Writers On Steroids

“Ok,” I said to the Senate Committee investigating Writers On Steroids in Room 2143 of the grand facade off Blue Jay Way.

They stared at me with jaundiced eyes. They shuffled paper. An old tottering fool of a Grand Inquisitor pounded his gavel. I remembered him from the McCarthy Era and feared the worst.

“You are accused of taking steroids to enhance your writing performance. We have evidence from editors, hacks and wan-ta-na-bees that you and perhaps thousands of your ilk slaving away like drones in the dungeons of mediocrity, dreams, illusions and journalistic heaven on word machines have boosted your word output through the use of banned, I repeat, banned substances. Say it isn’t so say its all a lie misconception hearsay. What say you?”

I took a drink of pure spring water from mysterious unfiltered Alaskan lakes. A naked trout started dancing on the table in front of me. I laughed. “Ha, you're joking aren't you?”

I stuttered, spitting water all over the microphone. It shorted out and I was forced to use my voice minus amplification.

“Of course I sue steroids, why, in fact, in truth of fact and fiction I sear the meat on your grill with my defamatory remarks. The pills are beautiful and come in a variety of colors, like rainbows. They open doors of perception with wonder shock and awe. I have irrefutable evidence that your committee grooved the approval of these pharmaceutical delights thanks to the huge financial contribution by multinational drug companies to keep you in office. It's well known this country, let alone sports heroes have been programmed to ingest chemicals.”

I jumped on the table with the naked trout and started yelling. “We are ALL filled with chemicals you idiots. It's the American way of life. It's the new mantra, Run, Read, Write with Greater Efficiency and Prose the Poem with diligence and fortitude using Elements of Style. It’s the style baby, the demolition charge under your hat, Jack.”

“Order, order,” yelled a bailiff approaching me with caution, mace and industrial strength handcuffs. “Down boy!”

They shackled me. The Grand Inquisitor handed down my sentence. It had a noun, verb and object.

“Take the prisoner to Cuba and give him an orange jump suit. Interrogate him and deprive him of his writes.”

I screamed in anguish as they dragged me past a pharmacy filled with promise, hope and salvation.

“You haven’t heard the last word from me. Where’s my trout?”

Travel slow in Burma. You're on the ride once.

The Language Company

Creative non-fiction. Journalistic facts. Literary imagination.

Lucky Foot taught English at The Language Company in Turkey in 2008. He returned in 2012. Collecting data. Field notes.

A Vietnam veteran, journalist and facilitator of courage he gifted luck to people in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos beginning in 2004.

He showed up to sit for a spell nurturing positive relationships in the long now.

Accompanied by Humor and Curiosity he helped students speak English minus their 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 their 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 states fostering passive acceptance, fear, indifference and rote learning teacher-centered systems. It was all about passing exams, not learning 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, Turkey 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 word 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.

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."

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," Rita said. "It's about people reading it."

Beauty's Mirror

I’m broiling on the balcony of my Oregon tree house.

Getting down and dirty after 1,001 years away from the typewriter.

Covered in construction dust needing oil it’s a small portable dangerous machine.  It’s capable of transforming life energies and weaving adventures. Threads follow the needle.

I am a peripatetic traveler, literary outlaw, photographer and journalist.

I’m lucky to get it down now and make sense of it later.

I’m a mirror in the mandala of my labyrinth. I am Labrys, from the Greek for a two-headed axe. I write with passion and vision. Short fast and deadly.

Punctuation is a nail.

My mirror reflects everything.

Beauty needs no tongue.

I’m confidant and self-reliant. I explore the human condition. Visual storytelling.

Human energies, frequencies and vibrations reflect languages, lives and attitudes.

I absorb being, joy, anger, jealousy, ignorance, desire, fear, greed, passion and suffering.

Hurl your thunderbolt unto death.

Meditate on the process of your death.

Suffering is an illusion.

The world is an illusion.

Grasping is suffering.

Values, attitudes, joy, belief systems and dreams evolve in my mirror.  

Your mask eats your face.

My mirror is free of dust.

I evolve emotional trust, wisdom, peace and love with truth and compassion.

I experience forgiveness with emotional honesty.

Creativity dances in language.

These truths don’t surprise you after 1,001 years of wandering.

Everything you know is a lie.

Keep a diamond in your mind.

 

The world is made of stories not atoms

I’m filled with wild passion.

A mind-expanding drug of curiosity, delight and freedom increases my awareness.

The eternal present is a long now.

My power is big medicine. It’s a sacred connection to Gaia after 60,000 years of paying attention to details.

I observe a spider meticulously wrapping an insect with thin microfilaments. Spider recycles her old web on the periphery. They haul it to a diamond center. It vibrates in a soft breeze.

Does the spider have any intention when building the web of catching the insect?

Does the flying insect have the intention of finding the web?

Where does instinct end and intention begin?

One instinct is to sit in meditation. Another instinct is to take risks.

To do great things you must take great risks and suffer greatly.

JUMP over the abyss.

My serenity is not purchased over the counter with pharmaceutical coupons. No dust collects on my mirror reflecting an elegant universe in my heart. In my expanded state I am a breath of fire, a lightning bolt sacrificing fear, doubt and uncertainty.

I shatter myth.

Lightning bleeds off my charge creating transformation.

I am an unemployed fortuneteller. I am ahead of the future. The day after tomorrow belongs to me.

