Dance

As a Japanese monk said, "You are always a fool whether you dance or not. So you might as well dance."

The Moroccan girl with wild brown hair tied

back is not on the train as it leaves a white station.

She sits on her haunches. Her bare feet

dig soil, grip small earth pebbles as exposed root structures dance with her toes.

Her toes are her extended connection where her shadow lies forgotten. It spreads upon vegetables. They wait below her. They prowl toward late winter light.

She is not on the red and brown train that zooms past green fields where her sheep in long woolen coats eat their way through pastures after a two year drought.

She is inside green the girl with her wild brown hair pulled tight. She is not on the train hearing music, eating dates, reading a book, talking with friends or strangers, sleeping along her passage, or dreaming of a lover.

She does not scan faces of tired, trapped people in their orange seats impatiently waiting for time to deliver them to a Red City in the desert.

Her history’s desert is full of potentates sharpening their swords, inventing icon free art, alphabets, practicing equality, creating five pillars of Islam and navigation star map tools, breaking wild stallions, building tiled adobe fortresses, selling spices, writing language.

She is not on the train drinking fresh mint tea orconsulting a pocket sized edition of the Qur'an. She does not kneel on her Berber carpet five times a day facing Mecca in the east.

She does not wear stereo earphones or listen to music imported from another world, a world where people treasure their watches. Where controlling time is their passion for being prompt and responsible citizens to give their lives meaning.

She is not on the train and not in this language the girl with her wild brown hair tied back with straw or leather or stems of wild flowers surrounding her with fragrances.

She is surrounded by orange blossom perfume beyond rolling hills, cut by wet canyons along yellow and green fields, where her black eyes penetrate white clouds in her blue sky.

In her open heart she hears her breath explore her long shadow, causing it to ripple with her shift. Her toes caress soil and she is lighter than air, lighter than a feather of a wild bird in the High Atlas mountains far away.

She smells the Berber tribal fire heating tea for the festival where someone wears a goatskin cape and skull below the stars.

It is cold outside. Flames leap from branches like shooting stars into her eyes and someone plays music. It is the music of her ancestors, her nomadic people and she sways inside the gradual hypnotic rhythm of her ancestral memory.

She is not on the train. She is inside a goat skull moving her hoofs through soil. She moves through fields where she danced as a child seeing red and yellow fire calling all the stars to her dance and she is not on the train.

Metta.

Eight

Eight mirrors, eight letters, eight whispers, eight sensations.

Eight breaths, eight emptiness, eight certainties, eight ambiguities, eight naked dancing birds,

eight laughing fools, eight hungry ideas, eight reflections,

eight musical notes, eight encounters, eight degrees.

Eight bells, eight echoes.

Trees burn facts and opinions in spring.

A blind dancer and a deaf dancer compliment each other.

Metta.

A Tomato Based Culture

From Fujian, China to Ankara, Turkey (a kind of fowl) to Bursa along the Silk Road with Doner and Pide, all the sliced and diced tomatoes, all the bamboo baggage filled with laughter and forgetting inside the smashing of utensils and wash and wear drip dry neon holiday flashing factories along metro subway tracks where world weary

pedestrians completing a simple sentence with a full plate of delicious shoppers dancing inside fire breathing ovens stoking love's fires before racing home to mother, father, sister, brother all wearing traditional anxiety values around heavily medicated ma-scared necks handing someone change, your fragile receipt for paying

at the cosmic bowling alley for strikes and spares and did you know the great father liberator has a train car parked forever at the main station, a gift from Adolph, the Further and it was all imaginary, this T place where idle men stood around looking bored and unemployed, uneducated drinking brown tea

after artfully massaging a microscopic silver spoon around the rim, deep into the universe of sugar stars clanging metal against a small glass destroying cubes manufactured in a filthy factory - so an inspection engineer whispered in her strict confidence - don't use the sugar she whispered across a plate of pasta on a chilly Ankara night before they went to a wedding in Ulus, the ancient Roman village, deep in an underground cavern filled with musicians, dancers, and children

gypsies played anvils

far away from shy lovers holding hands under the table inside the rising sun of their desire, their passion for yawning bamboo chairs where two elderly women in multi-hued headscarves smoked exploding drops of water from plummeting icicles onto tiled roofs above the cafe where a ghost scribbled in shadows burning his fingers to see the why eye and the falling water drops were music to his ears

Metta.

Baka Beyond

Drum. Dance inside the forest. Baka Beyond. Senses engaged. 

You have a responsibility to your imagination.

"There are two kinds of people in the world," said a child playing near a construction site on Java.

"What?"

"There are people who want to blame you and people who want to distract you."

"Heavy."

"Yes, this life construction project is a heavy duty process. Pick it up, carry it around. Put it down."

"Sounds like a bag of bones, if you ask me," said a tribal musician playing a skin.

"You are a rainbow of light."

"Yes, we cut through desire, habit and fear."

"This is the beauty and clarity of music and dance. Welcome to the forest."

Metta.