Myths became stories - TLC 38

Zeynep said, “I am a rose thorn and Winter Hawk. Wings instinct and heart. My razor talon tears meat from bones to feed my creative Hunger Angel.”

“I am a cognitive psycho-neurolinguist,” said a gravedigger. “My specialty is languages. Lost tongues. Wandering deep in the Tarim Basin following the Silk Road through Central Asia I discovered the 4,000 year old Tocharian language and Afansievo culture. It was a proto-Indo European language with Celtic and Indian connections established by trade caravans and explorers. I suspect it is Qarasahr or IA based on an Iranian dialect.”

Mircea Eliade, a historian of religions said, “Myths tell what really happened. Myths suggest a reality that cannot be seen and examined. Myth is truth trying to escape from reality. A myth is a story of unknown origins, sacred stories based on fear and belief containing archetypical universal truths. They are in every place and no particular place.”

History became legend.

Legend became myth.

Myth became story.

This anthropological fact accompanied Lucky wandering among unfinished construction projects and abandoned manuscripts in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

He joined millions of emaciated migrant refugees passing shattered bricks, broken hopes and strangling dangling cables connected to nothing in particular.

Shoddy incomplete dust dreams and quick profit schemes thrived where political thugs disguised as beauticians, missionaries and NGO social workers living in penthouses and driving Land Rovers exploited villages stealing land, rivers, mountains, children. Extorting money.

Their rule of law was a truncheon named GREED.

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Sophisticated command and control procedures thrived. Corruption stole millions. Substandard schools pancaked 10,000+ children from one-child families in a Sichuan earthquake.

Garment factories in Dhaka crushed wage slave workers stitching designer labels at a discount.

In May 2014 an inefficient unregulated profit-oriented private coalmine in Soma, Turkey caught fire, exploded, burned and collapsed killing 301 miners.

The angry Teflon Prime Minister visited the disaster. “This is a fact of life for poor illiterate underpaid miner slaves. It happened in Britain in the 19th century,” he said to widows and families. An angry miner booed him. He slapped the miner. “If you boo the Prime Minister you get slapped.”

His aide, a frustrated soccer player wearing a suit of armor kicked a miner on the ground being held by police. Aide screamed, “Dissent is TERRORISM!”

The ruling AKP Justice and Development party said it was all a mistake: the mine explosion, slap and penalty kick.

Violence, denial and repression are a way of life here, said Zeynep the younger creating a myth.

The Language Company

Maptia

A world of stories.

Enjoy the diversity, beauty, magic and mystery.

Maptia.

no metaphors

I'm one of those people who’s learned through living that there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to.

I am a metaphor looking for a meaning. There are no metaphors, only observations.

I feel free to move away from safe familiar places and keep moving forward to new unexplored areas of life. Drifting some would say.

If I had one red cent for every time someone asked me when I’d settle down I could afford a world hypothesis! Settling down was never an option.

Yes. I could bid on blessings. I’d sacrifice pre-linguistic symbols and create silent metaphorical abstractions. My linguistic skills would evolve into love into discursive logic.

26,000 year-old Paleolithic iron and copper paintings create a secret symphony of ancient stories in a Spanish cave.

No lengthy drawn out off-the-wall abstract explains my small empty self to anybody by virtue of who I was, am and will be.

Life is a palimpsest.

“There are only two stories in the world,” I said to the Moroccan. We carried boarding cards through the Casablanca terminal. 

“A stranger arrives in town or a person goes on a journey.”

“Yes,” said Omar, a blind writer overhearing our conversation, “we might add there are also stories about love between two people, stories about love between three people and stories about the struggle for power. Stories are about characters revealing emotion through dialogue and action.”

The world is made of stories, not atoms.

He handed me a pile of yellow papers wrapped in rushes.

“A gift for you. A Century is Nothing. It contains a farrago of evidence. Keep it simple.”

“Thank you. Where do I find you?”

“In the caves south of Ronda. It’s a long walk.”

He disappeared into Baraka.

At breakfast

Greetings,

I'm sitting in the lodge. People eat breakfast and chat. They remember last night. They plan a new day above ground.

There's a super serious Danish family of four. Sad blond dad and morose mom resigned to her fate. Two young boys about 10. They love to play pool, run around and make noise. A lot of noise. They need a behavior modification lesson for public places.

They're slamming balls around the table using their hands. Suddenly the young one blasts off into a terrified shriek of pain. It wakes up the eaters. His right hand was inside the cushion and brother's ball caught him squarely on the fingers. 

Dad rushes over. He cradles his son, escorting the bellowing child back to bread and eggs. Mom looks bored. She's dreaming of ice crystals in Copenhagen.

Three middle aged Americans and two 28-year old girls arrive and sit on soft cushions. One is the niece of the man. They've just arrived from a horrendous scam-filled long bus ride from Bangkok. 

The man is soft spoken. He's an Asian tour guide. He reminds me of Robert Thurman, the Tibetan scholar. His wife is an attorney in Portland, Oregon. She deals with suits. No one at breakfast is wearing a suit. I know her job because of the way she cross examines the two girls. An older woman with regal bearing is with them, perhaps one's mother. She is patient, kind and asks intelligent questions.

She lives in Eugene, Oregon as does one of the girls. The older woman grew up in Eugene, attended Portland State College and loved languages, especially Italian. She moved to Rome for six years. She came back and got her M.A. in Italian and Foreign Languages at the University of Oregon. She taught Italian until retiring. 

The attorney and the woman talk about growing up. The attorney is from Michigan.

"I was only able to get away for two weeks. My boss said, 'What happens if someone sues someone and you're not here to handle the case?'"

The older woman said, "It was just coincidence I ended up back in Eugene. It was hard growing up there."

"Why," said the attorney.

"It was the late 40's. We didn't have enough to eat. It was only steak and they cooked it to a cinder. It was that and potatoes. One brand of rice. I remember my mother and father loading us in the car and we'd drive to San Francisco to buy food."

"To sell?" asked the attorney.

The older woman looked at her. "No. To eat." I hear her thinking in Italian, "Mama mia! What a crazy question!"

The group talks about the bus, lodgings, cost and border hassles. The girls are dead tired. They compare travel stories. One girl has just completed a month teaching English in Burma. She says she managed to find a job through a foreign woman running a tour company.

"Yes," said the man, "there are people there who know the system. Where did you teach?"

"I didn't teach school. I taught teachers."

The man knows Burma. "I see. The authorities are very suspicious of foreigners. It's difficult to really get to know the people."

"I hoped to spend time with the Burmese in their homes but it was forbidden," said the girl.

I see the girl teaching a class of Burmese "teachers."

Half work for a government agency designed to acquire western educational pedagogical plans. The other half work for the secret police. One is a real teacher. Can you find the real teacher?

Metta.

A teacher.

Ghost Stories

Greetings,

In today's New York Times I found my comments included in a section called "Ghost Stories." I would like to thank the editors for selecting my piece.

On October 22, I posted an entry called BEDLAM AND HEALING. It was about the NYT and their "Home Fires," opinion section where Brian Turner, a Vietnam veteran posted his essay and poem. I'd read this and entered a comment and later read all of the postings, numbering 163 at that point.

Here is the entire piece and a link to the site. Read more...

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Hello Brian and Travelers,

I am a Vietnam veteran, author, English teacher and photographer living in Ha Noi after completing a teaching job in Indonesia. I felt it was time to “return” to a place where, as a green 19 year old, I was really on the ground.

I served with the 101st at Camp Eagle near Hue. I needed to get a sense of place and perspective. Nature has reclaimed all the land. Only the spirits and ghosts and memories remain.

I went to the Phu Bai airport. The yellow and green small simple cement building sits next to an “International” box. On the ground I found a discarded paper baggage handling tag. On one side in all caps it said, "EMPTY." I put it in my pocket.

‘Yes, ‘ I realized, ‘this completes the picture of my returning.’

As I wrote in my novel, “A Century Is Nothing” when I returned to San Francisco from Saigon heading to Denver they gave us a new green uniform.

It was a strange flight to Colorado. I grasped the significance of being a ghost. No one spoke to me. They averted their eyes. Maybe I smelled like death, evil incarnate, a green silent demon. Maybe all the passengers were afraid because I represented their worst nightmare. I was invisible, just like now.

Fortunately my “homecoming” was brief, then I continued to Germany where I finished my military time. Two years later while attending the University of Northern Colorado insensitive students, knowing my history, called me a “baby killer.” They had no idea. I didn’t absorb their sense of anger, frustration and illusionary ignorance.

Brian’s poem is a truthful insight how it feels to be invisible after a war. How leaves and rain and medicine birds are all. A cleansing and healing ceremony indeed.