Public relations - TLC 40

The other TLC cranium belonged to the Director of Natives. From the Big Apple core with a PR background she recruited them, interviewed them, hired them, trained them and centered them. She was off center. She took orders from two daughters managing her, accountants, center service managers, personal tutors and eloquent savages.

At a teacher training class in Constantinople chaired by a Spanish princess burning witches at an Inquisition running behind schedule because nobody knew what the fuck was going on the Director kept asking Lucky, “Where’s your watch? Where’s your watch?”

He put an hourglass on the table. He turned it over addressing the gravity of the situation. Sand dancing through time sang, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

Everyone creates his/her sandcastle.

The Director achieved her position because the owners knew she’d cause no turbulence during their ambitious tricycle. Training wheels had rusty mudguards and broken spokes.

“We have time,” said a native to foreign explorers in rain forests, “but you have the machines to controls time. Time is free.”

Leo, the Chief of Unemployed Cannibals showed white invaders the alarm clock strangling him, “Time is an abstract infinite concept. What’s strange is what’s going on inside time. In your world when you retire they give you a gold watch and not enough time to wind it. Life’s little joke. Here we have all the time in the world.”

The Language Company

Heart Monitor - TLC 45

On the Metro he sat across from a young boy, his mother and father. Father’s hands were hard calloused.  

The boy smiled, fascinated by whirling flashing light prisms. His father pulled up his son’s shirt. On his chest were two plastic suction cups and a machine the size of a deck of cards. Ace high. The heart monitor measured his beats, his life rhythm regularity. His father checked the display, saw the cups were secure and dropped the shirt.

“It is a machine for my son. It helps him,” he said with tired eyes. “We got it at Hospital A. Doctors said it was essential for his life.”

The boy and Lucky smiled, cupping hands around eyes scanning the universe, explorers with telescopic magnifying lenses.

He’s a happy kid. Not afraid of a thing like Tran my five-year old Vietnamese friend in a Da Nang hospital missing a leg after stepping on a landmine teaching me Courage.

“We should all be so fortunate,” said adults streaming sad life tales, “Oh pity me. I am so, so tired.”

Talk to the kid. He’ll tell you how tired feels.

Echoes of umbrella digger stone music faded near young lovers huddled on benches and a beggar dreaming on tarmac.

Children with sacred eyes on magical adventures balanced on silver tracks escaping dark tunnels. They disappeared into wild winter aspen forests as two black-shawled women negotiated muddy paths through foliage waiting for spring to thaw out relationships with nature.

Rabbits running in ditches sang The Season of the Witch.

Living breathing bipedal accidents with a pulse craved a place to happen with insight, precision and brevity. Pearl letters played out on a fragile necklace of water-beaded molecules inside an instant in eternity.

Time is a strung-out pimp looking for a fix and exit.

The Language Company

Article 301 in Deep State - TLC 59

“Deep State is a system composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary and organized crime,” said Zeynep.

*

“In summation your honor,” said a defensive attorney from the Land of Smirking Tomatoes, “my client is innocent of personal responsibility and conspiracy charges to overthrow the Deep State. We rest our case.”

 “Your discovery evidence in Article 301 while standing accused of insulting the Deep State is weak and inconclusive,” said a Turkish judge on a political payoff hiding Graft behind his back. “Your motion for acquittal and adjudication is forthwith dead and denied.”

“May I change my plea your honor? May I resume my please bargaining and negotiating hardball tactics on behalf of free speech? May I speak without fear of insulting the schizoid Turkish state, dead hee-haw headless horsemen heroes, nationalism, conservative Fascism and fundamentalism in the form of Islamic religious heroin addiction?”

“That’s a mouthful of here say. File a brief size small with elasticity.”

“Turkey has imprisoned more journalists than Iran and China,” said Zeynep. “Turkey ranks 154th out of 179 countries for Freedom of the Press.”

“Freedom is knowing how big your cage is,” said Lucky.

“Freedom is having no choice,” said Zeynep with an existential twist of sour lemon.

About Face - TLC 62

“Such a querulous quandary laundry list of regrets, what ifs, and maybes,” said a vein-veiled mother sweeping hopes, plans, and dreams down a drain-o with should, would and could tyrannies.

Turkey witnessed a long lilting laborious laughing list littered with the bones of Hunters-Gathers, phony Phoenicians, Romans give me your ears, Greeks, Hiatus, Coitus Interuptus, Arabs, Turkmen, Templar Knights, Mongols, nomadic pastoral hoards, Sultan-A-Mets from a Botox Bronx, Uighurs and literary rascals.

“The law of fear, uncertainty, healthy doubt, adventure and surprise in real time is implicit,” said Incense feeding dead ancestors their daily diet of guilt, shame, self-loathing and remorse fortified with essential vitamins.

A Turkish slave protected by a silk scarf hiding frontal lobotomy scars after perception was removed for analysis closed her balcony door killing world music. She didn’t hear wind-spirits sing dance and drum on shattered mirrors made of sand.

Bamboo leaves shuddered inside a kaleidoscopic reflection of sky, clouds and Lung-ta prayer flags above Lhasa. They danced with drifting chorten sage smoke.

Chinese boy-soldiers marched into a blind alley next to Rampoche Monastery on March 10th, Year Zero. They were surrounded by burgundy wrapped monks chanting, “Om Mani Padme Hum, Om...The Jewel in the Lotus.”

“Lock and load,” yelled Li Bow Down. “Fire. Ready. Aim.”

They blasted chanting monks.

“About face, save face.”

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My Name is Erhan- TLC 64

I am your masseuse. I’ve lived in this Bursa hammam since 1555.

In a large domed room sunrays shafting at precarious precious angles slant along humid walls glancing off mosaic tiles singing blue, green, yellow reflections. The dome has a perfect eight-starred symmetrical hat surrounded by sixteen stars in a geometric pattern. At night stars sing their light. They give me a pleasant headache.

This is where I live and work. I raised my family here. I will die here. This is my fate in a water world where tea and conversations meet in companionship, community and conspiracy.

After the hammam and noon prayers men went to a teahouse. They whispered stories, gossip, myth, legends, fairy tales, innuendo, lies, half-truths and fabulous fictions as small silver spoons danced in glass.

Someone else writes this with a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck 149 fountain pen. He drinks thick black Turkish coffee. A silver embossed glass of water waits for fingers to leave condensation on its surface. He turned to a stranger, “Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death and sweet as love.”

“If you finish the water it means the coffee’s no good,” said a stranger.

Lucky distributed providence to oral storytellers engaging tongues, dialects, foolscap, and fading footsteps behind shadows playing cards and slurping tea. Eyelids were heavy deep visual reminders studying down all the daze.

Such a grand and glorious saga, sang Zeynep, a heroine in a vignette.

I am a short story. You are a novel.

By day I am a gravedigger, said Lucky, and a literary prostitute after dark.

We bury our successes and failures in the same grave.

On your grave are two dates separated by a dash. What’s important is what you do during the dash. Is life a dash or marathon?

Go with your flow. Flow your glow.

The Language Company

Zeynep the heroine