Turkish coffee - hotter than hell, black as death, sweeter than love

“Where are you? I needed the documents on Saturday, you promised.”

“Yes. I wasn’t here. I was leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“Yes, leaving.”

 “Leaving what?”

“Leaving a comedy of errors.”

Lucky was a now. He delayed Sit Down. He learned to say maybe later in Turkey. It was lingua franca in inefficient micromanaged bureaucratic countries. Yeah, yeah.

Layers and years of later. He invented a tale. “I'll get them to you by Monday.” Ha, ha, ha. Monday turned into Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday. Lucky was a moss free rolling stone.

Please return to your seats. Fasten your seatbelt. Put your tray in an upright position and open your window blinds. Only the blind can see, said Omar adjusting his acuity.

Tuesday, October 30. Smell the scent and scene the screensaver scream team. His disappearance was discovered if you can discover a disappearance in a 4,000-year old historical zone.

Someone tried his line. A cold metallic message sang, “The number is no longer in service.”

It's a numbers game, said Profit Before People. They tried again. Ha, ha. No luck.

On the 30th, after the holiday, when Lucky was late for class, Ebru, the TEOL secretary in Giresun overlooking a Black Sea low cost coast harbor and Roman candle candy castles called him. No answer.

The previous week on the 23rd, she’d screamed in his cellular ear, “Where are you? You have a speaking class now.”

“I’ll be there in no time.”

At that decisive moment he was retuning his traveling shoes and salivating grilled meat. Coffee grounds coated his throat.

Turkish coffee should be hotter than hell, black as death and sweeter than love.

He showed up that afternoon and pushed TEOL students through a magic lantern language acquisition mirror.

A week later he was history.

Kill SIM

A German woman coughing on Flight 007 between Istanbul and Bratwurst via Bang Cock showed a refugee from Kiev how to fill out an arrival card for immigration.

A nervous confused Crimean woman wearing large silver hoop earrings fiddled with her passport and immigration documents misunderstanding quality of life values en route to sweet and sour Southeast Asian menu escapades with two daughters.

Ebru couldn’t find Lucky. His phone was dead. He’d turned it off and discarded the red Vodaphone SIM card into a green Re-cycle Through Re-Education Reform Labor Camp container at Gate 214 in the Istanbul pre-boarding zone while meditating on his death.

Passing through with élan.

He relaxed in 39B on an Airbus 330 with Winter Hawk gaining altitude.

Free to fly.

Bamboo exhaled.

The Language Company

Fujian is Workers' Paradise - TLC 87

Passing through vibrating unified energy fields Lucky walked home to visit his common-law wife and ghost relatives in Fujian.

The gravity of thinking observed the abyss between rich and poor in China was wide, deep and expanding faster than the universe. Rural annual wages - $1,600. Yearly city wages - $2,600.

Communist atheist leaders prayed economic stimulus incentives and cheap Yuan currency would encourage free citizens to buy rice cookers, plasma televisions, washing machines, microwaves, air conditioners, generators, refrigerators, motorcycles, electric bikes, luxury cars, destroyers, submarines, communication satellites, stealth fighters, Predator drones, labor saving robots and Dream Sweeper Machines.

Rusty loudspeakers squawked:

Consume Comrades. Get with the fucking program.

Lucky fantasied about owning a 4-wheel drive super-duper dream sweeper machine to ferry his merry family to Bursa, Hanoi, Sapa, Vientiane and Banlung animist cemeteries along the Heart of Darkness and renew relationships with Rita writer and Leo cannibal.

Where life is simple. Where gentle people never left their village, the world. No need or desire. Everything I have is here, said a shaman weaving life threads. The world is a village.

Lucky fountain penned Zeynep in Bursa, Turkey a postcard illustrated with an imperial yellow dragon protecting a luminous pearl:  

Dear Z,

I walked. I worked. I saved. I got lucky and bought a Flying Pigeon bike at a fire sale from a corrupt wealthy village official.

One-speed black. It got me from home to rice paddies. I reaped what I sowed.

We had a radio in our work unit. The publicity machine blasted Life Is A Party revolutionary anthems 24/7. Accelerate production comrades.

I saved and got a radio for home. My wife was beyond pleased.

She produced our required female child. Miracle. We desired a boy. She got pregnant again. Sex is fun. Responsibility is a duty.

