Fly

Ireland.

One night a Donegal fly arrives while I’m typing.

It lands on the lampshade.

A muse watchdog fly, one eye, many eyes.

It rubs its feelers together in anticipation of finishing off someone’s meal. Flies have lived on Earth for 93 million years. They symbolize death and decay.

There is no food lying around, only papers, magnifiers, books and clothing.

The fly’s aware of magic power and pure intention drawing it to the writer. The lamp is hot. The wind is cold. The fly reads my mirror mind, sees bleeding fingers, feeling the loneliness and freedom.

Fly appreciates and comprehends this must go down just as it must land to rub it’s feelers together sitting on the precipice of light beams with wonder, fury, delight, ramifications, responsibility and repose. Karmic fate.

-I saw you from a foreign window, said fly. -You were on a path.

-True. Suffering is an illusion. It’s a grand precious adventure. The road is made by walking. It’s a long walk.

-Seems full of fools, dead ends, bookends, trails, trials, tribal ramifications and tribulations. Where is the beauty and truth in this tale? Where is the narrative structure? Where is the plot of formless form?

-We live in a world of forms. It’s in the exposition. The big show. It’s in the thread of fates’ fabric. How do I know where it will go? Part of my job is to gather material, get out of the way and allow a writer to organize it. I’m lucky to get it down and figure it out later. I’m a conduit. I’m a figment of your imagination.

-So it would appear, said fly, -who lives it, writes it, rewrites it, polishes it, reads it, kills it, ignores it, abandons it. I am a drop of water on your mirror. Feed wild birds daily crumbs. Water flies from sky. It explodes into earth. I disappear into dust. Burn baby burn. Cry baby cry.

-You’re a fly. An insect. Short attention span, like some humans I’ve met. No attention span? No problem.

-Hey. Take it easy. Listen. Stay focused. Stay on task. You were in the jungle, the real deal amigo. You were dazed and confused, stupid, naive, dressed in green, following blind orders. Blind led the blind. You were the willing doing the ridiculous for the ungrateful. You survived to tell the tale. Give me a break. Start with one true declarative sentence. Punctuation is a nail. Write what you know. Write the ending and work backwards. Center ripples out. Use verbs and nouns. Murder adjectives and adverbs. Use active tense. Give me dirty realism. Surface. Write with passion. Keep it simple. Seduce the reader.

-It was hot and humid. It was November. I was a climatic cinematic spotlight-floodlight focus. I was a thick stream of gracious fear, healthy doubt, glorious uncertainty, wild adventure and unlimited surprise. 

-How did you feel?

-Shit, I was young and scared. Apprehensive. We were all young and petrified & naive packed into a tin can flying low over green jungles. I smelled the green lieutenant’s shit next to me skimming jungles before they opened the doors, before some sergeant got on yelling at us to get out and get going. We walked down the stairs into heat exploding off pavement. A brown and white striped tent waved in the distance. We walked toward it. There were hundreds of guys yelling and screaming at us.

-So what. Kinda Blue by Miles Davis

-Man it was weird, I gotta tell ya. All these guys in earth  brown uniforms, caked with dirt laughing, smiling, yelling, crying, taunting us, thanking us for bringing in their plane, yelling “man we’re going home, what’s your honey’s name jack and I’ll take good care of her, man am I short,” all kinds of verbal incantations.

-So what. (take 2)

-You don’t get it do you? Man we were just getting there and I said, shit here I am at 19 and I’ve got 365 days to go. These guys are done, finished, out of here and it was the biggest longest looking instant of future time in the immediate present tense sense you could imagine. I couldn’t even begin to see it, 365 what? Are you kidding me? Others went into shock knowing they had no idea what was in front of them, only seeing 365 days staring them in the face. You knew life expectancies disappeared fast being a numbers game maybe, at the most six months if you were lucky and then after surviving 180 days you stayed on edge trying to make it through the rest. We swallowed salt pills three times a day. The weak dropped like flies.

-Not funny.

Weaving A Life V1

Director of Brooms

Full Moon

Grazalema.

I was blessed to see many full winter Sierra moons. A bone white marble rode clouds. Undulating valleys dreamed of planting and harvest. Mad as hell caged hunting dogs howled high anxiety below western mountains.  

Grazalema men in sturdy boots carried lifetime labor tools through fields. After dusk when Luna was full they didn’t visit fields, river, forests or mountains. They lived the day. Spirits lived the night. They respected magic and ghosts.

Dogs bayed sunset to dusk. Rising orange clouds danced with a yellow moon. Men passed the cemetario toward harvest.

A heavy open thick bolted brown wooden church door led to the vestibule of an old Republican resistance memory.

A Virgin Mary crying blood decorated the altar. A woman in black performing her daily life penance through action and devotion changed the white lace cloth. She soaked blood out at Roman public baths below the village where water flowed from stoned carved angelic mouths.

A forcestero with a camera obscura passed her. She recognized his ghost. Yes, that’s all it was, a spirit visiting friends.

She blessed herself twice with bird wing fingers at the end of a warm winter day. Sun went home. Egyptian vultures danced in blue. She locked the black gate leading to the crypt. She remembered the forcestero doing his reconnaissance after yesterday’s funeral.

Today he worked in the crypt zone. Four walls held departed. Engraved stones with names, dates, in memoranda of children and adults to 1896. He made images below smoky green eyes of a wild Siamese cat on a red tiled roof.

Crypt construction tools, bricks, cleaning solution, trowels, broken black buckets, and rags dressed empty crevices. Rectangles waited for ornate boxes from a casket factory miles and lives away.

Caskets with simple bronze handles for six pairs of weathered hands. Brown and black religiously lined caskets and satin pillows. Pillows softer than language mumbling living tears. Hearts beat long personal and collective drum solos.

Every heartbeat contains a universe of possibilities.

Caskets in black cars with wreaths of infinite floral scents reached the black gate where they were hoisted on strong shoulders, carried past a palm tree, past a small church, another black gate on rusty hinges and slid into empty domain names. Cold gray cement cavities wore red brick ceilings.

I studied a desolate crypt space. It was long. It was empty. It was cold. It was a permanent change of address marked Eternity.

Leaving death’s shadow I heard men’s tools dig hard winter ground. They were above ground.

Black was the night and cold was the ground.

“Any day above ground is a good day,” whispered a gravedigger.

“I’d rather be a tiger for one day than a sheep for 1,000 years,” chanted a Tibetan monk at Sera Monastery outside Lhasa. He sat on a raised platform swathed in burgundy robes holding the Vajra diamond thunderbolt and bell in his left hand.

Ringing muted tones he chanted sutras. Chanting voices, drums, incense, and bells. After spinning copper prayer wheels pilgrims climbed narrow slick stone temple steps entering through a worn door hanging. Three ornate, copper-plated Buddha’s faced them.

Past, Present and Future Buddha’s contemplated rows of flickering butter lamps, fruit offerings, khata scarves, paper money and coins. Two wooden benches sat against a wall. On the floor was a pan of round clay balls. Devotees took one, rubbed paste on faces and hands, dropping it into a used pan.

They joined people waiting to be blessed. Gathered with bowed heads at the chanting monk’s feet were impatient, playful, devout jostling pilgrims. He cycled through sutras, chanting, touching people on heads with the thunderbolt before pouring holy water on their heads. Long life!

They eased away, others moved forward. He was in a trance state of awareness. Beyond wild.

An old woman in a heavy sheepskin chuba sat down next to a foreigner. Sharing a smile she mumbled kind pure words.

“Namaste. Blessings to you.”

Babbling tongues sang. The bell rang.

After this visualization I returned to Spanish crypts. Humming Estimated Prophet by The Grateful Dead, I manipulated a visual tool recording interments with names, flowers and passages of memory in love, loss, and chiseled historical pueblo connection. I imaged cavity shells of rectangular vacant passages where invisible stories dreamed. They illuminated desire, conflict, ambiguities, metaphors, and silence.

They waited for air to carry them to the listening faithful. Silent stories, silent night of the pious, silent in collective breathing with stories inside stories.

“The rest is silence,” said Shakespeare.

The church woman turned away from shadows crouched over rocky fields, shifting stones, fence plans and pruning dead growth from olive trees along the Rio. She saw her pueblo. Romans cleared fertile land now blanketed with yellow and purple wild flowers. They built stone homes and village roads.

They named it Lacilbula. They designed baths below mountains. Their road wound below towering cliffs. Ten-foot wide dolomite gray scraped stone roads twisted from the pueblo down to the valley. They built towers and walled fortifications with defensive mountains behind them for future legions expanding their empire. Soldiers treading west branched north to Seville or south to Cadiz.

Grazalema men loaded cork on tired tractors. Using bedsprings for gates they built pens for sheep, chickens, dogs, goats, and children. Twisted rusting bed coils lay scattered. Survivors used everything trying to tame poor rocky land. Men assembled fences using blackberry brambles with sharp thorns.

They decorated fences with stones and sticks, recycled old tires, tin cans, metal struts, old cars, discarded cooking stoves and bathtubs. Chipped tubs became watering troughs for livestock. Small stone dams diverted Rio streams to small fields.  Everything was done by hand. Labor worked dawn to dusk, day in day out. Labor cleared erosion’s debris marking land with tools and footprints.

Her husband slept in the Catholic crypt. Dusty light danced through palm leaves. She remembered his final whisper swallowing diamond ice. “I almost wish it were true.”

She was a full silent moon above his bone white memory. Her spirit guide served spirits.

A ghost worked among dead memories. Finished sacrificial rituals he flew above river stoned fields where men worked trust. His cloud vapor danced away from the cemetario.

Spirit energies manifested destiny with a full moon.

Caged mad dogs howled fear in gathering darkness.

A Century is Nothing

Borders

“He didn’t believe in countries and the only borders he respected were: borders of dreams – musty borders of love and indifference, borders of courage or fear – golden borders of ethics.” - Roberto Bolano

*

He took a night bus to Cadiz, an ancient city of Neoclassical churches where stained glass baroque explorers named Colon sailed west, dear Nina, in search of gold importing their assimilated desire, converting heathen slaves into worlds of persecution and misery.

It was expensive raising funds from skeptical kings and queens expanding their empire. Rumor said Queen Isabella was convinced of Chris’s project over a game of chess. The queen became the most powerful piece in the game, hiss- story-ically speaking.

This explained why Cadiz women were draped in gold. Remnants from ages of reason, enlightenment and discovery. Ages of illumination, prosperity and knowing the unknown gifts of the Magi evolving from bronze to iron to gold. Alchemical reactions turned base metals into gold. Chains around wrists and necks sold by the gram were heavily displayed by Spanish patrons.

Butchers in Cadiz didn’t wear gold. Their hands gripped the sharpened edge of well honed Spanish knives paring off fat, cutting through layers of gristle.

A shop bell rang. A stranger paused in a doorway.

A steel mesh glove protected a butcher’s left hand holding meat. He slammed a sharp hatchet blade through flesh and bone. The table was littered with blood. Women lined up to buy their favorite cut. Slabs of acorn fed pigs hung in windows as white quality funnel tags attached to hoofs collected fat.

Wild boar and stag heads stared down from walls next to color photos of local bullfighters. Orson Wells and Ernest Hemingway posed with famous Ronda matadors. Red rivers painted capes as bull blood flowed down muscular necks.

Dancing along the devil’s whiplash big black hungry flies buzzed around fresh red meat dripping warm blood into dust. A dog’s ribs rolled over scraping grounded shade, begging for water. A drop in the ocean, is all H20 no matter how deep you dive. A wave washed the shore day by day. Stones sang.

The sausages sounded sweet, retaining a sharpness, inextricably swaying like dancers in a choreography. Tired, frayed strings bent under a mass of weighted meat.

Manuel, the butcher stared through his jagged window of broken glass remembering the Spanish Civil War. His face was a mask of weary, solemn stillness. A quiet lying fury.

His silent words were exaltations, evaluations, the expected surcharge on an empty stomach, a tax for services rendered as reinforcements riding hard through Basque valleys, heard waves of German bombers over Guernica on April 26, 1937.

Beleaguered International Brigade freedom fighters held their own inside stone shepherd huts trapped in desolate Pyrenees Mountains spinning, standing grounded, surrounded by empty canteens, bread crusts, discarded family heirlooms, spent shell casings and decomposing bodies relishing solitude.

Survivors fled to fields or huddled in shelters. They knew the best way to survive was to remain silent. Their town was reduced to rubble. Manuel was required to remember old Fascist propaganda - the spreading of information.

He is a fleischer, one who slaughters.

In order to eat and provide for his family after peace was declared with celebrations of music, church services, wine, and dancing after burials he was forced by economics to slaughter his remaining beast of burden.

His bull was his calling card, his vision, his hope, his dream and village identity. Everything else was stolen by dictators, thieves and Fascists. All he had was his dignity, integrity, and self-respect.

Time arrived short of sympathy, sentiment or condolences. He sharpened his short axe. Standing under the brutal Spanish sun he worked steel across a grindstone removing old edges. It was sharpened with passionate ambivalence.

Laughter’s axe was ready.

He walked into the center of the red clay ring surrounded by a white clapboard fence. The bull stood in the far corner. He approached the bull and held out his hands lined with pulse rivers. The bull slowly emerged from the shade. Looking into the animal’s eyes he saw memory reflected in his soul.

He sighed, clapped his hands together twice, bowed to the bull, as a Shinto priest pays his respects to Bishamonten, the Kami god of benevolent authority. He asked for forgiveness, for his act of fate, raised his laughing axe and brought it down hard and fast on the bull’s neck.

The bull froze and slumped, straining to escape the blade carving through weathered skin, muscles, tendons, sinew, snapping final bones. Front legs folded, rear legs buckled. The carcass shuddered as a final breath exploded in red dust.

He clapped his hands again, severed the head and dragged the body to his shop. He cut it up. He hung the head in his broken window. “For Sale.”

His wife served portions to family and neighbors toasting his wisdom. They consumed his life’s work. Sharing is caring.

I witnessed this.

A Century is Nothing

Let's Go Shopping

“The fact is,” mused Phil a philosopher of unknown erudite style and substance, “the people who are most resilient have a learning reaction, not a victim reaction to bad events. The question is do they have a learning and coping reaction or a victim and blaming reaction?”

“Resilience is more spiritual, said Raven. “It means going back to your childlike nature, your curiosity and questioning nature, your playfulness, the innate morality and nobility that children have.”

“I am a teacher, ana usted,” said Ahmed, a Touareg Berber in Tamashek dialect.

“My tribe lives in the Souss valley southwest of the High Atlas Mountains. It is a land of two races. We are called Imazighen. We speak Tashelhit or Chleuh. Our written language is called Tifignagh. North Africa has been our home since before the Arabs. Our culture is 4,000 years old. Between the 11th and 13th centuries we had two great dynasties - the Amoravids and the Almohads. They controlled large parts of Spain and all of northwest Africa.

“Berbers traditionally maintained an oral culture and transmitted storytelling and song from generation to generation. We became internally displaced persons or IDP according to the United Nations. We had no knowledge of the United Nations. Our language is eye contact, gestures, sky, sand, silence and community.”

“How did you get here?”

“I walked. Touareg nomads migrated from Mali, Southern Algeria and Mauritania. Prior to 1956 there were six million Touareg on nine million square kilometers of desert. Before borders when there was no government control of movement. Now there are 7,000-10,000 in the Sahara Occidental. We call ourselves Imohagh or Imajughen, the noble ones.”

He wore a fine blue cotton robe. His eyes were far away. “Hurl your lightning bolt even unto death,” he said.

Abracadabra.

*

Centuries earlier or later depending on reference points along Time’s thin line on an event horizon as infinity and eternity played post 9/11 dirges, fugues, and blues with a full orchestra in the pits Ahmed resumed his story in the Sahara.

“Fate bites you when you least expect it,” he said waving his hands like wild kites. “Her appetite is insatiable.”

I was removed from 9/11 reality at Ground 0.

I took no possession of that event. I read Ahmed’s open palms and eyes. My facility for unspoken tongues was legendary. It was all body language and I was fluent in every language. Gestures were a work in progress.

Gestures use people.

Ahmed described airplanes and two tall towers. “I’ve read Superman by Nietzsche in Arabic. He said ‘God is dead’ and God said, ‘Nietzsche is dead.’”

He waved his arms like a Moroccan eagle condemned to freedom yet a prisoner of the sheltering sky. He raised a hand indicating height and smacked his flying hand into his stationary hand. The impact echoed across caramel dunes. He smiled through black teeth. His dark eyes held all the world’s secrets.

I had no idea where, who, how, why, or when Ahmed received his information. Perhaps from slave and gold trade caravans, perhaps through osmosis.

“Yes,” Ahmed said, “2,974 people from 80 countries died.”

“I see.”

We were two nomads in the Sahara. We did not talk about Being and Nothingness. We tweaked reality by breathing.

I handed Omar’s book to Ahmed. “Have a look-see.” Ahmed read Tifignagh words.

“He was not as surprised, stunned and scared as all the well meaning myopic tax paying, allegiance singing populace would have the world’s citizens believe in their us or them attitude. He knew they’d be catapulted into a new heavy deep reality, grounded fast, sifting soil, searching for answers, breathing through death masks, deconstructing and revising history while pleading for meaning to their existence. Postmodern dialectics.

“Now they had to figure out the big answer to the big question. Why? It’d keep them busy for life. Their children taught them to ask why? Being extremely impatient and under extreme pressure to be successful in their all-consuming reality, they became extremely frustrated with the “why” question from their children. Parents wanted to be the boss, the grown-ups in complete control. They figured they had all the answers.”

Whoops!

“In the BIG game people with a long history rolled their dice when it was their turn to play and everyone had to go back to the start. They had to read the rules. They had to read the small fine print. The details they casually accepted carte blanche, data they skipped because they didn’t think it was important, the stuff made in Hollywood, the fictional entertainment stuff with happy endings. They were well conditioned to violence, sex and reality television. Now they digested so-called reality television in real time.”

*

I pointed to a faded yellow page marked Empirical Evidence for Ahmed’s crash course in creative nonfiction techniques. Formless forms.

“Somebody off stage had triggered the light switch and their fragility was exposed. Evaporated their sense of humor. The audience sat stunned in silence when the curtain came down. It was full of holes, loopholes and wormholes. The apple was rotten. Survivors needed a card from the deck of life and did not want to see the one with the guy wearing the funny hat with bells. A small minority studied history. They knew, in a vague way, being experts on vagueness, how history repeated itself. They’d supported totalitarian regimes in the Persian/Arabic Gulf for decades burning imported Middle Eastern oil well past their bedtime.”

Only fools and madmen speak the truth.

This was a sobering reality. Ahmed continued reading.

“It was extremely frustrating. People in their illusionary magic kingdom assumed they were always supposed to be going forward to bigger, better, faster things. There was talk about a shift in Teutonic plates of awareness. Many plates showed their age being cracked, badly needing repair, requiring immediate unequaled madness assistance or UMA. Someone tried a cell connection. It was busy, snagged on assorted Fear, healthy Uncertainty and promising Doubt. F.U.D.

Minus surprise.

“Connections were a flashback to a simpler existence of peace and prosperity with model tract homes, two car garages, appliances, fast and faster food, weapons of mass destruction in the closet, renewable bonds, treasury notes, love notes, and notes on the edge of a cliff waiting for patients streaming out of their personal and collective asylums on holidays as prescribed medications rendered them insolvent, compliant and mute.

“A secure line of clear communication was caught in the undercurrent, the violent raging delight of human nature doing her infinite playful thing below the realm of consciousness. She stirred things up in a big way.

“Humans had a lot of explaining to do. Explaining how the world worked. Explaining all the moral ambiguities of truth and reality, all the fill-in-the-blank final exams. They were in big fucking trouble.”

“‘Because I said so,’” was their old standard dull, tedious and monotonous refrain when their sweet, ever-so-kind little intelligent monsters asked why for the umpteenth time. The adult’s ignorant facades had developed huge cracks. It was time to straighten the whiners out once and for all.

They went shopping to satisfy their fear of poverty and overcome their fear, a small fear growing stronger day by day being fed by hysterical know-it-alls in 24/7 media ivory soap towers of higher intellectual reasoning based on empirical evidence.

“More channels!” someone screamed. “We need more channels!” There was a preponderance of rumors. Mucho evidence was charred beyond recognition. It would need DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating.

According to Ahmed with the gift of foresight, “Teams of social workers swarmed across Earth extolling virtues of well being, hope, trust, and bravery in the face of adversity, values, free choice, and impending sales at outlet stores. People seeking outlets and outlet stores found solace in their ignorance of how the world worked on molecular, political, religious, economic, philosophical, and cultural levels. Long festering animosity and cultural bias had come full circle. An invisible Orobus constricted their heart. Their myth was part idealism and realism standing on its head.

“Socially, culturally, geographically and emotionally deprived children listened, shaking their heads, learning a very hard life lesson. One that escaped their well meaning parents. Kids knew when adults were bullshitting them.

Kids have a built-in shockproof shit detector.

“Scholars educated at global universities started speaking Arabic, reciting Sufi poetry and 1,001 stories about the rise and fall of civilizations written before their time with hieroglyphics and cave paintings. Survivors filled caves. Candles sales were brisk.

“A tisket a tasket we need a casket,” sang multi-lingual children.

“Historians, political scientists, talk show experts, taxi drivers, fortune tellers, beauticians, and morticians took hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially. Suicide search and rescue teams were put on alert. Citizens packed hospital emergency rooms. Medical schools increased graduation classes to meet the growing need. Demand outstripped supply when it came down to fear and consumption.”

“Wow, that's some heavy sociological shit, Ahmed,” said I.

“What happens when they run out of insecurity control programs?” a girl asked her mother. She was the mother of all answers.

“Don’t worry my sweet,” said the neurotic mother living her worst nightmare, “they’ll invent something new and improved. The manufacturing sector will rebound when shelves are empty. We’ll always have sugar and we can always go shopping.”

“How long will it take?”

“Hard to say. Could be we won’t live to see it.”

“I was afraid of that.”

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

“What is F.U.D. mother?”

“Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Been with us a long time and now it’s back with a vengeance.”

“How long?”

“You ask too many questions child,” she said fanning her daughter’s flame. “A long time. A Century is Nothing.”

“It’s good to know some things,” said the girl.

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

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

“The truth is, it’s all a lie. Our insecurities are evolving. I believe in my heart-mind that life is a celebration. It is beautiful, harsh, nasty and short. A Hobbesian dream scream. There’s no rhyme or reason or social contract. It’s about realizing peace in your heart and community. Inhale suffering and exhale healing. Cultivate heart awareness.”

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

“Yes, let’s invent a game theory my sweet daughter,” and they went out of the world.

Omar knew children suspected parents, teachers, social workers, bureaucrats, philosophers and homeless people living in cardboard shelters did not control the market on clear answers. Adults searched for the remote. They knew something better just had to be on the idiot box.

Big brown rats with sharp teeth scrambled out of dark dens scurrying through dead matter looking for food. The little animal named Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt was starving. It had a vociferous vain appetite for glorious political/economic systems. It ate it’s young with relish at picnics. It had no principles, morals, ethics or 20th century rationale, no religious ideology or neo-conservative agenda. 

It was not a vegetarian or a peace activist burning candles, sitting around wringing their bloody hands mumbling, “Oh what a pity,” or, “Somebody should have seen this coming.”

It avoided focus groups like the plague and read Arabic history and poetry by Rumi.

“A true story,” said Ahmed pointing at the sky. “Look, the north star.”

A Century is Nothing

A Century is Nothing

Centuries earlier or later depending on reference points along time’s thin line on an event horizon as infinity and eternity played post 9/11 dirges, fugues and blues with a full orchestra in the pits Ahmed resumed his story in the Sahara.

“Fate bites you when you least expect it,” he said waving his hands like wild kites. “Her appetite is insatiable.”

I was so far removed from 9/11 reality I took no possession of the event. I read Ahmed’s open palms and eyes. My facility for unspoken tongues was legendary. It was all body language and I was fluent in every language.

Gestures were a work in progress.

Gestures used people.

Ahmed described airplanes and two tall towers. “I’ve read Superman by Nietzsche in Arabic. He said 'God is dead' and God said, 'Nietzsche is dead.'"

He waved his arms like a Moroccan eagle condemned to freedom yet a prisoner of the sky. He raised a hand indicating height and smacked his flying hand into his stationary hand. The impact echoed across caramel dunes. He smiled through black teeth. His dark eyes held all the world’s secrets.

I had no idea where, who, how, why, or when Ahmed received his information. Perhaps from slave and gold trade caravans, perhaps through osmosis.

“Yes,” Ahmed said, “2,974 people from 80 countries died.”

“I see.” We were just two nomads in the desert. We did not talk about Being and Nothingness. We tweaked reality by breathing.

I handed Omar’s book to Ahmed. “Have a look-see.” Ahmed read Tifignagh words.

“He was not as surprised, stunned and scared as all the well meaning myopic tax paying, allegiance singing populace would have the world’s citizens believe in their us or them attitude. He knew they’d be catapulted into a new heavy deep reality, grounded fast, sifting soil, searching for answers, breathing through death masks, deconstructing and revising history while pleading for meaning to their existence. Postmodern dialectics.

“Now they had to figure out the big answer to the big question. Why? It’d keep them busy for life. Their children taught them to ask why? Being extremely impatient and under extreme pressure to be successful in their all-consuming reality, they became extremely frustrated with the “why” question from their children. Parents wanted to be the boss, the grown-ups in complete control. They figured they had all the answers.

“Whoops!

“In the BIG game people with a long history rolled their dice when it was their turn to play and everyone had to go back to the start. They had to read the rules. The small print. The details they casually accepted carte blanche, data they skipped because they didn’t think it was important, the stuff made in Hollywood, the fictional entertainment stuff with happy endings. They were well conditioned to violence, sex and reality television. Now they tasted so-called reality television in real time.”

I pointed to a faded yellow page marked “Empirical Evidence” for Ahmed’s crash course in documentary fiction techniques.

“Somebody off stage had triggered the light switch and their fragility was exposed. Evaporated their sense of humor. The audience sat stunned in silence when the curtain came down. It was full of holes, loopholes and wormholes. The apple was rotten. Survivors needed a card from the deck of life and did not want to see the one with the guy wearing the funny hat with bells. A small minority studied history. They knew, in a vague way, being experts on vagueness, how history repeated itself. They’d supported totalitarian regimes in the Persian/Arabic Gulf for decades burning imported Middle Eastern oil well past their bedtime.”

Only the fool spoke the truth. This was a sobering reality. Ahmed continued reading.

“It was extremely frustrating. People in their illusionary magic kingdom assumed they were always supposed to be going forward to bigger, better, faster things. There was talk about a shift in Teutonic plates of awareness. Many plates showed their age being cracked, badly needing repair, requiring immediate unequaled madness assistance or UMA. Someone tried their cell. It was busy, snagged on assorted Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The big F.U.D.

“Connections were a flashback to a simpler existence of peace and prosperity with model tract homes, two car garages, appliances, fast and faster food, weapons of mass destruction in the closet, renewable bonds, treasury notes, love notes, and notes on the edge of a cliff waiting for patients streaming out of their personal and collective asylums on holidays as prescribed medications rendered them insolvent, compliant and mute. Very compliant.

“A secure line of clear communication was caught in the undercurrent, the violent raging delight of human nature doing her infinite playful thing below the realm of consciousness. She stirred things up in a big way.

“Humans had a lot of explaining to do. Explaining how the world worked. Explaining all the moral ambiguities, all the fill-in-the-blank final exams. They were in big trouble.

“‘Because I said so,’” was their old standard refrain when their sweet, ever-so-kind little monsters asked “why” for the umpteenth time. Their ignorant facades had developed huge cracks. It was time to straighten the whiners out once and for all. They went shopping to satisfy their fear of poverty, to overcome their fear, a small fear growing stronger day by day being fed by hysterical know-it-alls in ivory soap towers of higher intellectual reasoning based on empirical evidence.”

“More channels!” someone screamed. “We need more channels!” There was a preponderance of rumors. Part of the evidence was charred beyond recognition. It would need DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating.

According to Omar, “Teams of social workers swarmed across the land extolling virtues of well being, hope, trust, and bravery in the face of adversity, values, free choice, and impending sales at outlet stores. People seeking outlets and outlet stores found solace in their ignorance of how the world worked on molecular, political, religious, economic, philosophical, and cultural levels. Long festering animosity and cultural bias had come full circle. An invisible Orobus constricted their heart. Their myth was part idealism and realism standing on its head.

“Their socially, culturally, geographically and emotionally deprived children listened, shaking their heads, learning a very hard life lesson. One that escaped their well meaning parents. Kids knew when adults were bullshitting them.

“Scholars educated at global universities started speaking Arabic, reciting Sufi poetry, and 1,001 stories about the rise and fall of civilizations written before their time with hieroglyphics and cave paintings. Survivors filled caves. Candles sales were brisk.”

“A tisket a tasket we need a casket,” sang multi-lingual children.

“Historians, political scientists, talk show experts, taxi drivers, fortune tellers, beauticians, and morticians took hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially. Suicide search and rescue teams were put on alert. Citizens packed hospital emergency rooms. Medical schools increased graduation classes to meet the growing need. Demand outstripped supply when it came down to fear and consumption.”

“Wow, that's some heavy sociological shit, Ahmed,” said I.

“Get this next part,” said Ahmed, turning a page.

Get is the joker word in English.

“What happens when they run out of insecurity control programs?” a child asked her mother. She was the mother of all answers.

“Don’t worry my sweet,” said the anxious neurotic mother living her worst nightmare, “they’ll invent something new and improved. The manufacturing sector will rebound when shelves are empty. We’ll always have sugar and we can always go shopping.”

“How long will it take?”

“Hard to say. Could be we won’t live to see it.”

“I was afraid of that.”

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

“What is F.U.D. mother?”

“Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Been with us a long time and now it’s back with a vengeance.”

“How long?”

“You ask too many questions child,” she said fanning her daughter’s flame. “A long time. A Century is Nothing.”

“It’s good to know some things,” said the girl.

“A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I’ve already told you a lot.”

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

“The truth is, it’s all a lie. Everything we know is a lie. Our insecurities are evolving. I believe in my heart-mind that life is a celebration. It is beautiful, harsh, nasty and short. A Hobbesian dream scream. There’s no rhyme or reason or social contract. It’s about realizing peace in your heart and community. Inhale suffering and exhale healing. Cultivate heart awareness.”

“I will be authentic and mindful 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 daughter.” They went out into the world.

Omar knew children suspected parents, teachers, social workers, bureaucrats, philosophers and homeless people living in cardboard shelters did not control the market on clearly defined answers. Adults searched for the remote. They knew something better just had to be on the idiot box.

Families of big brown rats scrambled out of dark dens scurrying through dead matter looking for food. The little animal named Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt was starving. It had a vociferous vain appetite for glorious political/economic systems. It ate it’s young, with relish at picnics. It had no principles or 20th century rationale, no religious ideology or neo-conservative agenda. 

It was not a vegetarian or a peace activist burning candles, sitting around wringing their bloody hands mumbling, “Oh what a pity,” or, “Somebody should have seen this coming.”

FUD avoided focus groups like the plague, read Arabic history and poetry by Rumi. Their appetite was legendary and tremendous.

“Such a true story,” said Ahmed closing the book. He pointed at the sky. “Look, the north star.”

A Century is Nothing