Voices

I’m sitting on the balcony. There’s an invisible guy next door. They have an infant. The guy raises his voice. People yell here. It’s normal like breathing.

They get yelled at when they are kids, like the man yelling at his infant until the kid screams.

Tears stream until mother rescues her darling from the emotional abuse.

Yelling affects their self-esteem and well being. Children learn how to reject this yeller. They will learn to raise their voice in a whining, demanding yelling overture. They will be passive-aggressive turning on the yell.

As they age they turn off. They turn off their ears. Their ears are assaulted non-stop 24/7.

The volume control is broken. They grow up to be non-listeners. Never engaged unless marriage and procreation recreation speaks sex.

The adult giant savors this power.

It’s a clear shattered mirror memory of their parents and generations raised with fear, intimidation, suspicion, insecurity, poverty, informers, empty promises, faint hopes and loud voices.

Some voices are soft. Many are pure nightmares.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Akiko

“The fear of living, observing and experiencing in absurd detail where others lack the self-scrutiny or courage to voice them,” said David Foster Wallace.

*

            Sheep fear watching other people make things happen and not knowing what the fuck is going on, said Z. Sheep and robots fear taking a risk. They know it’s easier to do nothing than take a chance, said Leo.

            I cut useless meaningless vague words blocking the narrative river. I am innocent, happy, empty and brave. I am not afraid to make wise selections when it comes to editing this massive amount of verbiage, said Zeynep.

            Where’s the burn bag, said the janitor.

            I fear Room 101, said Winston Smith in 1984.

            Poor schools makes it easier for SYSTEMS to control ignorant citizens.

            Leo - In Utopia we learn the less we do the fewer mistakes we make. The fewer mistakes we make the less we are criticized. I remain safe and happy. It’s called THE SYSTEM. Brainwashed. You see this in every Asian education system.

             Students shuffle in, remove their brains, soak them in a cleaning solution that is not the solution for fifty tedious minutes and replace said gray matter at the end of class. It’s endemic. Social conditioning.

            A teacher is Parent #2. School is your first dictator.

            Big Brother is watching. Save face. It’s your karma.

            The fear of humiliation is greater than the fear of death, said Death.

            Karma is the universal law.

            Will your characters discuss moral ambiguities? Yes. They will speak with nouns and verbs and use specific adjectives for description, playing with words like Joyce. They will play with ideas, like Borges, said Zeynep.

Attributes of good ideas said Devina.

a.         Simple

b.         Unexpected

c.         Concrete

d.         Credible

e.         Emotional

f.          Story-containing

            Good writing is clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. There are people who talk about things, said Zeynep, People who talk about people and people who talk about ideas. The life of the mind.

            Is a place a character, asked Tran, Sure, said Devina, A place has character like Kroma, Cambodia, a sleepy river town, famous for pepper, Sunflower’s hands, Milling Around and the SIGN ones, said Rita.

            Writers use a specific location in their work, said Omar. Cadiz, Spain worked its way into my morning pages. I traveled with a nomad after 9/11.

             His laughing axe synthesized metaphors of death, sacrifice and letting go. His mirrors became gifts (hello beauty) and gifts multiplied gifts with gratitude. The gift keeps moving. It was imperative to leave the united states of confusion and Morocco behind.

            Exile suited our spirit. It was the irony of ironies, pressed irons with heavy starch in the collar please I told the world’s dry cleaner. Wash and wear. Dry a tear.

            Nothing is true & everything is permitted, Omar told Akiko, a Japanese fashion designer in Cadiz.

            Everything is permitted with fabric and threads, naked in the dark exploring their personal puzzle maps, tracing contours through the Sierras in Andalusia toward beaches woven with linen and silk.

            They were two orange and black butterflies dancing in a courtship ritual. They slept together in a Hokkaido love hotel filled with mirrors.

            At 2 a.m. Cadiz garbage workers in fluorescent yellow tiger stripes collected discarded words along narrow streets.

            Omar wrote the morning down as sky painted orange, pink and cerulean colors. A crescent moon hung in the west. He walked down Benjumeda Street as uniformed school kids gripped parental hands passing veiled grandmothers wearing widow market black at intersections on their daily economic briefing. Roman cobblestones rested in white shadows. Cool clear air dusted lungs.

            The Plaza de Falla Moorish red brick extremities shimmered in soft light. Arches formed prayer hands. Golden, cast iron, bronze, brick, tile, and papier mâché arch models in the world prayed for non-violence, dialogue, a ceasefire and arms control.

