Mai

Her back to a silent world, a beautiful deaf mute dancer in Cambodia scrubs foreign laundry. Her becoming is loneliness, heartbreak and joyful silence.

Her silence is her freedom.

She wrote her story in a spiral notebook. I dreamed a deaf mute woman is married to a literary butcher. She hates him. I am she.

My life is a tedious slave labor laundry-washing job. A hall of mirrors faces me. I am beautiful. I speak-sign love laugh, sing, and dance.

Spoiled whining children and adults run around screaming. I can’t hear them. It’s a blessing.

I read lips pleading I want food. I want clean drinking water. I want love. I want education. I want medicine. I want a chance. I want a little luck.

The Children’s Hospital down the street has twenty-two beds in one room. They are filled with infants wearing air hoses in their nose. They suffer from pneumonia and tuberculosis. A parent holds a tiny hand. The infant mortality rate here is a tragedy.

I.C.U. has five beds. They are occupied.

400 mothers cradling kids wait to see a nurse. She dispenses free generic orange pills.

Life is a killer. Life is a generic placebo.

Mothers are happy to get something, anything. They have no knowledge about modern medicine. One effective blue pill costs $1.00. Parents need fifteen. $15.00 is a fortune. Out of the quest-ion. Rice comes first. Parents accept free ineffective orange pills. Parents need a lucky miracle.

How much does a miracle cost?

Life is a $1 blue pill, said a mother.

Mothers are hopeful. They wait in silence after riding on the back of motorcycles from remote villages. Everyone there had an answer for the child’s sickness. Babbling female genocide survivors sang remedies. Men pounded drums. Relatives and monks prayed and burned incense. A shaman dancing with death smeared chicken blood over a tiny chest. A healer waved smoking banana leaves over a child running a fever.

400 mothers wait forever to see a nurse to get an orange pill. Mothers know the answer to what is life quest-ion. A pill payer prayer, blind luck.

May your short sweet life dance be lighter, faster, cleaner than cool autumn winds caressing ebony’s laugh.

I am an unfinished symphony. I live with visual touch holding a small spinal kiss. Feathers caress my skin. Shivers inside skin love this sensation. Everything is sensation-intuition in my quiet world. A lotus blossoming from mud opens a purple petal. 

My love is voiceless and tenacious. I am passion releasing tension and lust trust. Gentle. Respect. Dignity. Grace. Luminous. Pure. My silent joy is a breath. I inhale suffering and exhale love. 

He comes to me in the heat of the day. I welcome him with my dark eyes gesturing a fingertip on lips...quiet. We share the present. My passion is deep and strong. My language - a smile, brown eyes, calloused hands, worn fingers and rolling sounds whisper: 

time

relationships

secrets

fear

family

passion

laughter

a heart

I dream traditional ignorant silence kills others. Truth is a powerful weapon.

People are afraid of truth. When I express truth I don’t have to remember what I said. I sign-say what others are afraid to express. My secret lover and I share the same frequency.

I am an anarchist, a linguistic magician. Speaking, living and realizing truth entails risk. If you want to do amazing things you must take amazing risks and suffer greatly.

Daring is not fatal. I am truth incarnate.

I am an objective mirror free of dust.

Everything here is a secret. Shhh. Fingers on my lips. I am secretly engaged to a false dream of going to Australia with Thorny. He is 50, married with family. He works for an NGO here. He builds fake bamboo homes. He plays my father figure and unconscious rescuer. Fat chance.

I come from a poor rural village. I was the last of eleven children. I am 28. I came here with my sister, 32. She got pregnant by a married Kiwi. She had a daughter named Moaning Lisa. She pretends to be married. It’s all show here. He sends her a monthly handout, pays the electricity.

She set up a hair salon business in a 1,001 year-old tourist temple town. It fell through. Salons are a dime a dozen. Thousands of uneducated poor girls from distant provinces can’t/don’t read. They cut. Do their nails. Digit phones. Staring at mirrors is their fate. Some moonlight as beer girls and hostesses. Where is Mr. ATM? Who’s going to save me wearing gloss in the dead of night masking eternal hopelessness.

Unspoken quest-ions, broken lives and starvation seek short-term financial solace.

My sister put me to work with a niece washing clothes. In reality I am a happy slave. I have my sister, niece, food and a safe place to sleep. I make some money. An Australian girl gave me a scooter. I dress nice.

My sister started selling massage service. If I meet a good man - more rare than verbal speech - I maybe let him touch me trusting he’ll take care of me. Short term.

I need help.

Massage has no emotional connection. Touch and go. I have the power to say NO. I have a 5th degree black belt.

I’ve killed more men with silence than you can imagine.

I tell aggressive idiots they can get laid somewhere else. Go find a beer girl. Flash your cash honey.

I do all the washing, ironing and massages. I make small tips. My sister pockets the money. She sits around admiring herself in mirrors, playing with Lisa and talking rubbish on her cell.

I am a voiceless voice of quiet resignation.

Shhh. I have a secret lover while Thorny is in OZ. I am easy going with a willingness to share my honest emotions. No commitment is a concrete-abstraction. My passion is immediate visual truth. My eyes are sensory awareness.

I see voices.

I am a voiceless one quivering lips and tenacious touch with my secret lover. He taught me a Tibetan mantra:

I would rather be a tiger for one day

Than a sheep for a thousand years

My sexual joy is shy. I dance tactile tenderness with silent breath.

My lover comes to me in the heat of the day. He is kind. I welcome him with smiling eyes, gesturing a finger on lips, shhh. My unfinished symphony lives with visual touch holding his kiss on my spine. I do this because I love it. It is my heart-mind fate.

He brings me luck. You can’t see it, measure it or hold it.

I say it I hear it I feel it I got it I know it.

My passion is deep and strong. My unlimited languages speak eyes, smiles and hands. Gestures create us in space. Gestures use me.

My speech voice is missing. I make rolling guttural sounds expressing metaphors, similes, intonations, frequencies, meaning, sensation, time, space, ideas, dreams, relationships, secrets, traditional family values, gratitude, health, wonder, contentment, passion, and joy.

By the time I learned the alphabet it was late in life toward primordial dusk. It was late in the moment before then and now.

I am a long now.

It was late in the whisper of silent air singing from the trash collector’s plastic bottle. Pulling his rolling cart filled with cardboard his muscular rhythm stirs somnolent red dust on broken stones. The majority of people here exist on less than $1 a day.

Rich land, poor people, greedy corrupt politicians.

I see, said a blind girl playing a cello in a demined cemetery. You can’t step in the same river twice.

Possibilities and probabilities, chance and coincidence flutter from my finger fragments like butterflies. Unknown mysterious sensations fling from signing hands. Fingers and hands are language wings. Blossom being.

My lover visualizes me in brown toned tropical worlds. He imagines I join a hearing impaired community, get an education and a real life. He’s a dreamer.

I jump ahead in my story. It won’t happen. I am a slave.

He realizes my movements say I was born to dance.

My gratitude is stillness.

There is a big difference between sitting still and doing nothing.

The hardest thing to do in life is to do nothing with intention as it takes the most out of you as a person mentally and physically.

Some people say nothing exists. I do nothing everyday.

I smell roses. I swallow fresh orange juice. I engage my senses in direct, immediate, raw, emotional experience.

He cannot save me from my destiny. He can only allow the process to flow. My existence is a long flow state.

One day he brought me apples, oranges and mangoes. We spoke with non-speech. He sees our passion is a glimmer of emotional security in the long now. Inside my deep-eyed mischief strangers comfort each other without discrimination.

I am a singularity.

Sensing passion we decipher riddles forecasting speechless tongues. We accept mindfulness with gratitude in quicksilver’s desperate wandering. Boredom’s fear carves a niche in my soul.

Dance saves me.

He is a Lone Wolf with a DNA variant comprehending my inherent instinctive intuitive needs.

It’s a blessing to understand another human being without words.

I hang laundry near the street. Memory’s lie is tempered by talking monkeys. Two boys harvest trash. One barefoot boy plays silent music with a long thin bamboo fiber. The other twirling a walking stick used for prodding garbage carries a plastic bag. Papa’s got a brand new bag.

Local people mill around. Milling around is an art form. They exist with a pure innocent childlike wisdom. Passive is their inherent Buddhist nature. They’ve suppressed their ego. Ease god out.

Others voice imaginary alien freedom ideas. I am Other. I live in my heart-mind luminous universe.

A sofa with a roof on wheels towed by a motorcycle carries fat white Europeans to see 8th century Angkor temples. They are the look and leave people. They are too busy passing through life to feel anything.

Eternity a young handicapped man wearing his new skin-tight artificial plastic left leg and foot shuffles through dust. He walks home. It is everywhere and nowhere. You can’t go home again.

My lover-friend was away for six weeks. He brought me pineapples, a yellow mango and passion fruit. Washing clothes in my silent world, my hair tinted golden hued, I felt ebullient. He touched my spine. Soft, I turned, smiling.

My silent world and calm joy are disguised potentials. We share a silent clear intention. Our private time contains no fear. It is a gentle soft and slow passion. My awareness is trust and authenticity.

I remember everything.

I paint my nails a shade of red-pink. My old thin brown fingers are tired after a day scrubbing clothes. My infinite silent no voice is all. He watches my intense angelic face focus on cuticles. One-by-one. My heart understands his sense of eternal loss in exile, a form of suffering.

He cannot save me.

I sign: I hate the French spies next door. He and his fat wife run a restaurant. He spies for Thorny. They are creeps. Before he left Thorny gave me money to stop doing massage. I agreed. The spies keep an eye on me.

In my silence only my voice is missing.

I am alone in my silent prison. It is a blessing and a curse. It confines me and it liberates me.

Silence is all.

I am one with everything. A singularity.

I am a stream-winner.

All visual colors, sensations, perceptions, imagination and energies of transient tactile existence permeate my being.

I live inside a net of light.

I live in a world of forms.

Everything floats away in a floating world.

Mu. Nothing.

Maya. Illusion.

Attachment is suffering. Suffering is an illusion. I don’t understand suffering. Does suffering mean experiencing taste, sound, temperature, texture and blind love feeling hope, regret, loss and spiritual death and rebirth as a pure being?

Did suffering invent our genocide in a utopian fantasy?

I witness many sad lost blank faces. Strangers eat their face. People wear sadness like discarded rags. I see mouths moving.

I never hear laughter as I pass through with my Dream Sweeper Machine.

What does laughter sound like?

Synesthesia.

What color is sound? What does it taste like? Is it sweet and sour?

Facts and truth have nothing in common.

Fear and trust dance in stillness. I meditate. Calm. Centered.

I am a stone cold Apsara dancer, a dancing revolutionary evolutionary soul.

I feel like screaming.

The dancing hall inside Preah Khan temple at Angkor Wat is where dancers don’t smile. They dance. They are slave dancers. They dance for the king. The god-king. He resurrected his desire creating new decrees for dancers. They dance for the mighty and powerful. They dance Khmer stories about war, family, harvests, seasons, sun and moon. They are submissive dances of life/death. They dance to celebrate life. A celebration of tranquility is their eternal dance. They dance or die. They wear tinkling bands of gold around wrists and ankles. Diamond diademed crowns and shimmering silk clothing. They do not smile. Their faces are frozen in the trance of dance.

I dance to escape the tyranny of life.

My dance expresses life. I’ve danced all my short sweet existence.

The Hall of Dancers has laterite columns and portals with broken jumbled green mossy stones. Stones whisper dance. Thick gnarled silk-cotton tree roots dancing below the surface of appearances in burial crypts crawl toward dancers. They dance through exposed roots past Shiva and Vishnu, the preserver and destroyer of life. 

Dance is motivated by emotional expression. Dance is about itself. Dance is a free playful existence. Life is a silent dance.

My spirit is destined for obscure happiness. Dancing my existence I welcome intention and intuition by communicating with gestures. My beauty. Symmetry. I am a formless form in a world of forms. Skin textures are perfect. Complete. My life is pure essence. Radiant. I dance with energy and freedom.

I am free. Clear. Pure. Luminous.

When you dance you are connected to the Source. I am the Source, the vast self.

My lack of speech and hearing is a blessing. I am grateful.

My body is my instrument.

I am a golden sprite, a fairy maiden. I am a young, innocent, shy, ferocious wild tiger. My claws feel this intensity. I dance with death deferred.

My needs are met on every level of being. It is sensual, playful.

I gesture to him. Go upstairs. Shhh.

I lock the door. We are safe. I am safe. I take off my clothes. My dance flows. My childlike love caresses air. It is the stillness of dance my free form.

Touch me. Nibble my ear lobes. Kiss my neck. Use your tongue. Ask me without words if I want it gentle, medium or hard.

I lie down. Hold me. Breathe deep. Exhale eighteen inches out. Deep space. Empty your mind.

Give me a full body massage. Start with my feet. They are erogenous zones of pleasure. Touch pressure points on my souls. My brain is an erogenous zone. Work up my calves massaging lower back along the spine expanding out across muscles and shoulders. My neck muscles are tight from doing laundry. Knead tension out. I’ll tell you how it feels with gestures of pleasure.

Listen and feel my body. Hear my breath exhaling sensation. Roll me over. Let your tongue do the talking. Stimulate me slow and easy. I feel your tongue caress ear lobes and neck down across breasts. Caress aroused purple nipples. Move south to my belly. Clear the department of the forest before tonguing my little button and labia rose. It’s highly sensitive. Slow. This is a powerful erogenous spot. Explore my blood filled flowers. Tongue lips deeper. Inhale my fragrance.

