One Sunday Song - Ice Girl

Chapter 11.

cambodia is a funny place. ha, ha, ha.

what do you see, asked Leo.

i see a man carrying one red brick. he’s looking for a place to put it down. he is confused. he had no idea his day would involve carrying a brick AND making a decision. he needs a woman to tell him what do. this is rare because men, in his culture, are the boss and tell women what to do. they tell them to lie down and get ready for the big thing. he is confused about accepting loss forever. his wife wears the pants. she is the now.

i see an exuberant extraordinary solid particle cow patty land-mine in the middle of a red road. it’s a steaming green mountain.

it smells like an art project.

it will be discovered by a speeding SUV leaving a trace of aroma past sweeping weeping women. it will spread itself over olfactory landscapes.

it will create new tomorrows.

welcome to a new reality game show called

Watch Women Work

or evolution of the species and social organization (+-).

log on, log in, log the forest. yeah, yeah. i am mr. monosyllable, your crème-filled hostess cupcake for this week’s exciting program. yeah, yeah.

contestant #1. a housewife in a rural village. her task is sweeping dust into piles of dust outside her bamboo shack. she has all day to complete this arduous task. repeat. dust to dust. dawn to dusk. poetic ramifications in the theatre of the absurd.

contestant #2. a housewife. she has a house. she is a wife. she has 10 children. having children is her DUTY. sex for her is nothing but a DUTY. she is a duty free outlet. her price tag has expired. everything must go. many children gives her mother and extended family someone to love and play with and yell at. yelling at kids here is abNORMAL and healthy. it nurtures their self-esteem and neurotic stunted emotional prolonged adolescence with punctuation marks.

her husband sleeps. he loves sleeping, eating and making tool babies. he doesn’t have to carry them around for nine months and experience hormonal feelings. he sleeps forever dreaming of a hammock in a bamboo forest. their children are naked. they play with trash and sing a song, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. they burn down the forest. fire is their funny game besides yelling and whining, feed me, feed me.

contestant #3. a housewife. she mills around without attention, focus, plan or direction. she teaches by example. she hopes lazy boys and girls grow up with initiative. she knows many won’t and don’t. she pounds an anvil all day. she is a worker, a tool of production in life’s assembly factory. a simple person, she spits out many well educated clever children. this is her duty.

contestant #4. a housewife. she works. her lazy adult son watches her. he is bored watching her. he stares at the long winding dirt road feasting his small beady soul window on dirt. his eyes are pure clean red dirt. she sweeps him into the river. swim, little fish. bye-bye baby, bye-bye. he floats away.

contestant #5. a housewife. she has a diamond in her mind. she is calm and focused. she exhales beauty, truth and love. she sings all day long.

pick one to emulate with incentive and initiative and win BIG prizes.

what’s the prize? a broom, a brick, an SUV smashing a green cow patty and a garish monster home shaped like a wedding cake surrounded by a moat, walls, silver barb wire and iridescent colored candles.

anything else?

a year’s subscription to your favorite illustrated color glossy advertising magazine: “Dreams, Lies, Wishes, Hopes, and Great Expectations While Driving a Blue Dismal Diesel Dump Truck Loaded with Ice Needing an Overhaul.”

cool prizes. let’s play.

Offstage Socrates said, my quest-ion is:

How do you live a good life?

Quest-ions gathered to discuss this.

destiny’s child disguised as a black and vermillion butterfly nurtured red and orange hibiscus above a wide flowing river.

see you next week on watch women work.

*

  Away from Ice Girl’s eyes new wet season life shimmered green rice paddies.

Beauty, creativity, dance, and music described sensations.

Sensations rested between an object and a concept.

  Stimuli engaged disquiet between notes.

  How do you manifest this waking dream, said Ice Girl.

  It’s all process with mindfulness said Leo.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Learn 4 Life - Cambodia

Learn 4 Life English Language Center

Siem Reap, Cambodia NGO

July 3 – September 8, 2017 

It took a couple of years to get this volunteer gig through Workaway.com.

