In Chinese cities a local foreigner is surrounded by millions of curious people in crowded living situations, a relic in a poorly maintained zoo. 

Animals are abused and neglected, but that’s beside the point of the doors on family compounds in big Chinese cities made of thick heavy metal. They close at night with a clang on old worn hinges. An adult voice is heard admonishing a child.  

“Get in, the night is here. It is late. You have to fold the clothes. You have your work for school. You have to clean up after dinner. You must study harder. Harder! If you fail your exams we will lose face. You will be an unemployed migrant child wandering lost cities looking for your future.”

The demanding accusatory tone of voice is always an admonishing attitude of voice in the way things exist. Shanghai commands are simple and direct. 

Outside the window heels strike cold hard pavement in darkness. The sharpness belongs to a girl escaping from family going out for the night. Muted voices of an old couple walking through narrow concrete canyons echo as her heels fade.

The elevator door opened on the 11th floor of a five—star business hotel in Shanghai. 

A beautiful young Chinese girl, maybe 20, in a white dress clutching a small black purse stared at a scuffed marble floor. Small puddles of rain water gathered around her shoes.

The American stopped talking to the Indian accountant and looked past him. 

She raised her face from the ground. 

Deep dark brown rings circled old, tired, fearful eyes hiding her heart's knowledge, revealing her soul. There was no place to hide, no magical cosmetic to conceal the truth of everything she knew. The woman and man instinctivily understood each other. She was passing toward another temporary hope, another ethereal reality.

She was on the wrong floor and pressed another number. Doors closed. She was going up. Up to the room of a foreign businessman who would take her through night into morning.

Everyone in town was making money. 

Billboards shouted, “Making Money in China is Glorious!”

She carefully folded hard earned hard currency into her black purse after a long hot shower and took the elevator back down. Gliding through a revolving glass and brass door, she passed a deserted dark empty Japanese restaurant and negotiated gray stained industrial steps to Nanjing Xi Lu.  

Serious adults in blue industrial clothing practiced Tai Chi with controlled balanced concentration. Every methodical movement had meaning. Dawn's collective breath formed a mist crashing around her well worn heels as she skipped over cracked city stones through their shadows. 

A neighbor cried out to a neighbor asking for something at high decibels.  

A motorcycle roared past followed by a bike bell ringing a sharp corner warning. Two old women wearing thick clothing talked about the price of vegetables, cool days and the fate of their children. Their words adjusted to musical volumes and surreptitious encounters in careful dark corners where sexual repressed couples groped for meaning. 

This is a small corner of the world. This is a small corner of the sky. This is all there is and it is enough for now.

Days, weeks and months later the foreigner finally exploded in anger and frustration. His bitterness understands locals don't know it's OK to lock the door. There are bars on his windows and he feels like a prisoner. 

Boredom, his enemy, has carved out a niche, a river in the soul.  

He declined offers to eat with the family. He needs distance. He is a dream they had, an intrusion on their language acquisition and their personal desire for growth caught up in unknown varieties of kindness. 

How many words will it take to explain this to them as anger grows from giving in? Listening to the wild wife talk on and on as her husband tries to wheel and deal. Nothing but endless questions. 

Interrogations during the Cultural Revolution.

His imagination engine kicks in. It's a ghost. A predator eating living beings, flesh. Tearing them apart as they sit and rest and doze off after playing cards. 

They shout at the deaf man in a small room with bars on the window.  Help us! they scream. 

His last week is the longest. The finest. 

Metta.

People down on the ground report being able to see my lost tool bag through 10 x 50 binoculars at a magnitude of 6.4.

It's too far away to see with the naked eye. This raises perplexing questions. Why are eyes naked? How do they see through their nakedness? Does being naked affect their ability to interact with other naked eyes? Do they avert their gaze when meeting another naked eye? How does their nakedness affect social interaction, mutual nakedness and so forth?

Cool.

Like everything in the universe, it is floating.

I am now allowed, by international space law procedural nemesis, to reveal the contents. My bag holds two grease guns, a scraper tool, a large trash bag and a small debris bag. My bag is valued at $100,000. Ok, so this means that the contents are very expensive. Do a financial analysis. 

Grease gun (2) =______

Scraper tool= ______

Large trash bag= _____

Small debris bag= _____

Big bag (30 pounds, 20" by 12")

Total= $100,000

May I file a lost luggage claim?

Grounded humans predict my wandering bag will eventually burn up depending on solar activity. Poof!

Metta.

The Middle Kingdom podcast numero 61 is up at an altitude of 225 miles floating with my lost tool bag. Reward.

And, as if that meditation isn't enough bliss, liberty and mindfulness, the urine-drinking water machine is still down.  

Fly me to the moon.

Metta.

MK 61

The space saga continues. As I reported in my last greasy message, I lost my tool kit while trying to fix a bad joint. Ze bag is (was) worth $100,000. I am offering a reward for it's return. No questions asked. It was last reported to be floating approximately 212 miles above Earth.