            Arms out of control waved goodbye to sanity and millions of orphans.

            Weary serious sad med students gripping texts crossed plazas toward class. Matriculation was a fading dream. Two men grimaced a ladder past a hospital and a fortune teller selling lottery tickets. Gambling was a big deal in Cadiz. Machines in bars with three virgin cherries rotated. ONCE lottery tickets bought the population where 40% were unemployed.

            Pay now pray later. The best is yet to come, said an unemployed Roma fortune teller.

            A nurse in white perfection entered a cafe for coffee. Old people hobbled in and out of a hospital. A woman left the hospital carrying one crutch. Needing Grave Digger she walked past an ambulance. I’m busy, said Digger, See my calloused hands.

            Death stood watch 24/7 in the big leagues.

            Book of Amnesia, V1.

Aftermath

In Amnesia catatonic paranoid citizens in addiction recovery programs swallowed bitter pills after a towering surprise attack. The acrid after taste did not go down well.

Heroes were showered with coins, paper currencies, dinner invitations and redeemable discount coupons. Sale of homes, vehicles, firearms, flags and genetically altered seeds increased as people contemplated sitting it out or escaping to jungles or caves.

Inside Rocky Mountain NORAD caves with buildings on huge gigantic springs to withstand historical frequency shifts, evacuation plans for major international cities were distributed to those with a need to know security clearance excluding 99.99% of Earth’s population.

Water, air and soil samples were collected and sent to labs by civilian teams disguised as recycling experts. The last thing they needed was public panic and violent social chaos.

“Fallout,” yelled an official. Citizens streamed out of Habitats For Humanity.

Addicts craving tranquilizers howled at a crescent moon down at the crossroads with rabid dogs.

Millions looted thrift shops singing, “Goodwill to men and peace on earth.”

Death masks sold out.

Humans addicted to chaos and entropy wore Hope clothing manufactured in Saipan sweatshops by chained emaciated emancipated Chinese slaves.

Worn torn Hope craved stronger innocent thread.

Robot authoritarian politicians suggested tighter immigration controls, concentration summer camps for kids, miles of walls, forced female sterilization, social network surveillance systems and retina eye scans of every human on Earth. It was approved and enforced with compliance by world governments to maintain Control of the sheep.

Someone called the exterminator to clean up the mess.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Touareg Berber Story

Under a full moon I transited south from Marrakech over the Atlas Mountains.

I was on the fringe of the Sahara eight days later when someone dialed 9/11 taking a bite of the big apple.

Whoops.

There was a hungry little worm at work. I was so far removed I did not take possession of that event.

I learned what happened from a Touareg Berber named Omar.

I wasn’t surprised. Fate bites you when you least expect it.

Omar spoke with his hands. I read his open palms and dark eyes. My ability with unspoken tongues and universal gestures was legendary. Body language gestures using humans were works in process.

Omar waved one hand in air as a bird condemned to be free. He raised a hand indicating height and smacked his flying hand into his stationary hand. The impact echoed across emptiness. His eyes flashed universal secrets. I had no idea where, how, why, or when he’d received his information, perhaps from trade caravans or through osmosis.

“I see.”

In the desert we did not talk about Being and Time, existential philosophy, the nature of evil, principles or values. We tweaked reality by breathing.

“3,000 people from eighty countries died,” said Omar. “Dust to dust.”

“Ah, an attack against the world,” I said, sensing an abstract permutation with eternal ramifications and hidden opportunity costs.

Writing story-truth futures, Omar and I sat down in Morocco and then Spain imagining stateside and global aftermath reality in the long now. 

I wasn’t surprised this happened. Myopic allegiance singing sheep in the United States of Amnesia would’ve had world citizens believe in their US/ THEM attitude.

Survivors evolved multiple ground truths, sifting soil, searching for plausible theoretical logical rational scientific cause and effect answers. Meaning?

Reconstructing, revising and recalibrating history they were left gasping, choking and breathing death mask dust. They evaluated meaning, truth and consequences in their short fragile existence.

Welcome to Earth babies. Revenge is best served cold.

Now they tried to answer the big question. “Why me/us?” and like Phase II group addicts it would keep them busy forever.

After the attacks their children asked, “why?”

Impatient angry adults under extreme pressure to be financially successful in their all-consuming life were frustrated with this “why” question from kiddies. As parents they wanted to be the boss, the all-knowing grown-up in complete Control. They assumed they knew all the answers. Whoops.

