S L E E P I N G   D O G   M O U NT A I N

Sleeping Dog Mountain. Burma 1992

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March 9th 1992, on a remote mountain top in Burma with a beleaguered, battle-weary group of Karen guerrillas, I got high for thirty seconds on the complete absence of fear that rides with the knowledge of certain and imminent death.

Death never came to me and the fear returned.

Sixty odd years prior, the MONK who had laboured to build a pagoda on the peak of Sleeping DOG Mountain left and placed a curse on the Mount and all who set foot there.

I walked off that place off DEATH and dying dreams after twenty four hours and left my brave Karen companions, sleeping MEN WITH GUNS.

They give the impression of being omnipresent in Asia, the Monks, the Dogs, the Death and the Men with Guns, all fates inextricably yet inexplicably overlapped.
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Where there is one, another skirts your viewfinder like a spectre.

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Introductory text for Blenkinsop's first handmade book,
​Monks, Dogs, Death and Men with Guns. 1997

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