Beauty's Mirror

I’m broiling on the balcony of my Oregon tree house.

Getting down and dirty after 1,001 years away from the typewriter.

Covered in construction dust needing oil it’s a small portable dangerous machine.  It’s capable of transforming life energies and weaving adventures. Threads follow the needle.

I am a peripatetic traveler, literary outlaw, photographer and journalist.

I’m lucky to get it down now and make sense of it later.

I’m a mirror in the mandala of my labyrinth. I am Labrys, from the Greek for a two-headed axe. I write with passion and vision. Short fast and deadly.

Punctuation is a nail.

My mirror reflects everything.

Beauty needs no tongue.

I’m confidant and self-reliant. I explore the human condition. Visual storytelling.

Human energies, frequencies and vibrations reflect languages, lives and attitudes.

I absorb being, joy, anger, jealousy, ignorance, desire, fear, greed, passion and suffering.

Hurl your thunderbolt unto death.

Meditate on the process of your death.

Suffering is an illusion.

The world is an illusion.

Grasping is suffering.

Values, attitudes, joy, belief systems and dreams evolve in my mirror.  

Your mask eats your face.

My mirror is free of dust.

I evolve emotional trust, wisdom, peace and love with truth and compassion.

I experience forgiveness with emotional honesty.

Creativity dances in language.

These truths don’t surprise you after 1,001 years of wandering.

Everything you know is a lie.

Keep a diamond in your mind.

 

Live the dream

"We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe."

- Upanishad

 

delicate gesture

a professional stranger shows up
among whisper smiles

old man
bamboo staff
coughs
walks

voices decipher a khmer woman
in a wheelchair
dancing her smile
extends a plastic bucket 
grateful for .50¢
ageless 
her smile a fragrance
beauty remembers graciousness

a rail thin girl never made eye contact
removing black chopsticks from a glass

bell jar

tapped them on edge
solving water molecules

she ate slow noodles
with jutted black teeth 

her beauty encapsulated tea
left hand cradled glass
a little finger curls space

delicate Apsara dancer

refined movement

Diamond in your mind - TLC

Secret literary agent accepted a covert mission. 51 days led here.

He knew in mid-September, after being in Trabzon, Turkey for two weeks doing street photography at dawn, writing field notes, helping students develop speaking courage and bringing prosperity to everyone along a wandering path, his essential choice for freedom brought him to today October 25^th.

Savoring thick java and sweet flaky pastry in a Trabzon establishment he observed people on Sacrifice.

Every day is a celebration when you practice the art of letting go.

You either let go or get dragged along.

Miniature buses disgorged humans: head scarfed heavy-set women clutching canes, swaggering males, well dressed couples, a sleek woman twirling a red rose, old men trailing texting generations and desperate parents gripping children’s hands.

A tan joyful man released from his daily grave digging soil toil danced away from angry confused faceless ones anticipating a long uphill walk past shop windows where they’d purchase flaneur reflections.

Shoppers entered to buy pastries, cakes and cookies. We have to show up with something a wide wife said to her mousy husband. Children begged for sugar, Feed me.

Three obese Saudi males bought bags of hand wrapped candies. Our caloric families will love this stuff said one from the house of Saud cramming it into his designer bag on plastic wheels of fortune.

You brought us good luck today, said the smiling woman behind the counter when Lucky prepared to walk on. You’re welcome. It’s a never-ending adventure.

A Trabzon taxi driver taking him to the airport said, “Today is like Christmas in Turkey.”

Deck the halls with boughs of folly tra-la-la-la.

Near the check-in zone a girl of four didn’t see her mother’s knife-like eyes inside the chador. A black veil masked her face. Closed for respectful preservations.

Everyone stared in amazement as a literary outlaw enjoying random encounters with evanescent beings sang your life is a work of art. We are stardust riding a blue marble through space.

The flight from Instant Bull to Backpack took eight hours.

In a transit zone he discovered Mont Blanc Fine and Medium Rollerball refills and a large bottle of dark blue fountain pen ink for Omar. He bought a 12-pack of multicolored pens for Zeynep.

Do you travel the world, asked the clerk as look n’ leave passengers examined the art of writing instruments. It is my destiny, You brought me good luck today, I am a calm lunatic assassin, I am not saving anyone.

The plane to Seems Ripe banked left to the imagination before climbing to 33,000 feet in an invisible night as he journeyed to the center of the Earth.

The Language Company

Ride like the wind.

A gravedigger is never out of work.

Ukiyo-e. Floating world.

Have luck will travel. A Giresun songbird gave Lucky the all-clear signal. Go.

At 0609 pulling a wheeled bag down 65degrees of click clack Roman stones he met a healthy golden brown dog. They walked to the ULUSOY bus station. The dog picked up a new scent, wagged his tail thanks for the company good luck and wandered away.

Down in the cold BAY piss chamber Lucky played his C harp singing an old blues song, “All my Love’s in Vain...”

Echo passed through: “When the train/bus/plane left the station there were two lights on behind...one light was my baby and the other was my mind...all my love’s in vain.”

Today - Bayram is Sacrifice, a national holiday. Make a sacrifice. Write hello my little fear and hello my littleanger on pieces of paper. Burn them.

Red, yellow, golden autumn leaves littered ground with sound. O sweet season. Mountains conversed inside foggy forests as curling chimney smoke swirled through bone cold villages.

Ukiyo-e. Floating world.

Sacrifice watched people watching people going to visit families. Someone somewhere waited for relatives to arrive with money and stories. Stories were cheap. Money was expensive. Layered characters using verbs wore leather shoes, new designer rags and carried big time.

Lucky remembered a story about a dignified man in Guatemala who walked barefoot from his village to town carrying his best shoes in a bag. On the edge of prosperity he put them on. Envious eyes followed his every step until he walked out of town. He carried them home. That’ll show them.

In Turkish villages after a breakfast of tea, tomatoes, black olives, yellow cheese, brown bread and thin sliced salami men wandered down trails to join friends at a cafe for tea and talk. Some read newspapers. Others fingered anxious worry beads. Passive men focusing on the idiot box watched a Teflon PM slap a grieving Soma coalminer in the face, No one boos me. Take that, idiot.

One man looked for his name in the obituaries. The grim reaper hasn’t found me yet. My luck is holding. I am that I am.

Men cleaned dirt from nails. They brushed lint or a meandering story thread from suit jackets. A gravedigger washed his hands. Someone evaluated the volume of black ink in a fountain pen before spilling words on paper.

The Black Sea was flat blue. A ¾ moon hearing cellos sang shit puke thunder and lightning.

Turkish citizens texted survivors, looked at big time or yakked their hearts out on cells with anxious intention celebrating Sacrifice.

The Language Company