Monday
Jul082019
The Garden #2
Share Article Podcast of poems from a Laos journal.
Published in Grow Your Soul.
Availlable in Kindle and paperback.
Entries in health care (55)
Thursday
Jul042019
Take The Orange Pill
Another brilliant Banlung day bloomed bright. Infinitesimally small intense waves and particles traveled at 186,000 miles per second.
What you don’t see is fascinating, said Ice Girl. She and Leo heard the clatter of tourist utensils singing near dumb thumbed Angkor Wat guidebooks dancing with dusty beggar children hawking vignettes at a medical clinic.
The Angkor Children’s Hospital in Siem Reap has 22 beds in one room. They are filled with infants wearing air hoses in their nose. They suffer from pneumonia, tuberculosis and dengue. This is common. A parent holds a tiny hand.
I.C.U. has five occupied beds.
400 mothers cradling kids wait to see a nurse. She dispenses free orange generic pills.
Life is a killer. Life is a generic placebo.
The mothers are happy to get SOMETHING, anything. They have no knowledge about modern medicine.
One effective blue pill costs $1.00. Parents need to buy 15.
$15.00 is a fortune. Out of the question. Parents accept free ineffective orange drugs. Parents need a miracle.
How much does a miracle cost?
Mothers are hopeful. They wait. They have ridden on the back of cycles from distant villages. Everyone there had an answer for the child’s sickness. Babble voices of genocide female survivors sang remedies. Men pounded drums. Relatives prayed and burned incense.
A shaman dancing with death smeared chicken blood over a tiny chest. Another healer waved smoking banana leaves over a child running a fever.
400 mothers waited forever to see a nurse and get an orange pill.
Chapter 22 Ice Girl in Banlung
Ling's art in Laos
Tuesday
Sep252018
Knife Sharp Man
One morning after Saigon noodles in a cold alley a man, 60 after wars and cold hard survival prematurely ages humans, sits sharpening a knife for a woman customer, redefining the steel.
No left foot. He curled his leg stump back resting it on a boot.
In the afternoon he walks past with a shuffling gait. He's wearing a green fatigue shirt, hat, motorcycle helmet, carrying his worn red plastic bag of simple tools. Knowing his truth, not knowing his story. A land mine or a stray bullet?
His left boot is an old combat relic, a discarded war object. It is split down the front.
It is brutally hot. The sun is behind him. How does he feel? Where is he going? Home for lunch and rest? Looking for more dull edges.
I am always walking, he said. I stop, find work, sit, sharpen an edge, get small money, put away my tools, put on my fake foot and walk. I eat noodles or rice on the street. I nap. I walk and work until dark. Then I go home. Home is where they have to take you in.
I am a storyteller with tools for sharpening life’s dull imperfections and sharp mirror reflections.
I am surrounded by amputees, he said. They approach me on their crutches, their hands out. They wheel themselves down the street on little trolleys, without legs, low to the ground truth.
A one-armed young man wears an old blue baseball hat. He sees local businessmen approaching. They wear fresh pressed white shirts, leather shoes and shiny silver belt buckles.
He takes off his old hat. Holds it out. It is empty. They ignore him.
He puts it on his arm stump, runs his one good hand through his black hair, puts his cap on and moves down the street.
I am in the army now, he said, an army of the legless, the armless, armies of physically wounded forgotten humans. They know you and you know them.
Sunday
Dec242017
Take The Orange Pill - Ice Girl
Chapter 22.
Another brilliant Banlung day bloomed bright. Infinitesimally small intense waves and particles traveled at 186,000 miles per second.
What you don’t see is fascinating, said Ice Girl. She and Leo heard the clatter of tourist utensils singing near dumb thumbed Angkor Wat guidebooks dancing with dusty beggar children hawking vignettes at a medical clinic.
The Angkor Children’s Hospital in Siem Reap has 22 beds in one room. They are filled with infants wearing air hoses in their nose. They suffer from pneumonia and tuberculosis. This is common. A parent holds a tiny hand.
I.C.U. has five occupied beds.
400 mothers cradling kids wait to see a nurse. She dispenses free orange generic pills.
Life is a painkiller. Life is a generic placebo.
The mothers are happy to get SOMETHING, anything. They have no knowledge about modern medicine.
One effective blue pill costs $1.00. Parents need to buy 15. $15.00 is a fortune. Out of the quest-ion. Parents accept free ineffective orange drugs. Parents need a miracle.
How much does a miracle cost?
Mothers are hopeful. They wait. They have ridden on the back of cycles from distant villages. Everyone there had an answer for the child’s sickness. Babble voices of genocide female survivors sang remedies. Men pounded drums. Relatives prayed and burned incense. A shaman dancing with death smeared chicken blood over a tiny chest. Another healer waved smoking banana leaves over a child running a fever. 400 mothers waited forever to see a nurse and get an orange pill.
Ling's art in Laos.
*
Mr. Money talked in the Battenbang market. He’s 30, well fed and garrulous. He stood near a shop holding a pile of 500 Real notes. 500 = 25 cents.
I am rich, he said waving money.
I am the President of Earth, said Leo.
He came over and collapsed in a red plastic chair. Southeast Asia is filled with red plastic chairs. It’s one big kiddy class for humans with an emotional IQ of -7.
He put the money on the table. See, he said, I have a lot of money. Real notes were old and faded.
Yes, you do. Where did you get it?
I collect the money from the shopkeepers. It is their daily cleaning fee. But, I am a poor man. I only make $50 a month. Food is cheap. I have two wives and two kids. Wife number 1 is mad at me. Why? She saw me with wife number 2. I screwed wife number 1 one day and then I went over to see wife number 2. Wife number 1 saw me with her and now she's angry, ha, ha, ha.
