iPhone test

Greetings,

Once upon a time before I invented the Internet I created poems, stories and comprehensive travel dreams using paper and pen.

Notebooks, flattened by geological pressure, strata layers, spirals, Fibbonaci. Even using pencils or crayons or watercolor brushes. Be the paper. Be the brush, the ink, the water. It wasn't clean which always made it creative, fun, exploratory and a mess. A beautiful mess.

I also pounded on a typewriter. I carried a red portable Smith Corona around Ireland for two years. Working as an au pair in Dundrum, then as a youth hostel warden in Wicklow, Donegal, Mayo and Killarney. I used inexpensive thin paper and carbon paper. The carbon paper was the original "save" feature. Sheets in a thin box. Valuable and recycled until every space became blackened, white dreams where words played, escaping like free wild geese in Ennisfree.

Oh. I amost forgot, yes ribbons. Ribbons for the machine. They were solid black and came on stainless steel spools. They were packed in small clear plastic bags in a box from a stationary shop on a small Dublin side street. I used a toothbrush to clean the keys. It was a sweet, fast lightweight machine.

Kinda like this iPhone app tool on Squarespace. Same-same but different. Wow! Star-techie.

I'll always prefer the heart-hand connection holding a pen, feeling the nib on paper, seeing ink marry paper.

Metta.

Moon dances with bamboo.

By the numbers

Greetings,

The rich make money. The poor make babies.

Only two percent of Chinese women practice birth control. About the same here give or take a number depending on the fear and educational level of the woman. In Vietnam with a population of 85 million, 50% are under 30. That's a lot of babies.

You see them everywhere, driving taxis, motorbikes, buses, boats, trucks, planes, cooking along the road, selling fruits and vegetables in the market, building new super cities in the suburbs, hauling cement and bricks, fixing broken machines, waiting in empty shops, selling anything and everything possible with an infant on their hip, chopping down forests for kindling to make fires and hunting animals until they become extinct.

Babies become extinct? Yes, if they don't run fast enough.

Humans are the only animals that work. This is why monkeys are afraid to talk.

You have to work to make a baby and then, more sooner than later the baby has to work to take care of you. It's a business deal with severe heavy emotional guilt overtones. Marketing and branding. The "one child" policy does not apply here. You can have as many babies as you want, like grains of rice.

You can hear parents and grandparents whispering to their children, "Accelerate Production!"

The bitter fruit, this legacy of love. Love is a legacy and it's more about sheer practicality than emotional love. It's a pure and simple matter of numbers and pragmatic reality. Long term child investments with a human savings plan.

Metta.

Say hello to tomorrow.

Sunday Scribbles

  Greetings,

You are an object of endless fascination and speculation. This stranger in their midst. This creature alive and well singing a song about disorientation, the unfolding process, dynamics. You are a ghost and people here have seen plenty of them. Before, now and later. They pray to the spirits.

It's theoretically possible to say the local people have an EI or Emotional Intelligence of -7. This simple truth is revealed through behavior, attitudes and verbal communication. It has absolutely nothing to do with their families, education or social skills. I witnessed the same reality while teaching and living in China. Or should living and learning come before teaching? Everyone is a student, especially on the street.

There are book smarts and street smarts. "Theatre of the Street," is opening on Broadway and coming to a theatre near you.

In Asia, it's always a theatre on the street. Hustler heaven on earth. Of course it's all a fake. I am a fake. I am pretending to be exactly who I am. My story is filled with contradictions and paradoxes.

Here's what a small sign said about Buddhist statues in Asia.                                

Gentility - China

Perfection - Japan

Refinement - Thailand

Meditation - Cambodia

Affection - Vietnam

If you sit still long enough someone will pass by ringing a bell.

Metta.

Mekong - River of Nine Dragons

Greetings,

I've just returned from three days in the Mekong Delta. It was marvelous to be on the water, this swirling powerful natural endless flow of time - past, present and future. To realize it's source in Tibet. It runs 4500 kilometers through China, between Myanmar and Laos, through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. 

Travelers shared their short sweet stories. Icelandic, German, English, and French. The majority were on quick 2-3 week vacations through Southeast Asia. I felt their anxiety and time schedule pressure, some had adjusted in some small measure to the rhythm of the Asian way. Others were suffering from sensory overload and in a hurry to get somewhere else. So it goes.

The Icelandic team of two brothers and their sister left Reykjavik in August and landed in Mumbai where it was 40+. I'm melting!

They stayed with boats and buses, reached Kathmandu, flew to Beijing and overland to Saigon. They left by boat to Cambodia and eventually Thailand. Two will continue to Sydney for New Year's. 

I took an Open Tour to My Tho, Ben Tre and Can Tho. It included a home-stay with a family deep in the jungle along a tributary. The tourist sites on small islands in villages included: a coconut candy production operation, honey bee 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 a climb up Sam Mountain offering 360 degree visions of the huge delta and Cambodia to the west. Stunning and sublime.

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

An extensive Saigon color gallery is up for your visual enjoyment. 

Metta.

Release birds to gain merit.

One man

Greetings,

One morning after noodles I wander down an alley. I make an image of a man, maybe 60 - hard to be precise - in an alley sitting alone, sharpening an edge, redefining the steel. His labor, simple tools. No left foot. He curled his leg stump back to rest it on a boot. He went to work.

In the afternoon I'm sitting along a sidewalk near the market. He walks past with a shuffling gait. He's wearing a green fatigue shirt, hat, motorcycle helmet, carrying his red plastic bag with his simple tools.

I watched him walk. Knowing his truth, not knowing his story. Perhaps a land mine or a stray bullet. His left boot is an old combat boot issued to soldiers. A discarded war object. It is splitting down the front.

It is brutally hot. The sun is behind him. I wonder how he feels? Where is he going? Home for lunch and a rest? Looking for more dull edges?

I am surrounded by amputees here. They come to me on their crutches, their hands out. They wheel themselves down the street on little trolleys. A one-armed young man wears an old blue baseball hat. He sees local businessmen approaching. They wear fresh pressed white shirts, leather shoes and shiny silver belt buckles. He takes off the old hat. Holds it out. It is empty. They ignore him. He puts it on his arm stump, runs his one good hand through his black hair, puts his cap on and moves down the street. 

The legless, the armless armies of physically wounded humans. They know you and you know them.

Metta.