Bursa Hammam by Z

Crows cackled at sunrise. Bamboo Nomad opened the blinds at the TLC teachers’ apartment in Bursa, Turkey, riding the blinds a metaphor for rails, a cryptic railroad life of drifters and literary outlaws hopping a freight out of town, rolling.

Light particles streamed to a pink and red veined orchid in a brushed silver container. Tibetan incense curled in white light. Red gladioli, oh so glad, petaled their beginning. Piano Etudes tinkled by P. Glass.

Fear, a handful of dust in an urn labeled Gratitude, celebrated laughter.

A piano fell silent. Violins and a cello picked up the slack hemming their garments at intersections on life’s loom, said Devina.

In the new world order all the police and security forces are children they know how the world works. Kids have a shock proof built-in shit detector.

Storytellers agreed.

Elegant cirrus clouds swirled around pachyderms and Staunton pieces fighting to control the four center squares.

A quixotic knight errant with a curving silver scimitar followed by Panache on a donkey waving a red one-star Vietnamese Communist flag sailed through Russian thongs and throngs driving a Turkish turbo-bus near Hanoi hair salons where women trimmed Winter Hawk’s talons.

Bright yellow coughing taxi engines heard Arabesque musicians fingering Ouds lamenting loss forever as percussionists hammered goatskin drums  ...

Turkish silver merchants sang, Lucky sale, First sale, Cheap, Make my day.

In a Bursa hammam built by the Grand Vizier Rustem Pasha in 1555 filled with blue and green geometric tiles and vaulted ceilings, steam rose through rusting bars to locate a Wi-Fi signal from the private Achebadem Hospital emergency room staffed by stressed out C-19 doctors looking over thin shoulders with lost bewildered aimless fear in trepidation toward lost bewildered aimless fat ugly white idiot tourists named ATM dragging their lives and dusty packs on tired shoulders through Asia as hungry heartbroken wolves paced tight narrow cages lamenting loss of freedom howled the blues.

Humans are wolves in sheep’s clothing, said Tran.

Chekhov said there are three paths. Choose one.

Turn left wolves eat you, go right you eat wolves, go straight you eat yourself.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

State of Becoming

One Saigon day a nomadic TEFL facilitator having a look-see visited ELF, a local English Language Factory.

He didn’t go in. He’d researched the business from Hanoi. It was a large well-funded managed operation with branches.

At a nearby java joint he met a teacher from the State of Becoming, SOB.

He said, We have good support. They offer a CELTA certificate costing you $1500, we have resources and a wide range of ages, groups and abilities, I’ve been here one year and my experience is positive, we have good team focus and professional development, they take care of work permits, new teachers without the CELTA are required, at a 50% discount, to take the course. Education is a business. There is flexibility and structure, the educational level is higher than Hanoi, one piece of advice, if the student is 28, they have the emotional level of 21. (-7)

This EI  is common in Asian schools. Teachers - parent #2 - tell kids what to think not teaching how to think.

Serious factoid. Push kids through The System minus critical thinking skills.

Oh, to be human…

Old man, young woman...

Wordsmith danced his final farewell Saigon long gone song. See if you can scribble twenty words. Write one clean honest sentence.

Twenty words. Twenty quick painless illuminations about the 60-year-old man in THE BLINKING LIGHT. Retired American or European.

Smoking, drinking a beer, wearing a flower print shirt. Alone. He called someone. Ten minutes later a woman arrives on her cycle. Mid 30's, long dark hair, red shirt, attractive. He grasps both her hands expressing deep gratitude. She is his lifeline in Saigon, his hope, passion, unrequited love and salvation from loneliness, alienation, suffering and life’s blues. She comes to his emotional rescue.

He handed her the wine list. Anything you want, it’s yours. He is grateful to know and receive her. I want your heart, she said. She is happy with him. He is her savior. Her love. Her salvation. He is Mr. ATM from a lonely-hearts club band first aid. Mouth to mouth recitation.

After a quiet romantic candlelight dinner they returned to his hotel room. They danced naked for dessert. She traced his spine with fingers. He rested his head on her breast, listening to her heartbeat, hearing the thump-thump-thump drum muscle pumping blood through miles of veins and capillaries and arterial aerated erotic aortas. Be the drum.

For one brief night in their healthy beneficial addiction they held each other with desperate desire before Tran’s Dream Sweeper machine collected everything at dawn. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged