Hammam

The author was in Morocco on 9/11.

Twice a week he left #187 and walked through dusty stone rubble past discarded plastic trash and small broken trees to the Moroccan hammam. The Turkish style public bath cost seventy cents.

The left side was for women, men on the right. He paid the shy girl behind her veil, went in, stripped to underwear, crammed his clothes in a plastic bag, handed it to a smiling toothless Moor, and got two buckets made of old tires remembering the suq alley in the Medina where boys cut the rubber, hammered, made and sold these buckets.

He pushed open a heavy wooden door. Three medium vaulted arched white tiled rooms receded with increasing degrees of heat and steam. Men reclined on heated tiled floors, collected cold or hot water from faucets in buckets, soaping and scrubbing themselves down.

Passing unrecognizable human forms he entered heat’s mist dream, walked through two rooms and found a space near a wall. He filled one bucket with scalding hot water and another with temperate liquid. He stretched out on his back absorbing heat and closed his eyes.

Heat penetrated his skin. It was a respite from the outside world, the chaos of poverty, begging, humor and hospitality. No one could see him, no one knew him. Feeling peace he rolled onto his side as heat blasted skin, muscles and bones.

Inside steam and water music sweating men slapped themselves on the broiling floor. He watched an old wiry man dissolving kinks bend a customer’s arms and legs into pretzel formations. The skinny bald man energetically worked wrists, elbows, shoulder joints to the point of snapping them off skeletons. He rolled patrons over, pummeling spinal chords, slapping backs while bending knee joints leaving men spread eagle on wet tiled floors. Content faces welcomed his attention.

Satisfied with the meditation, Point sat up, soaped and scrubbed layers off skin with a rough hand cloth. He rinsed oceans across inlaid tiles, walked out, retrieved his bag of clothing, covered himself with an ikat sarong slipping out of wet underwear into dry clothing. He gave the attendant a small tip. The old man smiled, shook his head, rolling his eyes. It wasn’t enough. He dropped more coins into brown frozen fingers.

“Shukran. M’a salama.”

He stepped into cool night air. The dusty path was filled with scooters, boys playing on abandoned rusty cars, scavengers probing piles of trash and mothers dragging black gown hems on the ground. Bright yellow slippers slapping earth flashed light in silt. Wandering children sang happy innocent songs.

A one-eyed beggar stumbled past looking for alms. Point gave him one thin coin and skirted an alley through debris for thick black coffee at a local cafe. Entering, he passed men watching 24-hour global terrorism catastrophes at full volume from a television propped on steel supports hanging from a ceiling.

“Ah, Ahab,” said the waiter, a smiling young man in a purple vest balancing a silver tray of cups and water glasses.

“Coffee?”

“Yes please, no sugar,” gesturing outside where empty tables littered cracked pavement. Dejected desperate shoeshine boys tapped wooden boxes. Their dark unemployed eyes inspected shoes of chronically idle men drinking coffee and endless glasses of tea. A hopeful boy wandered in and out of tables tapping his shoe box. Strong mint tea aroma filled the air.

At the bar a waiter cut mint tea leaves, crammed them into a silver plated kettle, dumped in a brick of sugar, closed the lid, raised the pot and poured a steady stream of light brown tea into a small purple embossed glass. Opening the lid he dumped the tea back into the pot and placed it on a table with glasses, spoons and sugar cubes.

A subtle red color extended across a high adobe wall. The Atlas mountain range wore white snow.

Women in billowing rainbow fabrics walked across the desert from clustered stone villages to take a local bus into the shimmering Red City or sit on broken cement stones along the road talking with friends enjoying their social hour in eternity.

Dusk and twilight married to procreate many children. More field hands, more child labor in dead end trades making less than a $1.00 a day. Many would walk to northern Morocco and, if lucky with money, slip across the Mediterranean into Spain. Some angry marginalized naive kids would join T cells in Madrid, or Hamburg and disappear in Europe. A select few would attend flight training school in Florida. Others became wealthy drug runners wheeling and dealing hash heaven in Amsterdam.

Women sat gossiping on cracked pavement surrounded by trash. People discarded their lives as they went through it like caterpillars morphing into exotic species. Attempts to plant a single tree inside a small block of dirt surrounded by cement had proved futile.

People had stripped off the branches and leaves leaving a sharp broken piece of wood sticking out of the ground. People wandered aimlessly or sat in dust. Unemployed men on haunches stared at the ground. A fruit seller with cardboard boxes of green grapes under a single bulb on a rolling cart waved at lazy flies.

A man in his wheelchair poured bottled water over a handful of grapes. Grapes of wrath. Water disappeared into dust around his wheels of life. He ate one grape at a time watching laughing boys weave past on broken bikes as rusty chains grasped crooked sprockets.

A bearded man struggled along the street collecting discarded pieces of cardboard in his recycled life. Cardboard was utilitarian - a cheap sidewalk seat, a foundation in rolling carts to keep stuff from falling out the bottom, sun hats, beds and doormats in front of shops after infrequent rain.

Shredded telephone wires dangled from the wall of a telephone business office cubicle as men with mobile phones punched in numbers and lined up to make calls on the single working phone.

Disconnected grease covered boys manipulated mammoth truck tires along broken sidewalks to their shop. Tools spilled into public paths. The area was alive as people relying on their survival instincts scrambled to make a living.

Off the main road people set up evening flea markets. Two men unloaded piles of shoes from the back of a car along a sidewalk. Location, location, location. One seller spread a bright blue tarp on the ground anchoring it with bricks. His partner arranged cheap dress and casual shoes for potential buyers. No ‘adidas berber’ shoes for these guys.

They fired up a propane lamp. Neighborhood people escaping small flats after a day of oppressive heat prowled the street with friends looking for a bargain or just plain looking.

A Century is Nothing

Flower

process is more alluring then product

Dimmi - tell me your secrets ... fundamental laws of nature ... synthesis ... geometry + shadow + light

Barthes - photographs attract us because they are pensive, they think

ideas in living laboratories

*

History, war, and violence screwed us, said Rita. Human genocide animals massacred 1.7 million out of 11 million between 1975-1979. Millions are subsistence farmers. It is a rural agrarian society. They produce what they need. They eat, sleep, plant, harvest, fuck and sit around.

They are soft and kind. They have a good heart.

As Buddhists they visualize a positive future with good education, health care, quality medicine, job opportunities and community strength.

They drift through your sensation, perception and consciousness with the speed and grace of a cosmic Lepidoptera. The lesson is to tolerate with kindness and Patience, your great teacher, the empty-eyed star gazing staring humans. Bored after five minutes they lose interest and leave you be. Zap, like a zigzag lightning bolt. Gone. Zap said Rita.

Let’s pretend to be exactly who we are. Let’s pretend to be someone else in life’s play.

Whew what a mouthful, said Tran, an amputee from Vietnam, Yeah spilling sounds and metaphors, the human condition reads history and weeps, time history is a play, create memory history and re-write it. Your memory is the world, said Omar, And the world is a village.

Everything I need is here.

Cry me a river. Build me a bridge. Get over it.

Question?

What do you recall during the one-hour full body massage with blind Flower at Seeming Hands? Her hands were all. Her hands were water air soft gentle sensations. Learning sensing and feeling is her physical way. She engaged all her senses. Touch is her essence.

She knew your pressure points. Soft, medium or hard, she said. During her meditation we considered this fragment. We discovered immediate direct experience with structure form and literary vulgarity.

We slow down inside a labyrinth contemplating a lotus growing from mud.

A writer is a dwarf, invisible and must survive. They write naked, in blood and in exile.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Burma

her chance

Bursa, Turkey

the woman on the metro

with a burned leg - you remember her clearly
how she sat after dragging her bad leg

into the compartment
this image of her
alone
cold
scared
in pain
how did it happen? why is she alone?
on a cold night in a flimsy sweater

her skin below the knee
running to her ankle
all burned away
exposing blood red lines

her abstract expression
her sacred scared distracted face
watching night fly past windows
where blue televisions and children eye each other

how she kept going
on the metro past a stop
where the expensive private hospital on a Roman
hill gleamed its extensive intensive pensive care
ward and her treatment was delayed
forgotten useless
here

because she is poor
so she stayed in her seat
anxious now feeling her pain
wondering where she would go
where she would end up this night

as a stranger studied her anxious passive 
expression feeling burns, violent burns
inside sensations fire and heat
nerve impulses darting through

along sensory
channels where signals blocked by
neurotransmitters shut down
her chance

The Priest Confesses

“May we resume our deliberations now?” said a pedophile priest with a Big Unit mobile attached to his ear. He heard a long distance confession from Boston, “Why me? Not me.”

Not wanting to make an ass of himself in public, he knew he’d face felony charges when they found his big hand had been on the little hand. He knew he’d never make Cardinal as a stool pigeon without a prosthetic leg to stand on. He whispered to the congregation.

