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A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
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Subject to Change Subject to Change
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Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
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Entries in education (379)

Friday
Mar172017

Finch's Cage, Sapa, Vietnam

In Sapa, Vietnam I discovered a side street and thick cold java at a run-down Internet cafe. I sat outside.

Finch had a yellow chest, red beak and brown feathers. It was outside a plate glass door. It’d escaped from its small yet safe bamboo cage in the main room. Someone, perhaps the young mother worried about her wailing infant or her brother worried about dying of boredom or her old mother worried about dying alone had left the cage open.

Finch sang, “Where’s my home? What is this beautiful world?”

Finch hugged the ground. It looked at green trees waving across the street. It saw a deep blue sky. It inhaled clear, clean mountain air. It heard birds singing in trees but didn’t understand them.

They sang about nesting, exploring, flying, clouds, trees, sky, rain, warm sun, rivers, bark, worms, snails, and melodies of freedom.

I wondered if Finch would fly away. I hoped so however I knew it was afraid to go. Perhaps it lacked real flying experience, the kind where you lift off fast beating your wings to get up and get going to escape the weight of gravity or memories filled with attitudes, beliefs, values and fear pulling you down.

Free, you turn and glide, relax and soar.

Finc, being conditioned to the caged world of bamboo with a perch, food and water looked and listened to the world.

Finch retreated from the possibility of free flight and pecked at loose seeds in a narrow crevice below the door. It smelled the dark stale room where the cage hung on a wire. It pecked under the frame. It wanted someone to rescue it.

It sang, “Help! Let me in. I want to come home. I’ve been outside and I’ve seen enough. It’s a big scary place. I promise I’ll never try to escape again. I was curious, that’s all. I’ve seen enough. Let me in.” 

Finch was amazing in it’s beauty. Yellow, red, brown and bright eyed in its aloneness. 

An old woman opened the door. She trapped Finch in a purple cloth and returned Finch to its cage. She closed the bamboo door and snapped the latch shut.

“Did you learn your lesson little bird?” she said.

Finch sat on its perch, enjoyed a long cool drink of water and sang, “Thank you. Now I am truly happy.” 

The old woman didn’t understand this language.

Muttering under her breath about inconvenience she shuffled down a long dark hallway to a kitchen where she killed a chicken for lunch.

 

Sunday
Mar122017

Five Chinese Aliens, Bhaktapur, Nepal

Spring roll 2011. It’s dinnertime. Five Chinese aliens appear in a Bhaktapur guesthouse restaurant.

Two males and three females around 20.

They are armed with laptops, cell phones, and loud discursive language. This is their normal. Noise and confusion and interruptions and arrogant attitudes fit their life style.

One girl is dressed like a flapper from the 20’s. Daisy talks with her mouth full of rice as her red diamond tiara squeezes her frontal lobe into a shucked pea.

They are lucky to have a passport. Their parents are important Red Party Officials.

It’s all about connections.

They’ve whined their way out of manners and intelligence in public places. The new breed of The Ugly Chinese - lost, terribly frustrated never satisfied in a big fucking hurry coddled spoiled youth.

They are the new emperors and empresses in a rising dynasty. They act like they own the restaurant. They complain about the price of a meal. One girl said in a shrill voice, “Oh, it’s too expensive. I am a poor student.”

She majors in Stupidity and Callousness at Beijing Ab-Normal University. She failed Basic Courtesy 101.

 

Gated primary Chinese student in Maja village Fujian, China.

A brat boy chastises the Nepalese waiter about his pronunciation of “Menu.” The crew cut Mandarin idiot commands the boy to say it again. MenuMenu. Menu.

They are living breathing examples of the spoiled one-child political and cultural genocide legacy.

It will come back to haunt China. They have the emotional maturity of a 10-year old. They are so busy stuffing their faces and talking over each other all the European guests stare at them. They don’t care. They act and talk like this at home.

A vociferous Chinese virus has been unleashed on Earth.

Flapper Dolly jumped up on the table yelling, “Kill the Running Capitalist Dogs! Making Money in China is Glorious!”

Everyone threw steel-toed reinforced hiking boots at her. She died of Shame. Such indignity.

Her friends dragged her body out. They sold the boots to pay for her cremation at a Hindu temple.

Bhaktapur, Nepal

Wednesday
Mar012017

Blend In

“You have a criteria for beauty,” said an austere Chinese business university teacher-mother in an apartment elevator going to ground zero. “You should just blend in.”

She was petrified like 1.7 billion of being singled out, purged, tried and executed or sent to the countryside and re-educational brainwashing for expressing bourgeoisie ideology in a harmonious Marxist society.

Her paranoia meant no one dared talk about June 4, 1989. No one whispered about freedom, human rights or democracy. Their collective hardwired brains were wiped clean by Big Brother.

