Saigon Ice by Tran

Tran requested ice java in an alley off Dream Street filled with jolly plastic Santa Claus armies and tinsel. Tis the season.

Rita opened a large insulated orange box. Her left hand wrapped in a blue cloth picked up a chunk of white ice. She slammed a hammer on ice. It cracked. Fissures of released pressure, jagged lines, perfect beautiful lightning spread deep through ice.

She held global warming in her hot little left hand.

She smashed it again with all her power and strength creating fragments of elemental particles.

A sharp piece of ice pierced Tran’s left eye. The sensation of pain was immediate and direct cushioned by a delicious feeling as ice melted through his retina, a pupil, nerve endings, frontal lobe, cerebral tissue and layers of perception altering visual organic matter as light transmitted new electric signals from rerouted optic nerves to the cerebral cortex.

Ice quality reflected everything around him. The stimulant of ice was a mirror.

The world is a mirror, he reflected with crystals shimmering inside kaleidoscopes of ice.

Illusions were smooth and clear. Buried inside the chunk of white ice he witnessed long jagged magic, mystery and sparkling universes emitting glowing crystal rivers.

The world is ice. Everything you see, hear, touch, taste and feel is ice, a sibylline language of clarity.

She dropped the block of ice back in the box.

She collected chips in a glass, added thick brown coffee, condensed milk extract, a straw and a spoon.

Here you are, she said, handing it to Tran. You look thirsty.

I am, thank you.

End of ACT 1

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Ali Gator

My name is Ali Gator. I live on a farm with 200 friends near Saigon. I used to live in the Mekong River before being trapped by animal poachers and brought here. Many humans are too greedy and clever for their own good. They use me for breeding. The babies are sold to restaurants. Bye-bye baby.

One tropical afternoon a group of us were relaxing by the pool after a vegetarian lunch. Surely initiated the idea. She knows a thing or two about consumption habits.

“You know what we need to do is expand. I suggest we create a line of bags, belts, shoes, purses and accessories made of human skin.”

Aghast, a strong-willed female member of the dwindling population, had a degree in marketing.

“I agree,” she said. “Considering the passion carnivores crave for designer wear to make a fashion statement, it’s only logical to assume Italian, French and English skins will provide us the color, texture, suppleness, elasticity, diversity, durability and above all the QUALITY demanded and expected by millions of animals.”

“Remember their eyes,” said Esther.

“What about them?” sang the chorus.

“They make great buttons.”

“Yes,” replied Grace. “We should respect humans and recycle everything.”

Scales with a background in finance and dodgy mergers spoke up.

“I've done a cost benefit analysis and it’s doable. Human skin resources are cheap and plentiful. Sweatshop labor manufacturing and production facilities are up and running. Our biggest hurdle are the ethical values of the end consumer. I mean, why would a Siberian tiger, whale, Malayan sun bear, elephant, cobra, eagle, or Pileated gibbon be caught dead wearing anything made of human skin? It’s beyond me.”

“Everything is beyond you,” said a member of our slumbering tribe. “It’s all a matter of personal taste.”

We took a vote. It was unanimous. “Hooray! Let the hunt begin.”

We celebrated with a round of human blood cocktails.

This is perfect timing, I thought, seeing all my friends in a new light, We’d create a new line of human skin products to be introduced worldwide before the holidays. It’s a wonderful life. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Saigon Woman Metaphor

You are an object of fascination and speculation. A stranger among strangers is alive, happy singing a blues song about creative disorientation and the dynamic unfolding process. You are a ghost and survivors have seen millions of them before now and later. 

Survivors pray to soul spirits because they are afraid of ghosts.

Many sheep have an EI or Emotional Intelligence of -7. This simple truth or unpleasant fact is revealed through behavior, attitudes and verbal communication. It’s a lack of maturity, a generation’s reality.

Zero incentive, initiative and opportunities have nothing to do with chance, fate, destiny, luck, education or life social skills.

I witnessed this reality facilitating in Utopia, said Leo, a survivor of Gulag #101. Living and learning comes before teaching.

Everyone is a student where life’s lessons are small and magnificent, said Zeynep.

There are book smarts and street smarts, said Tran.

The Theatre of the Street is opening on Broadway and coming to a country near you, SRO, every performance is sold out for infinity. Its free for amputees and orphans in Asia where life is pure street theatre, hustler heaven on earth and I am pretending to be exactly who I am. My little story is filled with contradictions, paradoxes and ambiguities.

Discover a Metaphor, said Devina.

Ok, said Tran, Here’s one. Vietnam is a Saigon woman, 18, she costs $28 an hour, living in a room with other girls down a long series of narrow twisted dead end back alleys in Area 51 on the dark side of town. They are radioactive rural chickens. They have no identity cards. They are the living dead. It’s an in-out job.

The fat boss plays cards with friends. Neighbors chew the fat. A customer arrives on the back of a cycle. The boss tells his son to get three chickens.

They walk into view and stand silent. Which one do you want, asked the boss. He doesn’t care. They are a commodity with an exchange value. Human life is cheap.

The man looks at the girls picks one the others shrug and leave the man hands the boss money he unlocks a green metal door the man and girl go in the boss locks the door behind them you can never be too careful there are two dimly lit curtained areas with thin mattresses and a bathroom in the back shy she undresses with her back to the man she is supple they play around like greased monkeys getting warmed up for the big climatic scene they’ve forgotten their lines and ad lib their silent film in slow-motion her breasts are small points of light it isn’t about her pleasure she warms up big daddy applies a love sock climbs on for the ride takes control of the action priming the pump she majored in Vertical Mergers & Acquisitions at Quick & Easy U moving with the grace of a river reed caressed by warm sea air in suspended animation finished with the climatic action they wash dress knock on the door the boss unlocks it she returns to her room friends TV and boredom waiting for another curtain call the man rides into night smelling naked metaphors and the boss deals another hand. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Down in the Delta

Three days in the Mekong Delta swirling endless flow past, present and future. It’s Tibetan source runs 4500 kilometers through China refreshing Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Tourists shared short stories. Icelandic, German, English, and French. They are on quick 2-3 week vacation through Southeast Asia. I felt their anxiety and time pressure. Some adjusted to Asian rhythm. Others suffered from sensory overload or beggar fatigue in a hurry to get somewhere else.

An open tour to My Tho, Ben Tre and Can Tho included a home-stay with a family deep in the jungle along a tributary.

Villages on small islands were a coconut candy production operation, honeybee processing, a python wrapped around your neck, fish farms, an alligator farm, a floating market, a rice paper making village, a Cham weaving village and Sam Mountain offering 360 degree visions of the huge delta and Cambodia to the west.

At a village home I awoke at 4 a.m. to sit by the river with the crescent moon and stars reflected in water.

Returning to Saigon life of dreams and hustlers I became a mercenary. Be aware. Be alive. 

Be a depressed pregnant woman. Hide behind a face mask below a conical hat. Silent. Passive. Quiet. Watching.

You see Truth and Beauty without evaluation, expectation, judgment or curiosity with a mercurial mercenary attitude, the quick and the dead.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged