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Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
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The Language Company The Language Company
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Subject to Change Subject to Change
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Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
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Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
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Saturday
Apr302016

New Garden - TLC 78

Lucky shifted to a serene garden zone after sharing a house for two months with a sad young Filipino math teacher in the gated community of Alam Sutra.

The boy/man fathered a five-year old girl and left her with her mom in Manila Vanilla. His favorite expression was, “Let's Eat.”

Truth is powerful. You don’t have to remember what you said. Lucky mentioned choices and consequences. Math man didn’t hear, listen or care. Being a calculating teacher he figured a job with a decent salary in Amnesia was worth the emotional compromise cost.

A Hanoi survivor yelled, “Any fool can have a kid. It takes courage to raise them as independent free thinking individuals.”

In the new garden Lucky planted thirty flowers, red and pink roses, apple trees, deciduous shrubs, watercress, dill, oregano, parsley and thyme.

He refocused healing energies an hour west of Joke & Choke plus trolls tolls by taxi nightmare traffic due to poor urban highway planning. City pollution was a killer. It blasted throat and eyes. All east-west traffic passed through the city center. No ring roads. Duh.

“The center cannot hold,” said W.B. Yeats.

Air quality was refreshing in walled estates with tropical flora. Butterflies, songbirds, cockroaches, big brown beady-eyed rats and contemplative speckled frogs existed with copious little people.

Some homes were Mac Mansions. Greek and Roman columns with Ironic and Corinthian spiral decorations shouted, Look at my huge monster home. I made it. Empty palatial rooms collected dust as in China where it was all external appearances. Goes to show ya. Most homes in the gated communities were a bland 1-2 story cookie-cutter style. 

Everyone had a maid in Java jive some older than spoiled offspring. They cleaned two cars, swept dust, watered stone passages, cooked, scrubbed clothes and fed kiddies while parents were making money. It’s a job. 

Making money is a job. You need plates, ink, paper, press, a paper cutter, distribution system and government backed IOUs.

Illiterate slaves supported families surviving in a no-name village memory. A never-ending human supply system on an archipelago swarmed with 230 million hungry worker bees.

Food was cheap. Medicine and education were expensive.

Keep them poor barefoot and happy.

Favorite Jakarta sports were: 1) Driving huge 4x4s. Gas was $2.40 a gallon. Sitting in endless long traffic jams. Paying parking fees to paramilitary uniformed men blowing stainless steel whistles.

2) Wandering around enormous prosperous numerous say it fast three times vast shopping centers, huge playgrounds for brats.

Out-of-control kiddies expended spoiled energy. Families enjoyed A/C climate controlled conditions admiring Ankara-like dummies behind glass in a museum quality of artificial life filled with diversionary stimuli and unsatisfied desire.

The private Alam Sutra School named for a fictitious beatific saint had 1,800 students from kindergarten through high school. It began in 1993 when a Catholic priest from Yoga Posture escaping Interpol child molestation charges joined community leaders using a fake I.D. to promote formal educational tyranny and religious intolerance.

Five barbarian elementary English teachers complemented friendly local teachers. Oh, I just love your hairstyle. Your diamond-soled shoes are divine. Your handbag woven from creeper vines is elegant and eco-friendly.

Native teachers had seen colonial invaders come and go for centuries. Lip service.

The English supervisor was an anthropologist from New Hamster, Nova Scotia. Formerly a tenured professor in Malta, she left the job, house, marriage, mortgage, cars, airplanes and yachts for a meditative life. Her resume extolled extensive international educational administrative experience with time and space.

 

Sunday
Apr242016

DO the Mango Tango - TLC 77

I go. We go. You go. Mango. Super fruit. Buy one. Get one free. Peel it down. Peel her skin. I am a bed rabbit. Plow my field. Honey needs money. Savor my succulent mass of alpha bet your sweet ass anti-oxidants.

A. C. E. Ace a mango.

Mango’s humility skin released interior monologue. Flowing sensations danced mango simplicity with serenity. 

Mango said, “There are two kinds of people in the world.”

“What are they?” said a Cambodian named Orphan.

“They are subdivided into sub-species. There are people who want to blame you and people who want to distract you. There are people who want control or approval. There are people who face the music and there are people who run for cover.

"There are people who pay attention and people who don’t know or care what the fuck is going on. They are too poor to pay attention. There are people who make things happen and people who dream about making things happen. Yeah, and one more thing - there are people who are willing victims of their auspicious fateful situation playing the blame game.”

“That’s a mouthful of mango logic if you ask me,” said Orphan. “You mean, according to the philosopher, Damon Younger Than Tomorrow, ‘distraction is an inability to identify, attend to what is valuable, even when we are hard working or content.’”

“Yes, that’s what I said I mean because I mean what I say and say what I mean jellybean,” laughed Mango doing the tango with Taoist monks at The Temple of Complete Reality in Sichuan.

“Disorientation begets creative thinking,” said Confusion.

Friday
Apr222016

The Commander's Wife Buys Confectionary

In Shan State, Burma in the long now, there was a running insurgency - land, freedom, peace, justice, jade, teak, gold - golden triangle profit and greed with Chinese dynasties.

A shiny green army pickup truck pulled up at the New Moon bakery in Lashio.

A soldier in green jumped out and opened the door. The wife got out – longhair tied bun tight, white and silver longyi, designer purse, imperial jade necklace, diamond studed serious face.

Six soldiers exited the back of the truck. They were on a mission to liberate cakes, cookies, sweets from glass shrines.

The commander got out. Short, wearing a camouflage jacket like a forest with depressed green pants and black shiny shoes. Epaulets on his shoulder.

His sharp black eyes stared at a stranger scribbling at an outdoor table. Zero expression.

His eyes lay buried in his face with recessed emptiness. The commander's war camo boonie hat sat at a rakish angle folded in the front. Decorated with a golden military symbol of happiness, compassion and love.

His wife climbed into a new sun. Her husband uttered quick syllables to #2.

Number two had military bearing without a care in the world. He barked into a walkie-talkie.

A military policeman guarded the front of the truck. Smoking soldiers stood around as motorcycles loaded with succulent strawberries streamed goodbye.

She exited followed by a salesgirl trundling bags of roles and sweet goodies. A soldier jumped to attention, took them and put them in the truck. She spoke to her husband. His face said he was an obediant child.

He followed her to the market for shopping. Soldiers marched behind the queen.

Years later they returned with strawberries, apples and bananas. Soldiers loaded everything into the truck.

Someone called the commander. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. He opened his mouth. Perfect white teeth. He smiled. He barked. A soldier open the door for his wife life. She got in.

He got in and removed his party hat. He smoothed his hair. The military police stopped traffic. They drove into a dream come true.

Wednesday
Apr202016

pen fountain

Sublime beauty near and far
golden butterflies
bamboo homes rolling hills golden rust colored
labor in fields waving raving children

urination

copious food sources, roses

Staring at a writer sitting in tea place cold morning
broken lights curious faces, voices whisper
is doing this
being flowing

“pen fountain” said a laughing boy
standing on a cement slope all the men staring at this transit tori process

The market is excellent.
No foreigners enter hilly labyrinth of morning. A source of fascination.
Zen of sitting nourishment. Monks barefoot meditation. An open hand holds everything. 
Burning coals. Tea.  Fractured light flowing energies.

Character is action.
Tell me a story. At the train stop in Hsipaw 24 lost european souls pulled on their acts

wasted the way onto shoulders
descended to the platform
unloaded packs into tuk-tuk for Golden Dragon hotel.

They took self declined fake images and left.

The lone traveler stayed on the train. It rolled north. The conductor walked through the empty car. He stopped at an empty seat, collected empty plastic water bottles, chopsticks, food wrappers, Styrofoam containers, dreams, nightmares and fantasies mixed with rising expectations, desires and needs.
He dropped everything out an open window.

The train rolled through night.

Monday
Apr112016

Train to Lashio

Ride the rails sixteen hours north

click clack click clack click clack
nature visions bamboo forests
silver rivers
feeling fresh air

hanging out the door of a rock’n roll train
rail alliteration starts at 4 AM.

Stars open sky

A red shaped leaf
fields of lilacs purple black and gold, butterflies,
sense of stillness, renewal of the free rolling spirit,
yellow bamboo leaves at lower elevations, then green exploding higher lush gardens, fir, pine..

Fields being planted
Women and men and children hoeing,  watering, turning soil
Say yes to everything.

The hard scrabble reality similar to northern Laos, oxen, weathered faces,

wood homes thatch, small train station shops in the middle of nowhere,

women loading loading baskets of greens vegetables,

men timber and iron on board
teens shuffle loads of wood from dirt into a train car door
Spaces race long lonely whistle blasts.

20 German Italian Japanese Australian tourists & senior citizens – ugly idiots on train platforms snap Burmese people no interaction real true relationship
attitudes behavior selfish selfies T Bow exit. 
Farewell my lovely.

The lone stranger rides the last four hours to Lashio.