Mi's Story

I don’t know how to read. I can speak a little English. My name is Mi like my song. I sing for tourists when they come to Sapa.

My village is a two-hour walk away. My tribe is the Hmong people. We have lived in the mountains of northwest Vietnam for many years. I don’t know how many. My grandfather lived 120 years and my grandmother 110. I am between about 8.

My mother is Sa. I learned English from tourists who came here before I was born yesterday. They come to hike in the mountains, relax and do a home stay in my village. Maybe you want to know why I can’t read.

I don’t go to school. My mother says I need to make money. She says I need to help our family so I walk to Sapa and sell handicrafts we make. Sometimes I stay in Sapa with my friends. I go to school sometimes and I like it. I have friends there, get to play, have fun and learn new things.

I like speaking English with the tourists. My real school is on the street.

Sometimes I lie to the tourists and tell them I go to school. I went to my village school for nine years. That’s it, that’s all the years I have there. I am finished. My formal education runs into a problem. It’s called M-o-n-e-y.

The school in Sapa costs too much money. I have little chance now. But it’s OK because I can stay in a room in Sapa with other girls so I don’t have to walk for two hours. And then I can meet tourists outside their hotel or restaurant or when they are walking around and I can sell my things to them.

When I am older I can take them to my village for a home stay. This is what older Hmong girls do. It’s a good chance for me to speak English and even learn some French.

Maybe someday I can go to school and learn to read.

 Mi

17 September Sapa

I sit in a Vietnamese breakfast stall eating sticky rice pancakes filled with onions covered in a brown fried garnish.

I am invisible to the suspicious rich woman in her boredom living in this cold mountain town bossing boys and girls around. They cut green vegetables and work the wok as her empty profit eye dances at a Hanoi businessman wearing filthy dress shoes recovering from a night of drink and bar girls while hearing the Hello of an old one-eyed Hmong women offering a handmade key trinket, her labor from a long dark cold night.

She embroiders her daylight hope of economic potential.

Across the path a young boy plays with plastic toys, action man, a green bulldozer and a sharp rusty knife handle. Sitting alone he manipulates toys while his mother prowls the market seeking fresh meat as his father bangs his morning mistress in her secret garden. All the pieces fall into place.

Around the Sapa traffic circle near the church above the tented commercial zone under blue tarps where Hmong sell their work are sixteen motorcycle honchos. Easy riders. They wait for tourists. Any tourists. Some tourists. One tourist.

Maybe a Hmong woman with her heavy bamboo basket loaded with hemp or an infant on her back needing transport to her village after a day of walking, selling, buying, seeing friends.

A thick white rolling fog obscures vision. Visibility drops to 200’ in a mystery mist. A shroud shouts, See the totality of phenomena.

Mo

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Finch's Cage

After seeing Tao I found an Internet cafe and sat outside.

I met a human-bird.

Finch had a yellow chest, red beak and brown feathers. It was outside the plate glass door. It had escaped from its small bamboo cage in the main room.

Someone, perhaps the young mother worried about her wailing infant or her old mother worried about dying alone or her brother worried about dying of boredom had left the cage door open.

Finch was outside. It sang, Where’s my home, what is this beautiful world?

Finch hugged the ground. It saw trees across the street. It saw a blue sky and inhaled clear, clean mountain air. It heard birds singing in trees but it didn’t understand them. Their songs were about nesting, flying, clouds, sky, rain, warm sun, rivers, bark, worms, snails, and melodies of nature’s freedom.

I wondered if Finch would fly away. I hoped so however I knew it was afraid to go. It was obvious.

It lacked real flying experience, where you lift off beating your wings to get up and get going to escape gravity’s weight pulling you down as freedom pulls you up into everything new and exciting reaching an attitude or altitude and you turn glide and relax feeling air beneath your wings. You soar free.

Finch, conditioned to a caged world of perch, food and water looked and listened to the world. This was enough.

Finch retreated from the possibility of freedom and pecked at loose seeds in a narrow crevice below the glass door. It smelled the dark stale room where the cage waited. It needed someone to rescue it.

It sang, Help, Let me in. I want to come home. I’ve been outside and I’ve seen enough. It’s a big scary place. I promise I’ll never try to escape again. I was curious, that’s all, I’ve seen enough. Please let me in.

Finch was amazing in its beauty. Yellow, red, brown, bright-eyed in its small alert aloneness.

An old woman came out, trapped it in a purple cloth and returned Finch to its cage. She closed the bamboo door and snapped the latch shut.

Did you learn your lesson little bird, she whispered.

Finch sat on its perch, had a long cool drink of water singing, Thank you now I am truly happy.

The old woman didn’t understand this language, muttered under her breath about inconvenience and shuffled down a long dark hallway to kill a chicken for lunch. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Sa, Mo, Mi

I rescued a brown moth from room 402 to fly free.

A white yellow dawn sun explodes over mountains. A brilliant rainbow arches over high green western hills in perfect harmony.

I met Sa, a Black Hmong woman. We walked around the cloth market discussing fabric quality.

She said, A Hmong woman in the far north mountains was kidnapped by Chinese men from Yunnan, taken over the border and forced into prostitution. When she became pregnant she was taken to a remote cabin in the mountains and kept there as a prisoner, one day she escaped with her child and returned to Sapa.

She’s the one over there crying and sewing her life story into cloth. Human trafficking is a persistent world problem.

Sa talked about the lack of Hmong shops in Sapa. We sat with mountains, sky, clouds, kids and stories.

Sa and daughter Ku

Sa’s Home

Small steps wind down steep trails. Sa identifies wild plants used for indigo colors and their clothing. The undulating terrain of rising rice terraces supports people harvesting rice. People cut, thresh, stack yellow stalks and burn them. Isolated puffs of black smoke signals wave in the valley below green forests and purple mountains. They have one crop of rice per year. The south has two.

It’s a long simple home with a dirt floor and bamboo walls. Wooden walls are expensive. The home is divided into a kitchen, main room and bedroom. The main room has a TV and DVD. Under the roof is a storage area. Outside is a water faucet, a bamboo holder for toothbrushes, a water buffalo pen, a pigpen and a writing pen. 

Imagination’s pen rearranges words. Words are masks to conceal fears of speaking the truth.  

The more words the bigger the fear.

Words hide in bamboo clouds, foliage, in flowing rivers, on slippery rocks, slithering inside important life experiences. Words form languages speaking indigo cloth, dyed in a large vat and hanging to dry on a wooden wall.

Stacked sacks of straw for winter’s feeding are ready. Twenty-five kilogram bags of rice in blue, white and orange plastic bags marked Made in Indonesia are piled in a corner. Sa’s husband drives water buffalo home.

We share a simple lunch prepared by one of Sa’s three daughters. She is 19, a mother and a trek leader speaking fluent English. Many girls marry at sweet sixteen. We share rice, tofu, greens and stories.

Cat-Cat Village, Mo and My Munchkins by Tao

Cat-Cat village is buried down a long meandering rough flag stone steep path descending to rivers and bamboo forests below rolling hills and mountains.

Steps lead past bamboo homes. Women wash and dry long streamers of blue indigo cloth for bags and clothing. It stains their hands a dark gray-blue shade. Naked Hmong kids play, pee, run, stare and take care of siblings. All the homes have tables outside selling silver, woven bags, wall hangings, shirts and hand-carved stone souvenirs.

Steps lead into forests near a wide river and a waterfall. Hanoi tourists run around taking photos of each other with roaring water in the background yelling, Look, a waterfall, Jump!

There is a small Hmong theatre behind shops. A Hanoi team from Open Community Solution Investment Joint Marxist Hit Them With A Stick Company films dancing Hmong girls.

A Hmong boy plays a small mouth harp. Hmong girls sit and embroider.

Boys smoke watching the action. Everyone shifts outside where the Hanoi dwarf star sits with two Hmong girls. They show him how to move a needle through fabric as the waterfall roars behind them. It’s the most complicated action he’s ever rehearsed.

The director yells, ACTION. The star embroiders. The girls help him.

CUT, yells the director. He gives directions.

Take two. ACTION!

Just get to the verb, said Tran.

Young girls carry baskets loaded with kindling up steep stone steps to their village home. One smiling girl hauls two gigantic logs on her bamboo basket. Her laborious elementary education hauls the world on her young back.

I visit Chocolate & Baguette to speak with Ms. Tao about their humanitarian work and hospitality training school. The C&B is a boutique hotel with four rooms and extensive menu in Vietnamese, French and English. The headquarters is in Hanoi. 

Hearing disadvantaged, blind and destitute children attend the Hoa Sua School for training and education in hotel services, bakery, housekeeping and English. They return home with skills to find meaningful employment. They are empowered.

