He wandered with Leica and Nikon tools.
Visual experiments.
Shoot through things.
Breathe and squeeze.
Smile and sit still.
Patience.
Dance around your subject.
Focus on spectators at an event.
Move like a ninja.
Geometry.
Spontaneity.
Hunt and trap.
Embrace extreme situations.
Be an invisible non-shadow.
“I will tell you the secret,” said a silver shop owner in Istanbul. “Be honest. If you rip someone off, if you cheat them in the slightest, you will lose them and then you will lose others.”
“Thanks,” said Lucky, “it’s a karmic lesson. I will share life’s secret with you. Laughter.” Wind-spirits howled.
“I am a gelotologist,” said Bamboo conducting a careful study of laughter. Ha, ha.
He wandered with Leica and Nikon tools. Visual experiments. Shoot through things. Breathe and squeeze. Smile and sit still. Patience. Dance around your subject. Focus on spectators at an event. Move like a ninja. Geometry. Spontaneity. Hunt and trap. Embrace extreme situations. Be an invisible non-shadow.
The Museum of Archeology in Istanbul offered historical perspectives of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Persian sagas singing civilizations.
Cuneiform writing symbols told Sumerian stories. Scribes etched symbols in wet clay with narrow sharp reeds.
Greek and Roman statues surveyed visitors.
Greeks idealized the human form.
Romans focused on realism.
Bust heads.
Apollo, Aphrodite, Pan, Marcus Aurelius, Sappho the poet.
*
Human-propelled factory buses roared around Bursa collecting worker aunts and uncles intent on daily toil and simple job satisfaction inside production and consumption machines. Rusty neighborhood loudspeakers imported from Hanoi exhorted:
Accelerate production.
Accelerate production.
Accelerate production.
Turkish/French car companies and textile factories proliferated with a bumper crop of shirts and pants.
Asian babies had babies.
Fat happy housewives dusted, mopped, moped, morphed and scrubbed lives. Simmer tomatoes. Women rolling grape leaves filled with their husband’s crushed nuts gossiped in alleys near crumbling stone and thatch homes below the Ulus Roman citadel overlooking the Plain of Jars laid waste by relentless U.S. bombing in a nine-year covert war.
They destroyed lives to save them from future suffering.
TLC in Bursa made arrangements for a new teacher. TLC went through teachers like a hot knife through butter or a serrated scalpel through cancerous tissue.
“To cut or not to cut,” is the literary polishing process, said Omar.
“Caress one line of sharp description,” said Zeynep. “I love divine details the reader can visualize or imagine. My job is to give you the situation. Your job is to experience it. Recreate the human experience as truthfully as possible.”
“Art is the mirror of our betrayed ideals,” said Bamboo. “Plot is not something that happens to a character. Plot is a character dragging others around.”
“Save the strong, lose the weak,” whispered a word surgeon walking their rounds from Tibet to Sichuan to Fujian to Ankara before Bursa along The Silk Road with Doner and Pide, surviving on handfuls of Lao sticky rice, iced java, dreams and sliced diced tomatoes while transporting Bamboo baggage filled with laughter’s fugue as Amnesia, smashing chopsticks wrung out wash and wear drip dry holidays near flashing factories before zooming along Metro subway tracks where world weary pedestrians completed a simple sentence with a full plate of shopping nouns dancing inside fire breathing verbal ovens stoking blind love’s fire feeling fear and inevitable death closing in for the kill before racing home to mother, father, sister, brother, and grandparents decked out in traditional morals, values and ethics strangling medicated ma-scared necks before handing someone life’s spare change by showing a gentle reader’s fragile receipt after paying at the Cosmic Bowling Alley for strikes and spares dude, and were you aware Ataturk the great father liberator of Turkey in 1923 has a green train carriage car parked at the main Ankara station?
It was a gift from Adolph The Further, everything surreal and imaginary in Turkey where idle men stood around bored, unemployed and uneducated drinking brown tea massaging a microscopic silver spoon around a rim swirling deep into a universal void of sugar stars clanging scrap metal against fractured glasses destroying perfect mathematical cubes manufactured in a filthy factory - so a female inspection engineer with a Masters in Food Quality Control and a TLC student whispered, “don’t use the sugar” to Lucky in strict confidence across a plate of Alfredo pasta one winter night a traveler before they attended a wedding in an underground Ulus cavern filled with Roma Gypsy musicians playing illegal anvil hammer and dulcimer music as wild free dancers and families celebrated an arranged marriage near testosterone driven shy lovers grasping hands below tables craving privacy as their short flaming life illuminated fatal attraction desire passion lust suffering loss courage joy gratitude and grand illusions.
Two elderly women in silk floral headscarves smoked exploding droplets plummeting from icicles on tiled roofs above the cafe where Omar released indigo ink flowing from his 149 fountain pen magnifying shadows seeing with a blind why eye.
L(if)e. No why.
Falling water molecules was music to his ears. If only it were true, he sighed.
Hi. My name is Timothy Mouse. I am a wanderer. I wander and wonder.
I was in Mandalay three years ago at a private school playing in the Montessori program.
The kids taught me to say I am a miracle.
The management wasn't very professional so I left after ten weeks. Probation is a two-way street. You can read a story about my experience in STORIES on the sidebar.
It's called Dr. Scary and Mrs. Marbles. They were a strange dysfuntional couple. I really enjoyed Myanmar. The people are gentle, kind and smiling.
Anyway, last year I had the chance to return with a language company in Yangon. It was a fantastic combination of helping others develop their vocabulary, criticial thinking skills and laughter while doing my street photography experiments. Everything I do is an experiment.
The CEO was mean and selfish. He lost the lease on one building where we had classrooms so I was downsized with three other teachers after five months. I was grateful for the opportunity.
I returned to Seems Ripe, Cambodia and did a volunteer English project in a rural reality for two months with low income families. I polished a new book of black and white images called Street 21, about Yangon. O joy.
I accepted an offer to return to Mandalay and here I is. I have classes with 9th graders, college prep seniors in a fancy air-con room and primary grades 1 & 2 at a rural private school. It's the first time any of them have had a native speaker.
Young learners teach me songs. We dance, sing and play games using the alphabet and colors.
It's the same old story - young ones have no fear and the older ones have been tyranized into passivity. Big ears no mouth authoritorial conditioning. As Einstein said, "Learning is an experience. Everything else is just information."
They are emerging from imaginary shells with a new sense of love, responsibility, leadership ability, polite manners, teamwork and courage. They experiment in creative notebooks. It's a joy to be a small part of their process.
Where are you from?
Vietnam.
I am from here. This is my country. I am a rich businessman. You are very beautiful.
Thank you.
How much for one hour?
I played stupid. What do you mean?
He laughed. Are you stupid? I said how much for an hour.
I looked at my girlfriends. One raised her right eyebrow. Go for it.
How much are you willing to pay?
$50.00.
This was the most money I’d ever heard of. I gambled. Make it $500 for one night. I’ll take good care of you all night. Maybe you can help out my friends.
He looked at them. Five hundred is easy money, he said. Let me make a call and have another drink first.
Ok, take your time. He bought me a whiskey talking about making money, exploiting the poor, twisted business deals using connections, property land grab development. I pretended to be interested. It was getting late. I gambled. Time’s up, I said. Are you going to help my friends? If you want me it’s $500. All night.
Ok, he said. He called someone. I have some chickens for you. He laughed and hung up. I have a place near here. Get me a taxi.
We went through dark streets and stopped at a house. Inside were two older men, drinking. They looked at the girls, paired off and disappeared.
I was a virgin and he was my first man. It hurt like hell, he was rough but I handled it and didn’t cry in front of him. I swallowed all my bitter tears. He fucked me all night. It was brutal.
In the morning I could hardly walk. He paid me in cold hard cash. Five clean crisp hundreds. I couldn’t believe it. I gave Miss Tan her cut and she was very happy. The pain will pass, she said. Get used to it.
I was in business. Easy. Turn on the charm, smile a lot, dress up, be smart, gamble, be open to suggestions, don’t drink too much and be ready, willing and able. Be a passive machine. Close your heart. Pretend you’re somewhere else.
That’s how I became a taxi girl. I was beautiful and tough. Miss Tan saw this and kept me busy.
Crow music
Dim sum next to glorious flowers talking
Who will buy me?
My bouquet rainbows
Red orange white purple green stem
Life carries me home
Climbing 114 steps
Arrange me like so many
Perfect Yangon worlds
Create a dream
Yes
Put me in water
On a soft day
Invisible crows in thick branches
Write laughter's dialogue
Bleed letters, ideograms
Chant sutras ring bells
Nothing but the blues in Malamyine, Myanmar
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