We need rules in turkey - TLC

At TEOL English school in Giresen, Turkey, a small town on the Black Sea, Curiosity asked, “How did I grow?” knowing it disturbed sedated ones. Curiosity loved asking philosophical quest-ions about how to live a good life.

Not interested with intellectual veracity another student said, “How did I get here?”

“By walking,” said Lucky. “Step by step.”

After the TEOL center closed completing a perfect circle he walked up a steep brick hill. At exactly 9:11 p.m. on a corner near an empty mosque with a broken fountain of youth, a four-man Swat commando team from a make believe secular Islamist country disguised as a provincial soccer team wearing purple spandex leotards and baklava masks cradled submarine machine guns. Itchy fingers caressed love’s hair trigger.

One was well dressed. Black. Hungry.

He said, “We are Deep State.” His comrades sang a refrain.

“WE are POWER.”

“WE are CONTROL.”

“WE ARE FEAR AND AUTHORITY. We kill people with visionary rose petals. Our artificial currency and idiotic ideological Rule of Law stirs evolutionary linguistic sugar cubes.”

Lucky said, “How did I adapt, adjust and evolve? How did I unlearn your dystopian world? I never took possession of your world.”

“Keep moving fool,” said Mr. Swat. “Looking at us is against the law. Speaking your mind is an act of dissent and terrorism and a irrevocable violation of Article 301 against The Deep State.”

Young unarmed gangs observing this show of farce were impressed by his bluster. They idled their ignorance with acuity. When I grow up, said one kid, like you know never, I will wear black and carry a loaded gun to impress my family, friends, idiots, fools and strangers.

Another true fragment, said Z.

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Cheap Thrills in Turkey - TLC

Editors note: Considering the fake coup in Turkey and massive number of people laid off, arrested and intimidated by the governement's fear tactics this exceprt from The Language Company bears witness.

Creative non-fiction.

Lucky heard dull Turkey talk accept pervasive inherent genetic sadness weighing hearts, minds and futures. Big time. Victimized by fate mothers sang, “Be well darling you can always come home.”

I am thirty+ and still live with my parents, said a male child sitting on the human supply side scale of justice.

Humiliation is obese.

Independence & freedom in Turkey is a foreign concept.

Click your diamond heels together three times. I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.

Domestic violence is a REAL social problem. Guns will not solve it. Giresun stores are filled and killed with guns. Boys carry them. Men carry them. Women pack them. Kids play with them. Police are everywhere. Visual intimidation with artificial insemination lives breathes and procreates.

Gravediggers love steady unforgiving work. Look at my hands said one turning a shovelful of metaphors and observations. I know two things.

There are no things only facts, said Z and that’s the truth.

Everyone talks at once. No one listens - same as Cambodia, Yeah, yeah with a side order of indigence.

It’s biological DNA malfeasance.

Men constructed an oil platform in Giresun harbor, the cheapest port along the BS. Pump money into economy.

A giant erector set. Takes a month, Derrick. Pull it out to see. Drill. Pump black gold.

Pump me baby. By low sell high. The more you drill the more you bill. ABC.

That explains everything said a female student in Giresun speaking with courage and clarity why stupid immature men would rather spend their money on fancy designer clothes, expensive cell phones and go hungry.

Thread follows needle, said Kairos.

Ah, said Lucky, artificial life. Yes, said Courage dancing with Curious, it’s insecurity, ego and fake visual abundance.

A muttering Giresun man stopped Lucky on the street. Look at my shiny patent leather shoes, crisp shirt and chrome-plated self-winding geodesic dome watch and lambskin leather jacket. See my new 45-caliber automatic. It holds a clip joint of fifteen. The only magazine I read is loaded with armor piercing titanium bullets. Look at my luxurious cell phone. Are you jealous? No? Ok, I am calling my mother.

- Hi mommy dearest, watches for lunch? Did you clean my room with your sad broom? Did you make my favorite manta meal slathered with greasy hazelnuts and wet yogurt? What’s for dessert? Turkish delight? You can’t be serious.