“We must make plans for the ordained conquest. The heathen are massing their cavalry on the mount of Venus as we speak on these vital matters of church and state.”

Idiots in rapture supported his religious ideology. Faith based her initiative in him.

Worm Hole, a mathematician, manipulated statistics on a child’s carnivore place mat. He created black holes to explore their gravitational pull. Space was more beautiful and mysterious than time.

“And now we’re here,” he said pointing to a small blue marble floating on a cosmic map. “It’s amazing how many people don’t appreciate their existence.”

“Yes,” said a knight errant, “there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the earth’s beaches. Try putting that into your hourglass.”

Everybody laughed except Bumsfield and his greedy buddy Dicky Chainsaw from Why O Ming.

Knights spinning around the round table guessed the military-industrial campaign might end by spring. They didn’t know the year so they surmised seasons.

Veterans, children, orphans and women knew it’d be forever. Someone had to take the fall and remove leaves clogging the Rivers of Tears. Seasons were theirs for the taking. It was a crapshoot. They all knew it.

Dice man played his hand, “Snake eyes!”

The room became quieter than 1.7 million unmarked Cambodian graves where orphans played with unexploded ordnance.

“We hit a Blue Cross building yesterday,” said a psychotic coalition general. “Was it red or blue, I can’t remember. You know how confusing things get in war.”

“Oh no,” said the priest, “not another cross to bear.”

At the word bear the mathematician looked up in horror from his predator place mat. A huge Alaskan brown bear with blazing eyes charged out of a forest carrying a decapitated wildlife ranger.

“We have a situation,” radioed a Cobra helicopter pilot circling the grizzly scene.

His radio crackled, “You have permission to fire.”

He pressed his magic red button. A $50,000,000 dollar Hellfire Tomahawk Missile blasted the beast to kingdom come.

“We’re saved!” yelled orphans. Gutting the beast with Berber knives and Tibetan daggers they salvaged every part of the animal. A kid named Export packed the testicles in Ice-9 for a Hong Kong pharmacy.

Authorities arrived. They dragged the priest away for questioning after numerous Irish children accused him of sexual abuse. He requested to speak with someone at the Holy See.

“We’ll see what we can do,” said a member of the Vatican SWAT team preventing anguished angry parents from strangling him with his rosary.

“Crucify the hypocrite,” yelled the high masses. Priests in crisis management modus operandi looked at new cardinal points on their compass. They needed an alibi.

“Roast him over an open friar,” sobbed a sacred heart mother of all transfusions.

“Rest in peace…” sang an angelic choir. “RIP it into shreds.”

“Let him write a check.”

“There’ll be a penalty for early withdrawals,” salivated a Vietnamese hooker lying on a thin mattress caressing a big hot strawberry flavored OK #1 condom.

“Any causalities?” queried a Foreign Legion mercenary just back from Yemen where he was shortlisted as MIA. He’d hitched a ride with a camel caravan across Oman heading to Kurdish/Syrian refugee enclaves near Turkey.

“Friendly fire wiped out a few of our forces which is to be expected,” reported an analyst. “Journalists, photographers, and an Italian intelligence agent bit the bullet so to speak. They’ve filed their final report. Wrong coordinates I’d suggest. They’ll be embedded forever. We have unconfirmed reports that Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghan hospitals are overwhelmed with the dead or dying, amputees, grieving mothers and widows. 500,000 and rising.”

“So it goes,” said a historian turning their hourglass over as sands of time fell in love with the gravity of thinking.

“We suspect they are executing their own,” said a junior minion. “We’ve bombed beans, rice, cooking oil, water treatment facilities, power plants, and oil refineries. The price of crude is escalating as members of OPEC agree to disagree. They’ve had us over a barrel for decades. Any sheik maintaining four wives has to keep pumping. Staple expenses went through the roof at a fire sale. The cost of staples is driven by supply and demand.”

“Humanitarian aid is a noble casualty for the price of peace,” said a coalition officer waiting for extradition on mass murder charges. “Politically cheaper than body bags.”

“Those are back ordered,” said a supply clerk from Kansas City with an 8th grade education. “77,000 body bags were shipped to a southern Italian military installation before we invaded Iraq with the intention to occupy. Boxes of rancid democracy lie stranded south of Basra marshes. Pallets of freedom sit abandoned along the highway of death between Damascus and Kuwait.”

“Is the democracy smooth or crunchy?” said the chef.

“We can’t wait. We’re screwed,” said a selected two-faced Fascist puppet president from O-Zone. “We bought the ranch. I’m moving to Argentina A.S.A.P.”

