I love being alive and a dad to my children but death seems to chase me around like a maniac with an ax swinging wildly, angrily in all directions, hoping, wishing, praying it would connect with me, slashing my flesh open in several places and draining me of my blood until my body can't function anymore, until my brain can't process the last thought, but somehow I was/am always able to navigate, maneuver from and avoid it completely with dignity and integrity steadfast.

Dad is the only title I hold seriously -- one of the few creeds I live by.

As many of you know, my latest death threat came from the NSA -- this U.S. government agency wanted my head according to a person known as Mindeyes19 of Brosix IM who also claimed to be working closely with agents from this fine institute. 

It maybe a joke to some of you, to some of you Mindeyes19 reminds you of the character played by Bill Paxton in True Lie, but to me I take any threat on my life as a serious matter -- worthy of a long, long jail sentence.  How dare he used our own NSA agents  to threaten me and other citizens who had challenged and exposed his many bogus, grandiose claims! What a freak!

Quite delusional!

Pathetic!

Shameful!...

...to use the U.S. government to threaten its citizens even when it was well established the threat to be bogus perpetrated by a man living in his own shadows, oblivious to things that are decent and grand, things of reality. 

A complete disgrace to our government!

Mindeyes19 is just another bad karma that I had to overcome in order to better myself, and that is looking from the brighter side of things.  I had overcome many bad karmas before, mindeyes19 should be a breeze, a quick sneeze and he'd be out of my life, hopefully forever.

America was found by my Masonic brothers after risking their lives and the lives of their loved ones during the revolution to ensure the power be granted to and be remained with the people and gave the people the right to bear arms just in case their government overstep their defined boundaries.  They established a government for and by the people, complete with a check and balance system. 

It's not the greatest form of government but it's close enough to being perfect. It gives everyday people the greatest of freedom to enhance their lives by whatever means deemed possible as long as it's within the law, to pursue liberty and happiness, to congregate in a protest, to express their opinions openly and the freedom of the press to report all the new developments in that government.

We Khmers had experienced the worst kind of government -- the type that was adopted, practiced and enforced by the Khmer Rouge.

Now that I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, it's one of my duties to see our government is not to be used against its citizens and immigrants alike.  We do not want a Khmer Rouge-like government in America, abusing and executing its citizens without justification.

I was born during the period of turmoil in Cambodia and later, this kingdom plunged into the hands of the notorious, merciless Khmer Rouge regime -- a Cambodian communist party with a strong support from the North Vietnamese.

My family and I were evacuated from the city to the country side to irrigate the empty fields for the sole purpose of producing rice for export; people were to strictly live off the land and be independence of other nations.

Cambodia was completely isolated from the rest of the world; it became a prison -- in every true sense of the word. The whole population was treated as prisoners by their captors -- actually their captors treated these people far worse than inmates, these individuals were slaves.

Cambodia became a nation of slaves.

People started planning an escape route after witnessing deaths of the individuals they knew under the hands of the Khmer Rouge soldiers during the exodus out of the city.  People were told America was going to bomb the city to smithereens, leave now before the first bomb hit the ground, grab what could be carried or hauled, move, move, move, march, march, march.  People believed them unequivocally because it happened before.

America was carpet bombing Cambodia along the Ho Chi Minh trail, inside the kingdom without U.S. Congressional approval, a neutral country, a clear violation of international law. People died in large number then later, America invaded the country; mistrust in America was beating strongly and loudly in the people's hearts. Some were glad America was defeated while others were just happy the war was over, time to rejoice so they thought.

They cheered on the Khmer Rouge as they marched into the city along the wide, tree shaded boulevards, not knowing what was going to happen next.  What's  the worst could be done to them? The Khmer Rouge were their brothers and sisters; they were Khmer just like them. They took comfort in that -- that was their security blanket. 

They didn't know, no one knew, that a short  time later that blanket was going to be used to suffocating them and their family members.  The Khmer Rouge didn't care if they looked like them, spoke their language, shared their custom, practiced their religion, came from their parents; they only cared to eliminate those who had been westernized.

These city folks were greatly influenced by the French; in other word, they were westernized; the French had colonized this nation for over a hundred years. Their fate in this new, unconceivable society was sealed.  They were destined to be killed; they would be lucky if they didn't have to dig their own graves or torture beforehand, lucky if they received a bullet behind the head instead of many other cruel and unusual killing methods employed during time when bullets became scarce.

I remember being told to duck because America was coming with their B-52 bombers, eclipsing portion of the sky. I remember seeing jets dog fighting dazzling me like a light show; I was standing on a balcony of a well constructed, modern building. I remember being fearful, fear of losing my life; I guess I loved life even back then, before I became a dad, before the NSA wanted my head, before I met Mindeyes19.

School and monetary systems were abolished, educated individuals were executed; the lucky ones were reduced to peasants; their humanity was ripped out of them and they could be slaughtered at any given moment without any justification and/or warning. The march out of the city was cruel on my feet; I believe I was shouldered most of the time, I was pampered since the day I was born.

I remember wanting to empty my bladders, to relief myself; I was bothered by what my body was doing to me and the sun was beating on me, a film of sweat was scratching my forehead, making me extremely uncomfortable; I grew impatience; I wanted to scream; I wanted to shout so loud that a nearby window would shatter into a billion pieces. 

My mother did everything she could to accomendate me, to keep me silence, to appease the Kmer Rouge manning the throng of people moving in unison towards an unknown destination.The Khmer Rouge loved keeping their victims in the dark, keep them guessing, wondering, pondering, opining.

My mother along with my brothers and sisters built a wall around me with kramas and sarongs in order for me to conduct my business in private. It was a bit unusual, something I wasn't accustomed to but I was able to relief myself anyway and everyone sighed a relief afterward because I could make a nasty scene if things were suitable to my need at that time, if I didn't receive the life style I was used to; I could put everyone in jeopardy. The Khmer Rouge were staring in our direction, anticipating an irrational action from us so they could end us on the spot.

As small as I was, I held a certain amount of power in that instant, in that situation.

What kept these people functioning as human beings while under the control of the Khmer Rouge was their compassion.  They understood no matter what type of cruelty was inflicted upon them or how fearful they were of losing their lives, as long as they kept their compassion insulated within their soul, they knew they would never take on the actions of animals in retalliation against those who were causing them great harm and discomfort.

As human, we thrive, we survive by any means necessary, we adapt, we evolve or become extinct -- extinction is never an option. Evolution is the only solution, we have to become better than who we are today, compassion is the only means in aiding evolution.

Compassion, compassion, compassion -- without it, we're just animals. And we saw that animalistic aspect of human beings in the Khmer Rouge who committed astrocity against their fellow man.  Compassion -- never leave home without it, hold onto it, defend it; it's part of our soul. 

Sell your soul to the devil if you must but don't lose your compassion; if you do, you will lose yourself; you will be beyond help; no one will ever be able to reach you again; you will be forever gone, and the tragic part of it is...you won't be missed; no one will be asking your whereabout.

Compassion is what makes us human.

While older ones were forced to work to death in the labor camps due to malnutrient, diseases, and starvation, I along with many other children were having jolly good times, a ball, living it up, fishing, catching little critters, hunting animals, etc.

We were left to be kids without adults' supervision, no school, no worries, no complains, the world was ours to discover and conquer and we explored as far out as our little feet could take us each day; Cambodia was our Chucky E. Cheese minus all the food, drinks and unrulely crowds. Although we knew the ground around us was replete with land mines, we still used it as our playground.

We didn't know what danger was; we weren't cautious or told to be. We didn't know what land mines were. We would spit in the face of the devil himself if he was standing before us. We were wild, we were crazy, we were testing the boundaries like no one else, we were playing...playing around death, inviting it, asking it to come hither mainly because we were clueless; our carelessness alone could have lead us to our demise; we were tempting death, stuck our tongue out at it but death wasn't interested in playing with us because it was busy dancing with the newly deceaseds; there were so many, it must be hard for death to keep track of all of them, its head probably was spinning like a top or maybe it was celebrating at a fancy place unbeknownst to us, feasting on a sumptuous meal. 

Whatever the case was, death left us alone, letting us play to our heart content.  Maybe we were just too young for the picking. Maybe it had a soft spot for little children. I doubted it.

Ignorance was indeed bliss.

Even when death was staring us in the eyes, we wouldn't blink or care to notice it; we were too focused on the tasks at hand; we were the devil to little creatures; we killed them then devoured them; we brought what left to the community to be cooked and consumed in the communal kitchen.

Everything belonged to Angka and was to be shared among the community.  Angka was the state, the government, the master, the leader, the murderer and the judge, jury and executioner. Death was assured to those who had the gall to question any of Angka's motives. Religion was outlawed, but it was okay to worship Angka; in fact, it was encouraged.

Angka executed my father after learning he was working in a Cambodian embassy in Saigon, the city of my birthplace, under the administration of the previous government. He worked closely with the Ambassador, he was a Foreign Affair Minister (some said he was the Ambassador), representing Cambodia to the best of his ability. He was a stateman; he was a father, a husband, a bread winner, soft spoken, the silent type. 

The type that would bare gifts to the people in his hometown every chance he was allowed to visit within the allotted time. He was kind; he was gentle. He doted on his children, possibly spoiled them to the bones; they were showered with the finests the world had to offer along with nannies, butlers and chauffeurs, Mercedes Benz, linousines and villas, swimming pools and movie theaters; we had it all.

He was my father, and I was denied the chance to get to know him.  He was honest and loved to read -- these activities revealed who he was to the Khmer Rouge. To them, he was educated and I believe wholeheartedly he was. He could not lie, he could not tell them he was a taxi driver even to save his life; he died because he was honest. They took his life and others' because they feared them, they feared education.  Education was their one and true enemy, they understood the pen is mightier than the sword so they started killing those that could write right away.

Education is often a life saver but not so in my father's case.

I remember encountering a small catfish in a rice field playing dead, reaching in and grabbing its tail; it swung its head and punctured me with its whiskerlike barbels extending from its upper jaw.  I became gravely ill from the infectious wound.  I was bed ridden for weeks, if not months, I was on the brink of death simply because there was no doctors to seek advice from or medications to intake. Some of those who found themselves in this situation didn't fare too well.  There were so many deaths occuring each day, residents ceased to the count the bodies as they were piling up.

Graves were dug up days in advance. One of them could have been mine.

The livings were just existing, breathing and exhaling slowly, expelling carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, waiting for their day to meet their Maker; some were looking forward to it; others didn't mind it. I, on the other hand, wasn't going to stop fighting for my life. I had refused to die by an injection from a catfish. I wasn't ready to meet death but I was sure it was searching for me. I wasn't hiding; there was no room to hide.

After the catfish ordeal, a dam broke and I was swept away by the incredibly violent force of raging waters, but my grandmother was there to pluck me to safety in a nick of time.  Before that, there was a tug of war between my grandmother and the raging waters. The waters swept me off my feet, drew the first blood, caught me off guard, threw me off balance but I was held in place by my grandmother, I was dangling, submerging now and then; the waters reached up and grabbed my waist then my chest, tugging, yanking, pulling, went for my mouth then my nose, threatening to swallow me whole, drown me right then and there but my grandmother held on to me until help arrived.

With the strength of many muscular men bravely reclaiming me from waters' hold, it finally gave up, gave in and relinquished me into my grandmother's arms.

Many days later, the waters vanished, receded, evaporated after graciously accepting its most humiliating defeat to date.  It wanted me terribly bad, used all its might to cling onto me, gripping me in its grasp like a vise, suffocating me at times, but my grandmother wanted me more; the will was with her; it was her determination that saved my life.

I believe I was four or five years old at that time and that memory of that incident had imprinted on my mind; I don't think I would ever forget such a moment -- a moment of life, a moment of death, death had arrived at my door, banging and demanding to meet me face to face but my grandmother was wise and fearlessly chased it away. So long, sucker.

Life, sometime, we just have to fight for it; it's so precious even Mother Nature now and then wants to snatch it from us and death is always waiting around the corner; it has all the patience in the world and time is on its side; in the end it wins; this what makes living so difficult because the challenges life faces each day is so tremendous that at times we just want to throw in the white towel, telling the referee we want to tap out and our time on earth is waiting to expire on us, usually unexpectedly, untimely, and worthwhile because we get to triumph many times during the course of life; we get to be victorious, we make miracles, miracles happen to us and not knowing it, we become someone's heroes, we're looked upon as the undisputed champions; we sigh a relief, we feel exalted, we feel appreciated, we feel accomplished; we think life is wonderful, great and complete, and to our surprise, life is wonderful, great and complete and refuse to buy into the myth that someone has to complete us; only we can complete ourselves.

Life is what we make it to be, it's stemmed from our mind, our ways of thinking, our thinking process; in essence, it's us; it's what we created, it's our creation; let's be creative; it's our kingdom, it's our castle, it's villas, paint them blue to compliment the sky and the oceans and invite only trusted positive individuals onto our playground and play well with others, keep our dignity and integrity close at hand to ensure we continue walking on a straight path as intended, and every battle we fight worths every ounce of our fiber and every drop of sweat. We all are fierce warriors inside.

And when we venture outside, we discover life is all that, and we want more of it for as long as we are here walking and speaking our mind but always minding our own business and no else's. It's the cake and we want to eat it, too while thinking of productive, lucrative ways to grab a piece of the American Dream, whatever that means.

After the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown by the Vietnamese armed forces several years later, we traveled back to Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh was a ghost town. There were no moving vehicles in sight. I would lay down, spine straight, arms rested along my sides, on the asphalt in the middle of a street and the fear of falling asleep didn't even fathom to emerge because I was so confident that there wouldn't be a vehicle coming through and run me over.

I was always playing with my life because  I didn't even know what it was -- I just lived simply to survive like an animal using its instinct. My knowledge of life didn't come unlimited but it was enough to barely kept me alive through many misadventures I had encountered.

There were families who had arrived in the city before we did and were already settled in in their newly found habitats and starting to enjoy a normal life, however it was defined back then.

Vietnamese armed forces occupied and oversaw the state of the kingdom in disarray; some of the populace were quite appreciative of the Vietnamese's presence and for liberating us from the notorious Khmer Rouge regime's deadly grip; lives were saved by the millions; the kingdom's population starts to increase once again despite the lack of basic necessities, of bare essentials.

We moved into an apartment close to my parents' original house that was occuppied by another family.  Since the Khmer Rouges ridded of all documents, there was no way of proving that house belonged to us.  Property ownership boiled down to the using of first come, first serve basis rule, that was the law of the land pertaining to real estate; a wild, wild west at its best.

Cambodia was a land without law. Lawlessness usually means anarchy but I didn't witness any form of its presence anywhere within the borders of this tiny kingdom. People were living as though the law preceding the civil war still played a crucial role in society, governing, keeping them safe and secured. There was freedeom; there was also a curfew as mentioned earlier but most important, there was peace, there was food for some; others still starved.

There was sign people were starting to rebuild their lives, their beloved country; pride started to appear on their faces; their faces started to smile when there was a reason to cause such a reaction; they started to see themselves as human again but forever the victims, the horrendous scars left by the Khmer Rouge had forever stained their hearts, minds and souls. There was a sense of a new llife emerging, a new country was being reborn.

This was year one. Happy birthday, Cambodia, welcome to a whole new world. Hold your head up high when picked on by your neighbors in a humble and respectful fashion but always be resilient as shown by your people through many years of plights.

The Khmer Rouge was successful in returning this country to year zero, reduced it to rubbles, stones and steel. 

Despite its shattered legs and vertebrate, Cambodia was rising from its ashes through the help and assistance of world communities; its glorious days were about to return.  It was great to be Khmer, to be Cambodians, a people of resiliency and smiles, of compassion and Buddhism, of constant search of Nirvana and enlightment.

While residing in the capital, I made friends with other nearby children (some were Vietnamese).  We played war with live bullets found all around us.  Bullets nearly struck me in the head on many occasions but our favorite weapons of choice were slingshots.  With a slingshot, we could hurl anything we thought was deadly at our enemies.  We had good times despite the deadly games we were playing. 

As we moved from building to building in a game of war, we would become surprised and horrified by decomposing corpses left behind in a panic or left in place intentionally for others to find. We often heard of fresh deaths due to electrical shock and other means, and when we heard such news, we would dash to the scene to look at the lifeless bodies -- we were curious; adventure was coursing through our blood; actually, we had nothing better to do than killing time.  We were kids, we were runaway kids.  We befriended the streets, but the streets refused to be kind to us.

There was a day when Vientnamese soldiers were having a gun fight with some alleged bad guys hiding in a dilapidated building,  because I was young and curious, I ran into the middle of the action. A grenade was tossed at the soldiers then rolled to my feet.  The soldiers shouted for me to sprint from it in Vietnamese, but I couldn't understand a word exiting their mouth.  The grenade didn't explode due to reason no one could explain.  I walked away with my life and limbs intact and the grenade in my hand.  It was a great day to be alive. 

The alleged bad guys lost their lives moments later after the Vietnamese soldiers unleashed their aggression with deadly force.

I was an adventurous and curious young man, the black sheep of the family.  School was never a niche with me. When I got to school, I would get whipped by both the teacher and then the principal so I never went back.  Because of my refusal to attend school again, I couldn't go back home fearing I would get whipped severely as well.

So I ended up on the streets. To survive the streets, the cold and the hunger, I had to steal necessities. Every time I got caught, I would be beatened to the verge of death and that was I how lived for several more years. Life was rough especially a night and the cold was put in place to ensure I wouldn't be able to sleep.  I needed to be awake anyway because death was hiding in every dark spot, and the hunger never left me alone, it was always there constantly reminding to me consume something or anything edible, bugging me, poking me, chastising me, ridiculing me; my stomach was constantly growling, begging, pleading, imploring to be filled with nutrious meals.

I understood its demand and insistence and I did all I could to satisfy its need; given, I failed at certain times, and I have forgiven myself for it after recognizing that I was not perfect then or now; I was young and famish.

Surviving was the only option; thievery was a natural reaction to combat a constant hunger, not by choice; I wasn't taking part in any hunger strike or protest. Food was just hard to come by; it wasn't readily available in every market. This was Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge.

Read part II in the next blog...

Tags: Nsa Mindeyes19

Bookmark: