not true

interrupted Omar’s suicidal literary agent speaking through voice snail. It’s impossibly probable.

You make your own truth from embroidered lies.

I know everything and can say nothing about beginnings, arc, tension or sustaining a plot. Something has to happen to move it along with narrative flow, character development, conflict and action. Make me cry. Give me emotional honesty so I feel for the protagonist.

Grab me by the throat in the first clear short sentence.

Make me pay attention.

Give me a sharp emotional marketing hook hanging above a mainstream marketing platform in cheap plywood Asian brothels where evil greedy men with POWER threaten and violently abuse orphaned sex slave girls.

Where they buy them or steal them from poor families in China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka and season them for five years in rooms, use them, abuse them and discard them on the mean old street.

They are commodities like rice. Rich men buy virgins for $5,000 a pop. Open my legs. Plow the fertile soil between my legs. Open my feeble, nonchalant and passive innocent broken heart-mind. Throw in some Asian culture like Chinese opera, Indonesian gamelan music, 3-act dramas, ballet, The Art of the Fugue by Bach and dancing Apsara dancers on 8th century laterite Angkor Wat ruins being strangled by cotton wood roots.

Show me how superstitious evil men believe fucking a virgin gives them super strength enabling them to leap over tall virgins with a single organismic shudder. Give me a small organic boom-boom death in eight seconds. Get to the verb.

            “Ok, said Rita, an orphan in Cambodia and independent writer/publisher of Ice Girl in Banlung. “Unpleasant facts are littered through this work like lovers, countries, butterflies, natural phenomena, rice and hot sex.

            “Cambodians have been screwed by history, war, violence and predatory politicians. Let’s Make A Deal. Do the numbers. 15% (and rising) of Cambodia has been sold to China. They’ve invested $16.9 billion. They bought the government.

            “1.7 million out of 11m were massacred by human genocide animals. 40% of our land is filled with unexploded ordinance. Millions are illiterate. Millions are subsistence farmers. It is a rural agrarian society. They produce only what they need to survive. They eat, sleep, fuck and sit around.

"Milling around is an art form. Khmer are soft and kind. They have a good heart. They are not as mercenary as the Vietnamese. They drift through your sensation, perception and consciousness with the speed and grace of a cosmic Lepidoptera. The trick is to tolerate bland empty eyed star gazing starrers and hustlers with Patience, your great teacher.

            “Bored after five minutes they lose interest. Bye-bye butterfly. Let’s pretend to be exactly who we are. The Great Pretenders. Be careful who you pretend to be.”

            “Thank you Rita. Whew, what a mouthful,” said the blind literary agent.

            “Yeah,” said Rita. I spill sounds and smell metaphors. The human condition reads history and weeps. Create memory a form of history. Rewrite history.          

“Your memory is the world and the world is a village,” said the nerve agent. “Cry me a river. Build me a bridge. Get over it.”

            “I will, will you?” said Rita.

"Maybe baby. I have a question for Lucky.”

            “He’s here.”

            “What do you recall during the one-hour full body massage with blind Flower at Seeming Hands?”

            ”Her hands were all,” I said. “Her hands were water, air, earth and fire. Soft gentle sensations. Sensing, feeling her physical sense. Engaging all her senses. Touch is her essence. She knew my body, all the pressure points.”

            “Soft, medium or hard?” Flower asked.

            “During her therapeutic touch and go I considered this vignette. How I was looking for ideas and structure and formless form and literary vulgarity. I slowed down inside the labyrinth. A writer is a dwarf, invisible and must survive.”

            Flower whispered, “I don’t like sleeping alone. It’s fucking boring.”

            It’s easy to remember loving Flower’s soft, deep real tactile sensations. She knew how to please a stranger’s skin. She lived in the middle way. Her middle way is breathing, and awareness. Her middle way is acceptance and loving kindness. It is wisdom, patience and gratitude. Non-attachment. Flower is the essence between detachment and sentimentality.

            “Eat the world with your blind eyes,” she whispered.         

“Yes my Flower, yes.”

            “Dead or blind there’s no difference,” Flower said. “People who cause you difficulties, you should think of them as very valuable teachers because they provide you with the opportunity to develop patience.”

The Language Company

Mandalay Burma Teacher Talk

Give us the fifty daze M-F 5:30 a.m. short van trip to CAE, the private school in Mandalay where you helped 10th graders become more human with humor and curiosity.

One class was from 6-7 another from 7-8.

Four male teachers left starlight and climbed into the van. Three were morose. Two early. Their dialogue mentioned sleep disorders, international menus and the quality of their shits.

One African-American guy muttered about Kuala Lumpur fast food choices cursed mosquitos smashing them on windows.

The others talked about teaching adventures in China. We are all peasants.

Exciting.

Yeah, I’m going to miss them like you miss a rock in your shoe.

I understand your student-teachers rearranged desks into groups to facilitate sharing. You played jazz, blues and classical music. They drew and colored their dream in creative notebooks. Daily.