Mo, 10 and My 8, two little Hmong munchkin friends work the street. My is a street urchin wearing a dirty green t-shirt, jeans and filthy yellow perforated sandals. Everyone wears these cheap sandals except older girls leading treks in stable Teva sandals.

Buy from me, she pleaded.

What do you have? She pulled out long embroidered wallets, colorful wristbands and postcards.

Look, here, cheap, thrusting them at me. Miniature vultures feast on a hapless victim.

Ah, I remember you from yesterday.

Sapa’s a small place and it doesn’t take long for all the street sellers to make your acquaintance if you are friendly and curious.

I walked down stone steps to a rusty museum gate and pivot.

Where are you going?

Down to the market, said Mo.

Ok, Let’s go together. We passed sidewalk vendors on a circle of grass ringed with blue tarps, stuff, dreamers and teams of Hmong and red Dzao women bargaining over hemp quality.

Are you hungry? I’m going to the market for coffee.

Ok. SOP is for the young girls to canvas streets, hotels and restaurants where tourists go. They wait.

We hung out in the market overlooking valleys, fog, hills, and steel blue wisps of flying water. They were hungry. The chicken soup was delicious. I suggested we meet the next day for lunch in the market. They said they had a good day selling belts, bags, purses and handiwork.

Their reality is the street. Mo has limited school opportunities. My mom said I need to make money.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Li's Little Tale

Hi, my name is Li.

I live in Sapa, Vietnam. I am a mountain trekker guide. I am almost 14. I speak excellent English.

I finished nine years of school in my village. I learned what I really needed to know on the street. What I really needed to know to survive. What I really needed to know to make money. I use really a lot. As someone said, You don’t want to let school interfere with your education. How true.

Tourists visit Sapa. It’s in the mountains close to China. I’ve never been to China. Someday I plan to go back to school. It’s good to have a plan. A dream.

I’m not talking about the hungry, angry, crazy, confused day-trippers from Hanoi or HCMC. They never talk to us. They are busy eating, drinking, fooling around with special friends at the nightclubs and buying cheap foreign products. They don’t buy from us. They buy a lot of junk. They must be rich.

They make me laugh because you can always tell who they are:

1) they arrive on big white tour buses

2) they wear bright red tour baseball hats so they don’t get lost

3) they travel in packs like scared animals

4) they stay in the government hotels and eat at local Vietnamese places

5) they ignore you

I'm talking and I speak excellent English, about the foreigners.

My friends and I work the street selling, politely pestering visitors to buy our handicrafts and offering guided treks, we don’t call the foreigners travelers they’re more like tourists really because they are only here for 2-3 days. It’s weird. It’s a beautiful place and they don’t stay long. They’re just passing through going somewhere else.

Everyone is passing through life.

They are in a big fat hurry. They have a vacation schedule. I think a vacation means free time. Time is free isn’t it? Someone said time is the greatest luxury.

They eat, sleep, wander around maybe trek to a local village and then, poof, like magic bubbles they disappear.

Then the tourist machine spits out more visitors for us to sell to, pester and offer treks to our village.

Some want to see the real deal. They want to experience nature. They want to experience the real Sapa. Some even stay overnight in my village which is great by avoiding the Vietnamese hotel owners and middlemen, the greedy ones after all the profit, my farming folks can make some small money.

For instance, the hotels charge a tourist $25 for a trek. So, let’s say they get 10. Do the math. $250.

I show up and take them out, down hills, up hills, across rivers, through valleys into villages and we have lunch. Then we take trails through pristine forests, crossing rivers, climbing up and down hills and I bring them home. They are happy and tired. The hotel guy gives me $5-10 because I am cheap labor. This is why I deal directly with the tourists and trekkers.

I am a smart, aggressive little business woman. Travelers are super friendly people. I’m learning English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Urdu, Pashto, Sanskrit, Persian, and Italian from them since I was a kid tomorrow. I love pizza with cheese.

I learned this from tourists with cameras, Say cheese. It’s hilarious. They say cheese and freeze. They stare at a little black mechanical box. What’s up with that?

Many really get to know us. They are intelligent and thoughtful and seem to really care about us, how we live, work, play, evolve and grow as human beings. They don’t leave a mess like trash and stuff.

I’ll tell you a secret. Many of us girls stay in Sapa. We share a room for $20 a month so we can get to the hotels early and meet the backpackers who want to go trekking. We are private operators.

It’s more convenient than going all the way home which takes two hours and...you understand. My friends and I have a lot of fun in the room. It’s simple with a bed and toilet. We talk, sing songs and do our embroidery work.

I’m a great little trek leader. It's nice to do what you love and love what you do. Nature is my teacher. Life is good in Sapa. Bye-bye. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Wisdom Mind

Dear Mischief Maker, 

How is your wisdom mind? What is your motivation? Intention is limitation. 

Every day is a gift day. In Hanoi dreaming of Northwest Mountains I project a film of elevations, exploring, climbing steep rocky slippery trails in fog, mist, sunshine and smiles. Clean. Integrity. Authenticity. Everything is light energy. Ritual. No fear or expectations. Frequencies. Vibrations. 

I’m traveling to meet hill tribes in Sapa. A wonderful adventure to learn, share and create.

Ethnologists classify the Montagnard tribes into three main groups:

             ▪           Tay - Tay-Thai language group

            ▪           Hmong  - Hmong-Dzao group; their language resembles Mandarin 

            ▪           Dzao - Mong Dzao language group. 

These three groups splinter into complex sub-groupings.

*

I begin at the beginning, said Zeynep. The hand is directly connected to the heart. Eye & hand & heart. Two won’t do. 

Computers are useless they only give you answers, said Picasso. 

It felt great to put on the pack, walk through narrow lanes, get to the street and station early. Weight steps remember terrain in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An, now destined for Sapa, mountains, trails, rocks, water and good dirt leaving footprints on Earth's surface. It’s a walking meditation. Rapturous joy meets synthesis of love.

The Hanoi train station has a Free W.C. House, yes, a free W.C. with Wi-Fi, electronic crap-a-rama go with the flow. Download into the hole. Delete from system, get some green tea and walk to platform #7 between trains and a sleeping berth in a room for four. 

Riding the rails, this rhythm. Comfortable in mid-week without humanity’s crush. 

 Mr. Metaphor by Devina

Dear lover of numbers, mathematics and logical contradictions.

Life is an absurd paradox, said Devina and we are a metaphor. How’s it feel to be a breathing sensing metaphor, contemplating perception and sensation, seeing others overwhelmed by the stimuli of sensation and perceptual data flow? Impressions flow like water. Quiet the monkey mind. Open Pandora’s (all gifts) box.

Look around, said Rita. You’ll see many insane neurotic humans suffering perceptual overload. Their hardwired receivers are overloaded with INCOMING low quality data from phones. Entertainment loves Attention Deficit Disorder. Short attention span? No problem. 

Write short, fast and deadly. 

Omar witnessed this reality in Morocco after 9/11. It’s scary living with pure fear and distractions. Zombies and automatons are willing slaves to their perceived hell on earth. Volunteered slavery loves a monkey mind ego with perpetual distractions. It’s all they know this life of distractions. 

Zap from stimulus to stimulus. They are engaged by a fleeting stimulus. Dopamine fix. A blind eyeball uses up 85% of their daily energy. No wonder they’re tired being hard-wired to this genetic addiction, a flow of stimulus, grasping nothing. It’s a pervasive learned behavior.

I’m having coffee yesterday with Ang in Hanoi. Don’t fuck with a beautiful black belt. She looks demure and can kill you with one fatal gesture. We hadn’t seen each other for six weeks. She kept pulling her phone out of her pocket. Reading the screen. Texting someone. 

I didn’t say a word. I stopped talking when she did this. I observed her. She never said, Excuse me. Must be really important. Can you imagine how she may have felt or reacted with the calm way of a Zen ninja killer if, during our brief visit, I said, Excuse me but you are really boring me and it is rude. I need to text someone. I need to use my phone to connect with someone who is not here but I really wish they were because you are boring me. 

Text me baby. Tell me about your situational awareness and sweet distractions. 

Text me your insecurity, loneliness, alienation and BIG plans. 

Text me about wanting to fuck long and hard tonight while our ancestors eat incense in their death dream if you want to get my undivided attention. 

Speaking of distractions, what’s scary is seeing all the crazy Hanoi motorcycle drivers texting while zooming along narrow crowded streets in heavy traffic. Talk about a death wish. Text this - Meditate on the complete cessation of your perception. No sensation.

You disappear into bliss. No time, dualities, boundaries.

It’s not the answers we need to ask but the questions we need to know, said Leo. All this. 

Hanoi sign: 

If you don’t know much about infinity 

you are invited to check into Hilbert’s Hotel 

with its infinite number of rooms. 

It can miraculously accommodate additional guests 

even when it’s completely full.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged