Entries in Turkey (154)
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TLC - 5
“A human life in China is worthless,” said Leo, 14, born in a Re-education-Through-Labor Reform Camp in Hubei. His mom worked in the empty university library.
After school exploring forested hills on mountain bikes Lucky and Leo shifted gears where the rubber met the road. One day they stopped in an old quarry to play in dirt.
It was an abandoned country, an abstract concept.
They stood in a deep excavated canyon. High dirt walls bordered by pine, evergreen and blue sky wore sharp deep gashes after machine teeth gouged down dirt. Workers harvested red clay for imperial jade tombs at the university where 15,001 students struggled to survive in a harmonious society. Students hiding from recycled Mao-styled uniformed security guards mastered eating, texting and casual sex.
They stood at the bottom of a bottomless pit.
“Everyone is a spy,” said Leo.
“How did you surmise this theoretical fact?”
“Life is my teacher. It’s our 5,000-year history plain and simple. Their job is to keep an eye on us. Think about it. We have too any people here and so, to monitor our behavior, attitudes and thinking, they recruit students and teachers as spies. Informers. Minders. They’re paid with passing grades or cash. My father was an informer during the Cultural Revolution. It’s Darwinian logic, evolution of the species. Survival.”
“I’m not surprised. This was common through dynasties. Perpetuate control and authority. The Central Party created a climate of fear. Husbands reported wives. Wives reported husbands, sons and daughters. Daughters and sons reported fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles. Concubines reported lovers. An evil cycle.”
“Yes,” said Leo, “evil is a myth. Everyone is a charter member of the Big Ears Sharp Eyes No Mouth Society. Our generation of informers and spies make good money. Knowing their place they keep their mouth shut to survive. Creativity is my meditation. I meditate on the comic, the absurd. Don’t take life seriously. It’s too short. If you laugh you last.”
“Thanks for life lesson #5.”
Lucky shared writing-living suggestions with eight new Chinese teachers. Make your characters want something right away, even if it’s a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaningless of life need water from time to time. It’s your job to create conflict so the characters will say or do surprising and revealing things, educating and entertaining us. Characters change/grow. Kill your darlings. If a writer can’t or won’t do that they should get out of the trade. A writer is a hustler.
Write like you’re dead. Someday you will be.
Ah the drama - the unfolding play observing sensational phenomena.
Entertainment is alive and well in Asia. It’s the entertainment capital of the world. Keep them stupid and happy. Children of all ages stay amused by cell phones, Lose Face social sites and the idiot box. They surrender their consciousness. Watch TV. Miss the show.
“Keep your hand moving,” he said to lazy Chinese robots. “The hand is directly connected to the heart. You are pure sensation. Be an anarchist. Take risks. Take a line for a walk.”
As a foreign language barbarian wearing a Tang Dynasty five-clawed red dragon, yin-yang symbol, a rising Phoenix and a crying crane flying through mist covered mountains he witnessed emperors screwing concubines inside Forbidden Cities with red lacquered emotional curiosities where visions of detached ebullient phosphorus streams wove silent abstractions of zither tonal quality in extreme bliss. Manifestations of superior phenomenal detective analysis and forty questions of the soul redlined final exams.
“We know so much and understand so little,” Lucky said.
“I don’t understand a thing. People are more affected by how they feel than by what they understand,” said Leo. “On day one my teacher said, ‘I only want you to bring two things to class. Your ears.’” Hear ye, hear ye.
TLC - what is life?
Two Ankara university girls fantasying about sex bought Zippo lighters.
An engraved lighter in a dusty Saigon display case read:
Once people were born alive and slowly died.
Now some people are born dead and slowly come to life.
Two high-heeled boys bought flaming gas to impress the girls. “Come next to my fire,” said one. Demurring she said, “I create my own fire. If you come any closer I’ll incinerate you faster than Tarek Bouazizi, a famous fruit and vegetable seller in Tunisia.”
“Amnesia?” said one boy.