“We’re not screwed,” whined a minimum wage slave. “When factories are finished producing expensive weapons of mass destruction, recycled petroleum products for happy meals and flags they will reconfigure their machines and production target quotas.”

“May I speak?” requested a poet.

“If you must,” said an officer buffing his medals with Brasso.

The poet tuned his Arabic oud instrument of mass distraction and sang a sad lament about a person dreaming they were free in a free country.

“Ingenious,” said a literary critic. “Uses language in imaginary and metaphorical ways. Gives it a goof feel.”

“We’ve allocated a percentage to Asian sweat shops,” said a textile importer. “To be specific: China, Thailand, Saipan, Malaysia, Burma, Vietnam and Cambodia, where one-third of sixty million people make less than $1.00 a day. Factory slaves are working overtime. They have absolutely no choice in the matter. A buck a day is a hell of a deal. Once the feds and W.T.O. leave us alone we’ll realize a handsome profit when all is sewn and done.”

“That’s nothing,” said an analyst, “it’s a two prong effort. We’ll construct air bases and military installations to control Middle East oil and air space and we’ll let American corporations buy all the Iraqi assets. We’re sitting on vast oil fields. Sweetmeat.”

“Perfect,” said Chainsaw, the greedy VP staring at a Spanish butcher dripping blood. “Where’s my cut?”

A security advisor spoke. “Last March we launched the largest psychological operations in our 225 year history. We have 1,000 PSYOP personnel working to sway Iraqis, Afghans, Iranians, and Syrians to join the rebuilding effort.”

“Are the PSYOP leaflets proving effective?” asked Colonel Sanderson with extra crispy clipped wings on his shoulders. He was molting. “We want them to see the democratic rationale of our occupation and walk on the bright side of life.”

“Propaganda is more based on untruth,” said a philosopher.

“Their illiteracy rate is high,” snarled a shoeless education major from Oxford. “Many of the fliers are being recycled as toilet paper and novels. Maybe we should have included lexicons?”

“Too expensive,” said a primary teacher named Laurie Lie. “We have standards to maintain with excellence. If we kill all the children no child will be left behind. This is our destiny for glory, truth, and democratic economics. The freedom and opportunity for children to go to school and develop independent critical thinking skills is our global educational platform. I suggest we set up a tax-free book foundation in Nebraska.”

“Excellent suggestion. Let’s call it Omaha Beachhead Incorporated with a buffet table.”

“It’ll be generations before we’re able to gauge the effectiveness of paper propaganda,” said a wood products CEO raising his options value. Adjusting his golden parachute, he grabbed the ripcord to bail out when share values plummeted.

A silent blind Touareg living on the edge of their deliberations knew they existed in a twilight zone beyond sight and sound bites.

“Who let him in here?” said Butler, pointing at Omar. “He should’ve been sent to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation and deprived of his civil rights with no access to legal counsel. He’s clearly a war criminal or a literary outlaw. Bag his head, shackle and torture him until he confesses or dies. To hell with the Geneva Convention I say.”

Knights ignored him. “Just bring us some food. Now,” yelled starving warriors rattling Moorish sabers. Blades flashed Chinese white, Permanent Orange, Pale Green, Cadmium Red, Viridian Hue, Lemon Yellow, and Prussian Blue.

“We’re experiencing limited success distributing electricity, food, water, medicine and a new artificial currency,” said a civilian. “We need to focus on fixing water treatment plants and restoring their infrastructure after 8,000 smart bombs laid waste.”

“Where does The Waste Land end?” said T. S. Eliot. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

“The end is the beginning,” Omar said.

“If your rough draft changes by less than 10% you’re done,” said an unemployed literary agent arranging DNA syntactical building blocks on a marketing platform.

“We need to make sure we connect the dots between 9/11 and Iraq,” said Intelligence. “If we are successful, coerced politicians will get out of the way and give us a ton of money like a glorious $600 billion or more to rebuild what we’ve destroyed. It’s our way or hit the heavily mined highway of death. You’re either with us or with terrorists is our message to the world.”

“Yes,” barked Faustus, Director of General Incompetents, “these malicious vermin are obstacles standing between the Iraqi people and security. They are terrorists...no, they are rebels...no, they are freedom fighters...no, they are guerillas... no, they are...insurgents.”

“Whatever. The road through Babylon, Tripoli, Tehran, and Damascus is endless. Our campaign will be well received. We will liberate the oppressed,” said an old white haired man named Regime Change wearing a pacemaker. He loved a girl from Why O Why Ming with a big spread near Bend Over.

Members of a House and their corrupt nefarious Congressional colleagues, doing nothing but squabble and bicker and delay and waste taxpayer money playing party politics for another term with automatic pay raises, looked at him with contempt, incredulity, amazement and pure terror.

“We ain’t in no fucking jungle on this,” sneered a nautical Delta Seal with ringmaster approval. “This war is on track Jack.”

“Collateral damage is a sorry fact of life,” said a man with a whip cutting through red tape.

“Bring them on I say,” yelled Bumsfield. “Our God is bigger than their God for God’s sake. Look, it’s easy, here’s what we do. We know the United Nations is useless. We’ll create false claims of nuclear and biological threats feeding 9/11 FEAR. Then we give the sheep a solution.”

Create a problem. Create a solution. Save the world.

Curveball came in for short relief. “I know where it is.”

“Where what is?” asked Bumsfield.

“All the non-existent Iraqi mobile labs full of toxins and nerve agents.”

“For an alcoholic spy and fabricator you have a lot of nerve,” screamed Tenant. He used to be Lew but now he was just plain Jane Tenant from a defunct housing project. He was on a speaking tour making big bucks after his slam-dunk fell well short of the net.

“Look,” said Curveball. “I gave German intelligence the high hard stuff. They don’t understand the American pastime. They said I was past my prime. They co-opted me with women and booze. A hell of a lethal combination let me tell you. They grilled me over a hot flame. I became a double agent. I was beside myself.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Bumsfield, “a classic bipolar case and your mother wears a straight jacket on the 5^th floor. We distort flimsy evidence from a worthless Intel source saying Sad Man is an immediate and direct threat to our national security. He’ll attack us in forty-five minutes.”

“But,” said President Bush League, waving his one-way ticket to Patagonia, “that won’t give me time to finish reading about goats to the elementary kids.”

“No butts sir,” said his spokesperson. “Skip pages. Get to the verb.”

“Isn’t this strategy too vague and deceptive?” asked a garbage collector in Marrakesh.

“Vague and deceptive stuff happens all the time,” said the man cracking his cool whip. “What planet are you from, amigo? We have the national propaganda media machines eating this flag waving patriotic bullshit. We con the world with these fictitious stories about Sad Man being a threat to us with his weapons of mass distraction and start a war to remove him from power. Problem and solution in one enchilada.”

“Brilliant,” said a civilian military contractor from Texas, “What then?”

“It’s easy. We know the dictator’s been bluffing all along to maintain his power base. Ask Curveball when he sobers up. Sad Man never had weapons of mass destruction except for the mustard gas and expensive munitions we sold him to support his eight-year war with Iran ...

The world doesn’t know or care about that fact. His military will collapse like a house of cards. We send in 150,000 young, poorly trained National Guard units from America’s middle and lower class mind you, take some losses sure, but that’s the price of doing business while we establish a quasi-official coalition government with us in total Control of everything. After a decade we send any military survivors to Afghanistan for 20+ years. Money & Power & Control, yes sir, the American way.”

 * Forbes: In the 20 years since September 11, 2001, the United States has spent more than $2 trillion on the war in Afghanistan. That’s $300 million dollars per day, every day, for two decades. Or $50,000 for each of Afghanistan's 40 million people. In baser terms, Uncle Sam has spent more keeping the Taliban at bay than the net worths of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and the 30 richest billionaires in America, combined.

“What about the local people?” said a humanitarian aid rep.

“Screw them. We’ve liberated them from a dictator for God’s sake. They should be eternally grateful to us and get down on their knees in sand thanking us.”

A public relations flack spoke. “For propaganda purposes we’ll let them form a provisional government so they’ll be distracted and think they have real input in how their country is going to be run. It’s like we’ve controlled Kuwait and Saudi Arabia oil production for years. They increase crude when we tell them. They shut it down when we hit the off button.”

“When do we get the contracts?” said a Texas oilman washing his bloody hands.

“All in good time. Rebuilding the oil industry will be tied to larger deals. We’ll start you off with easy contract stuff like mail delivery, detention camps, prisons, roads, schools, building hospitals and supplying food to the troops. That will keep your people busy for what, 20-30 years, easy.”

“Sounds great,” said the contractor. “This is going to make a lot of my friends very happy.”

“Hey,” said Hally Burden, “war is good business. Politics is business and business is politics. I love it.”

