Buddhist capital
|Loving kindness
Compassion
Sympathetiic joy
Equanimity
Natural simplicity
Interdependence
Loving kindness
Compassion
Sympathetiic joy
Equanimity
Natural simplicity
Interdependence
Yes. Make it new day by day make it new.
New country, renewal since Mandalay 1.5 years back.
New city - Yangon, traffic jams, new living space on the 8th floor - climbing up flights of cement stairs staring at your feet, walk softly, 114 steps. Exactly. Reminds you of narrow Chinese neighborhood flats, dwellings. Street talk. Habitats for humanity.
Flocks of crows welcome you. I salute the sun.
Caw, caw, swivel black eyes scanning the universe. Wing music.
New language company of educators from global births. Gifted transient masters of their destiny.
Soft gentle light staff. Land of smiles.
Process new sensations.
Happy Halloween!
It's the perfect day to return to Burma. Yes.
Get on your magic broom. Lift off, join clouds.
They should know you by now.
You were in Mandalay spring 2013. Montessori.
Now it's Yangon. Sweet culinary and spiritual bliss.
Help others develop courage. Explore the magical human condition.
Creative non-fiction. Journalistic facts. Literary imagination.
Unpleasant facts are littered through TLC like landmines, lovers, literary outlaws, educational malaise, geography, butterflies, rice, luck and sex.
Lucky Foot taught English at The Language Company in Turkey in 2008. He returned in 2012. Creating field notes.
A Vietnam veteran, journalist and facilitator of courage he gifted luck to people in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos since 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 with fluency 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
Dear of 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, and religions 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 your self.
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. 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 authority figures.
Leo, the Chief of Cannibals 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 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. Rice comes first.
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, gratitude, abundance and wonder as an independent individual.
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, Zeynep said. It's about people reading it.
Zeynep the heroine genius.
After Saigon, I walked to Sapa in northwest mountains.
Talking monkey tourists from Hanoi are here to eat, gamble, sing, dance/screw and buy cheap Chinese plastic products, said Mo, 10, H’mong cloth seller.
They are an army in high heels, floppy hats, sunglasses, shiny belts and lost eyes. They run to stand in front of a Catholic Church to have their photo snapped off. Most ignore us.
A woman tourist slows down in her long march toward consumerism to look at Mo’s work: a handmade belt, a colorful wrist wearable, a thin wallet. The wallet is thinner than Mo.
She’s surrounded by a chorus, “Buy From Me! Buy From Me!”
The woman faints. Another buyer takes her place near blue tarp patchwork junk dealers selling fake watches, cheap pants, shirts, hats and knickknacks.
Eyes scan colors, fabrics and faces.
A park has baby red roses. A dusty historical statue stares at brackish fountain water. Six Red Dzao women talk with bags and threaded samples spread on the ground.
“Do you want to buy from me?” said one smiling with gold teeth.
“Yes. I want to buy the mountain.” I pointed to the rising green western forest, steel gray granite slabs, deep shaded valleys, and gray clouds skimming peaks around high deep edges.
“Ok,” she said. “I will sell you the day mountain for 10,000 and the night mountain for 10,000.”
“Ok. It’s a deal.” We laughed.
Red communist scarfed school kids in uniformed mass hysteria, deprived of sleep stagger uphill to a bright yellow school building where a young boy pounds out a rhythm on a ceremonial drum. Come all yea faithful, joyful and trumpet.
Two big brown dogs fuck on the street in front of the Catholic church where tourists gather for a photo shoot.
Local Vietnamese women armed with cameras rented by the day selling images, memories and dreams poke and prod women, husbands, boys and girls into manageable groups for the moment.
The decisive moment they will remember forever.
Memories of their life will be framed on a family alternative votive candle altar near burning incense feeding, appeasing dead hungry ancestral ghosts.
Caught in time.
Frozen alive.
Possible signs of intelligent life in Sapa.
Rumor control reports.