Giants

“Try this,” said Raymond Carver a famous short story writer. “Write 25 words. Cut it to 15. Cut it to 5. This is what dead editors and hatchet men did to my work.”

Let me try, said Leo  ... here are 25  ... Once upon a time there was a tribe of orphans from Asia who escaped from captivity and abusive life where they were forced to … (haul shit, fuck evil men, work in a factory making electronic gadgets)

Fine. Next? Let me try, said Tran. Here are 15 … A tribe of orphans escaped the tyranny of forced labor and ran away to be.

Good. Next? Let me try, said Rita. Here are 5 … The scared orphans ran away. Precise, said RC, Keep it simple and short. Shorter is better. Less is more. Short, fast, deadly.

Character is action, said Omar. In a novel words reveal a character’s action. It’s internal and meditative. On stage in a play it’s all action.

Writers say what others are afraid to say.

They write naked.

They write in blood.

They write in exile.

See and smell their fear strength and authenticity. Heavy, deep and real. HDR.

Communicate without Voice words. WE sense their sincere authenticity. Writers confront their mental illness every day.

They love SIGN language. Gestures. Their awareness is misunderstood when speaking in SIGN because Speaking people ignore you. Voice Ones are illiterate and interrupt each other. See their fear being alienated, bored and alone. See, taste, hear, smell their fear to BE deaf, dumb and blind.

How do people cope using gestures, said Devina. Gestures control people. Asian Voice Ones talk over each other in their neurotic way. Loud and louder is their mantra. The loudest one is the BIG winner. Congratulations.

Here are my fears said Rita: The fear of living in Cambodia where you are always afraid looking over your shoulder and seeing the past with hard eyes because you have no imagination after twenty years of pure survival instinct with no incentive no initiative facing nightmare futures.

You are afraid someone will sneak up behind you and kill you. You suffer from fear and superstition. 1.7 million hungry ghosts swarm around you. Day in. Day out. We’re talking about some serious long-term trauma with a side order of shame and guilt. It will take another generation or two to clean our consciousness.

Rita: When I grow up, I will be a Fear & Superstition Manager. I’ll have booth on a red dusty road with an F & S sign. People will give me their fear(s) and superstition(s). I won’t say anything  ... I’ll smile and accept it. Thank you. Healed, they continue on their way. I burn it.

For example, they fear someone shows up in the middle of the night while they dream of peace and freedom and kills them. They fear armed strangers raping their screaming wife and daughters while they watch. They fear someone cutting out their tongue. They fear someone in their family not returning from the killing fields.

They suffer the fear of remembering & the fear of forgetting. They fear memory.

They fear losing their children, said Rita. They fear having no imagination. They fear asking why  ... They fear being distracted by stimuli in the environment … They fear controlling their environment … They fear their environment because it controls them … They fear living in Asian countries where, due to circumstances controlled by aliens, parents, teachers and authority figurines they live in perpetual childhood.

Adults keep you there with fake dependency & emotional abuse. They teach you fear. You eat fear three times a day. Delicious fear they say. Have some more. They are the great manipulators. Adults are giants with giant voices and giant control techniques. They threaten you with fear of pain, shame and guilt. It’s a vicious circle.

Life is a circle, a Fibonacci spiral.

The Wheel of Life is the universe.

When you meditate you are free from rebirth. Humans need love. Humans need compassion, kindness and empathy. They need to talk less and draw more. It’s a social and cultural thing. Giants never learned how to read or write. Giants fight, eat, fuck and sleep.

Un Pleasant factoid: 69 million children worldwide of primary school age will not  go to school this morning or tomorrow, next week, or next year.

I fear struggling to join the rising middle class in _______ without political connections and getting a degree in business, said Rita, After authority figures said a business degree was essential thousands got one. Many graduates don’t speak or care to learn English for future opportunities where they need it. They’re stuck working dead-end paper pushing menial jobs, sweeping dreams, chopping vegetables, doing boom-boom, sleeping or slaving in the tourism sector.

They need English to speak with foreigners or to get a job.

A teacher makes maybe $1,000 a month minus bribe fees. They lack initiative. Facing tiny sheep they fear losing control and acting like a fool in the theatre of life.

People fear questioning authority in Utopia before they execute you with a bullet in the back of your brain, said Leo speaking of historical awareness, I dance like nobody’s looking.

Yes, said Rita, I fear meeting my hungry ghost in a country where you:

a) are completely lost

b) have no comprehension what people say

c) suffer paranoia, a terminal disease

d) enjoy tedious ennui boredom carving a niche in your soul and you crave endless electronic distractions and gadget sensory overload

e) need food, water, clothing and shelter from the storm

f) have a humbling life changing experience of magnificent proportions    

g) hear a bell signifying enlightenment and satori, said Omar

Book of Amnesia, V1

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

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

Running Capitalist Dog - Ice Girl

Chapter 6.

You can say that again, sang Leo, a broken-hearted brainwashed exhausted starving peasant practicing free speech with the fluency of intellectual rational objectivity at a Reform Through Re-education labor unit on the edge of the Gobi desert or Hell on Earth.

  He was short, fast and deadly.

  He was condemned to the labor unit for quest-ioning heavily armed moral authority at Beijing Abnormal University. It was the beginning of the Brand NEW Cultural Revolution lasting 10,000 brutal years.

Quanzhou, Fujian, China

  China was systemically dismantled and converted into a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. It was sold at global discount stores labeled Made In China By Poor Illiterate Sweatshop Slaves.

  Millions of educated people were purged from jobs. All social connections were severed. Informers prospered. Families turned each other in to save their skin. Dignity and self-respect devolved into humiliating samzen or self-criticism sessions.

  Yes, they cried. I am guilty, stupid and the cause of all my suffering.

  Yes, they wailed. I am a Running Capitalist Dog. Have mercy. Where do I sign my glorious true confession?

  Here, said Authority. On the dotted line.

  After accepting Leo’s coerced confession interrogation thugs dressed as acrobats rehearsing for a Beijing Opera beat Leo with tofu sandwiches and sand-filled rubber hoses.

A clandestine CIA torture manual instructed them how to adapt modern waterboarding tactics with ancient Chinese water torture techniques.

  Sink or swim sucker, said a diving instructor in a bell jar.

Unemployed and pregnant, Quanzhou, China.

  They hung Leo upside down in the asylum. They spun him around until he became a flashing strobe light jellyfish. A literate starving peasant applied electrodes to his genitals. An illiterate starving peasant cranked up the juice on an old car battery.

  Leo talked. Leo stuttered. Leo cried for mercy.

  Leo screamed, Why me? Not me!

  Denial will kill you, said interrogators. You are an enemy of The One State. You are a clear and present danger to social harmonious stability. Questioning authority is forbidden. Repent Running Dog!

  Leo screamed, I’m a mongrel cur. I will never ever ask another quest-ion, have mercy. They cranked up jungle juice shocking Leo back to a Brave New World.

  His memory was erased.

  This happened because corrupt Chinese party leaders choking on greed, concubines, estates, and gold plated chopsticks with their futures on the line were not pleased one lost day when, in a Correct Political Thought class, Leo had the temerity to ask, Why do we have to read Mao’s Little Red Book, it contains nothing of value, it is outdated, filled with mush for pigs, doublethink ideologies and peasant socialist agrarian social big brother control plans, mindless propaganda and is obsolete.

  Shock and awe filled airless silence.

  Leo was denounced before the entire population. Leaders took care of Leo. They executed all his relatives. That’ll teach the little SOB, said a bureaucrat.

  Authority has spoken, leaders said, standing with Leo wearing shackles of regret and loss and remorse code watching his ancestral Sichuan home erupt in a blazing inferno, hearing his ghost parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandmother, and grandfather scream for mercy in Dante’s fire.

  I will get revenge, Leo reflected in the Gobi. Someday I will stand in front of a tank on Main Street in Beijing screaming, “Run me over you bastards!”

 Until then, Leo’s task based re-education reform activity or Understanding by Design pedagogical reality meant hauling buckets of night soil shit out of labor unit shacks near his straw and mud hovel.

  All day. Every single fucking day.

  He fed it to pigs on Animal Farm. Some pigs are more equal than other pigs. Oink, oink.

 After days, weeks, months, years, decades and centuries hauling loose smelly shit Leo received a Certificate Of Merit and Achievement at an award ceremony.

 20.5 million political-social prisoners witnessed the event.

  Maija, Fujian, China

Fat party work unit leaders exclaimed to tumultuous applause, You Comrade Leo, carrier of the people’s glorious shit, have learned your humbling life lesson through re-education and reform. You learned the hard way. The hard way is the smart way.

You have reformed your thought and behavior in accordance with Confusion moral and ethical social principles. You are now a skeleton, an example of a good, wise and moral person. Congratulations. You may now return to society as a useful citizen.

Here’s a map of the Middle Kingdom, a pocketknife, a handful of rice and a free bottle of water.

  Survivors exhaled with joy. They celebrated his freedom with festive drinking, eating, dancing and tons of free shit. If it can happen to him, it can happen to us, said one of 20.5 million.

  Shouldering his bag Leo wandered out of the Gobi. It was hotter than hell and almost as expensive. It’s a long fucking walk and I lived to tell the tale. I am alive. Leo experienced freedom from anger and attachment with mindfulness.

 Walking, whispered Antonio Machado a Spanish poet, makes the road.

 Timeless metaphorical themes of love, hope, despair, treachery, revenge, betrayal, alienation, loneliness, boredom, loss, choices, consequences, morals, ethics, values, principles, free will vs. determinism, and abandonment coagulating with DNA in a cosmic soup struggled to find clean water, education and medicine expressing irony, symbolism, satire, comedy, weather and sex. 

 Ice Girl in Banlung

Maija, Fujian, China

Question Authority - Ice Girl

Chapter 4.

Leo carried buckets of night soil shit. It was the price he paid for quest-ioning Authority.

  -why, do we have to read Mao’s little red book, it’s mush for pigs, he asked Authority.

  -because you are a tool of the state, said Authority.

  -this shit stinks.

  -here, said Authority. Carry some more.

  After that melancholy loss Leo didn’t take shit from anybody. He burned through levels of existence as an exiled ghost. He slept with shamans in cemeteries.

  He didn’t suffer from PTDS. He didn’t prowl life’s perimeter at midnight with bandoliers of munitions and Howling Wolf, his M-16 on full automatic.

  He wasn’t a suicide bomber hijacking ambulances in Gaza or Baghdad or Karachi or Damascus. He wasn’t blowing up cafes in Haifa or Spanish trains of thought watching children and adults fly through the air with the greatest of ease in the Greatest Show on Earth.

He did not attend pre-9/11 flight training school in Florida on a secret mission of revenge and miraculous destiny.

  Being a worthy asset with nonofficial cover he was quieter than a mouse. The second mouse gets the cheese.

  He disembarked, disabled, distributed, declassified, delineated, discussed and detonated unconscious trip wires. He was a silent night hymn, a predator practicing silence and cunning with his tantric eye wide open.

 I am a camera, he said to Rita, cutting ice. Like you I see the big picture. We are ahead of the future. Wandering storytellers accepted my willingness to walk point. It's the Tao of insight, intuitive friendship and leadership. I don’t sweat the small stuff.

  It’s all small stuff, said Rita. God, the Devil and Allah are in the details.

Checkmate, said Death. I only make one move and it’s always correct.

In Cadiz, Spain a well-dressed bald man with gypsy blood wearing polished black wing tipped shoes used the financial section of a daily rag to collect his dog’s shit off Roman cobblestone. He dumped it into a metal trash basket nailed to a postmodern yellow splattered wall.

  Five minutes later an obsessive-compulsive cleaning woman in her ground floor flat yelled, “What’s that smell?”                                              

  “History.”

Ice Girl in Banlung