Detergent Molecules

On Christmas night I met this strange animated very tall scientist at Relax. It was in the Spanish town of Ronda, the home of bullfighting in the country.

Alex was a physicist working with molecular structures in Liverpool. He created simulated computer programs for a detergent company. His task was to see how and which molecules were attracted to dirt and which ones liked water.

It was as simple as that, his work. He was paid to have fun.

“Every couple of years I shift around,” Alex said in his drunken state of mind. “Well this looks interesting, I say to myself. I’ll try this for a couple of years.”

His height over the world was frightening, at first. His companion, another physicist from Germany was silent night.

I listened. My work was writer, storyteller, a hunter gather of material. The Art of Hanging Out.

High talkative Alex said, when he knew the truth, “Well then I’ll give you something for your book,” and he did.

“I am from Canada, my family is from Hungry, I spent six years in Athens, Georgia, then in Germany and now I am in England. The cord connecting me to my past has been cut, severed. I am just floating around having fun. Yes, I just end up in these most fascinating places having fun. I don’t even know what I’m going to be doing two or three years from now. I just ended up in a place doing my scientific work and they pay me. It’s amazing! I think I am becoming less left-brained over time. I will tell you something that happened to me recently. I discovered music. I discovered the drums. I found out when you play the drums you cannot be analytical about it, you have to be the drum.”

He shouted in Relax. The place was packed and we were at the end of the bar. Spanish language competed with English, pounding music, laughter and colliding glasses in celebrations.

He was in the spotlight. He was letting it all out. He was drinking and free. He and his silent friend were on a three week holiday. His friend had driven down from Frankfurt and they met in Barcelona. Now they were in Andalucia and hoped to go to Morocco.

He was anxious. “My friend’s passport expires in six months and we don’t know if they will let him in. We want to go in at Cueta, travel to Fez, Meknez, spend new year’s eve in Marrakech, then go over the Atlas mountains, swing through the Sahara and back north.”

“What happens if you can’t get in?”

He laughed from a great height and threw out massive hands, the hands of a scientist with well manicured nails.

“Then we’ll just go where we feel like it, following old roads, seeing where they go, like we did today through white villages named Benacoz and Arcos. We have no plans other than trying to get into Morocco. Neither of us have been there. We don’t know it.”

“I know it. I was there on 9/11 for two months before coming here.”

“Really?” Alex shouted, combining a question with an exclamation that echoed through festivities. “What is it like? I really want to know.”

“It’s a strange fascinating place. It will be a shock for you and your friend for a couple of days and then you will get used to the rhythm of the place, how to handle the hustlers, how to see in the light. Eight hours seems like 24.”

“Really?” he shouted towering over his listener.

“Yes. Really. You will find a new world of experience there. The people are kind and very hospitable. It may be overwhelming.”

“I will tell them I am from Canada, even though I spent six years in Georgia. It took me six years to figure out how the Americans think, and it was very strange. They live in their own little world. They don’t see out. I would talk them and the frequency passed right through their transparent selves.”

“I know what you mean,” I said rolling a cigarette. “I’ve been out of the country since September 1st. I jumped through a window.”

“Really!” was Alex’s favorite word. He ordered another beer. He was a tall brilliant kid in a new world. His excitement at this realization was absurd, revealing, scary, funny and entirely full of repressed energy. He grabbed his space as people poured past them to reach bathrooms.

He poured out his words. “Wow,” he said looking around Relax. “This is really amazing. Why is this place so interesting and so full of people?”

“There’s an excellent Spanish language course at Mondragon Palace. Students from all over the world come here for intensive 3-4 month classes. The city dates back to Roman and Moorish times, the weather is good year round, and the social scene is nonstop. Plenty of recreational drugs are available. For medicinal purposes only, of course. It’s a good place for people to be.”

Alex laughed. “Well I’d be interested in the medicinal properties of course. Do you live here?”

