Passage

Greetings,

People are more affected by how they feel than by what they understand.

When they met she was anxious. Tall and talking fast. She was in a highly frantic state. She was from Sweden. After a couple of days she calmed down. She had a dream after visiting a temple at Angkor.

She said, "I don't know what I'm running away from. I'm traveling for a month. I just knew I had to leave. Now I don't know what I'm running toward."

"Yes," he said, "one door opens and one door closes but the hallways can be a bitch." She laughed. She felt better releasing her anxiety, her uncertainty by laughing. If only for a moment.

She's been here a week. "A week here," she said, "seems like a month. Now I feel like I can be in the moment. It's hard but I'm working on it. I want to cut all my hair off."

"Nothing like modifying your outward appearance to affect your self-esteem."

Shy Cambodian girls with straight black hair cut off her long blond movie star hair. They treasured her tresses, wrapping it with rubber bands to decorate their hair. 

"I feel better now," she said feeling the searing heat of tropical sun. "I'm going to begin sketching again. I loved to sketch when I was younger. I lost it somewhere. I'm starting again."

Here's one entrance/exit passage.

Here's one entrance/exit passage. There is NO EXIT.

Metta.

Dance hall

Greetings,

The dancing hall at Preah Khan is where dancers don't smile. They dance. They are slave dancers, all the women.

They dance for the king. He is the god-king. He has resurrected his desire and fury creating new customs, new decrees for dancers. They dance for the mighty and powerful. They dance Khmer stories about war, conquest, harvests, seasons, sun, and moon. 

They are submissive dances of life/death. They dance to celebrate life. They dance the celebration of tranquility. They dance or die. They wear tinkling bands of gold around wrists and ankles. They wear diamond diademed crowns and shimmering silk clothing. They do not smile. Their faces are frozen in the trance of dance.

One dances to escape the tyranny. She's danced all her short, sweet life.

The hall of dancers is surrounded by columns, portals and broken jumbled green moss stones. Thick gnarled silk-cotton tree roots crawl toward dancers. They dance through roots, past Shiva and Vishnu. The preserver and destroyer of life. 

Two foreign dancers dance with guide books. Golden leafed pages dance past their eyes. A guide who knows everything watches them. They are blind. He dances alone.

Metta.

Phimeamakas, Preah Pithu, Thommanon, Chau Say Thevoda...

Faces

Greetings,

Jasmine's grandmother. Such a beautiful face, filled with love, strength and dignity surrounded by family and friends.

Cremation

Greetings,

The procession of 200 people led by six monks in orange robes followed the rolling wagon carrying the wooden casket inside afternoon's blazing heat along Airport Road. After two kilometers we entered the monastery. A bus of school kids and nuns arrived. 

The casket was carried up the stairs and placed on a metal platform. Her husband led a procession of monks and family members around the tall tapered white and blue building carrying her picture and yellow flowers. They stepped back to allow the team of workers access. They opened the casket so family members could leave something personal inside. 

On a nearby pavilion monks and friends prayed. A man read a final tribute about the woman's life. The family finished expressing their love and men put small logs into the casket. They closed it, rolled it inside and piled more wood around it. They lit the fire and closed the metal door.

People looked up at the top of the tower to four Buddha faces and exhaust pipes. A wisp of black smoke escaped into the clear blue sky, followed by heavier gray and white, now billowing.

People sat in groups talking, drinking water. Everything burned for 2-3 hours. The bones were collected and placed in a family urn and returned to her room. They will be used to create a human figure on banana leaves. In 100 days they will be removed and returned to a family stupa at the monastery.

Metta.

Birth and death

Greetings,

One birth. One death. This is the reality here where it all happens up close and personal. Community.

Jasmine gave birth to a baby boy around 12:30 a.m. 3.9 kilos. It's her and Kunn's third child. I am on the balcony around 6 a.m. and hear him crying. Tears and lungs, breath, release. He's amazing and small. Sleeping after his nine-month water world journey. Every day is a new birth day. 

I walk down the dusty path, across the so-called "Highway of Death" to Jasmine Lodge.

People are gathering to celebrate the passing of Jasmine's grandmother. She was healthy and happy. Sheslipped away during the night after 84 years.

Friends and relatives gather under a pavilion to pay their respects. Some visit the Buddhist monk making a monetary gift, hands in prayer. He ties a small red piece of yarn around their wrist.

The ceremony will last three days. Women teams prepare food, chop vegetables and fruit - cook and simmer huge vats of rice, soup, fish, and meats using logs. Smoke curls through bamboo meeting music and the melodic chants of monks in song.

Tomorrow will be a procession to the monastery for cremation.

Metta.