Donate blood - TLC 19

Experience, a wonderful little teacher nowadays said, giving blood helps someone who needs it more than you. Survival luck. Giving blood gifts life.

Living safely is dangerous.

Lucky had rare A-. He donated after receiving permission from Ankara medical authorities. Yes you may, blood is no argument.

The blood bus sat near a busy downtown intersection. He walked past pretzel sellers, cascading water fountains and shit covered statues of hero soldiers firing rusty guns into cobalt skies.

Paying attention he heard imprisoned Turkish journalists crying, begging, and pleading for free speech in a totalitarian Deep State of Fear.

A voice in the wilderness cried out, “The application of Articles 6 and 7 of the Anti-Terror Law in combination with Articles 220 and 314 of the Turkish Criminal Code leads to abuses. In short, writing an article or making a speech can lead to a court case and a long prison sentence for membership or leadership in a terrorist organization. Together with possible pressure on the press by state officials and possible firing of critical journalists, this situation can lead to a widespread self-censorship.”

Dissent is terrorism, said the angry frightened Prime Minister, slapping a Soma miner for booing him in public. Oh the shame.

Lucky climbed on the bloodmobile express.

A smiling Bulgarian nurse asked health questions in broken English. Another nurse took blood pressure. She attached a tourniquet to his left arm. “You have excellent veins.”

She swabbed one and slid a needle in. “Open and close your left hand.” Blood river flowed.

Outside tinted windows in blinding sun Turkish, Armenian, Kurdish and Syrian parents gripped children’s wrists. Fingers never touched. Scraggly half-starved men unloaded boxes of tomatoes from a truck. Light reflected off cheerless sunglasses. Savage salivating salvage teams folded and loaded crushed cardboard boxes into metal carts.

Sad affective-disordered businessmen spilled black market Iranian nuclear fission material and Syrian VX chemical liquids into Ankara’s water supply. Sharing is caring.

Suchness, a heavy responsibility weighted lives.

Nurses waved goodbye, “You brought someone luck by donating life.”

“It’s a small powerful gift. One stranger helps another stranger.”

101 people lined up to donate platelets. “This should be fun,” a girl said to her mother, “I love needles.”

Tears flowed into The Dream Sweeper.

Puppet masters in Tibet - TLC 18

The endless Tibetan knot is the cycle of existence, said a monk. Existence is attachment, loss and suffering. Grasping is suffering. Suffering is an illusion. Let go.

Regrets and fears are monkey mind movies.

Pure joy, compassion, gratitude and forgiveness are clear.

Easy to say, hard to do be do.

Work like you don’t need the money. Dance like nobody’s looking. Love like your heart’s never been broken.

Nothing behind. Everything ahead, said Meditation.

Chinese-Tibetan puppet leaders in Lhasa informed monks they would increase patriotic re-education classes in monasteries. Re-education Through Reform, ideology, propaganda and fear-based thought control is the way comrades. We have Power and Control using fear and intimidation.

We wash your brain daily.

The Chinese, after looting and destroying 2,700 monasteries and killing millions in Tibet before, during and after the Cultural Revolution restricted the number of monks at the three major Lhasa monasteries, Sera, Drepung and Ganden. They recruited Tibetans as spies to live and work in monasteries.

This system proved effective from 1966-1976 when family members reported on each other neighbors and capitalist running dogs. It was a practical peoples’ campaign of fear and suspicion creating paranoia and ideological control.

Monks and nuns in monasteries who resisted or questioned this form of subtle or overt patriotic brainwashing risked imprisonment, torture and death. They knew what happened to monks and nuns at the notorious Drapchi Prison outside Lhasa.

“There are two kinds of suffering,” said a girl weaving wool carpets outside her yurt on the Tibetan plateau hearing wild blue rivers sing below mountains. “Suffering you run away from and suffering you face.”

Inside Drapchi, Chinese guards beat nuns and monks with rubber hoses filled with sand. They applied electric cattle prods to genitals, sending wire-cranked juice into skeletons, extracting screams.

“Denounce the Dalai Lama,” ordered an illiterate PLA soldier from Human Province. He tightened metal around a nun’s wrists until she screamed.

“Never.”

He wiped her blood off his broken glasses and increased pressure. Someone had to do this dull job.

“Save my face,” sang a Fujian university student, an innocent ignorant invisible victim of the one-child genocide policy. She wrung out a mop of spider webs creating water rainbows before swabbing a classroom. 15,001 students had failed higher-level exams for more prestigious institutions. They settled for this. No choice. She washed uneven crumbling cement floors with strands.

Operatic actors offstage fashioned animist death masks for a performance with a funeral formula.

“This is not a fucking rehearsal,” directed Altman. “Get to the verb.”

“Arrive on time, know your lines and wait for the check,” said the Tibetan weaver as radioactive light shafted mountains.

Rational speaking animals mumbled sounds, words, coalescing consonants, vowels and syllables. Etyms dancing with atoms made up everything with axioms of choice.

Divorce - Save face - TLC 17

“I know,” said an articulate woman lawyer in Unit 55 - Mastery level 68 - one day, “that my English is not grammatically perfect but I know my English is very fluent.”

“That’s beautiful and true,” said Lucky, seeing how she’d realized her confident nature to master a second language. He’d translate her awareness to students hoping her illumination would shine through their temerity.

He wrote on glass.

Foreign neurotic teachers lamented loss and dreams. One American’s joyful hyperactive energy regaled mentors with exhaustive stories about a stateside son. How he’d found a part-time job at Archery, a national discount chain, attended a technical school and bought a used Swedish car with a bloody knife in the trunk.

She talked a good game about writing. When it came down to the real work, she said, “I only write silly sentences.” She kept stringing word pearls on her lifeline. Positive therapy. She had a good heart.

Lucky gifted her a box of eight Honer blues harps before walking to Bursa. She was overjoyed. They were the only two deranged fools blowing.

Sometimes he blows and sometimes he sucks.

At TLC two drama queens from New Zealand and Scotland revealed personal horror stories of abandonment and neglect. Emotional histories expanded their quest for love with Turkish men confronting insecure masculine jealousies shattered by strangling mothers intent on controlling their little boys through prolonged adolescence rendering them insolvent and mute given to infantile behaviors and heartbreaking confusion in long strange fatal attractions.

Flower petals whispered, “He loves me, he loves me not.”

In Turkey divorce was seen as a failure. Shame on you, said Shame.

Marriage is a business deal with bad sex, said a heart broker, a form of volunteered slavery.

The majority of women knew their place and stayed in it. Blend in sweet thing. We’re in this for the long haul honey-bunny.

An emotional graveyard bloomed where mothers controlled and manipulated their offspring’s behavior, attitudes and counterfeit freedom with a heavy dictatorial hand called love. Working on love’s chain gang.

One was different. After seven months of marriage she filed divorce papers. She’d believed him in the beginning.

“I feel so much better. He lied to me. He courted me with sweet words and I thought, or believed I thought or thought I believed he had an open mind but I was disappointed because he wasn’t honest...so after weeks then months I saw his, how do you say, irresponsibility, how he wouldn’t contribute his heart to me, to our relationship and then, when I tried to talk to him he was closed to me, he shut down emotionally and I was working and trying to keep the flat up and work on our relationship but I saw it was difficult, then really impossible to live with everything in my brain and heart.”

She exhaled. “Now, when he saw my action to end the marriage he was filled with remorse and regret and apologies. But it’s too late. I told him to move out. Sent him home to his mama. He bothers me everyday in his childlike whining way but it’s over. I can handle it. I am strong and know what I want in my life. My family is very supportive of my decision.”

“Good for you. In China it’s about saving face. Fake face lies. Appearances. You’ve realized growth and self-respect. Some discover their courage, take control of their lives and some don’t.”

“I am not living the lie anymore. I feel free.”

“You discovered courage and accepted responsibility for your life. I am happy for you. Your heart-mind is calm. Be well.”

Tired - TLC 15

Ankara students felt tired. They loved being addicted to a phenobarbital reality altering sensations and emotional health with anti-depressants.

“Anxiety is a national problem,” said a male psychiatrist. His small silver spoon dissolved sugar cubes manufactured in a factory where hygiene conditions were abysmal.

They sat on thick embroidered cushions in a teahouse decorated with Turkish and Iranian carpets, blue amber oil paintings near a well-thumbed Zen Tarot deck.

The troubled shrink had endless neurotic patients. Predicting the future Lucky shared a meditative suggestion. “Heal them with metta - loving kindness. We are all extras in someone's film. You play a leading role. They trust you.”

Taxi Girl - My Name is Tam

Where are you from?

Vietnam.

I am from here. This is my country. I am a rich businessman. You are very beautiful.

Thank you.

How much for one hour?

I played stupid. What do you mean?

He laughed. Are you stupid? I said how much for an hour.

I looked at my girlfriends. One raised her right eyebrow. Go for it.

How much are you willing to pay?

$50.00.

This was the most money I’d ever heard of. I gambled. Make it $500 for one night. I’ll take good care of you all night. Maybe you can help out my friends.

He looked at them. Five hundred is easy money, he said. Let me make a call and have another drink first.

Ok, take your time. He bought me a whiskey talking about making money, exploiting the poor, twisted business deals using connections, property land grab development. I pretended to be interested. It was getting late. I gambled. Time’s up, I said. Are you going to help my friends? If you want me it’s $500. All night.

Ok, he said. He called someone. I have some chickens for you. He laughed and hung up. I have a place near here. Get me a taxi.

We went through dark streets and stopped at a house. Inside were two older men, drinking. They looked at the girls, paired off and disappeared.

I was a virgin and he was my first man. It hurt like hell, he was rough but I handled it and didn’t cry in front of him. I swallowed all my bitter tears. He fucked me all night. It was brutal.

In the morning I could hardly walk. He paid me in cold hard cash. Five clean crisp hundreds. I couldn’t believe it. I gave Miss Tan her cut and she was very happy. The pain will pass, she said. Get used to it.

I was in business. Easy. Turn on the charm, smile a lot, dress up, be smart, gamble, be open to suggestions, don’t drink too much and be ready, willing and able. Be a passive machine. Close your heart. Pretend you’re somewhere else.

That’s how I became a taxi girl. I was beautiful and tough. Miss Tan saw this and kept me busy. 

My Name is Tam