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A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
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The Language Company The Language Company
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Subject to Change Subject to Change
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Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
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Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
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Entries in art (212)

Tuesday
Jul142020

ART

I discovered an engraved Zippo lighter in a dusty Saigon history museum cabinet.

“Most people are born alive and then slowly die. I was born dead and then came to life.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” said Laughter Therapy, an antidote to the illusion of suffering.

I rolled snake eyes in life’s crap game. Reptilian id brain matter shredded old skin and identity theories. Retinas discerning space-time energy as light wave particles travelled on microscopic fibers to the cerebral cortex where data is received and analyzed for meaning. Meaning is a truth-value. Interpretation.

“Truth has few friends and they are suicides,” said Fernando Pessoa author of The Book of Disquiet.

Overloaded synapses crashed in psychotic bliss. Interpretation demolished nonrenewable resources in space-time fourth dimensions. You enter another dimension beyond sight and sound.

My hourglass sand approaches empty. I reversed it catching up to fiction-memory and truth-story. Weave on.

Leaves left winter’s tree in an airborne tag dance. They do not fall far from the Tree of Life. Frayed Tibetan Lung-Tao prayer flag horses beamed air current prayers. Perception and sensation ceased. I dissolved in the wake. Up.

“Time is a flock of nightingales,” said Albert Einstein. He added one plus one - “Experience is your education. Everything else is just information.”

A pulsating vein needle sang disconnected photons.

A three-act Greek play craved characters.

Her daughter in intensive care sang, “I feel free,” while carving her death mask.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Laos

Friday
Jul102020

Life Gift

To feel better, clean my heart, purge old fears and improve the quality of life I climbed down to donate a pint at The Blood Bank. Good old hemoglobin.

Suffering from cancer, a hospitalized child I will never meet, know, or love needs platelets more than I do. It’s been sixty-four clicks of Earth’s rotation between donations. It’s the best re-cycling program on the planet.

Give the gift of life that keeps on giving.

My calmness meets a scared mother pacing sterile emergency rooms at Sacred Heart Hospital wondering if her daughter will receive essential ingredients in time. 

A solemn-faced, stressed out cardiovascular lab tech with his personal set of challenges and opportunities, said to her, “At this moment we have no matching donors. We’ve released a global search engine to see what’s available on the market. People are selling short to cut their losses. It’s all about supply, demand and the fear of poverty. Scarcity. There are indications of further interest rate cuts to stimulate consumer confidence. We have no immediate indication of a stimulus. We will keep you informed.”

The mother doesn’t need to hear this prattle from a white lab coat.

Fingering her bone prayer beads, skeleton heads shake, rattle and roll. Fingers caress thorns. Everything happens by accident on purpose in her life, speaking of destiny, fate and chance. Life for her and millions in the land of the free, home of the brave and broke is free will versus random chance.

Everything’s already happened. People need to experience it while confronting their shadow and alienation, loneliness and loving community in a corrupt, cynical, hysterical greed-based world where people try to Control their fear.

Write FEAR & ANGER on a paper napkin.

Burn it.

Let go.

Citizen sheep believed in fear and unsustainable consumption because they were afraid of being lonely and poor.

Happiness is a myth. The wish of desire said so.

Humans were willing victims of their fear, healthy uncertainty, and doubt. Their amygdala, a small almond shaped brain structure creating fear and emotional response fired up. Fight or flight?

Are you the hunter or the prey?

Manipulated by the collective unconscious and a pervasive system of socialization control mechanisms, consumer sheep were happy. The subtle influence of right wing conservatives and media addiction bought idiots. Facing their mind-numbing daily grind with heart breaking choices sheep needed someone/something to Control them.

Accepting responsibility for their freedom was scary.

Intelligent centered ones feeling gratitude and empathy in their heart danced with Death. Everyone lives and dies.

“You work, breed and get slaughtered,” said an Asian child with a junior philosopher badge.

It’s essential to die once while you’re alive. Get it out of the way.

 

Saigon amputee, knife sharpening man.

*

I carried a copy of Omar’s book, A Century Is Nothing from Turkey to Indonesia to Nam in 2009.

Together with Omar we used fire, this crucible of alchemical combinations, diversities, sweat, blood and tears to create it so I’d use fire to release it. Save books, build a library.

Books are universes of ideas, experiences, feelings, visions, paths, and destinations obliterated through discovery, reminding memory. They are worlds of dreams, stories, dramas, plays, songs, histories and guides into new visceral experiences.

Pages sing their laughter with wisdom, song, and poetry. Preserve memory. Live forever with paper’s tactile voice. Voices of reason, comedy, and tragedy are skintight drum stories. They are oral transmissions recorded on parchment, vellum, and illustrated manuscripts in Irish Gaelic talking tongues, Sumerian clay and Asian scrolls.

I didn’t burn it, a way of sacrifice offering and letting go. Down the road in Saigon I gifted the brick to three Asian women. They had Chinese ancestry from Hong Kong and lived in Australia.

I said a friend wrote it so I signed it and laughed letting it travel with them. Thanks for the book. You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy it. It took all three to carry it. They staggered up guesthouse stairs with the tome.

After breaking down a wall they struggled to get it through an opening. People need to break down before they break through. Maneuvering it into a bag they discarded cheap Vietnamese souvenirs. We’ll have to check this monster all the way to Sydney.

ART

Saigon piano practice

Sunday
Jul052020

Language

I’m broiling on the balcony of my tree house. Getting down and dirty after years away from the typewriter.

Covered in world dust and needing oil it’s a small portable dangerous machine. It transforms life energies by weaving adventures. Thread follow needle.

I am a peripatetic traveler and literary outlaw.

Mandalay, Burma

I’m lucky to get it down now and make sense of it later.

I’m a mirror in the mandala of my labyrinth. I am Labrys, from the Greek for a two-headed axe. I write with passion and vision. Short fast and deadly.

My mirror reflects everything. It absorbs desire, anger, ignorance, passion and suffering.

Beauty has no tongue.

I’m confident and self-reliant exploring the human condition. Human energies, frequencies and vibrations reflect languages, lives and attitudes. Dreams dance reflections.

Mirror reveals emotional trust, wisdom, peace and love with truth and compassion.

Meditate on the process of your death.

Suffering is an illusion.

Your mask eats your face.

My mirror is dust free.

Creativity dances in language.

Language is oral, gestures and graphic.

Oral and gestures dissipate.

Symbolic graphic is constant.

This awareness enlightens you after years of wandering. I have been here for 1,000 years. It's easy to imagine what humans are going through.

Everything you know is a lie.

Keep a diamond in your mind.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Hsipaw, Burma

Friday
Jun192020

Samuel's Truth

"The important and only vital question is, how much greater, finer, am I than I was yesterday? Have I fulfilled my possibilities, made the most of my potentialities? What a marvelous world if all would - could hold this attitude toward life." - Edward Weston, photographer.

*

November 1969.

Leaving 101 into Eagle we passed white memorial shrines to dead Vietnamese. Farmers and boys grazed oxen near gravesites.

50,000 soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division lived at Eagle.

Mick drove along winding dirt roads past the main post office, barracks and a church. Buildings, clothing and landscape were brown. Eagle would be my residence for the next year if I survived.

Mick turned off the road and downhill to a small shipping container marked MAIL. I climbed wooden stairs to the company clerk’s office and commanding officer’s headquarters. The room displayed pictures of a president, defense secretary and hierarchy.

“Welcome,” said the first sergeant of the 265th Radio Research Company.

“Thanks, it feels good to be here.”

“I understand you volunteered for the 265th.”

“Yes. I looked at the 8th RRFS, talked to some guys and decided this would be more interesting duty.”

“It’s definitely more interesting. Not as plush as down south. Our mission is electronic code breaking, linguistics and traffic analysis. We provide critical intelligence to the Screaming Eagles at headquarters and in the field.”

“Fine. I’ll do my best.”

“I’m sure you will. Samuel will show you around, get you settled. Welcome to the 265th.”

“Thanks Tops.”

“That’ll be all.”

Samuel, a small wiry African-American company clerk was a virtual resident of Nam having extended his tour for five years.

“Better money to be made than going home to abuse, derision, scorn, apathy and unemployment,” he said issuing me a sleeping bag, M-16, ammo, gas mask, helmet, flak vest, Boonie hat and survival knife with a serrated edge for tearing flesh.

In - out dialogue.

“I know what you mean.”

“No you don’t. None of you white guys have a clue about real life in America. Better drugs in Nam cheap and good quality control. Let me know if you need a little weed.” Access. He pointed to my hooch up a hill.

“Top will meet you there. Take you on the grand tour.”

“Thanks Samuel. Nice to meet you.”

“See ya around.”

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A memoir.

*

Spike Lee co-wrote and directed a film released June 12, 2020. Da 5 Bloods follows a group of aging Vietnam Veterans who return to Nam to find a fallen commander and buried treasure. It received excellent reviews.

Monday
Jun012020

Page 95

Thanks to everyone who subscribed to this blog feed. Enjoy the adventure...

*

A child painting with smoke on mirrors blasted light, “Hey. That’s what the Greeks believed. Everything was beauty and order.”

“Order, structure, design, form, function, oratory, mathematics, seven musical notes. Beauty originated with them didn’t it?”

“You got it,” said the painter. “Hey, you know what? I think we all need to take the day off and be creative.”

“The present moment is eternal reality,” whispered a child. “We live in the eternity of the instant.”

“It’s about process not product. How we learn not what we learn.”

“Whew, that’s deep!”

“Yeah, we’re all in the shit, it’s only the depth that changes.”

“Yeah, if it’s not one thing it’s something else.”

“Fools speak the truth.”

“Fools are everywhere. We dance or die. If fate doesn’t make you laugh you don’t get the joke. Truth value meaning is in the mystery.”

“Tunkashila is grandfather’s spirit. It’s wisdom and calmness,” said children in a sacred circle. “It is the way of the warrior. We are all warriors.”

Rose listened with her heart-mind. She knew others were not ready to receive the wisdom of children. Their terminal existence validated life memories where wheelchair rubber met the road.

The children were spiritual warriors with distinct vibrations and energy frequencies. The future would be a scary time for generations unaccustomed to their authenticity.

Rose knew it’d be a beautiful decision putting the disability act in their short sweet Ghost Dance - maybe in the rising action leading to an epiphany or in the falling action with heart-breaking catastrophic transformational awareness. Cut. The end. Cue applause.

“How can I know what I think until I see what I say?” said a child with reported speech. Their wheel of life played tag with crazy wisdom.  Mu-shin, their state of “no-mind” blossomed where thought, emotions and expectations did not matter.

Who’s dragging around this bag of bones? Where do I park this empty vehicle? I have poems and stories to finish that I haven’t even started yet.

“To sleep, perchance to dream.”

“A dream is an unfulfilled wish,” said a kid with a Ph.D. in Psychoanalysis from the Jung Institute in Zurich.

“What else did he say?”

“He said, ‘There is no royal road to wisdom. To arrive in the future I must journey to the past. To attain the sanity with the One, I must risk the whirling madness of the possessed. One must confront their shadow or be crushed by it.”

“I like it,” said Rumi. “What else?”

“Well, here’s another cool thing he said. “‘I liken the formation of a character to weaving fabric. You know what happens when you make a mistake? The whole pattern is spoiled. You have a choice. You can finish the garment, however it will always be botched and ugly or you can unravel the weaving back to the mistake and start again. That’s basically what analysis is about. It’s a tedious job. The patient is scared and hostile. The analyst lends patience, honesty and courage.’”

“Excellent,” yelled kids, “here’s to our being patient patients with honesty and courage.”

“Speaking of courage, I’m looking for someone who knows reading and writing,” said Rose.

“I can read and write,” said the children. "We also love drawing, singing and dancing.”

“Reading and writing is power. Dance is life. Perfect. Let’s go together,” said Rose.

Downstairs at Sacred Heart a translucent mother saw her grief reflected in Beauty’s mirror. “This is my worst nightmare,” whispered her heart-mind.

Rose said, “Afraid to face the truth adults run away. They run away carrying their fear like a heavy bag of bricks. They are afraid to see the beauty, strength and dignity of Death and letting go.”

“Why?” said mother.

“They stay away because they are afraid of saying the wrong thing. The child’s spirit is pure energy. They have the strength to let go. Adults find Death a scary thing so they run away.”

“I see,” said a gardener trimming thorns below a tree house. “I know Death’s beauty and wisdom. Metaphors and mortality exist with initial memories. Memories are figments of our imagination. I am a dreamer in nature, bigger than the universe, in never-never-cuckoo land. I am a witness collecting evidence that tells no lies. The deeper you go the deeper the bliss.”

“I live with suffering,” said Rose. “I am a pain sponge.”

The gardener said, “I administer thorn pain. I ask strangers if they desire suffering and awareness. I distribute thorns to the needy greedy. I am very busy. Demand is high. My thorn supply is infinite. I am authorized to administer inoculations in life’s weaving process. Weavers prick themselves in the process of creativity. Their blood is part of the dye.”

“Fascinating,” Rose said. “Your silver tongue doesn’t fool me. You’ve seduced and satisfied more emotionally starved women with your tongue than you can recall. I inhale suffering and exhale love. We are all Death deferred. Be grateful.”

“To know Death one has to live. To live one has to die,” said the gardener. “I meditate on the process of death. I remember the future.”

Rose’s departure created a vacuum.

The trapped mother realized her ice reality. Concise crying crystals reflected clarity. Suffering from fate and free will she danced in flames seeking her SAVE key.

Hearing a child say, “I need help,” she received a blessing.

A child whispered, “The ending is the middle.”

“The middle is the beginning,” said a child. “You can start the story anywhere.”

“We are all orphans sooner or later,” said Rose. “We bury our successes and failures in the same grave.”

Death and the gravedigger agreed. “Everyone comes to us.”

ART Adventure, Risk, Transformation