A Chiroptera

I am an Old World bat. The family name is chiroptera. The sub-orders are megachiroptera and microchiroptera.

I am the only, yes! the only mammal in the entire known ecologically diverse animal kingdom that can really fly, sustaining myself on wind currents, up/down drafts and rough drafts of manuscripts and blog entries before they get cut down to size. I am too agile to get cut down. My size is perfect. I am a very valuable, important and productive member of the eco-system. I will explain.

It happened like this.

After a night of flying through amazing black skies illuminated by a faint moon and eating insects with delicious fruit for desert I was resting in a fifty-foot tall coconut palm tree between two squashed together homes in a Ha Noi suburb.

I've been roosting under the long thick leafy branch for awhile now. It's a temporary home until my younger brother gets his wings. Soon I hope because we need to expand our territory. It's a comfortable habitat high away from predators like snakes, cats, and creatures who enjoy tasty bat meat.

Anyway, like I said, I was roosting upside down which is the normal position for bats using my claws to grasp green fibers and I had an itch. I needed to stretch out my voluminous wingspan, my membranes. Natural enough. I rustled around and then, due my superior enhanced audio and visual systems which allow me to navigate, find food and survive, I detected a pair of eyes on me.

Yes me! I'd been seen. Discovered. I shriveled into myself. I pondered this dilemma.

After remaining as quiet as a mouse (easy to catch at night by the way if I'm feeling hyper aggressive) I peeked out from under my wings, through the leaves. Much to my surprise, sitting in his third floor room looking at me was some strange creature.

I hung on for dear life. He seemed harmless enough.

Actually, to tell the truth I am a hybrid bat, or to be really scientific about it, a CHIROPTERA. Write that down. Try and say it fast three times and you can impress your friends at parties.

I am the MEGA and the MICRO in the Bat Kingdom. Kind of like the Alpha and the Omega.

I have the most highly developed combination of DNA characteristics found in bats. The Mega has large eyes, excellent vision and claws on their second digit. The Micro has small eyes and uses echolocation to find nourishing insects. I have amazing visual and hearing genetic traits. 

Twilight's calling.

Metta.

Jumping Thunder

"Find whatever freedom it is that you need or whatever freedom from need that you seek" - a post on Hanoian from a writer in the Botanical Garden. Everyone lives in their personal garden, visible, secret, serene and portable.

Now then. From the notebook extolling recent Hue travel. On our first afternoon in Hue, Joe, Andi, Isabella and I walked to the Citadel. It sits along the Perfume River, long walled enclosures. It's huge with many exhibits, temples and rooms filled with photographs, art objects and paintings. Old images show an arena where they staged fights between elephants and tigers. 

It rains heavy and the girls disappear. Joe and I take shelter under a pagoda roof with a young couple.

She teaches poetry. Joe asks her to tell us a poem. Thunder. Lightning. She jumps. Rain pours on fields, old marbled stone stones, inside green. Initially she is shy, then she recites a poem. It is musical and mysterious. It is about love, about two people missing each other. Her voice is strong. She feels this poem through her, it is her life, history, all the stories and songs and poetry she learned growing up surrounded by friends and family.

She gets into it. Her voice is an angel. Her melody, rhythm and voice flow as the thundering rain and lightning flashes and dances.

We applaud her performance. She is retiring, relieved. Joe and I perform "Singing In The Rain," for them, circling around stone pillars, twirling with the words, feeling the music. Rain dance. They laugh.

The intensity of the rain slows down and we all walk through the drizzle. Say farewell.

The sun comes out, reflecting diamond light on stones inside shallow water pools. Deep dark blue skies fill the air above mountains. The sun drenched fields are an amazing brilliant shade of green.

We walk over the bridge, over the river.

Metta.

220 Volts of Stupidity

Hi. My name is Mr. Electric. I am the energy driving your machines, tools, lights, music systems and biology. I am the current flowing from here to there, in and out, up and down, before and after, left and right, top to bottom, and circular momentum of gravitational forces.

I am the current surging through your left ring finger when you try to reconnect the broken adapter to the floor strip of plug outlets. I am the immediate surging supply of 220V electricity blasting, tingling up your arm through muscles, tissue, veins, tendons and flesh before petering out near your left shoulder blade.

I am the after effect of a numbing sensation near the tip of said finger and various meridian points along your left arm. This will eventually fade away into a blur like some almost forgotten face, heartbeat, musical note, dust particle or breath of air.

Yet, it will always remain with you, this charge, this bolt of flying electric buzz. The light is steady. You are now fully charged and you may disconnect from the energy source. Congratulations.

Metta.

Ben & V

Travel long enough and far enough and you become a stranger to yourself.

The expatriated broken toothed junkie from Laos spent seven years as political prisoner. Or so he said one morning after dawn, walking through an Old Quarter looking for someone to talk to, a permanent change of address.

He was one of the lost ones. He was the star of his very own highly rated REALITY entertainment program. He talked a blue streak. He ranted. He raved. He had his hand out. Looking for salvation. An exit permit. An empty hand holds everything.

Now he lives on the street of dreams at noon o'clock where a dusty grand-father clock strikes 12. Bong-bong-bong-bong-echo. He jabbered his shadow away, past travel tour shops, bored girls waiting for tourists and motorcycle hustlers.

Lives of quiet desperation. Hustle to eat. Hustle to dream. Meal to meal. A cycle. Conversations love distractions.

Where are you from? asked a motorcycle guy down at the interesection of Yes, No, Maybe, hoping we'd establish a connection, bonding through need, want and desire.

I am from heaven.

He expected a familiar place name like Europe, America, Australia.

Heaven?

Yes.

Where is it?

I point toward the blue sky. There.

It's about trust here said a Frenchman. I know foreigners who have lived here 10 years and they still express reservations about who they can, do trust. It's a problem. Be careful.

In my neighborhood women do all the work. Selling vegetables, cleaning, giving birth, nurturing, sewing, cutting hair, cooking, serving, scrubbing pots, pans, chopsticks, knives.

Thuy is 47, and a teacher in a public middle school. She makes $250 a month. Her classes number 70. Reminds me of my China teaching days. Long bland cement rooms filled with faces.

She speaks good English. She is married with two daughters, Ben, a bright and lively 20 and V, 10. Her husband is an engineer at the largest paint company in Ha Noi. He speaks Russian. Ben studies Portuguese at Ha Noi University and will go to Portugal this October for 10 months.

V is learning how to ride her bike. She is scared of losing her balance and releasing her small fear.

The grace of a finger under a white ceramic bowl. This delicate love. What is essential is invisible.

Metta.

Friday Dinner

A group of teachers pile into a Blue Bird taxi and zoom through the polluted capital to a mall for dinner.

There's a Filipino woman, married to a local with two kids. The whiners are at home with maids.

Beck and call.

There's a fat happy Catholic Filipino relic of a science teacher, a young angry Hebrides science fiction android and a wandering scribe. They find a diner. They feast on Caesar salad, chips, tomatoes covered in cheese, dip and 150 grams of cooked beef between bad white bread.

Watching people flow past, in and out of gleaming neon stores, the scribe and woman talk about advertising, marketing and the relentless pressure people feel to consume, to buy, to get STUFF. They need to buy to feel better, to improve their internal sense of worth with external STUFF.

She is waiting for her local marketing husband to fight and survive traffic to get to the mall. When he arrives he doesn't smile. He doesn't greet anyone. He slouches, collapsing in a chair. They don't talk. This happens in many old boring Friday night marriages. No surprise here.

Everyone gets up and wanders around the mall. The husband tells his wife he's going to find some dim-sum. He goes off to eat alone. Alone.

"Great!" she says, "I'm going to look for phone accessories. I really need something new, flashy and fashionable for my Strawberry."

The android and introverted priest stand around eating sweet I Scream. Waiting to leave. Waiting to become trapped in a car while the husband negotiates a business deal at the wheel next to his silent wife as the priest talks about finding a female nest.

A ride through Hell-o Friday.

Metta.