The Language Company

Creative non-fiction. Journalistic facts. Literary imagination.

Unpleasant facts are littered through TLC like landmines, lovers, literary outlaws, educational malaise, geography, butterflies, rice, luck and sex.

Lucky Foot taught English at The Language Company in Turkey in 2008. He returned in 2012. Creating field notes.

A Vietnam veteran, journalist and facilitator of courage he gifted luck to people in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos since 2004.

He showed up to sit for a spell nurturing positive relationships in the long now.

Accompanied by Humor and Curiosity he helped students speak English with fluency minus their illusions of fear and phobia's relatives:

Fear of taking a risk.

Fear of being incorrect.

Fear of peer ridicule.

Fear of poverty.

Fear of starvation.

Fear of being ordinary.

Fear of success.

Fear of abandoning a manuscript by Zeynep entitled TLC.

Fear of accepting responsibility for their choices

Dear of accepting the consequences.

Fear of letting go of old conditioning. Shadows.

Fear of being alive and real. Growing.

Fear of_______. (Your free choice)

Lucky, Humor and Curiosity observed parents, schools, and religions fostering passive acceptance, fear, indifference and rote learning teacher-centered systems. It was all about passing exams, not learning how to be more human and think for your self.

Status quo. Sheep mentality. Blend in. Questions are forbidden.

Authority washes your brain daily.

Zeynep, his young genius friend in Bursa, Turkey taught him about life in her totalitarian country. I say what others are afraid to say. Anxiety is a chronic national problem. Adults here are good at two things, eating and fighting. Dissent is terrorism say our corrupt manikin authority figures.

Leo, the Chief of Cannibals revealed dystopian China. I spent years carrying word shit in a Re-education through Reform Labor Camp for questioning Authority. Everyone here belongs to the Big Ears, No Mouth society.

Oh the shame.

Rita, the independent author of Ice Girl in Banlung shared stories about Khmer culture and Cambodian history. We've had twenty years of hopelessness. We breed. We work. We get slaughtered. Poor people see education as a waste of time and money. Rice comes first.

I dream I am a free person in a free country.

A seven year-old Vientiane kid explained Laos. I develop my authentic character with critical thinking skills, gratitude, abundance and wonder as an independent individual.

If you want to do great things you must take great risks and suffer greatly, said Zeynep. You either let go or get dragged along. 

Awareness. Mindfulness. Compassion.

It's not about people buying this book, Zeynep said. It's about people reading it.

Amazon Kindle and Paperback

Zeynep the heroine genius.

share a story with Grade 4

Many tribes love to look back. Is it safe yet?

It’s all passion and illusions of suffering. A genetic molecule of fear, healthy doubt, uncertainty, surprise and adventure. A childish innocent curiosity lives in the present. As people age they want and need the past.

Living in the past is time consuming, said a kid.

Yes, said a teacher, Focus on your needs not your wants. Your need for freedom and freedom from need. Needs manifest a desire for a memory or a ghost or a regret.

We are all passing through. Humans look back to see if they see in their vivid reptilian imagination their ghost.

A ghost from a family or friend looks for clues at their personal ground zero. They’ve evolved from distant galaxies. Java man was discovered here 40,000 years ago. Accepting an evolutionary premise, their DNA star chart continues its genetic dance today. 

Oh, and one more thing. Don’t let school interfere with your education. See you tomorrow.

A wandering teacher lived in talking monkey zones. They eat rice. They drink water. They fuck. They breed. They wash one set of clothing and hang it on bamboo. They burn down the forest. They breed, work and get slaughtered. They harvest brooms. Shamans bring rain.

Tropical downpours allow people the luxury to wash cars. They use faint energy looking behind them wondering, all the wondering and wandering and milling around. 

Food is cheap. Let’s eat mantra. This has nothing to do with simians. It has nothing to do with the two women sitting in a dark warung neighborhood food joint near a private school outside Jakarta.

The warung faces a tall cinder block wall. Chickens, goats and cats prowl, peck and forage through garbage. One woman sits in a deep meditation. Her friend parts her hair looking for insects, cleaning her scalp.

They take turns cleaning and inspecting. This genetic behavior is repeated in zoos, jungles and rain forests. Chattering storytellers play the gamelan, pounding out 40,000 year-old tunes.

Heal people with music. Music is the fuel.

Males wash toy machines and study accumulated grime under long yellow curling fingernails. They play chess waiting for passengers. Checkmate, said Death.

They visit the warung to chat up girls while eating spicy rice mixed with tofu, chicken, veggies, green chilies and deep-fried snacks. One explorer creates a Brave New World. Forging new futures with cold, detached logical intention they create an assessment on process in a data based star cluster.

Men know the music. Women know the words.

Creating her dream in Nepal.

my cremation

Sekala, what is seen. Nisekala, what is unseen.

After chopping wood and carrying water I returned to Monkey Forest in Ubud, Bali for my cremation ceremony.

It was the best decision I ever made.

Everyday is a celebration.

The family tended my corpse for seven days, washing it with holy water, rubbing it down with rice flour, turmeric, salt, vinegar, and sandalwood powder. Shreds of mirrored glass - banten sutji - were placed on my eyes, pieces of steel on my teeth, a gold ring with a ruby on my mouth, and jasmine flowers on my nostrils. My four limbs received iron nails symbolizing perfect senses allowing rebirth as a stronger and more beautiful human being.

Since the 13th century every Balinese liberated their soul through cremation to heaven for judgment and rebirth in their grandchildren. Failure to liberate the soul haunted descendants as a ghost.

My corpse was wrapped in a white cloth, a straw mat and tightly bound with more white cloth on a rante of split bamboo. On cremation day it was placed in a tower constructed of wood and bamboo covered in rattan, decorated with colored paper, ornaments, glittering tinsel, and small mirrors. The tower represented the Balinese conception of the cosmos.

In a series of layers were bamboo platforms. The base signified the underworld with three ascending platforms representing the visible world, a pavilion for the body, and the tumpang or heavens.

French, German, American, British, and Japanese tourists wearing ceremonial sarongs holding camcorders and 35mm cameras mingled with local food and drink sellers. A Balinese man sold film from a suitcase. Women hustled soft drinks, water, and carved ebony statues. Local children trailed an ice cream man.

Festive crowds climbed crumbling moss covered earthen walls in Pedang Tagal anticipating my body exiting the family home. A towering ceremonial black bull waited as people gathered at the junction of two narrow dusty roads in sweltering heat.

My body was carried out and placed on the golden pavilion behind the 15’x15’ bull.

Women in ceremonial dress led a procession balancing effigies and offerings of fruits, rice and vegetables.

Forty yelling, screaming men in black and white checkered sarongs lifted the bamboo platform onto their shoulders. Laughing, they ran down the road jostling the bull back and forth in erratic semicircles to confuse angry spirits. Jubilant villagers doused the carriers and bull with streams of water. People stopped cooking, resting, working, and painting. They emerged from walled compounds to witness the ceremony.

My widow and children waited with 100 people in Monkey Forest. Noise and confusion mixed with laughter as the black bull and golden tower entered a clearing. The men struggled up a steep dirt hill under the weight.

The bull was placed under a cremation platform - bale pabasmian - constructed of bamboo with a white sky cloth and gold tinsel roof. Reeds secured the bull on four corner poles. The music stopped.

Women worked the crowd selling water and soft drinks in searing heat. Tourists replaced film.

Men cut the bull’s back open with a large knife under the sky pavilion and removed a section. I was lowered from the tower accompanied by cymbals, drums and clanging instruments. Women circled three times around the bull with offerings.

Hot, tired, sweaty, laughing men lifted me up and passed it to a group near the bull. They lowered it inside. My widow placed family heirlooms on my corpse. Forest monkeys chattered overhead. A black and white butterfly danced in fractured light.

A Brahmin priest in black stood on scaffolding singing and chanting prayers with my family. They cut a string binding white cloth, poured holy water from clay pots over me, passing them to a family member who smashed them on the ground.

The priest accepted a flowering plant and sprinkled soil on me. Another man added yellow silk. People handed them family items wrapped in white cloth to be placed inside. More clay pots were emptied on my form and destroyed on earth.

A tourist in the shade wrote a postcard.

A family member took a final photograph of me. An effigy of reeds and tinsel was dismantled and placed on me. The lid was replaced on the bull and secured with bamboo lashed diagonally across the corners.

Someone lit my fire.

The bull and flowers burned quickly as wood, bamboo and rattan sent smoke and ash circling into sky. Cloth shells flamed away as heat jumped to the tinseled golden roof.

Italian and French film crews worked close to the fire.

The crowd evaporated. The ground was littered with plastic water bottles and ashes.

My widow sat in the shade eating, drinking, and talking with our children and friends about sekala, what is seen, and nisekala, what is unseen. 

 

collecting dust

One day he climbed through the center of Bali inside magical light past an extinct sacred volcano at Lake Batur carrying spare ammunition, a small portable machine, a map carved on narwhal bone, a roll of scented four-ply toilet paper, codices or painted books and texts on bark paper called Amate, and cactus fiber including animal skins and dialogue of Mayan origin.

His hair caught fire. Gathering flames he lit a piece of bark for guidance. He mixed volcanic ash with water, creating a thick paste of red ocher, a cosmetic balm rich with antioxidants. He applied this to his skin to gain entry and passage through the spirit world of ancestors.

To become clay he created clay. He needed dust. He collected dust and minute grains of mica. Teams of gravediggers, weavers, butchers and typists explored rain forests, jagged mountains and impenetrable jungles collecting dust.

Hunters dived into, under and through massive Columbia waterfalls near tributaries where the confluence of Northwest rivers gnashed their teeth, snaking past abandoned Hanford nuclear plants where fifty-five million gallons of radioactive waste in decaying drums left over from W.W. II slowly seeped 130 feet down into the ground toward water tables.

The waste approached 250 feet as multinational laboratories, corporations and Department of Energy think tanks vying for projects and energy contract extensions discussed glassification options and emergency evacuation procedures according to regulations and Robert’s Rules Of Order inside the chaos of their well ordered scientific communities.

Tribal survivors ate roots and plants garnished with entropy.

Survivors passed through civilizations seeking antiquities. They reported back with evidence sewn into their clothing to avoid detection at porous India-Tibetan borders. They severed small threads along hemlines, Chinese silk gowns and Japanese cotton kimonos. Their discoveries poured light rays into waterfalls rushing over Anasazi cliff dwellings into sage and pinion forests.

Survivors arrived at a mythopoeic part of their journey. They reflected on the unconscious residue of social, cultural, ethical and spiritual values.

They needed masks. They needed to understand the underlying mysteries inside death masks. They confronted the realm of spirit. They bought masks in open air markets on their pilgrimage. Masks signifying the dignity of their intention thwarted demons and ghosts. They became spirits dancing in light.

Everything was light in their shamanistic interior landscape. They let go of the ego, Ease-God-Out, detached from outcomes, eliminated the need for control or approval, trusted their spirit energies, and remained light about it.

Inside light with slow fingers and long thin ivory nails they turned clay into pots. Spinning spirals danced on a wheel of time. They finished throwing them, used them for tribal ceremonies and smashed delicate clay pots to earth. They exploded into the air creating volcanic ash coating everything in a fine dust. He dug into the soil of his soul. He scattered raw turquoise stones on a trail of sacrificial tears, on a long walk through seasons and countries.

A Century is Nothing, Subject to Change.

A story for Grade 4

“Many world tribes love to look back. It’s all passion and illusions of suffering. A genetic molecule of fear, doubt, uncertainty, surprise and adventure. A childish innocent curiosity lives in the present. As people age they want & need the past.”

“Living in the past is time consuming,” said a genius kid.

“Yes,” said a teacher, “Focus on your needs not your wants. Your need for freedom and freedom from need. Needs manifest a desire for a memory or a ghost or a regret. We are all passing through. Humans look back to see if they see in their vivid reptilian imagination their ghost.

"A ghost from a family or friend looks for clues at their personal ground zero. They’ve evolved from distant galaxies. Java man was discovered here 40,000 years ago. Accepting an evolutionary premise, their DNA star chart continues its genetic dance today. Oh, and one more thing. Don’t let school interfere with your education. See you tomorrow.”

A wandering teacher lived in talking monkey zones. They eat rice. They drink water. They fuck. They breed. They wash one set of clothing and hang it on bamboo. They burn down the forest. They breed, work and get slaughtered. They harvest brooms. Shamans bring rain. Tropical downpours allow people the luxury to wash cars. They use faint energy looking behind them wondering, all the wondering and wandering and milling around. 

Food is cheap. Let’s eat mantra. This has nothing to do with simians. It has nothing to do with the two women sitting in a dark warung neighborhood food joint near a private school.

The warung faces a tall cinder block wall. Chickens, goats and cats prowl, peck and forage through garbage. One woman sits in a deep meditation. Her friend parts her hair looking for insects, cleaning her scalp. They take turns cleaning and inspecting. This genetic behavior is repeated in zoos, jungles and rain forests. Chattering storytellers play the gamelan pounding out 40,000 year-old tunes.

Heal people with music. Music is the fuel.

Males wash toy machines and study accumulated grime under long yellow curling fingernails. They play chess waiting for passengers. Checkmate, said Death.

They visit the warung to chat up girls while eating spicy rice mixed with tofu, chicken, veggies, green chilies and deep-fried snacks. One explorer creates a Brave New World. They forge new futures with cold, detached logical intention. They create an assessment on process in a data based star cluster.