Huge time

Greetings,

(a, an, the, old article man in the coffeehouse is reading three verbs in today’s sad newspaper whispering the words softly out loud to himself as if praying to newsparing print, stories and politics, fashion and football results)

and then, the air force became too strong, too sudden, too careful in its way through, seeking lower faster soil and plains across old Roman thermal bath waters plumping mist
up into rain’s marriage so it reached back,
circling it’s prey without saying anything happy to join new relatives,
strangers arriving with the street,
the moisture captured from seas far away and they all danced like children,
circling, spinning out from nothing, evolving from the center of their stillness,
caressing bark, long extended sinlight sunlight
flaying onion skinned paper inside a black book

where people don’t listen
don’t really listen
don’t really care
sleeping with their eyes wide
open
struggling with anxiety
swallowing daily happy pills
wearing huge magnificent time watch
this machine on thin wrists

hand-me-down my walking stick

Peace.

On the mountain

Greetings,

This is from a NYT report by Andrew Jacobs in Baihuatan, China.

Fu Hong, a 19-year-old horse breeder, came trudging from the other side, his face gaunt and his clothing wet and smeared with dirt.

After the earthquake buried seven of his friends, he scrambled to the top of a mountain and hunkered down in the forest. For three nights he sat numb, impervious to the rain. “At least up there, nothing could fall on my head,” he said.

In the end, hunger drove him back to Yingxiu, but he was haunted by the death all around him; an elementary school had collapsed on 400 children, and the constant rumbling of aftershocks made it impossible to sleep. “I had to get out of there,” he said as he passed by. “My family must think I’m dead.”

Peace.

NYT

Shattered

Greetings,

This Chinese artist does the dead. People bring him pictures of their loved ones and he captures their image using pencil. It is placed in family shrines to honor their ancestors.

As the images of heroic rescues and the grim reality of lost children flood the world, I am reminded of the artist, his work and all the children I knew in China.

May they rest in peace. May their parents and ancestors welcome them in their long silence, their memory.

Peace.

China Artist Does The Dead

Greetings,

Adapt, the balloon man lives near the hammam. Yes, mam. He lit a fire this morning under the abandoned stone memory where someone - he doesn’t remember who - lived, worked and died.

The balloon man collects anything he can find for his Sunday fire.

The fire blazes high and strong yellow flames. You see it from the metro window. You remember the balloon man from the other day when he carried his bouquet of flowers filled with air across his green spring field and set fire to the sky filling it with pink, green, blue and purple thin bags of air, his dream violet, daffodils, spilling balloon imagery across eyes, fields and sky flaming majestic canvas.

The balloon man’s voice carried across the rivers, “Create like a God, order like a King and work like a Slave because A Century is Nothing."

And, as he walked through the spring field, only the beginning, his thoughts flashed back to the fine knowing like stars throughout the universe - take a picture of the universe! - it would burn out, his fire, it would ask the air, “Where are you?”

“Where is your depth, insane calling patients," - reminding them of serious death defying appointments bathed in a light room near caged sad singing birds; three Golden Eagles, two males and one young female in the tall grass where two males battle, fighting the female for possession to be her dominate partner.

How she balanced on a strong extended leg, her deep brown lightning eyes, a yellow glint flashing anger, striking out with a sharp talon, it’s curving white tip a point slashing at the males circling her with desire, cunning and stealth.

She dances between the two males, pirouetting on one leg, her back near a fallen tree trunk protecting her flank. Her wings open, creating winds across the plains, reaching green mountain forests.

A wolf pack near her, trapped behind chains and fences numbers twenty.

They live on a worn brown hill studded with boulders. One lone wolf’s eyes are alien - slanting long deep with a unique fluorescent emerald green Aurora Borealis retina patina, rather like a deep slash inside of light, refracted prisms, very surreal and different this one wolf’s eyes.

"I am a lone wolf."

The others have “normal” wolf eyes. Brown, green. This one is an algorithm of DNA.

They are restless. They miss their wild and free nomadic relatives living in untamed eastern mountains near Armenia away from genocide and 1914 snow circling pines beneath fast vast gray skies. They look well fed and hungry. Hungry to get the hell out of their caged world.

Across town near shattered shouting mountains a patient Chinese artist does the dead in his gallery.

Peace.

Quake zone prayers

Greetings,

As you've heard, the Mother Earth quake blasted the mountainous region near Chengdu.

I taught English at a middle school one-hour south of there. Flimsy buildings in poor agricultural areas. Shoddy quick profit structures with no local accountability. Faulty design or poor construction? Rising death numbers, 15,000 and rising. Tears for the innocent.

Sleeping children never knew what happened.

Peace.

BBC report