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Entries in attitude (41)

Wednesday
Jul242013

Turkish attitude

Adult Ankara language students said they were tired.

They loved being addicted to a phenobarbital phenomenon reality altering life, taking anti-depressants (Xanax) by mouth. He processed their fear and anxiety.

A national Turkish problem, according to a male psychiatrist is anxiety.

A clinking small musically inclined silver spoon dissolved square sugar cubes made in a factory where the hygiene conditions were abysmal.

We sat in a teahouse filled with Turkish and Iranian carpets, blue amber oil paintings and thick embroidered cushions near a well-thumbed Zen tarot deck. Fortune telling is an art and science depending on a suspicious, auspicious way. We gifted each other the state of relaxation. Reading, feeling, absorbing the future is the process.

These a-dolts eat their fear, humiliation and guilt with yogurt, said Zeynep in Bursa drawing in a Moleskine. 

Wednesday
Jun262013

Dr. Scary and Mrs. Marbles (4/4)

She and Dr. Scary run and mismanage (if fear, ignorance, incompetence and greed IS management) the Great Educational Scam Machine. She reminded me of Chinese teachers in Fujian schools screaming, Just blend in. I only want you to bring two things to class. Your ears!

Welcome to my nightmare, said Yeah-Yeah.

She invested her princess sums in offshore rice paddy accounts near Burmese refugee camps bothering Thailand.

Why did you leave?

I'd witnessed enough of the dystopian Kafkaesque-like suffering. The teachers' apartments resembled prison cells. I've more useful things to do with my time, energy, love and compassion.

Give me a urine sample.

Yeah-Yeah in her infinite wisdom minus kindness expected me to write a lesson plan for the Kindergarten kids in the library.

You're joking.

It was Friday, June 8th at exactly 1:17 p.m.

I'd taken the geniuses to the bibliotheca for thirty minutes. They found books, sat reading, looking at pictures and sharing with friends. She wandered in and sat down.

I see you brought the kids to the library.

You are very observant.

Where's your lesson plan for the library?

You're kidding.

At 3:10 p.m. I gave seven-days notice to Dr. Scary. Here's my lesson plan. Probation is a 2-way street.

Good for you.

Yes. Life is too short for this nonsense. I shredded the truth with kids. I helped you. We helped each other grow. We walked slowly. We danced. We sang. We discovered sharing. We meditated. We had fun. Now it's time to ride my elephant through jungles back to Cambodia.

I left a sewing machine and umbrella on an operating table in the teachers' cellblock. I departed Mandalay without delay.

That's another story about creativity, independent thinking and free choice.

Yes it is. Thank you for your attention.

Wednesday
Feb272013

Lao kid

I’m a big seven as in 7, said an omniscient reliable Lao narrator.

Your life is not a test or a dress rehearsal. If it is an actual life your invisible friend will protect you from ignorance and fear.

My dad's not very smart. It's probably his DNA. A string theory of letters. Genetics. Gee. Net. Icks. 

Let me give you a kind-hearted example of his stupidity. It's the rainy season here in Laos. Slashing squalling delicious rain. Soft, cool, soothing. Like tears. Cry me a river.

It's pouring like honey. What’s dear old dad do? He washes his silver van in a downpour. Smart eh? Yeah, he’s trying to impress dry watchers with his intelligent hose running wealthy water over rain. Cleaning. He ignores me mostly.

Grandmother sits on the faded 1924 white austere colonial dark brown balcony folding banana leaves for a ceremony. Every morning at dawn she walks to the muddy road and offers wandering Buddhist monks a handful of rice. She burns incense at the family altar. She nurtures her shrinking garden after her son decided to plant a cement parking lot. What a clever little man.

Grandfather stares at rain on flower petals collecting in pools.

Father's very busy. He disappears for hours. Drinking beer with friends. Playing around with a secret squeeze in dark places. She’s starving for affection and cash. A poor girl from a poor family needs to make a living, poor thing.

My mom's also really smart. What’s the difference between smart and clever? After the rain, when it's dry and the smallest full moon of the year rises above the Mekong before a river festival filled with floating orange flowers and burning candles she burns all the plastic garbage. Yeah, yeah. Burn baby burn. Light my fire.

It's a sweet smell let me tell you. Like that Duvall character saying, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Kinda like that smell. What's the word? Acrid. 

When she's not burning plastic trash she sweeps. Broom music. Stone cold. She cooks. She pretends to be busy. She's a baby machine. What's another mouth? She manages the home, kids and cash. In China I’m worth $3,500 on the stolen kid market. My sister would have been aborted.

Mom ignores me mostly. She's very busy doing her humble mother routine. Later, she squawks. She's a soft kind later.

People here like parents and teachers and lazy passive humans love to pretend to be busy. I guess it gives their short life meaning.

Milling around is an art form with style. Hemingway had style. Fitzgerald had style and class.

They are soft and kind. They have a good heart. They are not as mercenary as the Vietnamese. They drift through your sensation, perception and consciousness with the grace of a cosmic Lepidoptera in a strong wind. The trick is to tolerate, with kindness and patience, your great teacher, the bland empty-eyed star gazing starrers and hustlers. Bored after five minutes they lose interest and leave you be. Zap, like a zig-zag lightning bolt. Gone. Zap.

Vietnamese plant rice.

Cambodians watch it grow.

Laotians listen to it grow.

Ain’t nature a great teacher?

For cultural, historical, educational, environmental, emotional, intellectual and economic reasons milling around is a popular daily activity. This unpleasant fact cannot be denied or ignored or forgotten like a missing leg.

It needs to be up front because it is a clear immediate danger and way of life.

Limited opportunities, unregulated population growth, substandard education, no medicine, no hope and inconclusive futures enhance Milling Around. It kills time alleviating boredom, the dreaded lethargic tedious disease.

Milling Around kills the human spirit. No initiative. Period. How sweet. How charming. It’ll take another generation to clean it up. Cambodia and Lao and Vietnam are alive with ghosts.

Their existence is one long perpetual distraction. Say what?

You may as well do what you love because you're going to spend most of your life doing it. Breed and work. That’s what I say.

I’m too young to know much. I know what I don’t know. Anyway, I need to finish my school paper on developing moral character with social intelligence, grit, self-control, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity.

How do you build self-control and grit?

Through failure, said the boy. There are two kinds of character.

What are they?

Moral character is fairness, generosity, and integrity. Performance character is effort, diligence, and perseverance. Kids need challenges to grow. Like hardships and deprivation. Yeah, it’s trial and error and taking risks.

Thanks for the life lesson. You are the future of Laos.


Friday
Feb222013

old cherokee

An old Cherokee chief took his grandchildren into the forest and sat them down and said to them, “A fight is going on inside me. This is a terrible fight and it is a fight between two wolves. One wolf is the wolf of fear, anger, arrogance, and greed. The other wolf is the wolf of courage, kindness, humility, and love.”

The children were very quiet and listening to their grandfather with both their ears as he then said to them, “This same fight between the two wolves that is going on inside of me is also going on inside of you, and inside of every person.”

They thought about it for a minute, and then one child asked the chief, “Grandfather, which wolf will win the fight?”

He said quietly, “The one you feed.”

Saturday
Feb162013

do the mango tango

I go, we go, you go. Mango. Super fruit.

Buy one, get one free. Peel it down. Peel my skin. I am a bed rabbit. Plow my field. Honey needs money. Hungry girls go to bed. Savor my succulent mass of alfa bet your sweet ass anti-oxidants.

A, C, E. Ace a mango.

The humility of a mango. Skin releases it’s interior daily monologue. Flowing sensations dance a mango simplicity with serenity. 

Mango said, “There are two kinds of people in the world.”

“What are they?” said Star, a Cambodian kid rented from mom by an NGO needing global media publicity.  

“They are subdivided into specific sub-species. There are people who want to blame you and people who want to distract you. There are people who want control or approval.

"There are people who face the music and there are people who run for cover. There are people who pay attention and people who don’t know or care what the fuck is going on. They are too poor to pay attention.

"There are people who make things happen and people who dream about making things happen."

“I see,” said Star. “You mean, according to the philosopher, Damon Younger Than Yesterday, ‘distraction is an inability to identify, attend to what is valuable, even when we are hard working or content.’”

“Yes, that’s what I said I mean because I mean what I say and say what I mean,” laughed Mango doing the tango with Taoist monks at The Temple of Complete Reality in Sichuan.

“Disorientation begets creative thinking,” said Star.

"You are bright," said Mango. "Shine on."

 

 

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