“Tunisia, you fucking idiot. Don’t you know anything about the world, geography and Arab Spring dignity, human rights and self-respect? Pay attention shit for brains. Here’s what happened.”
Tarek Bouazizi, 26, sold vegetables on the streets in the small town of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia. The unemployment rate was 30%.
He supported his mother, uncles and five brothers and sisters at home. He loved poetry.
One morning a policewoman demanded free oranges. He said no. She threatened to take everything because he didn’t have a license. He had enough of the endless cycle of poverty, bribery, threats, and corruption and complained at a local government office. They refused to see him. He bought some gasoline. He set himself on fire. He died flaming his life.
Tunisians grabbed their chance for freedom. Their dictator of twenty-three years ran away.
Middle Eastern, North African, Asian despots and autocratic international power hungry madmen went into denial mode.
Oh no, we're next. Needing to maintain power and control, dictators in Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Venezuela, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia among others, gave the military and police free BIG money with strings attached to protect and sustain their intractable insatiable greed.
Contacts = contracts.
They decreased rice prices to appease angry hungry people.
Protect us in our castles and mansions, said dictators. Protect us from educated empowered individuals demanding human rights, social justice, equality, education, jobs, medical care and an end to the charade of our reign of economic terrorism. Protect us from desperate citizens setting themselves on fire. Protect us from the aftermath.
You have to sacrifice the peel to enjoy the fruit, said Arabic Spring. Fear sells.
Hearing this story the boy backed off. Trailing flames the girls departed.
A confidence man, 60, in a worn beige leather jacket entered with his son. A stocky bodyguard with a thick neck, alert steel pupils, and short hair followed them. He was Russian or Tartar sauce. Brown suit, black wing tips. He clasped meaty hands together. He never moved. He watched his boss negotiate with the owner. He glanced at Lucky with meticulous eyes. He swiveled his gaze back to father and son.
The confidence man purchased a lighter and pen. There was a problem with the credit card transaction. He pulled out a cell phone called his bank, slathered words and disconnected. The owner punched in numbers. The sale sailed through.
Taking his purchase he turned to Lucky, “How do you like it here?”
“Everyone is hospitable. Fresh tomatoes are delicious. Anxiety is a national problem. The drug industry is making a fortune.”
“My accountant calculates steady pharmaceutical investment growth in my diversified portfolio. What’s your job?”
“I’m a designer of mysterious linguistic projects. I freelance as a literary prostitute and ephemeral word gravedigger. Alphabets, pictograms and ideograms contain no sound.”
“So I’ve heard. What’s your name?”
“Keyser Soze.”
“Ha. One who talks too much. We have many verbal fools here. Where are you from?”
“I am from the source. We are stardust. I am a stream winner. I don’t belong anywhere.”
“Good luck.” Clouds opened. The father, son and Holy Ghost disappeared in a flash of blinding light.
“Who do you think he was?”
“Maybe the head of a big organization, maybe a bureaucrat, maybe the Mafia. Maybe Deep State. Well connected. I never saw him before.”
People entered his shop.
“Goodbye,” said Lucky, “thanks for the tea and hospitality. Suited me to a T. Oh, and one more thing, what is life?”
“Excellent quest-ion. There are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. Let me guess. A bitch? A miracle? A dream? Paranoid attachment? A meaty meal with black and green olives smothered in red chili powder? Getting laid? Randomized coalescing atoms forming cytoplasmic hysteria? What you make it? How you grow? A beautiful mystery? An experiential game we get to play? Answers seeking/discovering quest-ions validating cosmological and deep philosophical significance? I give up. All I know is that you brought me good luck today. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. It’s my fate. I show up, sit a spell, strangers visit and look around. Some buy some don't. I go. The journey is the destination.”
TLC - Facilitator of courage
A secret compartment in a unique one-of-a-kind jeweled knife illuminated the Tibetan plateau with antelope, snow leopards and gazelles among wild mountain pashmina underbelly goats knitting high-end sweaters and shawls for couture.
