Gratitude

In late 2011 in Vientiane, Laos he finished another revision of A Century is Nothing.

He let it rest. He's tired of it. He's been consistent with it every morning and afternoon.

Doing the work. Polishing is the party.

He feels good about the process.

Stories inside stories.

A work of art is never finished. It is abandoned.

The 2nd edition was published December 2012.

After spraying oil on sprocket and chain he rode Mystery the mountain bike.

Slow.

He discovered a woman with her plastic box sitting in the shade doing nails on a quiet side street.

He gestured scraping callused souls. She smiled and finished another woman.

He soaked feet and hands in water. She scrubbed off dead skin.

It reminded him of murdering his manuscript darlings. She trimmed cuticles and skin with a small silver tool. She wrote him into her story and he wrote her into his. They're are mutually inconclusive.

Love is unconditional.

He is open minded, patient, positive, flexible, and friendly.

She is intuitive and creative with empathy, trust, respect and gratitude.

He paid. They smiled.

He rode away protected by a white butterfly ringing a bell.

Present and empty.

If I grow up I die - TLC 79

Being nine Lucky helped 4th grade geniuses become more human. Engage-study-activate. Everyone had fun. Students learned that whining was boring and useless. Smart ones knew without understanding. They knew what they didn’t know.

Kids shared Socratic discussions. They explored and expanded creative imagination journal writing, cross-disciplinary art, chess and teamwork development projects. They built and flew kites.

They practiced good manners and treated everyone with respect.

They focused on developing character: zest, courage, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, curiosity, fairness, generosity and integrity.

They shared soft eyes, relaxation techniques and meditation mind maps. They accepted personal responsibility for learning and exploring the process of becoming.

He assisted them to develop critical thinking skills outside imaginary social and educational conditioning traps. “I am here to help you make mistakes.”

One day a young teacher kid said, “We need challenges, Teacher Lucky.”

“What kind of challenges?”

“We need hardship and deprivation.”

“Yes,” said another teacher, “we need to take more risks.”

“How do you develop courage?”

“Through failure. We love to fail better."

“Correcto mundi. Welcome to The Think for Yourself Academy. Everything we do is an experiment.”

They planned, designed and constructed an elaborate high-risk rope and creeper vine obstacle course in jungles challenging body, mind and spirit. Teamwork skills blossomed like orchids.  

Residents near his garden sanctuary passed a tall green spiky cactus stretching arms into bluebird songs. A nanny carrying an infant memorized the echo of white cat paws trailing flip-flops. Faustus, seeing throughinnocent eyes rode behind his pedaling Chinese father.

A laughing skipping girl negotiated freedom. A beggar wearing broken shoelaces studied pavement. A man spinning in his labyrinthine puzzle struggled with an activated cell phone in worn green baggy shorts hoping the call would save him from loneliness, boredom, alienation and metaphors like death.

Children in pink pajamas collected brown leaves and fragrant yellow-white hibiscus flowers.

In Bahasa sun a middle-aged daughter spoon-fed her mother in a wheelchair. Swallowing love her smiling mother remembered when she did all the feeding.

The Language Company 

desperation calls

Muesli, fruit, yogurt.

Desperation called 18 times during the day asking, Why, What changed your attitude toward me, How did you arrive at this heart breaking conclusion to release me, to reduce my sense of responsibility and neglect burning ashes of regret?

Calm thought about Desperation's plight.

Release and letting go of passion, desire, and expectations requires a serenity, clear focus, unconditional love.

Everything dies.

All is dancing behind your tears, your questions.

Be still.

Sit with your sensations, perceptions.

Breathe deep in-out.

Her return. Small talk about respect and responsibility.

language animal

Mai's hearing evaluation.

Anthony from NZ came, he met, he talked, he promised, he took her out, he tried to seduce her, he failed, he left. Mai is resigned to her former life, massage and laundry scrubbing under the paternal gaze of her older sister who sits in perpetual admiration of her mirrored reflection.

How does her awareness and disappointment register in her POTENTIAL for unrealized dreams?

How does her silent resignation and understanding comprehend lost chance, all the complexity w/o expectations?

Even in the false dream of star rain they had to move a wooden toy pawn, the salad bar in silence welcomed cool air from a brown river, children pressed noses to a rolling window, laughing.

An archeologist skips through star puddles into 8th Century excavations.

Freedom sings stones, selling a Blue Pumpkin to a Cambodian land mine amputee w/o a left leg selling DVDs to fat tourists talking with their mouths full.

An Enfield rumbles in Pokhara spinning the Wheel of Time, rejoicing in miracles, small ones.

Sit in meditation.   

We do laundry by machine, said Language Animal.

3.8 billion years ago a black hole captured a star the size of our sun. It sucked the star into its empty mass. The star exploded the black hole. The escaping energy created, released streams of light we see today.

At that moment 20 raindrops trusted intuition.

To travel is to feel.

Indonesia asked you to return. Two years ago you said thank you. Goodbye to all that.

Orchids remember you.

The apple tree you planted at Gardenia is growing. Roots buried deep below blossoms lie fragrant with memory.

In and out dialogue.

Discover what speaks to you. 

ugly chinese trash nepal and elsewhere

In a Bhaktapur, Nepal guesthouse it’s dinner time. Five Chinese aliens appear. Two males and three women. They are in their 20’s. They are armed with laptops, cell phones, and loud discursive language. This is normal.

Noise and confusion and interruptions and arrogant attitudes fit their life style. One girl is dressed like a flapper dancer from the roaring 20’s. Daisy Bell talks with her mouth full of rice. 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 whined their way out of manners and intelligence in public places. They are the new breed of The Ugly Chinese, the lost, terribly frustrated never satisfied in their exported coddled spoiled youth.

They are the new emperors and empresses of a prosperous, for a minority, 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 is majoring in Stupidity and Callousness at Beijing Normal University. She failed Basic Courtesy 101.

A brat boy chastises the Nepalese waiter about his pronunciation of Menu. The crew cut Mandarin idiot commands the boy to say it again, 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 15-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 new strain of vociferous Chinese virus has been unleashed on Earth. Hong Kong residents call them locusts. 

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

Everyone threw their steel toed reinforced Everest hiking boots at her. She died of Shame. Her friends dragged her body out, selling the boots to pay for her cremation.

Brick boys in Kathmandu valley.

Twins work in Bhaktapur.