Butterfly of Consequence

The bats are back. They are roosting in the shade and protection of wide green fronds. Shhh.

Thumbing through the Moleskine. Here's a spring flashback entry. On March 23rd I gave my 90-day notice at the introverted strange private Catholic school in Jakarta. I sculpted the clean, real, honest and clear missive focusing on a June departure. Thank you for the opportunity. Time to fly. Enough.

I'd been alerted on January 9th when the Director sent an SMS to Surely, my supervisor. Ironically the big D wasn't wearing her specs and also sent it to me. It was a Friday night, Surely and I with her two kids had visited a local bookstore and then sat down at an Indian restaurant for nan, curry and sustenance with flavor. We were outside. The SMS arrived in a brown paper bag. Innocuous.

Briefly, it said, "Grade 4 parents called Terrible, the principal, and they want Tim replaced. We have to talk."

This was a positive sign. It alerted me to the realties, the parental influence and how I needed to refocus and redefine for myself, kids and parents, the specific balance between academic responsibility and freedom. Simple.

I learned some were not happy with the academic progress and structure. Some, not all, the parents were unhappy with my methods, the material and the personal evaluations and feedback I was giving their child.

I took immediate steps in class to make sure the kids and their parents were:

1) writing/sharing this balanced approach to learning in their daily Agenda notebook. Some parents, especially those activily involved in their child's educational progress would read it. Accountability.

2) understanding the benchmarks and various assessment on process tools - speaking, reading comprehension, listening and writing classroom evaluations and academic expectations. Get it in writing.

I shared the responsibility with kids and parents to understand the what, why and how process in the classroom and beyond.

I considered my options. They wanted me to stay for another year but I'd learned what I needed to learn about their system, parental controls, influence, mediocrity, became a better teacher and knew it was time to complete the little chapter and turn the page.

After I submitted a copy to the Director of English who was shocked to realize I'd acted to regain my freedom from the tyranny with such a responsible dignified and professional personal action, I dropped one off at Human Resources.

On my way out of the administration zone the final door handle came off in my hand, cheap stuff - "Oh, NO! I'm trapped in the system!"

I laughed, seeing the cosmic significance, handed it to an office girl and pried open the door. Close call.

While traversing a green lawn back to class tombs breathing deep relief I found a brown butterfly with a damaged wing. I carried it on my folder to a safe place. Then I planted seeds with the kids and we cultivated a garden. Together.

Metta.

Small paper gifts open doors

Settling into the flow of the street, city, parks, lakes, and people. It's a joy.

Irony of remembering arriving about a year ago in Jakarta from Turkey. How, during the long flight I studied packaging, how plastic wrap and tin foiled meals are air tight and require a degree in engineering to open them without spilling the contents everywhere.

Miles of tourists waited to have their passports stamped so they could get to Balinese temples, massage parlors and blue-green waves of laughter along some forgotten coast. Where palm oil plantation owners destroy the rain forest so women have sweet facial cosmetics. Where poor farmers kill elephants with poison laced pineapples for the black market ivory trade. Where people spend more time looking back than forward.

How the young immigration man asked me, "Do you have a return ticket?"

No.

"Come with me." He led me to a desk where he talked to another man. My school employer had failed to tell me I needed a return ticket - they assumed I would be stopping in Singapore for a visa but this was never explained. Clearly.

They talked. The man returned. "You need a ticket out." I took my passport from him, opened it and put a $100 note inside. "Will this help?" His eyes brightened, meaning yes. Money talks.

He returned to the box office, whispered to a colleague stamping tired expectant tourist faces and led me down the hall toward immigration officials. We passed rows of people waiting for their final turn at Stamp Entry Verification Headquarters. He went to an important man sitting in his cubicle staring at a computer. Mr. Big.

"Go through and wait there," he said, pointing to the free zone. He handed my passport to the man, they talked, the official stamped my document and returned it to him. He walked over, handed it to me, smiled and said, "Welcome to Indonesia."

"Thank you for your help. Goodbye."

When I shared this memory with the woman in charge of administration for foreign teachers she smiled, "Yes, that's the way things are done here."

So it goes.

Metta.

A Griot

Greetings,

One day I write “Blues Music Story” on the board. I discuss the African Diaspora, history,slavery, working on farms for little money and how they gathered to make music at the end of long hard days.

How the blues manifested as men and women left home on an economic migration for better jobs just like China now. How the blues allowed them to express their feelings about loss, separation from family and friends. How it's a “feeling, emotional, deep in your spirit soul,” music.

I pulled out my blues harp and they said, “Oh it’s a chochin,” in Mandarin.

“Want to hear some blues?”

“Yes!”

I blew some sweet slow stuff and then picked up the tempo and blasted rifts and wailing train whistles. Gave them a real sense of the music.

When you're a wandering minstrel or a Griot - a West African performer who perpetuates the oral traditions of a family or village by singing histories and tales; considered by musicologists to be a link with the acoustic blues - or a Seanachai - a traditional Irish storyteller of myths and legends - or a magician, soothsayer and Adept this comes naturally.

“You see. I am merely a conduit for music. It comes through me.”

Then we did a lesson about how to make a sandwich.

How to assemble the ingredients; bread, tomatoes, mayo, relish, turkey slices, mustard, onions and lettuce.

Suddenly, new music began. Everyone ran to a window.

Across the street an Indonesian boy sat on a piece of plywood in the shadow of a long tall Sally art deco three story building towering above a gated community filled with designer homes, wild tropical green blossoming fruit trees, displaced dysfunctional spoiled offspring spinning yo-yo's, sleeping on broken bamboo bed springs and swimming across flooded streams of dreams.

In his right hand he held a shining silver chisel. In his right, a flat edged hammer. He slammed metal against metal. He was on a bridge between the stone age and the iron age. Tap-tap-tap. Music flaking dust. He started singing an old village song remembering his family and rice paddies, feeling the wind carry his song.

A young girl using a broom made of thinned tree branches whisked a gentle rhythm creating a symphony.

Metta.

Travel transience

Yes and thanks for your patience while I was in transit, exploring new visions and shifting my base of exploration. Indonesia is where I sit down now to continue my work.

Transience is the only reality.

I have a lot to share with you, enough for a story, a long prose poem, or an in depth podcast, yes, a verbal sound bite. 

So, would you like the short version or the long version?

A short segment: packaging. Airline tin foil wrapped around hot strange food at 29,000 feet is a challenge. Keep your elbows in so you don't disturb Mr. Sleepy next door. He is a cook on a cruise ship based in Europe and returning home to Jakarta for a brief holiday with family and friends. 

Light sandle wood incense. Step out onto the front porch before dawn and communicate with a trilling bird. Whistle a song. Listen and repeat. Say hello to a large brown meditative frog sitting near a flowering species of tropical plant with red flowers for a hat. 

By now I have been to many gardens and collected 20+ flowering plants with exotic names for indoor and outdoor growth and beauty. I am living in a tropical paradise. Orchids are amazing and reasonably priced. I love the feeling of dirt. It is a hard packed red clay variety. I dig and plant, dig and plant. I water after dark, after a day of blazing heat. The flowers and plants appreciate this kindness.

After a week of teacher training I get a shiatsu massage. A girl walks on my spinal chord. It's a real alignment.

I found a new COSMIC mountain bike, helmet, front and rear lights, lock, and magic bell. The music is crisp and clear. The echo sends a pulse and signal and waves across the universe. The Tibetan bells are answering in their distinctive well calibrated tonal language.

"Maid" girls wash cars and sweep dust. Someone clangs a metal utensil on a wok and roll preparing breakfast. Wild roaming cats climb into curbside trash containers, lose their balance and spill the contents. Suburban people own two cars. They start one and leave it idling. A mosquito whispers, "I need blood." A flickering candle illuminates their probing sensitivity.

You remember a small story Zeynep shared while on the ferry across blue water to Istanbul. "Before we are born we know everything, then, when we are born, after being born, we forget everything because of the pain." 

Should I say something here about all the tourists wearing flip-flops in Istanbul? Perfect for the terrain; old Roman stones, inlaid mosaic tiles and wheelchairs. How, as their day progresses they gradually become worn out, tired, bored and sullen? Perhaps. 

One day at breakfast on the garden terrace overlooking the Bosporus filled with tankers, ferries and sailboats a chemistry teacher from Pittsburgh said, "Our daughter is 15. She says traveling is hard work." His wife, thinking about leaving for Israel to see friends and a seminar in physics added, "Somewhere in India is a man carrying the world on his back."

"Yes," said a linguistic gardener, "We are sanctifying a finite space in an infinite universe."