Book Blurb - TLC
Creative non-fiction. Journalistic facts. Literary imagination.
Lucky Foot facilitated English at The Language Company in Ankara and Bursa, Turkey in 2008.
In 2012 he facilitated in Trabzon and Gerisun on the Black Sea. Collecting data. Field notes.
Gonzo stuff.
He is a Vietnam veteran, writer, street photographer and facilitator of courage.
Since 2004 he's gifted luck in Burma, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, and Turkey.
He shows up. He sits for a spell nurturing positive relationships in the long now.
Accompanied by Humor and Curiosity he helps students speak English with confidence minus illusions of fear and phobia's relatives:
Fear of taking a risk.
Fear of being incorrect.
Fear of peer ridicule.
Fear of poverty.
Fear of starvation.
Fear of being ordinary.
Fear of success.
Fear of abandoning a manuscript by Zeynep entitled TLC.
Fear of accepting responsibility for choices and accepting the consequences.
Fear of letting go of old conditioning. Shadows.
Fear of being alive and real. Growing.
Fear of_______. (Your free choice)
Lucky, Humor and Curiosity observed parents, schools, religions and countries fostering passive acceptance, fear, indifference and rote learning teacher-centered systems.
It was all about vomiting the material to pass exams. Product. Not the process of how to be more human and think for yourself.
Status quo. Sheep mentality. Blend in. Questions are forbidden. Authority washes your brain daily.
Zeynep, his young genius friend in Bursa taught him about life in her totalitarian country.
"As a literary outlaw I say what others are afraid to say. Anxiety is a chronic national problem. Adults here are good at two things, eating and fighting. 'Dissent is terrorism,' say our corrupt manikin authoritarian figurines."
Leo revealed dystopian China. "I spent years carrying shit in a Re-education through Reform Labor Camp for questioning Authority. Everyone here belongs to the Big Ears, No Mouth society. Oh the shame. The bent nail gets hammered down."
Rita, the independent author of Ice Girl in Banlung shared stories about her Khmer culture and Cambodian history. "We've had twenty years of hopelessness. We breed. We work. We get slaughtered. Poor people see education as a waste of time and money."
"I dream I am a free person in a free country," said Curiosity.
"You're dreaming," said Humor.
A seven year-old Vientiane kid explained Laos. "I develop my authentic character with critical thinking skills, humor, gratitude, abundance and wonder as a free thinking individual. I have my junior philosopher's badge."
"If you want to do great things you must take great risks and suffer greatly," said Zeynep. "You either let go or get dragged along."
Awareness. Mindfulness. Compassion.
"It's not about people buying this book," said Rita. "It's about people reading it."
Dust. Coffee. Rice.
"I have walked through many lives some of them my own, and I am not who I was."- Stanley Kunitz
Dust coffee rice
Home zone bamboo ice
Voice language culture
Shadows
Old man cleans ears
A professional stranger shows up
Among whisper smiles
Old man balancing on bamboo staff
Shuffles
Voices decipher cognition
Plain clothes officers clean spectacular spectacles
With what they don't know
White paper
A girl loving geography
Lights four incense sticks with gratitude.
Dance now think later.
Hoi An, Vietnam
Screaming Lao Man
The screaming Lao man
Thin, late 20's, shorts, flip flops, black hair
Walks away from
Lao Provincial Hospital
Leaving a ward
Leaving someone he loves
Screams [speed of sound]
Broken by silence
Between knowledge and ignorance
He screams, closer
Screams...
He stops near hospital entrance
Frozen in midday sun
Burning pavement
Burning his heart
Throws out his arms
Drops to his knees
Screaming
Folds his head into his arms
Faces ground sobbing
Silent solitude grief
Loss heartbreak
A blind Khmer musician and his daughter.
World Poetry Day
Language river
Brown life highway
Mountain silent
Clouds fly around
Here we go