Deal - TLC 39

Downcast broken Turkish females wearing too much foundation makeup portrayed a beautiful face above a big behind tomorrow as merchants hung Ottoman carpets, caressed friendships, soles, heels and leather working tools.

A one-eyed Bursa shoemaker sharpened his utilitarian knife. One blind brown eye reflected Winter Hawk’s wings in rods, cones, a retina, iris, and cornea. He heard unemployed grizzle-faced men in a nearby teahouse slap cards on a green felt table.

Shoemaker in his small blue shack threaded uppers to lowers. His steel Blade Runner revealed reflections. He smashed his left hand on a window sparking conversations with a wealthy barefoot beggar seeking alms.

Another day dead he flicked a yellow switch extinguishing a single bulb. Carrying his bent arthritic back he shuffled across fresh packed sticky asphalt into a diner for rice, beans, coarse bread and brown tea.

A silver teaspoon tinkled glass music.

A player shuffled a deck.

Your deal, said Omar the blind.

Wind-spirits turned a page.

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.

The Language Company

Ice Girl in Banlung - Sapa - Chapter 13

After Saigon, Leo walked to Sapa in northwest mountains.

Talking monkey tourists from Hanoi are here to eat, gamble, sing, dance/screw and buy cheap Chinese plastic products, said Mo, 10, H’mong cloth seller.

They are an army in high heels, floppy hats, sunglasses, shiny belts and lost eyes. They run to stand in front of a Catholic Church to have their photo snapped off. Most ignore us.

A woman tourist slows down in her long march toward consumerism to look at Mo’s work: a handmade belt, a colorful wrist wearable, a thin wallet. The wallet is thinner than the girl.

She’s surrounded by a chorus, “Buy From Me! Buy From Me!”

The woman faints. Another buyer takes her place near blue tarp patchwork junk dealers selling fake watches, cheap pants, shirts, hats and knickknacks.

Eyes scan colors, fabrics and faces.

A park has baby red roses. A dusty historical statue stares at brackish fountain water. Six Red Dzao women talk with bags and threaded samples spread on the ground.

“Do you want to buy from me?” said one smiling with gold teeth.

“Yes. I want to buy the mountain.” Leo pointed to the rising green western forest, steel gray granite slabs, deep shaded valleys, and gray clouds skimming peaks around high deep edges.

“Ok,” she said. “I will sell you the day mountain for 10,000 and the night mountain for 10,000.”

“Ok. It’s a deal.” They laughed.

Red communist scarfed school kids in uniformed mass hysteria, deprived of sleep stagger uphill to a bright yellow school building where a young boy pounds out a rhythm on a ceremonial drum. Come all yea faithful, joyful and trumpet.

Two big brown dogs fuck on the street in front of the church where tourists gather for a photo shoot.

Local Vietnamese women armed with cameras rented by the day selling images, memories and dreams poke and prod women, husbands, boys and girls into manageable groups for the moment.

The decisive moment they will remember forever.

Memories of their life will be framed on a family alternative votive candle altar near burning incense feeding, appeasing dead hungry ancestral ghosts.

Caught in time.

Frozen alive.  

Possible signs of intelligent life in Sapa.

Rumor control reports.

Ice Girl in Banlung 

my little mandalay life

Draconian private school stuff: the 10th graders I help from 6-8 a.m. M-F live in a private hostile. No music, TV, web, books, zero. Study, study, study is their drab life. 

Waso, Buddha Day was a national public holiday. Do you get to go home? No. We study biology, chemistry, math, Myanmar, English, and physics all day long. Everyday.

Creative Notebooks are SOP. Colors, drawing, writing and dreaming on paper to all classes so they have something tangible where they can express their feelings. I’ve reminded them that their CN will be growing and going strong long after textbooks gather dust. It’s a small consolation for them.  

I share five of my worn CN books dating back five years for them to see art and writing. This is the raw material, I said.

Myanmar culture teaches people to respect their elders, like teachers so they don’t ask questions. Teams and 1-1 with partners is the way.

No breakfast. Bleary eyed. Marched to class. They arrive at 6, rearrange tables in teams and I mime, open your CN, draw your dream. I play blues and jazz and classical. Random items sit on a central table for still life stimulation if they so choose: flowers, plants, bowls, umbrella, a yellow pencil…you get the picture. We do text stuff focusing on the four skills and play learning games. 

From 1045-1145 I’m with thirty 12th graders waiting for their marks so they can apply to universities this fall. They live at home.

Their goal is speaking fluency for the ILETS exam. Same procedure as with the 10th graders - music, art, music and creativity in dust free notebooks.

Open discussions on local, regional and international issues between partners and groups. Their English is good. The majority need to open their mouth and not mumble. We do high quality text stuff, pronunciation practice and role plays with free interaction. I turn them on to international writers, films, poets and artists. Their self-esteem and confidence is growing.

The 10th and 12th graders will all be exposed to learning chess and competition the next three months before the company contract expires in November.  

Critical thinking example. I gave the 12th graders a homework assignment. 65/28 on the whiteboard. I reminded them for a week. Some guessed, is it a formula? an equation? No. One bright articulate girl finally got it. “It’s the intersection of Street 65/28, a long leafy street with badly corroded barely visible traffic signs." Yes. A place where you can breathe, meditate and draw and appreciate nature.

At high noon a driver zooms forty-five minutes into the countryside to a private school where I play, share and learn with 1st and 2nd graders. They teach me how to be more human. I act my age. 50 going on 10. Ha. We do songs, dance, chants, alphabets, colours, drawing, writing cursive and practice meditation. A child’s play is work.

Mandalay meets my needs. Wide green ancient tree blooming streets. You don’t see many white faces. If any they are tourists doing a 2-3 day pit stop. The construction boom is less than high car congested Yangon. It’s a motorcycle culture here, like Laos.

Mansions surrounded by barb wire sit next to bamboo shanties. It’s more like an extended village than a town. Poor sanitation, crumbling infrastructure. Flooded streets in the rainy season. Neighbours, relaxed men crowd teashops. Everyone I meet wandering, doing my documentary image work is gentle and kind. They recognise the smiling stranger.

This internal calm way permeates my being.

Species Specific - TLC 26

Welcome to another episode of Variations of The Species.

Today’s panel of exotic mutating organisms: Dancing cockroach. Used-car salesman. A soldier. IMF banker. Cambodian orphan. Amputee. Laotian monk. A genetically altered replica of your DNA, thanks to Crick and Watson, elementary. Some can and some Kant. Komodo dragon. Linguistic gardener. Blind typist. Mute femme fatale. A gravedigger.

The panel has agreed in scientific theoretical terms beyond a reasonable logical doubt to abstain from personal slander, libelous defamatory remarks and farting.

Profound physicists have proven that natural gas released by farting with regularity since the beginning of recorded time on Sumerian clay tablets leads to the demise, downfall, up-fall, where-with-all, you know it all disintegration of icebergs, glaciers, animals, plant populations, rainforests and human civilization.

It contributes to the extinction of diverse species. Period.

In conclusion we caution our panel of organisms to abstain from eating processed fatty foods high in sodium and imbibing fizzy sugar liquids while maintaining a high intake of organic nutrients like Korean red ginseng, gingko and lemongrass tea with Freedom after dark under a burning red light.

The Language Company