tyranny of impossible sheep

dawn garden is quiet

closed lotus waits for light

burmese teachers gave me lesson #5

lecture students

control students

feed students

so parents see the school is doing it's job

Pain's Logic - TLC 33

In Bursa the logic of pain met pain’s tolerance, pain’s loss, pain’s memory, pain’s attachment and pain’s fascination.

Awareness of dancing consciousness morphed a heavy dull throbbing sensation through exposed jaw nerves. Pain danced and sang along invisible blood red threads. Pain visualized minute tentacles of laughter.

Roots of pain bellowed in cold-hearted tissue.

Earlier, Dr. Death massaged tissue preparing it for a heavy-duty stainless steel syringe cast in Turku, Finland with a perfect circle for an index finger.

One by one he inserted three needles filled with anesthetizing solution into soft pink pliable gums. The downward thrust of pressure was constant and bewildering.

Numb the daze. Dumb the naive.

It didn’t take a well trained discerning eye more that a nanosecond after the partial was removed to sense the tooth witnessing interior monologues, dialogues and soliloquies of red stormed flesh pain - a sickness leaving the body - as Winter Hawk winged one true sentence.

The old recalcitrant reclusive tooth was exonerated. It’d served its animalistic purpose with multiple labia and nurturing oral stories. A heartbeat’s death defying rhythm pulsated faster than shadows divorcing themselves in blind love’s labyrinth.

After five days of whiteout blizzards Lucky enjoyed a perfect moment with ice coffee at dusk near a water fountain pen having resolved a molecular reality.

Peace trash in Mandalay

Defrost your imagination - TLC 32

“Today is a good day to be empty. Practice 10,000 breaths until you disappear,” said a Lhasa monk petting a Sumatran tiger facing extinction by Malaysian villagers burning down forests to develop cosmetic palm oil exports.

“Yes, not too detached and not too sentimental,” said Zeynep sitting at a restaurant table creating surrealistic art in her notebook. She drew stick figures with wild forested hair eating purple paper mache houses beneath a startled orange sun as disoriented Bursa talking animals crammed in spinach, green salad, tomatoes, grilled meat, rice and beans.

Across town on the TLC teachers’ apartment balcony sentry ants alerted the tribe to food. They marched from a drainpipe in single file, climbed over the edge of a plastic pot discovering good dirt. Teams fanned out sensing discarded muesli particles.

A mottled wingless insect living in bamboo detected worker ants approaching. Insect couldn’t fly. It scurried up a thin stalk to a green leaf blending in. Its feelers cleaned dirt off head and shoulders sham poop.

A gravedigger eating a hazelnut and strawberry jam sandwich on whole grain bread with grade A black olives harvested from Mudanya orchards nestled tight against Marmara Sea soil spoke to the insect as ants preparing their final assault gathered below the leaf.

“I need to move you.”

“Thanks. If I’m discovered I’ll perish. What do you suggest?”

“We use a leaf. Climb on it. I will let it go, floating over the garden. It will cushion your fall from grace. You will have a soft landing and better than a 51% chance of survival. Ground zero with better cover, food and dew you understand?”

“Ok. Thanks. 51% is better than zero.”

“You sound like an investment banker. Don’t mention it.”

“I need a new adventure.”

“Don’t we all. Here you go.”

Digger did what he had to do. Found a broad brown leaf. The insect climbed on. He released the vein-lined parachute into thin air. It floated. It landed on a huge exploding yellow sunflower.

“Goodbye,” sang the insect, “you extended my little life. I’ve survived to walk another day.”

The gravedigger sang, “Happy trails...to you...until we meet again.”

The Language Company

 

Another day in Mandalay

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

Practice 10,000 times

Zeynep in Bursa taught me how to swim with gigantic sea turtles.

We practice a sitting mediation. We practice a walking meditation. When you walk you become nobody. If your legs get heavy walk with your heart, she said. We meditated on our death.

Everything we do is a meditation. Practice 10,000 times until you’ve got it, she said.

Dive deep exploring coral and underwater life below the surface of appearances.

Let’s have a little adventure, I said to Zeynep.

I wove a magic carpet, she said. Let’s go.

We flew to the Temple of Complete Reality on Qinchengshan Mountain in Sichuan. It is a 2,000-year old series of Taoist temples in red orange yellow green autumn foliage.

Taoism’s home in China is balance and harmony in nature. We climbed for 2.5-hour in green hills, mountains, and clouds knowing us by now, feeling strong cold winds on a clear day. We caressed old stone steps and steep angled paths through old growth.  

We climbed through primal forests with Mountain Girl, ten. She sold tea near a trail fork. We didn’t ask her to guide us. She attached herself to us. She didn’t want anything. She wasn’t hustling anything. She lived onthe mountain, not below the mountain.

She diverted us away from whining Chinese. She pointed out medicinal plants and herbs in meadows, showing us delicious wild yellow and red berries. She babbled stories about the forest, plants, trees, rivers and animals. 

She shared a story about mountain spirits. Three men chased her through the forest. She met a snake.

“Please help me escape from men chasing me.”

“It turned into a slim beautiful woman.”  

“Don’t be afraid. I will help you.”  

“She took me down the mountain, saving me from the bad men. Then she turned back into a snake and disappeared into the forest.”  

We climbed through a series of temples. Statues, incense, prayers and spirit energies. Inner and outer visions extended in four directions.   

We shared rice, chicken and bread near the summit.  

Twin turtles with dragonheads guarded the entrance. The main temple was a reddish brown ornate rising sculpture. Large crimson incense smoke curled into sky.

Four Chinese characters reflected light.

Clouds circle this temple.

We circumnavigated levels of experience on narrow wooden steps. On the main level was a gigantic gold statue of a Lao Tzu riding a wild ox. Yin/Yang.

An old woman offered medallions of the cosmic symbol on red thread. Mountain girl and Zeynep selected one. They put it around their necks. We descended. Mountain girl fingered her threaded treasure. She was a treasure for us.

We stopped at a temple for tea. A young nun washed teacups. “I’ve been here fifteen years. I clean, pray, read, meditate, talk with monks and travelers, and do my work. I am focused on my goal.  My goal is to reach the root below the surface.”

Her awareness is direct with heart-mind intention.

In twilight we bought Mountain Girl food to take home and walked to her bike. I gifted her a white khata scarf from Tibet.

Zeynep gave her a poem by Rumi.

Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky

And you lift me up out of the two worlds.

I want your sun to reach my raindrops,

So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.

“Thanks,” said Mountain Girl. She smiled and zoomed away.

Every heartbeat is an eternal rhythm of universal possibilities.

“We went up. We went down,” said Zeynep, after we returned to Bursa, breathing through tribal masks.

“What kind of mask? Is it hand carved from memories?” 

“Masks are symbolic manifestations in primitive cultures,” she said. “Mask dance is a shamanic ritual, a dance trance. Wearing a mask you become the thing you fear the most, your basic human nature. Masks hide a human’s consciousness of fear.

“Dance is about process, becoming. Destroy Time. Shiva symbolizes the union of space and time and destruction. Dance is an ancient form of magic. People wear masks to hide their transformation, seeking to change their dancer into a god or demon. Dance is the incarnation of eternal energy. You see them everyday, everywhere. Have the courage to be natural with your mask. The entire universe is a vast theatre. The two critical elements of intelligence are humor and curiosity. Do you remember James Joyce, how he went into exile with silence and cunning?”

“Yes. He knew how to put seven little words in order. He was a cunning linguist. He said, ‘everything I do is an experiment.’”

“So it is. Your ability to imagine and scheme and deceive is raw instinct,” she said. “It separates you from lower life forms like apes, plankton and sea enemies-anemone (fish eating animals) and androgynous androids in the deep subconscious. Writers lie for a living. Literature is the best way to make fun of people. They treat their mental illness every day. They say what others are afraid to say. Being a writer is like having homework every day.”

“We are the only animals who laugh,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “and we are the only animals who know we are going to die. We imagine our death, our mortality. This fills some with dread, psychological neurosis, lack of purpose. For others it’s a release, a joy, and a dance. Freedom is unconditional. I was born laughing.”

“I was born dead and slowly came to life. Are you a clown? Perhaps a clown fish?” I asked.

“Look in your dream mask mirror,” she said. “Not all the clowns are in the circus.”

“Under this mask, another mask. I will never be finished removing all these faces.”

“Let’s dance. Let’s meditate on the process of death.”

My name is Beauty. Death is my mother. I have no tongue.

Your mask eats your face.