In a circular karmic game called Civilization & Random Revenge, players with long historical memories rolled the dice when it was their turn to play. Everyone had to go back to Start.

Citizens under siege didn’t read historical footnotes. They avoided the small fine print. The stuff they accepted carte blanche or skipped because they didn’t think it was important, the stuff made in Hollywood, the entertainment make-believe crap of car wrecks, violence, revenge and moronic happy endings.

Their attention span was shorter than the lives of 17,000 world children dying every day from starvation.

Somebody off stage triggered the lights exposing human fragility and evaporating all sense of humor. Audiences were stunned into silence when the curtain descended. It was full of loopholes, black holes and wormholes. The forbidden apple was rotten.

Survivors needing a new card from life’s deck did not want to see the Joker wearing a funny hat with bells.

Some had studied history. They knew in a vague way being experts on vagueness, mediocrity, hypocrisy, ignorance and cynicism how history’s long memory and sweet revenge encapsulated itself. They faced frustrating futures because they’d been lulled into complacency and brainwashed by soft media machines.

Media buys people.

Humans had assumed they would always be consuming bigger and better things. “The one who dies with the most toys wins,” said a salesman.

Tectonic plates of awareness shifted below the surface of appearances. Out of sight, out of mind. Awareness needed serious attention.

Human relationships snagged on fear, healthy uncertainty, doubt, adventure and surprise. Dreams of peace and prosperity, mortgaged tract homes, green lawns, two car garages, fast and faster food, weapons of mass destruction, love and symphonic notes danced on the edge of an abyss with hope, regret and fear.

Checkmate, said Death.

We need more channels, yelled sheep.

Shocked screaming patients streamed out of personal and collective asylums. They digested and overdosed on media medication rendering them catatonic, compliant and mute.

Earth is one big insane asylum.

Human nature and revenge stirred things up big time. Secure lines of clear fear communication revealed unconscious intentions of human revenge. Humans struggled for meaning in a random universe.

They tried to explain and/or rationalize and/or comprehend with logical coherent rational scientific explanations while mumbling, stuttering, staggering, falling, fumbling and failing to see how the world worked.

They struggled to explain all the moral ambiguities, principles and ethics on fill-in-the-blank final exams. They faced huge evolutionary adventures.

“Because I said so,” was the standard refrain when their sweet little monsters asked “why” for the umpteenth time. Cool laid-back intellectual facades developed fictionalized fractured fissures.

It was time to straighten the whiners out once and for all.

They went shopping.

This alleviated their fear of poverty, death and airplanes. Shopping is the perfect distraction. Shopping conquered fears growing stronger day-by-day fed by hysterical media, totalitarian governments and liberal know-it-alls in melting ivory soap towers based on empirical evidence and pure speculation.

“More media channels!” screamed millions. “We need more propaganda, advertising, distractions and fake news.”

There was a preponderance of rumors, myths, innuendoes, and evidence charred beyond recognition. It needed DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating.

Social workers and therapists swarmed Earth extolling virtues of wellbeing, hope, tolerance, gratitude, compassion and courage in the face of adversity, free choice and impending sales at outlet stores.

People needing therapeutic outlets found solace in their blind ignorance of how the world worked on molecular, political, religious, economic, philosophical and cultural levels.

Long festering animosity, religious, economic and cultural karma evolved. An invisible Ouroboros eating itself constricted their heart. Their mythical existence was part idealism and realism standing on its head.

Socially, culturally, geographically and emotionally deprived children learned a hard life lesson that escaped parents. Kids knew when adults were bullshitting them.

They suspected parents, teachers, doctors, social workers, bureaucrats and orphans, amputees, suicidal veterans and displaced humans and gravediggers did not own or Control the market of absolute answers.

Blind sheep believed something better just had to be on the idiot box, computer or phone. No attention span? No problem.

Inside demon gadgets a little animal named Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Adventure was hungry. It had a vociferous appetite for all things vain and glorious. It ate its young with spicy relish at picnics. It had no morals, ethics, principles or 21st century rationale.

It had a neoconservative financial and political agenda for:

Money

Power

Control

ART - Adventure, Risk & Transformation - A Memoir

Sappho

Plant A Seed

"I have captured the light and arrested it's flight. The sun itself shall draw my pictures."

- Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) One of the fathers of photography.

*

“Sounds like you’re fishing again,” said a patient kid, “with a line long enough to hang laundry on. Anyone here know anything about reading palms?”

“I know what I don’t know. Mine are too small to read.”

