Blossom

Attention Ladies & Gentlemen!

Civilization is sterilization - an agreement to avoid the abyss. You look into the abyss and the abyss looks back at you.

History is the symptom and people are the disease.

This is a long dream sequence, said Zeynep, author of The Language Company. Mirrors are metaphors like Banlung, Cambodian nill gemstones of the Mind-At-Large. Keep a diamond in your mind, reflecting 10,000 points of light.

WE create myths and stories … We build sandcastles … We used to be someone else and we traded them in.

Hold a mirror to the sky reflecting Beauty. Hold a mirror to the ground reflecting a muddy path. Hello Truth. Hello Beauty. See all the Beauty without hope or fear. Life is sad & beautiful.

It’s a long walk. Walking makes the road. Nothing more. Nothing less. Less is more. We play with reality, impermanence and illusions of reality. We cultivate ambiguities, create imaginary identities and play with fact and fiction. We use lies to tell the truth. Fast, short and deadly. In the future more than five words is a run-on sentence. A life sentence ran away.

What’s the next question, said Grave Digger. I love good dirt. I know two things. Look at my hands.

I know the solution and wait for the problem, the opportunity, the big SURPRISE, said Leo, Chief of Cannibals. Can we know death, said Leo, Good question, said Z. One should die at least once to appreciate life. One must die before they live. Most people are born alive and slowly die. Born dead we come to life.

Kill the Buddha. Kill yourself. Suicide is an honorable Asian way of saying goodbye with honor, dignity and respect.

Buddha said, I show you sorrow.

A blossoming voice has purity, love and truth. We know illusions of desire, anger, and ignorance. Pain, suffering, fear, loneliness and alienation kills the spirit, said Rita, author of Ice Girl in Banlung.

Alienation embraces uncertainty … Embrace the chaos.

A heartbeat contains a universe of infinite possibilities, said Zeynep, What is the difference between possibility and probability, asked Tran, polishing his prosthetic left leg.

How do we we dissolve monkey mind thought clouds and fleeting sensations to enhance our awareness and potential, said Omar a blind Tuareg Ghostwriter. Let it go, said Z. What does it mean to be a human being? Are you a human being or a hungry ghost? The reader completes the work of art. Yes, said Devina, Buy a ticket take the ride.

We are in exile with stealth and cunning.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Death Worship by River

Rumors of intelligent life in Hanoi is an exaggeration, said Leo. Rumor control reports existence.

Take my neighbors Sam and Dave for example, said Tran, Sam is the kid, Dave is the father. Their names and roles are interchangeable. These are not Viet names. If they were, they’d be named Binh and Thin and New Yen, like new Yin or old Yang.

Dave had kids so he and his wife can yell at them. So they will have someone take care of them in old age when they are lying or dying on bamboo recliners absorbing 10,000 wafting kitchen smells.

It’s an Asian thing. It was an arranged marriage after a three year courtship. Her parents demanded $50,000. Cash or no deal. Virgins have high value in the marriage market. They are have been sequestered behind fear and insecure superstitions and trapped by hovering in-laws and outlaws for centuries.

Marriage is legalized prostitution.  

Father knows best. You don’t marry the girl in Asia. You marry the family.

Cash gives them security. You pay and get the girl. The fun begins. Grandparents need kids to support them in old age. When you’re young pregnancy is always the only option. The tyranny of motherhood.  

Accelerate production comrade. Many procreating humans have more desire thinking about providing offspring for their security than the physical pleasure of sex. So it goes.

Sex is a DUTY. It ain’t about pleasure. It’s easy to have kids in the 13th most populated country on planet Earth. Get on. Go for the ride. E jack U late. There are 90 million hard and fast parenthood rules according to the popular Vietnamese Party book, Produce & Consume. Get married early erotic pressure is on and off, on and off. Savior a small death in 8 seconds.

You do not want to be unmarried, sad, lonely and forgotten. Loss of face and shame haunts singles with vengeance. Fear of loneliness increases the possibility and probability of heart attacks, strokes of genius and arterial vestiges of debilitating forms of social upheaval and social instability in a socialist society. They’ve taken their hormonal cues and social control systems from Uncle China.

Extreme pressure is on girls to find a husband. Sapa females in the NW, a future fragment of this tale, illustrate the value and necessity for rural girls to marry at the ripe old age of sixteen and produce genetic replicants. Petri dish. More Y chromosomes. It takes courage to raise kids with integrity, respect, and authenticity.

            Humans crave less suffering and neglect and more love.

Dave’s voice releases anger, bitterness and frustration allowing him to relax, expend and expand the sound. Dave is startled to hear the sound of his voice ricochet off cold molten gray interior Hanoi cement or is Ha Noise the block wall? His life is one long cold cement wall.

Echoes dance through his brain like sugarplum fairies. He knows the echo because he made the WALLS. He stacked red crumbling bricks, mixed the fine sand gemstones and quick dry cement.

He slathered it over red bricks with coherent circular logic fulfilling an abstract desire to create a work of realist art lasting forever which is how he remembered it the day he trow welled the paste. His voice manifestation expresses human primitive guttural sounds in a tight enclosed space near his gigantic liquid plasma television.

It is permanently implanted on a wall blaring news propaganda and perpetual adolescent dancing drama programs about life next door where the family sits on red rose cold tile floors hunched over with spinal deficiencies ... slurping from cracked bowls shoveling steaming rice and green stringy vegetables into lost desperate mouths and yelling over each other in tonal decibels ... competing with their gigantic plasma television featuring dancing bears and uniformed military pioneer patriots devouring acres of rubber plantations, palm trees, teak forests, beach front property and farmland ... with a double bladed axe singing a high Greek-like chorus their national anthem about land, sea, air, water and big profit with peasants as small players.

            Everyone’s being played.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Laugh

Wolf meets dog. Freedom vs slavery.

Laugh and keep moving.

Passion & peristence.

Writing like music - rhythm, harmony, improvisation.

Time, effort, patience, cooperation.

Living safely is dangerous.

Dialect of the hands.

Thread music / dancing needle / flying leaves / zone of color art magic / sewing, tea, eggs, chillis, juice /

Writing Book of Amnesia / polish monster / just sitting / rain

Northern Laos

Kabul Doctors

Now it happened one Sunday in Ankara, when streets were dead, everyone having evaporated to vote for someone special important and wealthy who’d change alter and manipulate the course of the Turkish future with panache, charisma, dedication, fortitude, and cold hard cash  ...

After 4,000+ years of invasions, intrigue, bells and whistles, harems, delicate Blue Mosque mosaics, gongs, cymbals and flutes in life’s chess game, survivors said YES we have realized truth and freedom and democracy in digestible form. One size fits all.

I stood on a main artery filled with silent rusty water fountains of youth. Shuttered stores gleamed with expensive watches, clothing and exchange rates. A bundled man in stone cold shadows sold Simit, a common thick round seedy pretzel from his red and white rolling carnival circus wagon.

Five women in shimmering red, green and sea blue silk danced along shiny plate glass windows admiring their reflection. Hello Beauty. They hugged each other exploring visual perceptions. Their dark skin, sharp noses, deep black eyes complemented long hair under bright head scarves. Clothing reflected silver balls and small mirrors. They jabbered in Farsi.

Three posed in front of a clothing store to have their picture taken with a male mannequin. Men talk nonsense, make war, babies and are real dummies. A white frozen dummy wore a dark pin stripped suit.

A tall woman used a point-n-shoot digital camera to trap an image of her laughing friends. One didn’t smile because she was sad, serious and a long way from home thinking  ...

How are my brothers and sisters today are they alive trying to find food while the Taliban coerces them into religious ideologies resembling spider webs composed of incessant swarming angry bees beheading and stoning and honor killing innocent women for trivial behaviors in public like walking, turning, gesturing, laughing, weeping, or pausing?

Breathing was a major crime.

Fundamentaliism is the Big H smack, said Louie, a barbarian crusader … look at world’s religions  ... Christians have a booze addiction  ... Catholics have faith in dope, weed, grass and ganja  ... Agnostics have a library card.

Shhh ... said one woman whispering to herself, One should keep quiet, practice self-censorship. Think freedom but don’t say it. A mantra for billions.

Don’t you realize how the dying religious leaders sleep together and will shuffle your deck, rearrange their animosity, hunt you down like a dog and pick their nose in private before blowing your life, wife, strife into their rag?

Do be pious, stupid and poor in mind body and spirit swallowing religious addictions controlling your gravitational awareness with mathematical rational certainty.

Her family, praise Allah, were still alive when she returned and she wasn’t sure about their destiny or hers because life is filled with unexpected complicated and complex random surprises and inconveniences and nature is a cruel beautiful illusionary dream.

At that exact moment bi-lingual Asian orphans played hide n’ seek in secret gardens above landmines far removed from adult stupidity, regrets, indignation, jealousy and revenge-tainted anger.          

The photographer finished. I gestured if she wanted me to take a picture of their group. Yes, she said, in impeccable English, Please ask your friends, your sisters to stand there, pointing to a wide area where full trees created a soft background. She sang to her friends. Two shy ones hid behind flowing skirts. They were coaxed out of hiding. Click.

I handed her the camera. Where are you from, We are from Kabul, Why are you here, We are doctors, we have been attending seminars and will return home this week.

Are you all from Kabul, No, gesturing to the women hiding behind their sisters, They are from distant provinces, I see ... How is the medical situation now in Afghanistan, do you have enough medicine … It changes we are fortunate to receive medicine from international aid agencies, our hospitals need more equipment, it’s a struggle at times especially outside the capital …

How are the children doing in your country, are they receiving medical care and enough food, can they go to school  ... We are doing our best to take care of the children  ... I wish you well in the future, knowing you face large responsibilities, it was nice meeting you, Thank you, she smiled, Good-bye, joining her friends passing shops, talking free.

One whispered to her shy sister, Our friends in Kabul will never believe it when we tell them we walked down a street talking, feeling free, how we had our picture taken by a man who wasn’t an immediate relative.

Her sister laughed, Yes, it’s strange feeling free to be your true self without fear of the religious police following you step by step, day in and day out like snakes ready to bite you, Someone should cut off their head, said another sister dancing her mirrors  ...

My dream, said another sister, Is to be a free person in a free country  ... Is that too much to ask, Freedom is a life changing experience with responsibilities, said her sister, smelling wild roses, I feel free.

When I related this encounter to a TLC student she asked, Were they open or closed, referring to veils not their liberated emotional being, They were open.

Book of Amnesia, Volume 2

Book of Amnesia V1

Creative nonfiction, systems analysis and social autopsy.

Five genius kid storytellers meet, explore and share adventures in Cambodia, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam and Utopia.

Everything you need to know is in this book.

"Writers are shamans. We go into the mountains and come back with visions for our tribes. Our holy assignment."

Book of Amnesia, Volume 1

Available for Kindle and in paperback. O joy.