Freedom. Choice. Plenty.

The self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being.

*

Literary Agent: Give me international investment fund managers manipulating Goldilocks, NGOs skimming 70% off the top in Asian countries, greed, corporate monopoly play money profit and an orphan with no motivation but survival.

Give me heartbreak, emotional tragedy, drastic home foreclosures, massive unemployment, millions dying of C-19, jealousy, pride, and make sure pride is filled with glimmering prominence. It brings people down, crashes empires, creates and resolves conflicts.

Give me disabled homeless angry American war veterans struggling with PTSS, divorce, authenticity, domestic famine and revenge, a central motivating factor  ... Give me imaginary borders in a crazy fucked up world.

Crossing borders is a transcendental act of courage, said Z, Ascertain the intention before the motivation, said Zeynep staying on a true line. The agent climbed a literary mountain. If there’s no literary mountain, she said, The publishing road would be flat, short and paved with gold.

Give me a new paragraph with short dirty realism sentences, said lit agent … Give me a classic Greek drama in three acts … Give me romance and treason, deception, intrigue and mayhem  ... Humans are the only animals that can scheme and deceive. 

Give me a life sentence with no chance of parole … Give me 1.7 million Khmers on death row tormented by hungry ghosts … Give characters fear, forgiveness, shock and awe …

Like Orwell give me the unpleasant fact about a Burmese man, on his way to the gallows, stepping around a puddle of water … Give me his awareness of impending death and quick generous insight into his frail gentle human life.

Strap me into my chair living in a kingdom with twenty-four virgins. Virgins strike for equality. Give me a lethal literary injection. Drip by drip. Yes, the metaphor of a single drop of lethal mind numbing, fumbling, bumbling drama intrigue and chaos.

Entropy - the 2nd law of thermonuclear dynamics. The center cannot hold, said WB Yeats.

Find the big metaphor Zeynep.

Give me revenge and betrayal - the how and why wars began … Give me a dumb downed version of primordial Faust … Give me humans selling their soul to the Devil down at the crossroads at midnight to achieve immortality. Ain’t nothing but the blues … Give me a heart-wrenching tale of abandonment, loss, misery and redemption. Tie in hope, the last thing that dies with gravity and arc.

Hope walks through the fire. Faith leaps over the fire.

Allow your characters to explore their feelings, thoughts, and reactions with total comprehension knowing the scientific fact that the universe is 13.7 billion years old and approaching TOTAL COMPLEXITY. Some refer to total complexity as God.

You may want to move this fact to the brutal satisfying conclusion, said the agent. This means the long now or 20,000+ years of human evolution is speeding up. Period. It’s becoming more random and chaotic. There’s a huge difference between complicated and complex. If you can write in God’s voice, it may sell. Many have tried few are chosen … God has a huge slush pile.

Earth, this is God … I have someone who’s interested in the property and I want you OUT by the end of the month. How’s that? Imagine an accelerated space program? said Z, Only the very rich can afford a shuttle seat. So it goes.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Duende

In June 2001 I called Pascal, an airline ticket broker in Montreal and set up the itinerary. Seattle, Detroit, Amsterdam to Casablanca round-trip for six months.

“When do you want to go?”

Another draft of A Century is Nothing would be abandoned by mid-August. I selected a random date.

“September 1.”

“What did Narcissus say when he saw his reflection in the water?” said Pascal during a conversation.

“What?”

“Watch out for yourself.”

“Good one.”

“We’ll take care of it,” he said. “Have a good trip.”

“Thanks for your help.”

A ticket to dusty roads in another village, town, city, country and continent offered new adventures. KISS. Keep it simple stupid.

Leaving was a wise karmic decision. Speaking of history.

I checked out of living between fifty-five million gallons of buried radioactive fuel at Hanford and the Umatilla Army Disposal Site where 7.4 million pounds of discarded chemical weapons waited to be incinerated.

Humans would be vaporized in an instant if the winds of change shifted. Weapons of mass destruction glowed in backyards.

My future lives were freedom, choice and plenty.

Two months after 9/11 while writing in Cadiz, Spain I visualized my incarnation as a calm word mercenary on an existential literary mission.

