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.

Life is a test. Lessons later.

Discover a pinecone near The Tax Department in Trabzon. It escaped The Department of the Forest.

Make copies of your life. Duplicates accepted. Mirrors reflecting mud and meadows of reality need cleaning.

Visit the Tax office. Get a tax number.

Go to bank. You are #199. Sit on sidewalk. Wait for a teller to tell.

Sullen and impatient she’s late for 12:30 lunch. Sit Down deposits $12,000 for four native barbarians.

Withdraw tomorrow, said Teller’s Overture.

Go to the police residency office across from the cemetery where a wailing mother drumming soil waters roses. Hired guns sing gravestone’s chiseled destiny with a sledgehammer. A gravedigger turns soil in his absolute phenomena of totality.

Grill your usual suspects while eating chicken with shredded lettuce not have this conversation in the abstract.

Giresun loudspeakers imported from Lenin Park in Hanoi engaged, studied and activated speech-enabled synapse software. Attention Comrades.

A woman teacher directed behavior control classes with sparkling syllables. Children memorized grammar rules. Pass the examination. 60 is heaven. 59 is hell. Pass me through.

Life is the test. Lessons later. It is multiple-choice.

Silver man polishes a serving set. Flour hands of a laughing baker removing loaves from ovens whisper secrets near fish hawkers washing ice streams. Bread aromas float past women selling cabbages bigger than lost children.

Walking through sad Giresun rain Lucky remembered his Khmer lover.

The Language Company

Lashio Burma poem

old woman

deep lined face

gray hair pulled back

meditates on emptiness

begging bowl

woman without arms

sits under umbrella

empty begging bowl

loving their phones

market people laugh

selfies - easily amused

wicker basket on her back

silver coins jingle jangle

light passage humor

red thread solid black background

how’s it feel this magic show

meditation, caught in the quiet

absorbing diversity wandering,

sitting in visual symphonies

cement shell zones

steel shutters, mercantile 

set it up…sell…tear it down…go home.

Conversation's Dexterity

Dawn’s orange lightness spread over the Black Sea.

Curious enrolled in a Push Them Through English School. I need vocabulary and the courage to use it with meaning, dexterity and humor. I know my English is not grammatically perfect but I know my English is fluent, said Independence.

Casablanca

I know what I don’t know, said Z. The more I learn the less I know. Real eyes see real lies.

You are the teachers, Lucky said to Turkish beginners brain-washed by parents, media and education system. I am a student.

They expressed fervent Denial, an Egyptian river. No, you are the teacher. We have no free choice or logical imperative to accept responsibility for our learning. If we accept responsibility we have to accept the consequences and do the work BUT we are lazy. We live in a never-ending existential crisis. We are conditioned to sit, listen and memorize. We blend in, like Leo's history teacher warned. We just want to pass the fucking exams. It’s your job to create a facsimile of grammar book learning.

The less I do the fewer mistakes I make, said one smiling with cunning social intelligence. The fewer mistakes I make, said their twin with cunning social intelligence, the less I am criticized.

You got that BS write, said Lucky.

Light my fire, said Jim Morrison trying to impress two girls.

Feed me, said another. I am not a participant. I am a victim.

I know what you mean, said another SAD student. It’s fun being a victim. We can blame everyone else with our projected fears and loss for our failure to be real, human and brave.

See with soft eyes, said Lucky. We see through our eyes, not with our eyes.

Thanks for life lesson #7, said a past tense grammar addict injecting a lethal dose of acquiescence into their heart-mind.

You’re welcome. Next.

I have two scissors and one brother.

How are you? I am 21 and you?

How old are you? I am fine and you?

Speak memory.

Oh yeah? The safest memories are those you never remember.

Memories are all you have.

Are your needs being met?

That’s a fundamental quest-ion. Right there with the What Is Life quest-ion.

You get one chance with dignity and grace. Get is the joker word in English.

I am Curious. It’s a pleasure to see you again. Go with the flow. Flow with your glow. Flow and grow is an honorable quest. I sing and live in a flow state in Giresun, said Lucky. So I heard.

A traveler passing through brought good luck to silversmith, cook, baker, candlestick maker, fish hawker, cheese seller, broom maker men, women sewing cloth, merchants selling knives, banging copper, punching leather, women brewing tea, men cutting roots, laughing children and students saying yeah, yeah we’ve heard all this before, as singing musicians overcoming temporary anxieties with flowing confidence speaking in tongues wandered narrow alleys of becoming.

Poetic inspiration. Short, fast and deadly.

A wandering minstrel in Trabzon played his Kemil with love inside shadows of tolerance and charity. His broken orange shoebox collected currency from enamored strangers. A young girl turned to her mother, you know the words mama and I know the music - he plays loss, hope and memory. It’s our cultural history sweetie.

Crystals reflected an island where Amazon women warriors took no prisoners. They had sex once a year and abandoned males in pine forests.

A busy busboy checked his obsessive watch. Out. Pulsating tick-tock. Big time waits for no one.

Office hysterics. A young English teacher from Plymouth expressed his quest. I need empathic accuracy. Look it up, said Lexicon opening his heart.

The Language Company

Listen to wisdom and beauty

I am a person who listens for a living. 

I listen to wisdom and beauty.

Hold your space.

Listen deeply.

Zanshin - "the mind with no remainder." The mind is completely focused on action 

and fixated on the task at hand. Be constantly aware of your body, mind and surroundings

without stressing yourself.

- effortless vigilance

- live your life intentionally and act with purpose

- the act of iving with alertness

- awareness and focus.

You arrive in a village. So long, so far you are a stranger to yourself.

Your mask eats your face.

Eight red monks dance through a walking meditation.

Silence feels the gentle rhythm inside labyrinithian joy.

Play the blues harp on the back of a motorcycle.

Your journey is shorter than a breath, in-out.

You have arrived.

Poetry is in the street. It goes arm and arm with laughter.

Words are insufficient.