Mandalay

Hi. My name is Timothy Mouse. I am a wanderer. I wander and wonder. Like Alice, I try to think of six impossible things before breakfast.

I was in Mandalay four years ago at a private school playing in the Montessori program.

The kids taught me to say I am a miracle.

Street photography was sublime.

The management wasn’t professional so I left after ten weeks. Probation is a two-way street. A friend who stayed for two years said they bled teachers after my departure.  

Dr. Scary and Mrs. Marbles were a strange dysfunctional couple. 

I really enjoyed Burma. The people are gentle, kind and smiling.

I had the chance to return with a language company in Yangon. It was fantastic combination of helping others develop vocabulary, critical thinking, facilitate teaching skills, laughter and do street photography experiments.

Everything I do is an experiment.

The CEO was mean and selfish. He lost the lease on one building where we had classrooms so I was downsized with three other teachers after five months.

I was grateful for the opportunity.

I returned to Seems Ripe, Cambodia doing a volunteer English project in a dusty rural reality for two months with low-income families.

I independently published a new book of black and white images called Street 21, about Yangon. O joy.

I published two short literary works – My Name is Tam, erotica from Vietnam and A Little BS from living and facilitating heart-mind in Laos. All the works are on the side bar.

Hungry, I scoured potential sources in Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Comabodia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Laos.

It’s a wonderful life part 42.

In June, 2015 I accepted an offer to return to Mandalay and here I is. Third times the charm said Lucky Mouse. The food is spicy. The rainy season is here, said clouds. They know me by now.

I speak perfect broken English.

As a Turkish lawyer said in The Language Company, I know my English is not grammatically perfect but I know it’s fluent. Yeah baby.

It’s an English language company. Teachers. Someone with a pulse.

Similar to TLC with more engagement diversity.

My classes begin with 9th graders at an expensive private school 6-7 and 7-8 a.m. Courage to speak and vocabulary while having fun in a non-threatening environment. Draw your dream.

Next are anxious college prep seniors. I came from Cambodia on an elephant. Really, said one sharp girl. Yes, really. His name is Packy and he’s in the secret garden having lunch.

They wait in a fancy air-con room on the fifth floor near the broken elevator for university entrance results so they can apply to a school and become a doctor or engineer or real human. They are the future. We focus on speaking fluency. Take a risk, kids.

Afternoons are with Primary 1 & 2 at a rural private school forty-four minutes out of town from 1-3.

Reminds me of the primal experience outside Shuangliu, China in 2005 – trees, farmland, rivers, birds, wildlife and subsistence living.

Kids there easily said, “Let me try!”

It’s the first time any have had a native speaker. Open your head, heart and mouth. Draw your dream. Write what you don’t know. 

Say please and thank you. Practice good manners. Share. Be kind.

Say I need help. Three little important English words.

The assistant primary teachers and admin are supportive and understand my small character development.  

Young learners teach me songs. We hold hands, share hugs, dance, sing and play games using the alphabet, animals, and colors. Storytelling imagination. We practice cursive writing. The hand is directly connected to the heart.

We meditate on our breath. Posture.

I act my age.

It’s the same Asian educational story - young ones have no fear. O joy.

Older ones have been tyrannized into passivity. It’s a cultural/educational reality. Big ears no mouth authoritarian social conditioning. A few have the courage to ask questions. Group work allows people to speak freely.

The culture taught them to respect other people’s integrity. Silence is the norm. Silence is the loudest noise in the universe. 

As Einstein said, "Learning is an experience. Everything else is just information."

I respect their situation. Students are emerging from imaginary shells and discarding social context masks with a new sense of love, responsibility, leadership ability, polite manners, teamwork and courage.

They experiment in creative notebooks. I bring objects to sterile classrooms – a yellow leaf, an apple, a feather, rocks, plants, and bouquets of yellow and white daisies.

Smell this.

Draw this and write your feelings.

Your creative notebook will be with you long after textbooks gather dust. It’s your best friend.

Share with your pod people.

It’s a joy to be a small part of their process. Let’s have an adventure.

The 9^th graders live in a hostel, sixteen to a room. Sexes don’t mingle, when I shift them to team tables with each other they freeze initially. Patience is my teacher. Say hello. Ask questions about name, family, food. Spark it.

Next week I expose them to Emotional Nourishment. Share hugs. Hold hands. Dance like nobody’s looking.

THE WORKERS

Let’s go.

One day the 12^th graders walked down five flights of stairs to sit out of the broiling sun in small groups drawing, sketching, coloring and writing about the workers.

Seventeen young male and female laborers inside the front gate shoveled sand, mixed it with water, carried piles of rocks on their heads to a cement mixer, welded metal and created a new cement floor. Earth needs more floors.

Local teachers couldn’t get their heart around this essential activity. A young student from elementary said teachers nicknamed me Free Man.

Amazing Victory (his English name) a local teacher said he appreciates the students having this opportunity. He said it’s a welcome sight in their system focusing on texts, marks, exams and rote learning.

We returned to the classroom and wrote about the experience. Share details with your partner. How did you feel? What did you smell, hear, visual awareness? Where’s the real education value?

One girl drew the back of a woman in a floral designed Longyi balancing a basket of rocks on her head. Clear description. Her essence. Too shy to share with the class I did it for her.

Look at this amazing art.

Homework – go for a walk with your notebook and colors. No gadgets.

Basics. Ten teachers stay in a hotel. It’s an old funky comfortable place with a blue shimmering swimming pool and well-established interior meditative garden with palm trees, wild flowers, ponds, lotus, ferns, and green life. Birds and cats. Like China 1,000 years ago.

The smiling laundry woman wears red and orange and green tie-dyed blouses. Ebullient. She’s been here thirty-one years. Her ironing skills are immaculate as we converse. I will invite her to come to my classes and teach the kids how to apply gentle pressure to cloth. The young ones will get it.

I wear a Longyi, a form of sarong, the male national dress, every day. Delightful. Soft fabric, thread, colors. Students and teachers appreciate this. Ventilation.

Conservative morose foreign teachers strangle dreams with a tie. Tuck in your shirt. I imagine their classes border on boredom. So it goes. 

AIS prison school where I did the Montessori program for ten weeks is east of town.

I hitch into town for supplies and street photography. This location is central, easy for walking, exploring and connecting with the local community. A bike would be sufficient however it’s too fast for street work and engaging people.

The road is made by walking.

You know how much I love dust.

I enter a pharmacy near Paradise Hospital for powder anti-oxidants, vitamins and minerals to add to water.

Where are you from, said the smiling man of Burmese-Indian heritage. Tibet. He got it. Tibet? I see. Yes, I walked here. Come visit again. We can talk. You can be my friend. Ok. See you later.

The camera entered a narrow lane. It passes wooden and bamboo homes with families sitting outside or indoors watching a soapy opera, men reading papers, kids playing, women bathing at a community zone. Draw water.

A plane flew overhead. Three kids sitting on a bamboo platform waved at the plane. Good-bye, ha, ha.

Thanks for your patience, a great teacher.

Truth, love and compassion.

Burma Commander

In Shan State, Burma once upon a time there was along running insurgency- people fighting and dying for territory, freedom, opium, jade, and blood red rubies - golden triangle profit.

A shiny green army pick up truck pulled up at the New Sign Moon Bakery in Lashio.

A soldier in green jumped out and opened the door. The fat wife got out – black hair decorated with blue sapphires in a white and silver long dress, designer purse, serious face.

Six soldiers exited the back of the truck. They were on a mission to liberate cakes, cookies, sweets from a glass shrine.

The short commander wore a camouflage jacket with depressed green pants and black shiny shoes. He had epaulets on his shoulder.

His sharp black eyes stared at a stranger sitting at an outdoor table bleeding ink.

Zero expression. His buried eyes were recessed emptiness. His camo boonie hat at a rakish angle was decorated with a golden military symbol of happiness, compassion and love.

His life climbed steps into a New Son. Her husband uttered quick syllables to number two.

Number two wore military bearing without a care in the world. He barked into a walkie-talkie.

A military policeman guarded the front of the truck. Soldiers stood around smoking as motorcycles loaded with fresh strawberries streamed goodbye.

She exited followed by a salesgirl trundling bags of roles and buns. A soldier put them in the truck. She spoke to her husband knowing words were unnecessary. He followed her to the market. Soldiers marched behind singing, I love a parade.

Years later they returned with bags of strawberries, apples and bananas. They loaded everything into the truck.

Someone called the commander. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. He opened his mouth. Perfect white teeth. If you knew words. He smiled.

A soldier open the door for his life. She got in. He got in took off his party hat and slicked his hair. The military police whistled traffic.

They drove into a dream come true.

Real–not true

True–not real

outside lao kids' hospital

thin vociferous tongues
wag letters
caligraphy senses

voices sniff garbage

smoke dances from grilled meat
h'mong man from
distant landscape vegetation
eats with startled fish eyes

net man braids

white filament threads 

Mahliang, Burma

Pop: 10,000

2.5 hours south of Mandalay, another village.

Namaste Storytellers,

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

Fog shrouds trees before dawn on a chilly morning. 

Mornings are fraught with mist as an orange burning orb rises over forests and rice paddies. Crows caw sing wing wind songs above monks chanting sutras at a pagoda. A bell reverberates.

Leaves dance free from The Tree of Life.

This raw, direct immediate experience reminds a traveler of Phonsavan, Laos, near the Plain of Jars, long ago and far away in the winter of 2013. A Little BS came of it.

At 5:45 a.m. below trees with yellow leaves, 100 grade ten female students with dancing flashlights trace a dirt path. They've escaped the comfort of hostel dreams.

They dance toward classrooms and a cavernous dining hall for rice and vegetables. Hot soup if they are lucky. Mumbled voices scatter singing birds.

Thirty-five grade ten female student voices reciting scientific lessons at 6:15 a.m. echo from classrooms at the Family Boarding School.

Dystopian wrote memorization. Utilitarian. Repetition.

Learning by heart.

It’s not about learning. It’s about passing the exam and marks.

Vomit the material.

The wisdom of the heart is deeper and truer than knowledge in the head.

They drone on huddled, hunched over wooden benches in jackets and yarning caps with swinging tassel balls. A bundled teacher scratches white words on a blackboard – Today is the day of my dreams.

A narrow garden of hanging pink, orange, purple, white orchids reflect shadows before scattered light sings. An office girl sprays H20 diamonds on petals and green leaves.

A distant solitary bell reverberates.

Monks chant sutras at a pagoda.

A thin stick broom sweeping world dust cleans perception.

Two doctor brothers own the fifteen-year old school. They speak good English and are friendly, resourceful and gentle. Their parents are also doctors.

Zones are under construction - new rooms and a kitchen for foreign teachers near the dining room. A gym, library and science labs are being built between long two-story buildings with eight classrooms per level.

Old trees prosper. Crows and dogs scavenge garbage.

Men and boys hammer, saw, dig, carry lumber, bricks, and rebar iron and mix cement. Boys shovel dirt from trenches. Women shoulder excavated dirt in bamboo baskets.

In the shade of 300-year old trees girls sort piles of plastic water bottles and Styrofoam containers. Crows watch with disinterest.

Kitchen women sitting in a sacred circle talk about life, love and their emotional wellbeing while peeling onions. They live longer.

Uprooted bamboo is planted against cinder block walls decorated with brown and green broken glass shards to prevent education from escaping.

Tree branches hacked into rough art forms pierce blue sky.

Fear & Curiosity converse with gestures. Do something you've never done before.

Trust, love, friendship.

Communicate. Learn. Imagine.

I am a rainbow.

This school reminds a ghost-self of rural schools in Sichuan, China. Broken windows, trash, rough cement passages where sewage smells like success.

Painted platitudes and Odes sing on the roof.

Learning in Paradise

Cement shells, paper exams plastered on windows.

Faded green paint. Wooden benches.

Worn wooden floors. Blackboards. Chalk n' talk.

Cover your mouth when you erase the past.

Ghost-self meditates with sleeping tigers.  

An eight-car train from Yangon to Mandalay rumbles past. Lonely whistles blow. Ain’t nothing but the blues sweet thing.

Horse cart traps jingle jangle hoof tarmac music, prancing and dancing along dirt paths - On Comet, On Cupid, Dasher and Dancer.

The peripatetic facilitator of English, Courage, Creativity and Fun is here until 12 February on a three-teacher team from Mandalay.

He arrived in early December to prepare the program before two teachers arrived for four weeks and then two new teachers. He’s here for the duration.

His sleeping room is spacious, light, leaf shadows. He salutes the sun and burning stars every morning through leaves of time.

Food in the family kitchen prepared by a smiling auntie is delicious; spicy curries, chicken, fish, pork, fresh veggies, soup, rice, fruit. Everyone is soft and attentive.

Native barbarian speaker focus is English exposure with Listening and Speaking for 365 G10 high school students with respect enabling Courage. 

In addition to text stuff  - artists, writers and dreamers explore and discover their infinite beauty and potential with Creative Notebooks. SOP. Mind map your self.

How to be more human.

How did I grow?

Chess lessons, strategies, and tactics, improves their critical thinking skills, planning, logic, accepting responsibility for their actions, visualization, time management, and teamwork.

Learn. Play. Share. 

500 grade 10-11 students live at the school. They’ve come from distant Shan state villages and Myanmar areas. They are their parents’ social security.

The school has an excellent reputation for matriculation results.

Segregated classes. Walking on campus, girls shield their faces from distant boys. No social testosterone distractions.

Zero gadgets.

They study Myanmar, math, history, physics, chemistry, science, biology and Magic and Potions from 6-11, 1:30-6, 7:30-11 p.m.  Sonorous voices echo daily.

They leave school one day a month.

The Wild West Village

Horse drawn cart traps.

One traffic light. Two motorcycles is a jam.

Green for go.

Twenty minutes away on foot, an extensive traditional market covered in rusting PSP sheets is a delightful adventure  - returning to the source of community, dark eyed local curiosity, street photography, laughter, and a floating babble of tongues inside a labyrinth of narrow uneven dirt paths.

Footprints on stone and dirt meander through forests and mountains of oranges, apples, bananas, red chilies, green vegetables, thin bamboo baskets of garlic and onions, farm implements, varieties of rice (a huge business), clacking sewing machines, basic commodities, steaming noodles, cracking fires, snorting horses.

Sublime.

Blindfish heads whisper The Sea, The Sea. Silver scales reflect light.

A woman hacks chickens. Blood streams down circular wooden tree rings

The gravity of thinking sits on a suspended hand held iron pan scale. A white feather sits in the other pan.

Balance.

Twenty-six varieties of rice mountains peak in round metal containers or scarred wooden boxes.

Horse drawn cart traps unload people and produce. Neck bells tinkle: Star light star bright first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might get the wish I wish tonight. Well. Fed horses paw dirt.

Ancient diesel tractor engines attached to a steel carcass hauling people and produce bellow black smoke.

Old wooden shuttered shops with deep dark interiors display consumables, soap, thread waiting for a conversation, stoic curious dark eyed women, others laughing at the benign crazy traveler. 

A ghost-self sits in meditative silence, absorbing rainbow sights, sounds, colors, smells, feeling a calm abiding joy. 

Wander and wonder. 

Two teachers arrived for three weeks. One tall relaxed American male and serious eyes. His Irish female’s unhappiness confronting the hardship assignment masked emotional distress and deep bitterness.

She lived at the girl's dorm fifteen minutes away by dusty footprints. I feel isolated.

Cry me a river, said human nature. 

Hardship and deprivation develops character, said an Asian child.

Don’t give me that crap, she said. I have twenty years of teaching experience and this is hell.

Hell is other people, said Sartre.

Be a good Catholic girl and make a confession, said Personal Problem.

It’s life lesson #5, said the child.

Yeah, yeah, said the whining adult eating her frustration and anger garnished with succulent tomatoes.

The world is a village. 

Mindfulness.

Mindful seeing.

Mindful attention.

Mindful presence.

Calm abiding.

Check in with your breath.

 

Engage senses. Visual epiphany between what is and what will be.

Yellow leaves flutter from trees. Thanks for growing me.

Brown birds with white wing markings sing on a branch. I feel free, what a glorious day.

Laborers pound nails and pour stones and sand into a cement mixer. Women shoulder baskets of dirt.

Angel choirs chant lessons; Life isn’t easy. Life is good.

On Friday at the end of week número uno the ghost-self carried a bag of colored chalk and a yellow daisy to a class of twenty-five girls.

Standard white chalk dusted world’s education. It dressed the stage and the brown raised platform where wooden faced esoteric teachers lectured, droning absolute physic computations dulling hearts and smiles. 

It reminded him of a previous incarnation in Room 317 at

Yang-En University in Sichuan, China in 2006 (A Century is Nothing).

We see through our eyes not with our eyes.

See with soft eyes.

How is you, said ghost-self?

I am a creative genius, they laughed.

Don’t let school interfere with your education said Laughter Therapy. Ha. Ha.

Please open your creative notebook. Free writing.

He wrote, “Love is...” on the green blackboard.

Five minutes. Write fast. Do not go back, erase or cross out. Keep your hand moving.

Classical violin music by Hillary Hahn echoed through the room.

They meditated on the process of hand - heart connections.

Be the ink. Be the paper.

They shared writing with partners.

 Students drew a floor plan of their favorite room. They practiced tragic English target language - using “There is...There are...” describing furnishings.

They practiced prepositions of place. I am on Earth. I am sitting between friends.

He divided the class into three teams and partitioned the BB.

He opened the bag of colors. Draw your dreams.

Laughing and chattering they created rainbows, rivers, moons, suns, people, mountains, trees, birds, and flowing gardens.

After fifteen minutes they wrote about their art experience in creative notebooks. You created a masterpiece, he said. See you Monday.

Good news here? Democracy and Hope for 55 million Myanmar people after free elections. People waited fifty years for this opportunity. They shared their joy and ink stained finger. Look! I voted.

Myanmar is the most generous country in the world, USA #2.

I am riding a beam of light through space.

Feel free to touch in.

Enjoy making sand castles with gratitude. 

Life is a test. Lessons later.

Discover a pinecone near The Tax Department in Trabzon. It escaped The Department of the Forest.

Make copies of your life. Duplicates accepted. Mirrors reflecting mud and meadows of reality need cleaning.

Visit the Tax office. Get a tax number.

Go to bank. You are #199. Sit on sidewalk. Wait for a teller to tell.

Sullen and impatient she’s late for 12:30 lunch. Sit Down deposits $12,000 for four native barbarians.

Withdraw tomorrow, said Teller’s Overture.

Go to the police residency office across from the cemetery where a wailing mother drumming soil waters roses. Hired guns sing gravestone’s chiseled destiny with a sledgehammer. A gravedigger turns soil in his absolute phenomena of totality.

Grill your usual suspects while eating chicken with shredded lettuce not have this conversation in the abstract.

Giresun loudspeakers imported from Lenin Park in Hanoi engaged, studied and activated speech-enabled synapse software. Attention Comrades.

A woman teacher directed behavior control classes with sparkling syllables. Children memorized grammar rules. Pass the examination. 60 is heaven. 59 is hell. Pass me through.

Life is the test. Lessons later. It is multiple-choice.

Silver man polishes a serving set. Flour hands of a laughing baker removing loaves from ovens whisper secrets near fish hawkers washing ice streams. Bread aromas float past women selling cabbages bigger than lost children.

Walking through sad Giresun rain Lucky remembered his Khmer lover.

The Language Company