Students pay $30 for nine weeks.

13-30 years young - 70 in four classes.

One hour a day M-F.

“Push Them Through,” ordered the head teacher, minus heart, a desperate myopic anal 60-year old female Kiwi volunteer.

Grammar Nazi.

“I am in control,” she articulated with marbles in her mouth. “And I love marking. I run this place like a national school even if half the students don’t show up.”

Her good intentions accquiesced to text-based learning. 

Kids have jobs, school and responsibilities.

Attendance is optional. Dance is mandatory.

Elementary & pre-Intermediate with basic English skills are taught by native speaking barbarians.

Khmer teachers do Beginners. It’s a job.

“Khmer students see a teacher as father #2,” said a gregarious young male Khmer teacher.

Respect blind obedience and ZERO critical thinking questions. “Why” is not allowed.

Formal education conditioned them into silence.

It reminded me of Leo, a 14-year old in Fujian, China where I taught at a private business university in 2005-2007 saying, “On day one my middle school teacher said, ‘I want you to only bring two things to class. Your ears.’”

Final Enlightening Lesson

Friday, September 8, 2017

Process vs. Product (Whiteboard Finale)

Product -

Mark/Grade #

So What?

60 is heaven

59 is hell o jolly mellow fellow

Asian education 101. Brave New World.

Pass the soma.

Three unit tests are not factored into final grade.

Final exam - Grammar 40%, Listening 20%, Reading 10%, Writing 15% Speaking 15%

Writing and speaking active skill values reflect dystopian educational focus.

Students with courage lack vocabulary.

Students with vocabulary lack courage.

Process -

What I learn

How I learn

How I feel

Grow

Self-improvement

Choices & Decisions

Independence

Self-confidence

Courage

Communication teamwork and group dynamics.

Character

Chess – problem solving, planning, logic, creative thinking, accepting responsibility for decisions. Pattern recognition.

Spacial relationships.

Working memory.

Long-term memory.

Play. Learn. Share.

Creative notebook - drawing, free writing, imagination - a different kind of “product.” Going strong when textbooks gather dust.

(After Grade 6 Khmer students don’t enjoy music or art. Rote learning robots.)

Drawing their dream daily in class is an initial shock. They adapt, adjust and evolve their vision like Picasso/Van Gogh/M.C. Escher singing, “I love to color!”

Chance

My role was to travel with you to this stage.

You have the tools now.

Eye + hand + heart.

Two won’t do.

The wisdom of your heart is greater than the knowledge in your head.

School gives you a lesson then a test.

Life gives you a test then a lesson.

Don’t let school get in the way of your education.

You’re on your own. Follow your heart.

 

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.

Chinese Peoples’ Pineapple Appliance Factory #8 - TLC 71

Good afternoon students. My name is Mr. ON.

It rhymes with song, gong and long gone.

It is 5:59 p.m. if it was 6:00 p.m. I would say good evening, however it is still afternoon. It is late in our short sweet life.

Class meets twice a week for two hours. Show up on time, stay awake, do your assignments and bribe me. Cash only. No plastic. Nothing more. Nothing less. Less is more. 

We are gathered here today in the glorious Chinese People’s Pineapple Appliance Factory #8 to begin our English lessons. Your supervisor informs me you are here by choice and chance. You don’t have a choice. This is your chance. Life gives you one chance. Am I clear? Do you understand me? Yes no maybe.

Now. I know. You have been slaving in #8 since dawn. It is the end of another long, mind numbing grueling tedious day down on the killing floor. Work is hell for people. It’s also logical to say hell is other people.

English has brought us together. You face unique challenges to acquire English, the language of noble barbarians, running capitalist dogs, curs and canines. Their bark is worse than their bite. You will try or don’t try is perhaps appropriate to say considering our passive cultural indoctrination and conditioning, to use said target language with meaning in context. To maybe baby become fluent minus accuracy. It will require your undivided attention, chemical and electrical energy.

You will practice speaking, reading, listening and writing. These are the four basic language skills.

Output: Writing and speaking are active. You do it. Yeah-yeah.

Input: Reading and listening are passive. However, reading is active if a character’s internal/external emotional conflict engenders your feeling and identification with said character’s actions.

Learning is a never-ending dramatic process. All of you will die before it’s complete. That’s a humble unpleasant fact.

Some of you clever cunning ones may use English skills to escape this dystopian existence. Get out there. Take risks. Embrace uncertainty. Daring is not fatal. Have more sex. Wear a condom in the rain. Make friends. Create art. Play with children. Never grow old or up. Stay 9 forever. Erase your shadow. Write a poem. Draw in a creative notebook.

Take a line for a walk. Play a cello in a cemetery. Dig your grave and see if it fits. Water rose thorns with tears. Drum dirt. Cultivate bamboo. Release wolves into the wild blue yonder. Dream big. Shave your head. Get your ears cleaned. Weave ikat on the loom of time. Expand your comfort zone.

Practice Zazen meditation for three centuries, three years, three months, three days and three breaths. Leaning against nothing.

Make a sandwich with baboons. Discover a sharp utilitarian knife in an Ankara display case. Operate The Dream Sweeper Machine in Hanoi and beyond wild. Explore jungles with Leo the King of Cannibals. Kill your father and marry your mother. Fly free with Winter Hawk.

Travel a lonely planet gifting luck to strangers as an aberration of their psychological insecure projections based on their imaginary expectations of greed garnished with kindness.

There is no security. It is an illusion.

Everything you know is a lie. Everything is permitted.

I am an assassin in drag.

Learning occurs in the context of task-based activities. In other words you learn by doing. You do and you understand as we say, said, do, did, done.

In exhaustive detail we will discuss four important appliances and their English A/C-D/C let’s see connections. They are: washing machines, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens.

These machines are now essential and fun to operate in one’s life. They are labor saving devices. Don't ask me what that means. Maybe it’s a labor of love, like labor pains or a labor-through-reform Gobi educational experience. You don’t ever want to go there. Trust me.

I don’t know and I don’t care to know. You know heavy deep true love because it is your job to put machines together with meaning. It’s like English. Putting words together makes a sentence or phrase. Pass the syntax please.

For your final exam you will assemble a Freeze & Point Refrigerator and extraterrestrial Moon Rover named Jade Rabbit.

A simple sentence is: I NEED HELP. These are three essential English words. Or I need food or I need a job or I need water or I need sex or I need freedom from need and a need for freedom. Or I need to be a free person in a free country. A Chinese waif named Curious in Turkey, not the bird, teaching Mandarin in Ankara said that with mindfulness.

Some English sentences are brief and precise. Some are gibberish. Many stream of consciousness sentences are composites of useless idiomatic semantic syntax, which is not the same as income tax, however both are expensive.

Life is difficult. Art is easy. Make the reader/observer work hard.

Write this down. English in >English out.

More vocabulary = more speech. Use it or lose it.

Say new words three times and make a sentence to retain restrain refrain vocal volcanoes.

Open your head, heart and mouth. Eat English. Empty your vowel bowel movements.

Please open your creative notebook. Using a simple writing tool like a pen or #2 getting the lead out with a fast pencil answer the following questions using simple English. Be brief.

What is life? _______

How did I get here? ______ 

Why am I here? _____

Am I a machine? _______

Am I a tool of the factory? _______

Am I a tool of nature? ___________

What is a human machine? ________

What is my motivation to learn English? _________

(Secret answer – MONEY with a capital M)

Here’s life's equation. No English = no job. No job = no money. No money = no food.  No food = starvation. I am sorry. Bye-bye. Good luck to you and your family.

Your supervisor has instructed me to motivate you. She loves rules and regulations. She eats rules 3x day. She expects me to demand you arrive on time, complete assigned tasks and pass exams. Her authoritarian management style commanded me to use fear as a form of discipline with you.

We know how phobias motivate Earthlings. If I fail to pass you I will be executed. Survival is my fear-based motivation. It is my DUTY to push you through. You WILL pass because my life depends on it. No quest-ion about it.

Fear is a funny word. How do four little letters enable esoteric ephemeral trembling meaning and sensation? For example:

Fear of starvation.

Fear of poverty.

Fear of losing face.

Fear of failure. Fear of failing better.

Fear of humiliation or shame.

(Greater than Death – the Grime Repair)

Fear of not meeting family expectations.

Fear of speaking in public.

Fear of ancestor ghosts.

Fear of being ordinary.

Fear of success.

Fear of crossing a transcendental border.

Fear of______(free choice). Fill in your Tabula Rasa.

In our next lesson we will discuss parts and functions of a language washing machine. Oh, and one more thing.

Normal is a cycle on a wishing machine.

Doctoral students will construct, operate and defend their dissertation using The Dream Sweeper Machine.

Thank you for your short attention span. See you when I see you.

The Language Company

 

my little mandalay life

Draconian private school stuff: the 10th graders I help from 6-8 a.m. M-F live in a private hostile. No music, TV, web, books, zero. Study, study, study is their drab life. 

Waso, Buddha Day was a national public holiday. Do you get to go home? No. We study biology, chemistry, math, Myanmar, English, and physics all day long. Everyday.

Creative Notebooks are SOP. Colors, drawing, writing and dreaming on paper to all classes so they have something tangible where they can express their feelings. I’ve reminded them that their CN will be growing and going strong long after textbooks gather dust. It’s a small consolation for them.  

I share five of my worn CN books dating back five years for them to see art and writing. This is the raw material, I said.

Myanmar culture teaches people to respect their elders, like teachers so they don’t ask questions. Teams and 1-1 with partners is the way.

No breakfast. Bleary eyed. Marched to class. They arrive at 6, rearrange tables in teams and I mime, open your CN, draw your dream. I play blues and jazz and classical. Random items sit on a central table for still life stimulation if they so choose: flowers, plants, bowls, umbrella, a yellow pencil…you get the picture. We do text stuff focusing on the four skills and play learning games. 

From 1045-1145 I’m with thirty 12th graders waiting for their marks so they can apply to universities this fall. They live at home.

Their goal is speaking fluency for the ILETS exam. Same procedure as with the 10th graders - music, art, music and creativity in dust free notebooks.

Open discussions on local, regional and international issues between partners and groups. Their English is good. The majority need to open their mouth and not mumble. We do high quality text stuff, pronunciation practice and role plays with free interaction. I turn them on to international writers, films, poets and artists. Their self-esteem and confidence is growing.

The 10th and 12th graders will all be exposed to learning chess and competition the next three months before the company contract expires in November.  

Critical thinking example. I gave the 12th graders a homework assignment. 65/28 on the whiteboard. I reminded them for a week. Some guessed, is it a formula? an equation? No. One bright articulate girl finally got it. “It’s the intersection of Street 65/28, a long leafy street with badly corroded barely visible traffic signs." Yes. A place where you can breathe, meditate and draw and appreciate nature.

At high noon a driver zooms forty-five minutes into the countryside to a private school where I play, share and learn with 1st and 2nd graders. They teach me how to be more human. I act my age. 50 going on 10. Ha. We do songs, dance, chants, alphabets, colours, drawing, writing cursive and practice meditation. A child’s play is work.

Mandalay meets my needs. Wide green ancient tree blooming streets. You don’t see many white faces. If any they are tourists doing a 2-3 day pit stop. The construction boom is less than high car congested Yangon. It’s a motorcycle culture here, like Laos.

Mansions surrounded by barb wire sit next to bamboo shanties. It’s more like an extended village than a town. Poor sanitation, crumbling infrastructure. Flooded streets in the rainy season. Neighbours, relaxed men crowd teashops. Everyone I meet wandering, doing my documentary image work is gentle and kind. They recognise the smiling stranger.

This internal calm way permeates my being.