“Mine are deeper than water carved canyons,” said a voiceless voice from a formless form.

“Ain’t that grand? Water stone. Yin yang. Gestalt. They sustain each other in a correspondence. The lifeline marries the heart line.”

“Do you see a connection?”

A child with dyslexia spoke, “It’s tough. I’m trying to learn 1,100 ways letters are used to symbolize the forty sounds in the spoken English language.”

“You mean to say, or say to mean,” said a child, “it’s difficult for a learning reader to connect verbal sounds with the letters or symbols that spell that sound?”

“Absolutely. Maybe that explains why there are ten million children in this country with severe reading problems.”

“Show us where the sound of speech has no alphabet.”

“Good on ya. Was it William - the kid from Kansas who lived in the Burroughs - who said language is a virus from outer space, a form of control? Where is he?”

“They took him away for treatment,” said Rose. “Some lab coat rat said he was delirious and firing a Colt-45 at an apple on his wife’s head in Mexico. William said hallucinating improved reality. Reality makes you crazy. It’s empty, dull, boring, tedious and filled with inconclusive abstracts.”

“He ate his Naked Lunch.”

“He dreamed with his eyes open?”

“You got it backwards. He was fast asleep with his eyes open and he woke up by closing his eyes. Everything is a meditation. Everyone is a Buddha. You are a stream-winner.”

“Connect the dots forward.”

“Figures,” said a kid, releasing cost benefit results scribbled on an artificial medical insurance form with a co-pay deductible.

“Some people never learn. They get older sooner and smarter later.”

“You change subjects faster than the weather,” said an observer. “How are we supposed to stay on task here?”

“Buy a ticket,” suggested a kid.

“Are you a ticket taker or a risk taker?”

“If you want to do amazing things you need to take amazing risks and suffer greatly.”

“Anybody have any spare change?” asked a panhandling waif on an aspirator with wealthy aspirations.

“Hmm, I see a faint star at the conjunction of the head and heart life lines. Does that mean anything?” said a kid fingering green palms approaching Easter Is-land on a bamboo raft.

“Depends,” ranted a child orator standing on a soapbox. “Do you mean faint as in non-distinguishable or feint meaning to throw one off a socially agreed upon tacit path implied by pretending to understand anything while processing information with a deft movement?”

“Yes,” philosophized a child with the wit of Camus, “it’s a sublime paradox, this absurd metaphorical life theater. We have aspects of knowing. We know so much and understand nothing. We are affected, infected, rejected or injected by how we feel not what we think we understand. Life is short and sweet. Art is long. Our lives are works of art. It’s not so much that there is something strange about time. What’s strange is what’s going on inside time. We will understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.”

“You’re just saying that,” said a voice.

“Sounds like a description of the food they serve here, speaking of strange,” one resident commented to no one in particular.

“No lie flutter by,” sighed a Monarch’s wings in Greek.

“What’s that have to do with the conservation of angular momentum and a parabola?” queried a child spinning wheelchair tires on a tennis court and making a racket while performing real alignments for friends.

“Do I love you because you are beautiful?” said Rose, “or are you beautiful because I love you?”

“Both,” sang the Greek chorus.

“You get what you pay for,” said a kid ironing words with grit, perseverance and discipline.

“The map (words) is not the territory (perception),” said a child reading The Dictionary of Symbols. They shared a story about dance.

“Dance is a process. Becoming. Shiva symbolizes the union of space, time and destruction. Dance is an ancient form of magic. People wear masks hiding their transformation. They seek to change their dancer into a god or demon. Dance is the incarnation of eternal energy.”

“Well all right then,” said a kid dancing in their death mask. “Let’s trip the light fantastic.”

“You get the face you deserve,” said a makeup artist. “Your mask eats your face.”

A couple of engaged children practiced lines in a theatrical play.

“I thought you’d never get here.”

“Sorry, I was delayed.”

“Obviously. Are you staying?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know, you’re such a mystery child to me.”

“You talk too much.”

“Cut!” yelled a director.

“Was it the line or the delivery?” said a kid.

Rose said, “Welcome to Earth. Hello babies. It’s round, wet and crowded. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. You may make it to 100 if you’re lucky. There’s only one rule. Just be kind.”

Laughing children in wheelchairs gathered at a starting line outside the hospital.  

“Ready? Get set. Go.”

They raced to the Denver Art Museum to meet Tibetan monks arriving from Santa Fe. They worked together for a week creating an intricate Kalachakra Wheel of Time sand mandala. Plant a seed.

ART