Laura from Canada

Holland, Amsterdam,
30 July 2010.

This is Laura from Canada, Vancouver I saw in the infamous long line of foreign visitors to Amsterdam, waiting for the Jewish lady whose messy death came to touch the whole world years and years after her death, a horrible death caused by the germanic Nazi hordes who needed a scapegoat for their European conquests...Wir brauchen ja Lebensraum!!!

Well, anyway, I have decided to keep this entry a simple one instead of focusing of the normal dramatic harshness of life itself that seems to have to be so prevalent in my blog stories...so lets stick to the fact that Laura was dressed in cut-off blue jeans, a huge hat covering her bright red manes and a green-colered bikini top, totally unaware of the Anne Frank House dress code...

Being a dertermined streetseller with years of experience with the fickle Amsterdam summer weather I always carry a second shirt with me during my ambulant street activities which I offered to Laura while expaining the rules for enterring the most famous Achterhuis in the whole of Amsterdam...

A coffee invitation and eventually much more were my reward but apart from the coffee that part is private...lets suffice to say that Lord Buddha smiled benevolently on my kindness...

When you get to read this, Laura, hope you arrived back home in Vancouver and enjoyed your short time in Amsterdam...

Two Thai monks

Two Thai monks in front of the original Anne Frank House

The Plight of the Karen People

Holland, Amsterdam,
26 June 2010.

I knew she was Karen the moment she came over and asked me for a drink, her roundish face a dead give-away reminding me of Nong in Krung Thep who herself is half Karen...

Now a drink in the land of the holy Thais is quite affortable to a reasonably well-off Farang like me so pas de problem there, and since I am always on the look-out for suitable models for my extensive collection of sketchbooks, it seemed only natural at the time I asked her for her life story while making a portrait of her...

This was in a small and obscure bar in Mae Sot, a small trading village on the Thai/Burmese border, surrounded by Karen refugee camps, fugetives from the frequent border skirmishes between an insane regime based in Ragoon at the time and weakening Karen resistence forces...my model was both a refugee and a female soldier fighting the hated Tatmadaw governement army...

Her name was Shere and she grew up in a typical dusty Karen village sharing her young life with semi-naked Karen toddlers running amok in the village's sandy streets while her parents were busy tending to the rice paddies under a scorcing hot sun up to twelve hours a day...

Getting her basic schooling under swaying Banyan trees from a woman so old she needed aid to walk to the village's dirty latrine but had the gift of languages and was the only one in a 500 hundert-plus community who could understand the marks on paper...

How one bad day when she was 13 years old, the feared Tatmadaw send an emissary telling the village elders they had to leave the land, not allowed to carry more then the necesary food and clothes on their bodies...about the long March to Thailand, the land mines on the way that ripped limps of fellow villagers, snakes and starvation and sneaking across the Thai border in the dark of night...

She told me about her illegal crossings back into Myanmar - or was it called Burma - fighting those she came to hate and despise while her fellow combatees were being ripped to pieces by the opponents bullets, the systematic burning of Karen villages, the rape at the hands of the enemy after having been captured and about her ordeal once she escaped, fleeing through a devilish jungle back to the safe haven of Thailand, taking a job as a simple bar girl to survive...

The story went on and on....it all came back to me last weekend when I found some pics of the Longneck Karen, a sub-tribe of the original Karen, which I drew in my sketchbook to distract myself after a heavy weekend full with booze and female attention...her name was Shere and she was only twenty-five years old...

A Thai monk at the Anne Frank House

Me and some of my customers, a Thai monk and his friend, at the Anne Frank House.

A rendez-vous with the Devine

Holland, Amsterdam,
22 July 2010.

They say that when you walk through the gates of Holy Jerusalem you will encounter the Devine...I might never have been to Jerusalem, let alone walk through the gates of this ancient city but I often feel like having a private rendez-vous with the spirits and ghosts that rule my sleeping hours when I drink dark red wine late at night, slowly getting melancholy in front of my telly, not understanding a word of what is getting on on the screen, talking heads turning into a misty background while I transport my drowsy semi-drunk mind to a higher plain of excistence...

The religious delusions of the fanatic devotees of God, Allah, Jesus Christ, Manitou or whatever one might call his personal chosen Higher being are way beyond me while I move to mental estates where voices of the past call out at me, "Why are you looking at me like that?"...."You are crazy, mister"...You are amazing, mister"...I move through dusty back alleys in thirds world cities where vomit and empty booze bottles are the norm and slutely dressed women eager to lure me inside obscure dark rooms where the matrasses are stained and dirty, the sperm remmannts of my predecessors clearly visible despite the dimly lit interior...

"Mister, all my friends have a game, I want a game too", the voice of a young Dutch boy bringing me back from beyond God's domain, back from the past - where was that, South America or maybe the dirty bars of Una Zona Nocturna in Mexico, maybe the voices of Phillipino Hunting Girls on Boracai or Pueto Gallera...whatever, game number thirty is sold and I am ready to go home, my body cold and clammy, shivering despite the hot Dutch summer weather...

Sub-conscious security, an exersize in infurtility.

Holland, Amsterdam,
18 july 2010.

I wake up with a start, the usual clammy feeling ruling my white Farang skin familiar and almost comfortable after all these years, the early rays of sun light filtering through my curtains telling me the unpredictable Dutch weather has finally turned for the better, telling me it is Mandala time again, time to go the world famous Anne Frank House and sell my Mandala games, make big Dinero for my planned three month stay this coming winter in King Bhumipol's Asian realm...

That mystic Kingdom ten hours of flying from my beloved Amsterdam but in Morpheus Kingdom it only needs closing my eyes and drifting off to the dream world...that equally mystic empire where only moments ago Miss Jiff was knocking on my door and bringing in more Hot Momma models from Pattaya's boulevard but whose misty eyes told me all there was to know about their mental state, Yaa-Baa and Mekhong having taken over their mental thinking...

For a moment there in that Morpheus ruled dream world the part of my f*cked-up mind I like to call Soul Of Mercy took over, making my blue shiners water but Miss Jiff knew nothing about Soul Of Mercy, thinking only about the reddish-colored pile of one hundert Baht notes she can make selling the artwork that will come out of my Farang hands, selling it on the boulevard to the Krung Thep Amataya that come to Pattaya during the weekends to get drunk on expensive Ballantine whiskey, or else to the expat community that are talked into buying by an experienced Thai Hot Momma greedy for Thai Baht so she can pay the rent, maybe another cheap bottle of Mekhong for my nutty models and three hundert Baht for another pill of mind dulling Yaa-Baa...

I guess that for me the concept of sub-conscious security is most definitely an exercize in infurtility, my dream world almost like a physical violation that cannot be undone though I have no right to complain...after all the mental harm done to these poor creatures of the night must be even worse...yeah, let's lapp it all up and get emotionally drained yet again and eventually when my time will come I will have to remember that in Death all questions will be answered...

Playing the Good Samaritan

Holland, Amsterdam,
14 July 2010.

Whenever I find the time I cycle over to the De Tweede Mijl, a homeless centre manned by a group of religious fanatics coming from the Dutch Hinterland, country-side Jesus freaks always willing to spread the Word of their Lord and Master, grasp the wonderfull Hand of Jesus Christ and you...r inmortal soul will be saved for ever, your life energy will rise to a higher excistence so beautifull it is beyond words....

I listen to their words of love and devotion, idolation to a higher Being that is invisible, untouchable, can't be experienced, though their convictions are unwavering, their never ending endeavours to convert me boring to the core....

But then I love sketching people from the streets and their are no better places in the cities of the world as these gathering places of the hopeless, the undereducated masses of the big town, those that have been spat out by the ruling elite, the rejects of the faithfull...

But the same faithfull who set up places like De Tweede Mijl, an opportumity to make merit, the perfect occasion to gain some "innocent" and lost souls for their Holy Master...

Go back to their big well-illuminated, well-heated expensive vilas in the Dutch hinterland after a long day of being the Holy Samaritan, boasting to their fellow church devotees about all the merit they have gained handing out supermarket donated food to the homeless poor masses of the Amsterdam streets...

The mockery of noicy dream imagery

Holland, Amsterdam,
13 July 2010.

As always I start the day with a steaming cup of instant coffee, slowly getting my shit together, preparing for the new day and as always vividly remembering the dreams from the past night, trying to capture them in my sketchbook though Morpheus dream world being totally incomprehensible to me...

Was it something from Khun Little-Sex-Obsessed-Monster with His images of the Devil's daughter who wanted to go Raw On The Straw with me...

King Alcohol screaming at me One Drink Is Too Many...One Hundert Drinks Not Enough...some sort of Devine wisdom there I guess...

Maybe it was that Crazy God called Allah who wants his devotees to bend forward Five times a day facing Mekka and showing their asses to the religious zealots in the next row while listening to Allah'U Akbar and Mohammed is his Profet coming out of noicy minareths...must get boring eventually having your eardrums invaded by the same mantras over and over again...

Somewhere in this whole mockery of noicy dream imagery that I got bombarded with last night I was back in my little one-person tent sleeping peacefully and completely dreamless after a whole day of cycling, maybe in that cactus kingdom called Baja California, with my only nighttime disturbances the coyotes checking out the empty Tecate beer cans that I drank before returning to my mouldy sleeping bag...

Maybe I should go back to my cycling life, sleep peacefully while the local wildlife can get tipsy on the left-overs of my local beer cans....

Ony one Conquistador

Holland, Amsterdam,
11 July 2010.

I feel like a different version of myself is cycling back home, returning from my Plekkie at the world famous Anne Frank House, cycling home through a very festive Amsterdam, people dressed in orange - Holand's royal color- boats in the canals sporting singing passengers, football songs from Holland coming out of hoarse throats, vusuvelas reverbrating through the labarinth of the countless little alleys criscrossing the old neighborhood called De Jordaan..my countryfolk preparing for tonight's final in South-Africa...

I guess quite a number of people have already entered Drunk Crossover despite the nearly four hours remaining untill the start making me wonder if they will watch the match and remember it the day after...maybe a few misty images through the fog of a heavy Heineken-induced hangover....

I have already decided to stay sober untill kick-off...The Netherlands contra Spain with only one Conquistador!!!

Mental resorts to depart for

Holland, Amsterdam,
09 July 2010.

No way I can affort to sit in front of my telly and get Khee Mao and be taken over by these mental images of the past. No Hot Momma invading my Farang thinking causing major trauma to my gray brain cells when I saw her jumping to her death from a skytrain platform - was it Ashok Station? - a train filled with commuters plowing into her hapless body, killing her instantly, wiping away the dreams of a Isan lady, physical agony that only took a spit second and replaced years of mental turmoil, her body smashed to pieces, a crowd of passengers, including crazy me, watching the suicide of a disappointed Third World Lady of the Night...I presume the bar on Soi Cowboy or Nana Plaza missed a employee that night...

No way I can affort to go out at night drinking myself semi-comatose on cheap Red Wine while looking for suitable lady backpackers willing to get to know a local lone male a bit more intimately, or else spending most of my night at the bar day dreaming, no night dreaming about that poor creature in Pattaya all these years ago, jumping down from a five star hotel roof...a red spot of bone and human bodily left-overs were all that was left of an erstwhile happy young rice-farmer's daughter from Loy-Et, a small yet another dusty hamlet up north in Thailand...

I don't even get the opportunity to transport my fucked-up mind back to that time when I was sitting on Pattaya's boulevard late at night surrounded by good looking young Asian women who where happily drinking the Chang beer I paid them from the nearby Seven/11 across the road, when one of them got the Kolder into her undereducated head and ran across the busy Beach Road, getting her legs pulverised by a speeding Songtheaw but leaving her mental processes in working order once she woke up several days later in Banglamung's hospital...I guess her dad up north in King Bhumipol's Asian Realm won't have been very happy with the hospital bills and a daughter in no condition to continue her work in Thailand's world famous sex industry...no more monthly checks for dad's naughty drinking binges with his mates...

Maybe it is a good thing my one-man Mandala business is keeping me so busy these hot and tropical days here in Amsterdam...I mean with mental resorts like these to depart for...

Selling Mandalas

Photo by customer of me selling my Mandala games at the Anne Frank House

In need of true Jai Dee for relaxation

Holland, Amsterdam,

05 July 2010.

My games have become quite an obsession these last couple of sunny weeks having sold nearly 400 in a single month, a record I guess since I have the licence and keep track of my selling progress...

Needing a break I decided to give today a rest, feeling true Jai Dee for relaxation in need of a serious Piisao to talk to but lacking one in earnest...well, Mai Pen Rai, I still have the street and its many diversions to keep myself occupied, maybe a free soup at De Tweede Mijl, aka De Tweede Kwijl because of their tasteless and bland supermarket-supplied free food but at least a good opportunity to make some sketches in my sketchbook...

Choo-Wah that their habitues from the street leave me in peace, giving me the polite "hallo" and "Hoe gatt het ermee, Shiva?"...and even a stronger Choo-Wah that these cristian volunteers from the Dutch Hinterland, running the place, wanna convert me again to their cherished Lord Jesus, coming over for chats and and serious interest in my chaotic artwork...interest that somehow feels unreal, unsubsequent...more like an opening for their conversion sh*t...

Too bad for them I have an hang-over from last night and feel like being left alone with my sketchbook and bland tasting iron bowl of soup...

The Dutch Revenge

Holland, Amsterdam,
02 July 2010.

I know I will damn my mentality tomorrow for sitting here in front of my telly banging away on my African drum, no doubt boring and frustatrating my downstairs Juppie neighbors to Kingdom Come and beyond, but no caring a fr*gging bit, watching the Dutch Soccer Team kicking the Brazilian Canaries well and good into the grass six feet under and out of the World Soccer Championship in far away South-Africa...

I know I will get frustrated tomorrow at the Anne Frank House being out of games early in the day, leaving a huge line of foreign visitors waiting patiently to get inside, hunderts of potential Mandala customers but I will have to go home ealy since I spent my time drumming instead of making new games, drinking cheap supermarket Pilsener beer that will make me get up all night to visit the Horngnam to relieve the heavy feeling in my bladder...

Outside in my street my country folk are preparing for a major party that will probably last all night....enough beer will go down Dutch throats to make even a Thai Klong jealous...

I know I will feel shitty at the Anne Frank House tomorrow nursing my hang-over from going into town tonight...but then it is not every night the Dutch make the Brazilians go packing on a major soccer tournament...

Oh yeah before I forget to mention...in between the drumming I might not have found time to replace the games sold today but I somehow got this drawing done, a Dutch and a Brazilian lady together in perfect sportive harmony.

Emotional release by the time I am 54

Hollland, Amsterdam,
01 July 2010.

This is too weird to deal with though it happens all the time to me, my heart beating way too fast with excitement, simply sitting here in shock while my consciousness is transported across the fast recesses of my Farang mind...

Past the Sleazy Corner, that part of my gray brain mass where women pose for me in erotic encounters of the past, past F*cked-up Mind, the part of my mental realm that got serious brain damage by the ferquent use of a couple of decenia of haevy illegal substances and King Alcohol's crazy promises, past Soul of Mercy, the part of my these little gray-colored cells that always makes me cry remembering all these poor illiterate and under-educated Hot Mommas that shared my male physical excistence for a couple of hours of sweaty work...

I am transported across nearly half a century of walking and crawling across Mother Earth in a human form, past all my lifetime experiences.. far away from this endless long queue of foreign tourists waiting patiently under a stifling hot sun for their turn to wander the famous Acherhuis where once a young Jewish girl wrote her diary while hoping desperately not to get discovered by the German Nazi swines but who ended up dying a horrible death in the death camps of a foreing invader...

Away from present time where the Dutch political world struggles to get a new covernment in blatantly ignoring the extreme rightist party of Geert Wilders though he was the Big Winner in last month`s elections...but then The Government`s Bankrumpcy can only mean REELECTION which is no option for Holland under the present circumstances...

I sail past my voluntary job at the Kinderboerderij, past my problems with that Shetland Pony called Niño, The Little Devil In Disguise....

I go fast and furious past Crazy Hans who has been selling his aquarels right next to me for nearly a quarter of a century, the man who is known as The Practical Joker, the Specialist of Amsterdam Humor...

I have no idea where this mental trip will end, exploring these dusty corner of my mind....I need customers real quick or else there will be no emotional release fore me untill I am fifty-four.