Courage

On his final day in Ankara he shared a Chinese calligraphy poem with adult students.

It was a Qing dynasty gift from primary students in a rural Sichuan school. This visual simplicity symbolized impermanence.

Bright beautiful elementary children in a radiant universe wearing Young Chinese Communist Pioneer red scarves around well-scrubbed necks sitting upright at colorful plastic desks raised hands when he asked questions yelling, “Let me try, let me try!”

Young brave students had the courage to say this.

Older students at a Chinese middle school, Chinese university and at TLC were aged, silenced and dumbed down through tyranny, fear and oppressive parental and educational brainwashed ideological structural systems.

Shame married Guilt, producing twins. The more the merrier.

Adults had lost their instinctual curiosity, humor and enthusiasm. Only primary kids had the courage to say, “Let me try, let me try.”

Their beautiful pictographic black ink calligraphy read, “One day a man climbed into the mountains and reached a hut. He met some children.”

“Where is the teacher?” he said.

“They pointed up the mountain covered by clouds. ‘He is not here, he’s gone into the mountains to look for herbs.’”

He folded the poem creasing Chinese ideograms where latitudes and longitudes met horizons.

His linguistic healing efforts departed Ankara with Bamboo.

The Language Company

China

Take Amazing Risks

“To do amazing things you have to take amazing risks and suffer greatly,” said Zeynep, his five-year old genius friend in Bursa.

“Here,” she said gesturing around the restaurant, “many a-dolts stay with their mothers forever and a day because they are afraid of freedom and accepting responsibility for their lives. They eat fear morning noon and night...

"They are afraid to express their honest feelings, their innate desire for independence. They are willing victims of traditional conservative attitudes and values...

"Free will is a foreign language. They are scared of taking risks, letting go and growing. I may grow old but I’ll never grow up. If I grow up I die.”

“I feel the same way,” said Lucky.

One day while sharing lunch and drawing in notebooks, he said, “When I was nine I was going on 50. Now I am 50 going on 9. I exist outside adult time.”

“We are passing through,” Zeynep said lighting a candle in darkness.

The Director in Istanbul offered Lucky a new TLC adventure in Bursa. This shocked everyone in Ankara. They assumed he’d stay with them forever. Students and teachers celebrated his transition with a sparkling cake. Women cried sadness and joy.

“We are not here for a long time, we are here for a good time,” said Sappho the poetess.

One Ankara student articulated her desire to move to Istanbul for an educational engineering job in a quality control factory school producing obedient robotic idiot children and live with her boyfriend.

She cowered behind her futile quest for independence from over-protective parents. “My father won’t let me.”

“Take control of your life," said Lucky.

"Let go. Jump. Discover courage and your wings on the way down.”

The Language Company

Flower Moon

Dancing in
A net of light

Singing red ink
I am learning how to walk
Zen meditation

Khmer woman in wheelchair
Dances her smile
Extends worn plastic basket
Grateful for .50
ageless face
Her smile a fragrance

Beauty remembers gratitude

Facial treatment waxes poetic
Edges of bi-lingual tongues speak calligraphy

Older now a Khmer woman
Still carries a bathroom weight scale
Around Siem Reap

Hoping someone will

Step on it

Exchanging weight data for Real notes

Strangers destined to die
Confront their deepest fears
At the intersection of Courage & Creativity

Book Blurb - TLC

Creative non-fiction. Journalistic facts. Literary imagination.

Lucky Foot facilitated English at The Language Company in Ankara and Bursa, Turkey in 2008.

In 2012 he facilitated in Trabzon and Gerisun on the Black Sea. Collecting data. Field notes.

Gonzo stuff.

He is a Vietnam veteran, writer, street photographer and facilitator of courage.

Since 2004 he's gifted luck in Burma, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, and Turkey.

He shows up. He sits for a spell nurturing positive relationships in the long now.

Accompanied by Humor and Curiosity he helps students speak English with confidence minus illusions of fear and phobia's relatives:

Fear of taking a risk.

