The Language Company

Carpe Diem in Ankara, said a reliable narrator, Pluck the day when it is ripe.

Lucky Foot explored a gleaming upscale mercantile atrium filled with bald silver female dummies fronted by glass. Mirrors reflected screaming bored housewives paroled for good behavior pushing pram infants.

He happened into a store with Roman, Ottoman, Egyptian and Middle Aged chess sets - game of Kings. Checkmate, said Mother Death, Beauty’s mother, Life is a chess game of experiences we get to play.

Black jazz statues played sax, trumpet, clarinet, keyboards, drums, and bass. Some of My Favorite Things, said John Coltrane. Blow your cool heart out.

“Good morning. Do you need something?” said the owner.

“Namaste. I salute the light within you. I seek to help others end suffering and misery.”

“Is it a way, a path?”

“It’s the nature of absolute emptiness with compassion. Ultimate truth. Reality.”

“What’s its form? Form an answer. Fill in your form. We live in a world of forms. It’s not the answers we need to know it’s the quest-ions we discover. Don’t be afraid to be confused. Remain curious. Trust authentic fragments. Follow your heart. Grow from it. Anything is possible when you risk everything. Stay open to your true nature as a lotus grows from mud. Form is emptiness and vice a verisimilitude. Would you like some tea?”

“Yes please. The quest-ion is the answer. Practice allows everything to wake you up. When you have taken the impossible into your calculations its possibilities become endless.”

“Today is good day to die. Meditate on your death. Celebrate your journey.” He pushed a buzzer. “Someone will bring tea.”

“Thanks. I like establishing impermanent relationships with compassion, trust, generosity and empathy.”

“You’re a dreamer dreaming the impossible dream. Are your needs being met? I suggest you need more direct immediate experience, observation and imagination. When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

Words escaping the tyranny of memories composed a jazz poem.

Kind of Blue, 1959 by Miles Davis. Modality.

 “Everything I do is an experiment. Traveling meets my genetic needs. I love weird. It’s a long strange beautiful trip. Life is an amazing beautiful messy test. It gives us the test first and lessons later. In my life I become we: many people. We face opportunities and challenges. We bring luck to people like you. People we meet and never see again. It’s ephemeral. We help strangers help themselves through levels of suffering, hardship, deprivation, letting go and developing courage. 

"Becoming.

"Throw in passion desire thirst and existential bliss with humor. Humor is the key. No shame, guilt or humiliation. No regret or fear. The day after tomorrow belongs to me. I am a dreamer with controlled imagination. I see you have knives. I need one to cut through fear and ignorance.”

 “Fear is blissful ignorance. Doubt is healthy. Uncertainty is necessary to grow. Travel allows you deeper penetration. Travel makes you. There are not many things you need to remember during your visit to Earth. Please have a look-see.”

 “Our life is a work of art and life imitates art. Art is easy. Life is difficult. Clouds know me by now.”

“You don’t say.”

A cabinet displayed Swiss Army knives with cool tools for cool fools. 

The Language Company

Gifted Kids

Greetings,

Here's an excerpt from a scene in a literary masterpiece and a link to Metagifted courtesy of Wendy Chapman. Go Indigo!

“Do you you see a connection?”

A child with dyslexia spoke. “It’s tough. I’m trying to learn 1,100 ways letters are used to symbolize the 40 sounds in the spoken English language.”

“You mean to say,” wondered a child, “it’s difficult for a learning reader to connect verbal sounds with the letters or symbols that spell that sound?”

“Absolutely. Maybe that explains why there are 10 million children in this country with severe reading problems.”

Another child added, “show us where the sound of speech has no alphabet.”

“Good on ya! Wasn’t it William - that kid from Kansas who lived in the Burroughs - who said language is a virus? Where is he?”

“They took him away for treatment,” said a tyrant. “Some guy in a lab coat said he was hallucinating.”

“Probably naked while eating his lunch. Or, eating his naked lunch.”

“Whatever.”

“You mean he was dreaming with his eyes open, again?”

“You got it backwards. He was fast asleep with his eyes open and he woke up by closing his eyes.”

“Figures,” said a kid, releasing cost benefit analysis results scribbled on a medical insurance form with a co-pay deductible.

“Some people never learn. They get older sooner and smarter later.”

Peace.

metagifted

Selling memories

Greetings,

In Spain, like anywhere else on the spinning rock, when strangers crossed paths he found them wanting.

“Do you want to buy a key chain?” he said to a lost blond femme fatale Standing Down At The Crossroads along Highway 61. “Do you need this? I sell memories.”

“Do you have any short term memories?”
“Yes. We have memories in all sizes and colors.”
“I need a memory of...”
“Can you be more specific?"
“I’m sorry, I’m having trouble remembering.”
“What do you want to remember?”
“I don’t want. I need.”

He opened with the Queen’s Gambit. Pawn to king four, P-K4. The great game of kings was about material, position and ruthless determination. Crush your opponent’s ego. Control the middle of the board. Castle within your first ten moves.

She answered with P-QB4.

It was touch and go with her. Use it or lose it. Paying attention to the details. Small microscopic details.
Allah is in and on the details.
God is in and on the details.
The Devil is in and on the details.
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.