Feel my response as I move with you. Dance with me. Explore my mysterious cave with a slow moving tongue. Feel my response. Sense my breathing. If it’s fast and shallow I’m excited. I press your face deeper into my forest getting what I need.

My body is your teacher.

Relaxed, he signs asking what I dream about. My imagination, perception and sensation means scrubbing cloth, wringing out water, hanging cloth on hangers, ironing cloth, folding cloth, bagging cloth, weighing cloth, handing cloth to strangers, accepting money, smiling and dreaming of freedom.

I dream dance.

He traces my forehead, breasts and jealous thighs. He dreams I have a real life with real opportunities.

Courage. Self-esteem. Dignity. Authenticity.

He takes me far away to a beach. I see silent crashing blue white waves. Feeling hot sun on my face I run into blue/green/white water shouting The Sea! The Sea!

A long white cotton dress feels invisible on my skin. I am brown and content. I feel free. He memorizes my small brown hands, heart, head and lifelines. They are heavy deep real and calloused from laundry. He is gentle with me.

I am a hungry animal. I release my repressed sexual energy. I trust him. I give myself to him.

I am a slave. He cannot save me. This is an unpleasant fact.

Edging my skin realizing sensations I feel safe and protected. I curl into his arms.

Without words I say my family is poor. There is no chance for us. He’s been in country long enough to know how my culture works.

My father is seventy-three and ill. I have many aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces and abandoned relatives. When they see a white face they smell money. They beg for money with fake reasons. They play their woe is me sympathy card. They are traditional and narrow-minded. They suffer from ignorance, envy and jealousy and want.

Desire, greed and survival is their master. I told them Thorny is my benefactor. Thorny thinks I was abused as a child. He found a doctor in Phony Baloney to assess my condition. They said it was too late to do anything to help me. My life is more silent laundry.

Thorny talked to my father using an interpreter. Thorny asked specifics - was she abused? Father said I wasn’t abused. Was she hit in the head as a child? Did she suffer from a head injury? No, no, no, my father said. He said something happened to me when I was two. I think they are afraid of Thorny and don’t want to tell him the truth. He flew home for three months. He plans to come back and get paperwork so I can leave and join his family in OZ. Fat chance.

My luck ran out.

I don’t hold my breath. I dance.

I exhale my dancing quest. I showed my lover some documents and he’s happy for me. If it’s possible, he signed. He knows my father has to approve any relationship with Thorny depending on cash amount. Marriage is a big maybe like my sister did. She was smart, played her guilt card, hooked the Kiwi and got pregnant. He paid.

If my family agrees they determine a pre-paid wedding dollar amount, say $3 grand. There’s a pre-nuptial waiting period, filing papers. Pay greasy greedy officials. The government requires foreigners to prove they make $2,500 a month. Everyone has a hand out. A wedding party will cost $200-$5,000 to impress friends with our social status. Big deal.

My father is afraid to lose me. He will say no. My lazy sister needs a slave. This is my fate. I am happy. It’s all I’ve known and will know.

My life dance is ambiguity, acceptance, independent detachment and creative imagination.

Dance is isolated yet cooperating and independent. I believe in the magic of dance.

When you dance for a fleeting moment you feel alive.

What do I see? I see a circle of movement, a connected unity, language in space. There are five rhythms in dance. You start with a circle. It’s a circular movement from the feminine container. She is earth. Then you have a line from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.

Chaos is next, a combination of a circle and line where male and female energies interact. This istransformation.

After chaos is the lyrical. A leap. A release. This is air. The last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.

I’ll dance until I die.

What is life?

Dance.

The Language Company

Crossing borders - transcendental act

TEOL gave Lucky a $300 monthly housing allowance. SOL (shit out of luck) found a ground floor flat next to The Department of the Forest.

He helped Lucky get a used fridge and a gas cooker. Lucky paid $125 for the fridge and $25 for the propane. No propane no gain.

Being a short-timer in paradise he never bought cooking tools. After surviving Nam he’d answer the eternal quest-ion, how long have you been here? All day. I pass through.

Repeat - most popular word in global English classes. Say it again dear robot. All day.

SOL borrowed his grandmother’s pliable mattress from the Ottoman dynasty. He loaned Lucky a blank sheet of paper and blanket. No hot water. You can wash/spin clothes and shower in the upstairs bathroom where everything is shiny and modern, said SOL. Thanks, I wash clothes by hand. I need tactile textile texture. Zen.

You need to buy a water heater, said SOL. It will cost you years of tears and regret. I love showering with cold water. Keeps you alert and you dry faster. This went over SOL’s head and he was very tall. He slouched forever.

He manifested the Turkish I Am Defeated Posture.

* See illustration on page 101 in The Department of Fear & Conditioning Manual.

The TEOL director in Giresun, a graduate of a Stalin training camp for Authority Figurines waiting for his funeral said to Lucky, You pay for water and electricity. We will deduct $500 from your salary to pay for imported Russian coal to heat your flat in winter. Erroneous pays for heating.

Everything in Turkey breaks down in 4-5 years speaking of children, said Zeynep, a writer kid friend in Bursa, That’s nothing, said Rita cutting, selling ice and publishing her small life story in Banlung, Cambodia. Kids here are broken before they’re born. It’s a mutant besmirched genetic strain in our DNA. Paranoid adults murder their darlings with benign dependency and passive hopelessness the dreaded disease of the heart-mind.

Rita shared a story - up river from Banlung in a remote jungle village they carve images of their dead.The Chunchiet animist people bury their dead in the jungle. Life is a sacred jungle. They believe in the universal inherent power of the natural world. 

The Tompoun and Jarai tribes have sacred burial sites. The Kachon village cemetery is one hour by boat on the Tonle Srepok River from Voen Sai.

Heart of Darkness flows through the jungle.

The departed stays in the family home for five days before burial. Once a month family members make ritual sacrifices at the site. The village shaman dreams the departed will go to hell. In their spirit dream story the shaman meets Loth, Leader of the Hell who asks for an animal sacrifice. The animist belief knows sacrificing a buffalo and making statues of the departed will satisfy Loth. It will renew the spirit and return it to the family.

After a year family members remove old structures, add two carved effigies, whittle wooden elephant tusks, create new decorated roofs and sacrifice a buffalo at the grave during a festive celebration with food and rice wine for the entire village. 

New tombs have cement bases and wooden effigies with cell phones and sunglasses. Never out of touch. See your local long distance carrier for plans and coverage in your area. The future looks brighter than a day in a sacred jungle.

Wow, said Zeynep, that’s an amazing cultural celebration. Yes, said Rita, life and death are beautiful mysteries.

How did you meet each other in Banlung, Zeynep asked Lucky. I traveled the narrow road from Pakse, Laos south to Stung Treng then east to the remote Northeast. Here’s what happened.

A rusty red and white metal border bar weighted by rocks in a wire bucket hung suspended. The VIP double-decker candy cane bus was packed with babbling European flash packers destined for the 9th century at Angkor Wat. They had a long way to go to get back in time. They were doing SEA.

The more they see the less they know, said a shaman.

The busboy handed out departure and arrival forms, collected passports, a $2 Lao departure fee, a $25 Cambodia visa fee and $2 entry fee. He took everything to a Lao shack. The border bar went up. The bus rolled through no-man’s land at the speed of a snail and stopped.

Being landless is fun, dramatic and exciting. No country, no documents, no money, no food, no water, no medicine, no family, no friends, no chance. Abandoned on Earth.   

A female Cambodian health care worker wearing a facemask got on the bus. Pointing a small medical toy gun into faces she registered body temperature.            

Someone said, “If you’re sick you stay here.”

“On the bus?”

“No, between countries. On the road.”

Sounds like a novel.

Crossing a border is a transcendental act.

On the C side it’s business as usual. Immigration shacks, money changers, women hustling fried food, beverages and fruits, naked children, scavenging emaciated dogs, ripped cell phone umbrellas and haggard tourists drinking H2O in blazing heat waiting for the boy to return with passports. An incomplete grandiose empty glass and brass Cambodian immigration building with fake Angkor temple motifs and plastic elephants, surrounded by landmines signifies exotic investment.

Money = tourism  = money. 

Stung Treng in Ratanakiri province was eight-seven clicks south along the Mekong. Swim with dolphins. Tourists passed through this small faded colonial town. They had a schedule. Time chases them, Hurry up! Hurry Up! You’re going to be late for an important date with destiny. Get a move on.

I visited Mekong Blue, the Stung Treng Women’s Development Center. Fifty women do a six-month silk weaving course. They feed larva, harvest cocoons, dye and create silk textiles. It is a UNESCO award winner known for superior quality, creativity and originality. 

They have Mulberry trees for leaves. Worms eat the leaves. Their saliva makes yellow cocoons. Saliva becomes a protein and is stronger than steel. Silkworm cocoons are boiled to extract raw yellow silk. One thread is 300 meters long. It is separated into soft and fine threads.

They dye the threads using natural materials: banana (yellow), bougainvillea (yellow), almond leaves (black), lac insect nests (red and purple), prohut wood (yellow and green), lychee wood (black and gray), indigo (blue), and coconut (brown and pink).

They also weave Ikat, a technique creating patterns on silk threads prior to dyeing and weaving. It is called HOL. There are 200 motifs.

The center improves their quality of life. It breaks the cycle of poverty through vocational training and educational programs. They have a primary school with thirty-five kids and two teachers. Everyone receives lunch. It is the single biggest employer in town after the government.

Then I traveled east on dusty roads to Banlung.

A cool educational adventure, said Z weaving through life.

The Language Company

Odyssey of the hat

Sitting in Trabzon in early September he decided to get another Akubra from David Morgan near Seattle. He’d had two in his short life. The first was a Banjo Patterson received in Eugenics. He wore it in China for three years and another year in Ankara/Bursa.

He gifted it to Zeynep before flying to Indonesia where he received a Snowy River. He gifted that cat in the hat to a Ho Chi Minh lover before walking the Nam-Cambodia-Laos-Trabzon path. In Trabzon he ordered aTraveler.

In late October two days before the Sacrifice holiday, Sit Down called from Trabzon, “I have your customs documents here.”

“Perfect timing,” said Lucky. “I’ll be over tomorrow. See you at the office.”

Process: Meet Sit Down and walk to the customs bureaucrazy near the port where Russian container ships unloaded crates of baboons.

Go to Office #1. Office #1 man sent them to Office #2 man. Office #2 man said, “Go upstairs to Office #3 man.”

Ring around the mulberry bush. Here we go and where we stop nobody knows.

Office #3 man was not at his desk. Another man said the value of the Traveler ($135) would mean BIG customs duties ranging from $25-75 depending on (a) his mood (b) international currency fluctuations based on speculative financial trades after the market closed and (c) his executive decision to charge said custom taxes in (1) Turkish Lira (2) Euros (3) Dollars (4) undetermined.

Lucky selected #1, filled out forms with blue ink on a line printed for that purpose the man entered data into a computer databank stamped some forms formed some stamps adjusted his purple Windsor fit to be tied neck knot smoothed his 100% blue cotton medium sized shirt into government issued tax pants nestled next to a black plastic belt above shiny handmade black leather shoes smiled and said, “46TL. Pay downstairs at Office #2.”

The portly going bald Office #2 man was loquacious. They exchanged grins paperwork and telepathy - We are in this together.

He copied essential documents accepted 46TL stamped and signed where he was authorized to because it was important necessary and fun. He handed forms back, “You brought me luck today. No one smiles here. Everyone wears grouchy pants. They rehearse eternal morose ambivalence. Go to the Receiving Office fifteen kilometers from here.”

Lucky smiled, “Every day above ground is a prodigious day.”

Lucky and Sit Down hitched a ride on a garbage truck overflowing with past, present and future used grammar textbooks. The RO was a cement building in an industrial park. A bonfire burned in front.

“Why?”

“They are destroying evidence of Kurdish and Armenian genocides, self-autonomy dreams, regretful memories, future fears, and Turkish democratic ideals,” said Sit Down.

A man in a death mask threw Human Rights Watch on flames.

“I see an eternal flame for international peace,” said Lucky.

“You’re dreaming,” said Sit Down.

They walked through dusty rooms filled with boxes.

The Receiving Director sat at his desk with a brown account ledger from 1900. Modern technology obscured. Lucky handed him formless forms. They shared tea and small talk. Spoons danced with brown leaves and sugar molecules.

Two workers carried over a long box from Holland. One slit it open with a serrated knife. He handed the Director an invoice, no voice and silent voice.

He enumerated the contents as the director marked off items in his book with a leaky pen: two aluminum bike frames including magnesium handlebars, miniature pedals, custom designed Italian foam seats, sprockets, chains, Shimano gears, hollow Zen bell from Kyoto, GPS navigation gadgets, four titanium wheels with be spokes, two hydrocarbon water bottles, two polyurethane reflective helmets featuring solid blue racing stripes augmented by spiral nebula galaxies, three pairs of form fitted black and blue iridescent bike shoes, three pairs of water soluble black/white racing gloves, synthetic shirts, shorts, and quick dry underwear in fifty shades of gravitational necessity.

The Director double-checked items in his ledger and handed the silent invoice back to the man. He put it in the box taped it shut and pushed it away.

