Burma Isotope U-235

An emaciated bald mad broken toothed male junkie in relapse approached me on a Hanoi street.

He was on his personal quest for salvation. I am from North Korea. I spent seven years as political-economic prisoner in Burma, he postulated after dawn prowling Old Quarter needing a permanent change of address with no zip looking for someone to talk at. He was a lost one.

He was the star of his reality entertainment program. He blathered a blue streak. He was naked with belief and madness.

He ranted, I tried to sell the Burma generals nuclear arms from NK. I was this close to closing the deal, making a peace sign, They need to protect themselves from the big bad hostile world. They are paranoid idiots. Anyway, I have friends in NK. Hey, business is business. They sold me the goods. I paid cash.

In Burma I got mixed up with the wrong people. Schemers and deceivers. They lied. They cheated. They played me for a fool. They stole all my fissionable material and locked me up. I had everything: triggers, U-235, isotopes, plutonium, uranium, plans, diagrams, designs, centrifuges  ... the works  ... it was the full course meal  ... you have no idea  ... you just don’t get on a plane with this stuff.

One Burmese general’s wife wears $50,000,000 worth of gold and precious stones when she takes a shit. Can you believe that?

He continued: You need to go by boat from NK to Sing Some More. In Burma they made me sing in prison. I was in the choir singing for my supper for seven years. My voice is shot. I was lucky I wasn’t shot. They tried to shoot me out a cannon. I got stuck in THE SYSTEM. Un-fucking believable, I should write a book called Seven Years in Burma. Do you have a pen and paper. I need to get it down before it evaporates like morning dew.

How did you get out?

I became an informer rat. I took care of people. I developed relationships. Relationships and timing is everything in life., I bought and sold information. I sang for my supper. I did hard time. The nuclear stuff was worth millions on the black market.

I was born in a black market, stall #101. My mother was appointed to have me. I made a killing in Iraq. Literally. Mercenary work. Black ops. I went to N.K. I made connections with the Ministry of Fear and Nuclear Ambitions.

I worked. I paid. I got the shit out. Then it collapsed like a house of democratic chad cards in Burma. I played the Joker. It was wild. The Burmese said, Show us your hand. I did. They cut it off with a rusty machete. He held up his ticket stub.

He was beyond wild. He had his remaining hand out looking for compassion in the form of an exit permit.

An empty hand holds everything.

He lived on Dream Street at noon o’clock where a dusty Vietnamese grandfather clock strikes 12 inside a deep black gravitational void. Bong-bong-bong-bong. 

He jabbered his shadow illusion away past same-same travel tour shops, same-same bored boom-boom girls waiting for same-same tourists offering them same-same cash for same-same skin merchandise and same-same sleeping motorcycle hustlers.

He was the blues personified. He had a permanent case of the walking blues. He pleaded quiet desperation with anyone who’d listen. He was trapped in Hanoi with people hustling to eat. Hustling to dream. Girls hustling to fuck Mr. ATM cash flow. Hustlers hustling happy meal to happy meal needed a bailout from IMF.

Life’s karmic wheel of birth and rebirth spun him in circles.

Conversations love distractions and you can’t step in the same river twice.

It’s not the same river and you are not the same person.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Thien Mu Pagoda

The Thien Mu Pagoda sits above the Perfume River. The river flows from northern blue-gray mountains. A pine forest shields a white stone cemetery beyond barbwire on the edge. The world needs more bard wire. This creates diversity, harmony, peace and love.

Forest pine needles waved to the rolling river and mountains. I met Mr. Brown Frog in the forest.

Laughing with bright green eyes he said, See how far you can jump.

Ok. I jumped.

Not bad, said Mr. Frog. Keep practicing.

I experienced a humble life lesson. Monks ate lunch. Older monks wear bright orange robes. Novice monks wear gray robes. They stood silent serving the older monks. Monks ate in silence.  Slowly. Contemplation. Silence. Enjoying their food in the community. Their gentle focused manner transformed me.

Eat in silence.

*

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

I is someone else.

*

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

lanterns

Hoi An women unload the night catch of screaming silver fish into baskets, weighing, selling, slicing and frying protean. I wander through the market smelling fish, meat, vegetables, inspecting fruit in broken light.

I am Lucky Foot. Wherever I am I bring good luck to universal money exchangers, manicure salon girls, banana woman, schools kids, tailors, cloth sellers and craggy faced Dan the local boat captain who worked as an interpreter at MAC V during the war.