Meanwhile I have been installing a new toilet recycling machine on the ISS

It cost a cool $154 million bucks. Now I know in these turbulent economic times when the average planetary inhabitant is living in a shack with an outhouse, riding a bike, using candles for light, eating baloney and afraid to get sick because they have absolutely ZERO heath care insurance the cost of my toilet may seem slightly extreme.

I can justify it. Watch and listen closely. It is a miracle of technology.

It converts urine into drinking water!

Yes, that's correct. It turns urine into H2O (when it's working)...Astonishing! Amazing! Delicious! Urine on the rocks, straight up.

Why is this necessary? The ISS currently can support three living creatures. Brains on the ground would like to increase the population by three to six, requiring, according to their math genius, the necessity of having a $154 million dollar machine to expedite the conversion of urine into drinking water. Kinda like reverse osmosis.  

Their rationale is that, with six homo sapiens on board, it will be too expensive in the long haul to transport drinking water to the ISS, so they concocted this elaborate urine-water machine. Wow!

To support their never ending research and development NASAL will be offering, for a limited time only, just in time for the holiday season, a heavily discounted stripped down modified version of their urine-water convertor to JQ public. Initial design mockups with corresponding price categories will be available by Thanksgiving.

Metta.

On my space walk to fix a joint while smoking a joint having a look at the joint my grease gun exploded.

It went off in my backpack. Whoosh! 

When you are connected to your module by a thin thread of hose fed air and electronic gizmos wearing a pack and floating in deep dark infinite space, an exploding grease gun sounds like a watermelon being flattened by a truck traveling at the speed of light.

Whoosh!

So the grease gun exploded spraying grease all over my goggles. I was blinded by grease. Am I a grease monkey?

Oh on, not another ancient simian tale. Spare me the details. Just get to the verb. 

My goggles covered in grease, I attempted to wipe off the gunk. Loose space grease acts weird. It congeals in millions of small miracles, losing it's viscosity. I began wiping and swiping with my handy-dandy gloves. I cried for my mother. She'd know what do but she wasn't here with me floating outside the capsule.

Then, the grease played a trick on me. My greasy gloves couldn't hold my tool bag and it slipped out of my greasy grip. Whoops! Off it went, curling slowly, doing a space ballet. Bye-bye tool bag. 

The dudes down in Houston are not going to be happy about this. Believe you me.

Have bag will travel.

What's a poor space walking scientist to do?

Metta.

Speaking of 40,000 year old primates, then, one day he saw three baboons. They were part of a Russian tribe living in his neighborhood. This is how it happened around dawn. 

A blond corn-plaited hairy one stuck her head out of a 5th story window and spit. She watched the spittle fly past trees and SPLAT! on the pavement. 

She looked around and they saw each other. She smiled. Her upper teeth were small and sharp. She started jabbering in her strange language. Her sounds, her words were questions. She wanted to know something.

Here is a rough translation.
“Where do you come from?”
“Are you alone?”

"Do you have money?"
“Do you want sex?”
She made many sounds but that’s the essence. Baboon language is simple and direct.

He just stared at her and smiled. She smiled. They smiled at each other.

She disappeared. A moment later she returned with two friends. One had dark hair, very hard eyes and big floppy breasts. She shook them side to side while speaking to him. 

“Look at these watermelons,” she said.
They were heavy fruit.

Another baboon joined them. She was blond with sapphire eyes and straight hair with short spiked bangs. Her oval face smiled and she stuck out her tongue. A shiny silver post glistened from the middle. Laughing like a child, she rolled her tongue around, up and out like a little snake. Every now and then a snake needs to find a cave.  

She appeared to be the most playful one in the group. 

All three stared at him and jabbered again, making suggestions and questions with their inarticulate yet clearly understood sounds.

“Where are you from?”
Blah, blah, blah.
“How old are you?”
"Do you have money?"
“Do you want sex?”

The plaited hair one got halfway out on the narrow balcony and crouched down, opening her legs. She started riding an imaginary wild mustang. Her eyes and face assumed a state of ecstasy. 

The one with hard eyes started gesturing with her hand, massaging empty space. He stared at this spectacle and smiled.

They laughed. The power of suggestion. 

The silver posted one kept smiling and flicking her tongue in and out, like breathing.

They were full of energy and wanted some action. Such amazing, funny and strange wild baboons!

Metta.

People here love to look back. It is a passion. It is a genetic molecule of fear, doubt and uncertainty. Perhaps also just a plain childish innocent curiosity of wanting the past, needing.

Yes. Focus on needs, not wants. Needs manifesting their desire. A desire for a ghost. We are all passing through. 

They look back to see if they see, yes, in their vivid reptilian imagination a ghost. Their ghost. A ghost from a family, friend, lost. Looking for clues at their personal ground zero. 

They've arrived from distant galaxies. Java man was discovered here 40,000 years ago.

So it figures, accepting an evolutionary premise, their DNA star chart continues its genetic dance today. 

I live in talking monkey zones. They eat rice. They drink water. They wash one set of clothing and hang it out to dry on poles. They burn down the forest. They harvest brooms. Their shamans bring rain. Tropical downpours allow people the luxury to wash cars. 

They use their faint star energy to look, not really seeing, behind them wondering, all the wondering. 