Fear of being incorrect.

Fear of peer ridicule.

Fear of poverty.

Fear of starvation.

Fear of being ordinary.

Fear of success.

Fear of abandoning a manuscript by Zeynep entitled TLC.

Fear of accepting responsibility for choices and accepting the consequences.

Fear of letting go of old conditioning. Shadows.

Fear of being alive and real. Growing.

Fear of_______. (Your free choice)

Lucky, Humor and Curiosity observed parents, schools, religions and countries fostering passive acceptance, fear, indifference and rote learning teacher-centered systems.

It was all about vomiting the material to pass exams. Product. Not the process of how to be more human and think for yourself.

Status quo. Sheep mentality. Blend in. Questions are forbidden. Authority washes your brain daily.

Zeynep, his young genius friend in Bursa taught him about life in her totalitarian country.

"As a literary outlaw I say what others are afraid to say. Anxiety is a chronic national problem. Adults here are good at two things, eating and fighting. 'Dissent is terrorism,' say our corrupt manikin authoritarian figurines."

Leo revealed dystopian China. "I spent years carrying shit in a Re-education through Reform Labor Camp for questioning Authority. Everyone here belongs to the Big Ears, No Mouth society. Oh the shame. The bent nail gets hammered down."

Rita, the independent author of Ice Girl in Banlung shared stories about her Khmer culture and Cambodian history. "We've had twenty years of hopelessness. We breed. We work. We get slaughtered. Poor people see education as a waste of time and money."

"I dream I am a free person in a free country," said Curiosity.

"You're dreaming," said Humor.

A seven year-old Vientiane kid explained Laos. "I develop my authentic character with critical thinking skills, humor, gratitude, abundance and wonder as a free thinking individual. I have my junior philosopher's badge."

"If you want to do great things you must take great risks and suffer greatly," said Zeynep. "You either let go or get dragged along."

Awareness. Mindfulness. Compassion. 

"It's not about people buying this book," said Rita. "It's about people reading it."

The Language Company

Create Art

Less talk and more drawing are essential in life, Z said.

Write and draw mean the same.

Experiment with circles, dots, triangles, squares, lines and curves to reach existential levels of realization. Connect the dots forward.

The asylum is a prison and protection, said Rita.

You create art to explore your sense of self and find out how you feel you are, rather than whom you think you should or ought to be, Z said, drawing her future.

Make the right choice for the wrong reason, Leo said.

Make the wrong choice for the right reason in the right season, Rita said.

Z discovered quest-ions were repeated. 1,001 quest-ions ran around her Turkish restaurant looking for answers. Quest-ions grew tired of repeating themselves.

This is so fucking boring, said one quest-ion. We are abused. We are manipulated and rendered mute. Useless.

Think of it as a test, said another quest-ion. Patience is our great teacher.

I’ll try, said another quest-ion.

Yes, said a quest-ion, these non-listeners have a distinct tendency to say nothing and say it louder than empty silence when they’re leaving, their faces turned away from eye contact, potential real heart-mind communication and growth.

Echoes drifted in through around silence and ignorance. I’ve seen that too, said a quest-ion, who, until this moment was silent. My theory is that it’s because of genocide, fear and ignorance. It’s also a delicate mixture of stupidity or indifference, said another quest-ion. I suggest it’s their innate Buddhist belief. They suppress their ego. Non-self.

Why’s the most dangerous quest-ion, said Lucky addressing quest-ions.

Remember Leo in China asking why and ending up carrying shit at the Reform Through Re-education labor camp near the Gobi before becoming Chief of the Cannibals wearing an alarm clock around his scrawny neck reminding everyone of Time?

Yes I remember, said a timeless prescient quest-ion. Leo was one smart cookie, whatever that means. He figured out unique survival skills in a desperate situation. He knew the fundamental difference between book smarts and street smarts.

How do you explain fear, asked a quest-ion.

The Language Company

Burmese kids. No fear.