Feel Experience With Camera

How many tourists only see through their camera/cell phone? Millions.

According to Rita, They feel the experience of 8th century Angkor artistic splendor with their cold impersonal little tools. Their experience is defined by camera. Obscura.

It’s not about understanding the Khmer people, culture, food, art, music, and language. It’s about feeling with a camera. They are in a big fat hurry.

They’ve learned through hard fast lessons to trust the machine. It is their weapon against mediocrity and boredom and alienation and shallow emptiness. They don’t comprehend the intricacies outside the machine. They believe the machine will save them.

The machine controls them.

They accept this reality. They give up their consciousness.

They press optical machines tight against their faces, piercing retinas, flickering lids. Point and shoot. They lower the device and stare with hard lost eyes at the image of their transient memory. They judge it. Evaluate. Crimp. DELETE.

Shoot again  ... point  ... shoot  ... delete  ... repeat  ... a snapshot  ... snap a shot  ... preserve this moment forever  ...  Quick  ... they must go  ... to the next great big thing  ... they are in a hurry  ... Death is closer than white on rice.

The tuk-tuk driver is a happy man. He waits as they stuff eggs, watermelon and soft bread into tired bored faces. They eat like starving animals.

They run in, around and out of the temples.

They point shoot and delete.

Hurry. They have no time to see their obscurity. This loss and sense of amnesia envelops them. It accompanies them through electromagnetic radioactive meltdowns. It is a dark cloud of forgetting. They remember to forget.

They are on a Homeric quest of infinite grandeur and infinite magnitude.

Their memory card is full. They attach electrodes to a cerebral cortex and press the DownLoad switch. Memories of Apsara dancers, elephants, monkeys, temples and celestial deities flicker on a screen behind their eyes.

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion smiles. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Angkor Wat by Rita

All Angkor Wat material is by Rita, fourteen, author of Ice Girl in Banlung. She is a resident tour guide and archaeological expert. Her food, transport and daily salary was paid by Dancing Mouse, a Khmer curator and art historian.

Angkor Wat – The City of Temples - is the largest spiritual building on Earth. It is a peaceful mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism. This makes it unique. It dates from the 9^th - 13th century.

Most tourists dash in, around and through for 2-3 days of their very short existence. They get to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise with hoards. They climb steep stairs to see the sunset with hoards. It’s a human zoo.

They visit the high points: Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, the interior of Bayon and, depending on time and planning, other temples of interest. There are over 1,000 temples at Angkor. Most people hearing the word Angkor imagine only the main temple. There are plenty of cool uncrowded temples to enjoy.

A day pass costs $37, a 3-day pass is $70 and a seven-day pass $100. The longer pass allows visitors the luxury of time - life’s great wealth - to enjoy the diversity of Angkor over a month.

I suggest you visit The National Museum and galleries around town to learn about Angkor history in advance. Be aware that Thailand owns 50% of The National Museum. Khmer do not go to their museum.

For $25 I hired Pat, a tuk-tuk driver with three kids to feed. We left before dawn. A tuk-tuk is a motorcycle pulling a simple covered sofa carriage. The air was chilly and refreshing. We reached the main entrance. It resembled a well-designed airport immigration office with windows and attendants for the 1-3-7 day tickets. I paid for seven, they took my picture and a girl punched my ticket. Buy a ticket and take the ride. The meter began running.

We drove through deep mysterious forests on empty roads past forgotten shadows and villagers stoking cooking fires near wooden stilt homes. The road skirted a long deep reflecting pool at Sras Srang.

We stopped for a noodle breakfast. A brilliant orange ball of flaming gas rose over flat brown fields. I salute the sun!

We headed for Banteay Srei, 37 km from town. Objective: get there for early light with peace and quiet before buses of sheep.

Srei was built in 987 AD and never a royal temple. Small intimate and designed by women with delicate hands. The carvings of pink sandstone cover the temple. Reliefs are deep and beautiful, the most incredible at Angkor. Covered by forest and earth for centuries, it was discovered by a lost French madman.

After Srei we continued north to Kbal Spean. We climbed through forests for 1.5 km. This is the source of waters for Angkor and the Siem Reap River. Water flows over 100m of carved sacred lingams and Hindu deities, Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.

The Sanskrit name is Sahasralinga, or “River of a Thousand Lingas.”

We headed southeast of Siem Reap to the Roluos Group, a series of three temples: Bakong, Preah Ko and Lolei, dating from the 8th-9th century.

Roluos is a pre-Angkor site.

Bakong was consecrated in 881 AD. The layout follows Mount Meru, with five ascending levels, moats, and ten surrounding temples. It was reconstructed from 1936-1942 under the direction of Maurice Glaize, the conservator of Angkor.

Preah Ko, or Parameswara, “The Supreme God,” or Shiva was built in 880 AD. It contains a stele in Sanskrit with an inscription about war, fearsome action in battle, flashing swords and invincibility - a eulogy to Indra Varman I.

Lolei, 893 AD. Four brick buildings in poor condition sit on an island above a former reservoir. The lintels, doors and inscriptions explaining the construction and divisions of tasks are well preserved.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

One Born & One Dies

One death. One birth. This happened in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Jasmine gave birth to a baby boy at 12:30 a.m. 3.9 kilos. It’s her and Kun’s third child.

I am on the balcony at 6 a.m. hearing him cry. Tears and lungs, breath, release. Sleeping after his nine-month water world journey. Every day is a celebration.

I walk a dusty path and across the Highway of Death to Jasmine Lodge. People gather to celebrate the passing of Jasmine’s grandmother. She slipped away during the night after eighty-four years.

She was healthy and happy.

Friends and relatives gather under a pavilion to pay their respects. They visit the frail Buddhist monk with a monetary gift. He ties a red piece of yarn around their wrist.

The ceremony lasts three days. Women teams prepare vats of soup releasing vapors. Grilled meat and fish aromas curl through bamboo meeting music and the melodic chants of singing, chanting monks.

Tomorrow is a procession to the pagoda for her cremation.

Led by six monks in orange robes 200 people followed the rolling wagon carrying the wooden casket in blazing heat along The Highway of Death. After two kilometers we entered the pagoda.

A bus of kids and nuns arrived.

  

Her casket was carried up the stairs and placed on a metal platform. Her husband led a procession of monks and family members around the tall tapered white and blue building carrying her picture and yellow flowers. They stepped back to allow attendants access. They opened the casket so family members could leave something personal inside.

On a pavilion monks chanted. A man read a final tribute about her life. The family expressed their love. Men put small logs into the casket. They closed it, rolled it inside and piled more wood around it. They lit the fire and closed the metal door.

People sat silent, whispering, drinking water. They observed the top of the tower with four serene Buddha faces and exhaust pipes. A wisp of black smoke escaped into clear blue sky followed by heavier billowing gray and white snow.

Everything burned for three hours.

Her bones were collected, placed in a family urn and returned to her room. They created a human figure on banana leaves. After 100 days her bones will rest in a family stupa at the pagoda.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged