Sewing - TLC 29

A sewing woman returned to her Kampot guesthouse. She splashed water on her face, changed clothes and spit into red roses. She kick started her cycle and rode to the local market inside a dirt labyrinth.

At her corner stall she keyed multiple locks. She stacked numbered wooden shutters. She dragged out her Butterfly sewing machine, ironing board and manikins.

Dummies wore exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling silver stars, moons and small reflecting balls. Her skill designed fabrics for women needing elaborate sartorial refinement attiring engagements, weddings and cremations.

She stayed busy with serious fittings and adjustments. Her universal process was selecting fabric; measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, pushing her machine treadle, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections and ironing.

Threads inside a slow prism flashed light and shadow as needles danced through cloth in endless conversations. Needles talked about traditional conservative behaviors, attitudes and opportunity-value cost. Thread followed their conversations. Together they measured precise calculations establishing a stop-loss number.

All explanations have to end somewhere.

Sky darkened

Ceremonial tribal drum thunder sang

Vocal intensity

Lonely lost suffering

Foreign faces

In Cambodia

Shuddered with fear

What if I die here?

How will my family and friends realize my intention to witness 1200 years of dancing Angkor laterite stoned history in gnarling jungles revealed by natural strobes? 

Lightning flashed skies

Giant flashbulbs

Illuminated petrified children

Buried inside cement caverns

Floating bamboo homes

Eyes

Eating cartoon images

On plasma screams

Skies opened

Rain lashed human crops

Rice blossomed green

Cloud tears cleaned earth

Sweet dreams baby

Rita, Ice Girl in Banlung smashing blocks of ice inside a blue plastic bag with a blunt instrument created a symphony outside unspoken words as a homeless man with a pair of brown pants thrown over a thin shoulder sat down to rest.

Shy women waiting for Freedom averted black eyes.

Aggressive market women manipulated stacks of government issued denominations trusting an implied value in exchange for meat, fruit, vegetables, gold, cotton and silk.

Counting and arranging denominations inside broken beams above fractured cement and mislaid wooden planks covering sewage channels with debris, feathers, jungles and jangled light particles, financial dealers surveyed commercial landscapes with dispatched dialects near rivers revealing stories with fine stitched embroidery.  

Lucky and Zeynep played a musical interlude.

“I know the music but forgot the words,” said an adult swallowing Xanax.

“Music is the fuel,” said Zeynep spinning her Sufi dervish trance dance.

An Anatolian mother intent on cleaning disorder - afraid of losing control of chaos because nature loves a beautiful mess - on her apartment balcony after shaking out wet underwear, dish towels and frayed family threads, hung them in shameful angry regret and slammed her door on dervish music, It's the devil's music.She loved sitting in dark rapacious self-pity waiting for a jingle jangle phony tone.

“Are you alive?” she said to her cellular daughter.

“I survived,” said a disembodied voice.

“Where are you? When are you coming home?”

“I’m with a tribe of women. We’re breaking down and breaking through old conservative values. They are so narrow we’ll need a crowbar or acetylene torch or C-4. We’re developing personal empowerment and dignity. I’ll be home someday mother. I’m doing my healing work.”

Her voice died. Swallowing ignorance mother lapsed into healthy doubt’s quicksand.

At sunset an imam’s recorded voice twittered from a mosque near Achebadem, “Allah is great and merciful. Buy a ticket.”

Push Play.

The Language Company 

Louis the hero - TLC 30

King Louis, a free slave riding a white stallion roared into Bursa from a Turkish dessert. Waving a jeweled sword he scrambled onto a world stage facing ninety million screaming bloodthirsty catatonic maniacs.

“Live and let live. I am a hero. I’ve returned from the mother of all battles. We defeated fear and ignorance. As a bonus we slew greed. We are victorious. We’ve been killing humans for 4,000 years and still no one knows who the king is. See what I brought you,” gesturing past a gateless gate. Red rolling dust clouds obscured chained destitute slaves.

“Oh, shit,” said his twin brother, a shackled slave and former Freon-free refrigerator shyster from Polo Alto singing soprano, “looks like it’s sheer linen damask lace curtains for us.”

“You can say shit again,” sang Leo, an exhausted Chinese prisoner practicing free speech in Braille, a foreign language and Omar’s specialty.

Leo’s memory remembered hauling buckets of night shit to fields near his straw and mud Gobi hovel. It was the price he’d paid for questioning Authority at Beijing Normal U.

- Why do we have to read Mao’s little red book? It’s mush for pigs, he’d asked Authority.

- Because you are a tool of the state, said Authority.

- This shit stinks.

- Here, said Authority, Carry some more.

After that melancholy loss Leo didn’t take shit from anybody. Living in exile with silence and cunning he burned through levels of existence.

A stream-winner, he slept with Ratanakiri shamans in animist cemeteries. He exchanged stories about becoming with Rita, his friend and author of Ice Girl in Banlung.

Using sustainable dry yak-yak manure Leo discovered fire by rubbing precious stones together. Impressed, his tribe anointed him Chief of Cannibals. He wore an alarm clock around his neck demonstrating Power Prestige Status & Esoteric Arcane Prescient Wisdom.

On stage raising his ruby, emerald and diamond mind sword Louis the crime smelter hero approached a line of wage slaves, Soma miners, shrouded widows, seventy imprisoned journalists and cheap coal powered grieving families. “Bend over. Stick your neck out. It’s not about justice. It’s about procedure.”

“Not me! Why Me?” exclaimed millions.

He brought justice down. He decapitated a screaming target. “Take that, idiot.” Heads rolled.

Revenge. Vengeance. Swift. Sweet. Complete.

A clear cheer erupted from Turkish sheep waving ticket stubs.

Louis turned to the masses. “Step right up ladies and gentlemen to The Greatest Show on Earth. Miracles revealed. Have your immediate future told,” he repeated with reported speech.

Slaves with an eyes-only top secret security clearance in deep shadows played espionage chess in the middle game. They focused on position and material. Your move, said Death, Be mindful.

I lost one day - TLC 31

Crows sang sunrise.

Lucky opened window blinds at the TLC teachers’ apartment. Riding the blinds sang a metaphorical cryptic railroad life. Hop a fright. Get out of town. Hit the highway. Get down the road.

Ain’t nothin’ but da blues, sweet thing.

When you come to a fork in the road take it, said Zeynep.

Sun streamed to pink-red veined orchids in a brushed silver container. Tibetan incense curled into light. Red gladioli, so glad, petaled beginning. Piano Etudes by Glass tinkled. A handful of dust labeled fear celebrated tonal frequencies. Piano fell silent. Violins picked up the slack hemming garments along life’s loom down at the crossroads making a Faustian deal with the d-evil.

In a new world order all the police are children.

They know how the world works.

Elegant clouds observed pachyderms and Staunton designed pawns, knights, bishops, rooks and queens fighting to control four center squares.

Look at the board. Absorb all the data. Recognize patterns. Analyze. Develop a strategy. Continually revise and develop that strategy as the game progresses, said Bamboo.

A black knight waving a curving scimitar and a 1* red and yellow hammer sickle flag driving a Turbo-bus filled with Russian baboons passed Hanoi beauty salons and full-body soapy massage parlors.

Girls trimming, buffing and painting cuticles greeted 1.5 million neurotic European tourists and swarming Chinese locusts in a fat fucking hurry at Angkor Wats happening?

Bright yellow Turkish taxis idled coughing engines. Arabesque musicians fingered ouds as an operatic Turkish singer in Bursa lamented her melancholic love. Percussionists hammered goatskins.

Singing silver merchants chanted, “Mr. Lucky Foot come here. First sale lucky sale make my day.”

He joined a Jewish and Turkish man drinking tea at the Bursa silk market in an exquisite stone Caravansary.

“I lost today,” said the Jewish man.

“What do you mean, said his friend. “You made 3,000,000 Lira.”

“Yes, but I lost one day.”

Inside a 500-year old hammam, steam rising through rusting metal bars discovered a weak Wi-Fi signal from the Achebadem emergency room staffed by Winter Hawk, Bamboo and heartbroken howling Lone Wolf.