“No, I live, write and climb in a mountain pueblo 25 kilometers from here in the Sierras. It’s called Grazalema. The Romans established a village there on their way to Seville. Their name for the village was Lacilbula. I’m down for a couple of days to see friends for the holidays.”

“Really? I never heard of it. We drove around today to a lot of places, just following the road. It was really great. This is a wonderful place.” He looked over all the Spanish women and men talking and drinking at tables along orange walls in candlelight.

“Hey, he said, “I’ll give you something for your book. Then I’ll be in it.”

“Ok."

“You won’t believe it but I work with a multinational company, in one of their labs in Liverpool. I use computer programs to create and analyze various molecules in their detergent.”

“Detergent?”

“Detergent. This is how it works. Some molecules are attracted to dirt. They adhere to it, they seek it out. Others like water. So, I assemble all these various atoms and molecules and see what they do. I introduce them to the materials and see how they react.”

“Fascinating.”

“Yes, and I get paid to have fun. They pay me to create these experiments.”

“So, it’s really like you are an artist using the computer to create a canvas, a painting of these molecules.”

“Exactly!” Alex yelled from his height, his enthusiasm blasting over the hip hop rap bass beat. “You can put that in your book.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Readers may find your work interesting. I used to work in an area where there was a nuclear reactor and I knew a lot of physicists there. They were working on nuclear questions, some on hydrogen fuel cells for alternative energy sources. I’ve never met a physicist working with detergent.”

“Yeah it’s pretty cool. And now we’re here. Did you know,” he said, “that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? Well, the remaining particles of atoms, a very small part, is life and then inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage.” He laughed long and loud.

“The amazing thing is how many people don’t know it or get it. The natural law is for things to get messy. That’s why people clean, to rearrange the molecules in some form of order. They think they are in control of it. They are afraid of the change. Things happen which are outside their control or plans of the creator. It expands the evolutionary process.”

“So,” I said. “The world constructed of stories includes atoms. Interesting. I took a statistics class once, and while I wasn’t very good in statistics I learned one thing from the teacher.”

“What’s that?”

“Any individual or system will do whatever is necessary to perpetuate and sustain itself.”

“That’s it!” Alex yelled. “That’s a pure definition of how the world works. That’s the exact answer.”

Natasha from Kiev

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 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.

With them was an American writer going to Morocco for six months. He had finished a book in the summer about a woman who spoke every language and he was jumping through a window into new adventures.

We all 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.

Passengers 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 a waterfall. Framed images of smiling kings 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 life on a cart and she disappeared into the throng with her son. I watched her husband’s family approach her. It was his father, mother, brother-in-law and an older woman dressed in traditional jellabas. They welcomed her with a hug, speaking words Natasha did not understand. They scooped up the boy.

I focused on the old couple as they slowly walked away and imagined 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 would 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 would carry the water and gather wood. She would carry their fading light, hopes, dreams and connections. Their grandson would realize everything. They disappeared into a polluted city of 5 million.

They were descended from Berbers. Their culture had a passion to touch a world outside their ability to perceive the reality.

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.

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

I whispered this story to Natasha but she found it hard to believe.

You Will Jump Through A Window

Dionce, a healer friend in Phoenix rising from 9/11 psychic ashes, talked about shifts, frequencies and vibrations.

History said they manifested themselves one year well before a month in the Fall from supremacy on a myopic vision emergency frequency. Before emergency calls on hot lines melted through tribal retributions.

“A little premonition can be a dangerous thing,” he said. She sighed over long distance. He prepared to fly into exile come autumn when leaves departed their structure. Does the tree feel sadness when it loses leaves?

She well understood his intentions and motivations. His nomadic instincts called.
“You will jump through the window,” she said during a summer’s conversation.

“My work here is going well. I’ll complete the first draft by August 2001, then it will be time to go and renew the spirit. To pay attention, get back on the road. To go back in time. I leave September 1.”

“How is it going?”

