Deal - TLC 39

Downcast broken Turkish females wearing too much foundation makeup portrayed a beautiful face above a big behind tomorrow as merchants hung Ottoman carpets, caressed friendships, soles, heels and leather working tools.

A one-eyed Bursa shoemaker sharpened his utilitarian knife. One blind brown eye reflected Winter Hawk’s wings in rods, cones, a retina, iris, and cornea. He heard unemployed grizzle-faced men in a nearby teahouse slap cards on a green felt table.

Shoemaker in his small blue shack threaded uppers to lowers. His steel Blade Runner revealed reflections. He smashed his left hand on a window sparking conversations with a wealthy barefoot beggar seeking alms.

Another day dead he flicked a yellow switch extinguishing a single bulb. Carrying his bent arthritic back he shuffled across fresh packed sticky asphalt into a diner for rice, beans, coarse bread and brown tea.

A silver teaspoon tinkled glass music.

A player shuffled a deck.

Your deal, said Omar the blind.

Wind-spirits turned a page.

Myths became stories - TLC 38

Zeynep said, “I am a rose thorn and Winter Hawk. Wings instinct and heart. My razor talon tears meat from bones to feed my creative Hunger Angel.”

“I am a cognitive psycho-neurolinguist,” said a gravedigger. “My specialty is languages. Lost tongues. Wandering deep in the Tarim Basin following the Silk Road through Central Asia I discovered the 4,000 year old Tocharian language and Afansievo culture. It was a proto-Indo European language with Celtic and Indian connections established by trade caravans and explorers. I suspect it is Qarasahr or IA based on an Iranian dialect.”

Mircea Eliade, a historian of religions said, “Myths tell what really happened. Myths suggest a reality that cannot be seen and examined. Myth is truth trying to escape from reality. A myth is a story of unknown origins, sacred stories based on fear and belief containing archetypical universal truths. They are in every place and no particular place.”

History became legend.

Legend became myth.

Myth became story.

This anthropological fact accompanied Lucky wandering among unfinished construction projects and abandoned manuscripts in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

He joined millions of emaciated migrant refugees passing shattered bricks, broken hopes and strangling dangling cables connected to nothing in particular.

Shoddy incomplete dust dreams and quick profit schemes thrived where political thugs disguised as beauticians, missionaries and NGO social workers living in penthouses and driving Land Rovers exploited villages stealing land, rivers, mountains, children. Extorting money.

Their rule of law was a truncheon named GREED.

* 

Sophisticated command and control procedures thrived. Corruption stole millions. Substandard schools pancaked 10,000+ children from one-child families in a Sichuan earthquake.

Garment factories in Dhaka crushed wage slave workers stitching designer labels at a discount.

In May 2014 an inefficient unregulated profit-oriented private coalmine in Soma, Turkey caught fire, exploded, burned and collapsed killing 301 miners.

The angry Teflon Prime Minister visited the disaster. “This is a fact of life for poor illiterate underpaid miner slaves. It happened in Britain in the 19th century,” he said to widows and families. An angry miner booed him. He slapped the miner. “If you boo the Prime Minister you get slapped.”

His aide, a frustrated soccer player wearing a suit of armor kicked a miner on the ground being held by police. Aide screamed, “Dissent is TERRORISM!”

The ruling AKP Justice and Development party said it was all a mistake: the mine explosion, slap and penalty kick.

Violence, denial and repression are a way of life here, said Zeynep the younger creating a myth.

The Language Company

Remember ABC - TLC 37

Said the Director of Sales at TLC.

“What’s that mean?” said a Kurdish beggar girl in Bursa one freezing night. To pay a Mafioso extortion bill her family threw her to the wolves. She hawked blue tissue packages to a sad man playing a flute sitting near a broken escalator above a homeless woman in rags setting fire to a pile of manuscripts trying to stay warm. Have mercy.

“Always be closing.”

Lucky sat in a blue plastic Metro chair zooming through a rainy morning. Mountain peaks meditated in white clouds above rocky-forested slopes and golden mosque spires. Other than two cheerful speech-enabled women, passengers were cold, distant, lost, bored and going somewhere intangible or else they’d be homeWaiting For Godot.

Tracks sloped down concrete edges. Blurring trees disappeared. Cars slid into darkness as florescent beams glided lighting bolts on steel tracks. Black click clack music reached an underground station with immaculate white tiles, benches and a large steel box holding bagged sweets. Comatose women in floral scarves grasping plastic bags studied heavy territorial shoes built for comfort. Station man in a green and yellow uniform manipulating a broom pushed history.

An automated Metro voice announced a stop. Doors opened. People departed. People boarded. Doors closed. Metro rolled on.

Communist party loudspeakers lashed to trees boomed across Lenin Park Lake in Hanoi:

Enjoy the ride. You’re only on it once.

