Democracy & Happy Meals

Immediately after 9/11 Spanish children scrambled through dust pawing soil looking for energy cells. Emergency air raid sirens exploded. Everyone scrambled into bombed out buildings.

"Hey, check this out," said a hungry refugee, "I found a case of Democracy. The Republican label says it spreads easily."

"Is it crunchy or plain?"

"How do I know? It’s just plain old Democracy."

"I hope it’s better than that old rancid Freedom Sauce. Let’s give it a go. Democracy is a good idea, in theory."

They opened the box, took out a jar, unscrewed the top, grabbed sharp knives, broke bread and slathered on Democracy.

"Wow! This is yummy."

"Yeah, well I got some stuck in my throat. It tastes like sand."

"It’s protein."

World tribes collected their Democracy.

"We need more energy," someone said. "We need music, news, a weather forecast. We need to know what’s happened."

"Need a clue? Take a look around you," said an illiterate person. Twin Towers, Iraqi and Syrian villages, and Afghan mountains smoldered on the immediate horizon.

"It looks desperate," said one.

"Eye, it does," said another. "It’s always darker before the dawn."

Sirens stopped and they emerged from darkness.

"We need shelter," said a family gathering rushes from the World Bank. Third world immigrants and internally displaced people pounded rocks and carried them on their backs toward unknown futures. They sang, “Give me shelter. Shelter from the storm.”

"Beware those who live on dreams," said a rationalist.

"We need a committee," said a company man. "We need order."

"May I take your order?" requested a disembodied voice from a black box in a drive-thru combat zone.

"One happy meal to go," cried a distraught family trapped in a massive traffic jam. It was bumper to bumper on the highway of death between the airport and Baghdad. Where the rubber met the road. Their digestive systems were backed up for miles with sugar, fat, grease and carbohydrates.

"Consider the essentials will you," pleaded a small voice from the back seat trying to get a dial tone, trying to get through, trying to find a rhythm inside swirling chaos. It threatened to swallow everyone and spit humans into a black hole sucking everything into a parallel universe. 

A Century is Nothing

Celebration Day in Ronda & Zahara

It started when he turned the key in the lock of room 12 leaving a cheap hostel in Ronda, Spain late one morning.

He walked past the corridor and spotted a dark shadow of someone entering a room down the hall. He took one more step and remembered seeing her before, down at Relax eating a large salad. He had spoken with her about the size of the tomatoes and she laughed saying it was too much food.

He stopped, took one step back and looked down the hall. They recognized each other and started laughing and talking like deranged idiots. They were filling in the blanks. He was checking out and she was checking in. Saving money.

They went to a cafe. She carried day old food in plastic bag.

Mona was from Sydney, moved through London, Paris, Lisbon, Granada and now Ronda. She had never been away from home and friends before. She didn’t like London and got out. She had relatives in Rome.

“I had to live with their rules,” she said. Hard. Her epiphany occurred in Nice, France.

“That’s when it hit me, she said, “all the loneliness, all the insecurities came piling out. I hit bottom.” This was her moment of truth. It hit her like a ton of bricks.
“I had no idea where I was or what I was doing. I started doing sitting meditations. I was in chaos.”

She made her breakthrough. She said it changed her life. She was free to move. It was about expectations. She had suffered enough, made enough wrong turns, listened to other’s bad advice about how to live and survive. She figured out only her compassion and acceptance would save her.

She moved forward with an open heart and mind.

We sat in a cafe near the Plaza de Socorro talking. She opened a can of garbanzo beans and they broke bread.

He told her about his journey, how a language dies on the planet every two weeks, about his narrator writing on mirrors, weaving magic cloth, how he finished the monster novel in August heat, threw it out and wandered away. How he jumped through a window flying across an eastern ocean under a full moon shining on waves. Beyond, beyond the great beyond.

She looked like Ingrid Bergman. A star in the universe. It puzzled him as he tried to be definitive about the resemblance. He made an image of her.

They met friends at Relax. Susan, a lively blond from North Beach studying Spanish, a dancer, a swimmer. John and Christ, friendly open minded German guys setting up their travel expedition company in Ronda.

John told them two stories, “I am a millionaire. Everyday I have a beautiful view.”

“There was a man in South America who worked and dug for gold for 40 years. Then he found some gold and exchanged it for money. He tied the money to a rope and ran through the village. Everyone said, ‘What are you doing?’ He told them, “for 40 years I have been chasing money and now money is chasing me.”

They drove to the old Roman village of Grazalema where the writer lived. It was a intimate white pueblo two room place with an enclosed patio holding 20 plants. Where he fed sparrows day old bread from the upstairs balcony overlooking the valley and mountains. Where he watched Egyptian vultures with 8’ wing span circle on high thermals.

Where he watched leaves change from green to yellow to brown and fall through air in their silence. Watching them lose their energy and return their strength to the soil and tree. They were free to fall through air and light.

In the patio was a lemon tree. Christ took three lemons and juggled. They met Jose and Silvia from Seville. We drove high into the national park stopping to walk and breath the clear air past mountains, valleys to the Mediterranean. Pure light.

We ended up at Zahara. The old abandoned tower sat on a pinnacle high above land, fields and artificial lakes. Zahara was founded by Muslims in the 8th century and fell to a Castilian prince in 1407. It was recaptured in a night raid in 1481 by Abu-al-Hasan from Granada and was the home of anarchists in the 19th century.

Somebody said George Harrison died the day before. We remembered ‘My Sweet Lord’. Somebody hummed, “I look at the world and it keeps turning. I look at you all while my guitar silently weeps.” We sat quietly inside vast plains, mountains ranges and sky.

Christ said anyone seeing the sky here would understand where Picasso got his colors. We were in the Spanish province of light. Sharp orange light painted the horizon from west to east as the sun bounced blue and green rays off El Torreon at 1654 meters, the highest mountain in Andalucia.

We climbed steep stone paths past old Roman baths past into futures. We held each other’s hands and coats inside pitch black stone step passageways toward the top of the tower.

It was magic, a kid’s day. The full moon showed a sliver of itself over mist hills and valleys to the east. Then it exploded up! It was a perfect white orb surrounded by purple, orange and blue.

We celebrated the impact being in the perfect place at the perfect time. History of Romans, Moors, Christians. Lakes stretched along the valley.

Lakes reflected moonlight. Before meditation the moon is the moon and the water is the water. During meditation the mountain is not the mountain and the water is not the water.

We were in a dream of light. Colors flashed across the sky, shooting starts came out to play. Mountains shimmered in the moonlight. The lakes were mirrors in our mind.

“In an improvisational acting class they had us do this when we made a mistake,” Susan said from the top of the tower.

She arched her back, threw her arms up and out into air and screamed, “I SUCK,” and relaxed. We laughed and understood her and the motivation in an instant. ZAP! Clearing the way with heart.

“This is the day of my dreams,” the writer said.
We took the low road back to the pueblo along lakes full of blue and silver moon light.

Susan said, “You know this would be perfect night to be able to fly. To make love in the sky.”
“Yes,” said the writer, “we could make love flying upside down then do acrobatic turns in space while connected.”

“Yes,” she said, “if the earth were a marble and dropped into the lake we could swim to the surface.”
“Yes,” he said, “and burst free and fly, glide over the mountains and plains forever”

“Yes,” she said, “just for one night.”
“Yes,” he said, “during the full moon we’d have the freedom to fly all night long.”
Their universe was yes.

They listened to sad Fado Portuguese singers as headlights shattered shadows. Moonlight danced on the water illuminating jagged gray dolomite mountains into the black sky full of shooting stars. We were all shooting stars.