Food is cheap here. Medicine and education is expensive. This has nothing to do with simians. It has nothing to do with the two women sitting in a dark warung neighborhood food joint. The warung faces a tall cinder block wall. Chickens, goats and cats prowl, peck and forage through garbage and dreams.

One woman sits quietly in a deep meditation. Her friend parts her hair gently, looking for minute insects, cleaning her scalp. They take turns cleaning and inspecting. This genetic behavior is being repeated in zoos, jungles, and rain forests. Chattering oral story tellers play the gamelan, pounding out 40,000 year old tunes.

Healing the people with music.

Males wash their little toy machines. They study the accumulated grime under long yellow curling fingernails. They play chess along the road waiting for passengers. Some visit the warung to chat up the girls or eat spicy rice mixed with tofu, chicken, veggies, green chillies and deep fried snacks.

Here's one man building a brave new world. Forging new futures with a patriotic purpose. An assessment on process in a data based star cluster.

Metta.

She was an angel looking down on the human world from a great height. She floated where material concerns and possessions did not matter in the big picture. 

She remembered standing at attention at basic training in another century with Senior Drill Sergeant Roger That screaming in her face, “You’d better keep the big picture in mind you bunch of dumb shits. What I’m telling you may save your sweet ass.” They practiced eating dust, killing ghosts and lethal hand-to-hand combat. The quick and the dead.

It was one of those crucial survival messages she was blessed to receive in her short sweet life. Before they packed her off to a hot humid Asian jungle where she gobbled rice with her hands, moved with the speed of a reptile, swam with leeches sucking her blood, connected all her senses into a single bright sharp clarity, maintained her ironic detached sense of humor and kept her mean machine clean. 

She’d rotated out of the jungle and just kept on going. 

They pinned medals on her in sweltering Saigon, she caught a freedom flight, confronted bitter cold in thin tropical khakis dashing across an Alaskan tarmac, then flew to the City by the Bay. A sergeant offered her a steak dinner. 

She muttered, “Screw the steak, give me a fresh dress green uniform and I’m back to Colorado.”

Airborne, airmobile to Denver she became an exile with a degree in Silence and Cunning. Surrounded by the living dead. Wandering Ghost material.  She’d evolved through the first of many metaphysical windows. It was impermanence; one life, no plan and many adventures. Restless was her masterful mistress. Movement and silence. 

She eased out at the Spanish summit to breath deep - receiving freezing cold gray and black clouds. They gave her the threads she needed then and there in the wilderness. They were a security blanket around her shoulders and she weaved them into a fine piece of work. 

She started descending toward the Penon Grande mountains above Lacilbula where she’d sit down doing her winter weaving travail. 

Immediately after arriving at her small space it started pouring. Coming down. Reminded her of Nam monsoons. Nature’s rain turned to violent hail, welcoming her to a new sanctuary in the old Roman pueblo. She welcomed the transition.

Inch deep hail accumulated on patio plants. She’d been warned it had the highest rainfall in Andalucia. The weather turned bitter cold for a week. 

“Unseasonable,” said a woman neighbor near a rose bush outside her cobalt blue Moorish door. 

She settled into an intimate furnished two room space with plastered stone walls, no central heating, a patio with 20 plants and delicious orange and lemon trees. Simplicity, serenity and sanctuary.

Metta.

Drum. Dance inside the forest. Baka Beyond. Senses engaged. 

You have a responsibility to your imagination.

"There are two kinds of people in the world," said a child playing near a construction site on Java.

"What?"

"There are people who want to blame you and people who want to distract you."

"Heavy."

"Yes, this life construction project is a heavy duty process. Pick it up, carry it around. Put it down."

"Sounds like a bag of bones, if you ask me," said a tribal musician playing a skin.

"You are a rainbow of light."

"Yes, we cut through desire, habit and fear."

"This is the beauty and clarity of music and dance. Welcome to the forest."

Metta.

after seven years of butterflies

in Africa

when he was renovating a home 

in a tight white myopic minded pueblo

full of poor greedy peasants

counting their pesetas

under low ceilings, behind Moorish doors with small openings for sabers stabbing 

opposing onslaught weak weakened warriors forces

unrolling their bankrolled visions on interior geometrically perfect tiled walls

white crochet nimble fingers

lentils, brown bread, yellow cheese

old black and white portraits 

of grandfathers from 1936 civil war years 

feasts or famine centuries cover walls 

eating grass soup 

grandmothers doing their white 

crochet handicrafts wearing fingernails 

down to the bone into the lentil soup it goes, 

under watchful framed wedding dress prop straits remembering how it was running the bull

beneath gladiolas spilling their blood

for tourist images

framed children kicking 

a ball off spic n’ span white 

walled fortifications of Christian church bells, 

round crypts, plastic bleeding flowers blooming 

rocky Roman roads, small tilled inhospitable fields, 

wild lemons, oranges, expatriates looking for a deal

stealing

narrow corridors

lost in Andalusian Sierra wilderness

angel flew away to regain herself

at new homeopathic remedy elevations

along with vultures, griffins

catching free thermals 

from dreary english weather patterns

in flip flops halter top leathered skin

manicured nails

rich parents

necessities become luxuries