Yes. Eye – hand – heart. Two won't do.

I reminded them their creative notebooks would sustain them for years, long after the textbooks gather dust. Long after they vomited material to pass a test. Get marks.

Give me specifics.

My room was the only team-building configuration. The other teachers maintained rows of wooden benches where students hearing a dull lecture stared at the back of someone’s empty head.

The Black guy mumbled. They replaced him with a dour business scholar from Papa New Genie.

One British teacher lectured from the book and played cartoons.

A drawling American teacher projected The Star Spangled Banner lyrics on a screen and had the class recite words.

You’re kidding me. I wish I was.

You heard parrots…”Oh say can you see…”

Our team-groups shared ideas prior to discussing diverse topics improving their speaking confidence.

In his final class Southern Comfort had them singing “Jingle Bells.”

Boughs of folly. Oh yeah.

My geniuses played a round-robin chess tournament the final two days. Great fun.

They’d practiced chess every Thursday and Friday for a month. They focused on tactics, strategy, activating pieces off the back row, castling, attacking through the center.

They developed critical thinking skills, planning and logic, problem solving, accepting responsibility for their decisions, respecting their opponent and sharing ideas with friends.

Life skills 101.

Shit Detector in Turkey (48% said no thanks)

One Sunday evening Lucky walked along a narrow Bursa street in Turkey.

Kurdish mothers in headscarves extended thick manicured necks beyond balconies observing street life. Women swept, mopped, stirred apartment dust, shaking molecules out over blood stained escarpments.

They married newly consecrated relatives during fifty-minute encounter sessions designed to use the target language in the context of remembering. The thrill of remembering old memories overlaid with new linguistic impressions.

Learning is easy. Remembering is difficult.

The president plays his hand.

Glorious grand immediate silent ivory piano keys waited for inspiration’s fingers. Feeling, tension, point, counterpoint, hammer strings, resonance, and chromatic silence paused with reflection and flight. Symbols of forgotten strumpets playing music between notes wailed solitary notes across an abyss.

Creased faces ironed brilliant red roses petals. Faces embedded themselves between pages in a worn black unlined notebook.

Two shy Turkish women with beautiful faces and humongous rear end collisions eating lonely tears in a tomato based culture buried ancestors.

Water exploded off pools as happy hour birds heard homo-sapiens shift erotic labia gears after assembling French cars at a Bursa eco-friendly green plant.           

“Welcome to Earth. Hello babies.”
            “Were you punished for being a dreamer?”
            “No. I was fortunate my family understood my nature. They respected my need for solitary time.”
            “I see,” said a blind beggar.
            “Wipe your glasses with what you know.”
            “I was born to be a poet like a bird is born to be a musician.”
            “Sing high, sing low, sweet chariot.”
            “Brilliant.”
            “Fascinating. We learned to say fascinating in finishing school instead of bullshit.”
            “You have a built-in shit detector.”
            “Ain’t that the fucking truth? Everyone needs a shit detector here in Turkey."

Truth is a value-based meaning factor. Can you create believable fiction-memory?”

Lucky passed his double identity twin theory below the surface of appearances at Ozmanhomogenized Gazi metro station. Two gravediggers wearing long black overcoats carried umbrella projectiles. Stepping into unknown futures they stabbed cement in cadence.

Green Metro cars slid into the station. Lucky sat across from a boy, 10, his mother and father. His father’s hands were hard calloused. They were simple working people from Van in the east. The boy smiled, fascinated by whirling prisms of light flashing past windows.

His father pulled up his son’s shirt. On his chest were two plastic suction cups and a small machine the size of a deck of cards. Ace high. A heart monitor measured his beats, his life rhythm, and his regularity. His father checked the display, saw the cups were secure and dropped the shirt.

“It is a machine for my son. It helps him,” he said with tired eyes. “We got it at Hospital A. Doctors said it was essential for his life.”

After the shirt covered his chest the boy and Lucky smiled, cupping their hands around eyes scanning the universe. They were explorers with magnifying glasses.

He’s a happy kid. Not afraid of a thing. We should all be so fortunate. Especially all the tired Turkish adults streaming their life tales, “Oh pity me. I am so, so tired.”

Talk to the kid. He’ll tell you how tired really feels.

Echoes of digger umbrella projectiles on stone faded near young lovers huddled on benches, a beggar crash landed on tarmac, head scarfed wrapped women with sacred scared eyes, children on curious adventures and wide eyed echoes along green tracks leading into dark tunnels disappearing into a wilderness of snow blanketed forests where two black shawled women negotiated muddy paths through foliage waiting for spring to thaw out relationships with nature.

Rabbits running in the ditch The Season of the Witch.

Living breathing biped accidents craved a place to happen with clarity insight and precision. Pearl letters played out on a fragile necklace of water bead molecules in an instant in eternity.

Time is a strung-out pimp looking for salvation, a fix an exit.

The Language Company

Playing a Turkish lament in Trabzon.

