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Entries in Baraka (4)

Sunday
Jul042021

Floating

 

I'm one of those people who has learned through living

that there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to.

I am a metaphor looking for meaning.

I feel free to move away from safe familiar places

and keep moving forward to new unexplored areas of life.

Drifting some would say.

Floating.

If I had one red cent for every time someone asked me when I’d settle down I could afford a world hypothesis! Settling down was not an option.

Yes. I could bid on blessings.

I’d sacrifice pre-linguistic symbols and create silent metaphorical abstractions.

My linguistic skills would evolve into love into discursive logic.

26,000 year-old Paleolithic iron and copper paintings create

a secret symphony of ancient magic stories in a Spanish cave.

No lengthy drawn out off-the-wall abstract

explains my small empty happy self to anybody

by virtue of who I was, am, and will be.

Life is a palimpsest.

 

“There are only two stories in the world,” Leonardo said to the Moroccan. They carried boarding cards through the Casablanca terminal. “A stranger arrives in a village or a stranger leaves a village.”

“Yes,” said Omar, a blind writer overhearing their conversation, “we might add there are also stories about love between two people, stories about love between three people and stories about the struggle for power. Stories are about characters revealing emotion through dialogue and action.”

He handed Leonardo a pile of yellow papers wrapped in rushes.

“A gift for you. It contains a farrago of evidence. Keep it simple.”

“Thank you.” Where do I find you?”

“In the caves south of Ronda. It’s a long walk.” He disappeared into Baraka.

A Century is Nothing

Wednesday
Jun302021

Attitude

This is Metafiction with a Gonzo attitude; master journalist, photographer’s eye and the balls of an actor.

“Start at no particular time of your life. Wander at your free will all over your life.” – Mark Twain

There are not many things you need to remember about your visit here to Earth.

The world gave me a strong sense of querencia, a Spanish term for homeland, “a place - like a bull facing death in the ring -  where you feel comfortable dying.”  - Lorca

Flow like a river, reflect like a mirror and respond like an echo.

On the meridian of time there is no injustice; there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.

“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

*

This is a camelo, Spanish for a tall tale.

Hello. May this find you well. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Omar. I am a Touareg Berber nomad from the Sahara desert in Morocco.

I am a blind prescient writer in exile.

This is my story about how I and other tribal members met a strange kind man named Mr. Point immediately after 9/11. He just showed up and the Sahara is a big place.

When others hear this tale they express disbelief.

“How can that be?”

Living Baraka, a supernatural energy and magic power practiced by our people, his appearance was, shall we say, expected. He is a poet, shape shifter, cosmic comic clown and literary outlaw.

Now it happened that we traveled together just like you and I now and we formed a community. We shared many tales and I have taken the liberty of including them here with some of my own stories. We enjoyed amazing adventures together.

I confess this narrative is not linear. In a sense, this is for and about children: innocence, curiosity, empathy, and playful pure intentions. Children love inventing stories and hearing them.

Stories are essential like air and water.

My friend and I love to travel and besides calling the Sahara home I also inhabit a very real magical late Paleolithic Spanish cave in Andalucía. It encompasses 26,000 years of art and history. The word ‘history’ comes from the Greeks. It means story. This explains the title, A Century Is Nothing.

Someone in our tribe said, “Imagine the earth is 24 hours old. To see a perspective of how long humans have been around, imagine they’ve been on the planet for only the last 60 seconds.”

Marco Polo, a famous traveler near death in 1324 at seventy left his famous epitaph for the world. “I have only told the half of what I saw!”

Keep an open mind and fasten your seat belt as we may experience a little turbulence during flights of imagination grounded in invisible particles of reality. In the event of a water landing your heart-mind may be used as a flotation device.

We’ll meet again. May your journey be filled with loving kindness, compassion and authenticity.

 

A Century is Nothing

Sunday
Sep272020

Baraka

Somebody released mad dogs and they ran howling at the crescent moon. They needed shots. Their remission hung over a small part of the world like a bad smell. It seeped into the water supply, the after taste was bitter and it did not go down well at all.

There was a run on thrift shops singing, “Goodwill to Zenmen and peace on earth.”