(Mom yaks....)

- Yes, yes, yes, bye mother, yes I love you and I will love you forever and a day. You are my world. Leave a light on. I’ll be later than never.

He turned to Lucky. Want to buy some time mister? Look at this big shiny fake gold watch. See idle hands sweep time. Cheap. For you I make special price. Brings me good luck.

Thanks, said the stranger, I have all the luck I need and your luck is running out faster than a cloud obscures a sundial in the sands of time.

I don’t get it, said Idiot. I am good at two things: eating and sleeping. Whining and juvenile bravado is a close 3rd oh and one more thing, taking Xanax improves my attitude, personality and character disorder. You don’t say, said Lucky.

Men and boys played chicken on narrow steep sidewalks. Non-verbal said, Get out of my fucking way or I will kill you with my cheap 45. Resistance is futile.

Buy the text, yelled educational robots. We eat grammar breakfast, lunch and dinner. We need grammar to pass an examination and get a certificate so we can file for unemployment. We paid for our innate stupidity.

Bend over said Deep State.

That’s an unpleasant fact, said face2face. 

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Tax office Trabzon - TLC

Eat dreams with Turkish yogurt minus needles of anxiety.

Cultivate silence and bliss.

Amazon women visited the residency permit offic3 in Trap A Zone. They severed their right breast. Here you are. We’re ahead of schedule and below budget. We pay now.

Arrows of time sang, Bull’s-Eye.

Everything has already happened, said Z. You just need to experience it. You and I hit the target others don’t see.

Before visiting the taxman Lucky discovered a pinecone poem near the tax office inhaled it caressed needle texture and put it in his pocket. Talisman.

The cool deep forest season scent reminded him of managing Glen Malure, an isolated Wicklow hostel in Ireland below Lugnaquilla Mountain absorbing the same sensation with pinecone nature in his pocket grounding him deep helping him survive dear old dirty Dublin passing through to wild Donegal in 1979.

Down the rocky road, one, two, three, leaving them all broken hearted.

After the tax office barbarians sang at The Bank of Greed & Prosperity to open an account. Wake up the clerk. Keep people busy. Sit Down deposited 12K to get it straight. Deposit today, withdraw next week, said sleepy teller.

Palming an ace, Paperwork shuffled a loaded deck.

In the afternoon the native speaking tribe went to the police office for residency paperwork. Wake up the dick in the corner. Everyone was armed and legged with hand ups. Desperadoes sang bordello caliber melodies.

Lucky handed over sepia photos, documents in triplicate, passport and random pages of a well-traveled TLC narrative by Zeynep to a morose female clerk wearing a hipster 45. She did her computer data duty and passed everything to a young steely-eyed policeman who, by pure dumb luck had met Mr. Foot two weeks earlier on the TEOL balcony where they conversed about essential English skills. Use it or lose it, said Lucky.

Cop looked at the residency permit, stared him down and said you cannot work in Giresun. Yes, said Lucky. Always say yes when a kid fingering a loaded 45 says you cannot. Negative tense.

In the future all the world’s police will be children. Period.

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Zeynep the heroine of TLC in Bursa.

Life is a test. Lessons later.

Discover a pinecone near The Tax Department in Trabzon. It escaped The Department of the Forest.

Make copies of your life. Duplicates accepted. Mirrors reflecting mud and meadows of reality need cleaning.

Visit the Tax office. Get a tax number.

Go to bank. You are #199. Sit on sidewalk. Wait for a teller to tell.

Sullen and impatient she’s late for 12:30 lunch. Sit Down deposits $12,000 for four native barbarians.

Withdraw tomorrow, said Teller’s Overture.

Go to the police residency office across from the cemetery where a wailing mother drumming soil waters roses. Hired guns sing gravestone’s chiseled destiny with a sledgehammer. A gravedigger turns soil in his absolute phenomena of totality.

