Buy Low, Sell High

In the Sahara removed from death, chaos, tears and 3,000 funerals I suggested to Omar maybe it was about economic terrorism, poverty and empathy.

He understood the economics of survival, bartering, trade, exchange value, supply, demand and getting the best price. Not too low and not too high.

“A person cannot drink or eat more than they need. It’s about hospitality,” he said.

Omar’s tribe migrated from Mali, Southern Algeria and Mauritania. Prior to 1956 there were six million Touareg on nine million square kilometers of desert with no government borders controlling movement. Now there were 7-10,000 in the Sahara Occidental.

Berbers controlled the Iberian Peninsula as a colony from Marrakech castles. Fierce warriors, they resisted outside control while maintaining their language and culture during Roman, Vandal and Arabic rule.

“Your enemy is my friend,” said Omar.

His tribes conquered and ruled Spain for centuries.

He’d seen boring television images. He preferred human conversation. Omar knew television and cell phones were the most insane consciousness-stealing inventions of all time. They sold desire and greed designed by advertising companies pitching food, sex, self-esteem and illusions of false happy secure lies.

After the successful 9/11 attacks desperate stories, lies and myths evolved, adapted and adjusted like petri dish cultures.

They created new languages, art, music, attitudes, values, principles, weapons of mass distraction and historical chaos in the long now. They took on new fragmented impartial impervious identities.

“Buy low and sell high,” said Omar as sand shifted below a blue sky.

“Simple as ABC,” I said.

“It’s easy to comprehend at the heart-mind level.” He was a man of few words. We contemplated a vast silent world.

“No language, no culture,” he sang as shooting stars played celestial tag.

I visualized elements of fear, disinformation, misinformation, bias, lies, half-truths and paranoid propaganda bloviated by politicians, popes, prelates, mullahs, and animists in every oral language on a spinning blue marble in space-time. 24/7.

Fear sells. People buy.

Human brains overflowed with data and visual distractions. Incoming! Run for cover.

Free medications were administered to seven billion humanoids.

Survivors crammed mountain caves as orphans sang, “A tisket a tasket we need a casket.”

Peaceful people lived wisdom, empathy, and compassion. Meditation, deep breathing, harmony and forgiveness of Spiriti Sanctus were portals into clear awareness.

Arabic speaking scholars recited poetry by Rumi. They shared stories about rising and falling civilizations. Transmitting oral stories they diagramed hieroglyphics, cave paintings, metaphors and unconscious archetypes.

I envisaged historians, political scientists, talking heads, taxi drivers, unemployed fortunetellers and morticians answering suicide hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially.

Governments increased military spending.

They cut education, health care and social programs.

Citizens overwhelmed hospital emergency rooms pleading, “Give us drugs to alleviate our fears and illusions of desire and suffering.”

Fear and Consumption demand outstripped supply.

Scarcity was thrilled.

“What happens when they run out of CONTROL programs and advertising?” a girl asked her mother, the mother of all answers.

“Don’t worry my sweet,” said her mother living her worst nightmare, “They will invent, fabricate and illuminate something new. The manufacturing sector will rebound when shelves are empty. Advertising and propaganda never dies. We’ll always have sugar and we can always go shopping.”

“How long will it take to reduce these feelings of imaginary fear?”

“Healing, empathy and compassion require our individual intention. Many practice a calm way like there’s no tomorrow,” said her mother.

“Healing energies, peace and love sustain us.”

“There is only F.U.D.,” said the mother twisting her daughter’s hair until it caught fire.

“What is F.U.D. mother?”

“Fear, uncertainty and doubt. It’s part of our DNA since we jumped or fell or were pushed from The Tree of Life 60,000 years ago. FUD evolved with a vengeance as hungry unconscious greedy demons.”

“What about adventure and surprise?”

“They are factors in our adaptation as a species. You ask great questions my dear,” fanning her daughter’s flame. “A long now-time. A century is nothing.”

“It’s good to know some things,” said the girl. “We know so much and understand nothing.”

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I’ve already said a lot.”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Tell me the truth,” mother. “I want to know your truth.”

“It’s a miracle we are here is my truth. It’s a big cosmic joke. Our insecurities are disappearing and our strengths are growing. Consider this. The letters F.E.A.R. can mean face everything and recover, or fuck everything and run away.”

“Life is a magical celebration, mother. We are flukes of the universe. We are miracles. Life is a beautiful short dream. There’s no rhyme or reason. It’s about realizing peace and gratitude in our heart. We connect with family, community and world tribes. Inhale other’s suffering and exhale healing. Cultivate our heart-mind awareness.”

“I love you,” said her mother.

“I will be present and grateful mother. May we go out and play now? May we take the day off and be creative?”

“Yes, let’s invent a game theory my sweet.”

ART

Adventure, Risk, and Transformation - A Memoir

Touareg Berber Story

Under a full moon I transited south from Marrakech over the Atlas Mountains.

I was on the fringe of the Sahara eight days later when someone dialed 9/11 taking a bite of the big apple.

Whoops.

There was a hungry little worm at work. I was so far removed I did not take possession of that event.

I learned what happened from a Touareg Berber named Omar.

I wasn’t surprised. Fate bites you when you least expect it.

Omar spoke with his hands. I read his open palms and dark eyes. My ability with unspoken tongues and universal gestures was legendary. Body language gestures using humans were works in process.

Omar waved one hand in air as a bird condemned to be free. He raised a hand indicating height and smacked his flying hand into his stationary hand. The impact echoed across emptiness. His eyes flashed universal secrets. I had no idea where, how, why, or when he’d received his information, perhaps from trade caravans or through osmosis.

“I see.”

In the desert we did not talk about Being and Time, existential philosophy, the nature of evil, principles or values. We tweaked reality by breathing.

“3,000 people from eighty countries died,” said Omar. “Dust to dust.”

“Ah, an attack against the world,” I said, sensing an abstract permutation with eternal ramifications and hidden opportunity costs.

Writing story-truth futures, Omar and I sat down in Morocco and then Spain imagining stateside and global aftermath reality in the long now. 

I wasn’t surprised this happened. Myopic allegiance singing sheep in the United States of Amnesia would’ve had world citizens believe in their US/ THEM attitude.

Survivors evolved multiple ground truths, sifting soil, searching for plausible theoretical logical rational scientific cause and effect answers. Meaning?

Reconstructing, revising and recalibrating history they were left gasping, choking and breathing death mask dust. They evaluated meaning, truth and consequences in their short fragile existence.

Welcome to Earth babies. Revenge is best served cold.

Now they tried to answer the big question. “Why me/us?” and like Phase II group addicts it would keep them busy forever.

After the attacks their children asked, “why?”

Impatient angry adults under extreme pressure to be financially successful in their all-consuming life were frustrated with this “why” question from kiddies. As parents they wanted to be the boss, the all-knowing grown-up in complete Control. They assumed they knew all the answers. Whoops.

In a circular karmic game called Civilization & Random Revenge, players with long historical memories rolled the dice when it was their turn to play. Everyone had to go back to Start.

Citizens under siege didn’t read historical footnotes. They avoided the small fine print. The stuff they accepted carte blanche or skipped because they didn’t think it was important, the stuff made in Hollywood, the entertainment make-believe crap of car wrecks, violence, revenge and moronic happy endings.

Their attention span was shorter than the lives of 17,000 world children dying every day from starvation.

Somebody off stage triggered the lights exposing human fragility and evaporating all sense of humor. Audiences were stunned into silence when the curtain descended. It was full of loopholes, black holes and wormholes. The forbidden apple was rotten.

Survivors needing a new card from life’s deck did not want to see the Joker wearing a funny hat with bells.

Some had studied history. They knew in a vague way being experts on vagueness, mediocrity, hypocrisy, ignorance and cynicism how history’s long memory and sweet revenge encapsulated itself. They faced frustrating futures because they’d been lulled into complacency and brainwashed by soft media machines.

Media buys people.

Humans had assumed they would always be consuming bigger and better things. “The one who dies with the most toys wins,” said a salesman.

Tectonic plates of awareness shifted below the surface of appearances. Out of sight, out of mind. Awareness needed serious attention.

Human relationships snagged on fear, healthy uncertainty, doubt, adventure and surprise. Dreams of peace and prosperity, mortgaged tract homes, green lawns, two car garages, fast and faster food, weapons of mass destruction, love and symphonic notes danced on the edge of an abyss with hope, regret and fear.