The Director handed him a lucky paper. He disappeared into a cavern. He returned holding a box with white sticker #2443. The Director verified the form from Office #2 man. Tick. He handed over the form and box, “Here you are. You brought me good luck today.”

“Thanks very much. Luck favors the prepared. Thanks for the tea.”

Lucky and Sit Down enjoyed thick coffee in Trabzon while seeing/hearing a blind Kemil player sing laments. They confirmed future conversations about residency permit paper work, shook hands and he returned to Giresun by hot air balloon skimming the BS.

On his last evening at TEOL he helped scared students. “Open your head open your heart and open your mouth. Say ah.”

Students chimed, “First we open our wallets. Ha, ha, ha.”

He carried the box to his cold empty apartment. He pasted #2443 in his notebook. He opened the magic box. Size 59 in Regency Fawn.

Box paperwork said, “The Traveller is the Akubra to accompany you on your travels. It is made in Akubra’s pure fur Pliofelt, a soft pliable fur felt developed specifically for crushable hats. The pre-creased pinched telescope crown is 4 3/8 inches high. The welted brim is 3 inches wide. The brim has a unique memory insert that allows the hat to be manipulated back to shape easily after being packed or crushed.” Unquote.

Addendum in invisible ink: Travelers wearing this hat cannot be crushed, folded, fooled, spindled, cheated or manipulated. This hat brings the wearer good luck. It spreads fortune and prosperity to others along the way. This hat allows Travelers to appreciate diversity, freedom and tolerance with beauty, truth, and gratitude.

The Language Company

Gratitude

A forest outside my new room.

Evergreens towering into sky. Crow calls at 6. Wake up! Wake up!

Sunburst over the Black Sea.

The flat is high in hills.

Fresh sea air.

Trabzon lies near the sea. On the sea. Greek, Roma life, ancient fort, walls, steps.

People share curious greetings, ah, so you know Turkey from 2007?

Dancing spoon glass

Wandering old roman stone streets early light,

Fruits, veggies, 28 olive varieties, raisins, tomatoes, cheeses, fish in food heaven.

Feels great being anonymous, ghost, blessed to be here now

Hospitality is slow.

Imagine the day.

Gestures.

Time machine.

See through eyes, not with eyes.

Zen way Tao.

Acceptance and gratitude.

English School Management Style in Turkey

Early in September at the beginning of a 51-day short story, Lucky suggested to Trabzon management, I’ll be happy to move to Giresun. You need a full time eloquent teacher there. It saves you time and money. It means you don’t have to send a native barbarian over by daily bus. Saves 2.5 hours two ways. Turn around time. Students will have a full-time talking monkey expressing clear pro-nun-ci-a-tion with a silent eye.

The ineffective English coordinator-director married to Mr. Fat Profit said, Ok and called the Giresun Die Rector conversing with wild specific gestures. She stopped yakking. Connection died.

She spoke with trembling hands it’s ok. She grabbed the teachers’ schedule and scratched out his name. I eliminate your name, identity and memory. I erase your existence here. You do not exist on my scheme of language inquisition and massive revenue if you only knew. We want our teachers to be happy, lying through her teeth. In Giresun they will help you settle in. Get a spacious apartment near The Department of the Forest. No hot water and a view of the Black Sea. Find your way. Etc.

Thanks this is my lucky day.

He traveled to Giresun by bus along the sublime Black Sea. The bus passed a long haul semi. The blue plastic canvas tarp read TRANSTIM.

Met a four transit. The rucksack truck carried refugees from Georgia to Grease. Three million lived in Germany. They were the pre-invasion poverty and destitute force seeking social welfare benefits.

B quiet, said Ata Leader born in 1923. Immigrant mothers covered children’s mouths. Don’t speak. If they discover us they will kill us with false hope, lies and acts of random kindness.

Police stopped TRANSTIM. They murdered adverbs and adjectives. Kill modifiers. Murder darlings.

In Giresun Lucky saw many people with bandaged hands - domestic victims…shhh no talking about reality.

4/10 Turkish women suffer domestic violence in terrified silence, speaking of unpleasant facts. If they go to a hospital, human services, or police to file a complaint they are exterminated with extreme prejudice. Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Everyone’s ego carried a gun reinforcing visual intimidation.

Shit Outta Luck

In Giresun, Lucky needing a temporary place to crash met Sooner Or Later (SOL) or Shit Outta Luck, a sad spinally hunched over articulate 28-year old part-time neurotic Turkish/English teacher. He was strong on grammar rules and weak on life.