Grill your usual suspects while eating chicken with shredded lettuce not have this conversation in the abstract.

Giresun loudspeakers imported from Lenin Park in Hanoi engaged, studied and activated speech-enabled synapse software. Attention Comrades.

A woman teacher directed behavior control classes with sparkling syllables. Children memorized grammar rules. Pass the examination. 60 is heaven. 59 is hell. Pass me through.

Life is the test. Lessons later. It is multiple-choice.

Silver man polishes a serving set. Flour hands of a laughing baker removing loaves from ovens whisper secrets near fish hawkers washing ice streams. Bread aromas float past women selling cabbages bigger than lost children.

Walking through sad Giresun rain Lucky remembered his Khmer lover.

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Conversation's Dexterity

Dawn’s orange lightness spread over the Black Sea.

Curious enrolled in a Push Them Through English School. I need vocabulary and the courage to use it with meaning, dexterity and humor. I know my English is not grammatically perfect but I know my English is fluent, said Independence.

Casablanca

I know what I don’t know, said Z. The more I learn the less I know. Real eyes see real lies.

You are the teachers, Lucky said to Turkish beginners brain-washed by parents, media and education system. I am a student.

They expressed fervent Denial, an Egyptian river. No, you are the teacher. We have no free choice or logical imperative to accept responsibility for our learning. If we accept responsibility we have to accept the consequences and do the work BUT we are lazy. We live in a never-ending existential crisis. We are conditioned to sit, listen and memorize. We blend in, like Leo's history teacher warned. We just want to pass the fucking exams. It’s your job to create a facsimile of grammar book learning.

The less I do the fewer mistakes I make, said one smiling with cunning social intelligence. The fewer mistakes I make, said their twin with cunning social intelligence, the less I am criticized.

You got that BS write, said Lucky.

Light my fire, said Jim Morrison trying to impress two girls.

Feed me, said another. I am not a participant. I am a victim.

I know what you mean, said another SAD student. It’s fun being a victim. We can blame everyone else with our projected fears and loss for our failure to be real, human and brave.

See with soft eyes, said Lucky. We see through our eyes, not with our eyes.

Thanks for life lesson #7, said a past tense grammar addict injecting a lethal dose of acquiescence into their heart-mind.

You’re welcome. Next.

I have two scissors and one brother.

How are you? I am 21 and you?

How old are you? I am fine and you?

Speak memory.

Oh yeah? The safest memories are those you never remember.

Memories are all you have.

Are your needs being met?

That’s a fundamental quest-ion. Right there with the What Is Life quest-ion.

You get one chance with dignity and grace. Get is the joker word in English.

I am Curious. It’s a pleasure to see you again. Go with the flow. Flow with your glow. Flow and grow is an honorable quest. I sing and live in a flow state in Giresun, said Lucky. So I heard.

A traveler passing through brought good luck to silversmith, cook, baker, candlestick maker, fish hawker, cheese seller, broom maker men, women sewing cloth, merchants selling knives, banging copper, punching leather, women brewing tea, men cutting roots, laughing children and students saying yeah, yeah we’ve heard all this before, as singing musicians overcoming temporary anxieties with flowing confidence speaking in tongues wandered narrow alleys of becoming.

Poetic inspiration. Short, fast and deadly.

A wandering minstrel in Trabzon played his Kemil with love inside shadows of tolerance and charity. His broken orange shoebox collected currency from enamored strangers. A young girl turned to her mother, you know the words mama and I know the music - he plays loss, hope and memory. It’s our cultural history sweetie.

Crystals reflected an island where Amazon women warriors took no prisoners. They had sex once a year and abandoned males in pine forests.

A busy busboy checked his obsessive watch. Out. Pulsating tick-tock. Big time waits for no one.

Office hysterics. A young English teacher from Plymouth expressed his quest. I need empathic accuracy. Look it up, said Lexicon opening his heart.

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