pain killers

Greetings,

Another brilliant day blooms zooms bright and infinitesimally small intense light. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. You'll never catch it.

What you don't see is fascinating.

The clatter of foreign tourist utensils sing near dumb thumbed Angkor Wat guidebooks dancing with dusty beggar children hawking stories of orphanages and medical clinics.

The Children's Hospital has 22 beds in one room. They are full. They are filled with infants and children wearing air hoses in their nose. They suffer from pneumonia and tuberculosis. This is common in Cambodia. A parent holds a tiny hand.

I.C.U. has five beds. They are full.

400 mothers cradling kids wait to see a nurse. The nurse can dispense five medicines. Three are cheap generic pain killers.

Life is a pain killer.

The other two drugs are generic placeboes. The mothers are happy to get SOMETHING, anything. They have no knowledge about medicine.

One effective pill prescribed by a doctor costs $1.00. Parents need to buy 15. 

$15.00 is a fortune. Out of the question. Parents accept cheap ineffective drugs. Parents need a miracle. How much does a miracle cost?

They are hopeful. They wait. They have ridden on the back of cycles from distant villages. In their village everyone had the answer for their child's sickness. Babble voices of the old survivors. Babble voices of relatives seeking salvation inside a dance with Death.

An old village healer waved smoking banana leaves over their child running a fever. Hot and cold.

Mothers wait to see the nurse as sparrows seek water in broken light.

Metta.

River

Greetings,

I flow a thick deep brown. Heavy wet season rains rinse my desire. I clean the world of perceptions.

I increase my fish productivity and cause havoc for low lying homes, flooding humans out. They swim in the mainstream. My current is strong. It has no boundaries. Water wears down stone. 

Joy is seeing endless green rice paddies waving for miles in every direction. White cumulus clouds dance in a blue sky. The green penetrates my eyes. Green releases me from the stone cold dead glass and brass cities trembling fear. 

Joy is a boy doing a perfect back flip off a hill into my river. Joy escapes gravity. Joy joins his friends laughing and swimming. His father casts a net as serene shimmering strands arch over water sailing into green. My river renews life.

Orange robed monks reflect my calm surface. Turbulent roaming charges may apply in the curious dimension of laughter's gratitude.

My awareness bliss flow is this transience. You can't swim in the same river twice.

Metta.

short

Greetings,

A foreign teacher visited a Khmer classroom. 300 local students study English, Japanese and Korean from 5-7 p.m. Monday through Friday.

A female Khmer teacher is writing Korean script on the board. There are three students. The visitor sits at the back of the room. A high school girl turns around asking in fluent English, Are you a teacher?

No, I am a student.

What do you study?

I study life.

Is it a short course?

Yes, it is.

Metta.

 =

barefoot

Greetings,

early dawn streaks orange skies. two barefoot mendicants are walking down the cambodian broken dirt road. one looks well fed. he wears simple tattered white cotton clothing. a red and white checkered kroma scarf is knotted around his head. 

he carries their possessions in three white rice bags on a simple bamboo pole balanced on his shoulder. he is followed on the dirt trail by his friend, a tall gaunt man. they are talking.

man #1. these bags are heavy. i am tired of carrying them. you carry them. 

he drops the bags and stick on the ground. they crash on the dirt. startled birds leave leaves. a river changes direction. he walks over to a large cistern filled with water. he splashes his face. he drinks deep. 

his friend stoops over, adjusts bamboo through twine and hoists the stick and bags onto his shoulder.

man #2. where are we going?

man #1 (muttering to his feet in red dust) down this road.

Metta.

 

Fire talks

Greetings,

What's louder than a group of Khmer people? Another group of Khmer people. Get used to it. Volume. Noise. They love distractions. They live, eat and breath distractions and noise. They love talking over each other. Listening is hard work. Silence is known for killing people. Fear of death is a one long conversation.

They've been traumatized by their long past into the immediate present grasping the future. It's a time machine, a time warp, a consciousness warp.

It is curious to see with complete clarity the FIRE inside the cement stove in the simple local java and tea shop at 0615. Orange and bright dancing red flames consume kindling. It heats water for tea and java. Reminds me of a winter stove in Lhasa warming a room with joy.

Words crackle, spit, dance with laughter's sensation of heat.

Piles of kindling are stacked between cement slabs like orphans waiting to exonerated.  

It's a male thing. The men are over 40. They are survivors of The Dark Years.

All the men wear fresh pressed shirts and long pants. They have jobs. They talk about life: business, jobs, paper, kids, wives, weather, facts, opinions, big plans and ghosts. They eat fried bread, drink brown tea and java. Their spoons create music with glass. 

1.7 million ghosts dance through their silent conversations. No one talks about it. They prefer to talk about the now. The future. Ghosts live in the past. Leave it there, said one man. Half our population is under 30, said another man. They have no memory of the past. Education is the key, said another man. Yes, said another man, We missed our chance.

The only chance I had, said another man, Was to run and hide in the jungle. Look at my hands. Now I spend my days rewriting history.

A human is a kind of conversation. Many humans live lives of quiet desperation. Fire knows this fact.

Metta.