I have lots of energy. I can screw three times a day. Do you want to go with me to a nightclub? I can show you around. There are many girls looking for some action. Their boyfriends are poor at sex. The girls are poor and need money.
Leo smiled. Sounds like a diabolical combination. Not today. You can only trust 10%.
It’s easy, he said, I know everybody, waving his arms around the market. People slurped noodles. Women negotiated prices, haggling, chopping vegetables, stoking cooking fires with kindling, manhandling blazing woks, nursing infants, wiping counters, sewing cloth, selling gold, trimming nails, cutting and shampooing hair, cleaning oranges and sitting with begging bowls as hungry eaters stuffed faces.
Eater’s eyes were either buried in bowls or scanning desperate hungry faces in a life of perpetual distractions.
Eat fast or someone will steal it from you. It’s not about taste. It’s about filling your stomach.
Between slabbed meat and fish an old woman with her begging bowl sat on cracked pavement waiting for kindness.
Save the strong, lose the weak, said Mr. Money.
Yes, I’m sure you know everybody, Leo said.
Are you really the president?
Yes, I am.
I think the president is a joke.
Many people would agree with you, Leo said. It’s a lonely thankless job being responsible for the entire human race.
Yeah, yeah. Well I gotta go make some collections. See you later.
The machine world in Banlung roared, reversed, revered and resounded with operatic overtures.
Banlung market
Sunday
Dec172017
Life Lesson #5 - Ice Girl
Chapter 18.
I’m a big seven as in 7, said an omniscient reliable Lao narrator.
Your life is a test. It isn’t a dress rehearsal. If it’s an actual life your invisible friend will protect you from ignorance and fear.
My dad’s not very smart. It’s probably his DNA. A string theory of letters. Genetics. Gee. Net. Icks.
Let me give you a kind-hearted example of his stupidity. It's the rainy season here in Vientiane. Slashing squalling delicious rain. Soft, cool, soothing. Like tears. Cry me a river.
Rain pours like honey. What’s dear old dad do? He washes his silver van in a downpour. Smart eh? Yeah, he’s trying to impress dry watchers with his intelligent hose running wealthy water over poor rain. Cleaning. He ignores me mostly.
It’s amazing what people do when they have nothing to do. Maybe it’s an innate creative instinct. Like milling around. Anyway I’ve learned there are three kinds of people in the world.
a) people who make things happen
b)people who watch people make things happen
c) people who don’t know what the fuck is going on
My grandmother sits on our 1924 austere colonial dark brown balcony folding banana leaves for a ceremony. Every day is a ceremony. Every morning at dawn she walks to the muddy road near the Mekong and offers wandering Buddhist monks a handful of rice. She earns merit in this life. She burns incense at the family altar. She nurtures her shrinking garden after her son decided to plant a cement parking lot. What a clever little man.
Grandfather stares at rain collecting in pools.
Father’s very busy. He disappears for hours. Drinking beer with friends. Playing around with a secret squeeze in dark places. She’s starving for affection and cash. A poor girl from a poor family needs to make a living, poor thing.
My mom’s also really smart. What’s the difference between smart and clever?
After the rain, when it’s dry and the smallest full moon of the year rises above the Mekong before a river festival filled with floating orange flowers and yellow flaming candles she burns all the plastic garbage. Burn baby burn. Light my fire.
It’s a sweet smell let me tell you. Like that Duvall character said, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Kind of like that smell. What’s the word? Acrid.
When she’s not burning plastic trash she sweeps. Broom music. Stone cold. She cooks. She pretends to be busy. She’s a baby machine. What’s another mouth? In China I’m worth $3-5K on the stolen kid market. My sister would have been aborted.
Mom ignores me mostly. She’s very busy doing her humble mother routine. Later, she squawks. She’s a soft kind later.
People like parents and teachers and lazy humans love to pretend to be busy. I guess it gives their short life meaning.
Milling around is an art form with style. Hemingway had style. Fitzgerald had style and class.
Lao people are soft and gentle. We have good hearts. We are not as mercenary as the Vietnamese. We drift through your sensation, perception and consciousness with the speed and grace of a cosmic Lepidoptera.
The trick is to tolerate, with kindness and patience, your great teacher, the bland empty-eyed star gazing hustlers. Bored after five minutes they lose interest and leave you be. Zap, like a white zigzag lightning bolt. Gone.
Vietnamese plant rice.
Cambodians watch it grow.
Laotians hear it grow.
The kid continued: For cultural, historical, educational, environmental, emotional, intellectual and economic reasons milling around is a popular daily activity. This unpleasant fact cannot be denied or ignored or forgotten like a missing leg.
I used to complain I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet.
This fact needs to be up front because it is a clear immediate danger and way of life.
Limited opportunities, unregulated population growth, substandard education, expensive medicine, no hope and inconclusive futures enhance milling around.
But what do I know?
Milling kills time alleviating boredom, the dreaded lethargic tedious disease. Milling around kills the human spirit. No initiative. Period. How sweet. How charming. It’ll take another generation to get educated. Cambodia and Lao and Vietnam are alive with ghosts.
A human’s existence is one long perpetual distraction.
I’m too young to know much. I know what I don’t know. I don’t know what I don’t know. Anyway, I need to go and finish my school paper on developing moral character with social intelligence, grit, self-control, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity.
How do you build self-control and grit, asked Leo.
Through failure, said the boy. There are two kinds of character.
What are they?
Moral character is fairness, generosity, and integrity.
Performance character is effort, diligence, and perseverance.
Kids need challenges to grow. Like hardships and deprivation. Yeah, it’s trial and error and taking risks.
Thanks for the life lesson, said Leo. You are the future of Laos.
