03.30.2014 "True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own."
- Nikos Kazantzakis Read more…
03.28.2014 A young girl wore a permanent tear on her left cheek. She was not smiling. Her t-shirt had a picture of a skull and bones.
Danger! LAND MINES!
She said: Here I am. I communicate my reality to the world. Do you like my shirt? Can you read words or do you need a picture? How about a picture of a picture? I don’t know how to read so I like to look at pictures. My country has 14.5 million people and maybe 6-10 million land mines.
Adults say there are 40,000 amputees in my country. Many more have died because we don’t have medical facilities. Mines are cheap. A mine costs $3.00 to put in the ground and $1,000.00 to take out of the ground.
I’m really good at numbers.
26,000 men, women and children are maimed or killed every year in the world by land mines leftover from ongoing or forgotten conflicts. Reports from the killing fields indicate there are 110 million land mines buried in 45 countries.
It will cost $33 billion to remove them and take 1,100 years. Governments spend $200-$300 million a year to detect and remove 10,000. Cambodia, Angola, Iraq, and Afghanistan are the most heavily mined countries in the world.
40 percent of Cambodian land is unused because of land mines. One in 236 Cambodians are amputees. A prosthetic limb costs $3,000.
Talk to me before you leave trails to explore the forest. It's beautiful and quiet. I know all the secret places. I showed my picture to a Cambodian man and he didn’t like it. They call this denial. He said it gave him nightmares. He’s seen too much horror and death in one life. So it goes. My village is my world. Where do you live?
03.25.2014 New music echoed. Everyone ran to a window.
Across the street an Indonesian boy sat on a piece of plywood in the shadow of a long tall Sally art deco three story building. It towered above a gated Jakarta community filled with designer homes, wild tropical blossoming fruit trees, displaced dysfunctional spoiled offspring spinning yo-yo’s and orphans sleeping on broken bamboo bed springs or swimming to Cambodia through flooded dreams.
In his left hand he held a shining silver chisel. In his right, a flat edged hammer. He slammed metal against metal on a bronze bridge between the Stone Algae and the Iron Algae.
Between knowledge and wisdom.
Between an object and a concept.
Tap-tap-tap. Music flaked dust. His chorale was a tribal creation song remembering family and soft rice paddies feeling wind carry his song.
A Cambodian slave girl in the background using a brothel broom of thinned tree branches whisked a gentle rhythm. She created her symphony of sadness and neglect waiting to be abandoned like a manuscript.
03.24.2014 Curious beginnings determine her artistic sense of form, coloring stories of her village. Cutting, planting, harvesting, complete slow rhythm of life. Her skill shines with every new expression, her heart sings.
Her simple direct feeling is all sensation.
Art enables her this beauty. She describes what she draws. Her words fly through forests, colorful birds resplendent peacocks birds of paradise.
A blind conversation developed a through line. Turn a blind eye.
Blindness listened. Blindness heard muted laughter before intuition gestured pink floating word worlds.
Laughter danced with exhaled attachment.
Blindness danced on through late yellow faltering light penetrating bamboo leaves spreading themselves over banana baskets impaled on swinging posts. Literally.
A bike bell. A young girl sat quiet watching the V girl do her toenails. Cutting, trimming, lemon/lime soak, cuticles, clear before applying a silver hued glossy glean. Nail by nail.
Blindness solved the mystery of sight crying tears of silence. A van of blank faced white Europeans trapped behind glass held rampant desires and expectations on laps. Fidgeting with uncomfortable languages floating into inner ears. Assaulting their long painful strides navigating tomorrow’s promises.
Blindness resolved to practice the subtle art of Tai-chi with precision.
Blindness exchanged blue ink for a dark shade of green. A handheld hair dryer waved hot air over a shampooed head. Mirrors whispered secrets.
Elements of silence said farewell. A series of eyes investigated decompression while swallowing fresh yogurt with peach slices near afternoon’s languishing empty promises intent on discovering new, make it new day by day. Explanations have to end somewhere.
In her village, the other world, Blindness threaded new beginnings as her loom waited for pressure and tightness between notes feeling sunlight dress saliva beads blending a weave, texture, design, saying hello Beauty.
03.20.2014 Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen?
The remaining atom particles are life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence.
The rest of the pyramid is garbage.
Existence precedes essence.
