On the Train

The Moroccan girl with wild brown hair tied back is not on the train as it leaves a white station.

She sits on her haunches. Her bare feet dig soil, grip small earth pebbles as exposed root structures dance with her toes.

Her toes are her extended connection where her shadow lies forgotten. It spreads upon vegetables. They wait below her. They prowl toward late winter light.

She is not on the red and brown train that zooms past green fields where her sheep in long woolen coats eat their way through pastures after a two year drought.

She is inside green the girl with her wild brown hair pulled tight. She is not on the train hearing music, eating dates, reading a book, talking with friends or strangers, sleeping along her passage, or dreaming of a lover.

She does not scan faces of tired, trapped people in their orange seats impatiently waiting for time to deliver them to a Red City in the desert.

Her history’s desert is full of potentates sharpening their swords, inventing icon free art, alphabets, practicing equality, creating five pillars of Islam and navigation star map tools, breaking wild stallions, building tiled adobe fortresses, selling spices, writing language.

She is not on the train drinking fresh mint tea or
consulting a pocket sized edition of the Qur'an. She does not kneel on her Berber carpet five times a day facing Mecca in the east.

She does not wear stereo earphones or listen to music imported from another world, a world where people treasure their watches. Where controlling time is their passion for being prompt and responsible citizens to give their lives meaning.

She is not on the train and not in this language the girl with her wild brown hair tied back with straw or leather or stems of wild flowers surrounding her with fragrances.

She is surrounded by orange blossom perfume beyond rolling hills, cut by wet canyons along yellow and green fields, where her black eyes penetrate white clouds in her blue sky.

In her open heart she hears her breath explore her long shadow, causing it to ripple with her shift. Her toes caress soil and she is lighter than air, lighter than a feather of a wild bird in the High Atlas mountains far away.

She smells the Berber tribal fire heating tea for the festival where someone wears a goatskin cape and skull below the stars.

It is cold outside. Flames leap from branches like shooting stars into her eyes and someone plays music. It is the music of her ancestors, her nomadic people and she sways inside the gradual hypnotic rhythm of her ancestral memory.

She is not on the train. She is inside a goat skull moving her hoofs through soil. She moves through fields where she danced as a child seeing red and yellow fire calling all the stars to her dance and she is not on the train.

Selling memories

Greetings,

In Spain, like anywhere else on the spinning rock, when strangers crossed paths he found them wanting.

“Do you want to buy a key chain?” he said to a lost blond femme fatale Standing Down At The Crossroads along Highway 61. “Do you need this? I sell memories.”

“Do you have any short term memories?”
“Yes. We have memories in all sizes and colors.”
“I need a memory of...”
“Can you be more specific?"
“I’m sorry, I’m having trouble remembering.”
“What do you want to remember?”
“I don’t want. I need.”

He opened with the Queen’s Gambit. Pawn to king four, P-K4. The great game of kings was about material, position and ruthless determination. Crush your opponent’s ego. Control the middle of the board. Castle within your first ten moves.

She answered with P-QB4.

It was touch and go with her. Use it or lose it. Paying attention to the details. Small microscopic details.
Allah is in and on the details.
God is in and on the details.
The Devil is in and on the details.
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.

“I have the desire to embrace danger,” he said. “Come with me, here, closer to the edge of our humanity.”

Distracted by his intentions she picked up a glossy brochure blowing down the street.

“Hustler 101 for freshmen is accepting applications. Sign up at registration.”

“Let me see,” she said moving close enough for him to get a good smell of her taste for unprotected lust.

Peace.

Bhutan

Spanish church bells buried in the Plaza de Dreams, a fictitious manifestation of reality, a conglomeration of his experience, tolled as people toiled. He didn’t steal a line, a title from Earnest about ringing bells. He paid his toll and crossed to the other side of paradise.

A wandering Chinese monk shared a talkstory with Omar.

“One day in the Himalayas I hiked to a meditation hut above Taktsang, Tiger’s Nest, in Druk Yul overlooking the Paro valley laced with rice paddies, rhododendron, fir, spruce, hemlock and barley fields.

“Guru Padmasambhava or Guru Rimpoche (Precious Teacher) was the spiritual founder of the Nyingmapa old school of Himalayan Buddhism in 800 A.D. which is still taught in central Bhutan. Tantric Buddhism in Bhutan dates to 450 A.D. and is the esoteric form of the Drukpa Kagyupa Buddhist School. The state religion of Mahayana Buddhism or the Great Vehicle was established in the 8th century.

“According to legend, Rimpoche subdued many demons in Paro and central Bhutan. At one time he had two wives, an Indian and a Tibetan. He transformed his Indian wife into a tiger and flew to Taktsang Monastery in the 8th century.

“Tiger’s Nest is a series of small tight buildings built into the cliff. It is composed of intricate staircases, stone flagging, a small open air kitchen, balconies, rooms for sleeping, and meditation. I was welcomed by boys and monks who showed me a small meditation room filled with statues, offerings of rice, coins, fruits and vegetables.

“They showed me the cave where Rimpoche lived for three years. Three monks appointed by the chief abbot in Thimphu live here for three years for meditation study and are followed by novice monks in their spiritual meditations.

“Taktsang, destroyed by a fire in 1998, was rebuilt.

“I traveled east along the spine of the dragon climbing to 10,000 feet dropping into valleys and climbing again. Distinct elevations consist of grasslands, crop lands, forests, hardwoods, coniferous forests, soft woods, alpine meadows, yak pastures, and glaciers. Barley, wheat and potatoes are primary spring and summer crops from 7,500-13,000’ with the tree line coming at 12,000-14,000' and coniferous replacing hardwoods above 8,000’.

“I passed West Bengal and Indian road gangs working at quarter mile intervals. They perform hard work carrying large rocks and crushing granite to repair and fill the endless washouts. They will live and work here for two or three years maintaining the roads before being replaced by new workers from northern India. Their living situation is very grim. Shelters are woven reeds, fortified with any materials they can find along the rivers. They carry their children on their backs as they work. Younger ones sleep along the road under torn black umbrellas.

“Ten thousand people live in the Bumthang area. Small shops and stores along the single main street serve as homes and business. Built of wood with small steel stoves and chimneys, the rooms are multipurpose; selling in front, eating and sleeping quarters in the rear. Merchandise includes thread, wool, fabric for weaving, canned goods, small toys, sweets, local spirits, spices, eggs, a limited supply of green vegetables, a few green apples, and soap.

“The architecture is Tibetan, rectangular buildings are two-three stories high, a pitched roof with open space holding firewood and fodder. The middle floor is for storage of grains, seeds and foodstuffs. The upper floor is the living quarters, broken into smaller rooms. The ground floor on a working farm is for the cattle. If not, there are windows at this level with a shop, storeroom, kitchen, and servant’s quarters.

“I arrived at a monastery in the foothills overlooking the town where 300-500 Bhutanese gathered to receive a blessing from a lama. Children and adults sit and talk on rows of timber slabs on the sun baked ground.

“Three monks blew long wood and silver jallee horns to chase evil spirits away. The lama, Nam Kha Nen Boo, is Khenbow, a reincarnation of a former monk known for his fortune telling power. He was seated and read in a low tone of voice for twenty minutes and used a small hand held drum and bell.

“Finished, he moved among the people touching us on the head with a statue called a Tshtshto. This dignifies the life of a human with a blessing “Have a long life.” People approached with offerings for his blessing. Bags of red string, flour, and jenlap, a nutmeg like substance, were offered. One lama handed each person jenlap. Another lama gave each person a single red string to be worn around the neck.

“I visited the Jakar Dzong. The head lama opened large doors in the quiet spiritual center. Ornate sculptures of Padmasambhava and flickering yak butter lamps filled the center wall. Inside another room was a ten foot high statue of the guru, bronze statues with salt and butter flower carvings.

“Display cases with hundreds of identical 5-6" Buddha statues sat in tiered arrangement extending the length of the room, reaching the ceiling. Larger images depicted historical and religious levels of spiritual attainment.

“My meditation is on The Eightfold Path or Middle Way between self-indulgence and self modification. The eight orders are: Right Views, Right Purpose, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Awareness, and Right Concentration or Right Meditation.

“I have a diamond in my mind. I am alive and empty in the here, now, and present. I know imagination is better than knowledge. Now I travel south on a path through the jungle.”

“Be well,” said Omar.

The Entomologist

People walked everywhere, moving through this thing called life. The city had an air of energy about it with all the coming and going.

People walked to the mercado next the Plaza de Flowers where stalls of color beguiled walkers hauling their provisions in rolling shopping carts. Women used wheel chairs to haul bags of groceries and cement in their utilitarian universe. Their rolling world carried a lot of stuff where the rubber met the road.

This indicated an invalid family member waited at home in a rocking chair watching Spanish game shows and talking heads. Waiting for the goods.

As an entomologist, a hunter-gatherer with Metis, a cunning intelligence, seeking visual epiphanies, Mr. Point opened his aperture to f/1.4 and let in the Light. All of it. Blinding light, prisms of kaleidoscopes, muted spectrums in waves and particles guiding his efforts to manipulate a tool, a well designed black foreign range finder. A camera obscura.

It had the finesse of a magnifying glass, a Hubble telescope looking into an expanding infinite universe, illuminating distant black holes sucking matter into a void. He couldn’t see the black holes but he knew they were there.

It was one thing he carried. He started carrying it in Nam and he was not about to stop now. It was just a tool. It allowed him to stop time and divide it two. The Kairos of his eye allowed him to discriminate intuitively. Both an eye and a mirror.

He filled it up, refining his being, becoming one with the subject, how to smile, how silence worked, how to be a detached observer, a photo journalist. How to disappear inside the scene, move with the quickness of a wild animal, how to see, really see, visualize, anticipate the impending decisive moment while stalking his prey with cunning.

How to freeze, compose in the viewfinder, breath, squeeze, advance with a quick flick of the opposable thumb, load, unload, develop, fix, print, label, and assemble his work. Film was his prayer wheel.

He adjusted to exile, making fundamental survival adaptations with proportion and harmony. He took his time quickly.

He hunted down images in the Sunday flea market; old photos, stamps, phonographs, typewriters, dolls, tools, locks, and religious paintings of the Last and Final Supper. He composed seafood, books, discarded clothing, toys, glass, buttons, broken phones, paintbrushes, watches, faces, hands, and lottery tickets.

Slot machine games with revolving wheels of fortune and flashing lights filled bars as drinking men pumped 100 peseta coins into hungry machines. Unemployed men and women prowled streets, corners, shops and exchanges selling lottery tickets called ONCE.

The Champion grocery store across from the old market sold sixteen different lottery tickets. A city this old and focused on religious faith had a fix on gambling. Pay now and pray later. People this poor needed all the hope money could buy. Small money.

He imagined streets, parks, cathedrals, beaches, white haired ladies playing bingo in the sand, women, and children dressed for religious festivals, men cutting fish, hands holding creased maps or thick Cuban cigars, and tourists gripping each other in wild lost abandoned desperation.

He captured lovers in the sun, men hammering old stones, pigeons fighting over scraps of bread, the moon between television aerials, juxtapositions of hammers and crucifixes on old fabric, balconies, brown nuns supporting their habit, blue Moorish doors, and the historical remains before and after Chris sailed east. He shot day and night, returning to the room to download a day’s images and write up notes.