Heavy Duty in China

Lucky walked to Ankara, Turkey from China in a convoluted adventure.

After Ankara he walked to Bursa.

Another invisible citiy in a schizophrenic totalitarian country trapped between East & West, between past and future being petrified ossified present on the Phosphorus.

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Preparing for strenuous escapades he performed a Tibetan tantric sitting meditation for three centuries, three decades, three years, three months, three weeks, three days, three moments and three breaths.

In-out. Spiritual awareness. Mindfulness.

My body. My breath. My practice.

Tibetans survived with a profound sense of humor and resilience considering 60+ years of Chinese oppression, genocide and nomadic exile from the Land of Snows.

Lhasa, Tibet

After walking meditations in Lhasa he wandered south of Chengdu to Shuangliu in Sichuan.

He facilitated English, meditation, chess tactics/strategy and how to be more human with eighth graders for a year.

One afternoon John, a smart, kind Chinese teacher passed him.

“Where are you going?” said Lucky.

“The Office of Morals and Re-Education. I have to copy tracts and texts.”

“Why?” - the dreaded question word.

“I’ve been removed from my class responsibilities. Not enough students passed their semester exam. It’s my duty to teach them. If they fail it’s my fault.”

“You’re a fine teacher. Duty is a heavy systematic responsibility in a dystopian Communist country. How long will you copy texts and tracts?”

“Who knows? Could be weeks or months. Maybe I will die in The Office of Morals and Re-Education writing an incomplete sentence. This is my life sentence. Tragic. The Teacher Performance Evaluation Committee will decide my destiny.”

“Good luck John. Welcome to the system.”

“Thanks. It’s my fate. I need some luck. See you around.”

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Cambodia

Wisdom Mind

Memory spoke: After they cut my tongue out during my re-education through shit labor experience I started writing script. I found a compressed black Chinese ink stick with yellow dragons breathing fire.

I added a little water to a recessed gray stone surface. I placed the ink in the center. Then, using my right hand, as Master Liu in Chengdu taught me, I rotated the stick in a clockwise motion. Black ink ebbed into liquid as a drop of water rippled a pond.

After collecting ink I selected my white wolf hair brush. After soaking it in water for three minutes to relax it’s inner tension I spread out thin rice paper. I placed my right foot at an angle, left foot straight, with my left palm flat on the table and fingers spread.

I dipped the brush in the recessed part of the stone to absorb ink and slowly dragged it along an edge removing excess. I savored the weight and heft. My brush has it own personality and character. There are 7,000 characters in my written language.

My Chinese script is about unity of mind and spirit.
I have much to see and a long way to travel with this unknowing truth.

My teacher recited a poem.

A mountain loses its spirit without cloud,
loses its peculiarity without stones,
loses its elegance without trees,
and loses its life without water,
and in painting,
one should concentrate the mind,
and hold the breath,
with concentration of the mind,
serenity is maintained,
with the breath held up,
preciseness is attained.

One should be as serene as an old monk in meditation and be as precise as a silk worm in spitting silk.

The spirit and real fun of painting are from nature and beyond brushes and paints.

I stood up straight inhaled three deep breaths and exhaled into emptiness. I centered my unconscious on blank paper filled with nothing. Respect white emptiness.

My wisdom mind of intent became water. It was quiet, calm and still with concentration and focus. I listened to brush, ink and paper. I am a conduit. Be the brush, be the ink, be the water, be the paper.

Each essence is pure, free, clear and luminous.

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Burma

The Language Company

The Language Company By Timothy M. Leonard A Gonzo work encompassing journalism, creative nonfiction and active imagination. TLC evolved from living and teaching English in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Unpleasant facts like landmines, educational dystopias, and social conditioning are illuminated. Humor and Satire meet Curiosity and Courage. $2.99 **Free On Kindle Unlimited!** The Language Company

Courage

On his final day in Ankara he shared a Chinese calligraphy poem with adult students.

It was a Qing dynasty gift from primary students in a rural Sichuan school. This visual simplicity symbolized impermanence.

Bright beautiful elementary children in a radiant universe wearing Young Chinese Communist Pioneer red scarves around well-scrubbed necks sitting upright at colorful plastic desks raised hands when he asked questions yelling, “Let me try, let me try!”

Young brave students had the courage to say this.

Older students at a Chinese middle school, Chinese university and at TLC were aged, silenced and dumbed down through tyranny, fear and oppressive parental and educational brainwashed ideological structural systems.

Shame married Guilt, producing twins. The more the merrier.

Adults had lost their instinctual curiosity, humor and enthusiasm. Only primary kids had the courage to say, “Let me try, let me try.”

Their beautiful pictographic black ink calligraphy read, “One day a man climbed into the mountains and reached a hut. He met some children.”

“Where is the teacher?” he said.

“They pointed up the mountain covered by clouds. ‘He is not here, he’s gone into the mountains to look for herbs.’”

He folded the poem creasing Chinese ideograms where latitudes and longitudes met horizons.

His linguistic healing efforts departed Ankara with Bamboo.

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China

Blues Music

One day I wrote Blues Music Story on a broken green Fujian, China university board with flakey chalk.

I discussed the African Diaspora, history, suffering and slavery on farms for small money and how they gathered to make music after long hard days in the sunshine of their love.

How the blues manifested as men and women left rural villages on economic migrations for city jobs like China now. Floating people in a floating world.

How the blues expressed feelings of loss and separation from family and friends. It’s an emotional, deep in your spirit soul music.

I pulled out my blues harp and they said, “Oh it’s a cochin.”

“Want to hear some blues?” 

“Yes!”

I blew sweet slow stuff picking up the tempo blasting rifts wailing train whistles. Giving them a real sense of loss forever.

“This is called, ‘Spoonful' by Howling Wolf.”

“When you’re a wandering minstrel or a Griot - a West African performer who perpetuates the oral traditions of a family or village by singing histories and tales, considered by musicologists to be a link with the acoustic blues - or a Seanachai - a traditional Irish storyteller of myths and legends - or a magician, seer and Adept this is natural. I am merely a conduit for music. It comes through me.”

After the blues lesson we practiced making a sandwich. Assemble ingredients: bread, tomatoes, mayo, relish, turkey slices, mustard, onions and lettuce. How do you eat a sand wish with chopsticks?

Let’s eat. Asian mantra.

New music echoed. Everyone ran to a window. 

Across the street an Indonesian boy sat on a piece of plywood in the shadow of a long tall Sally art deco three story building.

It towered above a gated Jakarta community filled with designer homes, wild tropical blossoming fruit trees, displaced dysfunctional spoiled offspring spinning yo-yo’s and orphans sleeping on broken bamboo bed springs or swimming to Utopia through flooded dreams. 

In his left hand he held a shining silver chisel. In his right, a flat edged hammer. He slammed metal against metal on a bronze bridge between the Stone Algae and the Iron Algae.

Between knowledge and wisdom.

Between an object and a concept.

Tap-tap-tap. Music flaked dust. His chorale was an old tribal creation song remembering family and soft rice paddies. Wind carried his life song.

A slave girl offstage in life’s dramatic interlude using a brothel broom of thinned tree branches whisked a gentle rhythm. She created her symphony of sadness and neglect waiting to be abandoned like a vignette.

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