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Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.50)

The Language Company The Language Company
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

Subject to Change Subject to Change
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
ratings: 2 (avg rating 3.50)

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Thursday
Nov042010

pain killers

Greetings,

Another brilliant day blooms zooms bright and infinitesimally small intense light. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. You'll never catch it.

What you don't see is fascinating.

The clatter of foreign tourist utensils sing near dumb thumbed Angkor Wat guidebooks dancing with dusty beggar children hawking stories of orphanages and medical clinics.

The Children's Hospital has 22 beds in one room. They are full. They are filled with infants and children wearing air hoses in their nose. They suffer from pneumonia and tuberculosis. This is common in Cambodia. A parent holds a tiny hand.

I.C.U. has five beds. They are full.

400 mothers cradling kids wait to see a nurse. The nurse can dispense five medicines. Three are cheap generic pain killers.

Life is a pain killer.

The other two drugs are generic placeboes. The mothers are happy to get SOMETHING, anything. They have no knowledge about medicine.

One effective pill prescribed by a doctor costs $1.00. Parents need to buy 15. 

$15.00 is a fortune. Out of the question. Parents accept cheap ineffective drugs. Parents need a miracle. How much does a miracle cost?

They are hopeful. They wait. They have ridden on the back of cycles from distant villages. In their village everyone had the answer for their child's sickness. Babble voices of the old survivors. Babble voices of relatives seeking salvation inside a dance with Death.

An old village healer waved smoking banana leaves over their child running a fever. Hot and cold.

Mothers wait to see the nurse as sparrows seek water in broken light.

Metta.

 

Wednesday
Nov032010

wash orange

Greetings,

You have to love your mystic lover. She said GIANTS in five. True. Nothing like a little fall ball in the heart of Texas. Drawling with their mouth full of chocolate cow patty cake.

Playing the blues with misfits, rag-tag, excellent pitching and stellar defense. Goes you show ya after 56 years. Handling pressure with poise.

Rookies, veterans and a merry bunch of pranksters. Dancing in the streets.

Manifesting their destiny. Heart. Ya'll come back now ya hear!

Metta. 

 

Wednesday
Oct272010

Wisdom Ghosts

Greetings,

Here's a link from World Hum which may interest you. It concerns The Odyssey by Homer.

"Cavafy is hinting at one of his poem’s themes: that life consists of experiences of intrinsic sensory merit, whether or not they’re extraordinary, whether or not they’re linked to success or failure. Only later, when we adopt the conventions pressed upon us and our sense of wonder dulls, do we begin to speak of success or failure, or set up temporal milestones to be reached, lest the quotidian occupation of existing be too tedious to bear."

World Hum...read more

Delicious. The Giants are playing great fall ball. 20 runs in two games.  A group of wild and crazy misfits, low-budget loose and well orchestrated combinations of excellent pitching, timely hitting and orange juice. My mystic lover says they take it in five. No jive. Fear the beard. 

What a long strange trip it's been. So speaketh Homer.

Dancing with The Grateful Dead

Spook-speak. 

Metta.

 

 

Monday
Oct252010

full count

 

Greetings,

Runners on 1st and 2nd. Two outs. Full count. 55,000 negative charged cream cheese people yelling at Brian. He steps off the rubber. The rookie catcher gives him the sign. Down and low. Low down and dirty. Dirty and clean. Howie stands in menacing his weight, leveraging timber.

Play by play announcers speak drama. He hasn't had an extra base hit in the series.

The crescendo of weeping white towels, shrieks, anguish, and the pitch. They pitch insurance and insurance runs, cars, stock houses, horses escaping gravity, Formula.

The stare in. The windup. The pitch. At the knees, called 3rd strike. Howie never took the lumber off his shoulder. The catcher screams, jumps, runs to celebrate. Howie turns silent staring at 55,000 stunned people.

Their season is over. Finished. Happy Hallowed gallows. The thrill of defeat. The agony of victory.

Hello S.F. bay. Water music and multiple planes of reality.

Metta.

Friday
Oct222010

colorado tourists

Greetings,

Once upon a time five tourists from Colorado came to Cambodia for two weeks. 14 daze.

The leader was a dentist from the Rockies. He had been coming here for ten years offering his services in the capital and rural villages. Doing good work, considering the state of dental health care. He also wanted to see his part-time local girlfriend. She ran a dental clinic in the big city.

She was hot. They practiced oral hygiene whenever they could. It was a mutually satisfying orgasm experience with pliable tissue, lots of saliva and swimming body fluids. Drill me baby.

In the group was a female dental hygentist and three dazed and crazed rich high school kids. The woman was in her 50's, lived in a conservative rural mountain town and was new to Asia.

Someone asked her about life in America. "It's a mess. People on welfare have this sense of entitlement. They get cell phones, food stamps and have no incentive to work. The school systems are falling apart. Immigrants from Mexico keep flooding in. Who would have thought that Hispanics would be the majority in Dodge City, Kansas? Immigrants do all the work that other citizens avoid. Plain and simple."

They went to Angkor for a day. They went to health clinics and helped the local staff. They shopped. They left, filled with monumental anxiety about traveling in reverse.

Metta.