Sitting down

Greetings,

May this find you well and dancing in the light. 

As a kid said in class, "Work like you don't need the money, dance like nobody's looking and love like your hearts never been broken." 

Wow! Such insight, wisdom and life like inner light shining, beaming and laughing.

It's great to be hanging out with kids after the Turnkey saga. Where the a-dolts griped and complained about their small, yes, small world complete with big responsibilities. Yes, and now sitting down in a tropical paradise filled with orchids, lizards, amazing flora and fauna. Playing in the dirt is wonderful.

It's been three weeks of adjustment, adaptation and adjustment. The normal routine of processing new cultural realities and allowing the children to lead, direct and orchestrate their personal development. A room of thirty nine-year olds. Reminds me easily of the old Chinese paradigm shift and focus.

Istanbul flashback: As you left the small shop, the owner swiveled his silver spoon inside a clear glass. Musical notes with a singular pause echoed as you walked away. This musical reminder. This melodic memory. A sweet sound. It is mixed with 5-year old Zenep's tears when she knows, deep in her heart your time together since 3 February is over. How this truth assaults her understanding. 

"Why? Why? Why?"

The youth of play. Sweet memory. The voice of silence.

Peace.

Travel transience

Greetings,

Yes and thanks for your patience while I was in transit, exploring new visions and shifting my base of exploration. Indonesia is where I sit down now to continue my work.

Transience is the only reality.

I have a lot to share with you, enough for a story, a long prose poem, or an in depth podcast, yes, a verbal sound bite. 

So, would you like the short version or the long version?

A short segment: packaging. Airline tin foil wrapped around hot strange food at 29,000 feet is a challenge. Keep your elbows in so you don't disturb Mr. Sleepy next door. He is a cook on a cruise ship based in Europe and returning home to Jakarta for a brief holiday with family and friends. 

Light sandle wood incense. Step out onto the front porch before dawn and communicate with a trilling bird. Whistle a song. Listen and repeat. Say hello to a large brown meditative frog sitting near a flowering species of tropical plant with red flowers for a hat. 

By now I have been to many gardens and collected 20+ flowering plants with exotic names for indoor and outdoor growth and beauty. I am living in a tropical paradise. Orchids are amazing and reasonably priced. I love the feeling of dirt. It is a hard packed red clay variety. I dig and plant, dig and plant. I water after dark, after a day of blazing heat. The flowers and plants appreciate this kindness.

After a week of teacher training I get a shiatsu massage. A girl walks on my spinal chord. It's a real alignment.

I found a new COSMIC mountain bike, helmet, front and rear lights, lock, and magic bell. The music is crisp and clear. The echo sends a pulse and signal and waves across the universe. The Tibetan bells are answering in their distinctive well calibrated tonal language.

"Maid" girls wash cars and sweep dust. Someone clangs a metal utensil on a wok and roll preparing breakfast. Wild roaming cats climb into curbside trash containers, lose their balance and spill the contents. Suburban people own two cars. They start one and leave it idling. A mosquito whispers, "I need blood." A flickering candle illuminates their probing sensitivity.

You remember a small story Zeynep shared while on the ferry across blue water to Istanbul. "Before we are born we know everything, then, when we are born, after being born, we forget everything because of the pain." 

Should I say something here about all the tourists wearing flip-flops in Istanbul? Perfect for the terrain; old Roman stones, inlaid mosaic tiles and wheelchairs. How, as their day progresses they gradually become worn out, tired, bored and sullen? Perhaps. 

One day at breakfast on the garden terrace overlooking the Bosporus filled with tankers, ferries and sailboats a chemistry teacher from Pittsburgh said, "Our daughter is 15. She says traveling is hard work." His wife, thinking about leaving for Israel to see friends and a seminar in physics added, "Somewhere in India is a man carrying the world on his back."

"Yes," said a linguistic gardener, "We are sanctifying a finite space in an infinite universe."

Peace.