In Hanoi by Ku

Ku said, I feel embarrassed when I go to Hanoi. They call me Little Cat.

She is from the Black Hmong tribe. She is 16 and Sa’s youngest daughter.

I am confused there. Too many cars and buildings. It’s hard to see the sky. The city is too big. It is noisy and scary. I get lost. She smiled.

Do you know what we call the Hanoi city people, talking monkeys. They go to Sapa to buy cheap Chinese junk. They miss the noise, motorcycles, tall buildings, endless clatter and traffic confusion. They run into buildings. They hide. They are afraid of nature. They complain it’s too cold it’s too hot it’s too weird say the city people with all these noble literate savages trying to sell us things like bags and embroidery and nature walks.

They don’t fool me.

Yes, they are strange animals. Because I am smart I speak many languages; our Hmong dialects, Dzao, Tay, Vietnamese, Mandarin learned from Chinese traders in the mountains, English, European words, even some Tibetan.

Cool eh, I love languages, especially nature’s language, like animals, mountains, clouds, rivers, sky, and wind.

Many people need more life experiences, she reflected on a cool rainy day in Sapa sitting in the market overlooking valleys hearing birds and noble savages sing their authenticity and integrity. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Drum

From the 4th floor balcony you see the yellow elementary school building. Students are obedient. Teachers are bored, overworked and underpaid. Drones. Going through chalk and talk with dry drab emotions. Memorize the text. Grammar rules. Close your mouth and open your ears. Vomit the material.

A red flag with a bright five-point yellow star is silent. All the hot air is in the classroom. The educational skin drum at the school echoes a long deep resonating thunder. Vibrations bounce off clouds and granite mountains. It is large and stretched tight. Clouds and mountains? No the skin drum.

Remember all the amazing drums at the Ethnology Museum over centuries and A Century Is Nothing, but a long now, drums here are essential for communicating over distance.

Drum language has two tones.

Be the drum, frequency and vibration, said little drummer boy pounding out his message. Thump. Thump. Thump. Three heavy beats. Vibrations echo across Sapa space and curl around the lake into eastern mountains.

Drums call young tribal members. All the children gather. Be the drum with mind-at-large.

It is seasonal mountain music saying plant, weave art, make children, tend animals, harvest fields, celebrate life, all the gathering of Black, White, Flower Hmong, Red Dzao, Tay. Community.

Spirit. Storytellers. Animism. Integrity. Authenticity. Nature is your inspiration, guide and teacher.

You live in an amazing art museum.

Cheap foreign plastic factory junk overwhelms natural fiber markets, threading globalization.

Joyful female cloth sellers in the old fabric market sustain energies in their sewing community.

The Hmong and Red Dzao women walk from their villages to stay in Sapa for 3-4 days like their daughters. If they sell or don’t sell they return to their village.

It’s a long walk. 

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

Structure

Trees are the most inspiring structure. - Godel

If you want to know a tree go to a tree. - Basho

Dancing tree 2020