Voices

Greetings,

A man's voice from magnified speakers echoes down river on new year's day. He talks about what ifs and maybes. Exhortations about the dire need for clean drinking water, sanitation, education and medicine.

What is the significance of new year? Another day, another opportunity for talking animals to discuss, share and elaborate on gaseous topics like:

• how to mill around without causing damage to the environment
• how to wear a yellow "HELLO" cell phone t-shirt without a license
• how laughing orphans fill up a wheelbarrow with lost dreams
• how perpetually distracted humans face unpleasant facts
• how loose tongues are required to discuss, share, elaborate or mystify a woman slicing limes
• how three foreign female educators chew nails and contemplate new programs in circular fashion
• how humans will never escape 'art'
• how teams of ants try, try, try to maneuver a large piece of sugar candy up a steep cement mountain
• how an experienced bicycle traveller from Holland named Harold helps at the grassroots level to improve children's quality of life in Cambodian orphanages and Burmese refugee camps. How he eschews large organizations working directly with the people. 

How bullet points fly to a target.

On new year's day, the woman in her blue pajamas decorates the family altar with cans and bottles of soft drinks, coconuts, durian, perfume, two crystal glasses of milk, candles, candy, bread, rice, oranges, apples, water, incense, photos of dead relatives, cockroaches, howling dogs, baboons, balloons, clouds, clones and clowns.

She turns on the TV. She turns it really LOUD. Her daughters, 4, 6, are entranced and captivated by the visual circus. They never read books. The idiot box allows the kids, servants, tuk-tuk drivers, husband and foreign guests to give up their consciousness. Another diversion, another day, a new year day. April Fools!

New day, new diversion, people pretending to be busy.

Angkor Wat Hindu dancers in gold silk lame dresses with towering headdresses perform ancient dances. Apsara fingers, delicate movements. They celebrate seasons, fertility, rice, fish, nature, courtship, and joy. 

She is frail, about 80 with silver hair. She sits in front of her house. Her left hand rests on a cane. She wears a beautiful purple sarong with golden threads and a white lace blouse. Her daughter trims her hair above the left ear with shiny silver scissors. The woman's smile illuminates her tranquil face.

Metta.

The art of Happiness

Greetings,

Here's the morning view. Clouds commute to another part of the sky. They appreciate wind. 

A day for seeing yellow leaves, yellow light dance free. Water light sparkles diamonds.

Hear with your eyes.

You navigate an old bridge. It is made of industrial strength cement, wire and rusty philosophies.

Five things to improve happiness: 

1. Be grateful. Write letters to someone who helped you in some way.
2. Be optimistic. Visualize your ideal future. Describe the image in a journal entry.
3. Count your blessings. Write down three good things that happen to you every week.
4. Use your strengths. 
5. Practice acts of kindness. Helping others helps ourselves. 

Metta.

Carry On

Greetings,

The Australian nurses leave tonight. They fly "home" to family and friends after three weeks on the ground.

Some, certainly not all, pack their Cambodian "humbling life changing experience" in their hand luggage.

One wonders, "how can I get my entire humbling, lfe changing experience into this very small bag?" Her question may trouble her for a second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year or the rest of her short sweet life. It's her experience.  She knows it's impossible to check it all the way through. She has to to carry it. 

She gets it ready. She assembles it on the floor along with fragrant toilet articles, clothing and soft silk scarves. Her experience contains a poor village near Siem Reap. She knows and loves everyone because she lived there. She took care of the people. She cried herself to sleep every night. In the village are thirsty, hungry, exhausted, sick children, women and men. One woman alone takes care of 16 children. 

She puts this one little village and everyone into her bag. To utilize space she discards everything else. 

She saves weight because there is no clean drinking water. She throws in handfuls of cooked rice to give them nourishment during the long flight to Sydney. 

She doesn't know how many will survive. She's finally ready to take her personal humbling, lfe changing experience home.

Metta.

Clean Water Please

Greetings,

The team of Australian nurses had a medical briefing. The head nurse talked about the biggest problem they've seen in Siem Reap communities since arriving two weeks ago.

"It's dehydration. It's the loss of electrolytes (salt)." 

They discussed primary concerns and physiological assessments. They talked about signs and symptoms. They discussed their progress helping and educating people. They returned to the villages.  

One billion people on Earth do not have access to clean water.

Metta.

Cambodia Statistics:

Total population: 14,197,000

Gross national income per capita (PPP international $): 1,550

Life expectancy at birth m/f (years): 59/65

Healthy life expectancy at birth m/f (years, 2003): 46/49

Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births): 82

Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population): 314/207

Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl $, 2006): 167

Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2006): 6.0

Figures are for 2006 unless indicated. Source: World Health Statistics 2008

Make it new

Greetings,

Yes, well, he said, here I am patrolling another planetary manifestation.

It's a random act of kindness to find the "correct" letters to say this.

Some humans take themselves way to seriously. Hang around listening to some of the anxiety and fear and trepidation and...

To express the sensation. How do you express a sensation? Is it an expressed gesture, a fleeting momentarily lapse of reasonable consciousness? Perhaps a main manifestation of the young girl watering the dust. Now as sunlight filters through the palm trees casting long shadows, golden rays.

Did I ever tell you I am a dust collector? It's a fact. Of life. I've collected dust in many places - in Vietnam, in the Sahara, climbing toward Drepung outside Lhasa one brilliantly frozen morning, in Korla, a well known far Western crossroads oasis along along the Silk Road where yellow is the original color produced by the silkworm's saliva.

The swirling red January dust here in Cambodia is a sweet deep rusty red. The path is a watercolor, traced by bike and motorcycle treads, grooving new tributaries of passage. Walk softly as if your eyes are on the bottom of your feet.

Metta.