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Title: I Survived Mindeyes19 and His Phony NSA Agents VII
Tags: I Survived Mindeyes19 and His NSA Agents VII
Blog Entry: Then one day, out of the blue, while gambling with other runaway kids on the streets, she plowed into us like an uncontrollable vehicle, bulldozing some of us to the sidewalk as she was fleeing a group of police officers waving their batons, blowing their whistles as though they were warning people of the next wave of the American carpet bombings inside the country, galvanizing the people to a gathering point and plan a retaliation. These police officers often overreached the power bestowed upon them. Sometimes, they thought they were God trying to keep the little peace the city was able to maintain despite the chaos brought forth by the civil war. I was oblivious to the incident as I was captivated by her, by her speed. My eyes came to lock on her when she turned away, when she was not looking, tracking her every movement as she profusely apologized to the mowed down kids for her fast speed sprint. No one was throwing blames like a deck of cards. How could she be blamed for something that was accidental? Her apology was not neccesary but accepted to assuage her guilt, as seen on her facial expresion. Besides, with the looks like hers, who could find fault in all that she did. It was true my eyes gravitated toward her as though she was standing in the nude. The gravitational pull was beyond my human strength, beyond  the strength of my mind. I gave my all in trying to avoid looking in her direction, discovered it was impossible and surrendered to her looks under the directions of my wandering eyes -- they couldn't help but wanted to see more of her even though she was fully clothed -- that demonstrated the power of her appeal to a young man like myself. Her voice trembled with lumps of fear unnaturally altered. Her throat was dry; she had to whisper at times, if not, the trembles in her throat would irritate her esophagus, later intermittenly produced sharp pain that shoots her brain like a harpoon used in the deep sea fishing. When that happened, one could hear the pain that anchored to her voice whenever she spoke -- the tone had noticeable change and it came intermittenly. We noticed the fast approaching swarm of police officers, immediately recognizing the situation she was running from; we had a common enemy, which immediately bonded us or at least, gave us a hook in which we could strike a  friendship with her then rail her in as a new member of the group. She would add a faminine touch to our daily lives, enhancing our image in the process; she seemed to be capable of that. She looked completely frazzled, distracted, internally screaming her head off like an insane person inside a padded room. She needed to be watched so I stealthily watched her. She turned to me, pleading with her big, brown eyes, "Help me." "Help her?" I thought to myself. "How? I'm just a boy." Beads of sweat glided slowly down her cheeks like morning dews, staining her tan silky skin as I nonchalantly pretended to ignore her, wanting to see how she'd react under tremendous pressure. Her forehead glistened under the hot sun due to the film of sweat now drenching her slim figure in the shape of an hourglass. She tried desparately to catch her breaths while glanced my way as if I was the answer to all her problems, waiting for, expecting me to jump to her rescue. I wasn't in the mood to be anyone's hero, not while I was on the streets, in home sew shorts and short sleeve shirt, my only possessions, bare feet. The person that needed rescuing should be me. I shot back a glare, "What?" -- as in, "What do you want with me?" What could I do for her? These police officers loathed me because I was too quick, too fast for them; I often made them look like stooges during their pursuits of me. I spent a great portion of my day running away from them; they were the bane of my existence. I could foment riots on the streets due to my aversion to them. It would be a mistake to give them another reason to chase me through the capital. Besides, this was my moment to rest, soon it'd be my siesta and I had planned of taking a lengthy one. Why could she leave me alone? I didn't want to get intertwined with her issues because I had some of my own, and I hadn't planned to burden anyone with them; they were mine, and I intended to protect them and deal with them on my own time and on my own term. She should have the same consideration regarding her own issues. We hadn't even exhanged "hello's" with one another, and here she was readying to unload her issues upon my shoulders; I was at a loss for the first time; I didn't know what to do with her case; I was not a social worker or a psychologist; I didn't know how I could be of help to her.  Maybe I did know but wasn't willing. After all, she was a just stranger who had clumsily mowed down some of my friends.. "Girls are problems," an older friend once warned me who went by the name of Sokom. He came from a family of wealth. His father traded gold, silver, rare coins and other intricate precious metal filigree with the help of his mother. His parents became later the people I unloaded my purloined valuables to in an exchange for spending money. She was definitely a girl with problems. I certainly didn't want to have any association with her at this point; it was a clear and obvious choice to make. She could only mean one thing -- problems too hot for me to handle. I could look past her beauty -- I would try. All I would have  to do was take over my thinking process, manipulate the muscles controlling my eyes through to use of mental power; once I had taken over my mind. I became curious about girls a few years back; the curiosity came unexpectedly. I engaged in a conversation with Sokom whenever questions pertaining to girls churned in my head. He seemed to have all the answers; he did have all the answers. Let it be known here and now that I was not the only one seeking him out; he had others who came to him to learn about the bird and the bee and the many mysteries behind girls. He was Mr. Know It All on this topic; he was the original "guru", if such a thing came into being. I don't know if he was Cassanova, but men who came to him and were given advice on how to please women appeared  enthralled as though they had discovered the Holy Grail, and they returned always with massive grins and smiles and shoke Sokom's hand as though he was God's right hand man or God's gift to women. It may sound like I was just embellishing him for his sake, but the truth of the matter is, Sokom was a friend of mine and he taught me a great deal on attracting and the interacting with the opposite sex, and I was waiting to use the magic he gave me on the next girl I would meet. The problem with me was I didn't heed his words, other men did. I had never used his advice on a girl because there wasn't a homeless girl I could meet. Any other girl wouldn't bat their eyes at me; much less, offered a smile. I knew my place in this newly developed society. I knew my boundaries. I stayed within my circle, mingled with my crowds. Sokom always handed out advice free of charge to all, including several corpulant Vietnamese men, that approached him; he was a kind and generous man. I once asked him to compile his profound knowledge into a book. So far, I hadn't seen such a book with his name printed on it, unless he wrote it as an alias. If I had to guess his age, I would say he was nineteen, twenty, maybe twenty one. I viewed him as though he was a son of a god that was cast out of their habitat to live among humans. If he could be worshipped, I would have done it as would other men who had conversed with him on the topic of women. He sounded like he had been around the block several times before. If he hadn't and I had been bamboozled by him, it was nice talking about girls, my topic of interest, anyway. I could listen to his grandiose, wild adventures with girls he courted, to the end of the moon and back; he was a fantastic story teller. Some of the tales he told were quite titillating, pleasantly stimulating at times. I couldn't go to my father to obtain such knowledge because the Khmer Rouge had deprived me of that chance the very moment they decided to execute him back in the mid 1970s  then neglected or simply refused to tell my mother the location of her dead husband's corpse. My father had never been given a proper burial. I hope he is resting in peace. I hope he is not worrying about me or too busy watching over me. If that is the case, he should know that I'll be all right no matter where I happen to find myself. I have the capability to quickly adapt to my new environment. I had walked on my own before and left many trails for others to follow. I had always been a child who had always lived his own life according to his own terms and prefered others to live their own lives according to their own terms on their own time. If their lives intersect mine, leave me better than I was. If not, keep on walking. The subject of human sexuality was quite taboo in Cambodia, young adults couldn't even crack jokes on the matter; if they did, the adults would treat their jokes with scorn or risk the scorn of their parents. Adults would coil in shyness and shame if they were to say anything of substance about their own sexual behaviors in the privacy of their bedrooms to their peers. To these days, no one knows where my father was buried, if he was buried, but I doubt the Khmer Rouge would have maintained such compassion during moments of his killing. I only hoped he didn't suffer too much before they delivered the last blow that ended his life.  I had wondered what his last thought was when his eyes decided to close on him, when his nervous system shut down and his mind erased in an instant -- all his knowledge was quickly disappeared before he could transfer some of it to me. Was I on his mind? After all, I was the baby of the family during the time of his murder. I had to be. Some of my friends and family members felt it was my filial responsibility to seek out the ground where he was murdered and posibility find what left of his remains and give him a burial he deserved in the city he dearly loved and funds deposited in offshore accounts in different cities in different countries and continents. I was left to uncover the mysteries of life on my own. I complained at times when I was much younger but not lately; after so many years of battling with the hardship of life, I surfaced with a renewed vigor and lust after the possibility of achieving a dreams, fulfilling a life's mission, a purpose. That possibility alone makes life worth living and lessens the strength of every life's struggle, dampening its effectiveness. Our daily struggles keep our lives from running amok, taming it, because it could be wild and crazy like a mustang if unwatched. I fought and keep fighting for that one possibility; my life will be defined by its outcome. Good or bad, I would still have a great life in the end, because I chose to let life unexpectedly happen to me. Life's definitely full of surprises; gifts from our Creator. yet, I hear people complain and sweat the small stuffs. God's heart breaks each time a person complains about His gift, which is life. Life is not perfect, nothing is, but it's fair. Those who say otherwise do not know God or appreciate the works that He does. Why wait until you're on the verdge of death to appreciate life. Maybe that is the other purpose of death, enhance life. All my mother could do was speculate his place of death. Others claimed to know where his body was hidden, but people weren't allowed to venture into that region of the woods -- a place where one went in and never came back out during the Khmer Rouge time. She weeped and mourned for months, and I couldn't understand why she cried so much. I couldn't remember missing my father or questioned his whereabouts; I didn't remember he went missing; I never once asked a question about his disappearance, only recently. When the North Vietnamese rolled into the village in their trucks, jeeps and tanks, they asked my mother in their language for the murderers of her husband, my father; she knew who they were but said nothing, and she was fluent in Vietnamese. She chose the let the murderers walk free, she forgave and moved on with her life and the lives of her children. She knew any man she pointed to would meet his demise in that instant, before her eyes. She didn't want that on her conscious or his blood splatter on her face. There were many men she could point to, but she chose to keep both hands at her sides. In all honesty, I would have done the same thing if the murderers had agreed to not take another human's life, and I would happily live with that decision. Her life had been one struggle, followed by another, but she never complained about her life being too hard. Life can only be what it is; it's us who complicate matters then say life is not fair. My father died, and I didn't even miss him. Not because I had a turbulance relationship with him while he was alive, but because I didn't know he had passed away; maybe I was  too young to understand what death was, and there was no one to explain it to me or maybe I was too busy playing in the rice fields. The girl kept looking my way, imploring for my interference, maybe annoyed by my hesitation. I was still weighing my options. How many more times could I turn away from her whenever she looked my way? To her, I was the only one who could pluck her out of her mess; it was her mess; why should I get involved? Why did she target me? Did she know me? Had she met me somewhere before? I could speculate but I wouldn't. I instead mused in the quiet of my mind, questioning, reasoning, hesitating, and her eyes kept wandering to me, and I continued to turn away; it was like we were watching a tennis match, back and forth, back and forth. The ball always ended up on my side of the court; I needed more time to opine. It was obvious she got herself into a really tight spot and needed to bolt out fast before the police officers had reached their place of congregation. Her fear of getting caught intensified; her eyes grew wider at the thought of jail time, her pupils dilating like a camera lens trying to capture a lush landscape under a harsh lighting conditions, refocusing her attention, always adjusting, a decision had to made now; there was no delaying. The police officers were inching closer and closer to her; she could now see them approaching; panic set in. "Should I bolt now? Where should I bolt to?" questions started to float in her head; if I was close enough to her, I probably could hear them. "I'm thinking, I'm thinking." She tried to silence her chatter box, which she'd soon discover to be an impossible task; in a situation such as hers, her mind would not rest, it would continuously search for possible solutions to her problems. She could cry right now but she wouldn't; she would rather hold in all her emotions than expose her breaking point. The strength of her mind was being pushed to its limit; she held on as I watched her sweated from a distance. While debating myself, I knew she had to be removed from her current situation before the police officers could grab a hold of her, handcuffed her then marched her to the nearest station. All eyes would flit to her; she would lose face, would be humiliated, and I would have to live with the guilt for not jumping to her rescue. At the same time, I didn't want to interfere with a due process, if such a thing existed in Phnom Penh back then. I thought of excuses after excuses not to get in between her and the police officers, fearing I would find myself entangled with the law, too, new entanglements. Instead of one person heading for jail, it would be two, and I would be the second person; due to my lengthy criminal activities on the streets, I could be locked up for eons. I could never adapt to a life behind bars because my nature was to roam and bask under the warm sun. I could never accept anything less than this. Why should I risk jail time for a stranger? Given she had a pretty face and a body to match it, an absolute eye candy. Could her looks force me to take action against my will? Possible; I believe in anything-is-possible due to the capability of the human mind. For a short moment, I found myself caught, amused by the idea of getting locked behind bars with her, but I didn't continue entertaining that idea; it was quickly abandoned, and it never resurfaced. But the thought of the police officers finally had me in their jail cell re-invigorated me into taking action. That thought gave me the impetus to act, it was also the barometer I used to measure the amount of my aversion to these police officers who on many occasions had abused their power while maintaining safety on the streets. If by a great chance, the police officers had her locked up, she would think I was the cowardest person on the planet. If that became the case, I wouldn't be able to withstand or swallow such a notion. It would also mean I had to find a means to placate her would-be anger. A coward? Who? Me? Never. I strutted to her and whisked her down an alley rarely used by other denizens due to urine and feces, trash strewn about, upkept and unswept for years. Grass jut out of cracks in the cement appearing like fingers grouped together. We nagivated down a few more alley ways to give ourselves sufficient distance from the police officers.  We hid behind a small hill of trash, watching my friends being interrogated by the police officers whose goal was to harrass and intimidate street kids, instead of lending them a hand or offering solutions to their plights. The year was 1979, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, after it was liberated by the North Vietnamese armed forces from the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime under the control of Pol Pot aka Brother Number One whose real name was Salot Sar, the evilest man Cambodia had produced. The Cambodian government was still being installed, not quite established.  The country was run by our liberators; they had the means and the knowledge of running a country. Most Cambodians welcomed them with open and appreciated them from saving their skin and country. They were glad they weren't living in fear of dying at any given moment. The international communities had not yet discovered the Killing Fields and become horrified by the huge number of deaths inside such a small country, committed by its own government, its own people. How could this happen in a modern society? Most of Phnom Penh was still absent of people; delapidated buildings went unoccupied for a few more years.  It was a true ghost town but its citizens were trickling in in small number. Some of the kids would wind up on the streets; some of them would find their way to me. Must be the energy I projected to the universe. I was young and naive. To the point, I was a punk, a runaway who stole anything and everything from people who could barely keep their stomach full. Foods and shelter were the important order of any day; these concerns haunted my mind the most. I didn't have time for any other thoughts until she came along and turned my life upside down, twisting it unrecognizable. She looked placidly out to the police officers screaming and demanding answers from the kids. The stench of the trash hill hadn't unpleasantly violated her senses, yet. If it had, she didn't seem to be bothered by it. I took this opportunity to size her up, studying and wondering about her. Could she be Chenda, my wife from my previous life?  Had she found me? Did I find her? Was it worth the heartache and aggravation? She looked familiar, like I had met her somewhere before but couldn't pinpoint the place or the time, and I couldn't bring it up to her by telling her we met before then worked up the courage to ask if she remembers me. She was still a stranger. I didn't want to bombard her with millions of questions, not yet, anyway. Not while she was still out on a limb. What if her replies were unusually loud and one of the police officers heard her?  There was no reason to put ourselves at risk. What if she ran off before I got the chance to ask her questions? At this point, I shut off the voice inside my head. I must take it slow, at the speed that was comfortable to her, at her pace.  I didn't want to see her running away from me like I did from police officer on a daily basis. I longed to know her name but I couldn't directly ask her for her name -- that would be a travesty. This is Cambodia, and I'm Cambodian. There were customs and traditions I had to adhere to. I maybe a street kid and a criminal in the eyes of people, a scum, a rat, a dog,  whatever, I still had a sense of obligation to and respect for the Cambodians' ways of life. My moral compass was still functioning correctly. It would be rude and disrespectful if I were to call her by her name because she appeared to be much older than me. In the Cambodian society, there's a certain amount of respect expected to be given to older people. So I resorted to calling her "bong" meaning "older sister", not "meang" meaning "aunty" because she didn't seem to be old enough to be my aunt. "Bong" would be the best term used to address her. "Bong," I called out, testing the quiet, calm water. She turned and looked at me, expecting me to finish what I was going to say.  I hadn't planned  to say anything at all; I just wanted to see how she would reaction to "bong"; she seemed to be fine with being called such. I was relieved. I had broken the ice. Our eyes met for the very first time. She smiled; I reciprocated. For a split second, all the planets in the universe lined up and saluted us. Somewhere somone wondered what happened. It was just our eyes meeting for the first time, and everything for everyone was all right for the first, and all the wars on earth stopped, there was peace as if Christ had come back but only for that split second, a blink of an eye then life returned to the way it was.