51 Days

The cost of the thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. - Henry Thoreau

*

Here we go. The alert went out on Saturday 27 October before Halloween when Sit Down, a native with a degree in Business Management from Tupperware College, living at home and working as admin guy at the TEOL school in Trabzon, tried to reach Lucky in Giresun - cherry in Latin - 2.5 hours away.

Sit Down needed his documents to apply for a residency permit.

The all-knowing, all seeing, all powerful and all believing Turkish government of bored drones, wanting to force everyone in the food chain to be accountable so they could maintain Control had told TEOL:

You, Profit Before People, running an educational business intent on brainwashing and dumbing down children, young adults, old adults and diseased heart-mind dead humans in quest of an English certificate from your institution have ... according to the grand and glorious proclamation from our dead fearless and forever glorified leader Ata Boy, ten calendar days - yes only ten - act now before it’s too late - to file the required paperwork requesting work permits for your native speakers born and raised outside our glorious land of sea, sky and succulent tomatoes, speaking with their clear pronunciation, these specific barbarians, after filing for their residency permits.

Failure to do so, said Authority, Means:

1) they cannot be employed by the state of Confusion & Sorrow & High Anxiety

2) they cannot order Allah cart in Kofte diners featuring grilled shit burgers slathered with yogurt

3) they will be decapitated at dawn tomorrow by a warrior hero riding a white stallion waving a diamond mind blade

Failure to comply with our Ten-Day Decree means you will need to start the complete bureaucratic sham process all over again. You will lose face. You will suffer personal & national humiliation & our brutal revenge.

You will become a hunted dog and massacred like 1.5 million Armenians. We do not acknowledge this genocide in 1914. We erased the Armenians. We deny their existence.

Prove it.

Denial kills you.

Anger is expensive.

Failure to comply and lie with intentional cunning means you will have to haul more word shit and process tedious official documents. You will spend years seeking a stamp from a performing seal of approval.

You will raise your greasy baksheesh palms to heaven imploring Ali Baba the leader of forty thieves for redemption and solace.

Tell me you love me. Desire, love and passion create suffering. Suffering is an illusion.

WE, Authority do our best to make the paperwork process cumbersome, illogical, frustrating, idiotic, mind numbing, depressing, heavy deep & real shit for brains.

We love paper. It’s why, as you've seen in Bay (male) or Bayan (female) toilets the absence of paper products. We use holy water imported from the Vatican via Syria to blast orifices. Water is sweeter than pleasure principles smothered with honey.

Everything here needs an official government issued signed stamped document permit for: breathing, laughing, dreaming, dancing, drawing, writing and meditating.

No paper no chance. Please note this text message to Lucky from Sit Down.

51 Days In Turkey

Amazon Women

After eating, Turkish businessmen splashed aromatic tonic on their hands, patted jowls and slicked back thinning hair. One man adjusted spectacles. Eating fish fast made him sweat. Sharing a joke about bones he smiled at an assassin writing a character sketch.

Ancient serious women accepted hard mountain village life.

Young women divorced from confronting nature, soil and invisible roots, facing steep cobblestone Trabzon streets, appeared dazed and confused confronting miles of shops, window dummies and aggressive male textile hawkers yelling, BUY FROM ME. SPECIAL MORNING PRICE.

Have a look-see.

Shoppers’ visual examination loved consumption paradigms.

Lucky hung out observing the flow as cats prowled for scraps, bodies with a voice cautioned parking spaces and lost souls attempting sad cellular telecommunication connections stumbled through life inconveniences below Roman walls.

An abandoned Roman castle overlooking Giresun had a secret tunnel to a nearby is-land where Amazon women lived. They mated annually to keep the race going.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint, said an Amazon woman to her Black Sea lover. Take your time. After you make love to me, I will kill you and eat your heart.

I have something to look forward to, he said. Yes, she said, death is a new adventure. Nothing ever happens again.

Swirling exhortations of mosque mullahs calling the pious echoed down cobblestone alleys past Giresun boys riding spoke less bikes between crumbling yellow Ottoman walls and mackerel sellers discussing silver fins lying dead-eyed glossy on ice crystals melting into a refrain, The Sea. The Sea.

51 Days in Turkey

51 Days in Turkey

Ebru had apartment keys. A broom and mop. Certified by Deep State Central Cleaning Company. Dust my room.

Alerted to transcendental shifts by Ebru, the bald strapping German TEOL teacher paid 170 Lira to take a Dolmus bus seating twelve through Giresun, careening up and down hills as the driver played an aggressive horn past sad-angry husbands, sad-angry wives, morose backpack kids, ebullient silver fish sellers, grizzled tea men huddled in shady alleys, hawk-nosed women chattering laundry, despondent boy clerks soaping glassy watch out time windows seeking clarity, while negotiating twists, turns and exists to reach a harrowing slick 65-degree upward slope leading to a white apartment bordering The Department of The Forest at the end of the yellow brick road.

He unlocked the door. Five empty freezing rooms.

The kitchen counter displayed empty soda bottles, a black plastic bag of cheap harsh stale tobacco, a box of lavender herbal tea flowers, 1/2 jar of Nescafé, one white coffee cup, one spoon, a sharp knife, a fork in the road and one bright yellow plate.

On a white laminated shelf was a first edition of Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, signed by the author.

“Read this,” said Silence, the loudest noise in the world.

Next to it was a black key for a teachers’ cabinet at TEOL.

“Call Trabzon,” the German man informed Ebru. “We have an MIA.”

She rang Sit Down in Trabzon.

“Lucky Foot took a hike,” she said.

“Call out the SWAT team and dogs. Hunt him down. Kill him with extreme prejudicial kindness.”

She called SWAT. The line was busy.

The German returned to TEOL and gave Ebru the key. She approached the cabinet. A rancid smell smashed her nose. “What’s that god-awful stench?”

Gagging, she threw up all over a teachers’ desk littered with empty tea glasses, cell phones and half eaten Simit pretzels. Regaining her composure she approached The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari (1920).

She heard a ticking sound. Maybe it’s a bomb. I should call the bomb squad.

They arrived. A man in a bombproof origami suit applied a stethoscope to the front panel. Yes, something is ticking.

He drilled a hole and pushed a microscopic eye into darkness. A mirror inside the cabinet reflected a thin piece of pulsating metronomic metal. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

“We’ll have to open this with thrilling caution. Get the Die Rector.”

The Die Rector, an economist, knew what to do. “Let’s assume there’s no fucking problem. Give me the key.”

Ebru handed it over. Everyone backed up hard drives.

The Die Rector, 56, who was scheduled for a heart-valve transplant in January, unlocked the door.

Inside was The Language Company by Zeynep, class rosters, green, yellow, orange highlighters, a magnifying glass, telescope, world globe, hourglass, a bag of hazelnuts, radioactive isotopes, a red rose with thorns, a dissolving image of a smiling ghost playing with Lone Wolf in a mountain meadow, a mirror, a dozing Black Mamba, a high voltage Dream Sweeper Machine from Hanoi, a Honer blues harp in the key of C, a magic carpet, one sugar cube, a glass, spoon, dry tea leaves, an empty bottle of Xanax, a ticking metronome, a bamboo forest, dusty footprints and rusty loudspeakers squawking:

We are Authority, Power and Control. Surprise!

Two things happened. He saw his reflection and suffered a minor heart attack. The aggressive Black Mamba struck him in the neck, injected 100ml of venom and slithered away to survive another day in paradise.

The victim collapsed writhing on the floor. He died in two minutes no more no less.

Ebru screamed, Oh no.

The bomb squad man stopped the metronome. “Time has ceased. Call an ambulance.”

The German called the Trabzon orifice. “We have a D.O.A. Die Rector in rigor mortis.”

“That's your problem, not our problem. You deal with it,” said Trabzon. “Don’t bother us with petty details. No evidence means no case. Die Rectors are a dime a dozen.”

51 Days in Turkey

Bursa, Turkey

Profit Before People

A global virus has a long term effect. Humans adjust priorities.

Big busine$$ restructures their operations. Oil, banks, pharmaceuticals, travel industry, automotive, and airlines.

It's a numbers game, said Profit Before People.

Story time...

...He unlocked the door. Five empty freezing rooms.

The kitchen counter displayed empty soda bottles, a black plastic bag of cheap harsh stale tobacco, a box of lavender herbal tea flowers, 1/2 jar of Nescafé, one white coffee cup, one spoon, a sharp knife, a fork in the road and one bright yellow plate.

On a white laminated shelf was a first edition of Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, signed by the author.

“Read this,” said Silence, the loudest noise in the world.

Next to it was a black key for a teachers’ cabinet at TEOL.

“Call Trabzon,” the German man informed Ebru. “We have an MIA.”

She rang Sit Down in Trabzon.

“Lucky Foot took a hike,” she said.

“Call out the SWAT team and dogs. Hunt him down. Kill him with extreme prejudicial kindness.”

She called SWAT. The line was busy.

The German returned to TEOL and gave Ebru the key. She approached the cabinet. A rancid smell smashed her nose. “What’s that god-awful stench?”

Gagging, she threw up all over a teachers’ desk littered with empty tea glasses, cell phones and half eaten Simit pretzels. Regaining her composure she approached The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari (1920).

She heard a ticking sound. Maybe it’s a bomb. I should call the bomb squad.

They arrived. A man in a bombproof origami suit applied a stethoscope to the front panel. Yes, something is ticking.

He drilled a hole and pushed a microscopic eye into darkness. A mirror inside the cabinet reflected a thin piece of pulsating metronomic metal. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.  

“We’ll have to open this with thrilling caution. Get the Die Rector.”

The Die Rector, an economist, knew what to do. “Let’s assume there’s no fucking problem. Give me the key.”

Ebru handed it over. Everyone backed up hard drives.

The Die Rector, 56, who was scheduled for a heart-valve transplant in January, unlocked the door.

Inside was The Language Company by Zeynep, class rosters, green, yellow, orange highlighters, a

magnifying glass, telescope, world globe, hourglass, a bag of hazelnuts, radioactive isotopes, a red rose with

thorns, a dissolving image of a smiling ghost playing with Lone Wolf in a mountain meadow, a mirror, a

dozing Black Mamba, a high voltage Dream Sweeper Machine from Hanoi, a Honer blues harp in the key of C,

a magic carpet, one sugar cube, a glass, spoon, dry tea leaves, an empty bottle of Xanax, a ticking

metronome, a bamboo forest, dusty footprints and rusty Communist loudspeakers squawking:

We are Authority, Power and Control. Surprise!

51 Days in Turkey

The Language Company

Study currency with a friend.

How did I grow?