life is a palimpsest

I acknowledged kairos - the shuttle passes through openings in warp and weft threads, making things happen, creating new forms, new fabrics inside my word loom. The shuttle voice allows me to recover, preserve and interpret tales.

I'm one of those people who’s learned through living that there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to. An open hand holds everything.

There are no metaphors, only observations.

I feel free to move away from safe familiar places and keep moving forward to new unexplored areas of life. Drifting some said. If I had one coin for every time someone asked me when I’d settle down I could afford a world hypothesis.

Settling down was not an option.

I am a compass without a needle.

Yes, I could bid on blessings. I’d sacrifice pre-linguistic symbols and create silent metaphorical abstractions. My linguistic skills would evolve into love, into discursive logic.

26,000 year-old Paleolithic iron and copper paintings created a secret symphony of ancient stories in a Spanish cave. I was transformed there. No past, no future. Present.

No lengthy drawn out off-the-wall abstracts explains my small empty self to anybody anything by virtue off who I was, am, and will be.

Life is a palimpsest. Have ink will travel.

street photography

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.

Pain's Logic - TLC 33

In Bursa the logic of pain met pain’s tolerance, pain’s loss, pain’s memory, pain’s attachment and pain’s fascination.

Awareness of dancing consciousness morphed a heavy dull throbbing sensation through exposed jaw nerves. Pain danced and sang along invisible blood red threads. Pain visualized minute tentacles of laughter.

Roots of pain bellowed in cold-hearted tissue.

Earlier, Dr. Death massaged tissue preparing it for a heavy-duty stainless steel syringe cast in Turku, Finland with a perfect circle for an index finger.

One by one he inserted three needles filled with anesthetizing solution into soft pink pliable gums. The downward thrust of pressure was constant and bewildering.

Numb the daze. Dumb the naive.

It didn’t take a well trained discerning eye more that a nanosecond after the partial was removed to sense the tooth witnessing interior monologues, dialogues and soliloquies of red stormed flesh pain - a sickness leaving the body - as Winter Hawk winged one true sentence.

The old recalcitrant reclusive tooth was exonerated. It’d served its animalistic purpose with multiple labia and nurturing oral stories. A heartbeat’s death defying rhythm pulsated faster than shadows divorcing themselves in blind love’s labyrinth.

After five days of whiteout blizzards Lucky enjoyed a perfect moment with ice coffee at dusk near a water fountain pen having resolved a molecular reality.

Peace trash in Mandalay

Defrost your imagination - TLC 32

“Today is a good day to be empty. Practice 10,000 breaths until you disappear,” said a Lhasa monk petting a Sumatran tiger facing extinction by Malaysian villagers burning down forests to develop cosmetic palm oil exports.

“Yes, not too detached and not too sentimental,” said Zeynep sitting at a restaurant table creating surrealistic art in her notebook. She drew stick figures with wild forested hair eating purple paper mache houses beneath a startled orange sun as disoriented Bursa talking animals crammed in spinach, green salad, tomatoes, grilled meat, rice and beans.

Across town on the TLC teachers’ apartment balcony sentry ants alerted the tribe to food. They marched from a drainpipe in single file, climbed over the edge of a plastic pot discovering good dirt. Teams fanned out sensing discarded muesli particles.

A mottled wingless insect living in bamboo detected worker ants approaching. Insect couldn’t fly. It scurried up a thin stalk to a green leaf blending in. Its feelers cleaned dirt off head and shoulders sham poop.

A gravedigger eating a hazelnut and strawberry jam sandwich on whole grain bread with grade A black olives harvested from Mudanya orchards nestled tight against Marmara Sea soil spoke to the insect as ants preparing their final assault gathered below the leaf.

“I need to move you.”

“Thanks. If I’m discovered I’ll perish. What do you suggest?”

“We use a leaf. Climb on it. I will let it go, floating over the garden. It will cushion your fall from grace. You will have a soft landing and better than a 51% chance of survival. Ground zero with better cover, food and dew you understand?”

“Ok. Thanks. 51% is better than zero.”

“You sound like an investment banker. Don’t mention it.”

“I need a new adventure.”

“Don’t we all. Here you go.”

Digger did what he had to do. Found a broad brown leaf. The insect climbed on. He released the vein-lined parachute into thin air. It floated. It landed on a huge exploding yellow sunflower.

“Goodbye,” sang the insect, “you extended my little life. I’ve survived to walk another day.”

The gravedigger sang, “Happy trails...to you...until we meet again.”

The Language Company

 

Another day in Mandalay

I lost one day - TLC 31

Crows sang sunrise.

Lucky opened window blinds at the TLC teachers’ apartment. Riding the blinds sang a metaphorical cryptic railroad life. Hop a fright. Get out of town. Hit the highway. Get down the road.

Ain’t nothin’ but da blues, sweet thing.

When you come to a fork in the road take it, said Zeynep.

Sun streamed to pink-red veined orchids in a brushed silver container. Tibetan incense curled into light. Red gladioli, so glad, petaled beginning. Piano Etudes by Glass tinkled. A handful of dust labeled fear celebrated tonal frequencies. Piano fell silent. Violins picked up the slack hemming garments along life’s loom down at the crossroads making a Faustian deal with the d-evil.

In a new world order all the police are children.

They know how the world works.

Elegant clouds observed pachyderms and Staunton designed pawns, knights, bishops, rooks and queens fighting to control four center squares.

Look at the board. Absorb all the data. Recognize patterns. Analyze. Develop a strategy. Continually revise and develop that strategy as the game progresses, said Bamboo.

A black knight waving a curving scimitar and a 1* red and yellow hammer sickle flag driving a Turbo-bus filled with Russian baboons passed Hanoi beauty salons and full-body soapy massage parlors.

Girls trimming, buffing and painting cuticles greeted 1.5 million neurotic European tourists and swarming Chinese locusts in a fat fucking hurry at Angkor Wats happening?

Bright yellow Turkish taxis idled coughing engines. Arabesque musicians fingered ouds as an operatic Turkish singer in Bursa lamented her melancholic love. Percussionists hammered goatskins.

Singing silver merchants chanted, “Mr. Lucky Foot come here. First sale lucky sale make my day.”

He joined a Jewish and Turkish man drinking tea at the Bursa silk market in an exquisite stone Caravansary.

“I lost today,” said the Jewish man.

“What do you mean, said his friend. “You made 3,000,000 Lira.”

“Yes, but I lost one day.”

Inside a 500-year old hammam, steam rising through rusting metal bars discovered a weak Wi-Fi signal from the Achebadem emergency room staffed by Winter Hawk, Bamboo and heartbroken howling Lone Wolf.

After a sauna Omar and Lucky entered a white marble room with a high vaulted dome. Thirty-two pinpoints of sunlight shafted across blue mosaic tiles. In eight recessed cubicles men soaped, slathered and scrubbed off melting skin in humid heat. A robust masseuse worked sandpaper fibers over a stranger removing dead terrorist cells.

Absorbing musical notes the thermal pool bubbled natural mineral water as the literary outlaws enjoyed a sitting meditation up to their necks. I’ve had it up to here, said Omar clearing his throat.

Renewed revived and rejuvenated after a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice they stepped into crisp spring air below blue sky.

The Language Company