Checkmate, said Death.

We need more channels, yelled sheep.

Shocked screaming patients streamed out of personal and collective asylums. They digested and overdosed on media medication rendering them catatonic, compliant and mute.

Earth is one big insane asylum.

Human nature and revenge stirred things up big time. Secure lines of clear fear communication revealed unconscious intentions of human revenge. Humans struggled for meaning in a random universe.

They tried to explain and/or rationalize and/or comprehend with logical coherent rational scientific explanations while mumbling, stuttering, staggering, falling, fumbling and failing to see how the world worked.

They struggled to explain all the moral ambiguities, principles and ethics on fill-in-the-blank final exams. They faced huge evolutionary adventures.

“Because I said so,” was the standard refrain when their sweet little monsters asked “why” for the umpteenth time. Cool laid-back intellectual facades developed fictionalized fractured fissures.

It was time to straighten the whiners out once and for all.

They went shopping.

This alleviated their fear of poverty, death and airplanes. Shopping is the perfect distraction. Shopping conquered fears growing stronger day-by-day fed by hysterical media, totalitarian governments and liberal know-it-alls in melting ivory soap towers based on empirical evidence and pure speculation.

“More media channels!” screamed millions. “We need more propaganda, advertising, distractions and fake news.”

There was a preponderance of rumors, myths, innuendoes, and evidence charred beyond recognition. It needed DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating.

Social workers and therapists swarmed Earth extolling virtues of wellbeing, hope, tolerance, gratitude, compassion and courage in the face of adversity, free choice and impending sales at outlet stores.

People needing therapeutic outlets found solace in their blind ignorance of how the world worked on molecular, political, religious, economic, philosophical and cultural levels.

Long festering animosity, religious, economic and cultural karma evolved. An invisible Ouroboros eating itself constricted their heart. Their mythical existence was part idealism and realism standing on its head.

Socially, culturally, geographically and emotionally deprived children learned a hard life lesson that escaped parents. Kids knew when adults were bullshitting them.

They suspected parents, teachers, doctors, social workers, bureaucrats and orphans, amputees, suicidal veterans and displaced humans and gravediggers did not own or Control the market of absolute answers.

Blind sheep believed something better just had to be on the idiot box, computer or phone. No attention span? No problem.

Inside demon gadgets a little animal named Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Adventure was hungry. It had a vociferous appetite for all things vain and glorious. It ate its young with spicy relish at picnics. It had no morals, ethics, principles or 21st century rationale.

It had a neoconservative financial and political agenda for:

Money

Power

Control

ART - Adventure, Risk & Transformation - A Memoir

Sappho

Kilim

When I arrived in Marrakech at 3 a.m. flat #187 was “under construction.”

It was a cinderblock shell with three rooms, a squat toilet and small kitchen.

Howling Wolf, the word machine, had a table.

Everything was under construction in a country where eight hours seemed twenty-four and you became a minor character, director and audience in a film called, Beyond Wild With Beautiful Intensity. You adapt, adjust and evolve.

Hustlers shuffled strangers back and forth. They were the jugglers. I was the ball in the Marrakech souk.

A boy led me through a maze of narrow blind trash-filled alleys to the tanneries. He handed me off to a man who took me past workers standing in cement vats of urine and solvents cleaning leather skins and cisterns of multi-hued colors for dyeing. He shuffled me to Taib selling carpets.

“I have worked in the tanneries for thirty-seven years,” said the 47-year-old purveyor of kilim carpets in his showroom overlooking the vats. “We start at 5 a.m. and work to dusk.”

He described the workmanship of a silk kilim as staff unrolled carpet after carpet. Intricate blends were reds, oranges, blues, and greens.

“These are made by Berbers 1400 kilometers to the south. They bring them here and we trade them leather. The silk comes from Mali, South Africa and Europe. Every kilim tells a happening-story.”

Small ones sold for $150, 4x6 carpets ran $300. “We take all credit cards and of course cash.”

His salesmen herded French tourists into an adjacent room for a sales pitch.

“I don’t sell in the souk,” he said. “The taxes are too high and they pass the extra cost onto the tourist.”

After Taib the tannery guide expected something for his troubles.

The boy appeared from shadows with his hand out.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Natasha

Passengers waited for a flight from Amsterdam to Casablanca on September 2nd, 2001.

Your Self, originally from Fez and now San Francisco was going home to see his family after years away. He was a wise man bearing gifts.

There was a woman from the Ukraine with her five-year-old son. Natasha was tall, slim, beautiful and married to a Moroccan. They’d met at the university in Kiev where she gave birth and he lived in Amsterdam. She hadn’t seen him forever.

He didn’t 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 Morocco but had never seen it. She was taking her son to Casablanca to live with her husband’s family. She didn’t speak French or Arabic.

Her cheap red, white and blue plastic baggage split at the seams. Her son pissed his pants leaving a trail of urine in the departure lounge. Natasha was beside herself with a double identity theory.

Everyone spoke the same language as night fell with the roar of planes taking people somewhere left gravity. We were buried at gate 54D, miles from duty free shops, perfume, electronics, banks, toy and clothing stores, restaurants, diamond rings and watches.

Fliers carried yellow plastic “Buy and Fly,” shopping bags.  

It was midnight when we landed in Casablanca. We walked through a towering hall with a waterfall and intricate mosaic tiles. A gigantic framed image of a benevolent aristocratic king watched passengers.

Customs was a formality. 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 strangers, friends and relatives.

I helped Natasha load her bags on a cart and she disappeared into humanity with her son. Her husband’s father, mother and grandmother in jellabas approached her. They hugged her speaking words Natasha did not understand. The old woman scooped up the boy. I knew they’d take him forever, this progeny of theirs and connection to their son.

Natasha, an aberration in their world would be relegated to a new life. She moved into their culture with a Ukrainian passport, sensing unknown languages where she would be welcomed yet relegated to serving her new family.

They would project their unconscious loss on her.

She’d carry their water and gather their wood. She’d shoulder their fading light, hopes, and dreams. Their grandson would realize everything. They disappeared into a city of five million.

Being a grand man in their hearts, their son in Holland could do no wrong. 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. He wasn’t lying when he said his family would take care of her.

Natasha heard this story at 54D but didn’t believe it.

ART - Adventure, Risk & Transformation - A Memoir

Duende

In June 2001 I called Pascal, an airline ticket broker in Montreal and set up the itinerary. Seattle, Detroit, Amsterdam to Casablanca round-trip for six months.

“When do you want to go?”

Another draft of A Century is Nothing would be abandoned by mid-August. I selected a random date.

“September 1.”

“What did Narcissus say when he saw his reflection in the water?” said Pascal during a conversation.

“What?”

“Watch out for yourself.”

“Good one.”

“We’ll take care of it,” he said. “Have a good trip.”

“Thanks for your help.”

A ticket to dusty roads in another village, town, city, country and continent offered new adventures. KISS. Keep it simple stupid.

Leaving was a wise karmic decision. Speaking of history.

I checked out of living between fifty-five million gallons of buried radioactive fuel at Hanford and the Umatilla Army Disposal Site where 7.4 million pounds of discarded chemical weapons waited to be incinerated.

Humans would be vaporized in an instant if the winds of change shifted. Weapons of mass destruction glowed in backyards.

My future lives were freedom, choice and plenty.

Two months after 9/11 while writing in Cadiz, Spain I visualized my incarnation as a calm word mercenary on an existential literary mission.

I created and wrote with discipline and perseverance.

I had duende, an untranslatable Spanish word, literally meaning possessing spirit and dark sound.

It signifies a charisma, emotion, expression and authenticity manifested by flamenco dancers, bullfighters, shamans, prescient seers and weavers. Audiences feel they are in the presence of a mystical power. The duende is an elf or goblin in Spanish and Latin American folklore.

The Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca produced the best description of duende.

“Years ago, during a flamenco dance contest in Jerez, an old woman of eighty, competing against beautiful women and young girls with waists as supple as water, carried off the prize by simply raising her arms, throwing back her head and stamping the platform with a single blow of her heel. In that gathering of muses and angels, of beautiful forms and lovely smiles, the dying duende triumphed as it had to, dragging the rusted blades of its wings along the ground.”

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Marrakesh