Ankara, Turkey

Brown rolling hills said, Open sesame. Shazam. 1,001 Arabian Nights shared stories inside stories. Dervish mystic dancers wheeling in trances welcomed his spirit.

Lucky had accepted a teaching/facilitating TLC job with an acquisition cycle.

He learned the majority of Turks suffered from anxiety. They took anti-depressants called Xanax to calm psychotic neurosis. Symptoms of overwhelming sadness dressed citizens in rose petals between self-pity, loathing and thorns.

Ankara was a boring, cold capital city filled with sad administrative paper-pushing androids.

A part-time female teacher from South Africa married to an English environmentalist studying seal habitats along the southern coastline helped Lucky buy a DNA cell phone. He’d never had one.

It was a 1984 red gadget with buttons and functions like calendars, tools, SMS, IM, Teams, Bluetooth, internet access, GPS and To Do, Did, and Does it work?

Connections. Locations.

It displayed points of interest at low interest rates. Instant, Everywhere You Are Or Imagine You Are or Need To Be Where You Are Now at this precise moment with dimensional proportions suited his nomadic status acquiring mobility extremes.

One morning he walked to the Ulus garden nursery below an old Roman castle. A red hammer and sickle flag waved above ramparts. He discovered white, red and purple roses, cactus, ten small plants, containers and potting soil. Good dirt.

A word gravedigger caresses good dirt.

For language play he stole brown, beige and black linen pants, five long-sleeved button-down cotton shirts, two silk ties and three pairs of thin black socks. He bought an iron and ironing board for linen, cotton threads and extraneous words.

Like Murakami he loved ironing. Zen heat and gentle pressure married textile’s texture.

He knotted a tie to his phone and dragged it through Ankara yelling, “Don’t think. Look. See. I’m connected to the Universe. I am now a VIP. I have Infinite Diversity through Infinite Combinations. IDIC for short.”

After studying cracked pavement anxious Turkish eyes expressed serious facial expressions

In Search of Lost Time.

Citizens cradled delicate phones like infants in sleep mode.

Strangers congratulated Lucky with lilies, orchids, rose thorns, floral arrangements and invitations to weddings and funerals in Kurdish PKK controlled no-fly zones bordering Syrian refugee camps.

The Language Company

Father & Daughter

The blind man and his daughter.

He wore a felt hat. He gripped a wooden staff. His face was long and sallow.

The girl was 11. Wearing cotton, her face was solemn, shocked.

Both wore plastic flip-flops.

She held his hand.

They came to an intersection.

Small buses, bikes, lost fat Europeans, orange robed wandering monks, silver vans.

Women carrying bamboo baskets spilling oranges negotiated pavement.

The girl led the man across the street.

Their pace steady.

She was his eyes. He trusted her implicitly.

A stranger drawing in his notebook watched them.

He pulled a 20 Kip note from his pocket.

He gestured to the girl, Take it.

She froze.

She spoke quick Lao words to her father.

Questioning, doubt, healthy uncertainty in her eyes.

The stranger gestured the 20.

She remained still.

He got up and slowly approached her. His hand extended the money.

His hand said, take it.

Her small hand emerged with caution. Her small fingers accepted the gift.

She smiled placing her hands together.

Her fingertips touched her chin meaning, Thank you.

She whispered to her father, it's 20.

His blind eyes darted back and forth.

He mumbled, Thank you, joining his hands.

His wooden staff hung in the air like a pendulum.

She led him away.

They disappeared.

Fragments

One-eyed blind.

On the 28th he said, Yes, I prefer doubt to certainty. I am more interested in the traces

than the object. I love the fragments.

On the 29th she asked, Where do I place it, this story?

What country what continent city village or heartbeat?

How do I keep it simple like a breath?

She asked him, Do you like small? Skin on skin? Yes kneading her shoulder muscles,

Easing tissue from her supine sublime spinal chord

Erasing tension. Her smile said, Yes. Her relaxation exhaled.

She spoke with hand wings. Short, fast and deadly.

She dreamed of writing a poem perhaps flash fiction.

She selected a pen unscrewed the black ebony summit opened a black notebook.

She made a pot of green tea.

She began with flowing calligraphy letters.

My life began in a village. I don't need to leave my village. My village is the world.

She drew a picture. It looked like this temple. Women carved it. Caress the details. 

 

Tourists find, travelers discover.

A dreamer with controlled imagination.

SLOW CHILDREN...lightning bolts - blue butterfly, white sky, green flowers, red leaves, songs of invisibility, piano shadow notes.

How do you spell loss?

What I call "memory" contained an entire world.

A blind painter creates from memory. A blind writer. A blind poet.

Words of yellow laughter.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Burma - Give Peace A Chance

Buson Haiku

On the great bell

Stops a butterfly

And sleeps.

Buson

Other, Shadow & Weaver

I am afraid, said the Swiss girl, of becoming the Stranger, the Other.

The Other. I am Other said Shadow. Outsider.

I'm afraid of always being the Other, she said.

Why? said Shadow.

It's fear I suppose, it's difficult to articulate. It's a sense of feeling apart, separate from people.

I know it, Shadow said, I'm like that. I live on the edge. I engage. I am vulnerable, open, honest maintaining a sense of detachment.

How is it this sense of outside? she said.

It's objective, he said.

Shadow felt her vision escape toward the weaver at her loom creating her meditation.

I am the shuttle sliding across threads, Weaver said. I am smooth aged wood holding two bobbins. One is golden silk thread, the other purple.

As I slide threads bobbins spin at the speed of light releasing, ah all the releasing, letting go of myself trailing into and between thin black origins - the essence where I rest.

Weaver cautions Shadow with her fingers - purple and golden desires lie tight. She pulls her emptiness toward me, hands and feet.

I feel connected, said Weaver.

I am bound to Others before me.

I wait for Others to join me.

I am part of the whole. Part of the grand design inside her dream.

I pass through. I am not dreaming. I am here and now.