Iceye

Greetings,

I asked for a Vietnamese iced coffee in an alley off a main street filled with jolly plastic Santa Claus armies and tinsel. Tis the season.

The young girl opened a Styrofoam box. She picked up a chunk of white ice in her left hand, cradling it inside a blue cloth. She slammed a hammer on the ice. It cracked.

Fissures of released pressure, jagged lines, imperfect beautiful lines spread deep inside the ice. She held global warming in her hot little left hand.

She smashed it again and again creating fragments of ice, chips, particles. She dropped the small block of ice back in the box. She collected chips in a glass, added fresh thick brown coffee extract, some condensed milk, a straw and a spoon. Done.

A piece of cold sharp ice pierced my left eye. The pain was minimal, cushioned by the delicious cold feeling as the ice melted through a retina, a pupil, nerve endings, tissue, layers of perception - then my vision altered its state as light transmitted new signals from rerouted optic nerves to the cerebral cortex. 

It was the quality of ice and I began to reflect everything around me. The stimulant of ice this frozen water now becoming liquid was glass. The world is made of glass, crystals shimmering inside the kaleidoscope of ice. While the illusion appears to be smooth and clear on the surface, buried deep inside are long jagged beautiful lines filled with magic, mystery and sparkling universes, emitting glowing crystal rivers.

The world is ice. Everything you see, hear, touch, taste and feel is ice, a sibylline language of clarity.

Metta.

Before this woman became a butterfly she was a useful member of society. She is practicing here.

Gator Aid

Greetings,

My name is Ali Gator. I live on a farm with 200 friends near Saigon. I used to live in the Mekong River but was trapped by some greedy animal poachers and brought here. Many humans are too greedy and clever for their own good. They use me for breeding. The babies are sold to restaurants. Bye-bye baby.

One tropical afternoon a group of us were relaxing by the pool after our weekly vegetarian lunch. Surely initiated the idea. She knows a thing or two about consumption habits.

"You know what we need to do is expand. I suggest we create a line of bags, belts, shoes, purses and accessories made of human skin."

Aghast, a strong-willed female member of the dwindling population has a degree in marketing.

"I agree," she said. "Considering the passion carnivores crave for designer wear so they can make a fashion statement, it's only logical to assume Italian, French and English skins will provide us the color, texture, suppleness, elasticity, diversity, durability and above all the QUALITY demanded and expected by millions of animals."

"Remember their eyes," said Esther.

"What about them?" sang the chorus.

"They make great buttons."

"Yes," replied Grace. "We should respect them and recycle everything."

Scales, with a background in finance and dodgy mergers spoke up.

"I've done a cost-benefit-analysis and it's doable. Human skin resources are cheap and plentiful. Sweatshop labor manufacturing and production facilities are already up and running. Our biggest hurdles are the ethical values of the end consumer. I mean, why would a Siberian tiger, whale, Malayan sun bear, elephant, cobra, eagle, or pileated gibbon be caught dead wearing anything made of human skin? It's beyond me."

"Everything is beyond you," countered Minksy a new member of our slumbering tribe. "It's all a matter of personal taste."

We took a vote. It was unanimous. "Hooray! Let the hunt begin!"

We celebrated with a round of drinks made with human blood. This is perfect timing, I thought, seeing all my friends in a new light. We'd create a new line of human skin products to be introduced worldwide before the holidays. It's a wonderful life.

Metta. 

By the numbers

Greetings,

The rich make money. The poor make babies.

Only two percent of Chinese women practice birth control. About the same here give or take a number depending on the fear and educational level of the woman. In Vietnam with a population of 85 million, 50% are under 30. That's a lot of babies.

You see them everywhere, driving taxis, motorbikes, buses, boats, trucks, planes, cooking along the road, selling fruits and vegetables in the market, building new super cities in the suburbs, hauling cement and bricks, fixing broken machines, waiting in empty shops, selling anything and everything possible with an infant on their hip, chopping down forests for kindling to make fires and hunting animals until they become extinct.

Babies become extinct? Yes, if they don't run fast enough.

Humans are the only animals that work. This is why monkeys are afraid to talk.

You have to work to make a baby and then, more sooner than later the baby has to work to take care of you. It's a business deal with severe heavy emotional guilt overtones. Marketing and branding. The "one child" policy does not apply here. You can have as many babies as you want, like grains of rice.

You can hear parents and grandparents whispering to their children, "Accelerate Production!"

The bitter fruit, this legacy of love. Love is a legacy and it's more about sheer practicality than emotional love. It's a pure and simple matter of numbers and pragmatic reality. Long term child investments with a human savings plan.

Metta.

 

Say hello to tomorrow.

iPhone test entry

Greetings,

Once upon a time before I invented the Internet I created poems, stories and comprehensive travel dreams using paper and pen. Notebooks, flattened by geological pressure, strata layers, spirals, Fibbonaci.

Even using pencils or crayons or watercolor brushes. Be the paper. Be the brush, the ink, the water. It wasn't clean which always made it creative, fun, exploratory and a mess. A beautiful mess.

Then I used a typewriter. I carried a red portable Smith Corona around Ireland for two years. Working as an au pair in Dundrum, then as a youth hostel warden in Wicklow, Donegal, Mayo and Killarney.

I used inexpensive thin paper and carbon paper. The carbon paper was the original "save" feature. Sheets in a thin box. Valuable and recycled until every space became blackened, white dreams where words played, escaping like free wild geese in Ennisfree. Oh. I amost forgot, yes ribbons. Ribbons for the machine.They were black and came on stainless steel spools. They were packed in small clear plastic bags in a box from a stationary shop on a small Dublin side street. I used a toothbrush to clean the keys.

It was a sweet, fast lightweight machine. Kinda like this iPhone tool. Same-same but different. Wow! Star-techie.

I'll always prefer the heart-hand connection holding a pen, feeling the nib on paper, seeing ink marry paper.

Metta.

Sunday Scribbles

You are an object of endless fascination and speculation. This stranger in their midst. This creature alive and well singing a song about the disorientation, the unfolding process, dynamics. You are a ghost and people here have seen plenty of them. Before, now and later. 

It's theoretically possible to say the local people have an EI or Emotional Intelligence of -7. This simple truth is revealed through behavior, attitudes and verbal communication. It has nothing to do with family, values, education or social skills. I witnessed the same reality while teaching and living in China. Or should living and learning come before teaching? Everyone is a student, especially on the street.

There are book smarts and street smarts. "Theatre of the Street," is opening on Broadway and coming to a theatre near you.

In Asia, it's always a theatre on the street. Hustler heaven on earth. Of course it's all a fake. I am a fake. I am pretending to be exactly who I am. My story is filled with contradictions and paradoxes.

Here's what a small sign said about Buddhist statues in Asia.                                

Gentility - China

Perfection - Japan

Refinement - Thailand

Meditation - Cambodia

Affection - Vietnam

If you sit still long enough someone will pass by ringing a bell.

Metta.