Down dream street - TLC 24

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

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

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

Her daughter joined a tribe of singing women. They lived their dream making sacrifices with clear intention, motivation and mindfulness. The entourage of women danced through valleys, climbed jagged 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. “It is a linguistic philosophy.”

“There are no facts, only interpretations,” said a monk in Kyoto writing seventeen syllable haiku. The moon is not your finger and your finger is not the moon.

“Where is this place?” said Curious in a strange village in a strange country on a strange continent 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 in dust, make millions off the sweat of wage slaves and congratulate each other on their mutual stupidity and insatiable greed.”

Winter Hawk winged women, “Go home. Return to your families and friends. Live in peace.”

Women followed their heart-mind.

“It’s tough living in dystopia where women are beautiful and sad,” said Zeynep. “Millions don’t know whether they are coming or going, going, long gone. They’ve fashioned well-defined living death masks from loss, hopelessness, confusion and uncertainty selling their tears and fears wrapped in silence, the loudest noise in the world. Millions wait for a forced marriage.”

Potential Turkish husbands gathered to draw lots. They drew with ink, pastels and charcoal. The charcoal came from a deep black shameless unconscious well of women singing, “Give me your sperm, your love juice. Give me a child, give me someone to love and protect carry forever, cherish and spoil with benign neglect. Give me your future. Give me a child who will help me bury your worthless corpse. We don’t care about adverbial labial love, it’s all arranged. Everything has already happened. We just need to experience it. Love is a blind whore with a mental disease and no sense of humor. It’s an impossible love. It’s a matter of practicality. Business is business. Marriage first. Love later.”

“Here,” said a marriage broker offering his son, “accept this boy/man stranger into your heart. Give him a child and user-value with implicit assessment for money in a temporary security agreement. Open your legs swallowing his thick purple verb. Practice dramatic rising action, climax and falling asleep action with a happy ending. Sensational.”

“We breed, work and get slaughtered,” said a baby-bearing slave. Daughters wrapped these constricting words around their hearts in love’s tangled jungle.

Lucky never saw women taxi drivers in Turkey. It’s a male ego thing. Bright tires, spinning wheels. Toy’s For Big Tots show.

Idle retired or unemployed guys sat around in cafes from opening to closing playing backgammon and drinking tea. They slid wooden pieces carved from youth’s forgotten toy story. Young idle macho guys, the next generation of backgammon players played taxi symphonies in the horn section. Beep-beep.

Women knew better. They were more intelligent than men. They expressed their feelings. They lived longer. They knew how the world worked.

Courageous young women confronted parents. “I respect your traditional ideas about arranged marriages however to be honest, heavy, deep and real, it’s old fashioned conservative values and morals. This is 2014 not 1987. I am a member of a new freethinking educated generation. I am not willing to be a victim of your narrow-minded attitudes. I will choose my friends and lovers and potential husband based on my needs and our mutual sense of self-respect. I know why the caged bird sings chirp, chirp, set me free.”

 

Three Baboons - TLC 23

Watering red roses one rosy dawn on the Ankara balcony he met three baboons from a Russian tribe.

A blond corn-plaited hairy one stuck her head out a 3rd short story window and spit past trees. SPLAT. She looked around, smiling. Her upper teeth were small and sharp. He smiled. She jabbered sounds and articulated questions.

“Where do you come from?”

"Do you have money?"

“Are you alone?”

“Do you want sex?”

She strangled sounds but that’s the essence. Baboon language is simple and direct. Humans should be so lucky. He smiled. She smiled. They smiled at each other. She disappeared. She returned with two friends. One had dark hair, hard eyes and big floppy breasts. She shook them side-to-side.

“Look at these watermelons,” she said.

They were heavy fruit. Good enough to eat. Another baboon joined them. Blond, with sapphire eyes and straight short spiked bangs. She stuck out her tongue. A shiny silver post glistened. She was the playful one. Laughing like a child she rolled her tongue around, up and out, like a little snake, kissing phallus. Every now and then a one-eyed snake needs to find a cave. All three jabbered with inarticulate clear syntax.

“Where are you from?”

“Do you have any money?”

“Do you want sex?”

The plaited hair one got halfway out on the narrow balcony crouched down and opened her legs. She rode an imaginary wild mustang. Her eyes and face assumed a state of fluid ecstasy. Shake your moneymaker. The hard-eyed one massaged empty space.

He smiled at this spectacle. They laughed savoring the power of erotic visual suggestion. The silver-posted one flicked her tongue in and out like breathing. Full of energy they needed a verb.

Monkey see, Monkey say, Monkey do.

He waved currency at them. They smiled. He gestured I’m coming. They nodded and disappeared. He skipped downstairs, out the door, ran to their apartment and rang the bell. Ding-dong. Honey, I’m home. The blond plaited woman dragged him in and down a hall. “Ssh,” pointing at closed doors, “they are dreaming about their families in Kiev.”

They were polite. They played all morning introducing him to well lubricated Kama Sutra gymnastics. International relations improved. They made a triple-decker sandwich with trimmings. Let’s eat. 

