About Face - TLC 62

“Such a querulous quandary laundry list of regrets, what ifs, and maybes,” said a vein-veiled mother sweeping hopes, plans, and dreams down a drain-o with should, would and could tyrannies.

Turkey witnessed a long lilting laborious laughing list littered with the bones of Hunters-Gatherers, phony Phoenicians, Romans give me your ears, Greeks, Hiatus, Coitus Interuptus, Arabs, Turkmen, Templar Knights, Mongols, nomadic pastoral hoards, Sultan-A-Mets from a Botox Bronx, Uighurs and literary rascals.

“The law of fear, uncertainty, healthy doubt, adventure and surprise in real time is implicit,” said Incense feeding dead ancestors their daily diet of guilt, shame, self-loathing and remorse fortified with essential vitamins.

A Turkish slave protected by a silk scarf hiding frontal lobotomy scars after perception was removed for analysis closed her balcony door killing world music. She didn’t hear wind-spirits sing dance and drum on shattered mirrors made of sand.

Bamboo leaves shuddered inside a kaleidoscopic reflection of sky, clouds and Lung-ta prayer flags above Lhasa. They danced with drifting chorten sage smoke.

Chinese boy-soldiers marched into a blind alley next to Rampoche Monastery on March 10th, Year Zero. They were surrounded by burgundy wrapped monks chanting, “Om Mani Padme Hum, Om...The Jewel in the Lotus.”

“Lock and load,” yelled Li Bow Down. “Fire. Ready. Aim.”

They blasted chanting monks.

“About face, save face.”

The Language Company

Two Zeyneps. I am sorry. TLC - 61

A wandering Mesopotamian tribe missed a crucial evolutionary step in their 10,000-year history. Collective schizophrenia evolved between Europe and Asian geographical worlds, two calibrations, two frequencies, two imprecise incomplete halves of one whole. Gestalt. Yin/Yang.

“Are we Asian or European?” said Zeynep the elder playing her cello resembling the human voice in a Bursa cemetery.

“Sadly,” said young Zeynep scribbling with black, red and blue ink on Moleskine parchment, “we'll never know our true identity. We suffer an existential identity crisis. 90% of Turkey is in Asia. We need talking foreign monkeys with clear pro-nun-ci-a-tion at TLC. Wow, it’s another day in a magical paradise.”

Zeynep knew her ABC’s. Always Be Closing.

Her grandparents had a restaurant near a Bursa shopping center.

He wandered in one day before going to TLC. Shy and curious she watched him writing and drawing. He smiled, Hello. She stared. He pushed red, green, blue and black pens across the table, turned his notebook toward her showing a page of color gesturing to materials and a chair, come and sit down. You can draw. It’s fun. She was curious with courage.

Trust. They became friends.

Zeynep and Lucky created art daily in a ravishing food zone.

Bored anxious depressed adults devouring their dreams, nightmares and anxieties with plain white yogurt swallowed shock and awe. Opium and lotus-eaters stared from deep vacuums with hard dark brooding eyes.

Want to make a deal? How’s it feel to be on your own with no direction home like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?

When Z or L made eye contact adults glanced away with fear, uncertainty and incriminating disbelief. Not to mention psychosis, repressed aggression and guilt complexes. They didn’t see regular professional strangers here, let alone one talking, laughing, playing and creating art with a kid as an equal.

Adults listened at 10% or less saying yeah yeah or I am tired with panache.

They asked Z many quest-ions without speaking.

What’s the melody? How can you revert to primal childlike innocence? Is the music in the cello? How do you get it out? Why do you risk being free and independent? How did you escape the tyranny of social conditioning? How do you develop your wings after jumping? Why are you always scribbling words or drawing or playing the cello? Do you have mental disorder? Are you on medication or meditation? Is it contagious this art and music process of creativity? Is it the food, air, water? Am I this or am I dreaming?

All of the above said Z. Good things happen when you take risks. You risk expanding your perception. You risk losing everything in the expansion. Are you prepared to lose everything?

Adults were afraid to express repressed feelings, too risky.

Rita entered the conversation: I know the feeling of fear believe you me when the bad people killed our families to teach us a lesson. Survivors are conditioned by this memory.

I am sorry are our three favorite words in Cambodia.

It’s the last thing 2,000,000 genocide victims cried out before a relative or a complete stranger slammed a shovel against their skull. I am sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Strangers threw their useless, lifeless, worthless corpse into a ditch all the rabbits ran singing, Must be the season of the witch.

One survivor said to another survivor, what a beautiful fucking mess. Help me drag this one away. You either let go or get dragged along, said a Buddhist monk lighting incense for world peace.

Same in China said Leo, We learn life’s hard bitter lesson to accept loss forever, I am sorry. What is the most beautiful word you know Zeynep?

Kindness. And yours? Food, said Rita and Leo.

Less talk and more drawing are essential in life, Z said. Experiment with circles, dots, triangles, squares, lines and curves to reach existential levels of realization. Connect the dots forward.

The asylum is a prison and protection, said Rita.

You create art to explore your sense of self and find out how you feel you are, rather than whom you think you should or ought to be, Z said, drawing her future.

Make the right choice for the wrong reason, Leo said.

Make the wrong choice for the right reason in the right season, Rita said.

Z discovered quest-ions were repeated. 1,001 quest-ions ran around her restaurant looking for answers. Quest-ions grew tired of repeating themselves. This is so fucking boring, said one quest-ion. We are abused. We are manipulated and rendered mute. Useless. Think of it as a test, said another quest-ion. Patience is our great teacher. I’ll try, said another quest-ion. Yes, said a quest-ion, these non-listeners have a distinct tendency to say nothing and say it louder than empty silence when they’re leaving, when their faces are turned away from eye contact, potential real heart-mind communication and growth.

Echoes drifted in through around silence and ignorance. I’ve seen that too, said a quest-ion, who, until this moment was silent. My theory is that it’s because of genocide, fear and ignorance. It’s also a delicate mixture of stupidity or indifference, said another quest-ion. I suggest it’s their innate Buddhist belief. They suppress their ego. Non-self.

Why’s the most dangerous quest-ion, said Lucky addressing quest-ions. Remember Leo asking why and ended up carrying shit at the Reform Through Re-education labor camp near the Gobi before becoming Chief of the Cannibals wearing an alarm clock around his scrawny neck reminding everyone of Time? Yes I remember said a timeless prescient quest-ion. Leo was one smart cookie, whatever that means. He figured out unique survival skills in a desperate situation. He knew the fundamental difference between book smarts and street smarts. Anyway before we drift off the subject, how do you explain fear, asked a quest-ion.

Rita - Fear is a basic instinct. It’s in our DNA. It’s in the amygdala. Flight or fight? Is it safe, eyes say scanning a potentially dangerous environment since Day One. You see it everywhere, all day, everyday all the scared uncertain eyes asking is it safe? They peek left, glance right, double check. The coast is clear. Let’s go. People ran away to survive. Instinct. People had a panic attack, started running and others would ask them a quest-ion like why are you running, who’s chasing you, where are you going or what’s the matter or when did you become afraid or why are you afraid, or why don’t you stay longer and the running one would keep going trailing abstract quest-ion words behind them like memories of dead or missing families or disembodied spirits or exploding landmines or molecules of indifferent breath. I see, said a quest-ion that explains everything. Yes, said an open-ended quest-ion. Being correct is never the point. 

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. We are assassins.

One more thing said a quest-ion eating fear try this.

Fuck Everything And Run away.

Or

Face Everything And Recover.

Quest-ions took the 5th. We refuse to incriminate ourselves.

Ignoring blind eaters Z traced ideograms, symbols and ageless archetypes with red, blue and black collective unconscious lines on white paper. She was blank paper, invisible ink and flow. Be the ink, she said. Be the paper. She connected dots forward.

I am a flow state.

Holding out two small hands she said, “I only know two things.”

They played guess which empty hand holds the answer to the BIG quest-ion. What is Life?

“That’s an excellent quest-ion to ask people as you pass through multifaceted adventures with an open heart-mind,” she said. “If you can hold it in your hand it’s not important.”

“You are a stream-winner,” said Lucky.

Red roses bled fragrance into blue sky turning it magenta.

Zeynep leaned across the table whispering an irrefutable truth. “All these adults were punished for asking quest-ions or dreaming. They’ve had creativity, curiosity and a sense of humor beaten out of them. They’ve been conditioned by fear.”

“That’s an unpleasant fact. There are two kinds of stories in the world,” said L.

“What are they?”

“A person goes on a journey, like us. A stranger arrives in a village, like us.”

“Some people never leave their village. It is their world.”

“The world is a village.”

Z and L laughed sang and played all day making a beautiful fucking mess.

“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream....”

Zeynep said, “A work of art like this tome is never finished. It is abandoned with intuitive wisdom and courage.”

“I was abandoned at five. My mother left me for poliomyelitis in 1955,” said L.

“What's that?”

“It's an acute viral disease marked by inflammation of nerve cells of the brain and spinal chord. She was paralyzed from the waist down and lived her final twelve years in a wheelchair. She processed heavy frustration and anger. She took it out on her three kids and being the oldest I was first in line. She was a witch with a switch.”

“I see. My mother puts me in a box under the cash register when we get busy. That’s a form of abandonment. We have neglect in common. We learn to accept loss forever.”

“Seeing her do this to you makes me feel sad. She needs to keep you safe. Reminds me of lone wolves I met trapped behind fences away from mountain freedom. Maybe you can help her to think outside the box.”

“It’s my temporary fate. She means well, knowing I’m safe and she can keep an eye on me. It’ll stop when I grow taller and start helping out. I just imagine there’s no box.”

“It’s your sitting meditation practice.”

A stranger stood up in the restaurant. “Attention everyone. You came from somewhere else. We were all inside someone once. I am an exiled dissident North Korean nuclear rocket scientist living in Utopia developing invisible toxic laughing gas for export. Let’s create slave labor gulags and form collective socio-logo-gamma-ray-logical Anatolian ghettos with starving illiterate peasants morphing into a harmonious society.”

“We trust your vision,” drooled an eater. “Let’s take a vote. All in favor raise your hand.”

Hands holding bread crusts went up.

“All opposed?”

Falling hands crammed bread in gaping mouths.

“Let’s eat,” said the majority.

“What’s a vote?” said a woman dressed like a manikin.

A murmur ran out the door.

The Language Company 

Gili Air - TLC 58

After going cold Turkey he began this episode between dawn and noon on a ten-day December reprieve from a private Jakarta school. He sat on a green pillow at a Sasak warung, a small simple eatery.

Gili means water. The small island, one of three off the coast of Lombok had 1,000 residents and zero motor vehicles. The bamboo pavilion where he enjoyed thick black coffee, hand-rolled Drum cigarettes and serenity faced the ocean or maybe it was the sea or perhaps the Straits. Either one was big and blue. Across water Rinjani volcano meditated above grey clouds at 3,500 meters.

A Muslim cemetery with twelve small grey plots decorated with coral borders and eroded headstones rested in a grove of small trees. Weeds, trash and buried lives treasured memories.

Roaming Earth he discovered cemeteries in Lakewood, Hue, Donegal, Bursa, Grazalema, and Ratanakiri animist sites in Cambodian jungles where dead dreamed and he slept with shamans.

In 1999 his stepmother carried her husband’s ashes in a carved box through Colorado fall foliage to Sec. 9 Blk. 9 Lot 11A, Grave NGSW/MGSW at Mt. Olivet west of Denver. She placed them in the ground near his mother, Elizabeth (42-cancer) and sister Martha Ann (13-leukemia).

