If I grow up I die

Being nine Lucky helped 4th grade geniuses become more human.

Engage-study-activate.

Everyone had fun. Students learned that whining was boring and useless. Smart ones knew without understanding. They knew what they didn’t know.

Kids shared Socratic discussions. They explored and expanded creative imagination journal writing, cross-disciplinary art, chess and teamwork development projects. They built and flew kites.

They practiced good manners and treated everyone with respect.

They focused on developing character: zest, courage, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, curiosity, fairness, generosity and integrity.

They shared soft eyes, relaxation techniques and meditation mind maps. They accepted personal responsibility for learning and exploring the process of becoming.

He assisted them to develop critical thinking skills outside imaginary social and educational conditioning traps. “I am here to help you make mistakes.”

One day a young teacher kid said, “We need challenges, Teacher Lucky.”

“What kind of challenges?”

“We need hardship and deprivation.”

“Yes,” said another teacher, “we need to take more risks.”

“How do you develop courage?”

“Through failure. We love to fail better."

“Correcto mundi. Welcome to The Think for Yourself Academy. Everything we do is an experiment.”

They planned, designed and constructed an elaborate high-risk rope and creeper vine obstacle course in jungles challenging body, mind and spirit. Teamwork skills blossomed like orchids.  

*

Residents near his garden sanctuary passed a tall green spiky cactus stretching arms into bluebird songs. A nanny carrying an infant memorized the echo of white cat paws trailing flip-flops. Faustus, seeing through innocent eyes rode behind his pedaling Chinese father.

A laughing skipping girl negotiated freedom.

A beggar wearing broken shoelaces studied pavement.

A man spinning in his labyrinthine puzzle struggled with an activated cell phone in worn green baggy shorts hoping the call would save him from loneliness, boredom, alienation and metaphors like death.

Children in pink pajamas collected brown leaves and fragrant yellow-white hibiscus flowers.

In Bahasa sun a middle-aged daughter spoon-fed her mother in a wheelchair. Swallowing love her smiling mother remembered when she did all the feeding.

Mandalay Burma Teacher Talk

Give us the fifty daze M-F 5:30 a.m. short van trip to CAE, the private school in Mandalay where you helped 10th graders become more human with humor and curiosity.

One class was from 6-7 another from 7-8.

Four male teachers left starlight and climbed into the van. Three were morose. Two early. Their dialogue mentioned sleep disorders, international menus and the quality of their shits.

One African-American guy muttered about Kuala Lumpur fast food choices cursed mosquitos smashing them on windows.

The others talked about teaching adventures in China. We are all peasants.

Exciting.

Yeah, I’m going to miss them like you miss a rock in your shoe.

I understand your student-teachers rearranged desks into groups to facilitate sharing. You played jazz, blues and classical music. They drew and colored their dream in creative notebooks. Daily.

Yes. Eye – hand – heart. Two won't do.

I reminded them their creative notebooks would sustain them for years, long after the textbooks gather dust. Long after they vomited material to pass a test. Get marks.

Give me specifics.

My room was the only team-building configuration. The other teachers maintained rows of wooden benches where students hearing a dull lecture stared at the back of someone’s empty head.

The Black guy mumbled. They replaced him with a dour business scholar from Papa New Genie.

One British teacher lectured from the book and played cartoons.

A drawling American teacher projected The Star Spangled Banner lyrics on a screen and had the class recite words.

You’re kidding me. I wish I was.

You heard parrots…”Oh say can you see…”

Our team-groups shared ideas prior to discussing diverse topics improving their speaking confidence.

In his final class Southern Comfort had them singing “Jingle Bells.”

Boughs of folly. Oh yeah.

My geniuses played a round-robin chess tournament the final two days. Great fun.

They’d practiced chess every Thursday and Friday for a month. They focused on tactics, strategy, activating pieces off the back row, castling, attacking through the center.

They developed critical thinking skills, planning and logic, problem solving, accepting responsibility for their decisions, respecting their opponent and sharing ideas with friends.

Life skills 101.

learn in burma

Give us the fifty daze M-F 5:30 a.m. short van trip to CAE, the private school in Mandalay where you helped 10th graders become more human with humor and curiosity. July - October 2015.

One class from 6-7, another from 7-8.

Four male teachers left starlight and climbed into the van. Three were morose. Too early.

Their dialogue mentioned sleep disorders, international menus and the quality of their shits.