Zeynep the heroine - TLC 20

He expanded humans’ courage at TLC. This extraneous mixture contained Kiwi, American, Scottish and Turkish dialects. Distinctive voices contained ash, clouds, wind and intrinsic human needs for healthy unconditional loving relationships.

“Are your needs being met?” he said.

“Yes,” said Freedom. “I am free from need and the need for freedom.”

Freedom worked 24/7. Under a broiling Banlung sun tempered by a soft breeze he carried buckets of cement over exposed sewage drains and poured it on red dirt. He shoveled twenty-one muscular sandy efforts into a wheelbarrow. He pushed it to a New World Order construction site filled with profound greedy expectations and poverty’s paradoxes.

Off a dusty road after dark Freedom caressed a hungry passive $10 lover inside a plywood shack with a dirt floor, bed and OK condom removed from neon, Blue Zircon and the tooth fairy.

Her clothes hung on rusty nails embedded in exploitation. Stale perfume, lip-gloss and mascara sang long lost hope. Her dead eyes said plow my field with no emotional connection. She stared at a brick wall as Freedom, grinding desire assaulted heaven’s gate. Get to the verb faster, she whispered.

After fifteen minutes longer than forever she joined five girlfriends sitting around a fire below twinkling stars. See who shows up the night’s young, said one. We are tools, said another. I don’t give a shit, said a sad one remembering her mother and siblings up the Heart of Darkness.

The fat male moneyman slouching in a porch hammock watched flickering reruns under a red light special.

Return to Mandalay

Hi. My name is Timothy Mouse. I am a wanderer. I wander and wonder. 

I was in Mandalay three years ago at a private school playing in the Montessori program.

The kids taught me to say I am a miracle.

The management wasn't very professional so I left after ten weeks. Probation is a two-way street. You can read a story about my experience in STORIES on the sidebar. 

It's called Dr. Scary and Mrs. Marbles. They were a strange dysfuntional couple. I really enjoyed Myanmar. The people are gentle, kind and smiling. 

Anyway, last year I had the chance to return with a language company in Yangon. It was a fantastic combination of helping others develop their vocabulary, criticial thinking skills and laughter while doing my street photography experiments. Everything I do is an experiment.

The CEO was mean and selfish. He lost the lease on one building where we had classrooms so I was downsized with three other teachers after five months. I was grateful for the opportunity.

I returned to Seems Ripe, Cambodia and did a volunteer English project in a rural reality for two months with low income families. I polished a new book of black and white images called Street 21, about Yangon. O joy.

I accepted an offer to return to Mandalay and here I is. I have classes with 9th graders, college prep seniors in a fancy air-con room and primary grades 1 & 2 at a rural private school. It's the first time any of them have had a native speaker.

Young learners teach me songs. We dance, sing and play games using the alphabet and colors.

It's the same old story - young ones have no fear and the older ones have been tyranized into passivity. Big ears no mouth authoritorial conditioning. As Einstein said, "Learning is an experience. Everything else is just information."

They are emerging from imaginary shells with a new sense of love, responsibility, leadership ability, polite manners, teamwork and courage. They experiment in creative notebooks. It's a joy to be a small part of their process. 

Winterhawk - TLC 16

Winterhawk is his Fountain Penmanname.

He rolled past a sea and mountains toward Instant Bull in a train dining car. Snowfields stretched to infinity. Pink and green stems bloomed wild yellow flowers. Click clack. Shine your light. Be light about it.

The train trundled through starlight star bright first star I see tonight I wish I may I wish I might create a surrealistic memory. Dancing elemental rivers, sagas and oral transmissions married fallow winter fields.

Bundled children waved goodbye at a remote one-stop station.

Long ago and far away with a wisdom heart-mind of intent soft eyes lived in interior and exterior landscape languages.

Winter Hawk wingspread read cold air. I am free to fly. My only imaginary fear is leaving the sky. It protects me. As long as I stay below it I am safe. I feel free in dreams. It’s all instinct and sensation being crystal light easy gliding like smiling and laughing. I absorb steam vapors rising off blue-green rivers below me as I zoom over red mountains swooping through groves of tall Aspen trees singing their wavering bark dancing branches. In my vivid winter world strong wings brush reflections inside star trails. My destiny is to remember everything. Sky welcomes my wing song.

The overnight take the A train to Constantinople tracking along a blue sea passed freighters and natural gas orange flames burning stars under a bone white moon, rolling 
click-clack.

A Turkish woman closed her drapes. Below her blindness 
two veiled lovers escaping the tyranny of familial expectations cherishing shadows held hands in a deserted street.

Train whistles serenaded 
invisible villages.

Long haul semi beams illuminated a black ribbon. Barb wire train stations imprisoned 
sad-faced men staring at ground zero waiting 
for life 
to unfold 
its precious fragrance. Moonlight released aromas of purple prosaic grapes.

An Istanbul commuter ferry churning blue water waves 
in elemental light envisioned blue mosques, silver spire needles and crescent domes.

TLC