Heart Wisdom

Mahling Township, Myanmar (Pop: 10,000)

2.5 hours south of Mandalay, another village.

Fog shrouds trees before dawn on a chilly December morning.

Mornings are fraught with mist as an orange burning orb rises over forests and rice paddies. Crows caw sing wing wind songs above monks chanting sutras at a pagoda. A bell reverberates.

Leaves dance free from The Tree of Life.

This raw, direct immediate experience reminds a traveler of Phonsavan, Laos near the Plain of Jars, long ago and far away in the winter of 2013. A Little BS came of it.

Here at 5:45 a.m. below trees with yellow leaves, 100 grade-ten female students with dancing flashlights trace a dirt path. They’ve escaped the comfort of hostel dreams.

They dance toward classrooms and a cavernous dining hall for rice and vegetables. Hot soup if they are lucky. Mumbled voices scatter singing birds.

Thirty-five female student voices reciting scientific lessons at 6:15 a.m. echo from classrooms at the Family Boarding School.

Dystopian rote memorization. Utilitarian. Repetition.
Learning by heart.
It’s not about learning. It’s about passing the exam and marks.
Vomit the material.

Delicious

The wisdom of the heart is deeper and truer than knowledge in the head.

They drone on huddled, hunched over wooden benches in jackets and yarning caps with swinging tassel balls. A bundled teacher scratches white words on a blackboard

 Today is the day of my dreams.

A narrow garden of hanging pink, orange, purple, white orchids reflect shadows before scattered light sings. An office girl sprays H20 diamonds on petals and green leaves.

A distant solitary bell reverberates.
Monks chant sutras at a pagoda.
A thin stick broom sweeping world dust cleans perception.

Smile & Go

Educational shock therapy
Language is not only communication - it is a reservoir of memory, tradition and heritage.
Braid goatee...girl wears a Fuck t-shirt
NO she said laughing
Painting eyebrows

I attract a crowd

Business noodles chase market light
Long now
I am a rainbow
Trash collectors at plastic school
Mountains
Garbage in garbage out
Moon cloud
Keep staring I might do a trick
Experience is your education
Everything else is just information
Banlung, Cambodia
Respect from students HA

One month eating dust at The End of The World
Wailing kids in Muslim neighbor family
Sounds like torture neglect
Too much suffering
Blind loud little people
Look without understanding

School kids active loud no self control
They need a Command & Control Babysitter Teacher (G2 G4)

They “learn” in a rigid structured environment
Laconic teachers...by the book...systematic educational procedures

Teaching through fear

Vomit material on exams

Versus creativity, song, dance, fun positive experiences
All things considered
Lack of focus

Storyteller introduced drawing, coloring, music, writing...
some influence
Smile and GO

Grow Your Soul

Amazon Women

After eating, Turkish businessmen splashed aromatic tonic on their hands, patted jowls and slicked back thinning hair. One man adjusted spectacles. Eating fish fast made him sweat. Sharing a joke about bones he smiled at an assassin writing a character sketch.

Ancient serious women accepted hard mountain village life.

Young women divorced from confronting nature, soil and invisible roots, facing steep cobblestone Trabzon streets, appeared dazed and confused confronting miles of shops, window dummies and aggressive male textile hawkers yelling, BUY FROM ME. SPECIAL MORNING PRICE.

Have a look-see.

Shoppers’ visual examination loved consumption paradigms.

Lucky hung out observing the flow as cats prowled for scraps, bodies with a voice cautioned parking spaces and lost souls attempting sad cellular telecommunication connections stumbled through life inconveniences below Roman walls.

An abandoned Roman castle overlooking Giresun had a secret tunnel to a nearby is-land where Amazon women lived. They mated annually to keep the race going.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint, said an Amazon woman to her Black Sea lover. Take your time. After you make love to me, I will kill you and eat your heart.

I have something to look forward to, he said. Yes, she said, death is a new adventure. Nothing ever happens again.

Swirling exhortations of mosque mullahs calling the pious echoed down cobblestone alleys past Giresun boys riding spoke less bikes between crumbling yellow Ottoman walls and mackerel sellers discussing silver fins lying dead-eyed glossy on ice crystals melting into a refrain, The Sea. The Sea.

51 Days in Turkey

ART

I discovered an engraved Zippo lighter in a dusty Saigon history museum cabinet.

“Most people are born alive and then slowly die. I was born dead and then came to life.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” said Laughter Therapy, an antidote to the illusion of suffering.

I rolled snake eyes in life’s crap game. Reptilian id brain matter shredded old skin and identity theories. Retinas discerning space-time energy as light wave particles travelled on microscopic fibers to the cerebral cortex where data is received and analyzed for meaning. Meaning is a truth-value. Interpretation.

“Truth has few friends and they are suicides,” said Fernando Pessoa author of The Book of Disquiet.

Overloaded synapses crashed in psychotic bliss. Interpretation demolished nonrenewable resources in space-time fourth dimensions. You enter another dimension beyond sight and sound.

My hourglass sand approaches empty. I reversed it catching up to fiction-memory and truth-story. Weave on.

Leaves left winter’s tree in an airborne tag dance. They do not fall far from the Tree of Life. Frayed Tibetan Lung-Tao prayer flag horses beamed air current prayers. Perception and sensation ceased. I dissolved in the wake. Up.

“Time is a flock of nightingales,” said Albert Einstein. He added one plus one - “Experience is your education. Everything else is just information.”

A pulsating vein needle sang disconnected photons.

A three-act Greek play craved characters.

Her daughter in intensive care sang, “I feel free,” while carving her death mask.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Laos

Seamstress

Away from ice girl’s eyes wet season life shimmered in green rice paddies. Beauty, creativity, dance, and music described sensations. Sensations rested between an object and a concept. Stimuli engaged disquiet.

How do you manifest this waking dream, asked ice girl.

It’s all process, said Leo. Any explanation is a well dressed mistake.

Across town a seamstress returned to her guesthouse. She splashed water on her face, changed clothes and spit into red roses. She kick started her cycle and went to the market inside a dark labyrinth.

At her corner stall she keyed multiple locks. She stacked numbered wooden shutters. She dragged out her Butterfly sewing machine, ironing board and manikins.

Dummies wore exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling faux pas silver stars, moons, and small round reflecting balls.

Her skill designed fabrics for women needing elaborate sartorial refinement for engagements, weddings, and cremations.

She evaluated serious fittings and adjustments. Her sewing universe process was selecting fabric; measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, pushing her machine treadle, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections, and ironing.

Needles inside a slow prism flashed light and shadow as threads danced through cloth in endless conversations. Needles talked about traditional conservative morals and opportunity-value cost.

Thread followed their conversation securing 1,001 small mirrors. Together they measured precise calculations establishing a stop-loss number. All explanations have to end somewhere. Cut.

Ice Girl in Banlung