04.30.08
The Land of a Million Elephants
I’m sitting in an internet shop in
04.29.08
Siam…
I’m sitting in an internet shop in a metro station in Bangkok, Thailand. I leave on the night train for Laos in a few hours, the time has come when finally I get to take a night train. 
Well, the land of the King and I has caught me completely off guard. I heard it was modern but I really had no idea. Of course, I’ve not been into the countryside, but comparing it to Vietnam and Cambodia… The differences are stunning. The metro is clean and fast; it scans little black plastic tokens to know your destination and calculate your fare. In addition to the two metro lines, there’s also a skytrain. Between all of them, you can get most places in the city without hiring a taxi; though there are many if you so desire. It’s a thousand times nicer than the New York subway, I’m pretty much in awe. Public transport! Then there are the malls…mind, I haven’t bought anything but the architecture is simply stunning. Then there are the small additions like a smoothie shop stuck in a little ledge overlooking a central area where live musicians are playing ambient music. Yes, live musicians. I almost went to watch a movie but then decided not to. But while hunting down the theater, I stumbled across the ice skating rink but alas my feet were too big. My feet, too big in Asia, go figure. Basically, everything about the malls here is about twenty times cooler than the malls back home. Even the stores are more open and flow with the building rather than take up blocks of it. It all works out very nicely. The city is a strange mixture of modern and ancient, but somehow it works. It’s what an American city might be without the flight to suburbia; hip, trendy, and supported by a good infrastructure. Then again, I’ve been here the whole of maybe fourteen hours, first impressions can be very wrong.
04.22.08
simplicity
when you want less, where do you go? what do you do? how do you feel less, think less? how do you purge your being of all the everything which fills you up?
I am over-ful. not the biblical overflowing, but too full. feeling so much all the time it makes me tired. i am grieving. i recognized that today. grieving a lot of things, again. the loss of innocence. the end of my honors project. the end of college. the end of living at home. “I am tired in my heart” I wrote on my paper many weeks ago, and I am.
my feelings are bubbling, stewing, percolating, mulling. the simmer on the edge of my consciousness, drawing the mental and emotional energy like blood draws leeches, or maybe like leaves draw sunlight. i can’t feel anything, fully. its all subdued. enough to hurt a lot but not enough to lean into and soak in and process through. instead it just sits. i wonder if she and he feel this way a lot?
Groceries suggests that every city has a word that drives it. NYC’s word is success. Paris’ is romance. Rome’s is sex. each person also has a word. hers is a sanskrit word that means “one who lives on the edge of the woods” a metaphoric and proverbial location for someone who does not quite belong to the town and lingers at the edges of the unknown. my word is ambiguous: pulled in two directions. i can think and feel such opposite things all at once. Its amazing and heady and enlightening and exhausting. i am just a small woman in a big world, a pebble on a beach, a leaf in a forest. wow.
if i am forever in love with opposites, will i ever be content? can i?
i want to push it all out. purge myself of all the mud inside me. the emotionl mishmash of twigs and bark and worms and dirt and water. if i am to sit in the middle of chaos, let it be the eye of the storm, the quiet balanced center. i want the simple life. to feel light and open, empty to the world and the sky. one mass of atoms and quarks and cells breathing air through me like water passes through baby’s breath, entwining life-giving oxygen with each individual cell before moving past. a stream of light which does not linger, but leaves me empty and pure
swearing off things doesn’t help. the restlessness is here. the irritation and chaos and misplaced tears. i want to run for miles, but i don’t. i want to feel like i think i would after running for miles. light.
bleeding it out. what a metaphor. as my body releases a dream in long drops of blood, the rest of me longs to release the dreams that are not to be. just let go, damn it! let it leak out and have its time of mourning. tomorrow is a new day. there will be water to drink and salt and meat to eat, replacing the necessities i have lost. thank God for abundance. thank God for enough.
04.15.08
hope
“…for the flowers”
“My hope is built on nothing less…”
“…because the greatest thing of all is always hope…”
“…I simply remember my favorite things”
sunshine, breeze, billowing curtains, flowy fabric, a lawnmover in the distance, jingling dog collars, solemn stone, patterned paper, ideas, journals, scents, twinkling lights, new tulips that look like fire in their red and gold, noisy birds, Brave Saint Saturn, Sailor Moon’s new theme song that makes me bounce every single time I hear it, waterfalls in the moonlight, wisps of blue mist in a forest, fairy wings, rolicking pirate songs, Captain Jack Sparrow, pouncing cats, fleece blankets, mint green 3 ring binder for my honors project, scarves, jewelry, narnia, ainulindali, luthien’s song in the spring, lorien, tapestries, photos and paintings that make you feel like you’re there in that place, fairy weddings, flower petals on my face, beautiful strings of words, imagination, tree skeletons, cold water, warm rain, thunderstorms, sand melted by lightning, environmentally friendly stapler that look like black turds, my rings of beauty and power, late nights in the back of the center smiting evil FOR GREAT JUSTICE, building towers with dice, eating peanut butter, juice, studio ghibli
“hope is what you do” said the speaker a couple weeks ago. maybe. yes, probably. but its also happens to me. in my rush to marbeck when the wind pounces on my exposed face, drawing my eyes to the stars, i hope. every time that nutty new Sailor Moon theme song plays i bounce and smile without meaning to. hope is built into our world, just like forgiveness. and the desolation of it has never been more or less horrific. the responsibility has never been more or less significant. but the joy of seeking out hope in the ugliness has every bit as much power as finding the joy.
wanting isn’t always good enough to change something external. but it is always enough to shift the fabric of the universe, the connected spirit of the world.
i am deeply grateful to the world and to hope for finding me once in a while
04.07.08
Fresh Kills and the Killing Fields
During the Cambodian New Year festival next week, I’m going to travel to the homeland of my Khmer language teacher, Uong Sam Ang. There, he has promised to take me to a “killing field”; one of hundreds of sites which dot the country where the Khmer Rogue slaughtered their own people. Some have great shrines containing the bleached skulls of the slain, some are overgrown and abandoned, and some others have been built over in the name of progress. Most have one thing in common, the possessions and remains of the slain slowly poking up from the soil as the rain and wind erodes it away.
The February 2008 edition of the Sojourners magazine contains an article entitled At the Hour of Our Death.
Over my anger and sorrow, more than anything, I am sickened.
The article talks about how efforts to recover the bodies of the victims of the September 11th
The debris was taken to the Fresh Kills landfill. There, it was supposedly searched carefully for human remains. Repeatedly, the New York Mayor’s Office issued statements promising that the debris was being sifted down to a quarter of an inch. However, according to Department of Sanitation records, more than 200,000 tons of debris that was sent to the landfill was never sifted, never searched, its location in the landfill never even recorded. It was just dumped and covered by a foot of soil.
The ‘scoop and dump’ method was for clearing the site, not recovering the dead. Earthmovers and steam shovels scooped up debris at Ground Zero and dumped it in trucks that took it to barges. It was floated up the Arthur Kill tidal strait and then trucked to the Fresh Kills Landfill to be sifted for remains and personal effects. According to the sworn testimony of workers there, whole bodies were still in the wreckage. Taylor Recycling’s site supervisor for the Fresh Kills sifting job, Eric Beck, testified in conjunction with a lawsuit the Word Trade Center Families have bought against the city of New York, “I vividly remember our finding a man’ s full chest and the full body of a man still dressed in a suit.” Beck also testified that Department of Sanitation workers were told to take the “fines” (the sifted, screened, and washed soil) – in effect the cremated remains of WTC victims – and use them to pave roads and fill in potholes.
Don’t be impressed with the efficiency of the city of
“We began to realize that human remains were in the debris when human body parts began to be found in the debris that had been sifted,” testified sanitation worker Theodore Feaser, “and when the sifted and bulldozed debris was suddenly subjected to droves of seagulls that swooped down, attracted by the human body parts contained therein.”
If the sifted debris contained human remains, what of the 200,000 tons of debris that vanished into the landfill? The bodies of over a thousand victims were never recovered, forty percent of those who died probably ended up in a garbage dump or as filling for the pot holes of
No, no. No. The Fresh Kills landfill is unlined, having been constructed before lining was made mandatory by law. As erosion slowly wears away at the layer of top soil, among household trash and twisted steel, human remains are being exposed.
WHAT IS THIS? The most powerful country on earth can’t bother to bury its own dead? Human remains are thrown into a garbage dump? No. Not just any human remains, the victims of the tragedy that has dominated American politics for seven years.
This was all done under the Giuliani administration. It was by the order of that administration that recovery efforts at Ground Zero were ended once the gold was removed, that funds for the recovery effort were diverted into the city’s coffers, that for the sake of political expediency bodies of victims were thrown into a garbage dump, that used the ashes of the dead to fill potholes… Then, they have the gall to promote themselves as the heroes of 9/11. The audacity of that man, to dare to run for President on the merit of his response to 9/11. The only word I can find to describe such an act is evil.
The money was there. The time was there. The public was far beyond supportive. The motivation for so dishonoring the dead and taking such disgusting shortcuts was…was… What was it? Mere political maneuvering?
Here, you expect it. It is still horrifying, but the scars are apparent all around you and you brace yourself for the sight of the soil vomiting up the dead. Never. Never, in my wildest imaginings would I have thought that there was a place in modern
Anymore, politicians all play the 9/11 card, but I guess we just need to walk down to the local dump to see just how much of a f*** they really give.
Can we please, please, please just all stop supporting, empowering, voting for these wicked evil people? Democrats, Republicans… I see little real difference between them. THEY DON’T CARE. THE ONLY THING THEY CARE ABOUT IS POWER. Isn’t a democracy suppose to be about choices? Why have we been content with a selection, not a choice? It’s a rare thing when either party gives us a leader of substance rather than style, can we please just turn our backs on them and pick people whose beliefs are more than just rhetoric to get the vote? Please?
04.05.08
Telekinesis for pleasure and profit
Most people think that telekinesis is out of their reach, quite literally, and never even to brother considering the benefits of dabbling in such a skill. While it’s true that open use of telekinesis carries some risk; often causing one to become the subject of a witch-hunt or, alternatively, driven insane as everyone around them mentally dismisses the reality of their awesome powers, subtle manifestations of telekinesis can have some resounding and delightful benefits for the even the most average person.
Consider the case of…we’ll call him ‘Lance’, a friend of mine who unwittingly possesses telekinetic ability… For years, ‘Lance’ has worked diligently as a professional delician; slicing ham, turkey, and other meats for the consummation of the masses. Isn’t it strange to reflect that in all of that time, ‘Lance’ has never once lost a limb? The truth is that his subconscious has generated a telekinetic field around him, protecting him from the spinning wheel of sundering. This subconscious ability of his has been refined during long airsoft skirmishes where, remarkable for the sheer number of times he has been shot, he has never once lost an eye.
Telekinetic fields are only the beginning of what can be accomplished by even surprisingly average people with telekinesis. Tired of high gas prices? With some practice and a lot of caution, using telekinesis to accelerate continental drift can move you closer to your destination at speeds of up to 10 centimeters a year. Did one of your friends get the better of you with a snarky comeback? Telekinesis can help you to get the upper hand, just imagine, “Why George…did you forget how to tie your shoelaces in such a fashion that they would not come undone after a mild walk? How quaint.” Just think of all you can do socially with telekinesis, why with proper usage it can even cure the hiccups, cause someone to choke in middle of dinner giving you the chance to play heimlich hero -this is a great way to impress ladies, especially if the chokee is their father-, and handily snatch dungeon keys just when you were about to do something really absurd, like bribe a horse to get them for you with an apple.
While telekinesis can be difficult to learn initially, once you get the hang of it, the skies the limit. There are those who scoff, praising technological progress and calling telekinesis a waste of imagination, but how many of them can levitate the entire world with their mind?
04.04.08
Caravan Hearts
I was grumbling to my good friend Doctor Casey about the truly heart wrenching tragedy that Dragon Quest Monsters 3: Caravan Heart never made it to West. As I vented my deepest frustration and pain at this, explaining how difficult it had proven for me to play the game in Japanese…which, I did manage to do with the NES Final Fantasy 3…he quietly, humbly, sent me a link to a freshly completed translation. So, in my downtime, I’ve been able to play the last Dragon Warrior game made by Enix before it merged with Squaresoft. Excellent times.
Several years ago, my brother Ben and I double teamed the original Dragon Warrior Monsters as we had double teamed Pokemon Blue before it. At the time, we didn’t have two Gameboys nor two game cartridges, but it was still a great deal of fun to hand off the gameboy and raise monsters together. Later, after he moved to Arizona, we both played Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 but unfortunately he soon outpaced me, though the opposite was true for Pokemon Gold. I have to admit that playing through Caravan Heart makes me a bit melancholy, I miss my little brother…even if he doesn’t miss me. 
In other news, since I’m living in Asia, I decided it was time for me to begin dispelling the notion that all those crazy RPG villages are just fantasy. I’ll start with a simple village square…but there’s a floating village up on the tonle sap, a mountainside temple in Ba Phnom, and many another sight that might just surprise you…or not.
The new theme song of my life.
No Phone
Cake
No phone No phone I just want to be alone today No phone no phone Ringing stinging Jerking like a nervous bird Rattling up against his cage Calls to me thoughout the day See the feathers fly No phone No phone I just want to be alone today No phone No phone No phone no phone I just want to be alone today Rhyming chiming got me working all the time Gives me such a worried mind Now I don't want to seem unkind But god (it's such a crime) No phone No phone I just want to be alone today No phone no phone No phone No phone I just want to be alone today No phone no phone Shaking quaking Waking me when I'm asleep Never lets me go too deep Summons me with just one beep The price we pay is steep I've been on fire And yet I've still stayed frozen So deep in the night My smooth contemplations will always be broken My deepest concerns will stay buried and unspoken No I don't have any change but here's a few subway tokens No phone No phone I just want to be alone today No phone No phone No phone no phone I just want to be alone today No phone no phone No phone No phone I just want to be alone today No phone No phone