Journeys
Images
Cloud
Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.50)

The Language Company The Language Company
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

Subject to Change Subject to Change
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
ratings: 2 (avg rating 3.50)

Amazon Associate
Contact
Saturday
May212016

memory is hunger

I saw my first Cambodian woman with a prosthetic right foot. It was her gait.

How she dragged the green olive drab right leg behind her as she crossed the street. It reminded her of a lost condition where one whispers know more than they reveal.

She was maybe 40, give or take a moment. It was a moment years ago when she stepped on the invisible land mine. Her story evolved into family taking care of her. Relatives patched her up. They tied her leg with vines to stop the flow. A doctor. Blood. Pain. Tears and memory.

Memory is hungry. I need more victims, said Memory.

She absolved her faint transitory belief in Buddha and mysteries. I am grateful to be alive.

After she went to SR she got her new leg.

She practiced walking again. She developed the drag.

If her husband and family rejected her

she ended up in the city sitting on a sidewalk selling string

Begging

Stringing life line life time string

Monday
May162016

If I grow up I die - TLC 79

Being nine Lucky helped 4th grade geniuses become more human. Engage-study-activate. Everyone had fun. Students learned that whining was boring and useless. Smart ones knew without understanding. They knew what they didn’t know.

Kids shared Socratic discussions. They explored and expanded creative imagination journal writing, cross-disciplinary art, chess and teamwork development projects. They built and flew kites.

They practiced good manners and treated everyone with respect.

They focused on developing character: zest, courage, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, curiosity, fairness, generosity and integrity.

They shared soft eyes, relaxation techniques and meditation mind maps. They accepted personal responsibility for learning and exploring the process of becoming.

He assisted them to develop critical thinking skills outside imaginary social and educational conditioning traps. “I am here to help you make mistakes.”

One day a young teacher kid said, “We need challenges, Teacher Lucky.”

“What kind of challenges?”

“We need hardship and deprivation.”

“Yes,” said another teacher, “we need to take more risks.”

“How do you develop courage?”

“Through failure. We love to fail better."

“Correcto mundi. Welcome to The Think for Yourself Academy. Everything we do is an experiment.”

They planned, designed and constructed an elaborate high-risk rope and creeper vine obstacle course in jungles challenging body, mind and spirit. Teamwork skills blossomed like orchids.  

Residents near his garden sanctuary passed a tall green spiky cactus stretching arms into bluebird songs. A nanny carrying an infant memorized the echo of white cat paws trailing flip-flops. Faustus, seeing throughinnocent eyes rode behind his pedaling Chinese father.

A laughing skipping girl negotiated freedom. A beggar wearing broken shoelaces studied pavement. A man spinning in his labyrinthine puzzle struggled with an activated cell phone in worn green baggy shorts hoping the call would save him from loneliness, boredom, alienation and metaphors like death.

Children in pink pajamas collected brown leaves and fragrant yellow-white hibiscus flowers.

In Bahasa sun a middle-aged daughter spoon-fed her mother in a wheelchair. Swallowing love her smiling mother remembered when she did all the feeding.

The Language Company 

Wednesday
May112016

diamond mind

He's been here many times, many places on earth.

He passes through with a diamond in his mind.

A man in a white hat rings a bell. He pushes his orange three-wheeled ice cream cart down the street. He passes a woman unloading stacks of kindling at a cafe.

12,000 orphans from 269 safe houses huddle for warmth.

Humans are nature's tools.

Fuel for cooking and heating water.

Men sit staring at a ghost. Trembling eyes pursue the endless stream of life.

When a conversation dies someone picks up their cell to call another conversation.

I just called to see if you're alive. Have you eaten, Yes. Today was eggs and rice, Tomorrow it's lobster. Ha. Laughter is perfect therapy.

Listening is a lost art. The majority of people don't listen to understand they listen to reply. Lost art wandered around Laos discovering Listening. 

Sullen is one kind of conversation. Surly married Indifference.

People die from neglect suffering from no love.

I work. I breed. I get slaughtered.

Sunday
May082016

Beauty of travel

The beauty of travel is the anonymouse sensation in a crowd.

On a Sunday all the Khmer men gather for coffee, tea and stories.

Do you take milk with your stories, asked one. No, straight.

Some study another's face and words.

Others study cell phones or the unposed their music video on a tv.

TV is great, said one, it allows you to give up your consciousness.

Still others study a conversation disguised as a peddler pulling his trash cart

Down a street squeezing air out of a worn plastic bottle to summon the attention of a person waiting to hear the air knowing they can pawn some junk, perhaps an old family heirloom or weaver's word loom in Lao village along a river stream of consciousness.

Or a real loom with or without threads of a dangling modifier; cotton or silk having created clothing for relatives now since gone.

The silence of conversations attracts flies.

No one bothers the stranger writing or drawing in a notebook. 

Sunday
May012016

words discuss words

Words had a discussion.

They discussed choices. Cause and effect.

They negotiated a fine line.

SMILE- WE WILL HELP YOU PRACTICE

Do you feel my pain?

Animate and inanimate objects.

Mindfulness in the moment.

Hope is the greatest evil. A myth. POWER. CONTROL.

Thoughts are shadows of our feelings - always dearer, emptier, and simpler.

Dreams, wishes, fears. Dreams are repressed wishes.

Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.

Living safely is dangerous.