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

Raven

The next day the tribe crossed a plain and reached a raging river. As they knew from their ancestor’s tales, the river was deepest here because deaths upstream created tears as souls migrated on their journey through the Bardo.

What’s the Bardo? asked Jamie.

A place between life and death. A transition zone. Where, after you die, for nine days, you confront ghosts and demons wearing your old masks. We need nine days to take another form and during these nine days we meet all these demons reminding us of our temporal existence.

The tribe dreamed as wood evolved into ashes. Their fire dream consumed itself as sighing sensations tingled through Raven’s body. Night winds played around her heart. She danced with stars. Diamond crystal swallowtails flew from her hands into silent endless space. Her breath released peaceful feelings. She fell awake.

Sunlight streamed through ferns, plants, and roses as a morning breeze delivered petals of a wild rose to her feet. She stretched like a solitary snow leopard feeling freedom’s wildness. She glanced at the fireplace. Her shattered glass lay on the brick floor near a charred pencil and scraps of paper. She gathered word edges, lines, drawings, and blurred prisms of light.

She felt a searing pain in her heart, released the papers and touched her third eye. She went deep inside. A calm feeling blessed her. A warm breeze carried her into the center of a sacred wisdom circle. Her essence was joy, delight and happiness. It was a world of pure being. She recognized the world of appearances was full of suffering, desire and illusion.

Discovering her essence, her spirit energy breath renewed her heart, her passion and vision. People seeking to know their future and wisdom sought her out for guidance. She opened her heart to them finding solace, peace, strength, and dignity in the sacred flames of regeneration through quiet simplicity. She kept her own counsel knowing others would have to find their own way in their personal and collective wilderness.

Her hair caught fire as she gathered flames while lighting a piece of bark in a Paleolithic cave. She mixed volcanic ash with water, creating a thick paste of red ocher, a cosmetic balm to gain entry and passage through the spirit world of ancestors. She walked through fire, dancing in her inner light of pure intention in a magical world realizing childhood’s innocence.

She became an angel of light. Her Jinn emanated fire, life and consciousness. This fire consumed ignorance, and my memory of her became a meditation on the physical process of identifying with higher energies through form, sensation, perception, sense impressions and consciousness.

Her meditation inside the cosmic dance dissolved the self. Fire became her driver, sexual kundalini yoga burned soft and hard wood together. The sleeping serpent coiled at the base of her spine was fed by the energetic fires. The Jinn manifested by the fire of the telling.

Yes, said Omar, Jinn are summoned through spirit ceremonies as the world of men communicate with their world by means of music and dance.

I am a character in my own story, said Omar, a hakaawati, a professional Persian storyteller inside the shadow of my imagination. I manifest an oral way of transmitting khurata, fanciful stories, inside the ocean of stories.

A Century is Nothing

Walnut Story

A Zen monk related a story.

"Before becoming a monk I was an English teacher in an Experimental High School near Chengdu in Southwest China. One day I held up a walnut."

“What is this?”

They answered in Mandarin.

I wrote “walnut” and “metaphor” on the board. “This walnut is like a person I know, very hard on the outside. They are very safe and secure inside their shell. Nothing can happen to them. What is inside this shell?”

“Some food,” said a boy.
“How do you know?”
“My mother told me.”
“Do you believe everything your mother tells you?”

“Yes, my mother always tells the truth.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good, but I wonder if mothers always tell their children the truth. Why? Because mothers and fathers like to protect their children and keep them safe. Especially young children. Now you are in high school and developing as a more complete and mature human being. It’s good to question things and find out the truth for yourself. Do you understand?”

Some said “yes,” others nodded passively.

“This walnut is a metaphor for the self. A symbol. The self that is afraid to take risks because they are “protected” by their shell. Maybe the reality is that the shell is empty. How do we really know what is inside.”

“It’s a mystery,” said a boy.

“That’s right, life is a mystery. How will we find out what’s inside?”

“You have to break it open,” said a boy with poetic aspirations.

“Yes, you or I will have to break open the shell, our shell, break free from the shell to know what is inside. That can be a little scary when we are conditioned and comfortable carrying around the shell every day isn’t it?”

“It’s our self,” whispered a girl in front.

“Very good. It’s our self, this shell and the mystery. We have to take risks and know nothing terrible is going to happen, like trying to speak English in class.”

“If we don’t break the shell we’ll never feel anything,” said another boy.

A girl in the back said, “it means it’s hard to open our heart. It’s hard to know another person and what they are thinking, how they are feeling.”

“You got it,” I said. “We’ll never experience all the feelings of joy, love, pain, sorrow, or friendship and miss out on life.”

This idea floated around the room as I juggled the shell in my hand.

“I know people who grow very tired every day from putting on their shell before they leave home. It gets heavier and heavier, day by day. Many carry their shell into adulthood. It’s like wearing a mask. They look alive but inside they are dead. But eventually, maybe, something important happens to them at the heart- mind level and they decide to break free from their shell and see what’s inside. They say to themselves, ‘This shell is getting really heavy and I’m so tired of putting it on and carrying it around. I’m going to risk it.’”

I smashed the shell on the table. It splintered into pieces. Students jumped with shock.

“There, I’ve done it! I smashed my shell. Can it be put back together?”

“No,” they said.
“Right, it’s changed forever. The shell is gone.”
I fingered small pieces of shell, removing them from the nut.

“See, it’s ok. Wow! Now it’s just an old useless shell. It doesn’t exist anymore. It’s history. It will take time to remove pieces of my old shell. Maybe it’s fair and accurate to say the old parts represent my old habits, behaviors, and attitudes. It happened. From now on I will make choices using my free will accepting responsibility for my behavior. And, I know nothing terrible will happen to me. I feel lighter. Now I can be real. That’s the walnut story.”

“Well,” mused a sad serious girl named Sylvia Plath, “I believe every living object; seed, flower, tree and animal has an anxious soul, a voice, sexual desires, a need for survival, and feels the terror at the prospect of annihilation.”

“Language dreams itself."

A Century is Nothing

Hammam

The author was in Morocco on 9/11.

Twice a week he left #187 and walked through dusty stone rubble past discarded plastic trash and small broken trees to the Moroccan hammam. The Turkish style public bath cost seventy cents.

The left side was for women, men on the right. He paid the shy girl behind her veil, went in, stripped to underwear, crammed his clothes in a plastic bag, handed it to a smiling toothless Moor, and got two buckets made of old tires remembering the suq alley in the Medina where boys cut the rubber, hammered, made and sold these buckets.

He pushed open a heavy wooden door. Three medium vaulted arched white tiled rooms receded with increasing degrees of heat and steam. Men reclined on heated tiled floors, collected cold or hot water from faucets in buckets, soaping and scrubbing themselves down.

Passing unrecognizable human forms he entered heat’s mist dream, walked through two rooms and found a space near a wall. He filled one bucket with scalding hot water and another with temperate liquid. He stretched out on his back absorbing heat and closed his eyes.

Heat penetrated his skin. It was a respite from the outside world, the chaos of poverty, begging, humor and hospitality. No one could see him, no one knew him. Feeling peace he rolled onto his side as heat blasted skin, muscles and bones.

Inside steam and water music sweating men slapped themselves on the broiling floor. He watched an old wiry man dissolving kinks bend a customer’s arms and legs into pretzel formations. The skinny bald man energetically worked wrists, elbows, shoulder joints to the point of snapping them off skeletons. He rolled patrons over, pummeling spinal chords, slapping backs while bending knee joints leaving men spread eagle on wet tiled floors. Content faces welcomed his attention.

Satisfied with the meditation, Point sat up, soaped and scrubbed layers off skin with a rough hand cloth. He rinsed oceans across inlaid tiles, walked out, retrieved his bag of clothing, covered himself with an ikat sarong slipping out of wet underwear into dry clothing. He gave the attendant a small tip. The old man smiled, shook his head, rolling his eyes. It wasn’t enough. He dropped more coins into brown frozen fingers.

“Shukran. M’a salama.”

He stepped into cool night air. The dusty path was filled with scooters, boys playing on abandoned rusty cars, scavengers probing piles of trash and mothers dragging black gown hems on the ground. Bright yellow slippers slapping earth flashed light in silt. Wandering children sang happy innocent songs.

A one-eyed beggar stumbled past looking for alms. Point gave him one thin coin and skirted an alley through debris for thick black coffee at a local cafe. Entering, he passed men watching 24-hour global terrorism catastrophes at full volume from a television propped on steel supports hanging from a ceiling.

“Ah, Ahab,” said the waiter, a smiling young man in a purple vest balancing a silver tray of cups and water glasses.

“Coffee?”

“Yes please, no sugar,” gesturing outside where empty tables littered cracked pavement. Dejected desperate shoeshine boys tapped wooden boxes. Their dark unemployed eyes inspected shoes of chronically idle men drinking coffee and endless glasses of tea. A hopeful boy wandered in and out of tables tapping his shoe box. Strong mint tea aroma filled the air.

At the bar a waiter cut mint tea leaves, crammed them into a silver plated kettle, dumped in a brick of sugar, closed the lid, raised the pot and poured a steady stream of light brown tea into a small purple embossed glass. Opening the lid he dumped the tea back into the pot and placed it on a table with glasses, spoons and sugar cubes.

A subtle red color extended across a high adobe wall. The Atlas mountain range wore white snow.

Women in billowing rainbow fabrics walked across the desert from clustered stone villages to take a local bus into the shimmering Red City or sit on broken cement stones along the road talking with friends enjoying their social hour in eternity.

Dusk and twilight married to procreate many children. More field hands, more child labor in dead end trades making less than a $1.00 a day. Many would walk to northern Morocco and, if lucky with money, slip across the Mediterranean into Spain. Some angry marginalized naive kids would join T cells in Madrid, or Hamburg and disappear in Europe. A select few would attend flight training school in Florida. Others became wealthy drug runners wheeling and dealing hash heaven in Amsterdam.

Women sat gossiping on cracked pavement surrounded by trash. People discarded their lives as they went through it like caterpillars morphing into exotic species. Attempts to plant a single tree inside a small block of dirt surrounded by cement had proved futile.

People had stripped off the branches and leaves leaving a sharp broken piece of wood sticking out of the ground. People wandered aimlessly or sat in dust. Unemployed men on haunches stared at the ground. A fruit seller with cardboard boxes of green grapes under a single bulb on a rolling cart waved at lazy flies.

A man in his wheelchair poured bottled water over a handful of grapes. Grapes of wrath. Water disappeared into dust around his wheels of life. He ate one grape at a time watching laughing boys weave past on broken bikes as rusty chains grasped crooked sprockets.

A bearded man struggled along the street collecting discarded pieces of cardboard in his recycled life. Cardboard was utilitarian - a cheap sidewalk seat, a foundation in rolling carts to keep stuff from falling out the bottom, sun hats, beds and doormats in front of shops after infrequent rain.

Shredded telephone wires dangled from the wall of a telephone business office cubicle as men with mobile phones punched in numbers and lined up to make calls on the single working phone.

Disconnected grease covered boys manipulated mammoth truck tires along broken sidewalks to their shop. Tools spilled into public paths. The area was alive as people relying on their survival instincts scrambled to make a living.

Off the main road people set up evening flea markets. Two men unloaded piles of shoes from the back of a car along a sidewalk. Location, location, location. One seller spread a bright blue tarp on the ground anchoring it with bricks. His partner arranged cheap dress and casual shoes for potential buyers. No ‘adidas berber’ shoes for these guys.

They fired up a propane lamp. Neighborhood people escaping small flats after a day of oppressive heat prowled the street with friends looking for a bargain or just plain looking.

A Century is Nothing

whispers

yes said

everything happens for awhile

a boy in shadows layers bricks

another wall

another art project

quality of life

whispers

sweet nothings

writing is saying something

to someone who is not there

who will never be there

we will be the ones

who have gone away

- George Perros

A Century is Nothing ... True enough. Existence is suffering and pleasure. It’s a grand precious adventure.

Seems full of fools, dead ends, bookends, trails, trials, tribal ramifications and tribulations. Where are Beauty and Truth in this tale? Where is the structure? Where is the linear narrative?

It’s in the big show. Shows to go ya.

It’s in the thread of three Greek fates. The three most dangerous goddesses were the Fates called Moirai. Homer called them ‘spinners of the thread of life.’

Clotho, the birth goddess, spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured the length allocating the amount of time to each person.

Atropos cut the thread. Anyone resisting them faced Nemesis, goddess of justice.

The Fates spin out our lives, fusing art and language. My instincts indicate a good harvest.

I dance through canyons leading to Southwest kivas inside a fire dragon’s mouth. I welcome the energy of sun, rain, life.

Languages. Tongues. How do I know where it will go? My job is gather material then let the Other organize it. I'm lucky to get it down. A conduit.