emotion expression

Everything going in an ear comes out as language.

A tool for emotion and expression.

The greatest sorrow is the death of the heart.

Life is found in a desperate situation. - Chinese proverb.

All you have to do is take out the garbage, said a writer. Separate the cans, glass, plastic, paper products, adverbs, and adjectives. Editors want it short fast and deadly. They want to feel a character facing obstacle(s) and their motivation. They want characters to reveal themselves through dialogue and action. How is the character living and feeling? Focus the lens through the protagonist’s eye. Live forever.

Make it immediate and dramatic. Show their vulnerability, their worries, hopes and fears. Use active verbs. Be specific so we feel the experience. Clarify the narrator's interpretation.

Please continue with your delightful story, Jamie.

Yes, well, it needs a central character, like Omar here, he's a good one with a woven thread and laborious languorous tension to move it along now doesn’t it? As I was saying before you went off a tangent Point, which I see you are prone to do, he understood their wingspan.

See, one of the largest nesting colonies of tawny vultures in Europe was here. While living and hiking in the region he’d seen several species: the golden eagle, Hieraetus fasciatus, Aquila heliaca, Hieratus pennatus, and Circaetus gallicus. Goshawk and the Egyptian vulture also inhabited the Sierras.

Amazing. I once was a screaming eagle in Vietnam, said Point. Strange place for eagles eh? Remind me and I’ll spin you a tale about them.

Ok. A large vulture grabbed air toward the mountain cliffs, sailed along the rocks and it was difficult to keep it in focus because their brown body blended perfectly with trees and mountains. It sailed, banked, disappearing into cover. Breaking through clouds another vulture flew into the sun splashing hillside and peaks in blazing light. It dropped in elevation, turning, showing quick flashes of golden feathers, brown body, in and out colors as the bird played on the air. Really incredible I tell you.

Then it flew near ridges turned toward his position for a moment, just long enough displaying complete wingspan and I’d guess a good 6-8 feet across, then it blended into the foliage finding its mountain perch.

Excellent. Nothing like a little free form flying exercise in the morning I say. Free morning drafts. Gets the blood flowing, lowers the heart rate and strengthens the spirit, said Omar.

Spirit of flight, flight as freedom the vision they must have, said Jamie. Imagine, if you will, how it feels to be rising on air, feeling the slightest push or pull as wind whips past you and you climb into and through clouds flying past you. You circle through endless space able to maneuver, balance, floating higher and higher. He felt good feeding small birds watching big ones fly. Always maintain your awareness.

History is the symptom.

People are the disease.

Language is a virus.

Weaving A Life, V1

Phonsavan

To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength. - Celine

I facilitate English, the language of barbarians in Yangon, Myanmar.

Ah bliss. I salute the sun every morning from the 8^th floor balcony with twinkling stars flocks of crows and silent burgundy monks clanging gongs.

Wing song.

Bamboo grows strong. Resilient.

Laundry dries faster than a speeding sparrow.

One small life chapter began in Phonsavan, Laos, a sleepy, dusty enclave near Vietnam.

The Plain of Jars wars and scars.

Survivors and archeologists say the jars were funeral containers holding bones of relatives. Jarring fact.

Truth is beyond a shadow of a reasonable healthy doubt they were drinking vessels of GIANTS.

I know. I was there 4,000 years ago.

This is what happened more or less.

A wealthy Lao landowner hired a Burmese management team to build a golf course near the airport.

Golf is good necessary and an important social, cultural and economic improvement in the quality of life when it involves business between two of the most impoverished Asian countries placing a ball on a T.

Factoid. Lao GDP per capita - $2593, Myanmar - $1347

Why drive when you can putt?

They had a meeting. What do we need, asked Mr. Lao? We need a lot of land - grass, trees, sand, water, - irrigation systems, electricity, roads, parking lots, air conditioning, a clubhouse, a driving range rover, range rover can I come over, said the Burmese developer.

We need umbrellas, clubs, balls, toilets, ATM machines, restaurants, capital expenditures for furniture and fixtures, food, napkins, plates, cutlery, lawnmowers and many servants. You build it, said the Lao man and wealthy Asians will come and go.

A ten-year old girl said Laos is divided in two parts. The Chinese own the north and Vietnam owns the south. So it goes.

At the corner he turned into Nham Nham market-street. The U shaped dirt lot market faced 1-D. Tuk-tuk drivers and small pickup trucks waited for passengers to Never-Never Land or distant H’mong villages.

Fifty or more H’mong women selling produce spread out inside the U before dawn. Community.

At 8:30 Mr. Important, an old man in a red coat walked around telling everyone to pack it up and move on. Carts, baskets loaded, wheeled trolleys disappeared. Women unable to rent interior market space stashed baskets of greens near the interior market. They’d set up on stone passageways at 4:30 p.m. for evening business.