“I’m blessed to be working on it. It’s coming together. It’s edgy, daring and insightful. It’s a weapon of mass destruction. It may not appeal to mainstream agents, publishers and a general readership due to its fragmentary nonlinear nature. I feel I’m working on some intricate puzzle and jumping through windows without leaving the ground. Some belief windows are desperate for a good cleaning.” They laughed.

“Puzzles are revealing,” she said.

“It’s like the Navajo or Tibetans creating their sand mandala. Through their daily practice they achieve a vision, their clarity allows them to manifest their intuition. When they are finished creating their work manifesting their internal vision of peace and nonviolence, they sweep up the colored grains of sand and release material in water or air. It’s a healing process of non-attachment. Impermanence. A gift.”

He read some to her.

“It’s all about the mysteries,” she said. “Will you send me some?”
“Sure. I’ll get some chapters printed up and off to you.”

She shared a story about three men in the desert who discovered the secret of the mysteries in the Cabbala.

“They had three choices. One walked away in peace, one died and one went mad.”

“Maybe that’s my fate.”

They discussed various moral ambiguities through their characters.

“To travel is better than to arrive because you are always here,” he said.

“Who is it that is dragging this corpse around?” she asked him.

“All time is now and all space is here.”

“Yes. Time is history and space is geography.”
“Be well.”
They rang off.

They’d exchanged the laughter and wisdom of a child’s voice inside living history. This was only part of the experience and he hadn’t written much about it because he had been living it day in and day out. One character lived it, another character felt fortunate to just get it down and try to make sense of it later.

He decided that everyone he’d met, known and loved would be fair game in this tale. If they didn’t like it, fair enough, it wasn’t nothing but the blues. The blues are life’s way of talking.

Art of the Knives

September 1, 2001. Before sleeping dragons woke up in Truth Or Consequences to have a little fun at the poor human’s expense.

One thing he witnessed with clarity on the transatlantic flight was how a Spanish woman sitting across and up a row manipulated her knife to carve an apple. She used her thumb to measure thin red skin and gently worked the blade down the fruit near her thumb while maintaining slight pressure.

She was delicate and firm with the sharp tool. He’d observe many people using knives and he always remembered the Spanish woman’s fingers and blade.

On warm afternoons as winter sun sang past the Grand Penon dolomite mountains in the Sierras an old Spanish man labored up the hill on his cane with his brown and white terrier toward the gazebo. The gazebo overlooked Lacilbula.

“Ola,” exchanging pleasantries. The man pulled a folding blade and a pear wrapped in a white paper napkin from his brown sweater pocket.

He had the same precision as the woman on the plane. When he finished slicing a piece he kept it on the edge and ate off steel. Slice by slice. Done, he tossed the core to his barking mongrel, wiped off the blade, folded it, returned it to his pocket, took his cane, walked over to the potable water stone fountain, removed his upper teeth, washed them and put them back in his mouth.

The village butcher named Garcia had the art. Grazalema families butchering a pig on a plywood slab in their garage had it. A cafe barman displayed it with his long thin blade slicing thin strips of ham off a pig’s bone wedged between wood supports.

Friends had it butchering rams in Casablanca for Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice. The feast, a major Muslim holiday, commemorated the Qur’an’s account of God allowing the patriarch Ibraham to sacrifice a ram instead of his son Ishmael. It was sacrifice with a capital S. Ibraham dreamed he wanted to kill his son and God said, “No. I will send you a ram,” and this was their tradition.

Three rams were slaughtered, one for each married man in the family. The rams spent their last night in the wood factory attached to the warren of rooms constituting the family home in an industrial section of town.

They started at nine a.m., after a breakfast of crepes and tea. Ahmed, Tofer, Saad and their father secured wooden beams and ropes above the red and gray tiled floor.

They held the ram down and sliced it’s throat. Breath and blood flowed across checkerboard tile. It fought for it’s life, kicking and screaming. The head was severed and thrown to the side. They cut a hole in a back leg near a tendon and bone, ran a rope through it and hoisted the carcass into the air.

The wool coat was sliced off and thrown on a ladder where it dried in the sun. It’d be collected by a man pushing his rolling cart through the neighborhood and made into a prayer rug. The body was inflated with an air compressor to make skinning easier. Blood flowed over tiles.

Rex, the German shepherd drank his fill.

Sharp knives. They re-sharpened blades in the shop and worked fat off the skin of the poorest animal. Internal organs tumbled into plastic tubs. A wife carried them upstairs to the team of women preparing meals. Men washed the interior cavity with hot water.

Liver skewered with fat was grilled over red hot coals and served with tea, hot bread and olives at noon. Everyone gathered at a long shaded table under pink and red boginvillas flowers and clear blue sky.

At 3 p.m. they ate the stomach with lemon, olives and fresh hot bread. Fruit and water. Larger sections of the ram were dismembered with a band saw, placed in plastic bags and frozen. A third would be given to the poor.

Across the street itinerant men cooked rams heads on a makeshift grill and hacked off the horns.

Rare people say they experienced two sensations simultaneously: they saw colors when they heard sounds, or they heard sounds when they ate something. The condition is called synaesthesia.

The sound you hear is the smell of a ram’s head crying. The music of embers, wool and glazed eye calm. The edge you touch is the blade releasing blood, the feeling you see is the poorest skin, white intestines, black liver on red coals. A single piece of charcoal welcomes the skull, horns curve from blue sky into dark eyed knife slashing flesh.

All families made the sacrifice. Sacrifice, community, family energies within the spirit world and human hospitality. The feast lasted three days.

The art of the knives.

Fat and Happy

On September 1, 2001 he was wedged next to the window of a puddle jumper flying over the Cascade mountains. Next to him were an overweight happy couple in economy anticipating their future first class flight to London out of Georgia. Days before people on, from and inside cells placed long distance calls from the edge of caves.

“We own a travel agency. We’re meeting friends,” said the wife, “and then,” her husband chimed in, “we’re sailing down the Danube for a week, drinking good wine and enjoying the food.”

She wore enough jewelry to feed Bangladesh and their combined girth was sweet consumption. They exceeded their weight limit. The scales of justice were balanced in their favor as they spilled wealth.

“What do you do for a living?” her husband asked.

“My friends call me Mr. Point. I work for The Department of Wandering Ghosts Ink. 24/7,” he said with a straight face. He was a survivor, Vietnam 1969.

“Busy, busy, busy,” he laughed. “Yes, I am a mercenary of love, an unemployed fortune teller if you must really know. You might remember me from the Academy of Pain and Anger Management if you have a need to know. The more you know the less you need. If your top secret security clearances are valid.

“I’m heading to North Africa to meet my female nomad lover and various strangers. Here’s a dirty little secret. One of our classified missions is the extraordinary rendition program, allowing intelligence agencies to transfer terrorism suspects to various friendly foreign countries for interrogation and torture. We use Gulf Jet Stream jets based in South Carolina operating under fictious companies.

“If they don’t talk to us our friends start by removing their fingernails. If that method doesn’t get ‘em talking they start boiling them alive. We chain them to walls and play ear splitting rap music 24 hours a day to drive them crazy. Stale bread and rancid water. A grisly business, but hey, it’s a paycheck.

“We also set up off shore accounts for clandestine agencies, or fronts if you will. We collect raw opium in Afghanistan, process it in Asian labs so street addicts get their fix. Along the way we collect internal organs to sell in Hong Kong. The market is diversifying. Pick em’ up and lay em’ down. No women or kids. We have to draw the line somewhere, eh?

“Business has never been better. Ain’t nothin but the blues baby.”

They cut him off after this truth.

His one-way air ticket to Morocco and Spain; another village, town, city, country and continent offered simple psychic realities and fewer intrusions on his sanity.

The KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, principle. Just leaving was a wise decision as it turned out. Speaking of hiss-tree.

“Beyond, beyond the great beyond,” he’d whispered to someone when they asked him where was he was going and why he did what he did with the who, when and howdy doody yankee doodle dandy stick a feather in your cap crap paradigms.