Get to school fool

Get to school fool: the Turkish TEOL Push Them Through Language Skool was, how do you say depressing oh my yes students on hard luck streets among Roman ruins showed him, illuminated him into their sadness and loss. Serious big time long lost time depressed.

Theydontknowwhatheydontknow or carets ate all.

According to history’s short story 10,000 Greek warriors escaping starvation and being pursued by Persian hoards ran down Trabzon mountains yelling, The Sea! The Sea!

They built Sumela Monastery in 386 A.D. on a remote mountain cliff at 3,900 feet facing the Altindere valley. Orthopedic Greek monks painted alfresco du jour stories with Apostles. Emperors came and went. Ignorant 20th century tourists defaced faces with pens, trowels, keys and bleeding fingers. Erase the past, yelled Turkish Authority taking a page out of Chinese and Khmer revisionist plans.  

Green and yellow forests, high rocky peaks and gorges inhaled fresh mountain air. Dirt paths escaping civilization’s eternal chaos forded deep rushing rivers climbing through autumn leaves hearing crescendos of water music singing, Pilgrimage. Up. 

OLD BOOTS

Creativity is a verb.

He accepted Z’s advice on not trying to be perfect. Don’t try. DO. He remembered her counsel. You will abandon this beautiful mess.

In Trabzon, he discovered new Merrell hiking boots for 112 bones to replace three-year old Hanoi relics. Soft slow in-step and out-step. Stepping is freedom.

Walking makes the road.

Timeworn boots remembered Hanoi alleys, Sapa Mountains, 101st Screaming Eagles wandering Hue with ghosts, Saigon pagodas,

Angkor Wat temples, faded colonial yellow buildings near a corroding Kampot iron bridge,

Battenbang genocide survivor stories, serene Luang Prabang monks receiving alms before dawn on winter mornings, Nam Ou river songs in Laos,

Phongsali tribal dialects, Pakse cotton threads, sacred Banlung animist jungles, Siem Reap lovers,

Nepalese villages below Annapurna, Boudhanath circumambulations, Vientiane genius kids developing social intelligence and character with curious laughter and Trabzon hospitality.

At Sumela boots built for comfort not for speed explored terra firma. Then he strolled along the Black Sea to Giresun.

The Language Company

Boudhanath

Namaste,

The road from Bhaktapur to Boudhanath is paved or broken or nonexistent.

Broken dirt rutted cement narrow filled with humans and black belching diseased smoke. Green fields, planting, turning dirt, harvesting beans, potatoes, cauliflower, hauling wicker baskets to market. Soldiers running their future, pounding old boots past a rising forest. Mountains run in shadows. Children in cold dawn light brush white teeth.

It's a returning to Tibet. Pilgrimage around around around circumambulation. Chanting prayers, earning merit. A shift from the Hindu spirit world of Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu. A feeling of peace and tranquility permeates your walking meditation.

Spin prayer wheels.

Lhasa Morning Meditation. We slow down. Each step is a breath. As before, in other planetary places we savor the beginning of a new day becoming - cold, isolated, sublime mysterious reality. The street blends into the circuit. Go to the main square.

Two large chorten furnaces are breathing fire, sending plumes of gray and black smoke into the sky. Figures of all ages and energies, sellers of juniper and cedar. Buyers collect their offerings - throw sweet smelling twigs into the roaring fire, finger prayer beads and resume their pilgrimage. Merit.

We join the flow, shuffling along. Feel the softness being with the ageless way of meditation, a walking meditation.

It is a peaceful manifestation of the eternal now. The  vast self vibration of frequencies in the flow. Our restless wandering ghost spirit feels the peace and serenity inside the flow.

The sky fills with clear light. As above, so below. Prayer flags lining roofs sing in the wind as incense smoke curls away. The shuffling pilgrims create a ceaseless wave - the sound of muted consistent steps, clicking of prayer beads, a gentle hum of turning prayer wheels, murmurs of mantras from lips. Everything is clear and focused on offering, sacrifice, gaining merit in the collective unconscious. Our river flows.

Dawn light blesses eastern snow capped mountains with a pink glow. A black faced half-naked boy throws himself down and out on his hands and knees prostrating the length of his skinny skeleton. He wears slabs of wood on his hands and an old brown apron. He edges forward, pulling himself along, rises, gestures to the sky, hands together, down along his skin out and down to the ground scrapping away flesh edging forward inside shuffling pilgrims. His eyes are on fire!

One completes one circuit after another, circling the Jokhang, the spiritual center of Tibet. More light, more people ascending into the square - handfuls of juniper feed roaring flames, Crack! Hiss! Burn! Back to Dust!

You will walk through the fire. Do this practice every day.

Metta.

 

Antonio Machado

Greetings,

A poem by Antonio Machado. Translated from the Spanish by Betty Jean Craige.

Walker, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more.

Walker, there is the road, the road is made by walking.

Walking you make the road, and turning to look behind you see the path you never again will step upon.

Walker, there is no road, only foam trails on the sea.

Metta.

You can't photograph a memory. - Henri Cartier Bresson