Entries in Myanmar (51)
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Burma Market
Horse drawn cart traps. One traffic light.
Two motorcycles is a jam. Green for go.
Twenty minutes away on foot, an extensive traditional market covered in rusting PSP sheets is a delightful adventure - returning to the source of community, dark eyed local curiosity, street photography, laughter and floating babbling tongues inside a labyrinth of narrow uneven dirt paths.
Footprints on stone and dirt meander through forests and mountains of oranges, apples, bananas, red chilies, green vegetables, thin bamboo baskets of garlic and onions, farm implements, 26 varieties of rice, clacking sewing machines, basic commodities, steaming noodles, cracking fires, snorting horses.
Sublime.
Blindfish heads whisper The Sea, The Sea. Silver scales reflect light.
A woman hacks chickens. Blood streams down circular wooden tree rings.
The gravity of thinking sits on a suspended hand held iron pan scale.
A white feather sits in the other pan.
Balance.
Rice mountains peak in round metal containers or scarred wooden boxes.
Horse drawn cart traps unload people and produce. Neck bells tinkle: Star light star bright first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might get the wish I wish tonight. Well. Fed horses paw dirt.
Ancient diesel tractor engines attached to a steel carcass hauling people and produce bellow black smoke.
Old wooden shuttered shops with deep dark interiors display consumables, soap, thread waiting for a conversation, stoic curious dark-eyed women, others laughing at the benign crazy traveler.
A ghost-self sits in meditative silence, absorbing rainbow sights, sounds, colors, smells, feeling a calm abiding joy.
South of Mandalay Part 3
An eight-car train from Yangon to Mandalay rumbles past. Lonely whistles blow. Ain’t nothing but the blues sweet thing.
Horse cart traps jingle jangle hoof tarmac music, prancing and dancing along dirt paths - On Comet, On Cupid, Dasher and Dancer.
The peripatetic facilitator of English, Courage, Creativity and Fun is here until 12 February on a three teacher team from Mandalay.
He arrived in early December to prepare the English program for 365 G 10 students. Two additional teachers will arrive for one month. He’s here for the duration.
His sleeping room is spacious, light, leaf shadows. He salutes the sun and burning stars every morning through leaves of time.
Food in the family kitchen prepared by a smiling auntie is delicious; spicy curries, chicken, fish, pork, fresh veggies, soup, rice, fruit. Everyone is soft and attentive.
Native barbarian speaker focus is English exposure; Writing, Reading, Listening and Speaking with respect enabling Courage.
In addition to text stuff - artists, writers and dreamers explore and discover their infinite beauty and potential with Creative Notebooks. SOP. Mind map yourself. How to be more human.
How did I grow?
Chess lessons, strategies, and tactics improves their critical thinking skills, planning, logic, accepting responsibility for their actions, visualization, time management, and teamwork.
Learn. Play. Share.
Students live in sepearet dorms at the school. They’ve come from distant Shan state villages and Myanmar areas. They are their parents’ social security.
The school has an excellent reputation for matriculation results.
Segregated classes. Walking on campus, girls shield their faces from distant boys. No social testosterone distractions.
Zero gadgets.
They study Burmese, math, history, physics, chemistry, science, biology and Magic and Potions from 6-11, 1:30-6, 7:30-11 p.m. Sonorous voices echo daily.
They leave school one day a month with parents. Freedom.
South of Mandalay Part 2
A thin stick broom sweeping world dust cleans perception.
Two doctor brothers own the fifteen-year old school. They speak good English. Friendly, resourceful and gentle. Their parents are also doctors.
Zones are under construction - new rooms and a kitchen for foreign teachers near the dining room. A gym and library are being built between long two-story buildings with eight classrooms per level. Old trees prosper. Crows and dogs scavenge garbage.
Men and boys hammer, saw, dig, carry lumber, bricks, rebar iron and mix cement.
Boys shovel dirt from trenches.
Women shoulder excavated dirt in bamboo baskets.
In the shade of 300-year old trees girls sort piles of plastic water bottles and Styrofoam containers.
Crows watch with disinterest.
Kitchen women sitting in a sacred circle talk about life,
love and their emotional well being while peeling onions.
They live longer.
Uprooted bamboo are planted against cinder block walls decorated
with brown and green broken glass shards to prevent education from escaping.
Tree branches hacked into rough art forms pierce blue sky.
Fear & Curiosity converse with gestures. Do something you’ve never done before.
Trust, love, friendship.
Communicate. Learn. Imagine.
I am a rainbow.
This school reminds a ghost-self of rural schools in Sichuan, China.
Broken windows, trash, rough cement passages where sewage smells like success.
Painted platitudes and Odes sing on the roof.
Learning in Paradise !
Cement shells, paper exams plastered on windows.
Faded green paint. Wooden benches.
Worn wooden floors. Blackboards. Chalk n' talk.
Cover your mouth when you erase the past.
Ghost-self meditates with sleeping tigers.
World as illusion
Kampot ceremony
70,000 years of pointillism
Walking makes the road
Khmer wedding music clanging symbols
Yellow silk accompanies jackhammers
In a brave new world
Mawlamyine, Burma
*
Pure mind Buddhism - world as illusion
How’s this for coincidence chance fate
You walk to market
Past a massage place greeted by seated smiling woman named Cosmos
Connection strong married two kids 14/5
used to run her own place until husband said no
now p/t for sister needing help
Delight intensity oral pleasure friendly and communicative
A few poetic words about Kampot morning
Energies
Frequencies
Transmissions
Cool fresh dawn breeze
Swift lets in kitchen prepare bird nest soup using saliva
Boys tear down wedding celebration immaterial
after food conversations song dance concert
celebrations in narrow park garden
red bunting where
loud happiness
spills into a brown river below green silent mountains
Funky second-hand shop discovers Burmese
cheroot aha flashback to Mandalay market purveyor of rolled leaves
*
Dancing possibilities in Kampot dawn
Delicious stream-of-consciousness
Be invisible little angel of light
Have mercy becoming Wushu meditation
Comedy
Chanting monks flame orange voices
Ageless Vietnamese woman pushes wheeled trash treasures
Her spine curves toward tomorrow’s promise
Mystery light
Sensation perception intuitive
Line
Shape
Shading
Discernment
Detachment
Calligraphy
Breath
Line pressure
Sign language
Riding the rails in Burma - 2015
Grow Your Soul - Poems and Prose from Laos & Cambodia
