51 Days

The cost of the thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. - Henry Thoreau

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Here we go. The alert went out on Saturday 27 October before Halloween when Sit Down, a native with a degree in Business Management from Tupperware College, living at home and working as admin guy at the TEOL school in Trabzon, tried to reach Lucky in Giresun - cherry in Latin - 2.5 hours away.

Sit Down needed his documents to apply for a residency permit.

The all-knowing, all seeing, all powerful and all believing Turkish government of bored drones, wanting to force everyone in the food chain to be accountable so they could maintain Control had told TEOL:

You, Profit Before People, running an educational business intent on brainwashing and dumbing down children, young adults, old adults and diseased heart-mind dead humans in quest of an English certificate from your institution have ... according to the grand and glorious proclamation from our dead fearless and forever glorified leader Ata Boy, ten calendar days - yes only ten - act now before it’s too late - to file the required paperwork requesting work permits for your native speakers born and raised outside our glorious land of sea, sky and succulent tomatoes, speaking with their clear pronunciation, these specific barbarians, after filing for their residency permits.

Failure to do so, said Authority, Means:

1) they cannot be employed by the state of Confusion & Sorrow & High Anxiety

2) they cannot order Allah cart in Kofte diners featuring grilled shit burgers slathered with yogurt

3) they will be decapitated at dawn tomorrow by a warrior hero riding a white stallion waving a diamond mind blade

Failure to comply with our Ten-Day Decree means you will need to start the complete bureaucratic sham process all over again. You will lose face. You will suffer personal & national humiliation & our brutal revenge.

You will become a hunted dog and massacred like 1.5 million Armenians. We do not acknowledge this genocide in 1914. We erased the Armenians. We deny their existence.

Prove it.

Denial kills you.

Anger is expensive.

Failure to comply and lie with intentional cunning means you will have to haul more word shit and process tedious official documents. You will spend years seeking a stamp from a performing seal of approval.

You will raise your greasy baksheesh palms to heaven imploring Ali Baba the leader of forty thieves for redemption and solace.

Tell me you love me. Desire, love and passion create suffering. Suffering is an illusion.

WE, Authority do our best to make the paperwork process cumbersome, illogical, frustrating, idiotic, mind numbing, depressing, heavy deep & real shit for brains.

We love paper. It’s why, as you've seen in Bay (male) or Bayan (female) toilets the absence of paper products. We use holy water imported from the Vatican via Syria to blast orifices. Water is sweeter than pleasure principles smothered with honey.

Everything here needs an official government issued signed stamped document permit for: breathing, laughing, dreaming, dancing, drawing, writing and meditating.

No paper no chance. Please note this text message to Lucky from Sit Down.

51 Days In Turkey

Tax office Trabzon - TLC

Eat dreams with Turkish yogurt minus needles of anxiety.

Cultivate silence and bliss.

Amazon women visited the residency permit offic3 in Trap A Zone. They severed their right breast. Here you are. We’re ahead of schedule and below budget. We pay now.

Arrows of time sang, Bull’s-Eye.

Everything has already happened, said Z. You just need to experience it. You and I hit the target others don’t see.

Before visiting the taxman Lucky discovered a pinecone poem near the tax office inhaled it caressed needle texture and put it in his pocket. Talisman.

The cool deep forest season scent reminded him of managing Glen Malure, an isolated Wicklow hostel in Ireland below Lugnaquilla Mountain absorbing the same sensation with pinecone nature in his pocket grounding him deep helping him survive dear old dirty Dublin passing through to wild Donegal in 1979.

Down the rocky road, one, two, three, leaving them all broken hearted.

After the tax office barbarians sang at The Bank of Greed & Prosperity to open an account. Wake up the clerk. Keep people busy. Sit Down deposited 12K to get it straight. Deposit today, withdraw next week, said sleepy teller.

Palming an ace, Paperwork shuffled a loaded deck.

In the afternoon the native speaking tribe went to the police office for residency paperwork. Wake up the dick in the corner. Everyone was armed and legged with hand ups. Desperadoes sang bordello caliber melodies.

Lucky handed over sepia photos, documents in triplicate, passport and random pages of a well-traveled TLC narrative by Zeynep to a morose female clerk wearing a hipster 45. She did her computer data duty and passed everything to a young steely-eyed policeman who, by pure dumb luck had met Mr. Foot two weeks earlier on the TEOL balcony where they conversed about essential English skills. Use it or lose it, said Lucky.

Cop looked at the residency permit, stared him down and said you cannot work in Giresun. Yes, said Lucky. Always say yes when a kid fingering a loaded 45 says you cannot. Negative tense.

In the future all the world’s police will be children. Period.

The Language Company

Zeynep the heroine of TLC in Bursa.

hagia sophia, trabzon

An unprecedented wave of egalitarian support featuring millions of sad, serene women facing arranged marriages filled with empty hopes and vague promises of love and happiness enlisted to become engaged to strangers across transcendental borders. 

This wave resembled an open hand gesturing in the eternal present of a long now as a mother gifting her daughter a long fare well gesture watched her disappear into life’s teeming stream.

“Be well my love. You are in our hearts.”

Her daughter joined a tribe of singing, sighing women. They were living their dream fate and making sacrifices with clear intention, motivation, determination and focus. The entourage of singing women danced through valleys, climbed jagged Eastern Mountains of Regret and entered a no-name village where males pounded war drums and hammered plowshares into word swords.

Marginalized poor angry males killed each other over pita bread, olives, fresh tomatoes, kebabs and geographical dust while studying imaginary maps.

“The map is not the territory,” said Visualization, a cartographer.

“Where is this place?” said Curious in a strange village in a strange country on a strange planet in a strange solar system in a strange universe.

“It is far away,” said a gravedigger with earth moving experience. “It is a dysfunctional place where bronze statues of fallen soldiers, warriors, corrupt politicians and testosterone fueled fools rust, make millions off the sweat of fools and congratulate each other on their mutual doubts, stupidity and insatiable greed.”

Wind said to women, “Go home. Return to your families and friends. Live in peace.”

Women followed their heart-mind.

“Are you alive?” she said to her cellular daughter.

“I survived,” said a disembodied voice.

“Where are you? When are you coming home?”

“I’m with a tribe of women. We’re breaking down old conservative values. They are so narrow we’ll need a crowbar or acetylene torch or C-4. We’re developing personal empowerment and dignity. I’ll be home soon, dear mother.” Her voice died. Mother swallowing ignorance lapsed into doubt’s quicksand.

At sunset an imam’s recorded voice twittered from a mosque near the private hospital. “Allah is great and merciful. Buy a ticket.”

Push Play.

Hagia Sophia...

one morning

small short history

heard a crow in a green autumn forest

document orange black sea light

among singing strangers

offering lemons, fresh bread, tea, 

as red roses converse with thorns