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.

 

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.

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We are Stardust - TLC 80

He shared a universal story with Grade 4. “Many tribes love to look back. Passion and grasping creates suffering. It's a genetic molecule of fear, healthy doubt, fantastic uncertainty, surprise and adventure. Monkey mind. No worries, no memories. A child’s innocent curiosity lives in the present.”

“Every little thing is in front of us,” said a genius kid.

“Yes,” Lucky said, “focus on your essential needs not your wants. Imaginary wants manifest desire. Attachment and grasping creates suffering. Suffering is an illusion. We are all passing through. Humans look back in their vivid reptilian imagination hoping to see a ghost memory, a figment of their imagination.

Is it safe?

“Change is scary. They look back to remember where they came from. They look back because they are afraid they will never see the village and people again. They use their disappearing energy to look behind wondering and wandering and milling around in a perpetual state of shock and distraction.

“Humans seek clues at their personal ground zero. They’ve evolved from distant galaxies. Java man evolved here 40,000 years ago. Accepting an evolutionary premise, their DNA star chart continues its genetic dance. We are stardust. Never trust an atom. They make up everything. The world is made of stories not atoms. Oh, and one more thing. Don’t let school interfere with your education.”

He lived in talking monkey zones. They ate rice, drank water and fucked. They washed one set of clothing and hung it on bamboo. They killed all the animals and burned down all the forests. They bred, worked and got slaughtered. Shamans brought rain. Tropical downpours gave humans free showers. 

Food was cheap. Let’s eat mantra. This had nothing to do with simian behavior. It had nothing to do with two women sitting in a dark warung food joint near a private school facing a tall cinder block wall. Chickens goats and cats prowled pecked and foraged in garbage. One woman sat in a deep meditation as her friend cleaned her scalp. They took turns exploring and inspecting. This genetic ritual was practiced in world zoos, jungles and rain forests.

Chattering storytellers. Musicians played ancient gamelan tunes. Heal people with music. Music is the fuel.

Idle Indonesian males after washing taxis studied accumulated grime under long yellow curling fingernails. Waiting for passengers they played chess in Banyan tree shade. Checkmate, said Death, You lose.

Drivers visited the warung chatting up girls, devouring spicy rice mixed with tofu, chicken, veggies, green chilies and deep-fried snacks.

One lucky explorer created a Brave New World.

         Culture is what you are.

         Nature is what you can be.

He invented new futures with cold, detached logical intention and compassion. He survived in an assessment-of-process paradigm inside an expanding data based star cluster.

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Intention and motivation

Attention

To: Secret Agent Wordsmith.

From Godot: Nobody shows up. Nothing happens.

Discernment is everything in his mute Turkish life. Silent speculative tongues babble on community islands. Hustle tea with brown details. Clown town. Mother leads fashionable daughters. An old man’s shoulder weights a box of hazel’s nuts. A battered pewter teacup sits empty. A flaneur primps.

Inbreeding statistics reveal genetic truth and future medical issues at rural population control centers. Confront basic Turkish insecurities – loss and awareness with repressed aggression, sullen anxious attitudes, pervasive psychotic disorders and phobia.

What you don’t see between unemployed words is fascinating.

A cripple without legs heard laughter’s lymphatic memory. They were amused by a smile stirring sugar’s anger. A reader read a weather forecast to a friend. Rain. A black bearded man carried a chainsaw into a Giresun forest with intention and motivation.

The Invisible Ghostwriter

Down below love’s labyrinth looking for sexual partners 50,000 symbolic woodcarvers gesturing possibilities fostered benign footsteps telling 4,000-year old stories behind fish markets hearing catatonic voices seek meaning.

Quest-ions ran around looking for answers, Where are you? Come out come out wherever you are my bright little star.

Worry beads between male fingers worried themselves to death.

Alone and feeling cold, an old man stirred tea with ambivalence.

Love conspirators sang the blues.

Harmonic convergence polished black dress shoes.

A beautiful Trabzon university girl with shattered dreams and zero hope of being a boat captain attended an economics class.

Do the numbers. ABC. 

Chance

It’s come to our attention, said Deep State, we need more police – yes that’s correct...more police...moreguns, ammunition, uniforms, plastic hats, plated belt buckles, shields, face masks, tear gas canisters (made in Brazil) water cannons, green parks in Istanbul, collapsed mines in Soma killing 301, authoritarian boredom, fear, self-censorship, zero social networks, NO judiciary, more imprisoned journalists, more GREED and less wisdom, compassion, freedom and tolerance.

A new directive was issued. Verb 3.

Eating is important for a balanced diet.

Turkish female robots with bored black eyes conducted international surveys wearing skintight jeans promoting small chattels.

Remember to accessorize your demeanor with high heels and a serious facial expression of:

1) disgust

2) stupidity

3) monochromic awareness

4) worry

5) anxiety

6) fear

The die was cast.

Fate and Destiny sang a duet.

Timing played Danishan melodies at 1644 hours.

Giresun Before Dawn Mid October 2012 6:02 a.m.

Mild air outside designer storm windows fitted with rubber air current verb modifiers played through grammar-based pine trees eating kabobs in The Department of the Forest.