“I’ve learned,” she said, “to keep my mouth shut unless I’m eating fast before starving thieves steal my food or laughing to myself at the stupid laconic narrow-minded ways of our leaders. They are old despotic men. They sit behind blood stained teak desks imported from Burmese dictators. They chop seals and devour dolphins and whales with malice. They swallow tiger bone extract for sexual potency and wash it down with bear bile. Silence is our golden mean. My husband works in a distant province. He has a mistress named Orgasm. No money, no honey.”

Pouring restaurant slop in Mandalay Burma market

She cried silent tears, raised her son and wrote life lesson plans. “By the book,” she screamed in silence facing eighty comatose students scrambling for a pass. It fell incomplete.

“Sixty is heaven and fifty-nine is hell,” said a thin girl in a freshman speaking class of 80. “My parents will kill me if I fail.”

“What is your dream?” said Lucky.

“I want to be a waif when I grow up.”

Her naive honesty surprised him. “What is a waif?”

“You know, a homeless person existing on the street. Living on their wits with silence and cunning, like a mercenary, assassin or literary outlaw. Authentic experience. A free person has courage. They take risks. Not taking a risk is a risk. They don’t live off state handouts in a broken down system filled with graft, corruption and nepotism. They overcome suffering and hardship and deprivation. I mean a real person with dignity, self-respect and courage.”

Seventy-nine others failed to grasp her awareness and honesty.

“You are wiser than your years.”  

 

The Language Company

Sunday
Feb122017

Chinese Education System

In China everyone is safe, happy and well adjusted, Leo said to Ice Girl one torrid day in Banlung, Cambodia.

They sat on an operating table next to a sewing machine and an umbrella.

I cut, you talk, she said. A drop of sweat from her nose landed on a block of ice.

It’s called THE SYSTEM, he said. Brainwashed. You see this in all Asian educational systems. Laconic students shuffle in, remove their brains, soak them in a cleaning solution, which is not the solution for fifty tedious minutes and replace said gray matter at the end of class. It’s endemic.

Big Brother is always watching you.

Save face.

The fear of public humiliation is greater than the fear of death.

Intention is karma.

Tell me about your life in China, said Ice Girl.

After completing five years of a night soil shit job in the Re-Education Through Labor experience for questioing Authority I visited my family graves in Sichuan. I offered prayers and burned incense. I prayed for strength, courage and humility. Then I walked east. Fortune smiled on me.

I worked as a facilitator at a private business university in Fujian with 15,000 replicants.

I faced eighty stone-faced freshmen in a long cement tomb. It was a required speaking class. Desks were bolted to the floor in groups of four. They had year zero English skills. I gave two a test. How are you, I asked a boy. I am 18. How old are you, I asked a girl. I’m fine, and you?

I paired eighty off, boy girl, boy girl. They didn’t like this. They got used to it.

Will someone please share a story?

A girl raised her hand.

The less I do the less likely I am to make mistakes and the fewer mistakes I make the less I am criticized then I feel no shame.

It’s easier to do nothing, said one clever robot.

Correct, I said, you’ve both expressed the essence of your cultural and intellectual education.

That’s a long sentence filled with verbs and significant philosophy said Ice Girl, waving a Blue Zircon reflecting 10,000 things in an elegant universe. Don’t let school interfere with your education. Say more about Becoming.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Thursday
Feb022017

Moon Cartoon Town

Beyond the forest on comet tails South of North Star near a state mental hospital and directly across Nugget Sound-Bite from Paradise Prison full criminals doing hard time, he passed through a small conservative town of 1,001 retired military guys and gals. Every house displayed a large American flag on its stoop.

Blowing in the wind.

He needed a haircut.

Incorporated in 1848 by religious fanatics from Siberia, Moon had a city hall, asphalt tennis court with a broken net, a restored drugstore with Native American artifacts and pharmaceutical histories, public security department and Indian tribal cultural center museum.

There was a post office, dentist, bank, small market, church, pub and deli - a converted gas station selling high octane java to drivers - well manicured lawns with roses and annuals, an upscale dining establishment and ferry service to neighboring islands.

A heavy-set blond woman, wearing wrap around sunglasses, blue jean shorts, a white t-shirt and tennis shoes hesitated at the door of a barbershop.

She was on Insane Street. A red and white striped barber pole rotated in its glass container outside the gray one room building needing a fresh coat of paint. Inside were three black leather barber chairs, two metal folding chairs and outdated Hunting & Flagellating magazines. The barber had a neatly trimmed beard. Out back a small dog kennel sat near a rusting van with a fundamentalist religious bumper sticker, "Jesus Loves U."

“Can I get a trim?” she asked.

“Sure,” said the barber.

“How long will it be?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“Do you take checks?”

“Sure.”

She went out, sat smoking in her car for a minute, got out, slammed the door, came back in and sat down. The barber was finishing a customer.

She started talking.

“I’m taking sixteen to eighteen pills a day,” she said to no one in particular. She turned toward an old man reading the obituaries in a paper-thin daily newspaper.

“I knew it would never happen with the guy at work,” she said. “He started seeing someone else on another floor of the hospital. He cheated ME. He never really opened his true heart. He put people under. He was a divorced anesthesiologist with a three-year old kid he never saw. His ex-wife was a lawyer and they made some deal, an arrangement about life without parole. He loved me. But he wasn’t in love with me. That’s the difference. Do you live here?”

He looked up. “Yes, twenty years now. I think you are a strong person.”

“Actually, I’m a wimp.”

He laughed knowing better.

“True,” she said, “I’m just average.”

The man told her things. He influenced her. They were vulnerable. Her old history of fear, anger and resentment was about trust, loss of self and manipulating men to get them involved, in bed with a warm security blanket and then out of her life.

The old man knew about martyrs and the futility of rescuing women. Being human they were both predators. He was available without making her uncomfortable no pressure no expectations.

He was willing to be vulnerable.

She asked his age.

“All I know is that I’m retired from the Army. After that I worked at the state hospital.”

“Is it true they tie them down there? I heard they kept people tied down for fifteen years.”

“No. I never saw anyone tied down unless they were married to their insanity.”

“Are you married to your insanity?” she asked him.

“My wife died two years ago. We celebrated our 50th anniversary and she died two years later.”

“Will you get married again? Insanity is a blessing.”

“No. I won’t get married again. Marriage is like a business deal with bad sex.”

She took off her glasses revealing layers of dark smudged eyeliner.

Trucks loaded with cement, paper products and garbage rumbled past the open door throwing dust into air.

“Yeah,” she said, “well, my ex-husband works at the nut house and he has trouble with them people so he’ll probably sue.”

She kept talking to no one in particular hoping someone would listen.

They talked about everything but mostly he listened to her pain. They shared emotions and feelings and she was surprised at his openness. Stories with detachment increased emotional truth and trust.

They enjoyed hours of conversations filled with laughter and insight, confronting grief and loss and discovering their authentic self. Their communication bills were staggering.

They were lost, looking, open and honest.

They talked about their dysfunctional families, the absence of love in their respective families, her gay brothers and the sexual humiliations they faced. 

“I worked in a hospital once,” she said. “I hated the stress of working in an operating room during heart surgeries, how some of the ancient surgeons were inept with their chauvinist attitudes. I felt uncomfortable working with an ex-boyfriend, so I quit. I’m not good at handling this breakup. I need to find a new job. I need to get a life.”

She started in again. She was a broken record of life’s miscarriages.

Aborted possibilities lurked inside her screaming heart.

“When I met him I was a model, size five. Look at me now. I can’t believe I’ve let myself go. I did lingerie and bathing suits. Look at me now. I’ve joined weight watchers and lost five pounds.”

“Off with her HEAD!” screamed the Queen.

No one said anything. The barber cut and dried.

She blasted hot air. “I’ve been in a couple of films, if I can’t get back in films I’m not going to do anything.”

The barber finished, shook off the plastic sheet, pushed white metal numbers on an old wooden cash register ringing up the sale. The woman stood outside the shop smoking.

“Nice haircut,” she said as he passed her.

After the barbershop conversation and discovering cosmological stamps of nebulas at a post office he entered a local day care center full of violence and neglect after seeing a child get slammed into a door by a caretaker.

He started to say, “Excuse me…it’s none of my business...” and stopped, seeing a girl dragging abused kids into the cramped office.

The exhausted receptionist said, “May I help you?”

He switched gears. “How much does it cost?” 

“$135 a week.”

“What are your hours?”

“5:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. M-F.”

Ok, he thought, the woman is going to talk to the girl about the petrified kids.

The halls reminded him of a nursing home. He wondered if parents working in some office had any idea what went on in these places. What really happened to their kids during the day?

Temporary jobs for undereducated, unskilled and poorly trained child care providers. Looks good on the outside, all the advertising, bright yellow buses and plastic gym toys in the yard.

One wonders how the effect of early childhood mauling inflicted hard fast lessons of FEAR for future child development construction projects.

We go to these places when young. We go when old, paying people to take care of us. In between the beginning and end of life adults dropped us off, picked us up or left us alone to figure it out. The only difference was years and quality health care. Dynamics.

Random acts of kindness inside wire fences and behind metal doors needed a way out of a labyrinth without a center.

A Century is Nothing