Omar's Dream

A month later Omar returned to the caves to wait for me. He had a dream.

“I’m afraid you will have take your boots off,” said a soldier wearing a 45-caliber sidearm with an M-16 slung over his shoulder when he saw my scarred climbing boots at SeaTac airport in March 2002. They had steel rivets.

“Anything interesting happen while I was away since September 1, 2001?”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Do you mean the half before the shift or the half after the shift?”

The G.I. answered with a dull blank stare.

A retired homeless bag lady approached security. “It’s good to know that 450 airports in early 2002 hired more than 45,000 workers. Maybe I can get a screener job here.”

“Why not?” said a T.S.A. official standing near an X-ray machine. “Each month, screeners take from passengers about a half-million things, including 160,000 knives, 2,000 box cutters, seventy guns.”

“Look like things have improved since I’ve been gone,” she said, pushing her grocery cart down the discount aisle. “Now I feel really safe.”

Along the concourse I studied glossy high definition pixel posters of airplanes slamming into towers with the admonition:

Beware!

This could happen to you.

Live in fear.

Report any and all suspicious activity.

Do not trust anyone.

Spy on neighbors and report them to the Secret Police.

Do your civic duty.

Be a Patriot Act.

Big Brother Is Watching 24/7

I’d created this reality with precise clarity.

Returning to the United States of Amnesia after centuries on the ground in Morocco and Spain I sat in my Tacoma tree house. I worked in a room bathed in light.

I had a maul, a hatchet, and a double bladed axe named Laughter.

Inside shifting forest tides, I was buried beneath 150- foot tall Douglas firs waving in wind.

A blade’s swinging, singing weight edge sliced through old growth tree time rings with ferns, moss, and rain.

I sat down spinning out tales, weaving spider webs on a loom of time. My mirrors reflected everything.

I carried Omar’s palimpsest through the forest. It was a bird song trill and spring music with owls, ravens, crows, eagles and vultures circling on thermals offering shamanic visions of clarity, insight and ancient wisdom.

I established a refuge from the storm with simplicity, serenity and sanctuary.

Living on the edge I savored shelter in a bird’s song. Trimmed cuticles spiraled into spring. It snowed flowers.

I looked deep into the forest of the mysterious manuscript. It was true and filled with sensory details. I connected new narratives with Omar’s animal skins revealing adventures, quests, dreams, conversations and awareness blended with joy, delight, courage and healing energies.

People wondered and wandered, chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of their eyes. We see through our eyes not with our eyes.

I resumed my Spanish exile.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir