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Entries in Book of Amnesia Unabridged (3)

Tuesday
Sep302025

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

Sunday
Sep212025

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 

Sunday
Dec152024

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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