Passage tell-e-vision

Yes, this is the Truth channel. Do not attempt to adjust your set. Eyeballs perhaps but not the set. Game, set, match. You will be happy to know that television continues to dumb down the population around the planet.

For example, I was walking through the very narrow concrete passageway either to or from the street of dreams where I eat with construction workers, and allow Jasmine to develop confidence with her English for an hour as impatient motorcycle people hurrying home beep-beep-beep negotiating a thin street filled with kids, elderly walkers, young exercise addicts going or coming from the park across from clogged streets,

women carrying bamboo baskets filled with vegetables, bricks, recycled steel, bread and dreams mixed with residents sitting on tiny plastic kindergarten chairs crowding home/store fronts, drinking beer, peeling, peeing, cooking, eating, in brief - living

inside the narrow as I passed numerous open portal homes made of sliding accordion gates nestling motorcycles in the front room, I saw and heard vast volumed images flickering their phosphorescence, their

marketing and economic messages into brain faces of kids, parents, grandparents and ancestors. An old women sat slumped against a door frame staring at the box. She hasn't seen the sky for years. If she looks left and up she can see a slight sliver shiver. That's it.

Let's eat! Let's watch TV! Give me your consciousness. Everyone is happy. Life is good.

Metta.

Authorized to speak truth

According to me, speaking on the condition of anonymity because I am not authorized to reveal the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth:

1. truth is classified. The source of truth concerning Everything is classified. Ossified.

Yes, I am authorized to say, with complete anonymity that truth is filtered, it is compartmentalized, abstracted, excerpted, sliced, diced, parsed, fossilized and classified. It hides inside a deeply buried locked black box. The key is classified. The key is not on a social network site designed to distract.

The key is, for the Time Being, a woman somewhere in India carrying the world on her back. She's the key. 

2. truth is a joke. The source of truth concerning jokes is classified. I am not authorized to reveal the joke. The big joke, the laugh track. Your tears speak streak truth, mangling truth.

3. truth is a myth. The source of the myth is classified. Read it and weep. As Antonio Porchia well said, (he was authorized to speak) - "Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides." 

4. truth is the Next BIG Thing. It will modify seeds providing billions of humans with a genetic food source.

5. truth will provide more than 1 billion people with access to safe drinking water.

6. truth will enable literacy for 850,000,000 million people worldwide who cannot read. Woman are 2/3 of this number.

7. truth will employ 2.8 billion people surviving on less than $2 a day. Truth will employ 1.1 billion people existing on less than $1 a day.

8. truth will assist 70% of the people in the "developing" world having no access to electricity in their homes, health clinics and schools.

Truth is a fatal disease, like love. A sledgehammer.

Metta.

Two Kids

Two kids are talking.

The kid from the West said, "Where did I come from?"

The kid from the East said, "How did I grow?"

Metta.

Natasha from Kiev

I recently read an article about how women are treated in some countries. For example, in Turkey, health care workers report that 65% of all wives are beaten by their husbands.  It's considered normal behavior because many, not all, women are treated as property. There and elsewhere. 

We've all read stories about arranged marriages, child marriages and the desperate plight of women in many countries.

It reminded me of a story I wrote about a women named Natasha. I put it in my book. Recycled. Here it is.

At the beginning of September 2001, passengers at the Amsterdam airport waited for their flight to Casablanca. There was Youseif, a Moroccan man from Fez living in San Francisco going home to see his family after many years. He would stay three months. 

There was a woman from Kiev with her 5-year old son. Her name was Natasha and she was tall, slim and beautiful. She was married to a Moroccan man. They'd met at the university in Kiev and now he lived in Amsterdam. She had not seen him for three years and he didn’t know his son.

He did not come to the airport to see her because he didn’t have the correct papers nor was she able to leave the airport and see him because she lacked the correct papers so she waited for her flight to her new home. 

Natasha had heard about her new home but had never seen it. She was taking her son to Morocco where they would meet her husband’s family for the first time and live their life. 

She did not speak Arabic. Her cheap red, white and blue Russian plastic baggage was falling apart at the seams. Her son was a terror and pissed his pants leaving a trail of urine in the departure lounge. Natasha was beside herself. 

I'd finished a book that summer about a woman who spoke every language and I was jumping through a window into new adventures and gather new material. Everyone spoke the same language as night fell around the roar of planes leaving gravity taking people somewhere.

We were buried at gate 54D, miles from bright gleaming duty free shops full of perfume, electronics, banks, casinos, toy stores, restaurants, gleaming diamond rings and watches, customs, clothing stores and business.

Shoppers carried plastic bags saying, “Buy and Fly.” 

It was midnight when we landed in Casablanca and walked through a towering hall full of intricate inlaid mosaic tiles and waterfalls. Huge framed images of smiling monarchs watched us. Customs was a formality and the baggage conveyer belt broke down as frustrated passengers waited. Small wheels on useless baggage trolleys were bent and stuck. They careened left and right as people wrestled impossible loads through green ‘nothing to declare’ zones toward friends and relatives.

I helped Natasha load her broken bags on a cart and she disappeared into the throng with her son. I watched her husband’s Berber family approach her. It was his father, mother, brother-in-law and grandmother dressed in traditional jellabas. They welcomed her with a hug speaking words Natasha did not understand. They scooped up the boy.

As the old couple slowly walked away I knew they would take him forever, this progeny of theirs, their connection to their son. 

Natasha, an alien in their world, an aberration, would be relegated to a new life. She moved into their world with a Ukranian passport, speaking unknown languages where she'd be welcomed on one hand and relegated to a life in a new reality serving her new family. 

She was going to be many things to them and they would manifest their loss on her. She'd carry water and gather wood. She'd cook and clean and slave away. She'd carry their fading light, hopes, dreams and connections. Their grandson would realize everything. They disappeared into a sprawling chaotic city of five million.

Their son in Holland relied on his mobile. He could do no wrong. He was a grand man in their eyes and hearts. Many women came and went in his life. It was his dark eyed nomadic destiny. 

When his wife was trapped in the airport he was with a prostitute and he didn’t have the correct papers anyway. He wasn’t lying when he said his family would take care of her.

This was the story I whispered to Natasha but she found it hard to believe.

Metta.

Butterfly of Consequence

The bats are back. They are roosting in the shade and protection of wide green fronds. Shhh.

Thumbing through the Moleskine. Here's a spring flashback entry. On March 23rd I gave my 90-day notice at the introverted strange private Catholic school in Jakarta. I sculpted the clean, real, honest and clear missive focusing on a June departure. Thank you for the opportunity. Time to fly. Enough.

I'd been alerted on January 9th when the Director sent an SMS to Surely, my supervisor. Ironically the big D wasn't wearing her specs and also sent it to me. It was a Friday night, Surely and I with her two kids had visited a local bookstore and then sat down at an Indian restaurant for nan, curry and sustenance with flavor. We were outside. The SMS arrived in a brown paper bag. Innocuous.

Briefly, it said, "Grade 4 parents called Terrible, the principal, and they want Tim replaced. We have to talk."

This was a positive sign. It alerted me to the realties, the parental influence and how I needed to refocus and redefine for myself, kids and parents, the specific balance between academic responsibility and freedom. Simple.

I learned some were not happy with the academic progress and structure. Some, not all, the parents were unhappy with my methods, the material and the personal evaluations and feedback I was giving their child.

I took immediate steps in class to make sure the kids and their parents were:

1) writing/sharing this balanced approach to learning in their daily Agenda notebook. Some parents, especially those activily involved in their child's educational progress would read it. Accountability.

2) understanding the benchmarks and various assessment on process tools - speaking, reading comprehension, listening and writing classroom evaluations and academic expectations. Get it in writing.

I shared the responsibility with kids and parents to understand the what, why and how process in the classroom and beyond.

I considered my options. They wanted me to stay for another year but I'd learned what I needed to learn about their system, parental controls, influence, mediocrity, became a better teacher and knew it was time to complete the little chapter and turn the page.

After I submitted a copy to the Director of English who was shocked to realize I'd acted to regain my freedom from the tyranny with such a responsible dignified and professional personal action, I dropped one off at Human Resources.

On my way out of the administration zone the final door handle came off in my hand, cheap stuff - "Oh, NO! I'm trapped in the system!"

I laughed, seeing the cosmic significance, handed it to an office girl and pried open the door. Close call.

While traversing a green lawn back to class tombs breathing deep relief I found a brown butterfly with a damaged wing. I carried it on my folder to a safe place. Then I planted seeds with the kids and we cultivated a garden. Together.

Metta.