Mother, may I sleep forever? Yes my sweet, she purred stirring tomatoes content in the context of creating a lifetime of dependency while baiting a sharp fishhook sentence snaring a gentle reader, Let’s Eat the alphabet.

Are you a victim or participant, asked Quest-ion.

A victim, said Turkish student-citizens. We are (free) willing victims. We eat loss for breakfast with twenty-eight varieties of olives. I am a proactive participant, said a linguistic Chinese waif. You are Other, said victims, a barbarian and a rouge element. We share everything, said Other. Eat your freedom like Lone Wolf, said a reliable narrator having their ears cleaned with sanitized stainless steel tools by a Cambodian woman waiting for Mr. ATM.

I have nothing to say and I’m saying it. That’s nothing, said Milling Around in Asia. I have nothing to do and I’m doing it. I sleep, eat and fuck. So what, said Curious, I have no reason to live except to find out what happens next in this adventure. I don’t have time for negative losers. Get a life.

Inside a frozen sterilized room planning his great escape under the cover of Sacrifice, a national holiday 26-31 October, Lucky scribbled by tenor sax. Blue Train echoed through empty rooms with acoustic memory.

This geographical derivation detour wasn’t his glass of tea or chai in local lingo.

I agree, said Z, Ya got get a move on. Get back where you belong. You did your work here, brought people some luck, helped others develop courage, made field notes and street photography, I don’t belong anywhere, he said, It’s ok, where you go there you are, your heart’s in Asia.

Where’s Franz Kafka when u need him? He’s living in Anatold you so as an unmuting amusing assumed mute protagonist so he is. The bureaucrazy night dream mare plays on...

Write another chapter, said Z to calm your tortured heart.

Scene: Giresun, 4,000 years later. I’ve been here before, said a fish in a bowl. What’s water? It’s all I know. It’s the first thing an infant needs and the last thing a dying person requests.

I am amused by Freedom said a woman opening her legs getting to the verb.

One word. One vision. One day. One dream. One chance.

Make it new day-by-day. Make it new.

Opportunity cost. Return on investment. Cost-benefit ratio.

Lucky paid now.

Putting profit before people, Trabzon English Language School paid later.

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Conversation's Dexterity

Dawn’s orange lightness spread over the Black Sea.

Curious enrolled in a Push Them Through English School. I need vocabulary and the courage to use it with meaning, dexterity and humor. I know my English is not grammatically perfect but I know my English is fluent, said Independence.

Casablanca

I know what I don’t know, said Z. The more I learn the less I know. Real eyes see real lies.

You are the teachers, Lucky said to Turkish beginners brain-washed by parents, media and education system. I am a student.

They expressed fervent Denial, an Egyptian river. No, you are the teacher. We have no free choice or logical imperative to accept responsibility for our learning. If we accept responsibility we have to accept the consequences and do the work BUT we are lazy. We live in a never-ending existential crisis. We are conditioned to sit, listen and memorize. We blend in, like Leo's history teacher warned. We just want to pass the fucking exams. It’s your job to create a facsimile of grammar book learning.

The less I do the fewer mistakes I make, said one smiling with cunning social intelligence. The fewer mistakes I make, said their twin with cunning social intelligence, the less I am criticized.

You got that BS write, said Lucky.

Light my fire, said Jim Morrison trying to impress two girls.

Feed me, said another. I am not a participant. I am a victim.

I know what you mean, said another SAD student. It’s fun being a victim. We can blame everyone else with our projected fears and loss for our failure to be real, human and brave.

See with soft eyes, said Lucky. We see through our eyes, not with our eyes.

Thanks for life lesson #7, said a past tense grammar addict injecting a lethal dose of acquiescence into their heart-mind.

You’re welcome. Next.

I have two scissors and one brother.

How are you? I am 21 and you?

How old are you? I am fine and you?

Speak memory.

Oh yeah? The safest memories are those you never remember.

Memories are all you have.

Are your needs being met?

That’s a fundamental quest-ion. Right there with the What Is Life quest-ion.

You get one chance with dignity and grace. Get is the joker word in English.

I am Curious. It’s a pleasure to see you again. Go with the flow. Flow with your glow. Flow and grow is an honorable quest. I sing and live in a flow state in Giresun, said Lucky. So I heard.

A traveler passing through brought good luck to silversmith, cook, baker, candlestick maker, fish hawker, cheese seller, broom maker men, women sewing cloth, merchants selling knives, banging copper, punching leather, women brewing tea, men cutting roots, laughing children and students saying yeah, yeah we’ve heard all this before, as singing musicians overcoming temporary anxieties with flowing confidence speaking in tongues wandered narrow alleys of becoming.

Poetic inspiration. Short, fast and deadly.

A wandering minstrel in Trabzon played his Kemil with love inside shadows of tolerance and charity. His broken orange shoebox collected currency from enamored strangers. A young girl turned to her mother, you know the words mama and I know the music - he plays loss, hope and memory. It’s our cultural history sweetie.

Crystals reflected an island where Amazon women warriors took no prisoners. They had sex once a year and abandoned males in pine forests.

A busy busboy checked his obsessive watch. Out. Pulsating tick-tock. Big time waits for no one.

Office hysterics. A young English teacher from Plymouth expressed his quest. I need empathic accuracy. Look it up, said Lexicon opening his heart.

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