I created and wrote with discipline and perseverance.

I had duende, an untranslatable Spanish word, literally meaning possessing spirit and dark sound.

It signifies a charisma, emotion, expression and authenticity manifested by flamenco dancers, bullfighters, shamans, prescient seers and weavers. Audiences feel they are in the presence of a mystical power. The duende is an elf or goblin in Spanish and Latin American folklore.

The Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca produced the best description of duende.

“Years ago, during a flamenco dance contest in Jerez, an old woman of eighty, competing against beautiful women and young girls with waists as supple as water, carried off the prize by simply raising her arms, throwing back her head and stamping the platform with a single blow of her heel. In that gathering of muses and angels, of beautiful forms and lovely smiles, the dying duende triumphed as it had to, dragging the rusted blades of its wings along the ground.”

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Marrakesh

Create Art

Less talk and more drawing are essential in life, Z said.

Write and draw mean the same.

Experiment with circles, dots, triangles, squares, lines and curves to reach existential levels of realization. Connect the dots forward.

The asylum is a prison and protection, said Rita.

You create art to explore your sense of self and find out how you feel you are, rather than whom you think you should or ought to be, Z said, drawing her future.

Make the right choice for the wrong reason, Leo said.

Make the wrong choice for the right reason in the right season, Rita said.

Z discovered quest-ions were repeated. 1,001 quest-ions ran around her Turkish restaurant looking for answers. Quest-ions grew tired of repeating themselves.

This is so fucking boring, said one quest-ion. We are abused. We are manipulated and rendered mute. Useless.

Think of it as a test, said another quest-ion. Patience is our great teacher.

I’ll try, said another quest-ion.

Yes, said a quest-ion, these non-listeners have a distinct tendency to say nothing and say it louder than empty silence when they’re leaving, their faces turned away from eye contact, potential real heart-mind communication and growth.

Echoes drifted in through around silence and ignorance. I’ve seen that too, said a quest-ion, who, until this moment was silent. My theory is that it’s because of genocide, fear and ignorance. It’s also a delicate mixture of stupidity or indifference, said another quest-ion. I suggest it’s their innate Buddhist belief. They suppress their ego. Non-self.

Why’s the most dangerous quest-ion, said Lucky addressing quest-ions.

Remember Leo in China asking why and ending up carrying shit at the Reform Through Re-education labor camp near the Gobi before becoming Chief of the Cannibals wearing an alarm clock around his scrawny neck reminding everyone of Time?

Yes I remember, said a timeless prescient quest-ion. Leo was one smart cookie, whatever that means. He figured out unique survival skills in a desperate situation. He knew the fundamental difference between book smarts and street smarts.

How do you explain fear, asked a quest-ion.

The Language Company

Burmese kids. No fear.

letting go

He procrastinated. He was addicted to Ling.

They stayed together. They helped each other in small ways.

Love, passion, time, money, energy.

One night she repeated her performance, I come back in one hour.

He waited. Her chance to be responsible. To do what she says. To be honest.

She's a no-show. Her reasons, her choice.

He released his awareness of the futility. Free following their path with dignity, respect.

Letting go. Exhale everything out. Clean break.

How's it feel this emotional release for all the imaginary angst?

Calm. Centered.

fascinating

You are an object of endless fascination and speculation, said Orphan.

A stranger among strangers alive and well singing a blues song about disorientation, the unfolding process, dynamic. You are a ghost. People here see them before now later. 1.7 million to be exact.

Fear and superstition.

They pray to dead soul spirits because they are afraid of the dead. And it's theoretically possible to say local people have an EI or Emotional Intelligence of -7. This simple truth or unpleasant fact is revealed through behavior, attitudes and verbal communication. It’s a lack of maturity.

Zero personal individual incentive, initiative and growth.

It has nothing to do with culture, families, chance, fate, destiny, education or life social skills. I witnessed the same reality teaching in China, said Orphan, a survivor of Gulag #101.

Should living and learning come before teaching, wondered Orphan. Everyone is a student on peace street where life’s lessons are small and magnificent, said Elf.

There are book smarts and street smarts, said Orphan.

Children are a tool, said a wealthy Chinese man in Laos. He had 2.