I bring good fortune to the 125cc motorman, water seller girl, barber, high-heeled sandal seller, massage love sock girls, noodle mama and rent-a-life companies. HCE – Here Comes Everybody.

A girl searches Tailor Town for magic silk, linen, cotton cloth and an invisibility cloak. Everywhere every day everyone on their quest meets the old woman with a basket sitting outside the cloth market discovering the exact threads they need.

Everyone has a quest. Some have quests for air, water, food, sex, shelter, clothing and money. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs feeds the sheep. Someone else owns the grass.

I stop at a salon. I ask for a pedicure. The women are shocked. They are familiar strangers. Everyone smiles and laughs. Ha they chatter in musical frequencies. The old snake wants to shed his skin.

It’s good to know all the walking, treading movement and sole memories are so easily erased as curling epidermis falls away.

How slow can you travel?

You discover ice in the market. It is a floating world of light and shadows.

Ukiyo-e.

In the old town past the Japanese bridge is a serene shady street lined with trees, homes and shops. An abandoned temple once used as a school is jammed with jumbled desks and dusty forgotten Communist party political posters. It is now a workshop for bamboo lantern production.

Hoi An is famous for circular red bamboo lanterns. Their reflections line the river at night and decorate streets and homes. Boys carry long bamboo poles into a courtyard, set them on a chopping block and split them lengthwise with a machete. They cut long pieces into ten-inch sections and split them into the thin fragments. Three women chat while shaving the narrow green bamboo pieces.

Boys drill holes in the pieces using a simple punch machine. Girls and women assemble wooden lacquered bases for tops and bottoms by wiring pliable bamboo staves into bases to shape and curve frames with circular dialogue.

A young girl does her homework using a chair for a table as her mother works. An old frail woman arranged lines of fresh lacquered staves to dry in the sun. Every generation has their role to play.

A boy loops piles of round bamboo skeletons on his bike for merchants who’ll wrap diaphanous red cloth skins around frames.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Hoi An

I took a bus to Hoi An. We passed through Da Nang, a mess of glass and brass mega resorts swallowing farmland with miles of beachfront developments creating imaginary golf courses faster than speeding high finance and rabid speculation.

I am on the street early. A winged shadow caressed my forehead. A black and orange butterfly fluttered in front of my eyes. Touched, grazed, blessed by Psyche. Magic.

I am a prime lens on a 35mm tool. I capture soft light inside the old city. I slow down, feeling free, curious and open wandering. Before noise and lightning bolts of laughter’s language fills the air. Tourists sleep off heavy European food and distilled beverages. Streets are empty.

A young woman under a bamboo hat shovels sand. It takes her 21 gestures to fill up a wheelbarrow. No more, no less. 21. Blackjack. She pushes it down a street to a new home project. She dumps it. She repeats the process. All day. Every day. Her Tao.

I walk to the river near an ancient Japanese Bridge built in 1593 and sit near two elderly women. They’re surprised to see a foreigner sitting alone with coffee. Black with ice. I smiled. They smiled and whispered strange man alone has a camera it’s so early for him to sit here with us. We shared humanity, silence and morning light.

We communicated without words. I see their lives, childhood, growing up here, families, surviving wars, and meeting every morning for conversation, walking and tea.

Supporting each other they walk through quiet streets, past yellow walled homes with red tile roofs protecting long deep brown wooden interiors. Ancestors whisper stories from the 15th-19th century when Hoi An was the major port in Southeast Asia and the first Japanese settlement in southern Vietnam. Ships unloaded cargo and loaded high-grade silk, paper, porcelain, tea, sugar, molasses, medicines, elephant tusks, Sulphur and mother-of-pearl.

Now 400 tailors measure, cut, sew, iron, hang, and sell threads.

Women in teddy bear floral pajamas play badminton chasing a shuttlecock. Pajamas make utilitarian sense. Cotton is cheap and easy to wash. You sleep in them, get up, cook, eat, talk to your pajama neighbors, sweep dust, yell at your kids because they are spoiled brats and terrorized since escaping the birth canal, go to the market, buy food, admire new pajamas, return home, eat lunch, talk to your pajama neighbors and take a nap. Pajamas have a warning label on the collar. Remove Before Sex.

Pajamas are cool. One size fits all.

Residents stretch and talk. A leather-faced canoe woman set up her small clay figurines under a tree. The two women finished their tea, gestured goodbye, held hands and walked across a wooden bridge taking care of each other.

 *

Nature is my inspiration, said Eric, a sculptor from Europe. He has a gallery with an elegant hard gray marble sitting Buddha in the central window facing the street. Eric is 45 and thin with a deep lined brown face and brown eyes. He sits below a large leafy tree surrounded by his huge marble flowers, Buddhas, Jesus, bowls and delicate petals. He drinks milk. I drink green Chinese tea.

I’ve been depressed for three months. I feel sad and empty now. I haven’t had any new ideas for a long time.

He’s had his gallery for four years. The landlord wants the place back I need to find a new space for my gallery, he said. He has a workshop six kilometers outside town near Marble Mountain. I lived in a Swiss forest for thirty years. Nature is my teacher. I studied with a Hungarian master. I have to go now. Goodbye.

*

I wander along the river and stop at a food stall. A young German eating noodles shared his story.

He looked at the river as blue boats ferried people back and forth.

This place is a little Disneyland, I love Mali and Ethiopia, it’s what happens when countries and governments save historical places and they become well known to tourists. Governments develop them with monetary and cultural motivation to capitalize on a place with potential profit. Local people often get squeezed out. Others adapt and make a decent living.

Tourism = money = tourism.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Train to Hue

A friendly grandfather, grandmother and their g-daughter are on the train going to Saigon to visit friends and relatives. Born in Hanoi, she’s been studying in Czechoslovakia for seven years. Sprawling Hanoi is new for her.

We roll though night lulled by the rhythm of click-clack rail language. At 4 a.m. a bone white moon dances with clouds and silent stars over rice paddies, forests and black mountains.

I went to the dining car for java at dawn. I saw a Hobbit inside a dark blue hooded sweatshirt framing wisps of brown hair, angular face and perfection facing a woman.

Wow you are a beautiful elf, I said. She looked up, smiling. Thank you.

I join her and her mom. They were away from Switzerland for five weeks, doing the SE Asia circuit. Simone, 19, is sincere and direct with piercing green eyes. She will begin a Hotel & Tourism management school in Zurich in the fall. She’s been traveling the planet since the age of two.

Her mom is a journalist and businesswoman. No nonsense. World wise. She leaves to find her husband.

We talk about the hospitality business and attention to detail. It’s called MBWA, I said, Management by walking around. I worked in Hyatt, Shangri-La and Ramada International operations. It’s about guest service and marketing. Get out of your office and on the floor. Get a head in the bed.

I’m really excited to learn so much, she said. You will make an excellent General Manager. I hope so, if I do I will give you a meal and bed.

 

Her stepfather wanders in after dreaming. He’s a professional cellist, teacher, diver and photographer. We talk about music. The cello is closest to the human voice, he said. In an opera when the music drops in a romantic or high drama point it’s the cello you hear. He mentions Jackie Du Pre and her genius. She did it all at 42 yeah, it’s strange for me and other professional musicians, after the performance and all the applause it feels so strange to return to a hotel room alone.

We met by chance on purpose with destiny dancing in the wood paneled dining car, a memory of an era with slow meandering train travel.

Hue was the ancient imperial capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945. We walked to the Citadel near the Perfume River and across a bridge toward long walled interiors. It’s filled with exhibits, temples, rooms, black and white photographs, art objects and paintings. One image shows an arena where they staged fights between elephants and tigers.

It rains heavy and the women disappear. Sam and I shelter under a pagoda roof with a young Vietnamese couple. She teaches poetry. Sam asked her to tell us a poem.

Thunder & Lightning. She jumps. Rain pours on fields, old marbled stones inside green.

Initially shy she recites a poem. It is musical and mysterious. It is about love and two people missing each other. Her voice is strong. She feels this poem through her, it is her life and history, all the creation stories and songs and poetry she learned growing up. Her voice is angelic. Her melody, rhythm and voice flows as rain thunders. Lightning flashes and dances. We applaud her performance. She is retiring, relieved.

Sam and I sing and perform Singing In The Rain for them, circling around stone pillars, twirling with the lyrics, feeling the music. Rain dance. They laugh.

The intensity of the rain slows. We walk through drizzle. The sun reflects diamonds off stones inside shallow water pools. Prussian blue skies decorate mountains. Sun drenched fields lie emerald green. A solitary gray elephant stands near a banyan tree anticipating a golden stalking tiger.

We walk over a bridge, over a river, over a world.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged