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Entries in The Language Company (178)

Wednesday
May022018

Ankara, Turkey

Brown rolling hills said, Open sesame. Shazam. 1,001 Arabian Nights shared stories inside stories. Dervish mystic dancers wheeling in trances welcomed his spirit.

Lucky had accepted a teaching/facilitating TLC job with an acquisition cycle.

He learned the majority of Turks suffered from anxiety. They took anti-depressants called Xanax to calm psychotic neurosis. Symptoms of overwhelming sadness dressed citizens in rose petals between self-pity, loathing and thorns.

 

 

Ankara was a boring, cold capital city filled with sad administrative paper-pushing androids.

A part-time female teacher from South Africa married to an English environmentalist studying seal habitats along the southern coastline helped Lucky buy a DNA cell phone. He’d never had one.

It was a 1984 red gadget with buttons and functions like calendars, tools, SMS, IM, Teams, Bluetooth, internet access, GPS and To Do, Did, and Does it work?

Connections. Locations.

It displayed points of interest at low interest rates. Instant, Everywhere You Are Or Imagine You Are or Need To Be Where You Are Now at this precise moment with dimensional proportions suited his nomadic status acquiring mobility extremes.

One morning he walked to the Ulus garden nursery below an old Roman castle. A red hammer and sickle flag waved above ramparts. He discovered white, red and purple roses, cactus, ten small plants, containers and potting soil. Good dirt.

A word gravedigger caresses good dirt.

For language play he stole brown, beige and black linen pants, five long-sleeved button-down cotton shirts, two silk ties and three pairs of thin black socks. He bought an iron and ironing board for linen, cotton threads and extraneous words.

Like Murakami he loved ironing. Zen heat and gentle pressure married textile’s texture.

He knotted a tie to his phone and dragged it through Ankara yelling, “Don’t think. Look. See. I’m connected to the Universe. I am now a VIP. I have Infinite Diversity through Infinite Combinations. IDIC for short.”

After studying cracked pavement anxious Turkish eyes expressed serious facial expressions

In Search of Lost Time.

Citizens cradled delicate phones like infants in sleep mode.

Strangers congratulated Lucky with lilies, orchids, rose thorns, floral arrangements and invitations to weddings and funerals in Kurdish PKK controlled no-fly zones bordering Syrian refugee camps.

The Language Company

Tuesday
Apr102018

The Language Company

The Language Company on sale promotion April 10-17 with Kindle Direct Press (KDP). Cool.

Learn. Play. Share. 

Reading is power.

Meanwhile...

See with soft eyes

Gratitude
No mistakes in life art - happy accidents
Ink dances

Reveals point line shadow
Watercolor pencils
Creativity has no rules
Take a line for a walk

Create like a god, order like a king, work like a slave

Work like you don't need the money
Love like your heart's never been broken
Dance like nobody's looking

I am a short story
You are a novel 

 

Saturday
Apr072018

Leo

“A human life in China is worthless,” said Leo, 14, born in a Re-education-Through-Labor Reform Camp in Hubei.

His mom worked in the empty university library.

After school exploring forested hills on mountain bikes Lucky and Leo shifted gears where the rubber met the road. One day they stopped in an old quarry to play in dirt.

It was an abandoned country. An abstract concept.

They stood in a deep excavated canyon. High dirt walls bordered by pine, evergreen and blue sky wore sharp deep gashes after machine teeth gouged out dirt.

Workers harvested red clay for imperial jade tombs at the university where 15,001 students struggled to survive in a harmonious society. Students hiding from recycled Mao-styled uniformed security guards mastered eating, texting and casual sex.

They stood at the bottom of a bottomless pit.

“Everyone is a spy,” said Leo.

“How did you surmise this theoretical fact?”

“Life is my teacher. It’s our 5,000-year history plain and simple. Their job is to keep an eye on us. Think about it. We have too any people here and so, to monitor our behavior, attitudes and thinking, they recruit students and teachers as spies. Informers. Minders. They’re paid with passing grades or cash. My father was an informer during the Cultural Revolution. It’s Darwinian logic, evolution of the species. Survival.”

“I’m not surprised. This was common through dynasties. Perpetuate control and authority. The Central Party created a climate of fear. Husbands reported wives. Wives reported husbands, sons and daughters. Daughters and sons reported fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles. Concubines reported lovers. An evil cycle.”

“Yes,” said Leo, “evil is a myth. Everyone is a charter member of the 

Big Ears Sharp Eyes No Mouth Society.

Our generation of informers and spies make good money. Knowing their place they keep their mouth shut to survive. Creativity is my meditation. I meditate on the comic, the absurd. Don’t take life seriously. It’s too short. If you laugh you last.”

“Thanks for life lesson #5.”

Lucky shared writing-living suggestions with eight new Chinese teachers.

Make your characters want something right away, even if it’s a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaningless of life need water from time to time.

It’s your job to create conflict so the characters will say or do surprising and revealing things, educating and entertaining us.

Characters change/grow.

Kill your darlings. If a writer can’t or won’t do that they should get out of the trade.

A writer is a hustler.

A writer treats their mental illness every day.

Write like you’re dead. Someday you will be.

Ah the drama - the unfolding play observing sensational phenomena. 

Entertainment is alive and well in Asia. It’s the entertainment capital of the world. Keep them stupid and happy. Children of all ages stay amused by cell phones, Lose Face fake social sites and the idiot box. They surrender their consciousness. Watch TV. Miss the show.

 “Keep your hand moving,” he said to lazy Chinese robots. “The hand is directly connected to the heart. You are pure sensation. Be an anarchist. Take risks. Take a line for a walk.”

As a foreign language barbarian wearing a Tang Dynasty five-clawed red dragon, yin-yang symbol, a rising Phoenix and a crying crane flying through mist covered mountains he witnessed emperors screwing concubines inside Forbidden Cities with red lacquered emotional curiosities where visions of detached ebullient phosphorus streams wove silent abstractions of zither tonal quality in extreme bliss.

Manifestations of superior phenomenal detective analysis and forty questions of the soul redlined final exams.

“We know so much and understand so little,” said Lucky.

“I don’t understand a thing. People are more affected by how they feel than by what they understand,” said Leo. “On day one my teacher said, ‘I only want you to bring two things to class. Your ears.’” Hear ye, hear ye.

The Language Company

The Street - Quanzhou, Fujian, China

Sunday
Apr012018

Book Blurb - TLC

Creative non-fiction. Journalistic facts. Literary imagination.

Lucky Foot facilitated English at The Language Company in Ankara and Bursa, Turkey in 2008.

In 2012 he facilitated in Trabzon and Gerisun on the Black Sea. Collecting data. Field notes.

Gonzo stuff.

He is a Vietnam veteran, writer, street photographer and facilitator of courage.

Since 2004 he's gifted luck in Burma, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, and Turkey.

He shows up. He sits for a spell nurturing positive relationships in the long now.

Accompanied by Humor and Curiosity he helps students speak English with confidence minus illusions of fear and phobia's relatives:

Fear of taking a risk.

Fear of being incorrect.

Fear of peer ridicule.

Fear of poverty.

Fear of starvation.

Fear of being ordinary.

Fear of success.

Fear of abandoning a manuscript by Zeynep entitled TLC.

Fear of accepting responsibility for choices and accepting the consequences.

Fear of letting go of old conditioning. Shadows.

Fear of being alive and real. Growing.

Fear of_______. (Your free choice)

Lucky, Humor and Curiosity observed parents, schools, religions and countries fostering passive acceptance, fear, indifference and rote learning teacher-centered systems.

It was all about vomiting the material to pass exams. Product. Not the process of how to be more human and think for yourself.

Status quo. Sheep mentality. Blend in. Questions are forbidden. Authority washes your brain daily.

Zeynep, his young genius friend in Bursa taught him about life in her totalitarian country.

"As a literary outlaw I say what others are afraid to say. Anxiety is a chronic national problem. Adults here are good at two things, eating and fighting. 'Dissent is terrorism,' say our corrupt manikin authoritarian figurines."

Leo revealed dystopian China. "I spent years carrying shit in a Re-education through Reform Labor Camp for questioning Authority. Everyone here belongs to the Big Ears, No Mouth society. Oh the shame. The bent nail gets hammered down."

Rita, the independent author of Ice Girl in Banlung shared stories about her Khmer culture and Cambodian history. "We've had twenty years of hopelessness. We breed. We work. We get slaughtered. Poor people see education as a waste of time and money."

"I dream I am a free person in a free country," said Curiosity.

"You're dreaming," said Humor.

A seven year-old Vientiane kid explained Laos. "I develop my authentic character with critical thinking skills, humor, gratitude, abundance and wonder as a free thinking individual. I have my junior philosopher's badge."

"If you want to do great things you must take great risks and suffer greatly," said Zeynep. "You either let go or get dragged along."

Awareness. Mindfulness. Compassion. 

"It's not about people buying this book," said Rita. "It's about people reading it."

The Language Company

Saturday
Mar102018

Street Talk

Captain Tremendous Tremor here again with an update from the dead zone of grieving Chinese parents and crushed kiddies. One reality shows to go ya where Big Brother wraps barbwire around collapsed schools preventing parents from rescuing 10,000 kids. Educational corruption and fear thrives in a Brave New World.