The Dream Sweeper Machine collected everything.

The Bursa Sales Director resigned the next day. He had a falling out with management. It was always about numbers. Sell. Sell. Sell. He said he had 210 for February. They said 175.

That ominous day the TLC owner arrived from Constantinople, parked his Benz and entered the center of the universe where everything happened similtanesilly.

The receptionist freaked out and called the Sales Director.

Marketing man #2 escorted Boss through the center of Earth. He looked around. Purchased from Leaf Branch Growth in Dublin for $700,000 the three-month old franchise didn’t meet his standards. He had a corporate mentality and wasn’t a happy little camper. No clocks, broken glass doors, no wall art, out-of-order computers, badly peeling lamination work on desks and so on. “Shoddy half-finished work, even if I do say so.”

Lucky and the soon to be extinct director were enjoying a munch lunch with sheesh-kabobs. The director’s cell sang.

“He’s here,” said the receptionist.

“Who?”

“Sand Dune. He just blew in.”

“Oh no. I’m not dressed for work.”

Buy low sell high.

Revealing his true character he ran away. After a final e-mail to headquarters about numbers he trashed his office, yelled adios to the staff and disappeared into a subterranean cavern catching a Metro home sweet home.

Women staff cried on the sidewalk facing the center. A girl dragging a metal cart filled with cardboard and broken computers needing an OS surmised someone died. Serious departed tears. Tearful women smoked in sunlight. One tear reflected 360 degree blue sky. Melting mountain snow returned to work murmuring gossip and fear.

“Who’s next?”

The center’s magic numbers were now two sales, two receptionists, two native personal tutors (one from Trabzon - see footnotes) and two imported barbarians.

“We are understaffed, overworked and underpaid,” lamented a joyful personal tutor. Her name was Zeynep, the older, from Kurdistan. She spoke English, Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, French, Esperanto and Cello. She cherished seven magic stones from Mudanya on the Marmara Sea where she lived.

Her grandmother told her Kurdish creation stories. Her language was out loud and outlawed by scared totalitarian Ankara politicians. Kurdish speakers were decapitated in public with a jeweled word sword every Friday at high noon.

“Bend over,” said Teflon Ergonomics, the Prime Minister and de facto dictator. Playing economic prosperity songs to poor uneducated Soma coal mineworkers, illiterate villagers and wealthy middle class voters he bought the presidency in late 2014. It’s never too late to be president, he said. Manipulation and I can really run the Deep State now.

 TLC had Janus heads. One head was the owner.

“Hey,” he said, “it’s a business this language and money acquisition cycle.”

He called Hire-n-Fire, the maintenance manhole cover job in Instant Bull and ordered him to fix every little thing. He returned and did a partial job. It gave him an excuse to come again in a juicy sandwich with Russian dressing.

“Someone’s chasing their tale here,” said Omar, a vinaigrette vignette guide. “I love fragments of true authenticity. It’s all I trust.”

 *

L said to Z: There’s an old fable about a bird and an ogre telling his daughter where his soul lived. “Sixteen miles from here is a old gigantic tree. Around the tree are tigers, bears and scorpions. On top of the tree is a huge snake. On top of the snake’s head is a small cage and inside the cage is a bird. Inside the bird is my soul.”

Temporary management art - TLC 35

Bursa brought in a young teacher named Instant Bull. He didn’t last long. He missed the nightlife, friends and mommy who after 100 tearful years still did everything for her little baby boy. He was spoiled like everyone. He ran home pleading, Mother, may I grow up to be free and courageous? No. Go to your room, no dinner and no social network time bandits. Self-censorship is everything we believe and practice with mind body and soul so shut your trap.

Management brought in Spin, a schizophrenic alcoholic from Down Under. Night after night he carpet-bombed the teachers’ apartment with demonic deliriums.

“They’re here, they’re here,” he wailed in catatonic fits thrashing on the floor flailing nuclear arms into space. “Help me. They will kill me. Look, can’t you see them?”

“What can I do about this idiot?” said a scared shitless rail thin female Turkish/English teacher on temporary duty. The brilliant neurotic girl from Hoagie Sophia, her black hair clogging shower drains, addicted to TV, sugar and perpetual sadness missed her mother.

Communicating through sewer channels she told Constantinople management Spin had to go. They yanked him out like a bad molar.

She’d been with the company for five years as a Personal Tutor doing bi-linguine translations. Her English placation skills enabled students with false modesty. She’d quit for a translation job with another Istanbul company, discovered it wasn’t so hot after all and returned to TLC dragging her miscalculation.

Now she worked as a management spy. Istanbul gave her a title: Director of Personal Tutors. She traveled to nine centers evaluating and training tutors. She knew the system. Her social skills were shit. She was the perfect corporate drone head. 

