Make it new day by day, make it new, said Leo sitting under a Camellia tree in a green garden.
It blossoms 10,000 pink flowers every spring ... light shadows bamboo leaves ... practice calligraphy ...
Be the brush be the paper be the ink ... Zen.
Give the gentle reader saatch aur himmat, Z said in Turkish.
Translation please, said Devina.
Truth and Courage.
Keep them engaged, said Tran. Be gentle with the dear reader. They are educated. Challenge them.
What’s a word doctor, said Leo.
Someone who fixes manuscripts with a sharp axe, said Tran waving a Mont Blanc 148 piston-driven fountain pen splattering blood red ink on everyone in his radius. The pen is mightier than the sword. Edge focus. WE, you and I, them, he, she and us aint going anywhere. We live forever.
In your dreams, yelled Devina. Everyone’s doing hard time. It aint nothing but the blues sweet thing.
Have mercy.
Rita, an orphan and independent visionary writer from Banlung chimed in with a voice sweeter than a Buddhist bell, I’m going to be an English facilitator and historian. I’m going to stand on a street corner begging people to give me their wasted hours.
Where have I heard that before, asked Leo, an activist in exile from an orphanage on the Yangtze, heavy with silt and six trillion cubic meters of garbage flowing to the South China Sea.
What will you do with collected time, said Tran, Visit sick children in hospitals where they do DNA evolutionary experiments to stem the cells, can you sell the stems?
Speaking of stems, I’m moonlighting as a gardener, said Omar, There’s nothing more beautiful than nurturing nature in this impermanent life. We plant seeds for trees we will never see mature. Another leaf leaves life’s tree.
If you plant roses and need someone with experience to take care of the thorns give me a shout, said Tran, a one-legged Vietnamese child wearing his heart on the sleeve of a ragged 101 Screaming Eagle t-shirt.
A bird pressed its breast against a thorn singing, O what a beautiful morning o what a beautiful day.
A poet, like a chef or gardener, needs everything because they love everything.
I’m going to study Donatello, said Devina.
Who’s he?
He was a great Renaissance artist. He was born in 1386 in a place called Florence, Italy. He was honest had integrity and was super original. Technically he worked with anything. You name it: wax, bronze, marble, clay, all kinds of rocks, wood and glass. He raised the status from someone who created beauty to a craft, a real artist.
Painting with smoke and mirrors, said Tran.
Hey, that’s what the Greeks said. They believed everything was beauty and order, said Rita. Order, structure, design, form, function, oratory, mathematics, musical notes, all the beauty originated with them didn’t it?
You got it, said Tran. Hey, you know what, I think I’ll take the day off and be creative. Ha.
This present instant contains all reality, whispered Zeynep. We can call this experiment The Theory of Z, about a young precocious girl, her friends, artists and seers. Why not?
I taught a blind nomadic gardener/janitor/gravedigger and kid friends about emotional life in an alien schizoid civilization called Turkey, said Z. We shared values, stories and art with a free spirit.
I’ll tell you a secret. There’s two of me. One young and one old. The older is Kurdish and plays a cello in a cemetery. Can you dig it?
Aliens and fantastic probabilities said Rita. Tell me the difference between possibility and probability. It’s about process not product. Whew, now that’s deep.
Yeah, said Devina, We’re all in the shit, it’s only the depth that changes. Yeah, if it’s not one thing it’s something else speaking in the abstract.
Let’s not have this conversation in the abstract, said an authoritarian demanding Realist vomiting contrarian hypotheticals, truth, logic, verifiable data based evidence, scientific facts, precise specifics. We must ascertain the immediate personal moral and ethical values with lofty principles and assistant principles on principal.
After they cut out my tongue I started writing script.
I found a compressed black Chinese ink stick with yellow dragons breathing fire. I added a little water to a gray stone surface and placed the ink in the center.
Using my right hand as Master Liu in Chengdu taught me I turned the stick in a clockwise motion. Black ink ebbed into liquid. A drop of water rippled a pond.
I picked up my long heavy brush with pure white wolf hair. After soaking it in water for three minutes to relax it’s inner tension I spread out thin delicate paper.
I placed my right foot at an angle, left foot straight, my left palm flat on the table with fingers spread.
I dipped the brush in the recessed part of the stone to absorb ink then slowly dragged it along an edge removing excess.
I savored the weight and heft. My brush has it own personality character. There are at least 5,000 characters in my written language.
I have much to learn and a long way to travel with this unknowing truth.
I stood up straight, took three deep breaths and exhaled into emptiness.
I centered my unconscious on the paper filled with nothing. My wisdom mind of intent became water. It was quiet, calm and still with concentration and focus.
I listened to brush, ink and paper. I am a conduit.
Be the brush, be the ink, be the water, be the paper.
Each essence is pure, free, clear and luminous.
My useless tongue flapped in the cold December Himalayan wind. Stories and songs were birds. I heard children laughing and singing. Playing with strings of word pearls they greeted each other in the babble of nothing.
They dream with eyes open.
When we are asleep we are awake.
I memorize ancient chants with black ink soaking through parchment skin.
I am not of this world.
I sit with a diamond in my mind. It reflects 10,000 things. It is free of the five dusts: greed, anger, pride, hatred, and jealousy.
I sing my tongue-less body electric.
Where do I park this empty vehicle?
I have paintings, poems, stories, translations of oral traditions to finish that I haven’t even started yet.
If I had more time I’d make them shorter.
Thin vociferous tongues
Wag sound letters
Calligraphy senses voice
Sniffing garbage
Swirling smoke dances from grilled meat
H'mong man eats sticky rice with startled fish eyes
Net man deftly braids threads
White filament
Words melt into excellent soft smooth paper
Laughter sings a long song
Wearing a crash helmet
In the event of a volcanic eruption
Pen fountain
Tyranny of whining children
Angry mothers without love die of neglect
How did I get here?
Blind eyes see blind lies
Real eyes realize real lies
In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king
We’ve been killing each other for 4,000 years and still no one knows who the king is
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