Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

A NOTE TO THE READER
uine article, a true San Franciscan. Without giving away her story, I
will mention only that she talked about eleven tourists missing in
Burma, who were the subject of news headlines for weeks, a story
readers may well recognize. While Karen Lundegaard may have con­
structed from what she had already read in the news, her writings
contained details that were not reported, according to people I later
interviewed.
Whether one believes in communication with the dead or not,
readers are willing to suspend disbelief when immersed in fiction.
We want to believe that the world we have entered through the por­
tals of another’s imagination indeed exists, that the narrator is or
has been among us. And so I have written this story as that, fiction
inspired by Karen Lundegaard’s automatic writings. I retained Bibi’s
religious and racial comments that may be offensive or humorous,
depending on the reader’s politics. A few people who were part of
the real events asked that I not use their names. And while I was not
able to confirm some details that Bibi gave, I left in those I found
interesting. Hence, there may be errors of fact. Then again, the na­
ture of many people’s recollections entails some degree of embellish­
ment, exaggeration, and the bias of opinion.
Although you may think this book was as effortless to write as
those dictated by Patience Worth, I relied on the assistance of
many to assemble the pieces. For interviews, I thank people too
numerous to name, but you know who you are. I am grateful to the
Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the American Society for
Psychical Research in New York for opening their doors to me. I
hope readers will visit their collections and give generously to their
coffers.
At the time of this writing, foreign writers and journalists were
still not allowed in Burma, so I was not able to see the mentioned lo­
cations firsthand. Thus I appreciated the videos of the country lent
to me by Vivian Zaloom. Bill Wu provided expert commentary on
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