Death masks sold out. Humans addicted to chaos and distractions dressed themselves in clothing called Hope, the greatest evil. Torn and patched in places it needed a stronger thread. Someone suggested improving immigration standards, fingerprinting every human on the planet, bard wire and eye scan IT which were rejected with derision and contempt by human rights organizations.

There wasn’t enough wire to go around the tree of life. They’d have to call the exterminator to clean up the mess. They collected carried and exchanged heavy change.

“Get your FEAR here,” yelled unemployed people of all nationalities. “One size fits all.”

People flapped their sugarless gums at unemployed dentists while flapjacks sizzled on the grill. The heat was on. They cooked with expensive imported natural gas.

Advertising promoted: Free Fear For All - Buy 2 and Get 1 - Not Free For All.

It was fear and ignorance. The big “F” in the law of averages. Statistical studies created its own metamorphosis.

FEAR - Face Everything And Recover or Fuck Everything And Run Away.

“The fear beast is big, rambunctious, hungry and never sleeps,” Omar said. “It does not recognize rational intellectual dissertations. It demands more energy. It creates and morphs into manifestations of it’s well defined beginning. It exists in the hearts and minds of the people. The fruit is bitter and destined for export markets with no restrictions on trade barriers.”

Little Nino joined them on the story train. “Imaginary barriers went up toward children flying kites in Central Asian mountain villages at the edge of refugee camps where they received food, shelter, education and medical care.”

“Then what happened?” Point asked.

“Circumstances beyond their control, beyond their comprehension compelled them to spend days and nights watching television, tuning into cable news bulletins and meeting their strange transparent neighbors flying star flags and kites from roofs before subtle frequencies permeated their consciousness. Their daily priorities shifted in the drama of life. Trick or treat played on every corner before a spring war ran through inner city projects. It was the inevitable catastrophic event.

"The towers of Babel and world order monetary power disintegrated. Artificial time collapsed. We are in The Law Of Real Time now. This reality created the fear that people experienced. It’s been well marketed by governments after the fact," said Little Nino.

“The irony was not lost on Point surveying the Rue De Castaella in Cadiz,” Omar said. “He memorized 3,000 years of history for his friends.”

“He sent them gifts,” said Nino. “Mirrors. Mirrors, many blank, others displaying terror faces, words written backwards, images of people, places and things and a box named Pandora. Pandora became one of their favorite things by Coltrane. They never knew, from one exploration to the next what they’d find in the small packages he sent from the way.”

“One thing they knew,” Omar reflected, “was how they communicated via telepathy. They experienced an exotic flow of spirit energies bathing them in a crystal light. They slowed down. They cultivated a diamond in their mind. Baraka and silence.”

“Such a fascinating story,” said Nino. “Could it be true?”

A Century Is Nothing

Tuesday
Dec222015

The Transmitter

I am the Naggal, ‘The Transmitter’ in Persian history.

I am the hakaawati, the professional storyteller from historical times when stories were told after harvests, during night when stories were cherished, reserved for darkness - the idle time between planting and harvesting - during long lonely winters.         

“Their stories maintained, developed, protected, transferred to children and women. This is the way the ones who feared the power of the story told us.”

“Why?”

“They abandoned us to the exile, islands, remote meditation caves, vision quests, temples of stone singing word-strings toward Arabic, Persian, Indian, Mongolian, Tibetan and European oral mystics. It was all a play, a la’ab inside the shadow of their imagination.”

“What did you learn from them?”

“There were seven layers, seven levels deep in their unconscious. Seven is the number you must remember, for it symbolizes perfect order and a complete cycle. It leads to the seven directions of space, forms the series of musical notes, colors, planets and spheres. Seven is the symbol of pain, a sickness leaving the body.”

They moved through the wild wilderness of their youth after seeing and hearing their spirit guardian, a solitary black raven, a Tibetan Golak. 

The oracle went into a trance to deliver the transmission.

The transmission was Baraka, investing them with a supernatural power of prosperity and blessings. The Baraka allowed them to conserve and control power.

Baraka was transmitted in the solitary deepness of the Sahara between Berber tribes. The more you see the less you know. The less said the better.