I love rules, said SOL. I failed my government teachers’ exam by one point. What’s the point, asked Lucky pointing at the Black Sea. Being correct is never the point.

The point is to get a cushy government-teaching job, said SOL. Now I teach, cajole, bribe, insist and incite with grammatical insight, exam material to blind, deaf and dumb university students.

How to pass, how to pretend they know the grammar rules. How to keep their fucking mouth shut in a Big Ears No Mouth society. They struggle for jobs. They struggle in/out of university. They struggle to be free and independent. They struggle to escape the tyranny of oppressive, emotionally distraught neurotic parents and teachers like me with our obsessive-compulsive control issues.

Yes, said Lucky, I see a distinct similarity between your fate and young female Chinese university teachers. Your age is the same as students. You are their brother. In China teachers were sisters. Students’ attitudes were, ‘be my friend.’ It’s impossible to be objective treating them like siblings. It perpetuates dependency versus autonomy.

I motivate them in the simple present, said SOL. Subject+verb+object. My fate is future past perfect, he said.

I am simple present and empty, said Lucky. The day after tomorrow belongs to me. Welcome to the insane asylum. I celebrate with crazies.

I invoke the Light of God within.

I am a clear and perfect channel.

Light is my guide.

Welcome to Land of Erasers. Turkish university students at TEOL loved forcing erasers across paper with passion, purpose and dexterity.

Erase mistake’s memory. There’s the rub.

  

In Banks We Trust

Every morning scared Giresun citizens lined up at banks before opening time.

In Banks We Trust. Give me your coins. Give me your artificially valued numerical currency with implicit trust. Give me your economic life. Give me your insolvent fear of financial collapse and worthless exchange. Give me your tomorrows. Give me your unlimited potential. Give me your laughter and stupidity. Give me your hope, the last evil thing to die at low interest rates.

Stepping with energy along a frozen alley at dawn an old bearded man wearing a knit cap and layers of cloth carried a sharp saw and wicker basket over his shoulder. Going to The Department of the Forest to harvest kindling. His best friend stumbled behind him staying one step ahead of death closing in.

Age whispered, Faster, faster. Enjoy the time you are given.

A young girl carrying a bouquet of red balloons walked past crumbling Ottoman walls. Her head scarfed mother gripped her hand in morning’s desperation. Stone stories sang as red, pink roses wearing thorns said hello to men haggling over silver fish. Are you passing through, said fish man, Yes, said balloon girl, there are not many things you need to remember about your visit to Earth. This is the day of my dreams.

 

 Give us a quick Giresun tour one fall afternoon.

You take a path away from bland towering apartment blocks watch time shops, sartorial dummies and modernity into a neighborhood of eighty-year old plastered stone/straw homes. A smiling curious Kurdish woman on her balcony asked quest-ion words. You shrugged. You didn’t know. You smiled. She smiled. Smiling is the answer. She shared Kurdish stories. Leaf plane shutter images whispered family and community minus alienation.

You wandered down another path and met a shaggy golden retriever chained to a wall. He was happy to have his ears scratched by Lone Wolf. Everyone stared at you playing with the dog. When they were distracted by nothing as usual you cut the chain. The dog ran free. Trailing thread a tailor emerged from his shop yelling, where’s my fucking dog?

Red, yellow and white wild roses said hello. A man planed wood for an axe handle at his shop. Honing laughter’s axe his bushy moustache and sharp eyes said he studied biology. His methodical passion reminded you of your father in his basement workshop on Independence Street. He respected his tools.

You visited a kind seamstress in her hole-in-the-wall shop. She fashioned a coin bag with satin ribbon drawstring refusing money accepting a smile.

You sat outside a teahouse. Across the street hard-working men and women with weathered faces haggled over farm tools, axes, hoeing instruments.

Young black haired men with strong backs, dark eyes, solid boots and motivation carried sacks of hazelnuts (Findik) to a wholesaler. He weighed them on a scale. Men sold their nuts. My wife loves my nuts, laughed one. His friend said, my wife never says show me your nuts she says show me the money honey.

Late light slanted off cobblestones.

A nursery gardener shook dirt off a small tree and cut roots. He helped an old woman bag it. Planting it in her garden she heard a woman crying in a Bursa cemetery water soil with tears near a gravedigger pounding a sledgehammer.

Everything must go.

Verifying her existence a woman studied her undulating reflection in a window of female dummies sporting wedding dresses. She glimpsed a serious fleeting vision of her calm beauty self-reliance and wisdom without a care in the world.

It will be cold in January, said Bamboo. Turning pages, yellow leaves sang, what a long strange trip it’s been.

The Language Company