Forced Abortion Committee officials visited at midnight. They screamed NO! It is forbidden. You do not qualify for two children. They tied me up and held a gun to my head. I was forced to watch. They aborted our child and sterilized her. We cried. They laughed, Always Be Closing.

We lost face in the village. Blending in was impossible.

Out of the quest-ion.

She wanted a TV to distract her from sorrow, guilt and shame. Ok, we’ll get a 24” flat screen with a remote. I worked. I saved. We hung it on a brick wall above our aborted fetus in a hermetically sealed glass jar and grainy images of our ancestors eating incense.

How about a new rice cooker, she said. Ok.

How about a used refrigerator, she said. What’s wrong with the plastic orange icebox? You buy cabbage, cauliflower, onions, leeks, turnip greens and fresh ice from writer Rita every morning. Why do we need a refrigerator?

Our neighbors have one. Oh, I see, got to keep up with the Yin- Yang’s. Envy and I scrounged around. I developed connections. Connections in China make the world spin and people feel dizzy. Millions fall down. I remember when you said fall up, Z. I’m still laughing at your insight. Anyway, here it’s whom you know not what you know. Greed is god, I mean good.

I traded twenty kilos of Quality Of Life rice for two brothel chickens from Human Province. I traded the chicks for Burmese teak, rubies and a sharp knife stained with Karen blood. One trade led to another. If you’re not fast you’re last.

Buy dirt sell sky.

I brought luck to others by walking around.

I found a filthy frigid fridge and traded the teak and rubies. My wife was beyond pleased. Wild. We filled it with cheap baby formula. The formula was tainted with a poisonous chemical to increase protein. We didn’t know this small unpleasant fact.

Our girl became sick. Her luck ran out.

Peoples’ Worker’s Hospital #9 said I had to pay BIG money for imported medicine or she’d die.

Life is cheap here.

I sold the fridge, downsized the TV and sacrificed my bike to buy pharmaceuticals.

She’s on life support. Now I walk to see her. It takes forever and a day. Walking makes the road. Bus #11 means legs. Next to an optimistic amputee in Laos or Cambodia I’m lucky to have a leg to stand on.

I dream of rich cities - bright beacons of prosperity with automatic cash machines for consumers like me flashing fake plastic. Dream on sucker. Polluted cities filled with food smells, construction projects, appliances and economic class warfare. I hope against hope for sustainable work and some blind stupid luck.

Party leaders say millions of workers will return to villages on Chinese New Year. To make matters worse six million college graduates flood the job market every June. Three million drown screaming I Need Help!

Radio static flickering radioactive images and disembodied voices order us to stay home. Be quiet. Keep your fat fucking mouth closed unless you are eating. Practice social stability and harmony. Save face. Blend in. 

May your life be interesting dear Z and filled with adventure - something that’s going to happen - and magical surprise from the get go.

I remember you saying we will abandon this manuscript with intuitive wisdom and courage, Z. Here it is, here it goes, free as Winter Hawk and Lone Wolf. Thanks:-)

Omar will gift you the manuscript when he passes through Bursa.

If you see Curious dancing with Humor and you will, hug her for me. People need five hugs a day for emotional health.

Love and gratitude with honeyed memories,

Lucky

P.S. You are a miracle.

The Language Company

Dance - TLC 86

“We climbed up. We descended,” said Zeynep breathing through her shamanic mask.

“Is it carved from tribal memories?”

“Masks are symbolic manifestations in diverse cultures. Mask dance is a ritual, worn in a dance trance. Wearing a mask you become the thing you fear the most, your essential nature. Masks hide a human’s consciousness of fear.

“Dance is about process, becoming from stillness, from nothing. Shiva symbolizes the union of space, time and destruction. Dance is ancient magic. People seeking transformation wear masks representing gods or demons. Dance is the incarnation of energy from the source. We are from the source. Have courage to wear your natural face mask. The entire universe is a vast theatre. Death does not exist.”

“Humans evolved their ability to scheme and deceive behind masks,” said Lucky. “How do they manifest compassion and love without projecting guilt and shame on others while wearing their mask?”

Lhasa, Tibet

“That's an eternal life quest,” said Z. “It requires daily practice and letting go of ego. Cogito ergo sum. They think their mask is reality. It's not. It’s artificial, an illusion, a myth, a projection of their fear.”

“What's your greatest fear is an essential quest-ion. We become the thing we fight the most. Our true self,” said L.

“My greatest imaginary fear is not experiencing truth and bliss beyond the self, passion and cravings,” said Z.

“That’s Nirvana. You break down before you break through. Authentic people confront their shadow. They evolve as a higher being. Scared, conditioned masked ones project their fears and insecurities onto others. It’s a survival behavior, a defense mechanism to avoid being honest and real. To avoid facing their mortality their darkest fear in room 101 the last room you want to enter, they deceive themselves. They lie to themselves and others avoiding the truth. They mask their pain. Truth is painful. Pain and suffering are different. Pain is a sickness leaving the body. Existence is suffering.”

Desire - Attachment - Loss - Suffering

Desire creates suffering. Kindness is a healing energy.

Your mask eats your face.

“Two critical elements of social intelligence are humor and curiosity. Do you remember James Joyce going into exile with silence and cunning?”

“Yes. He knew how to put seven little words in order. He was a cunning linguist. He said, ‘everything I do is an experiment,’” said Z. Exile is a form of suffering.

“So it is. Survival and creativity are raw instincts. Self awareness separates humans from lower life forms like apes, plankton and sea enemies-anemone fish eating animals and androgynous androids in the deep subconscious.”

“Writers lie for a living. We make stuff up. We write it down. We treat our mental illness every day. We have stories, poems and adventures to finish we haven’t started yet.”

“Imagined or invented conversations and episodes,” said L.

“Literature is a tool for unveiling, not obscuring the truth. It’s the best way to make fun of people.”

“Literary fiction expounds historical truth.”

“I prefer healthy doubt to certainty. I am more interested in traces than object. My notebook is essential,” said Z.

“We are the only animal who laughs and the only animal who knows they will die. We die every day. We imagine our death, our mortality. This fills some with dread, psychological neurosis, paralysis and lack of purpose. For others it’s a release joy and a dance. To live one has to die at least once. Once you die you realize how to live. Freedom is unconditional.”

 “Freedom is an absence of choice. Are you a clown? Perhaps a clownfish?” L said.

“Look in your dream mask mirror. You get the face you deserve. Not all the clowns are in the circus. Let’s dance.”

“When you're looking good you're feeling good and when you're feeling good I just live to see your face.”

“We are wise calm lunatics whether we dance or not so we may as well dance. Let’s invent the world. Let’s invent reality. Wisdom-mind of intent not the emotion mind of fire & water.”

 “I’m with you. We were born dead and slowly came to life.”

Flame your life.

The Language Company

Bhaktapur, Nepal

dance becomes you

Her long legs reached the ground.

As she bent over the green pool table lining up her stick on the cue angling Cambodia, her short black skirt ran higher. She killed time waiting for her Algerian honey.

Bank the 8 ball, side pocket.

Spontaneous - jazz - breath

Other told kid friends he was marrying Turkey for 52 days.

You are a witness.

The absurd metaphorical theatre.

Dance is process. BECOMING.

Reality is the funniest jest thing happening.

Impossible to take any of this seriously.

You don't _____ through thought but through experience.

New crystal.

Close edit.  Living (existing) in a culture of fear.

Living in Non-Memory land.

New paths, new directions.

All the "masked" humans investigate potentials and possibilities.

My work here is complete.

Have ink will travel. Zen. 

kid joy

Ah, to be young and happy.

Where are you now? Central Asia. Where language began 9,000 years ago.

On a warm Sunday he went to the local Siem Reap java joint to draw, color and share stories with three kid friends. They played "king" wearing Merlin magician pointed hats from a birthday party.

One girl, 6, said, "did you finish your story?" She referred to seeing me last week with a red pen and pile of paper.

Subject to Change manuscript, doing a red line edit. Day by day. In the morning, in a quiet time/place before noon, no distractions, bird by bird, page by page, configuring words, structure, sense and flow. 

"Yes, I finished the story..it will be abandoned with intuition and curiosity."

I made images of them in magic hats, drew on blank paper, drank coffee, smoked, laughed with them and wandered off. See you in the next life.

It's always pure joy w/kids. We are innocent and mad. Trust and play.

He is a calm lunatic in the "fun zone."