The outside edges of the U are lined with shuttered shops.

At a pharmacy he conversed with a happy female doctor who works at the hospital and is pleased to introduce him to her 14-year old daughter who can speak English but is too busy now playing a game on her phone, see you later he said to the pharmacist ... passing wooden shops with sewing men and women, hair salons one in particular where a smiling Vietnamese woman cuts his hair and cleans his ears, rice threshing people working machines, tools and farming essentials before entering twisting narrow cement interior islands of fabric, dresses, shirts, pants, shoes and MSG packaged food stuffs as women converse, watch imported Thai videos and play with curious eyed kids.

The traditional market was covered with rusting PSP sheets and tattered umbrellas along the edge with excellent fruits and vegetables. Carnivores buy buffalo, chicken, beef, grilled bats and fish. Dirt and haphazard cement floor. Watch your step.

How slow can you go?

He never saw foreigners here.

He enjoyed the ambiance, peace and quiet, observing life, mimicking language and eating thick noodle soup with boiled liver slices swimming with ginger, ground red chilies, two boiled eggs. The kind woman gave him a platter of fresh lettuce. $1.25.

An old funny woman doing good business fries small cakes and coconut balls. Early on, after he discovered the noodle place he heard her say loud and clear, I don’t know and I don’t care.

He turned laughing. How and where did she hear and learn this? From my son. Otherwise her English was nonexistent. She badgered him to buy thick sweet milk coffee.

Women chop, cook, chatter in low tones, breastfeed infants, stoke cooking fires with kindling, fry snacks, sell fast food - meat, noodles, vegetables, and fruits to motorcycle helmet shoppers, moms, dads, school kids, shopkeepers from the interior and wandering lookers gossiping, exchanging lives.

H'mong women don’t buy here. They sell on the edge. They grow all the food they need.

Self-sufficient.

A Little BS

Raven

The next day the tribe crossed a plain and reached a raging river. As they knew from their ancestor’s tales, the river was deepest here because deaths upstream created tears as souls migrated on their journey through the Bardo.

What’s the Bardo? asked Jamie.

A place between life and death. A transition zone. Where, after you die, for nine days, you confront ghosts and demons wearing your old masks. We need nine days to take another form and during these nine days we meet all these demons reminding us of our temporal existence.

The tribe dreamed as wood evolved into ashes. Their fire dream consumed itself as sighing sensations tingled through Raven’s body. Night winds played around her heart. She danced with stars. Diamond crystal swallowtails flew from her hands into silent endless space. Her breath released peaceful feelings. She fell awake.

Sunlight streamed through ferns, plants, and roses as a morning breeze delivered petals of a wild rose to her feet. She stretched like a solitary snow leopard feeling freedom’s wildness. She glanced at the fireplace. Her shattered glass lay on the brick floor near a charred pencil and scraps of paper. She gathered word edges, lines, drawings, and blurred prisms of light.

She felt a searing pain in her heart, released the papers and touched her third eye. She went deep inside. A calm feeling blessed her. A warm breeze carried her into the center of a sacred wisdom circle. Her essence was joy, delight and happiness. It was a world of pure being. She recognized the world of appearances was full of suffering, desire and illusion.

Discovering her essence, her spirit energy breath renewed her heart, her passion and vision. People seeking to know their future and wisdom sought her out for guidance. She opened her heart to them finding solace, peace, strength, and dignity in the sacred flames of regeneration through quiet simplicity. She kept her own counsel knowing others would have to find their own way in their personal and collective wilderness.

Her hair caught fire as she gathered flames while lighting a piece of bark in a Paleolithic cave. She mixed volcanic ash with water, creating a thick paste of red ocher, a cosmetic balm to gain entry and passage through the spirit world of ancestors. She walked through fire, dancing in her inner light of pure intention in a magical world realizing childhood’s innocence.

She became an angel of light. Her Jinn emanated fire, life and consciousness. This fire consumed ignorance, and my memory of her became a meditation on the physical process of identifying with higher energies through form, sensation, perception, sense impressions and consciousness.

Her meditation inside the cosmic dance dissolved the self. Fire became her driver, sexual kundalini yoga burned soft and hard wood together. The sleeping serpent coiled at the base of her spine was fed by the energetic fires. The Jinn manifested by the fire of the telling.

Yes, said Omar, Jinn are summoned through spirit ceremonies as the world of men communicate with their world by means of music and dance.

I am a character in my own story, said Omar, a hakaawati, a professional Persian storyteller inside the shadow of my imagination. I manifest an oral way of transmitting khurata, fanciful stories, inside the ocean of stories.

A Century is Nothing

I Lost One Day

Crows sang sunrise.

Lucky opened window blinds at the TLC teachers’ apartment. Riding the blinds sang a metaphorical cryptic railroad life. Hop a fright. Get out of town. Hit the highway. Get down the road.