I am a gravedigger/archaeologist. Soil is my groundwork. Look at my hands. I know two things. See good dirt under fingernails. I am the soft sand of sleep calming tortured hearts.

Abracadabra! My feminine nature hurls her lightning bolt even unto death. She is a death deferred. She is on death row with a short reprieve. My tranquility is a lethal injection of travel.

It’s 100 degrees in blistering sun. I work hard and fast pounding typewriter keys, digging graves, discovering artifacts.

I dust history off history. I destroy the present to discover the future.

I hammer keys in a new form of construction business. Before bits, bytes and gadgets.

The world is made of stories, not atoms.

Shovels plow archaeological deserts reflecting passion and curiosity. An archaeologist inside a tomb waving Diogenes’s lamp yells, “Every bit we dig out tells a little more about the story.” They unearth a story revealing communities, customs and cultures.

A digger explains how it works. “This stuff we roughly estimate is between 1,800 to 1,990 years old. We use a method called carbon dating. It measures the amount of carbon-14 remaining in ancient material.”

“What is it?”

“Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon found in all organic matter. Scientists determine the age of fossils and artifacts by comparing test results to an international standard. We’ll send it to a lab for analysis.”

“Beautiful. Let me know what you discover, what you learn.”

Tourists find. Travelers discover.

Explorers sift discoveries through mesh screens. A delicate camel hairbrush caresses historical fragments. They dig toward 8,000 well-rested Chinese terra-cotta warriors in battle formation standing ready for excavation.

Chariots, horses and supplies with trapped Mandarin survivor voices echo toward the surface causing vibrational shifts.

Confucian scholars join them. Buried since 210 B.C., guarding Qin Shi-huang-di, the first Emperor of China, their collective consciousness breath creates tremor waves near Xian, the capital of Imperial China.

Warriors stand silent on the edge of the Gobi desert along the Silk Road. Voices sing swirling word storms. They hear brushes shovels, earth moving equipment and hammering keys approach their hidden truth.

“They are coming for us,” said a warrior.

In my inner garden of crimson stimulus I tend wild roses. Nostrils scent sense.

I have a responsibility to the thorns.

Temple of Complete Reality

Zeynep showed Lucky how to swim with gigantic sea turtles off Gili Air is-land.

They did a sitting mediation deep in clear blue water reflecting surface sunbeams.

They practiced a slow walking meditation in soft sand.

They took three slow steps with “in” breath - arrived.

Three steps with “out” breath - home.

If your legs get heavy walk with your heart, she said. Everything we do is a meditation. One is one’s own refuge, who else could be the refuge?

They meditated on the process of their death.

Practice 10,000 times until you’ve got it, she said.

Dive deep exploring underwater life below the surface of appearances.

Let’s have a little adventure.

I wove a magic carpet, Z said. Show me a place you remember. Let’s go.

They flew to The Temple of Complete Reality on Qinchengshan Mountain in Sichuan. It was a series of 2,000-year old Taoist temples in red orange yellow green autumn foliage.

Taoism’s home in China personified balance and harmony. They climbed for 2.5 hours. Cold winds on a clear day. They scampered up mossy stone steps and steep angled dirt paths through primal forests.  

They met Mountain Girl, ten, selling tea where a trail forked into forests. When you come to a fork in the path take it, she said. She joined them. She didn’t want anything. She wasn’t hustling. She lived in the mountain.

She diverted them away from whining obnoxious Han tourists.

She described medicinal plants and herbs. She fed them delicious yellow and red berries. Babbling tales about plants, trees, rivers and animals she shared a story about mountain spirits.

Once three men chased me through the forest. I met a snake. “Please help me escape from men chasing me,” I said to the snake. “It turned into a slim beautiful woman and said, ‘don’t be afraid. I will help you.’ 

“She took me down the mountain, saving me from the bad men. Then she turned back into a snake and disappeared into the forest.”  

They explored a series of temples. Statues, incense, prayers and spirit energies. Inner and outer visions extended in four directions.

They shared rice, chicken, bread and water near the summit. Stone carved twin turtles and dragons guarded the entrance. The main temple was a reddish brown ornate rising sculpture. Crimson incense smoke curled into sky.

Four Chinese characters read:

Clouds circle this temple

Clouds know us by now, said Mountain Girl. 

They circumnavigated rising levels of experience on narrow wooden steps. Below them a golden statue of Lao Tzu rode a wild ox. Yin/Yang.

An old woman offered medallions of the cosmic symbol on red thread. Mountain Girl and Zeynep selected one to wear around their necks. They descended. Mountain girl fingered her threaded talisman.

They stopped at a temple for tea. A young nun washed teacups. “I’ve been here fifteen years. I clean, pray, read, meditate, talk with monks and travelers and do my work. I am focused on my goal.  My goal is to reach the root below the surface.”

Her path was direct with heart-mind intention.

They bought Mountain Girl food to take home and walked to her bike. He gifted her a white khata scarf from Tibet.

Zeynep gave her a hug. “Here’s a poem by Rumi.”

Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky

And you lift me up out of the two worlds.

I want your sun to reach my raindrops,

So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.

“Thanks,” said Mountain Girl. “Every heartbeat is an eternal rhythm of universal possibilities. May you enjoy wonder, health, abundance, gratitude, and contentment.”

Mountain girl and Vivian