Bantey Kdei - Ta Phrom by Rita

Evidence of intelligent life on Earth is exaggerated. It’s a rumor and a myth. Sit still long enough and you’ll see/hear some wild, anxiety filled conversations. Filled with interruptions.

Barbarian Voice monkeys interrupt each other. They cancel each other out. It’s an endemic social disease  ... short attention span? No problem. People love to be understood before they understand. This explains their emotional fear, lack of focus and anxiety. Roll your bones. Love my bones, said a t-shirt in Sapa, Vietnam.

Who’s dragging around this bag of bones, said Leo.

We are a bundle of pure sensations, said Zeynep. It is a path of authenticity.

That’s been the problem on the trip, said an American girl on a work-study NGO program in Cambodia, No one’s giving us change. Hahaha.

Change comes from within.

400 Khmer mothers and their children wait outside the Children’s Hospital to get a free pain killer pill. The placebo is blue and free. Orange pain pills cost $1. Few can afford orange. Life is a painkiller.

Sound-symbol-sign-word.

Rita and storytellers explored Banteay Kdei and Ta Phrom.

Kdei is perfect for walking and swallowing dust. A sun yellow butterfly led the way. It explored the perimeter sensing jungle and stone perspectives. Wandering outside temples gives you the feeling of natural space acknowledging deep green forests, said Rita, I do this at every temple, it’s rare to see tourists explore the outside, because intelligence and curiosity and taking risks on Earth is rare.

Tourist sheep are in a disciplined hurry. They march along following other sheep on broken stone paths. They wander around, make a lot of noise, pose for pictures and march out. The bus is leaving for another temple.

They look serious and sad. Unhappy people in a happy world.

They are controlled by unknown unconscious diabolical forces. It’s the silent ticking mechanism on their wrist near a pulse saying faster.

Leo shared a Tibetan truth  ...  

I would rather be a tiger for one day than a sheep for a thousand years.

Rita and friends explored gentle forest winds. It’s a slow walking meditation.

I engaged all my senses, said Leo.

Thick dust is a welcome relief after stones, said Tran.

I am light and shadows dancing through leaves, said Devina.

All nature all the time, said Zeynep.

Butterfly leads me into interior passages and shadow play experiences, said Rita. Butterfly shows me mysterious art and deep unconscious space, it takes one life to reach the center and then you’re back where you started, amazing  ...  Ha-ha.

It’s a long walk, said Devina.

Prohm is where the most famous photographed tree on planet Earth grows, said Rita. It entwines itself around and through soft stones. It’s a zoo as idiots line up to take a photo, pushing and shoving and jostling to have their picture taken with the tree and roots as Italian, French and German tongues wag like mongrels in heat.

Life is a bitch, said a sad tourist focusing their plastic toy.

The Japanese and Chinese are total image addicts. Obsessed with posing in doorways and passages with carvings, plants, ferns and leaves and tall trees, thick brown and green gnarled roots above the surface, scary monster leaves they find yellow, black, red, golden butterflies to be overwhelming.

We don’t have this beauty at home they lament. We have cement.

Tourists on their great quest feel the experience with their cameras. They behave like the temples are a Dizzy Land amusement park.

Shatter their illusions with the power of laughter, said Rita.

And silence, whispered Omar.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

 

Preah Khan, Clean Water, Burma

Ta Som is a compact temple with a laterite enclosed wall and well preserved gopuras or entrance buildings. The feeling is intimate. I wander quiet and peaceful. I evaporate into deep meditative silence. Birds sing through shadow light. Pure magic.

Preah Khan, constructed in 1191, is wonderful. Inscriptions refer to a lake of blood and a story about a battle when the Khmer killed the Cham king and expelled them.

It is one of the largest and most lightly visited temples at Angkor. It is a fusion temple with Mahayana Buddhism featuring equally sized doors and cardinal directions.

The Hindu deities, Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma are present. Receding smaller doors emphasize unequal nature.

It was a religious university with 1,000 Buddhist monks in the 12^th century. It has four long main corridors, a central shrine, ancient columns, libraries, hidden mazes, delightful light play and detailed Apsara dancer carvings.

I am a dust collector, like Tran. I wander with ancient stone stories where people created life.

Sacrifice. Prayer. Art. Celebration. Ceremony.

The carved dancers are transported by inner visions.

They perceive beauty and serene wisdom.

The nature of the process is the process of the nature.

The unconscious is integrated into your life.

*

A team of Australian nurses had a medical briefing at Jasmine. The head nurse asked them for the biggest problem they’ve seen in Siem Reap communities the last two weeks.

“It’s dehydration. It’s the loss of electrolytes (salt). Malnutrition is also a concern.”

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

One billion people on Earth do not have access to clean water. This is an unpleasant fact.

*

Three middle-aged Americans and two 28-year-old girls arrive at Jasmine. They sit on soft cushions. One is the man’s niece. The girls just arrived from a horrendous long bus ride from Bangkok.

The man is soft spoken. He’s an Asian tour guide. He reminds me of Robert Thurman, the Tibetan scholar. His wife is an attorney in Portland, Oregon and originally from Michigan.

She deals with suits. No one at breakfast is wearing a suit. I know her job because of the way she cross-examines the two girls.

An older woman with regal bearing is with them. She is patient, kind and asks intelligent questions. She lives in Eugene, Oregon with one of the girls.

The older woman grew up in Eugene, attended Portland State College and loved Italian. She moved to Rome for six years. She came back and got her M.A. in Italian and Foreign Languages at the University of Oregon. She taught Italian until retiring.

The attorney said, “I was only able to get away for two weeks. My boss said, ‘What happens if someone sues someone and you’re not here to handle the case?’”

The older woman said, “It was just coincidence I ended up back in Eugene. It was hard growing up there.”

“Why?” said Attorney.

“It was the late 40's. We didn’t have enough to eat. It was only steak and they cooked it to a cinder. It was that and potatoes or one brand of rice. I remember my mother and father loading us in the car and we’d drive to San Francisco to buy food.”

“To sell?” asked the attorney. The older woman looked at her.

“No. To eat.” She’s thinking in Italian, Mama Mia. What a crazy question.

The group talks about the bus, lodgings, expenses and border hassles. The girls are dead tired. They compare travel stories. One girl just completed a month teaching English in Burma. She found a job through a foreign woman running a tour company.

“Yes,” said the man, “there are people there who know The System. Where did you teach?”

“I didn’t teach school. I taught teachers.”

The man knows Burma. “I see. The authorities are very suspicious of foreigners. It’s difficult to really get to know the people.”

“I hoped to spend time with the Burmese in their home but it was forbidden,” said the girl.

I see the girl teaching a class of Burmese “teachers.” Half work for a government agency designed to acquire western educational pedagogical plans so they can push students through a looking glass into an alternate universe.

In the universe is a white rabbit saying I'm Late! I'm Late, a smoking caterpillar, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, tea parties, a grinning Cheshire cat and a fat Burmese female named Imperial Jade waving a jeweled sword yelling, Off With Their Heads!

The other teachers are the secret police.

Big Bother Brother runs the school. Into the ground, said the girl. Then she fell asleep. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Feel Experience With Camera

How many tourists only see through their camera/cell phone? Millions.

According to Rita, They feel the experience of 8th century Angkor artistic splendor with their cold impersonal little tools. Their experience is defined by camera. Obscura.

It’s not about understanding the Khmer people, culture, food, art, music, and language. It’s about feeling with a camera. They are in a big fat hurry.

They’ve learned through hard fast lessons to trust the machine. It is their weapon against mediocrity and boredom and alienation and shallow emptiness. They don’t comprehend the intricacies outside the machine. They believe the machine will save them.

The machine controls them.

They accept this reality. They give up their consciousness.

They press optical machines tight against their faces, piercing retinas, flickering lids. Point and shoot. They lower the device and stare with hard lost eyes at the image of their transient memory. They judge it. Evaluate. Crimp. DELETE.

Shoot again  ... point  ... shoot  ... delete  ... repeat  ... a snapshot  ... snap a shot  ... preserve this moment forever  ...  Quick  ... they must go  ... to the next great big thing  ... they are in a hurry  ... Death is closer than white on rice.

The tuk-tuk driver is a happy man. He waits as they stuff eggs, watermelon and soft bread into tired bored faces. They eat like starving animals.

They run in, around and out of the temples.

They point shoot and delete.

Hurry. They have no time to see their obscurity. This loss and sense of amnesia envelops them. It accompanies them through electromagnetic radioactive meltdowns. It is a dark cloud of forgetting. They remember to forget.

They are on a Homeric quest of infinite grandeur and infinite magnitude.

Their memory card is full. They attach electrodes to a cerebral cortex and press the DownLoad switch. Memories of Apsara dancers, elephants, monkeys, temples and celestial deities flicker on a screen behind their eyes.

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion smiles. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Celebration

In a Hindu cremation ceremony on Bali in an archipelago surrounded by oceans where every day is a celebration I released Martha Ann. She never experienced 14 of anything.

Blessed by her spirit.

Free form, free spirit in a free world,

Where will you finish your journey?

After rubbing you down with holy water, rice flour

turmeric, salt, vinegar, sandalwood

we put shards of mirrored glass on your eyes

pieces of steel on your teeth

a gold ring with a ruby on your mouth

jasmine flowers on your nostrils

iron nails on your four limbs

symbols of your perfect senses

reincarnation will bring you back

stronger, more perfect

wrapped in tight ceremonial fabric

we laid you on a straw mat tied to a bamboo platform         

placed in a tower representing

the underworld, the visible world, the heavens

behind a rattan Black Bull beast

village women

balancing offerings of fruit,

rice, vegetables

led you through the village of Pedang Tagal

carriers laugh, sing, dance, spinning you

in circles to confuse spirit ghosts

crowds throw water on the ancient Bull

they cut the bull open at Monkey Forest

place you inside

Brahmin priest in black cuts

white binding string

pours water from clay pots inside

smashes them on the ground

sprinkles flowers, soil and family items inside

replaces the Black Bull’s back

final fire begins

you float to holy sky united to karmic force!

is it true this maya this illusion

this transformation this celebration

Her spirit dances beyond the great beyond. I spread her floating ashes on the sea.

