Take Amazing Risks

“To do amazing things you have to take amazing risks and suffer greatly,” said Zeynep, his five-year old genius friend in Bursa.

“Here,” she said gesturing around the restaurant, “many a-dolts stay with their mothers forever and a day because they are afraid of freedom and accepting responsibility for their lives. They eat fear morning noon and night...

"They are afraid to express their honest feelings, their innate desire for independence. They are willing victims of traditional conservative attitudes and values...

"Free will is a foreign language. They are scared of taking risks, letting go and growing. I may grow old but I’ll never grow up. If I grow up I die.”

“I feel the same way,” said Lucky.

One day while sharing lunch and drawing in notebooks, he said, “When I was nine I was going on 50. Now I am 50 going on 9. I exist outside adult time.”

“We are passing through,” Zeynep said lighting a candle in darkness.

The Director in Istanbul offered Lucky a new TLC adventure in Bursa. This shocked everyone in Ankara. They assumed he’d stay with them forever. Students and teachers celebrated his transition with a sparkling cake. Women cried sadness and joy.

“We are not here for a long time, we are here for a good time,” said Sappho the poetess.

One Ankara student articulated her desire to move to Istanbul for an educational engineering job in a quality control factory school producing obedient robotic idiot children and live with her boyfriend.

She cowered behind her futile quest for independence from over-protective parents. “My father won’t let me.”

“Take control of your life," said Lucky.

"Let go. Jump. Discover courage and your wings on the way down.”

The Language Company

Simple Voice

After a reliable narrator

established a voice

geography, atmosphere, tone, conflict and cinematic jump cut action

employing minimum wage universal themes

like time, boredom, passion, loneliness and alienation

in an unforgiving universe of meaningless existence

with humor and curiosity holding hands

casting characters like plot

dragging others around

chained to their personality defects and character flaws

wearing original death masks

surrounded by distracted

simple, noisy, gadget addicted

compassionate illiterate peasants

in a play waiting for Godot

no one shows up

nothing happens

writing with a Mont Blanc 149 fountain pen

using Royal Blue invisible ink

on blank parchment

was pure luminous joy

Yangon, Burma

Eudemonia

What is life?

Autonomy.

Personal growth.

Self-acceptance.

Purpose.

Environmental mastery.

Positive relationships.

Eudaimonia.

Near Jakarta he shared a universal story with Grade 4. “Many tribes love to look back. Passion and grasping creates suffering. It's a genetic molecule of fear, healthy doubt, fantastic uncertainty, surprise and adventure. Monkey mind. No worries, no memories. A child’s innocent curiosity lives in the present.”

“Every little thing is in front of us,” said a genius kid.

“Yes,” Lucky said, “focus on your essential needs not your wants. Imaginary wants manifest desire. Attachment and grasping creates suffering. Suffering is an illusion. We are all passing through. Humans look back in their vivid reptilian imagination hoping to see a ghost memory, a figment of their imagination."

Is it safe?

“Change is scary. They look back to remember where they came from. They look back because they are afraid they will never see the village and people again. They use their disappearing energy to look behind wondering and wandering and milling around in a perpetual state of shock and distraction.

“Humans seek clues at their personal ground zero. They’ve evolved from distant galaxies. Java man evolved here 40,000 years ago. Accepting an evolutionary premise, their DNA star chart continues its genetic dance. We are stardust. Never trust an atom. They make up everything. The world is made of stories not atoms. Oh, and one more thing. Don’t let school interfere with your education.”

He lived in talking monkey zones. They ate rice, drank water and fucked. They washed one set of clothing and hung it on bamboo.

They killed all the animals and burned down all the forests. They bred, worked and got slaughtered. Shamans brought rain. Tropical downpours gave humans free showers.

Food was cheap. Let’s eat mantra. This had nothing to do with simian behavior. It had nothing to do with two women sitting in a dark warung food joint near a private school facing a tall cinder block wall.

Chickens goats and cats prowled pecked and foraged in garbage. One woman sat in a deep meditation as her friend cleaned her scalp. They took turns exploring and inspecting. This genetic ritual was practiced in world zoos, jungles and rain forests.

Chattering storytellers. Musicians played ancient gamelan tunes. Heal people with music. Music is the fuel.

Idle Indonesian males after washing taxis studied accumulated grime under long yellow curling fingernails. Waiting for passengers they played chess in Banyan tree shade. Checkmate, said Death, You lose.

Drivers visited the warung chatting up girls, devouring spicy rice mixed with tofu, chicken, veggies, green chilies and deep-fried snacks.

One lucky explorer created a Brave New World.

Culture is what you are.
Nature is what you can be.

The Language Company

Heart-mind

The heart-mind gift of writing allowed Zeynep to meditate in the present as a stranger to herself:

Mindfulness gives me time and time gives me choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. I’m not swept away by my feelings. I can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.

I love the crazies, it’s the fools I can’t tolerate.

A Zen writer is an artist, said Z the younger. They love making a big bright, beautiful mess, cleaning it up and making another mess. You are a Lone Wolf blessed with genetic DRD4-7R. Free is your quality of life.

The world is a stage and we are but the players. The play’s the thing.

A risk taking adventure using asemic language sensing joy and mystery winds down.

A poem begins in wisdom and ends in delight.

Visionary mystics blossom radiant beauty.

Water-stone. Yin-Yang.
Wear a star on your forehead.
Small powerful stars sing with their light.

The Language Company

Burma

Path

Meditation breath
Kindness
Diamond mind wisdom

Women lay out golden chains
Men yak in phones
Gleaming significance weighs potential

rubies, sapphires

Glittering like a million stars

Path leads past mannequins
Wearing fashionable silent plastic splendor

facsimiles of prayers flow from a woman's mouth

Answer stirs ice

formless form

Shy beyond description
    a girl weighs lettuce hills
    cucumbers whisper adjustments
    cell phone eliminates an old man's loneliness
   a sharp hatchet congratulates bloody meat
   a woman stabs ice memories

Ice coffee is bitter sweet my sweet
Hammock infant swings high/low
Contemplating an old woman
Stepping through puddles carrying a plastic bag

two tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, daily bread

Eye contact dissolves in the wake up