My new life

Whew, what a first week it was for my little existence, my little humanoid welcoming. I began a new strange scary awkward weird and transforming experience in a couple of human’s lives.

I begin at the beginning.

I fell out of my mom, a female production company last week. Talk about letting go. She was big and fat and she dropped me out, pushing and pushing and exhaled an infantile projection of freedom feeling her pain and my pleasure and I came slathering, slipping through some universal ectoplasm fluid, like a gusher, whoosh, into millions of bright shining suns. A crescendo of angels, luminous spirits, formless forms and shapes swirled like whirling Sufi dervishes along light waves and particles. Such splendor. My last nine months did little to prepare me or allow me to know anything.

I was born dead and slowly came to life.

It’s all sensation.

My tiny black eyes welcomed light energy into my being. I was a galaxy. It was awesome and mesmerizing. I was an Eagle nebula, a gathering of space dust melding, morphing into a solid state, a unified field theory. I was beside myself with wonder and delight. I joined seven billion others. I am another in the stream of life.

Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? The remaining atom particles are life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage.

Existence precedes essence.

Most people merrily exist.

Never trust an atom. They make up everything.

never written

There are poems
that are never written,
that simply move across
the mind
like skywriting
on a still day;
slowly the first word
drifts west,
the last letters dissolve
on the tongue,
and what is left
is the pure blue
of insight, without cloud
or comfort.
 - Linda Pastan
yama bato  Read more…

*

Here is a book of tongues.
Take it. (Dark leaves invade the air.)
Beware! I now know a language so beautiful and lethal
My mouth bleeds when I speak it.
 - Gwendolyn MacEwen  Read more…

ordinary experience

"There exists a world. In terms of probability this borders on the impossible. It would have been far more likely if, by chance, there was nothing at all. Then, at least, no one would have begun asking why there was nothing."
 - Jostein Gaarder

*

"In our ordinary experience, there is the world and there is you. Recognizing this does not mean that you are going against the Buddha's teaching of egolessness. There is definitely something there, which is the working basis and magic of the path. You cannot negate that you taste a good cup of coffee. You cannot say that there is no coffee and there is no you to taste it - there are such things! Mindfulness of life is based on that kind of immediate appreciation."
 - Chögyam Trungpa
Mindfulness of Life  Read more…

Dr. Scary and Mrs. Marbles (4/4)

She and Dr. Scary run and mismanage (if fear, ignorance, incompetence and greed IS management) the Great Educational Scam Machine. She reminded me of Chinese teachers in Fujian schools screaming, Just blend in. I only want you to bring two things to class. Your ears!

Welcome to my nightmare, said Yeah-Yeah.

She invested her princess sums in offshore rice paddy accounts near Burmese refugee camps bothering Thailand.

Why did you leave?

I'd witnessed enough of the dystopian Kafkaesque-like suffering. The teachers' apartments resembled prison cells. I've more useful things to do with my time, energy, love and compassion.

Give me a urine sample.

Yeah-Yeah in her infinite wisdom minus kindness expected me to write a lesson plan for the Kindergarten kids in the library.

You're joking.

It was Friday, June 8th at exactly 1:17 p.m.

I'd taken the geniuses to the bibliotheca for thirty minutes. They found books, sat reading, looking at pictures and sharing with friends. She wandered in and sat down.

I see you brought the kids to the library.

You are very observant.

Where's your lesson plan for the library?

You're kidding.

At 3:10 p.m. I gave seven-days notice to Dr. Scary. Here's my lesson plan. Probation is a 2-way street.

Good for you.

Yes. Life is too short for this nonsense. I shredded the truth with kids. I helped you. We helped each other grow. We walked slowly. We danced. We sang. We discovered sharing. We meditated. We had fun. Now it's time to ride my elephant through jungles back to Cambodia.

I left a sewing machine and umbrella on an operating table in the teachers' cellblock. I departed Mandalay without delay.

That's another story about creativity, independent thinking and free choice.

Yes it is. Thank you for your attention.

Dr. Scary and Mrs. Marbles (3/4)

Sounds like the blind leading the blind. Where did they meet, these educational super heroes?

They mated at the Day Grow Country School in Saipan. She was head babysitter. He ran a doctoral marathon between Tainan and Rota.

What does she do in this improbable profitable scheme?

Yeah-Yeah is the bureaucratic stone face of the Macaroni Monti Sorry Money Story program.

She hired thirty female Myanmar university graduates for the Monti Sorry program. They signed a five-year - no option out contract - same as teachers were required in China. She and the good Doctor sold the Burmese managing director great expectations of wealth. The school paid a discounted rate of $3,500 for each teacher's training and certification program. Sublime slavery. Yeah-Yeah took her cut.

Is she a certified Monti Sorry trainer?

No. She learned the methodology in Havana ten years ago. She's not certified for anything. She's a little fish out of water.

For three months the local teachers have been training from scratch. Yeah-Yeah goes through the motions. School started on May 20th. Now it's on the job training, learning and laughing with 20 kids/three teachers per class (8 classes) plus six tedious hours on Saturday. They watch instructional videos featuring an OCD state side teacher with one student, create materials and practice lessons. They "graduate" next year after being certified by a real Monti Sorry woman in the states of confusion.

Smells like a shell game.

Teachers make $200 a month. The average Burmese makes $804 a year. A SIM card costs $300. 9% of the people have phones. Call collect. One-percent of the population has Internet. 26% are unemployed. 16% do not have electricity.

If local teachers are late thumbing a fingerprint after 8 a.m. in the admin office the school charges them 25 cents. Live and learn fear school.