Accept loss forever.

Grief is the origin of poetry

The Greeks knew the three most dangerous goddesses were the Fates called Moirai.

Homer called them “spinners of the thread of life.”

Clotho the birth goddess spins the thread of life.

Lachesis measures the length allocating the amount of time to each person.

Atropos cuts the thread.

Anyone resisting them faced Nemesis, Goddess of Justice.

Fates spin out our lives fusing art and language.

Fates dance.

Fire spirit welcomes sun, rain, life energies.

WE salute the sun every dawn. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Martha’s Zen Card

I am a short story.

You are a novel.

It never occurred to Matt to buy indigenous cultural music while traveling.

Martha his girlfriend considered it essential.

Music made her edgy and alive.

When she heard music she danced.

She returned to her primitive self.

She danced naked.

Ballet. Flamingo. Tango. Cha-cha. Lambada. Waltz.

He wrote naked verbs. They loved naked. Naked cherished syllable skin music.

They wrote danced and lived like they were dead.

One day they will be. It's now or never.

They were free. It's the way to be.

Culture is what you are. Culture means you can forget.

Nature is what you can be.

People are nature's tools.

Passing through Body Sat Quiet in Asia on a three week, “Look, don’t think” holiday from frozen Europe they happened into an 8th century tourist town music repository.

They smelled music before they saw it. Seeing music is an art form. Synesthesia.

In music like life the end of the composition is not the point.

A music boy handed Matt an orange book. Write your melodic request here. Matt opened the book. A vignette floated free.

An orphan girl popped out of blank pages: I am sorry. Goodbye and good luck to you and your family. These are our famous last words. Big vocabulary. Tongues speak. Small life. Big chance. Yeah. Yeah.

The Hunger Angel watched 24/7 in the big leagues.

Sanitation workers in green environmental vests with broom music swept streets for the New Year. Make it new. Make it new.

We should be so lucky to have crystal clean sheets.

Every day is a new year.

One day is like a minute.

One minute is like a day.

That's relativity. All my relatives are dead.

Never trust an atom. They make up everything.

When you know what you don't know you realize character with social intelligence, integrity, humor and courage.

Courage is an unknown word in our head and heart. Running away is our way. Every day I have the blues. No one loves me but my mother and she could've been lying too.

You absolve in the rhythm when you have adequate life experience.

Silence and hunger are identical naked twins.

Fear and Ignorance produce Expectation & Greed.

I am good at two things:

Eating and sleeping.

Fighting and fucking.

Laughing and crying.

Reading and writing? That's for idiots.

The less I do the fewer mistakes I make, said Insecurity.

The fewer mistakes I make the less I am criticized, said Fear.

It's easier to do nothing, said Doubt.

We know the essence of survival. Keep your fucking mouth shut.

One day, Bliss’s part-time lover said, buy me a TV.

NO.

You have a job, a mother, a 12-year old daughter, two brothers, no father and no husband. I gave you money to buy a bike for your daughter and she lost it, money for clothes, money for medicine, money for food, money for temporary naked lust and currency sobriety. You play me for a fool. You’re fucking crazy.

Her arrival was sporadic at best. She visited at 8:37 for a shower, fucking and another shower.

He explored her lips, thin neck, small ears, crest of skin throat, narrow brown shoulders, pinpoint breasts with tongue talk, flat belles letters, long legs and played his way into her valley of potential.

He loved giving her oral pleasure.

Edging rose lips long and deep.

Slow sweet.

Little man in a boat sang, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

She reciprocated playing his bone flute.

Riding the pony, priming her G spot grinding hard and fast she exploded with precision and extra ambition whispering, Give me a baby. Give me a baby.

He deferred chromosomes. Fat fucking chance, there's no way under the tropical son I'll give you anything but short time, money, temporary love and the high hard one in your strike zone with runners in scoring position.

Here’s the pitch.

She stayed until 9:45 and left for work at an upscale spa wearing aromatic Grecian urns. He gave her 20 bones. Feed me.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Get out of my life, said Telepathy. You are subservient and I am stupid to put up with this shit. He creased her indifference into a cumulus cloud. It rained goodbye and good luck.

She sat on the bed with her back to him. Sniffle, sniffle.

Her fake tears formed rivers named Regret and Hopelessness and Indifference.

Fish behind twelve Lao dams to provide electricity to Thailand fed 60 million Asians downstream in deltas.

His NO created black-eyed daggers. They stabbed him with hatred, loss, self-pity, violence and starvation. Revenge is best served cold with DNA.

They put on death masks.

Your mask eats your face.

They walked out into tropical heat. Separate directions.

Waves of loneliness shuffled down a broken street. Children dying of malnutrition at a health clinic on the coroner of Hope cried as desperate mothers received free blue placebos.

The day after tomorrow belongs to orphans and lucky losers with Wabi-Sabi.

Wabi - the beauty of the most ordinary circumstances and objects.

Sabi - feel one's own sharp existence.

Martha and Gratitude danced through life.