A private Jakarta school - TLC 70

Monday at 6:45 a.m. is formal education tyranny time.

Players call it Stormy Monday. Tuesday is just as bad. Wednesday is kind of rough and Thursday’s oh so sad. The eagle flies on Friday. Saturday I go out to play. On Sunday I go to church get down on my knees and pray. They call it Stormy Monday.

Lucky stood in front of an open rusty iron green gate wearing a pressed green shirt made of palm fronds. He waved an iridescent peacock feather wrapped in a Native American leather braid decorated with rainbow beads welcoming students at a private school.

Parents rule fool. 

Martial Catholic music blared from tinny church loudspeakers at the nearby church of the Immaculate Misconception. Religion was under permanent construction. Empty false hope the greatest evil based on blind faith filled towering grey artificial plastic golden arches with compressed dust.

Air conditioning ducts lay scattered in the vestibule. Purple priest garments hung by a broken thread in a chastity of lotus blossoms. Heaven’s holy light played along a contorted floor jangling cracked tolling bells.

The incomplete church thrived underground. Shadows and illusions named shame, guilt, sin, jealousy, regret, sloth, and lies had enough parking spaces for a choir of angelic forms in the rising Indonesian middle class.

Humans invented religion in their free time. We need meaning and intention sang priests, poets and philosophers. We is educated. Order poor uneducated slaves to get back to work, said a king of dubious origin waving a jeweled mind-sword.

Black tinted SUVs arrived at the gateless gate. Sleepy-eyed kids extricated themselves from air-conditioned nightmares. A green uniformed whistle-blowing male slave directed traffic. Blue clad office boys unloaded suitcases of textbooks, water bottles, lunch baskets, severed cultural connections, identity theories and universal mind maps.

Sleep deprived children waited for a maid, a driver, a mom, a dad, or a perfect stranger to hand them a suitcase handle, a plastic get a life grip. 

Children said good morning to Lucky before dragging cumbersome baggage along slick mopped tile floors down a hall-like crypt. They manipulated life luggage around corners before hoisting it onto little shoulders killing back muscles or pulled it clattering up two flights of stairs. Click-clack-click-clack music echoed through corridors absorbing childhood.

After leaving her vehicle Amanda a 4th grade genius waited in tropical sun. Her right hand was empty. It held everything.

Exhaust from idling cars, vans and flaming plastic bags filled the air. Everyone choked. Feeling exasperated she was angry tired and bored. She opened and closed her empty right hand suffering a desperate spasmodic fever.

She stared straight ahead. Her brown eyes focused beyond green gates. Retinas explored tropical subterranean rain forests. Wild purple orchid aromas permeated shade near a flowing river. Blue-green waterfalls crashing into jungles gave her a cool essential meditation in her heart-mind.

“Give it to me. Give it to me,” shouted her grasping hand. Someone handed her a plastic suitcase handle. She dragged educational baggage into a cave. It would take eight more tedious years to exterminate her innate childhood curiosity and sense of humor.

The Language Company