One Black guy muttered about Kuala Lumpur fast food choices while cursing mosquitos and smashing them on windows.

The others talked about teaching adventures in China.

Exciting.

Yeah, I’m going to miss them like you miss a rock in your shoe.

I understand your student-teachers rearranged desks into groups to facilitate sharing. You played jazz, blues and classical music. They drew and colored their dream in creative notebooks. Daily.

Yes. Head – hand – heart.

I reminded them their creative notebooks would sustain them for years, long after the textbooks gather dust. Long after they vomited material to pass a test. Get marks.

Give me specifics.

My room was the only team-building configuration. The other teachers maintained rigid rows of wooden benches where students hearing a dull lecture stared at the back of someone’s head.

The Black guy mumbled. They replaced him with a dour scholar from Papa New Genie.

One British teacher lectured from the book and played cartoons.

A drawling American teacher projected The Star Spangled Banner lyrics on a screen and had the class recite words.

You’re kidding me. I wish I was.

You could hear the parrots…”Oh say can you see…”

Our team-groups shared ideas prior to discussing diverse topics improving their speaking confidence.

In his final class Southern Comfort had them singing “Jingle Bells.”

Boughs of folly. Oh yeah.

My geniuses played a round-robin chess tournament the final two days. Great fun.

They’d practiced chess every Thursday and Friday for a month. They focused on tactics, strategy, activating pieces off the back row, castling, attacking through the center.

They developed critical thinking skills, planning and logic, problem solving, accepting responsibility for their decisions, respecting their opponent and sharing ideas with friends.

Life skills 101.

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.

 

I lost one day - TLC 31

Crows sang sunrise.

Lucky opened window blinds at the TLC teachers’ apartment. Riding the blinds sang a metaphorical cryptic railroad life. Hop a fright. Get out of town. Hit the highway. Get down the road.

Ain’t nothin’ but da blues, sweet thing.

When you come to a fork in the road take it, said Zeynep.

Sun streamed to pink-red veined orchids in a brushed silver container. Tibetan incense curled into light. Red gladioli, so glad, petaled beginning. Piano Etudes by Glass tinkled. A handful of dust labeled fear celebrated tonal frequencies. Piano fell silent. Violins picked up the slack hemming garments along life’s loom down at the crossroads making a Faustian deal with the d-evil.

In a new world order all the police are children.

They know how the world works.

Elegant clouds observed pachyderms and Staunton designed pawns, knights, bishops, rooks and queens fighting to control four center squares.

Look at the board. Absorb all the data. Recognize patterns. Analyze. Develop a strategy. Continually revise and develop that strategy as the game progresses, said Bamboo.

A black knight waving a curving scimitar and a 1* red and yellow hammer sickle flag driving a Turbo-bus filled with Russian baboons passed Hanoi beauty salons and full-body soapy massage parlors.

Girls trimming, buffing and painting cuticles greeted 1.5 million neurotic European tourists and swarming Chinese locusts in a fat fucking hurry at Angkor Wats happening?

Bright yellow Turkish taxis idled coughing engines. Arabesque musicians fingered ouds as an operatic Turkish singer in Bursa lamented her melancholic love. Percussionists hammered goatskins.

Singing silver merchants chanted, “Mr. Lucky Foot come here. First sale lucky sale make my day.”

He joined a Jewish and Turkish man drinking tea at the Bursa silk market in an exquisite stone Caravansary.

“I lost today,” said the Jewish man.

“What do you mean, said his friend. “You made 3,000,000 Lira.”

“Yes, but I lost one day.”

Inside a 500-year old hammam, steam rising through rusting metal bars discovered a weak Wi-Fi signal from the Achebadem emergency room staffed by Winter Hawk, Bamboo and heartbroken howling Lone Wolf.

After a sauna Omar and Lucky entered a white marble room with a high vaulted dome. Thirty-two pinpoints of sunlight shafted across blue mosaic tiles. In eight recessed cubicles men soaped, slathered and scrubbed off melting skin in humid heat. A robust masseuse worked sandpaper fibers over a stranger removing dead terrorist cells.

Absorbing musical notes the thermal pool bubbled natural mineral water as the literary outlaws enjoyed a sitting meditation up to their necks. I’ve had it up to here, said Omar clearing his throat.

Renewed revived and rejuvenated after a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice they stepped into crisp spring air below blue sky.

The Language Company