If you want to play you must pay. We know so much and understand so little.

“I don’t understand a thing. Let’s take the day off and be creative,” sang Zeynep, “grab our cameras and tale a walk.”

Lucky and Zeynep passed through ephemeral effervescent worlds healing strangers. Free non-transferable luck was distributed to the needy.

Air simmered grilled meat aromas in a tomato culture as swirling silver musical spoons tickled tea glasses. Seven tonal notes create cosmic spectrums.

Inside Ulus alleys near Ankara laughing blacksmiths with calloused hands burnished musical metallic containers. Friends forged balconies, grates, bars and enclosures on anvils with Thor’s hammer. Gateless gates.

A coal man loaded bags of black on his back. A cornered Russian mistress wearing diamonds on the sole of her shoes waited for rich monkeys. A weaver loomed geometric silk ikat threads. A father taught his son the art of carpet repair. Needle led thread. Dusty stories coagulated and copulated on teakettles rusting atop Roman burial slabs covered in binary codes.

Expanding universal maps and NSA spy satellites collected data.

Total information awareness. TIA.

A peasant woman rolled dough to make ravioli-like manta pasta. A brown snail carrying its spiral galaxy home scaled green and white stones as waving antenna received signals from orbiting space-time Dream Sweepers.

Head scarfed Kurdish women inside stone path shadows near crumbling straw packed homes with broken wooden slat shutters sat in a sacred circle talking and rolling spicy grated seeds into grape leaves. Thick meaty fingers toiled. Heavy 24-caret golden bracelets reflecting scattered light led to undiscovered archaeological sites for sore eyes and a doctoral thesis on amalgamated dust.

“It’s true to report that everyone in Turkey is psychologically well adjusted, employed and content with their free life,” said Zeynep.

“You’re dreaming, delusional or telling real lies,” said Curious.

“Made in the shade, cool baby,” Lucky said. “This is to say with precise specific clarity they have the courage to speak, are never tired or afraid of falling in love and marrying someone outside their rigid social and/or economic class. They take amazing risks and suffer greatly with gratitude.

"Photographing the universe they rent time-share apartments in black holes sucking matter into a void. Some scribble or doodle unintelligible non-linear calligraphic ideograms. The majority disappears into phosphorescent television monitors where they absorb political blather and fake reality shows. Media buys them. They give up their consciousness and miss the show.”

In Bursa a father + two son trash collection team pushed a rolling cart loaded with discarded plastic computers past crumbling Ottoman buildings secured behind barbwire and rusty locks. Faded orange and blue pigments peeled a long lost hollow bell.

One freezing morning a grandmother staring at Ottoman history lifted her child’s child to an iron-grated window. Zeynep, an invisible street photographer present with empathy squeezed a soft shutter release. A whirling dervish painting with light in continuous mode murdered time.

“Freedom is essential in my life. I control the result with spontaneity. I develop real relationships and embrace extreme situations. I’m a photographer who needs to travel. If I stay in one place I go blind.”

“Our images communicate light, story, form, emotion, information and raw aesthetics,” said L.

“Emotional impact. Photography is more art and intuition than process and procedure,” said Z.

In a warm art studio overlooking a fast icy river flowing from Uludag a female flute player fingering emptiness explained melancholic notes. Her chattering laughing friend created marbled flower art using pinpoint dabs of color in a tray filled with hot wax.

A white seagull’s calibrated internal navigation system negotiated air currents with Winter Hawk, Lone Wolf, 101 Screaming Eagles and Labrys of raging violin string theories. Piano melodies and hard bop jazz improvisation reinforced Bamboo resilience.

A 19% waxing crescent moon danced with clouds. Moon remembered moons in Augustine Fujian. Eat moon cakes, said Curious. Feed dead ancestors with filial duty. A cruel heartless forgotten forgiving month heard sky welcome moon. Clouds explored atmospheric conditions.

HELP screamed in a literary agent’s slush pile.

Help was a bulldozer leveling forests to harvest trees outside Phonsavan, Laos.

Vietnam bought them all. One tree = $10,000.

Chopsticks chairs tables toothpicks. Wood you believe it?

Lighter than Winter Hawk’s feathers, HELP made fun of people.

Invisible howling soft wing energy manifested Beauty. Letters. Signs. Symbols. Metaphors. Observations. Unpleasant facts.

Help expressed brevity. How are you? I'm short, said Brevity.

Help played with variable truth-value meaning.

Help, a landmine in Cambodia below the surface of appearances in a luminous landscape reaching infinity weighted for sensation.

 The Language Company