The Dark Years

It was curious seeing the Cambodian barber open on the last day of Khmer New Year.

The small southern river town of Kampot was dead quiet. Merchants and families slept in shuttered shops behind metal gray accordion sheets. A tropical afternoon sun beat down. White cumulus clouds billowed in the east.

The barber had a white haired customer. He’d fought against Thailand, Vietnam and Khmer Rouge. He didn’t talk about it. He survived. That was his conversation. His legacy.

He sat in a solid steel chair staring at his reflection. He saw a thin serene brown face and wavy white hair. A long mole bristling white hair resembling an inverted Buddhist pagoda hung from the left side of his chin.

The mole saved him from Khmer Rouge executioners. They were superstitious peasants and said he was the Devil, an evil spirit. They’d let him go.

They conversed in French. The gaunt barber had lived here all his life. The Devil survived four years of genocide by hiding his family in nearby mountains and jungles where the French constructed and abandoned a post office, hotel and casino. They called them The Dark Years.

No one talked about The Dark Years.

The old man closed his eyes. The barber trimmed with hand clippers. Snip, snip, snip. White hair fluttered to the floor meeting piles of black hair. Electric trimmers with frayed wires collected dust on a narrow wooden table under a fractured mirror. A holiday television program featuring Apsara dancers blared from a box on a bamboo table inside the long narrow room.

After trimming top, sides and neck hairs he adjusted the chair easing him back. The barber extracted a thin razor blade from a small piece of paper. He severed both ends into a soda can clinking metal fragments.

He opened a wooden handled straight razor and clicked the blade in. He sprayed water mist around the man’s head. Moisture refracted rainbow light prisms. Whispering the outside edge of an ear lobe angling the man’s head with his left hand he trimmed microscopic hairs.

The razor rasped temple to temple across the scalp line. He was quick, silent and efficient. Smooth hands touched head and face fast light and artistic. The blade followed the line of the nose, curled and danced across skin below closed eyes. He wiped the blade on a white towel lying on the man’s chest. He shaved lower sideburns.

He returned the man to a sitting position. The man smiled at his reflection. The barber snapped a towel across thin shoulders scattering dead cells.

The man eased out of the chair as they chatted. He removed a roll of money hidden at his waist. He handed peeled notes to the barber. Merci. Au’voir.

He shuffled into white heat. His son waited for him on a motorcycle. He tried to swing his right leg over the rear seat. Feeling off balance he hesitated. His left hand reached for a shoulder. His frail contorted useless right arm dangled in space.

The executioners had broken the Devil’s arm. They taught the Devil a lesson in compassion and forgiveness and power and control. Before giving him freedom they wanted to hear the Devil scream for mercy. They wanted to hear his pain echo through The Dark Years.

Beach

Waves erase footprints. Sleeping dogs cur into sand.
The beach orchestra builds its daily tempo.
A young Italian woman unfolds a blue towel on sand.

She lies face down. Pushing up with her arms she assumes a yoga posture eyes straight ahead on a blue green sea. Her spine weaves vertebrae like a wave.

Calm and focused.

Visitors stagger from beds, walk foam, eat, stare at waves evolving from a flat lined horizon holding green island hideouts. People plan to sit or go.

Yes go.
Go for a walk, a swim, adventure.

Discover reality below the surface of appearances.
Dive deeper than unconscious.

Nail girls protected by large floppy hats seeking cuticles needing trim canvass sand sun lovers.
String theory bracelet girls traverse grains of the universe. Boys ply sunglasses for a bright future.

A girl balancing a bamboo platter of pineapples, mangoes, bananas, paring knife, plastic bags and sharp sticks prowls sand from dawn to dusk.

People watch people watching people. It's the thing - look without understanding.

A narrow blue and white boat arrives on sand. A boy throws out a rusty anchor.
Backpackers from islands unload kilos of memories, dreams and reflections.

Boatman throws five large empty water bottles toward land grab.

Mid-day sun shimmers above shaded tables as massage clients

smothered with oil feel muscled women knead bronze
skin tone epidermis as children laugh, run and play in surf
near extreme serious a-dolts and retirees wondering
how they ended up in paradise removed from frozen Europe
hearing dulcimer hammers at a nearby five-story cement project.

Swimmers plunge into H2O covering 70% of Earth.

Couples embrace cold drinks behind mirrored sunglasses.
Fat white Russians slobber UV 30 on skin and drink cold beer.
99.9 % of beach people stare at phones. Ocean waves goodbye.

Strangers accustomed to cement pavement feel sand
Danger. Watch your step. Cautious sensation.

Babel languages whisper a Sappho wind singing iambic pentameter odes with save face time.
Spit in the ocean.
Restless orange diamond light crashes into sunset.
Red sun, white waves, blue sky, green islands. Floating world.

Silver waves lap shore.
White crescent moon hangs by a thread.
Stars sing with their light. I am twinkling.
Create your sandcastle.
Rinse and repeat.