Tell me a secret

Greetings,

Ostim: an industrial wasteland manufacturing zone near Ankara.

It's time to go a wandering...inside the reality magic show, welcoming the opportunity, the gift as it is to receive, shifting into another zone of influence and experiential discovery. (Bursa)

As they know you are leaving, this distant. Perhaps they have repressed, regressed into their real way. I appreciated seeing, knowing, understanding how it is, how some people feel, O so sad and withdrawn in their personal way. Their Zen: Awareness. Moment. 

As usual my ghost moves through a transparent knowing. Tell me a secret. Screwing up is a virtue.

Sit by the cafe window. Sky, clouds filled with light: gray production pollution, dust, winter icicles, vapor, yellow haze, solitary birds on wing, rolling and tumbling...this small cafe and sky window, the kind Kurdish woman's hospitality, her delicious manta, a sanctuary from the chaos.

Take the 1310 metro to Ostim. Strange industrial landscape where men cannot afford gloves inside childhood's winter. Remove their hats and make monkey groom females in exchange for sex, and all the capital people slog in their struggle

remembering Rumi, how a human being is a kind of conversation, dancing down all the days of early winter clean cold silent

The art and elements of a Japanese folding placemat: shapes, designs, edges, art. Free form, free spirit. Play.

Draw, paint, sing, dance, disappear. Seize the day.

I love the smell of garbage in Cambodia.

Metta.

Human business plan.

Nature's business plan.

Drone on

Greetings,

After class I am walking on green carpeted space (imagining I'm in a small sleepy Cambodian river town) listening to two Frenchmen talk about their boring travels using a Lonely Planet book,

ok, it's a lonely planet, it's Earth after all, understanding how their experience contains all the wisdom of the same-same but different philosophy - what did they expect on a beautiful blue marble dancing in space

droning on like a Predator drone zeroing in on Afghan mountains where shrouded cloth covered humans cowering on THEIR lonely planet inside remote mountain caves near impossible borders

wait for the droning tourists to assault their position with illiterate guides: Sleep here. Eat here. Go here.

Armed with the sharp attentive diamond eyes, a precious precocious girl wrote words with red ink using a new Chopin piston fountain pen on this onion skinned Moleskine paper. It is a medium. M. It has a weight, a heft, a thick solid feel to its base, the black resin manifesting the ink, visceral realists. 

Savoring a feeling of tactile sensation - this nib, this edge of finding small joy seeing ink flow, this tactility, this delightful smooth flow, she dances a singularity.

It was a joy, slow and precise dancing ink on paper. The Art of Writing.

Simple on lonely planet.

Metta.

The library at Beng Mealea on a living planet.

Brian Turner, poet

Greetings,

I had the pleasure of meeting Brian in Siem Reap in February. We shared the day and stories. more...

His first book, Here Bullet is now followed by Phantom Noise.

Here Bullet has sold 25,000 copies, excellent for a book of poetry. It's available through Amazon.

Here's a link to a recent piece about Brian and his new poetry book published by Alice James Books. more...

"We've reached the line of departure," Turner wrote in one new poem. "So lock and load, man. From here on out we are on radio silence."

Metta.

 Fire, heat, experience, time, memory, write, revise = poem

Dr. Fish Massage

Greetings,

Have you ever seen a fish that can do massage?

Our shop has amazing and unique fish that can do massage.

This fish eat our dead skin and make our hard skin softly.

So we call this fish as "Doctor Fish."

Please come and enjoy special massage by lovely fish!

Hundreds fish will kiss your toes and suck up all your dead skin!

Wonderful! Exciting! Funny!

New country! New Experience!

Metta.

Dancing away

Greetings,

After a wild wonderful educational week with an intense secret friend gathering new material for poems, stories, novels and wild imaginings I leave Saigon and Vietnam tomorrow. My work here is finished. Six months is long enough, or as someone said, 'We haven't been here very long but we've been here long enough.' True.

As some of you know, I was here in the U.S. Army back in 1969 for one solid character defining year. I was based near Hue. While teaching English in Indonesia I decided to return and pay my respects. As I told my 4th graders, 'Congrats, you've graduated to Grade 5 and I've graduated to Vietnam.' Pure and simple motivation.

Return is a strange word. Like making a U-turn or a spinning whirling Dervish dance celebrating Rumi the Sufi poet, seer and mystic. Rumi knew life, transitions, celebrations and expressing the spirit with love and devotion. Joy.

I begin a new chapter in Cambodia. As a ghostwriter said, 'To travel is better than to arrive.'

Metta.