Daily Casket Express

Greetings,

The daily Casket Express Metro pulled up at the central station between two platforms. On the "Departures," platform stood young military boys in battle dress; helmets, gas masks, water canteens, with weapons locked and loaded. A sergeant at arms played a bagpipe dirge.

On the "Arrivals" platform were strong black eyed men in front of 1,000 weeping women.

The orange and black doors opened on both sides. The soldiers rammed their spines to attention, eyes straight ahead as notes floated.

The express was five cars long and each car held 100 crude wooden caskets. The strong men spit on their hands and moved forward. As the boy soldiers sang, "We're off to the front, we're going to meet our destiny,"  and their wives, sisters and daughters waved goodbye the men hauled out the wooden boxes.

Teams of weeping mothers, daughters and sisters surged forward, pulling and grasping at wooden boxes as the men stacked them against walls. The women were seeking clarification, an I.D., an old photo, a necklace perhaps, a shred of evidence, a glass eye, some visual epiphany.

They came because they were called by some faceless totalitarian desk jockey handed the inevitable task of notifying next-of-kin so they came to claim.

The wives, mothers, daughters and sisters cried tears of blood. This captivated the audience of passive transparent heavily indoctrinated raw stoned ambivalent authorities hiding behind a pile of shredded documents containing treaties and falsified bills of lading.

When the men finished unloading the caskets, the soldiers marched into the cars,  the doors closed and it departed.

So it goes on the daily Casket Express.

Peace. 

 

Freedom is terror

Greetings,

My friend's son found a job. He refurbishes pots and pans. It's a dirty, hot, stinking job with great wage slave benefits. His mom is ecstatic to have someone in the family making money. She's addicted to money and the fear of poverty. She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming, "It's economic terrorism! My child is being exploited!"

Must be the season of the witch. He is facing his future with a calm mind. Clearly.

Peace.

Hala

Greetings,

    In Lhasa he met Hala who invited him to her home near the mosque for dinner. Her father is a factory worker, her mother a homemaker. One brother is a doctor, married with one child. Another brother is finishing his two year compulsory military service.
    A pleasant small place displaying a carpet of Mecca on one wall and a 4x6’ glossy photo of a two-story white American clapboard dream home surrounded by trees and a large green yard.
    Ah! No money down. Act now!
    It reminded him of the ubiquitous color glossy images decorating simple Chinese and Muslim restaurants here; large strange revolting pictures of Western bread, cheese, wine and gleaming dishes of food as if an advance team from Better & Better Houses & Wild Gardens or Lifestyle Of The Possessed ripped out the advertising and plastered it up for an eater’s dream.
    They dined on butter tea, rice, meat, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes as Hala translated conversations about life.

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The Potala was constructed in 1694 out of stone, wood and mud. It contains 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and 200,000 statues.
    He entered through the west gate climbing steep wide stone stairs. The interior passageways were packed with pilgrims filing through rooms and chapels. It was very dark, mysterious and beautiful with yak butter lamps flickering in front of statues, rows of dark texts stacked in cubicles accompanied by mumbling muted prayers from the mass of humans squeezing through twisted corridors and along narrow, steep stairs.
    Uneven stone floors were slick with yak butter as pilgrims spooned offerings into thousands of flickering candles on altars. He climbed through a series of temples, past shrines to the roof overlooking Lhasa.
    He wandered around the north side of the Potala inside markets fronting the Dragon Pool. He had a noodle lunch, and made images along path and bridge of Potala, prayer flags, mendicants reading sutras, beggars, pilgrims.
    Calm mind, slow steps in dust wearing out old boots.
    A Tibetan woman selling butter on the street near Ramoche asked him to read some of her English writing. It was a story about someone hiding something behind their back in a classroom. A guessing game. He pointed out a couple of awkward sentence constructions and asked her about her life.
    “I stay single because if I had kids they’ll have to go to a Chinese school. They wouldn’t be allowed to speak Tibetan.”  Historical shades of American Indian treatment by the white Anglo Saxons.

Peace.