Shaggy yaks tinkled bells as eagles, Golak ravens and Winter Hawk winged free over remote white monasteries, rainbow Lung-Tao prayer flags and meditation halls filled with burgundy clad chanting monks playing gongs and cymbals, blowing silver jallee horns, lighting incense, laughing and reciting sutras in Himalayas near melting glaciers feeding wild torrential rivers flowing through slag scrabble rocky terrain, lush wildflower meadows, past isolated stone homes with yak dung drying on flat roofs, pilgrims studying a traditional herbal chart in the Amdo hospital and walking the Barkhor circuit in Lhasa filled with prostrating joyful people fingering prayer beads, whispering mantras and offering sage and pinion into a burning chorten under the ever-present watchful blind suspicious eye of naked plainclothes Chinese secret police disguised as international human rights observers employed by an NGO scam organization.
“You have some cool tools,” Foot said. “I am a tool of nature.”
“Yes you are and yes I do. Health care is expensive because patients and families incur 90% of the medical cost during the final years of their life. Hospice, home care, nursing homes, drugs, medicine, in & out patient care increases cost, long term debt, poverty and so on.”
“The dead paid sooner and the living paid later. Another unpleasant global fact is uncontrolled population growth, lack of job opportunities, substandard education and no medicine.”
“Life is filled with inconveniences. We have millions of idle unemployed here in Turkey. Bankers and politicians stole all the money. Greed is good is their mantra. Government is organized crime. Soma mine disasters with catastrophic loss of life is a fact of life for diggers making $500 a month. My job is to sell stuff. Treasures to be dusted on archaic mantelpieces. People buy things to make themselves happy - in the short term. They want to impress family and friends. They get bored, forget about it, lose it, throw it away or donate it to charity and buy more stuff. It’s a never-ending insatiable desire of supply and demand consumption dramatics. Advertising never dies. Fools are ruled by their emotions. Fear. Enough psycho-social-babble. What brought you here?”
“My feet. I work at The Language Company. I’m a facilitator of character and courage.”
“I know intestinal fortitude. It’s the most expensive virtuous school here.”
“Education is a business. You pays your money and takes your chances.”
“An open hand holds everything.”
They stirred sugar cubes, drank tea, and made small talk.
The Language Company - C 1
“Mother had me before polio condemned her to an iron lung. She had another boy, lived in a wheelchair and produced a daughter with Irish will power. I survived in a dystopian dysfunctional family coping with physical and emotional abuse. Whippings, sadistic beatings, trauma and abandonment, the usual childhood shit. Feeling guilt for her illness I developed stone cold manipulation skills and independent survival skills. Trust in woman was MIA.
"Vietnam is a woman. We fucked them during the day and they fucked us at night. Love them and leave them. Abandoned ones become abandoners. Mother died at forty-two. My sister died of leukemia at thirteen. Only the good die young. She taught me courage. By chance do you have any?”
“It’s rarer than something that doesn’t exist. Courage is an intangible feeling of wellbeing and supreme confidence. You know this from your mind full Tibetan experiences. I sense you are a stream-winner. Sensation, perception, desire, fear, and ignorance ceased. Frequency shifts. Transformations. What happens to dreams The Sweeper collects?”
“They are sorted by type, category, allegory, myth, metaphor, galaxy, nebula, genus, species, phylum, irrationality and coherent sublime scientific symbolic meaning.
“Word dreams live in vignettes, jazz poems, epilogues, prologues, blog slogs, musical incantations, rain drops, beads of sweat, blood, bleached human bones, Sumerian script and 26,000-year old Paleolithic cave paintings near Benaojan, Spain hearing hollow bells ring high ring low as a Cambodian boy in satori clapping with one hand drags his cart along fractured dusty red roads collecting cardboard. Dawn to dusk. Composing musical symphonies he squeezes a plastic bottle expelling stale air attracting garbage contributors and hungry literary agents in a traditional publishing casino wheeling and dealing for their glorious 15%.”
“You are the director, audience and players,” said the owner stirring tea.
Sappho, poetess