Ain’t nothin’ but da blues, sweet thing.

When you come to a fork in the road take it, said Zeynep.

Sun streamed to pink-red veined orchids in a brushed silver container. Tibetan incense curled into light. Red gladioli, so glad, petaled beginning. Piano Etudes by Glass tinkled. A handful of dust labeled fear celebrated tonal frequencies. Piano fell silent. Violins picked up the slack hemming garments along life’s loom down at the crossroads making a Faustian deal with the d-evil.

In a new world order all the police are children.

They know how the world works.

Elegant clouds observed pachyderms and Staunton designed pawns, knights, bishops, rooks and queens fighting to control four center squares.

Look at the board. Absorb all the data. Recognize patterns. Analyze. Develop a strategy. Continually revise and develop that strategy as the game progresses, said Bamboo.

A black knight waving a curving scimitar and a 1* red and yellow hammer sickle flag driving a Turbo-bus filled with Russian baboons passed Hanoi beauty salons and full-body soapy massage parlors.

Girls trimming, buffing and painting cuticles greeted 1.9 million neurotic European tourists and swarming Asian locusts in a fat fucking hurry at Angkor Wats happening?

Bright yellow Turkish taxis idled coughing engines. Arabesque musicians fingered ouds as an operatic Turkish singer in Bursa lamented her melancholic love. Percussionists hammered goatskins.

Singing silver merchants chanted, Mr. Lucky Foot come here. First sale lucky sale make my day.

He joined a Jewish and Turkish man drinking tea at the Bursa silk market in an exquisite stone Caravansary.

I lost today, said the Jewish man.

What do you mean, said his friend. You made 3,000,000 Lira.

Yes, but I lost one day.

Inside a 500-year old hammam, steam rising through rusting metal bars discovered a weak Wi-Fi signal from the Achebadem emergency room staffed by Winter Hawk, Bamboo and heartbroken howling Lone Wolf.

After a sauna Omar and Lucky entered a white marble room with a high vaulted dome. Thirty-two pinpoints of sunlight shafted across blue mosaic tiles. In eight recessed cubicles men soaped, slathered and scrubbed off melting skin in humid heat. A robust masseuse worked sandpaper fibers over a stranger removing dead terrorist cells.

Absorbing musical notes the thermal pool bubbled natural mineral water as the literary outlaws enjoyed a sitting meditation up to their necks. I’ve had it up to here, said Omar clearing his throat.

Renewed, revived and rejuvenated after a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice they stepped into crisp spring air below blue sky.

The Language Company

Hanoi Alley Bell

It takes courage to raise kids with integrity, respect and authenticity. Sex is fun.

Responsibility is a duty.

Dave releases streams of anger, bitterness and frustration allowing him to relax, expend and expand the sound. He is startled to hear the sound of his voice ricochet off substandard cold molten gray Hanoi cement block walls. His life is a cold cement wall. Echoes dance through his brain like little sugarplum fairies.

He knows the echo because he made it. He mixed the fine sand and quick dry cement. He slathered it over broken red bricks in a circular abstract desire to create art lasting for eternity which is how he thought of it the day he trow welled the paste.

Life gave him art and he used art to celebrate life.

His voice manifestation expresses human auditory tendencies in a tight space near a gigantic liquid plasma television permanently implanted on a blank cement wall blaring news propaganda and perpetual adolescent reality soap shows ...

about life next door where a hunched over family sits on cold red floral tile slurping from cracked rose bowls and shoveling steaming rice and green stringy vegetables into lost mouths while yelling over each other in tonal decibels competing with their gigantic plasma television ...

featuring dancing bears and pioneer patriots devouring rubber plantations, beaches for golf courses and farmland for glass and brass designer hotels with a double blade axe singing, in a high Greek-like chorus, the national anthem about survival and rampant greed ...

on land, sea, and air as water pianos played by a young wisp her fingers a delicate blur of fast incantation musical channels

dance near a woman garbage collector ringing a bell at 1655 alerting people in Dave’s neighborhood it is time for them to bring out their daily garbage.

Remove the evidence. Bag it and tag it. Autopsy material.

Mrs. Pho hears the bell. She’s ready. She’s willing. She’s able. She’s arranged her family’s daily consumptive waste into two plastic bags. One pink. One white. Orange and yellow fruit rinds went white, shreds of fat pink. She didn’t waste a thing. No one did. 

Life is a nasty, brutal short struggle she reflected bowing in front of her parent’s faces, dead, gone remembered forever with their stoic black and white ghost images living above eternal electric Buddha bulbs pulsating red, green, blue, and white on the family altar.

Plastic flowers, daily fruit offerings, burning incense - spirit food.

Let’s eat.

Weaving A Life, V1