*

He was in Morocco on 9/11. Chance. Aptitude. Timing. CAT.

Pure luck and perfect timing, the secret of everything.

He teamed up with Omar the blind, a Touareg seer. After six weeks they moved to Cadiz for a month polishing A Century is Nothing.

Omar returned to Cueva De La Pileta caves south of Benaojan where he created 26,000-year old Paleolithic cave paintings for archeologists and suicidal literary gnomes.

Lucky shifted to Grazalema, a small Andalucía pueblo for three months of winter writing with Little Wing, a weaver.

Across the valley was a cemetario near a small church. Empty white crypts held cleaning materials, rags, bricks and trowels. Behind iron gates plastic flowers, names and dates faded curling black and white photographs of the dead collected dust where a procession of men laid a forty-year old friend to rest. 

They slid his wooden casket into a long stone cold cement cavity and said hello to the blessed Trinity with fast fingers before returning to the tight white community of 2,300 for sherry and conversational memories about the shepherd who died alone.

Gray dolomite cliffs and peaks above crypts welcomed a watercolor sky as white, grey, orange and blue hurtled east. Egyptian vultures expanded wings on thermals. 

Lucky manipulated a rangefinder in fading light imagining interments with names and flowers, passages of memory in love and sadness, chiseled history and pueblo life. He focused down cavities cement shells and rectangular rows of empty passages named Eternity.

Invisible stories whispered desire, conflict, ambiguities, metaphors and silence.

Silence required air to reach the faithful. Silent stories evolving in silent stories exhaled a silent night of the pious silent in collective breathing. World’s cemeteries died at dusk.

Relatives watered red, pink, white, yellow roses in lost light.

A single drop of water on a leaf’s fragile edge reflected scattered clouds as an old Spanish woman, a sabiawith mystical abilities, stared over graves’ territorial expansion from her Grazalema balcony and down at a sleeping infant in someone’s arms as three juveniles wrestled near shuttered fruit shops among scattered orange skins.

She heard ash falling from a burning stick of meditation nonsense in Hanoi.

It whistled a white hair on a sliver of tongue’s laughter.

Hungry ancestor ghosts eating incense begged feed me, feed me.

The Language Company

get to the verb - TLC 57

A German-made Bombardier Metro sped through subterranean optical illusions.

An old man wearing a crumpled white hat negotiated a slippery cobblestone slope with his wife.

She was his noun, he her verb.

“Get to the verb,” he said.

Their language of love complemented autumn browns, yellows and greens, golden sparrows, blue jays and preening lovey doves.

Streets named Regret and Laughter welcomed human potential.

Passion and heartbreak danced with death as a Moon Metro hurtled through folds in space-time.

Silent salient passengers wore sad eyed emptiness. They craved sleep in a tyranny of sheep-less-mess. 

draw the dead - TLC 54

Below shattered shouting Fujian mountains a patient Maija village artist sketched the dead near the university where Lucky and Leo biked through forests along narrow dirt paths seeing black and orange butterflies mate in dust as farmers planted, harvested and threshed rice. Women lugged exploding white cauliflower in bamboo baskets suspended on pliant poles balanced on emaciated shoulders.

Easy riders zoomed past athletic sweat shop shoe factories filled with morose girls and bent-backed forgotten women huddled over clacking Butterfly sewing machines making uppers, lowers, tongues and seamless survival wages until they reached a steep narrow street where they entered a small shop to enjoy high quality Fujian green tea with a purveyor of leaves. 

Uphill were red slat wooden home/shops, street noodles, rice, doughy steamed buns, appliances, a primary school filled with teachers screaming Blend In and hacking butchers.

The artist sketched dead people. His stoic art decorated family altars. Dusty faded ancestor images in temples and home altars ate bowls of fresh fruit and burning innocence. Death worship is a cultural way of life. 

The Language Company