TLC - Facilitator of courage

A secret compartment in a unique one-of-a-kind jeweled knife illuminated the Tibetan plateau with antelope, snow leopards and gazelles among wild mountain pashmina underbelly goats knitting high-end sweaters and shawls for couture.

Shaggy yaks tinkled bells as eagles, Golak ravens and Winter Hawk winged free over remote white monasteries, rainbow Lung-Tao prayer flags and meditation halls filled with burgundy clad chanting monks playing gongs and cymbals, blowing silver jallee horns, lighting incense, laughing and reciting sutras in Himalayas near melting glaciers feeding wild torrential rivers flowing through slag scrabble rocky terrain, lush wildflower meadows, past isolated stone homes with yak dung drying on flat roofs, pilgrims studying a traditional herbal chart in the Amdo hospital and walking the Barkhor circuit in Lhasa filled with prostrating joyful people fingering prayer beads, whispering mantras and offering sage and pinion into a burning chorten under the ever-present watchful blind suspicious eye of naked plainclothes Chinese secret police disguised as international human rights observers employed by an NGO scam organization.

“You have some cool tools,” Foot said. “I am a tool of nature.”

“Yes you are and yes I do. Health care is expensive because patients and families incur 90% of the medical cost during the final years of their life. Hospice, home care, nursing homes, drugs, medicine, in & out patient care increases cost, long term debt, poverty and so on.”

“The dead paid sooner and the living paid later. Another unpleasant global fact is uncontrolled population growth, lack of job opportunities, substandard education and no medicine.”

“Life is filled with inconveniences. We have millions of idle unemployed here in Turkey. Bankers and politicians stole all the money. Greed is good is their mantra. Government is organized crime. Soma mine disasters with catastrophic loss of life is a fact of life for diggers making $500 a month. My job is to sell stuff. Treasures to be dusted on archaic mantelpieces. People buy things to make themselves happy - in the short term. They want to impress family and friends. They get bored, forget about it, lose it, throw it away or donate it to charity and buy more stuff. It’s a never-ending insatiable desire of supply and demand consumption dramatics. Advertising never dies. Fools are ruled by their emotions. Fear. Enough psycho-social-babble. What brought you here?”

“My feet. I work at The Language Company. I’m a facilitator of character and courage.”

“I know intestinal fortitude. It’s the most expensive virtuous school here.”

“Education is a business. You pays your money and takes your chances.”

“An open hand holds everything.”

They stirred sugar cubes, drank tea, and made small talk.