letting go

lightning thunder rain

fresh wind

black butterflies 

circle aroma

exploring nepal

year ago 

non-attachment

flowing colors, sounds, dialouge 

smiling humility

metis

As an entomologist, a hunter-gatherer with Metis, a cunning intelligence, seeking visual epiphanies, he opened his aperture to f/1.4 and let in light. All of it. Blinding light, prisms of kaleidoscopes, muted spectrums in waves and particles guided his vision to see and stop time. 

Manipulate a tool. A well designed black foreign range finder. A camera obscura. It had the finesse of a magnifying glass, a Hubble telescope looking into an expanding infinite universe, illuminating distant black holes sucking matter into a void. He couldn’t see the black holes but he knew they were there.

It was one thing he carried. He started carrying it in Nam.

It was just a tool. It allowed him to stop time. Divide time in two.

The kairos of his eye allowed him to discriminate intuitively. An eye and a mirror. It refined his being, one with the subject, how silence worked, a detached observer, a photojournalist. How to disappear inside the scene, move with the quickness of a wild animal, see, visualize, anticipate the impending decisive moment stalking his prey with cunning. How to freeze, compose in the viewfinder, breath, squeeze, advance with a quick flick of the opposable thumb, load, unload, develop, fix, print, label, and file his work. Film was his prayer wheel.

Mythstory

Shovels plow into archaeological deserts reflecting passion and curiosity.

An archaeologist inside a tomb waving Diogenes’s lamp yells, “Every bit we dig out tells a little more about the story.” They unearth fragments of a story revealing institutions, customs and cultures.

A bird presses her breast to a thorn to make herself sing. There is an old fable about a bird and an ogre telling his daughter where his soul lived. 

“Sixteen miles from here is a old gigantic tree. Around the tree are tigers, bears and scorpions. On top of the tree is a huge snake. On top of the snake’s head is a small cage and inside the cage is a bird. Inside the bird is my soul.”

I am the thorn, bird, wing, feather and air. My thorn is a claw, a sharp definitive talon for tearing meat from white bones. Satisfying my hunger along the Tao.

I am a cognitive psycho-neurolinguist. My specialty is languages. Lost tongues.

“Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities,” according to Wade Davis, anthropologist.

Wandering deep into the Tarim Basin along the Silk Road in Central Asia I discovered the Tokharin language and Afansievo culture dating back 4,000 years. It was a proto-Indo European language with Celtic and Indian connections established by trade caravans and explorations. I suspect it is Qarasahr or IA, based on an Iranian dialect.

Mircea Eliade, a historian of religions, once stated, “Myths tell only of that which really happened.”

Myths suggests that behind the explanation there is a reality that cannot be seen and examined. Myth has been defined as truth trying to escape from reality. A myth is a story of unknown origins, sacred stories based on belief, containing archetypical universal truths. They are in every place and no particular place. The world is a sacred story.

pin head

Fear sang a middle class song accompanied by a young girl spoon feeding Chinese infants before they were stolen by gangs of coastal traffickers.

A young boy’s value is $3,500 - $5,000. Negotiate. Continuing talking about the price.

Always Be Closing. ABC in kindergarden classless freedom.

The one-child policy created a desperate daily search for heirs.

Losing face meant public humiliation.

Shame.

before a girl swept she wept.

yes. birds whistle foolish sharp twills, humans yap emotional distress, leaves vein, rats, geckos, butterflies echo. ah, a faint sound of a step slap on gravel.

a piano note. broom music on stone.

a crescent moon sex slave on her back massages ink sky is-land floating on blue water, a wake for the living. be a work of art or wear a work of art.

compose tongue bones inside tibetan thangkas, golden threads, grounded semi-precious stones.

mandala. centered. release.

read everything backwards. write right to left to the imagination sitting on a metro subway

sandwich dreaming world dust exposing word tunnels. arabic mystic dervish dances.

spin your wheels. wheel of life. angels dance on a pin head.

give her a sewing machine and she’ll change the world. 

clown money

once upon a time Orphan and Elf enrolled in a kindergarden class. a new project in Laos.

where's the stuff, like toys and games and books, they asked.

our supplies are limited said Budget, the administrator.

this was a new vocabulary word for Orphan and Elf.

what's a budget? it's the control of money.

what's money? it's paper with people's faces.

may we have some paper and pencils, asked Orphan and Elf, WE can draw faces on paper.

here, said Budget handing them sheets of papyrus and graffiti lead them now-here.

be my guest.

thank you very much.

Orphan and Elf designed, illuminated and created paper money with faces of clowns.

great, said Elf, let's exchange these clowns for some stuff like toys, games and books, OK, said Orphan.

they went shopping.