“I have the desire to embrace danger,” he said. “Come with me, here, closer to the edge of our humanity.”

Distracted by his intentions she picked up a glossy brochure blowing down the street.

“Hustler 101 for freshmen is accepting applications. Sign up at registration.”

“Let me see,” she said moving close enough for him to get a good smell of her taste for unprotected lust.

Peace.

Bhutan

Spanish church bells buried in the Plaza de Dreams, a fictitious manifestation of reality, a conglomeration of his experience, tolled as people toiled. He didn’t steal a line, a title from Earnest about ringing bells. He paid his toll and crossed to the other side of paradise.

A wandering Chinese monk shared a talkstory with Omar.

“One day in the Himalayas I hiked to a meditation hut above Taktsang, Tiger’s Nest, in Druk Yul overlooking the Paro valley laced with rice paddies, rhododendron, fir, spruce, hemlock and barley fields.

“Guru Padmasambhava or Guru Rimpoche (Precious Teacher) was the spiritual founder of the Nyingmapa old school of Himalayan Buddhism in 800 A.D. which is still taught in central Bhutan. Tantric Buddhism in Bhutan dates to 450 A.D. and is the esoteric form of the Drukpa Kagyupa Buddhist School. The state religion of Mahayana Buddhism or the Great Vehicle was established in the 8th century.

“According to legend, Rimpoche subdued many demons in Paro and central Bhutan. At one time he had two wives, an Indian and a Tibetan. He transformed his Indian wife into a tiger and flew to Taktsang Monastery in the 8th century.

“Tiger’s Nest is a series of small tight buildings built into the cliff. It is composed of intricate staircases, stone flagging, a small open air kitchen, balconies, rooms for sleeping, and meditation. I was welcomed by boys and monks who showed me a small meditation room filled with statues, offerings of rice, coins, fruits and vegetables.

“They showed me the cave where Rimpoche lived for three years. Three monks appointed by the chief abbot in Thimphu live here for three years for meditation study and are followed by novice monks in their spiritual meditations.

“Taktsang, destroyed by a fire in 1998, was rebuilt.

“I traveled east along the spine of the dragon climbing to 10,000 feet dropping into valleys and climbing again. Distinct elevations consist of grasslands, crop lands, forests, hardwoods, coniferous forests, soft woods, alpine meadows, yak pastures, and glaciers. Barley, wheat and potatoes are primary spring and summer crops from 7,500-13,000’ with the tree line coming at 12,000-14,000' and coniferous replacing hardwoods above 8,000’.

“I passed West Bengal and Indian road gangs working at quarter mile intervals. They perform hard work carrying large rocks and crushing granite to repair and fill the endless washouts. They will live and work here for two or three years maintaining the roads before being replaced by new workers from northern India. Their living situation is very grim. Shelters are woven reeds, fortified with any materials they can find along the rivers. They carry their children on their backs as they work. Younger ones sleep along the road under torn black umbrellas.

“Ten thousand people live in the Bumthang area. Small shops and stores along the single main street serve as homes and business. Built of wood with small steel stoves and chimneys, the rooms are multipurpose; selling in front, eating and sleeping quarters in the rear. Merchandise includes thread, wool, fabric for weaving, canned goods, small toys, sweets, local spirits, spices, eggs, a limited supply of green vegetables, a few green apples, and soap.

“The architecture is Tibetan, rectangular buildings are two-three stories high, a pitched roof with open space holding firewood and fodder. The middle floor is for storage of grains, seeds and foodstuffs. The upper floor is the living quarters, broken into smaller rooms. The ground floor on a working farm is for the cattle. If not, there are windows at this level with a shop, storeroom, kitchen, and servant’s quarters.

“I arrived at a monastery in the foothills overlooking the town where 300-500 Bhutanese gathered to receive a blessing from a lama. Children and adults sit and talk on rows of timber slabs on the sun baked ground.

“Three monks blew long wood and silver jallee horns to chase evil spirits away. The lama, Nam Kha Nen Boo, is Khenbow, a reincarnation of a former monk known for his fortune telling power. He was seated and read in a low tone of voice for twenty minutes and used a small hand held drum and bell.

“Finished, he moved among the people touching us on the head with a statue called a Tshtshto. This dignifies the life of a human with a blessing “Have a long life.” People approached with offerings for his blessing. Bags of red string, flour, and jenlap, a nutmeg like substance, were offered. One lama handed each person jenlap. Another lama gave each person a single red string to be worn around the neck.

“I visited the Jakar Dzong. The head lama opened large doors in the quiet spiritual center. Ornate sculptures of Padmasambhava and flickering yak butter lamps filled the center wall. Inside another room was a ten foot high statue of the guru, bronze statues with salt and butter flower carvings.

“Display cases with hundreds of identical 5-6" Buddha statues sat in tiered arrangement extending the length of the room, reaching the ceiling. Larger images depicted historical and religious levels of spiritual attainment.

“My meditation is on The Eightfold Path or Middle Way between self-indulgence and self modification. The eight orders are: Right Views, Right Purpose, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Awareness, and Right Concentration or Right Meditation.

“I have a diamond in my mind. I am alive and empty in the here, now, and present. I know imagination is better than knowledge. Now I travel south on a path through the jungle.”

“Be well,” said Omar.