Dr. Death - TLC 81

After eating Turkey with trimmings, Simon Says, a fat jovial American educator with an M.A. in Obscurity collecting centuries on his resume escaped Indonesian archipelagoes on short notice.  

He accepted a new job in the Middle Eats to pay for his emergency life support expenses while employed at a private Jakarta school.

Lucky returned home from his fare-thee-well dinner of grilled-fired fish, rice, veggies and giant prawns swimming in garlic to discover a medium size cock-a-roach scurrying toward dark safety.

One room smelled of Turkish delight, a sweet gooey mixture of nuts, berries and flakey pastry. Another room was resplendent with tropical bird songs and silk warbling blues riffs, improvisational cool cello bass lines and the sweet taste of a flute.

Behind locked doors sad, lonely, angry, and neglected spoiled crying Asian and Turkish humans rehearsed songs of alienation, loneliness and boredom.

Amnesic rooms dancing with autocratic sensations remembered how Simon perceived his decision to decline a doctor’s advice and proceeded with a dangerous medical exploratory option to check out the source of his internal distress.

“No anesthetic,” Simon told Doctor Death. This decision almost killed him in a microscopic moment inside Time, a valiant teacher, an educator, facilitator and an arrow of non-renewable resource. His decision cost him vast quantities of blood. He needed many transfusions from barbarians and strangers.

During exploratory surgery Simon felt a warm light bathing his skeleton. Understanding by Design.

Simon saw God. God said, “Later Simon. I will wait for you.”

 Simon was frayed fabric. A needle dripped volunteered slavery. Lying in his hospital bed Simon contemplated what is life.

Mental gymnastics: Why do simple medical challenges escalate into a life-threatening crisis? Rash misunderstanding of how and why my body said, give me pain killers and my monkey mind ego extinguished flashing rational emergency lights ignoring warning signals common sense and professional medical advice. 

Being a Super Hero had its risks and rewards.

The Language Company

memory is hunger

I saw my first Cambodian woman with a prosthetic right foot. It was her gait.

How she dragged the green olive drab right leg behind her as she crossed the street. It reminded her of a lost condition where one whispers know more than they reveal.

She was maybe 40, give or take a moment. It was a moment years ago when she stepped on the invisible land mine. Her story evolved into family taking care of her. Relatives patched her up. They tied her leg with vines to stop the flow. A doctor. Blood. Pain. Tears and memory.

Memory is hungry. I need more victims, said Memory.

She absolved her faint transitory belief in Buddha and mysteries. I am grateful to be alive.

After she went to SR she got her new leg.

She practiced walking again. She developed the drag.

If her husband and family rejected her

she ended up in the city sitting on a sidewalk selling string

Begging

Stringing life line life time string

Beauty of travel

The beauty of travel is the anonymouse sensation in a crowd.

On a Sunday all the Khmer men gather for coffee, tea and stories.

Do you take milk with your stories, asked one. No, straight.

Some study another's face and words.

Others study cell phones or the unposed their music video on a tv.

TV is great, said one, it allows you to give up your consciousness.

Still others study a conversation disguised as a peddler pulling his trash cart

Down a street squeezing air out of a worn plastic bottle to summon the attention of a person waiting to hear the air knowing they can pawn some junk, perhaps an old family heirloom or weaver's word loom in Lao village along a river stream of consciousness.

Or a real loom with or without threads of a dangling modifier; cotton or silk having created clothing for relatives now since gone.

The silence of conversations attracts flies.

No one bothers the stranger writing or drawing in a notebook. 

happy language animal

Your nature is to be happy.

I am a needle. Words are the threads.

Metaphors. Neologism - (new word phrase)

Where are you from?

I am from the universe, said the blind man.

During the day I am a gravedigger. At night, a prostitute.

It is the endless story.

I am in the world but not of it. 

I am a lone wolf. Predator. Instinct.

A language animal. Meaningless.

Immigrant Story - The Mark - TLC 76

After a year eating Turkey with a side order of Mudanya olives he landed in Jakarta. If you don’t have an onward ticket blue uniformed ones shake you down. You know the drill. Extract a crisp green C note. Insert into a worn passport. Slide it across a counter. Man smiles. His golden shoulder braid shudders. He gestures just a minute.

You stand aside as Europeans and ill-informed internally displaced desiccated immigrants stream past paying with their lives to receive an entry stamp for thirty days before heading to another gold braided computer man.

Your man comes out. He escorts you through The Quest-ion Line. Incoming. Quest-ions screaming help ran for cover. He hands your documents to another gold braided scam man.

He says, Wait outside the NO ENTRY zone. You observe men, women and orphans waiting for one last stamp, one final slim to nil chance for freedom from tyrannical vagabondism a disease with no known antidote.

Computer friend nods, accepts documents and does his thing. Opens removes cash slides passport through a scanner darkly stamps it hands it back. Hands down. Deal. Ace high. Genius returns it to you, Good-bye my little butterfly.

You grab your bag and hit the bricks.

230,000,000 (+/-) humans struggling to survive with a little luck eat you with their eyes.

On one side are 1,001 females with Women For Hire signs. They swing brooms, caress irons, dance with mops, feed infants, hang washrags, burn trash and stir woks. Visual acuity. Rancid re-cycled cooking oil penetrates universal collective unconscious. 

On the other side are 1,001 males with I Will Do Anything placards.

Small print reads, “I can clean, drive, escort, bribe, talk, build, hammer, make bricks, carry bricks, stack bricks, break bricks, sleep, eat, pretend I am busy and freelance vaginal come and go construction projects are my specialty.” 

A gamelan orchestra of eighteen copper gongs and brass symbols creates a melodic meditative refrain with gentle persuasion. You follow effervescent notes into the dark night of the soul with lost quest-ions whispering to you, The Mark.

Quest-ions tout you:

Want a maid? Want a driver? Want a cleaner? Want a cook? Want transport? Want boom-boom? Want a room? Want a job? Where do you go? Where are you from? Want a quick fix? Want an exit permit? Want a new passport? Want inoculations? Want to get lucky? Want to meet my sister? Want a butterfly? Want to change money? Want to die here? Want to be cremated here?

Want to hang out with talking monkeys near Ubud? Want to eat? Want to meet my friends, liars, cheats and thieves? Want water? Want a map? The map’s not the territory. Want to take a chance? Want an answer? Want a way out? Want love? Want massage? Need AIDS or HIV? Want a friend?

Want boredom and loneliness and alienation your highness? Want a guide? Want a SIM card? Want a taxi? Want ice?

Want to join a Brave New World? Want to be a charter member in a New World Order manipulated by politicians, greedy geo-political banks and fraudulent financial institutions? Want a secret identity theory and off shore tax-free bank account? Want to torture humans with water molecules in a friendly country’s secret black prison?

Want to die before you get old? Want to fade away? Do you have plan tomorrow? Where do you go? Where do you go tomorrow? What’s you (sic) name? Where is this line of quest-ion-ing going? Are you the hammer or the nail? How did you get here? Why, tell me why. What is life?

All the quest-ion words were brought in for interrogation. Zeynep, a savage detective looked for motive and opportunity.

A ghost plays a six-string Kemil instrument in shadows. You follow phantom notes into the night.

Black is the night. Cold is the ground.

The Language Company