Hand Luggage by a Nurse

The Australian nurses prepared to return home to family, friends and medical school after three weeks on Ground Zero living short-term personal evolutionary variables of medical, emotional and scientific truths.

Before leaving one arranged her heavy deep real life changing Cambodian experience in her hand luggage. She wondered, How can I get my entire heavy deep real humbling life changing experience into this very tiny bag?

This serious question troubled her for a second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year and remaining sweet existence. It’s her experience. She knows it’s impossible to check it all the way through. She will have to carry it. 

She assembles it on the floor along with fragrant spices, Khmer cotton cloth decorated with elephants and yellow silk scarves.

Her profound experience is a poor slum village near Siem Reap. She loves everyone there because she lived with them. She took care of the people. She held them. She gave children medicine and water. She cried herself to sleep every night. She suffered from nightmares surrounded by dying crying children, Save me Save me.

One woman in the village takes care of sixteen children.

Thirsty, hungry, exhausted sick children, women and men exist.

She puts the survivors of this one little village into her bag. She discards everything else.

She saves weight because there is no clean drinking water. She throws in handfuls of rice and fried bananas for nourishment during the long flight to Sydney.

She doesn’t know how many will survive. She’s ready to carry her experience home.

She knows it will scare the hell out of her friends, family and colleagues.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

 

Preah Khan, Clean Water, Burma

Ta Som is a compact temple with a laterite enclosed wall and well preserved gopuras or entrance buildings. The feeling is intimate. I wander quiet and peaceful. I evaporate into deep meditative silence. Birds sing through shadow light. Pure magic.

Preah Khan, constructed in 1191, is wonderful. Inscriptions refer to a lake of blood and a story about a battle when the Khmer killed the Cham king and expelled them.

It is one of the largest and most lightly visited temples at Angkor. It is a fusion temple with Mahayana Buddhism featuring equally sized doors and cardinal directions.

The Hindu deities, Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma are present. Receding smaller doors emphasize unequal nature.

It was a religious university with 1,000 Buddhist monks in the 12^th century. It has four long main corridors, a central shrine, ancient columns, libraries, hidden mazes, delightful light play and detailed Apsara dancer carvings.

I am a dust collector, like Tran. I wander with ancient stone stories where people created life.

Sacrifice. Prayer. Art. Celebration. Ceremony.

The carved dancers are transported by inner visions.

They perceive beauty and serene wisdom.

The nature of the process is the process of the nature.

The unconscious is integrated into your life.

*

A team of Australian nurses had a medical briefing at Jasmine. The head nurse asked them for the biggest problem they’ve seen in Siem Reap communities the last two weeks.

“It’s dehydration. It’s the loss of electrolytes (salt). Malnutrition is also a concern.”

They discussed primary concerns and physiological assessments. They talked about signs and symptoms. They discussed their progress helping and educating people. They returned to villages. 

One billion people on Earth do not have access to clean water. This is an unpleasant fact.

*

Three middle-aged Americans and two 28-year-old girls arrive at Jasmine. They sit on soft cushions. One is the man’s niece. The girls just arrived from a horrendous long bus ride from Bangkok.

The man is soft spoken. He’s an Asian tour guide. He reminds me of Robert Thurman, the Tibetan scholar. His wife is an attorney in Portland, Oregon and originally from Michigan.

She deals with suits. No one at breakfast is wearing a suit. I know her job because of the way she cross-examines the two girls.

An older woman with regal bearing is with them. She is patient, kind and asks intelligent questions. She lives in Eugene, Oregon with one of the girls.

The older woman grew up in Eugene, attended Portland State College and loved Italian. She moved to Rome for six years. She came back and got her M.A. in Italian and Foreign Languages at the University of Oregon. She taught Italian until retiring.

The attorney said, “I was only able to get away for two weeks. My boss said, ‘What happens if someone sues someone and you’re not here to handle the case?’”

The older woman said, “It was just coincidence I ended up back in Eugene. It was hard growing up there.”

“Why?” said Attorney.

“It was the late 40's. We didn’t have enough to eat. It was only steak and they cooked it to a cinder. It was that and potatoes or one brand of rice. I remember my mother and father loading us in the car and we’d drive to San Francisco to buy food.”

“To sell?” asked the attorney. The older woman looked at her.

“No. To eat.” She’s thinking in Italian, Mama Mia. What a crazy question.

The group talks about the bus, lodgings, expenses and border hassles. The girls are dead tired. They compare travel stories. One girl just completed a month teaching English in Burma. She found a job through a foreign woman running a tour company.

“Yes,” said the man, “there are people there who know The System. Where did you teach?”

“I didn’t teach school. I taught teachers.”

The man knows Burma. “I see. The authorities are very suspicious of foreigners. It’s difficult to really get to know the people.”

“I hoped to spend time with the Burmese in their home but it was forbidden,” said the girl.

I see the girl teaching a class of Burmese “teachers.” Half work for a government agency designed to acquire western educational pedagogical plans so they can push students through a looking glass into an alternate universe.

In the universe is a white rabbit saying I'm Late! I'm Late, a smoking caterpillar, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, tea parties, a grinning Cheshire cat and a fat Burmese female named Imperial Jade waving a jeweled sword yelling, Off With Their Heads!

The other teachers are the secret police.

Big Bother Brother runs the school. Into the ground, said the girl. Then she fell asleep. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged