get to the verb - TLC 57

A German-made Bombardier Metro sped through subterranean optical illusions.

An old man wearing a crumpled white hat negotiated a slippery cobblestone slope with his wife.

She was his noun, he her verb.

“Get to the verb,” he said.

Their language of love complemented autumn browns, yellows and greens, golden sparrows, blue jays and preening lovey doves.

Streets named Regret and Laughter welcomed human potential.

Passion and heartbreak danced with death as a Moon Metro hurtled through folds in space-time.

Silent salient passengers wore sad eyed emptiness. They craved sleep in a tyranny of sheep-less-mess. 

Man Delay, Burma

Wandering Mandalay.

Hey Orphan, your Mystery bike is faster now.

Yeah, we visited a shop after seeing the old tire hanging on a nail next to a white shirt drying in the sun.

It had four months of accumulated dust and grime and road songs.

He was a nice guy, filled the tires, blasted Mystery with water, soaped and scrubbed it down, air hosed it dry, oiled the chain, re-calibrated Shimano gears and said, I'm going to Japan next year to see my family.

Say again. Spin them wheels.

the long now

Events, characters, setting, impressions. Energies and frequencies.

Remember Coco speaking in Fujian, China? She watched all the university students walk past the old village people. "They are all peasants."

Years later the rich Chinese man in Laos served you fresh green Fujian tea at the Luang Prabang guesthouse. "Children are tools," he said. He had two. They arrived in a Raging Rover using GPS.

Discernment with sensitivity.

Engaged by a stimulus. Disengaged from a stimulus.

Truth-Force.

Signal-Noise

High season in V. Perfect for drawing twilight as scooters mumble putt putt exhausted fear based laughter succumbing to circumstance. Yoke said a verb is a condition. Her insight was victorious. Word got back that all but three 8th grade students were caught cheating on their Lao exams. No surprise there. Delight in the sly, cunning attitude.

On 10 November determination chopped ice, shifting passive years, gears and fears into a zonal transparency of blank eyes. Is-land tourists became localized stimuli wandering blank.

It's a meaningful coincidence.

We are literary outlaws.

Explanation is a well dressed mistake.

The long now.

We connect the dots forward. Play an infinite game of chess.

Checkmate, said Death.

Content vs form.

Existence precedes essence.

 

Blues - TLC 41

In Fujian, China using flakey chalk Lucky wrote Blues Music Story on a broken green board for eighty classless university students.

He spoke of the African Diaspora, history and slavery in America and how indentured humans gathered to make music and dance after long hard days in the sunshine of their love.

The blues manifested stories and songs as men and women left rural villages on economic migrations for city jobs like China now. Floating people in a floating world.

The blues expressed physical and spiritual loss from family, friends and communities. It’s “feeling, emotional, deep in your spirit soul” music. He pulled out his blues harp and they said, “Oh it’s a cochin.”

“Want to hear some blues?” 

“Yes.”

He blew sweet slow stuff, picking up the tempo blasting rifts of wailing train whistles and a sense of loss forever.

“This is called, ‘If you don’t help me I’ll find someone else,’ by Howling Wolf. When you’re a wandering minstrel or a Griot - a West African performer who perpetuates oral traditions of a family or village by singing histories and tales, considered by musicologists to be a link with the acoustic blues - or a Seanachai - a traditional Irish storyteller of truths, myths and legends - or a shaman, seer and adept it’s natural. I am a conduit for music. It comes through me.”

After hearing and feeling the blues students practiced making a Western sandwich: bread, tomatoes, mayo, relish, turkey slices, mustard, onions and lettuce. How do you consume a sand wish with chopsticks?

Let’s eat, said 1.6 billion peasants. We’ll eat anything with wings and legs except tables and planes.

New music echoed outside Room 317. Students ran to painless windows. 

Across the street a young Indonesian boy sat on a piece of plywood in the shadow of a long tall Sally art deco three-story concrete building.

It towered above a gated Jakarta middle-class community filled with designer homes, wild tropical blossoming fruit trees and displaced dysfunctional spoiled offspring spinning yoyos. 

In his left hand he held a silver chisel. In his right a flat edged hammer. He slammed metal against metal on a bronze bridge between stone and iron ages.

Between knowledge and wisdom.

Between an object and a concept.

Tap-tap-tap. Music flaked dust. Wind-spirits carried his chorale and tribal memories of family, rice paddies, nature and seasons.

Accompanying him a girl using a brothel broom of tree branches whisked a gentle rhythm creating their symphony of sadness, loss and neglect. They went on tour. Standing Room Only. Sold out forever and a day.

Public relations - TLC 40

The other TLC cranium belonged to the Director of Natives. From the Big Apple core with a PR background she recruited them, interviewed them, hired them, trained them and centered them. She was off center. She took orders from two daughters managing her, accountants, center service managers, personal tutors and eloquent savages.

At a teacher training class in Constantinople chaired by a Spanish princess burning witches at an Inquisition running behind schedule because nobody knew what the fuck was going on the Director kept asking Lucky, “Where’s your watch? Where’s your watch?”

He put an hourglass on the table. He turned it over addressing the gravity of the situation. Sand dancing through time sang, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

Everyone creates his/her sandcastle.

The Director achieved her position because the owners knew she’d cause no turbulence during their ambitious tricycle. Training wheels had rusty mudguards and broken spokes.

“We have time,” said a native to foreign explorers in rain forests, “but you have the machines to controls time. Time is free.”

Leo, the Chief of Unemployed Cannibals showed white invaders the alarm clock strangling him, “Time is an abstract infinite concept. What’s strange is what’s going on inside time. In your world when you retire they give you a gold watch and not enough time to wind it. Life’s little joke. Here we have all the time in the world.”

The Language Company