Shit Detector in Turkey (48% said no thanks)

One Sunday evening Lucky walked along a narrow Bursa street in Turkey.

Kurdish mothers in headscarves extended thick manicured necks beyond balconies observing street life. Women swept, mopped, stirred apartment dust, shaking molecules out over blood stained escarpments.

They married newly consecrated relatives during fifty-minute encounter sessions designed to use the target language in the context of remembering. The thrill of remembering old memories overlaid with new linguistic impressions.

Learning is easy. Remembering is difficult.

The president plays his hand.

Glorious grand immediate silent ivory piano keys waited for inspiration’s fingers. Feeling, tension, point, counterpoint, hammer strings, resonance, and chromatic silence paused with reflection and flight. Symbols of forgotten strumpets playing music between notes wailed solitary notes across an abyss.

Creased faces ironed brilliant red roses petals. Faces embedded themselves between pages in a worn black unlined notebook.

Two shy Turkish women with beautiful faces and humongous rear end collisions eating lonely tears in a tomato based culture buried ancestors.

Water exploded off pools as happy hour birds heard homo-sapiens shift erotic labia gears after assembling French cars at a Bursa eco-friendly green plant.           

“Welcome to Earth. Hello babies.”
            “Were you punished for being a dreamer?”
            “No. I was fortunate my family understood my nature. They respected my need for solitary time.”
            “I see,” said a blind beggar.
            “Wipe your glasses with what you know.”
            “I was born to be a poet like a bird is born to be a musician.”
            “Sing high, sing low, sweet chariot.”
            “Brilliant.”
            “Fascinating. We learned to say fascinating in finishing school instead of bullshit.”
            “You have a built-in shit detector.”
            “Ain’t that the fucking truth? Everyone needs a shit detector here in Turkey."

Truth is a value-based meaning factor. Can you create believable fiction-memory?”

Lucky passed his double identity twin theory below the surface of appearances at Ozmanhomogenized Gazi metro station. Two gravediggers wearing long black overcoats carried umbrella projectiles. Stepping into unknown futures they stabbed cement in cadence.

Green Metro cars slid into the station. Lucky sat across from a boy, 10, his mother and father. His father’s hands were hard calloused. They were simple working people from Van in the east. The boy smiled, fascinated by whirling prisms of light flashing past windows.

His father pulled up his son’s shirt. On his chest were two plastic suction cups and a small machine the size of a deck of cards. Ace high. A heart monitor measured his beats, his life rhythm, and his regularity. His father checked the display, saw the cups were secure and dropped the shirt.

“It is a machine for my son. It helps him,” he said with tired eyes. “We got it at Hospital A. Doctors said it was essential for his life.”

After the shirt covered his chest the boy and Lucky smiled, cupping their hands around eyes scanning the universe. They were explorers with magnifying glasses.

He’s a happy kid. Not afraid of a thing. We should all be so fortunate. Especially all the tired Turkish adults streaming their life tales, “Oh pity me. I am so, so tired.”

Talk to the kid. He’ll tell you how tired really feels.

Echoes of digger umbrella projectiles on stone faded near young lovers huddled on benches, a beggar crash landed on tarmac, head scarfed wrapped women with sacred scared eyes, children on curious adventures and wide eyed echoes along green tracks leading into dark tunnels disappearing into a wilderness of snow blanketed forests where two black shawled women negotiated muddy paths through foliage waiting for spring to thaw out relationships with nature.

Rabbits running in the ditch The Season of the Witch.

Living breathing biped accidents craved a place to happen with clarity insight and precision. Pearl letters played out on a fragile necklace of water bead molecules in an instant in eternity.

Time is a strung-out pimp looking for salvation, a fix an exit.

The Language Company

Playing a Turkish lament in Trabzon.

Burma Commander

In Shan State, Burma once upon a time there was along running insurgency- people fighting and dying for territory, freedom, opium, jade, and blood red rubies - golden triangle profit.

A shiny green army pick up truck pulled up at the New Sign Moon Bakery in Lashio.

A soldier in green jumped out and opened the door. The fat wife got out – black hair decorated with blue sapphires in a white and silver long dress, designer purse, serious face.

Six soldiers exited the back of the truck. They were on a mission to liberate cakes, cookies, sweets from a glass shrine.

The short commander wore a camouflage jacket with depressed green pants and black shiny shoes. He had epaulets on his shoulder.

His sharp black eyes stared at a stranger sitting at an outdoor table bleeding ink.

Zero expression. His buried eyes were recessed emptiness. His camo boonie hat at a rakish angle was decorated with a golden military symbol of happiness, compassion and love.

His life climbed steps into a New Son. Her husband uttered quick syllables to number two.

Number two wore military bearing without a care in the world. He barked into a walkie-talkie.

A military policeman guarded the front of the truck. Soldiers stood around smoking as motorcycles loaded with fresh strawberries streamed goodbye.

She exited followed by a salesgirl trundling bags of roles and buns. A soldier put them in the truck. She spoke to her husband knowing words were unnecessary. He followed her to the market. Soldiers marched behind singing, I love a parade.

Years later they returned with bags of strawberries, apples and bananas. They loaded everything into the truck.

Someone called the commander. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. He opened his mouth. Perfect white teeth. If you knew words. He smiled.

A soldier open the door for his life. She got in. He got in took off his party hat and slicked his hair. The military police whistled traffic.

They drove into a dream come true.

Real–not true

True–not real

We need rules in turkey - TLC

At TEOL English school in Giresen, Turkey, a small town on the Black Sea, Curiosity asked, “How did I grow?” knowing it disturbed sedated ones. Curiosity loved asking philosophical quest-ions about how to live a good life.

Not interested with intellectual veracity another student said, “How did I get here?”

“By walking,” said Lucky. “Step by step.”

After the TEOL center closed completing a perfect circle he walked up a steep brick hill. At exactly 9:11 p.m. on a corner near an empty mosque with a broken fountain of youth, a four-man Swat commando team from a make believe secular Islamist country disguised as a provincial soccer team wearing purple spandex leotards and baklava masks cradled submarine machine guns. Itchy fingers caressed love’s hair trigger.

One was well dressed. Black. Hungry.

He said, “We are Deep State.” His comrades sang a refrain.

“WE are POWER.”

“WE are CONTROL.”

“WE ARE FEAR AND AUTHORITY. We kill people with visionary rose petals. Our artificial currency and idiotic ideological Rule of Law stirs evolutionary linguistic sugar cubes.”

Lucky said, “How did I adapt, adjust and evolve? How did I unlearn your dystopian world? I never took possession of your world.”

“Keep moving fool,” said Mr. Swat. “Looking at us is against the law. Speaking your mind is an act of dissent and terrorism and a irrevocable violation of Article 301 against The Deep State.”

Young unarmed gangs observing this show of farce were impressed by his bluster. They idled their ignorance with acuity. When I grow up, said one kid, like you know never, I will wear black and carry a loaded gun to impress my family, friends, idiots, fools and strangers.

Another true fragment, said Z.

The Language Company

Tax office Trabzon - TLC

Eat dreams with Turkish yogurt minus needles of anxiety.

Cultivate silence and bliss.

Amazon women visited the residency permit offic3 in Trap A Zone. They severed their right breast. Here you are. We’re ahead of schedule and below budget. We pay now.

Arrows of time sang, Bull’s-Eye.

Everything has already happened, said Z. You just need to experience it. You and I hit the target others don’t see.

Before visiting the taxman Lucky discovered a pinecone poem near the tax office inhaled it caressed needle texture and put it in his pocket. Talisman.

The cool deep forest season scent reminded him of managing Glen Malure, an isolated Wicklow hostel in Ireland below Lugnaquilla Mountain absorbing the same sensation with pinecone nature in his pocket grounding him deep helping him survive dear old dirty Dublin passing through to wild Donegal in 1979.

Down the rocky road, one, two, three, leaving them all broken hearted.

After the tax office barbarians sang at The Bank of Greed & Prosperity to open an account. Wake up the clerk. Keep people busy. Sit Down deposited 12K to get it straight. Deposit today, withdraw next week, said sleepy teller.

Palming an ace, Paperwork shuffled a loaded deck.

In the afternoon the native speaking tribe went to the police office for residency paperwork. Wake up the dick in the corner. Everyone was armed and legged with hand ups. Desperadoes sang bordello caliber melodies.

Lucky handed over sepia photos, documents in triplicate, passport and random pages of a well-traveled TLC narrative by Zeynep to a morose female clerk wearing a hipster 45. She did her computer data duty and passed everything to a young steely-eyed policeman who, by pure dumb luck had met Mr. Foot two weeks earlier on the TEOL balcony where they conversed about essential English skills. Use it or lose it, said Lucky.

Cop looked at the residency permit, stared him down and said you cannot work in Giresun. Yes, said Lucky. Always say yes when a kid fingering a loaded 45 says you cannot. Negative tense.

In the future all the world’s police will be children. Period.

The Language Company

Zeynep the heroine of TLC in Bursa.

Deep State

Before Lucky moved downstairs writing in cold empty rooms waiting to be abandoned, SOL let him crash for seven days in his family (mommy & daddy were pensioners living in instant bull) owned 80,000TL all white Swedish-styled six-room apartment filled with glass tables, appliances, chairs, sofas, wardrobes, plasma screen savers and high tech cleaning tools like rags, brooms and mops with a partial view of the deep blue BS.

SOL (shit out of luck) was kind and lonely - feeling heavy deep real repressed bitterness like millions of others intelligent enough to see know and understand how the Turkish authoritarian micromanaged Deep State system had screwed citizens with grandiose educational employment lies and empty promises pacifying 300,000 unemployed teachers living at home on welfare handouts while exerting Power & Control programs through never ending academic tests, endless exams - play it again Sam - prolonging the inevitable death of individual spirit and curiosity and humor with enough monumental paper pushing to grind humans down, kill hearts and dull minds causing emotional earthquakes on cultural fault lines while stifling dreams and desires of paranoid students to achieve future social and economic dreams.

Fat chance said zero luck.

The future is now, said Lucky and it’s a beautiful mystery. My generation is fucked, said SOL strumming his Spanish guitar with sad eyed seriousness on his balcony near The Department of the Forest.

Before going to Giresun Lucky helped twenty Trabzon university students practice for oral exams. They needed more vocabulary and courage. They studied forty topics to prepare for extreme extra temptations like sex-ting and extemporaneous vocal chords.

Topics were about society, politics, history, current events, moral choices and obscure rigid authoritarian cross-cultural scientific and mathematical legacies focusing on developing and fostering insecurity, memorization and command and control illusionary procedures employing Deep State propaganda to coerce eighty million bleating sheep into medicated anxiety.

Let’s eat more XANAX, said student victims swallowing fear, healthy doubt and mysterious uncertainty.

We cannot change our major, said female university students. Ever. We live and breathe and die in our systemic major whether we like it or not. My dreams to be a boat captain disappeared like the Titanic, said one girl. Poof.

Suck it up, said Deep State.

We need more Engineers said Deep State in 2008. Design and conquer.

We need more Teachers said Deep State in 2012. Buy the book.

We need more prolonged adolescents over thirty living at home, said parents. Females crying silent tears waited for pre-arranged marriages to perfect strangers.

We need more idle backgammon players drinking brown tea and stirring processed carcinogenic sugar molecules said Deep State.

We need more big time watches, expensive cell phones, patent leather shoes, guns, water cannons, tear gas canisters and corrupt profit motivated private mine inspectors in Soma, said Deep State police.

We need more Xanax, said the dumbed down population. Increase the dosage, said a shirking shrieking shrink in Ankara.

WE, Deep State disguised as surrogate parents, will whine you and dine you. Do what we say or we will starve you to death by consensus.

Being curious is not in our vocabulary, said female university students. Personal freedom and independence is not in our lexicon, having been outlawed by Article 301. 

Dissent is terrorism, said Deep State.

Outlandish.

Outsourced to ideological appliance factories and Re-form Through Re-education Gulags in China.

Bend over said Deep State raising a sword. Take it like a man.

The Language Company