent change of address with no zip looking for someone to talk at. He was a lost one.

He was the star of his reality entertainment program. He blathered a blue streak. He was naked with belief and madness.

He ranted, I tried to sell the Burma generals nuclear arms from NK. I was this close to closing the deal, making a peace sign, They need to protect themselves from the big bad hostile world. They are paranoid idiots. Anyway, I have friends in NK. Hey, business is business. They sold me the goods. I paid cash.

In Burma I got mixed up with the wrong people. Schemers and deceivers. They lied. They cheated. They played me for a fool. They stole all my fissionable material and locked me up. I had everything: triggers, U-235, isotopes, plutonium, uranium, plans, diagrams, designs, centrifuges  ... the works  ... it was the full course meal  ... you have no idea  ... you just don’t get on a plane with this stuff.

One Burmese general’s wife wears $50,000,000 worth of gold and precious stones when she takes a shit. Can you believe that?

He continued: You need to go by boat from NK to Sing Some More. In Burma they made me sing in prison. I was in the choir singing for my supper for seven years. My voice is shot. I was lucky I wasn’t shot. They tried to shoot me out a cannon. I got stuck in THE SYSTEM. Un-fucking believable, I should write a book called Seven Years in Burma. Do you have a pen and paper. I need to get it down before it evaporates like morning dew.

How did you get out?

I became an informer rat. I took care of people. I developed relationships. Relationships and timing is everything in life., I bought and sold information. I sang for my supper. I did hard time. The nuclear stuff was worth millions on the black market.

I was born in a black market, stall #101. My mother was appointed to have me. I made a killing in Iraq. Literally. Mercenary work. Black ops. I went to N.K. I made connections with the Ministry of Fear and Nuclear Ambitions.

I worked. I paid. I got the shit out. Then it collapsed like a house of democratic chad cards in Burma. I played the Joker. It was wild. The Burmese said, Show us your hand. I did. They cut it off with a rusty machete. He held up his ticket stub.

He was beyond wild. He had his remaining hand out looking for compassion in the form of an exit permit.

An empty hand holds everything.

He lived on Dream Street at noon o’clock where a dusty Vietnamese grandfather clock strikes 12 inside a deep black gravitational void. Bong-bong-bong-bong. 

He jabbered his shadow illusion away past same-same travel tour shops, same-same bored boom-boom girls waiting for same-same tourists offering them same-same cash for same-same skin merchandise and same-same sleeping motorcycle hustlers.

He was the blues personified. He had a permanent case of the walking blues. He pleaded quiet desperation with anyone who’d listen. He was trapped in Hanoi with people hustling to eat. Hustling to dream. Girls hustling to fuck Mr. ATM cash flow. Hustlers hustling happy meal to happy meal needed a bailout from IMF.

Life’s karmic wheel of birth and rebirth spun him in circles.

Conversations love distractions and you can’t step in the same river twice.

It’s not the same river and you are not the same person.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Dance

Mr. Easy Rider took me to the Hue train station. He was a gaunt gap-toothed happy man riding his ER cycle.

The next time you come to Hue you find me, I take you DMZ, Ho Chi Minh trail, Highway #1. He looked at me. You’re old enough to remember that I know.

Yes I’m young enough remembering our eight minute spin to the small red & pink art deco station seeing hearing smelling remembering V trains filled with scared young men and war equipment rolling north and south to fight the French, VC, Americans and ghosts.

Tribes of Australians performed luggage contortionist tricks manipulating mountain size rolling bags clacking up pink stairs. Tattooed blond feminists with white elephant bellies and Mohawk cuts mixed with retired well shoed businessmen and their smart bagged wives.

A diminutive Viet woman arrived on her motto with big goodie bags destined for transport. She struggled to unload everything and drag it upstairs to the shipping zone.

A bored mom waited with two rambling kids as loud European tongues played tag.

A detached thin well-manicured high heeled beauty either going home for a hot shower or heading north to take a sperm bath in the Hanoi skin trade sat alone.

The W.C. in the SIE 4 waiting room smelled sweet. A potent extract of high acidic aroma. Every blue plastic chair bolted to the floor was occupied.

All the film extras in a long running performance milled around playing bamboo flute river music. Old eyes remembered everything from years and tears swallowing dark natural amazement.

A young woman with delicate hands and perfect posture wearing scuffed white ballet slippers and a five-point gold star painted on her forehead turned to me.

Did you hear Mercy Cunningham, the dancer died.

No. What’s the story.

I study dance, that’s how I know. He was amazing. Dance is all about ambiguity, poetry and acceptance. He had independent detachment. He had creative imagination. He said dance was isolated yet cooperating and independent. He believed in the magic of dance.

When you dance for a fleeting moment you feel alive.

I see a circle of movement, a connected unity, a language in space, I said.

It’s more than that, said Tran a one-legged dancer leaning against nothing.

There are five rhythms in dance.

You start with a circle. It’s a circular movement from the feminine container. She is earth.

Really, said the woman.

Yes. Then you have a line, from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.

Chaos follows, a combination of circle and lines where male and female energies interact. This is the place of transformation.

After chaos is the lyrical, a leap, a release. This is air. The last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.

She danced away.

Movement never lies. 

Seeing through soft eyes I visualize a language in space, said Rita.

A spoken language dies on Earth every two weeks, said Tran.

Yes, said Devina. Storytellers sing and dance oral stories. The world is made of stories, not atoms. WE memorize seasons, celebrations, rites, magic and ceremonies, create and exchange clan and tribal myths as children listen, memorizing, chanting, reciting songs and the dances of their ancestors. They receive and transmit future oral traditions.

Historians try to understand what happened through the arrow of time.

Cultural anthropologists try to understand how people communicated their stories, said Omar.

The more I see the less I know, said Leo. WE ride beams of light. Let’s dance.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Thien Mu Pagoda

The Thien Mu Pagoda sits above the Perfume River. The river flows from northern blue-gray mountains. A pine forest shields a white stone cemetery beyond barbwire on the edge. The world needs more bard wire. This creates diversity, harmony, peace and love.

Forest pine needles waved to the rolling river and mountains. I met Mr. Brown Frog in the forest.

Laughing with bright green eyes he said, See how far you can jump.

Ok. I jumped.

Not bad, said Mr. Frog. Keep practicing.

I experienced a humble life lesson. Monks ate lunch. Older monks wear bright orange robes. Novice monks wear gray robes. They stood silent serving the older monks. Monks ate in silence.  Slowly. Contemplation. Silence. Enjoying their food in the community. Their gentle focused manner transformed me.

Eat in silence.

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Travel long enough and far enough and you become a stranger to yourself.

I is someone else.

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Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Be The Brush

Make it new day by day, make it new, said Leo sitting under a Camellia tree in a green garden.

It blossoms 10,000 pink flowers every spring  ... light shadows bamboo leaves  ... practice calligraphy  ...

Be the brush be the paper be the ink  ... Zen.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

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