Mandalay Mingalar Market Fire

To the west a dancing sun burned yellow-orange. It filled the sky shading orange and blue.

The rough dirt street paved in places by jutting stones was crowded with residents staring east.

A billowing black source cloud swirled high into gray wind whipped smoke. Spectators gawked, gasped, and yakked. Speculation, supposition, myth.

Down below, out of sight, out of mind, flames spread from rows of makeshift food zones near the west entrance of Mingalar Market.

A spark? A moment as charcoal embers flamed cloth and wood? An errant signature glowing slow and steady.

Near the narrow food area were fabric shops and plastic food in plastic bags – elements of combustible material.

Women with organic fruits and vegetable piled into mountains scattered screaming grabbed children heading for exits. Two children died of smoke inhalation.

Flames bolted into around and through wooden stalls filled with cloth.

Colors exhaled in the heat.

100 sewing machines glowed red.

Flames indulged their fantasy. Fruits and vegetables fizzled, cracked, exploded. Frenzy of fire.

Street 73 was packed with cell phone amateurs, beeping motorcycles, police cars, fire engines and ambulances all trying to get through…night fell, crashing into waves of volcanic billowing smoke floating north, gaining speed at higher elevations.

A full bone white moon witnessed the spectacle.

Water cannons extended from fire trucks directed streams of life over exterior stonewalls and shuttered shops into the center.

Red flames leaped, licking black clouds.

Firemen scrambled with hoses seeking more H20. Flashing emergency lights illuminated shifting crowds flashing strobes on phones.

White helmeted men yelled instructions to firemen. Sirens roared down streets looking for a source in a sewer drain.

The morning after – lines of police down the middle of 73^rd and adjacent streets. Squads of orange vested street cleaning women huddled in groups having tribal discussions.

Fire trucks lined the street blocking off the market.

Vested women hauled out bamboo baskets and lifted them to men in garbage trucks.

Gawkers lined streets.

Firemen rolled up frayed hoses – police cadets marched in formation.

Trucks with armed soldiers left the scene.

Gutted shops, debris, and memories danced near boys leaning against a fence staring at burned mattresses. Salvaged hair dryers on a sidewalk reflected puddles of water.

A medic in a white Red Cross helmet waited for no one.

Two tired firefighters lying on top of a truck closed their eyes.

the blind man and his daughter

He wore a felt hat. He gripped a wooden staff. His face was long and sallow.
The girl was 11. Wearing cotton, her face was solemn, shocked.
Both wore plastic flip-flops.
She held his hand.

They came to an intersection. Small buses, bikes, lost fat Europeans, orange robed wandering monks, silver vans. Women carrying bamboo baskets spilling oranges negotiated pavement.

The girl led the man across the street.
Their pace steady, yet hesitant.

She was his eyes. He trusted her implicitly.
A stranger drawing in his notebook watched them.
He pulled a 20 Kip note from his pocket.
He gestured to the girl, Take it.
She froze.

She spoke quick Lao words to her father.
Questioning, doubt, healthy uncertainty in her eyes.
The stranger gestured the 20.
She remained still.

He got up and slowly approached her. His hand extended the money.
His hand said, take it.
Her small hand emerged with caution. Her small fingers accepted the gift.
She smiled placing her hands together.
Her fingertips touched her chin meaning, Thank you.

She whispered to her father, it's 20.
His blind eyes darted back and forth.
He mumbled, Thank you, joining his hands.

His wooden staff hung in the air like a pendulum.
She led him away.

They disappeared. 

  

Survivors Talk - TLC 65

More Cambodians own a cell phone than have a toilet, said Rita. There are eleven million Khmer people with twenty million SIM cards. Ha, ha, ha. Priorities sing quality of life. Playing with a small toy prolonging adolescence our young generation talks yaks, chats, and texts enjoying cheap thrills. My condolences.

Goodbye and good luck to you and your family are our famous LAST words.

I am sorry.

Yeah. Yeah. The science of imaginary solutions regulates exceptions.

The beauty of travel, Lucky said to Zeynep, is my anonymous sensation in a crowd like you feel as a street photographer. Invisible. An outsider. After Vietnam flying from S.F. to Denver to see family before finishing my military time in Germany I became a ghost-self. Other. Passengers stared and averted their eyes. Guilt.

If you’re not living on the edge you’re taking up too much space.

I share field notes from Battenbang, Cambodia where I evolved for three months.

Men gather at 0615 for coffee, companionship, tea, lies and stories.

A fire roars inside the cement stove in the local java/tea shack along a muddy road. Orange and bright red flames heating water consume kindling. Stacked kindling stands like 12,000 orphans in 269 safe places exonerating memories of loss and abandonment.

Words crackle, spit, and dance with laughter's sensation of heat.

Survivors stare at a ghost-self writing/drawing in a notebook.

Khmer Rouge, The Organization, murdered everyone my age.

They are over forty and survivors of The Dark Years. They wear fresh pressed short-sleeved white cotton shirts and black pants. They talk about money, business, jobs, kids, wives, girlfriends, weather, facts, opinions, plans, construction projects, rice harvests, myths and fear of ghosts. Eating fried bread they drink brown tea and thick java. Spoons create music with glass class and style.

1.7+ million ghosts dance through silent conversations whispering, What if I die here? Who will be my role model? All my role models are gone. Feed me, feed me, cries a ghost to their family burning sandalwood incense.

No one talks about the past. Silence is golden noise. Men talk about the long now.

Some focus on another’s face hearing words discovering kindness intention and meaning. Others study cell phones or watch a Thai music video on a plaza scream at full volume. One hears an abstract conversation disguised as a peddler pulling his trash cart down the red muddy road squeezing air out of a worn plastic bottle summoning attention deficit disordered sellers waiting to hear wheezing AIR knowing they can pawn junk, an old family heirloom or a traditional wooden loom with or without cotton or silk threads where women wove white cremation shroud clothing for relatives long gone.

Living in the past is time consuming, said Memory. Keep me alive.

Ghosts live in the past, present and future. Leave it there, said one. Half our population is under thirty. They have no memory of the past. Education is the key. We missed our chance. The only chance I had was to run and hide in the jungle. My education was nature. Look at my hands. I know two things. Now I spend my life in an office rewriting our sanitized history. A tedious thankless job I'll have you know. And one more thing, I'd rather be writing than eating incense, if you get my meaning. We do, we do, said his friends cupping hot java jive sakes alive. History is time and geography is space, said a survivor. I disappeared by hiding where space folded, you don't say, Oh I do.

I realized my dream to be a gardener at a meditation retreat, said a thin 60-year old genocide survivor. White t-shirt, blue shorts and black flip-flops. His silent black eyes contained secrets.

How did you survive, asked Lucky. I ran away. First I hid in the jungle then I ran into mountains, deep, very deep, deeper than unconscious memories of life’s transient nature. I ran from the shadows of Death. I became a living ghost, a stranger to myself. Other. I survived hearing screams 24/7 from room 101 as generations slaved starved and died, hearing, witnessing brainwashed peasant soldiers murder everyone kids like you fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents all disappeared gone erased finished evaporated exterminated dead.

Yes, agreed Death. Everyone comes to me.

Khmer Rouge reign of terror: three years, eight months and twenty days.

I lived every one.    

When I thought it was safe I crawled out of slime crossing landmine paddies into a Brave New World. I stumbled over 1.7+ million bodies and bones, smelling, tasting, hearing seeing Death. Death bones in my dreams rattle freedom, food and family. My family is gone. I never sleep. Death sees me. Here, now. I feel it. I feel it closer than skin on bones, closer than white on rice.

It will take another generation before we adjust to breathing. Laughter is rare. My people have sufferedhopelessness and passiveness for twenty years. That’s a humbling life changing experience, said Lucky, yes I discovered life in a desperate situation.

They met every afternoon in fading light after torrid heat. Gardener waters red roses, flame orange bougainvillea, green ferns, purple orchids, hanging planters. Water rainbows cascade through white light coating green, sliding down stems, meeting petals. He smiles. Water disappears toward roots below the surface of appearances.

He sat curled up on a brown chair calm and silent watching Lucky mine an unexploded episode from a notebook. The gardener realizes a notebook, once used by Authority to write down names of the dead or soon to be, is now a potential source of liberation and memory.

I don’t know this tool, this machine, he said pointing at a plastic screen and floating artificial letters as Lucky played with twenty-six letters. I can’t read, no chance, it was all about surviving, labor, nature, planting, harvesting, scheming and deceiving, running, hiding, blending in, keeping your mouth shut. We work, breed and get slaughtered. Such is our fate.

A screaming voice from a nearby classroom wafted through orchids.

Quest-ions are forbidden!

Overworked, underpaid and undersexed teachers named Authority and Social Control said, Ask at your peril. Anyone with courage raising their hand to ask a quest-ion is shamed or silently beaten into silence. Fear and ignorance are great motivators, forever and a day. Conformity breeds conformity. Conditioning.

Curiosity is fatal, said Rita. Curiosity kills more humans than war, disease, lack of medicine and starvation. Humor, curiosity and courage are basic elements of intelligence.

Conversation’s silence attracted flies.

A gaunt man who survived The Dark Years from 1975-1979 wearing a dirty white hat ringing a hollow brass bell pushed his orange ice cream trolley through red dirt. He passed a woman unloading kindling. Men stared. Trembling eyes pursued life’s endless stream.

After Conversation died someone picked up a cell phone and called another living, breathing conversation. Hello, are you alive? Yes? Just checking. Have you eaten yet? No? I had rice and eggs. Tomorrow it’s lobster. Ha, ha, ha. Good luck to you and your family. Bye-bye.

Listening is a lost art, said Conversation. I don’t have a hearing problem. I have a listening problem. Most people don’t listen to understand. They listen to reply. Sullen suffering is a pervasive conversation.

People without love die from neglect.

You can say that again, said Silence.

People without love die from neglect.

The Language Company

Life lesson #5 - TLC 49

What is life, said Lucky.

I’m a big seven as in seven, said an omniscient reliable Lao narrator. Your life is not a test or a dress rehearsal. If it is an actual life your invisible friends protect you from ignorance and fear with courage.

My dad’s not very smart. It’s his DNA, a string theory of letters. Genetics. Gee. Net. Icks. 

Let me give you a kind-hearted example of his stupidity. It’s the rainy season. Slashing squalling delicious rain. Soft, cool, soothing. Like tears. Cry me a river.

It’s pouring like honey. What’s dear old dad do? He washes his silver passenger van in a downpour. Smart eh? Yeah, he’s trying to impress a dry writer polishing words by using his intelligent hose running wealthy water over rain. Cleaning. He gets a free shower.

He ignores me. I am a tool.

Grandmother sits on our austere 1924 colonial dark-brown balcony folding banana leaves for a ceremony. Every morning at dawn she walks to the muddy road near the Mekong offering Buddhist monks handfuls of rice. She burns incense at the family altar. She nurtures her shrinking garden after her son decided to plant a cement parking lot. What a clever little man.

My grandfather stares at rain, forming lakes.

Daddy’s very busy. He disappears for hours drinking beer with friends. Playing around with a secret squeeze in dark places. She’s starving for cash. A poor girl from a poor family in a poor country needs to make a living poor thing.

My mom’s also smart. What’s the difference between smart and clever? Maybe that’s the answer to your life quest-ion.

Survival with a capital S.

After the rain when it's dry and the smallest full moon of the year rises above the Mekong before a river festival filled with floating orange flowers and burning candles she incinerates plastic garbage. Yeah. Yeah. Burn baby burn. Light my fire.

It's a sweet smell let me tell you. Like when Duvall in Apocalypse Now said, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. That smell. What's the word? Acrid. 

When she’s not burning plastic trash she sweeps. Broom music. Stone cold. She cooks. She pretends to be busy. She’s a baby delivery service. What’s another mouth? She manages home, kids and cash. I’m worth $3,500 on the stolen kid market in China. My older sister would’ve been aborted. Bad luck for her.

Mom ignores me. I am a tool.

She’s super busy doing her gentle mother routine. Later, she squawks. She's a soft kind later.

Parents and teachers and millions of lazy humans here love to pretend to be busy. I guess it gives their short life value.

Milling around is an art form with style. Art transforms life.

Lao are soft and kind. We have a good heart. We are not as mercenary as the Vietnamese. We drift through your sensation, perception and consciousness with the grace of a cosmic Lepidoptera in a gentle breeze.

The trick is to tolerate with kindness and Patience, your great teacher, the empty-eyed star gazing starrers and hustlers. Bored after five minutes they lose interest and leave you alone. Zap like a zigzag lightning bolt. Gone.

Vietnamese plant rice.

Cambodians watch it grow.

Laotians hear it grow.

Nature’s a great teacher. We are nature’s tools.

For cultural, historical, educational, environmental, emotional, intellectual and economic reasons milling around is a popular daily activity. This unpleasant fact cannot be denied or ignored or forgotten like a missing leg after discovering a landmine in paradise. 

Limited opportunities, unregulated population growth, substandard education, no medicine, no hope and inconclusive futures enhance Milling Around.

It kills time alleviating boredom a dreaded lethargic tedious disease.

Boredom is fear’s patience.

Milling around kills the human spirit. No initiative. Period. How sweet. How charming. It’ll take another generation to get a life and accept personal responsibility for choices and consequences.

Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam are alive with unexploded ordinance, amputees, superstition and ghosts.

Existence is one long perpetual distraction. Say what?

You may as well do what you love because you're going to spend most of your life doing it. We breed, work, get slaughtered and mill around. We are told to blend in to survive. My mom taught me this hard cruel life lesson. She reminds me every time I open my mouth to express an original freethinking idea. That’s what parents and teachers teach us by example and they have extensive Life Experience - another amazing teacher.

I’m too young to know much. I know what I don’t know. Anyway, I need to finish my school paper on developing moral character with social intelligence, courage, self-control, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity.

How do you develop self-control and courage?

By failing. Fail better. There are two kinds of character.

What are they?

Moral character is fairness, generosity and integrity.

Performance character is effort, diligence and perseverance.

Kids need challenges to grow. Like hardships and deprivation. Life is trial and error and taking risks. Daring is not fatal.

Thanks for life lesson #5. You are the future of Laos.

You’re welcome. I have my junior philosopher’s badge.

Burned woman - TLC 47

Well removed from erotic games of loneliness, regret, alienation and impending loss Metro doors opened at 9:23 p.m.

She limped in dragging her right foot. Scared. Excruciating pain. Alone and cold in a thin black sweater and long gray skirt. 45, slight of sight, olive pale skin, black hair pulled back. Her left foot was normal. Her right foot resembled elephantiasis.

Bending down she raised her skirt from around her ankles. Burned and bloody skin ran three inches across and ten inches high. First or second-degree burns exposed a layer of red lined white skin. She touched an edge of fried skin with a white tissue. Clear cold air sent shivers through her central nervous system shutting down pain receptors.

She needed medical attention. Two embarrassed men diverted their eyes.

Grimacing she fingered a phone. No tears.

Metro rolled through darkness, over a river, past an Everest furniture store flashing red neon and shuttered Doner diners.

Why was she alone on a freezing late night in a flimsy sweater her skin below the knee running to her ankle burned away exposing blood red lines wearing an abstract expression on her sacred scared distracted face watching night fly past windows where blue flickering TV images and children eye spied on each other as she kept going

past the expensive private hospital on a hill gleaming its extensive intensive care wards filled with antiseptics, bandages, lotions, potions and patients with money as her treatment was delayed, forgotten, useless now

because she was poor and silent in her seat, anxious, feeling pain wondering where she’d go, where she would end up on this cold dark night of her soul

as a stranger

lacking the ability to heal her studied her anxious passive expression feeling her violent burning sensations as fire and heat nerve impulses penetrated synapse sensory channels where signals blocked by neurotransmitters shut down her final inconvenient chance.

The Language Company