Lucky met her in Ankara where she spied for a month. She spent her time chatting with her yet to be met and later to be left boyfriend in Johannesburg. “I hate Ankara.”

“If you want to play the blues you gotta pay your dues,” said Lucky.

“I’m tired of dealing with shallow minds above and below me,” she said sipping tea on the balcony. Bamboo listened.

“I am one of them, sent around to keep an eye spy on barbarian natives. They told me to train the tutors who’ve seen through my transparent disguise. I’m not fooling anyone but myself. I got the promotion I wanted and they used me.”

“Welcome to The Dream Machine.”

“In the future I will escape to Johannesburg and live with a paroled heroin junkie running a safari eco-outfit. I will wear an orange day glow jumpsuit emotionally attached to my despondent mother in Istanbul. Mama spends her life chained to a sink filled with life’s dirty dishes.”

Late one day as Lucky tended rose petals, thorns and fed Winter Hawk day old bread annoying idle businessmen slouched against a BMW downstairs yelling, “Where in the hell are all these crumbs coming from?” the director called from Constantinople.

“Would you like to move to Bursa?”

“Yes. When?”

“Next Monday. We need stability and maturity in the new center.”

“The center is a spiral of stardust. I’ll bring Bamboo. Thanks for the chance.”

His life was walking, writing, photography, helping others be more human, and spreading prosperity. Nurturing Bamboo as a calm lunatic he passed through with detached discernment. He was Mr. Fix-it, Mr. Dependable and a stable element in the periodic language table.

After he settled into Bursa, management realized they needed more temporary help. They brought in an experienced sadomasochistic Australian misogynist from another center to manage the show for ten days. He was fifty, a divorced womanizer with relationship and alcohol issues, an aggressive fool pawing female students and chatting with his twenty-one year old girlfriend in city E. He knew the TLC system and little else. He had a long running feud with management. They fired him.

The revolving TLC door circled through ineffective zones.

* 

 “People here in Turkey,” said Zeynep, “are good at two things, eating and sitting. Sleeping and fighting are close behind.”

“Yes,” said a rag and bone merchant boiling clothing and animal skins for Omar’s palimpsests, “we are surrounded by fools and incompetents. Reading and writing is for people with time, money, critical thinking skills, courage, humor and a future. Not to mention social intelligence. Natives make perfect excuses. They celebrate their perceived victimization and prolonged adolescence with self-pity and loathing.”

“Have you eaten yet,” asked Curious. “We always ask people about food first in China.”

“It’s the same here,” replied Zeynep, “satisfying basic needs.”

A chorus of 15,001 Chinese university students sang, “The less I do, the less likely I am to make mistakes, and the fewer mistakes I make, they less I am criticized. It’s easier to do nothing.”

“Thanks for a long sentence filled with verbs and truth-value meaning,” said a Cambodian orphan caressing a Burmese ruby reflecting 10,000 things in an elegant universe.

“My name is May Be,” said a Turkish woman filing for divorce after centuries of emotional totalitarian terror. She faced her family, friends and strangers with fresh self-esteem.

“He lied to me. I saw through his deceit and irresponsibility. I sent him home to his mama. When he realized his stupid shallow emptiness he ran back pleading, exhorting, crying, bribing and threatening me with personal, physical and emotional disaster, trouble, death and so forth. I didn’t buy his song and dance. It’s rare for a woman here to file for divorce.”

Winter Hawk sang a single throated bird song: freedom’s knowing how big your cage is.

“Learning is easy. Remembering is difficult. We have storage ability and retrieval capability. Speak memory,” said Zeynep doodling on papyrus.

“Memories are for navigating now,” said Lucky. “What I’m telling you is true, or at least as much of it as I remember. I know I have false memories. Everyone does. Imagine people in a world without memory. No past. No things, objects, identification, grasping or attachment. Only patterns and sensation forms like flowing water or butterfly wings brushing air. Living in an eternal present.”

“You are brilliant. Let’s practice ZaZen.”

After meditating on the nature of comedic existence they witnessed human temerity, guilt, fear, shame and humiliation. Heavy sadness. Adult maniac manikins wore artificial death masks decorated with perpetual mediocre distracted confusion.

He’d seen it in the Middle Kingdom as Li Po and Tu Fu's poetic ink danced on parchment, expanding nature’s sublime story.

He absorbed it in Asia Minority seeing bored, tired idle people swallowing Xanax by the handful, eating grilled meat, playing backgammon and twiddling idle retired thumbs as Metro cars crammed with morose living dead idle humans dressed in black mirroring idle heart-minds zoomed to metallic industrial Ostim wasteland o-zones outside Ankara before returning at midnight filled with carved wooden caskets of wasted youth from the never-ending war in Serious on the Syrian border.

Gravediggers and headstone carvers enjoyed steady work with dead matter.

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