(AD 2000)
The bones of Cambodia, it's an old story, Pol Pot and his destruction: for the living to live among the dead … A few years back (AD, 2000) my wife and I, we are traveling in Cambodia within sight of Pol Pot's desolation of the '70s, where He had over a million of his countrymen put to death our guide-Kim, middle aged, strong-shouldered, his eyes like wide-open sea windows, Very patient, as if endlessly enduring, a slight Paleness to his face, weighty hair, We are in a fenced-in section of the once famous, "Killing Fields" the hole I am looking into, twenty-thousand bodies were thrown into-, nearby is a glassed-in aquarium likened to A small mausoleum: it slides open, I take out one of its 9000-skulls, of Pol Pot's Legacy; The whole area is really just a fenced in graveyard, with military police guarding it … a sad reminder! Bones of the dead see up to the surface of the soil, after rainy day, I know this for a fact, it had just rained, I pick one out of The soil, along with a red part of a blouse or shirt, "This Is common, "says Kim.
Under the mystery of this soil that resides here, that has woken up the world's once kept secret, Kim sees dimly through the deep layers of earth, he says: "I was among them, one of them, I was a grass eater, and It was my only nourishment, it was that or a merciless death (he says this all in an opulent voice-thankful to be alive, unashamed) We're pitch it, watch us like hounds in The cold-nearby, have us do certain jobs until we Dropped Dead, they seldom fed us. In the mornings, we drew in the fields, I'd run off into the high weeds, to know myself among the wild plants and bushes, eat Grass, return, get sick from dirrhea, malnutrition, or worse, but not defy the guards, for should I have shown the slightest resistance, With a blink of an eye, they're shoot you, but I survived. "
Then I got to thinking: how primitive, how primordial, he had turned back to some ancient orbit of time, that had seemed seemingly, Everlastingly, until one day, the mind woke up and said, 'I never thought I'd get down From this leafless tree 'not even knowing What took place. Anyhow, second thought: sometimes at one time we were all grass eaters: now refined to: grains, bread, noodles, Cereals and beers; But once upon a time-likened to the old fairy tales-nonetheless, we were all grass eaters: in essence, not all That much different.
At what point did we change? Who's to say? And does it matter? And for them that it does matter, may they scratch and crack the pits of time-and if they find out, to their Surprise or dismay, maybe they will conclude we are a newer found species, newer that is, than an older lost one : Who came Of age.
# 3366 / 6-30-2012