After a sauna Omar and Lucky entered a white marble room with a high vaulted dome. Thirty-two pinpoints of sunlight shafted across blue mosaic tiles. In eight recessed cubicles men soaped, slathered and scrubbed off melting skin in humid heat. A robust masseuse worked sandpaper fibers over a stranger removing dead terrorist cells.

Absorbing musical notes the thermal pool bubbled natural mineral water as the literary outlaws enjoyed a sitting meditation up to their necks. I’ve had it up to here, said Omar clearing his throat.

Renewed revived and rejuvenated after a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice they stepped into crisp spring air below blue sky.

Defrost your imagination - TLC 32

“Today is a good day to be empty. Practice 10,000 breaths until you disappear,” said a Lhasa monk petting a Sumatran tiger facing extinction by Malaysian villagers burning down forests to develop cosmetic palm oil exports.

“Yes, not too detached and not too sentimental,” said Zeynep sitting at a restaurant table creating surrealistic art in her notebook. She drew stick figures with wild forested hair eating purple paper mache houses beneath a startled orange sun as disoriented Bursa talking animals crammed in spinach, green salad, tomatoes, grilled meat, rice and beans.

Across town on the TLC teachers’ apartment balcony sentry ants alerted the tribe to food. They marched from a drainpipe in single file, climbed over the edge of a plastic pot discovering good dirt. Teams fanned out sensing discarded muesli particles.

A mottled wingless insect living in bamboo detected worker ants approaching. Insect couldn’t fly. It scurried up a thin stalk to a green leaf blending in. Its feelers cleaned dirt off head and shoulders sham poop.

A gravedigger eating a hazelnut and strawberry jam sandwich on whole grain bread with grade A black olives harvested from Mudanya orchards nestled tight against Marmara Sea soil spoke to the insect as ants preparing their final assault gathered below the leaf.

“I need to move you.”

“Thanks. If I’m discovered I’ll perish. What do you suggest?”

“We use a leaf. Climb on it. I will let it go, floating over the garden. It will cushion your fall from grace. You will have a soft landing and better than a 51% chance of survival. Ground zero with better cover, food and dew you understand?”

“Ok. Thanks. 51% is better than zero.”

“You sound like an investment banker. Don’t mention it.”

“I need a new adventure.”

“Don’t we all. Here you go.”

Digger did what he had to do. Found a broad brown leaf. The insect climbed on. He released the vein-lined parachute into thin air. It floated. It landed on a huge exploding yellow sunflower.

“Goodbye,” sang the insect, “you extended my little life. I’ve survived to walk another day.”

The gravedigger sang, “Happy trails...to you...until we meet again.”

The Language Company

Pain's Logic - TLC 33

In Bursa the logic of pain met pain’s tolerance, pain’s loss, pain’s memory, pain’s attachment and pain’s fascination.

Awareness of dancing consciousness morphed a heavy dull throbbing sensation through exposed jaw nerves. Pain danced and sang along invisible blood red threads. Pain visualized minute tentacles of laughter.

Roots of pain bellowed in cold-hearted tissue.

Earlier, Dr. Death massaged tissue preparing it for a heavy-duty stainless steel syringe cast in Turku, Finland with a perfect circle for an index finger.

One by one he inserted three needles filled with anesthetizing solution into soft pink pliable gums. The downward thrust of pressure was constant and bewildering.

Numb the daze. Dumb the naive.

It didn’t take a well trained discerning eye more that a nanosecond after the partial was removed to sense the tooth witnessing interior monologues, dialogues and soliloquies of red stormed flesh pain - a sickness leaving the body - as Winter Hawk winged one true sentence.

The old recalcitrant reclusive tooth was exonerated. It’d served its animalistic purpose with multiple labia and nurturing oral stories. A heartbeat’s death defying rhythm pulsated faster than shadows divorcing themselves in blind love’s labyrinth.

After five days of whiteout blizzards Lucky enjoyed a perfect moment with ice coffee at dusk near a water fountain pen having resolved a molecular reality.