Everyone had an agenda. Blazing a trail, beaters eliminated environmental impact statements. The grass was very high. Inhaling, they found Kyoto on a map and deleted it from their servers while Pablo and Salvadore created art for an upcoming show at the asylum. It was sold out. Standing room only. Their accountant was pleased beyond words. It was an excellent return on their intuitive investment.

A child said, “It’s not so much that there is something strange about time...the thing that’s strange is what’s going on inside time. We will understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.”

“This show is X-rated. Get your ass out of the room and get to bed,” yelled their divorced, manic-depressive father, “or else I will beat you with this stick and stone your mother to death for adultery. If I have to tell you again I will send you to Drapchi prison outside Lhasa where, in 1997, five Tibetan nuns committed suicide after being beaten with clubs, belts, and rubber hoses filled with sand for refusing to sing Chinese Communist regime songs. Don’t for one minute believe they killed themselves with honorable intentions to end their suffering.”

A bearded fellow from the Taliban Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice spoke.

“We agree. Lashes, stoning, amputation of limbs, hanging and crucifixion for flaunting our rigid Islamic laws is true justice. Women lose their virginity if they drive a car. It’s a scientific fact.”

“What does that have to do with anything we can measure?” said a nuclear physicist.

“Everything and nothing,” said Rose, a psychic healer who was not, according to their official top secret Trilateral New World Order guest list, part of the elite inner circle.

“When we retire they give us a watch but we don’t have time to wind it,” said a blind watchmaker named Evolution.

The Lone Ranger, a civilian from a Special Ops Group, studied a satellite imagery map and pixel data. He was afraid to ask Pablo how to draw coordinates with a vanishing perspective. Knights considered him the Lone Stranger.

“Let us know if you find anything interesting,” said Macintosh, a Scottish bagpipe officer from the Guardian Angels, an invisible flying force. Squeezing hot air from a goatskin he played rational coherent necessity with cause and effect. His tartan was out of kilter. All dressed up and nowhere to go.

The sundial on the wall of honor at Langley’s house approached twelve.

Tick-tock.

Trick or treat.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Patriot Act

War on terror experts discussed tactics and strategies for a play with many acts. A dramatic play with word swords cut to the chase. Some acts were difficult to follow or comprehend. Reviews would be mixed when it ran off Broadway flagging down a Berber caravan inside an air-conditioned nightmare looking for a Caravansary on Route 66.

“What’s the name of the first act?” asked a playwright.

“Patriot,” said General Consensus.

“How does The Patriot Act sound?” said Sir Scribe, a former loan shark and energy consultant.

“I like it, I really like it,” said a general named Attorney. He was a neo-conservative right wing religious fanatic from the State of Misery. “It has teeth with wide ranging subversive constitutional powers perfectly timed for our agenda. Let’s push it down the legislator’s throats. We rule and Control by fear.”

“Does that mean the gag rule will be in effect?” cracked a comedian on welfare.

“Sure does. Anyone who expresses constitutional concern about this act will be blacklisted, ridiculed, ostracized, and labeled unpatriotic. They will never work again in this great beautiful free country. We will revoke their voting rights, cancel their citizenship and deport them to Cuba. I’ve had it up to here with this liberal democratic crap. Our culture is to kill. Take no prisoners. Abuse the hell out of detainees. Lock up all the immigrant children. Tell the tree huggers to take a hike through old growth forests,” smirked Attorney.

“There is no doubt about our honorable intentions. We are on a holy mission. Our destiny is to install democrazy in the Middle Eats,” said chef Boy R. Dumbed Down Dee, “whether they like it or not. They’ll eat what we give ’em or starve. This is an ala’ carte blanche military menu.”

“Perhaps we should we open diplomatic channels?” queried Plame as day, an agent with a blown cover.

Days, weeks, months, years and centuries after 9/11, English hawks warbled to Blare about taking the campaign into winter. They needed hawk food. As predators they knew the terrain, the sweet sound of droning wings whistling through clouds with laser-guided precision. Their talons were sharpened by inherent power, greed and historical imperative.

They were ready, willing and able to establish and sustain new empires by spilling native blood. They had the experience of controlling colonies using guns and fear to establish The Rule of Law. They’d raped, pillaged and plundered old world civilizations and would not be deterred in their desire for more money, power and influence.

They were experts at economic terrorism and exploiting natural resources using slave labor.

“Yes, open a channel,” said another covert agent disguised as a Spanish cleaning woman with Romani DNA.

Nonofficial cover was their nom de plume in proprietary front companies conducting espionage and money laundering. Fronts were social web networks, airlines, travel agencies, blood banks, world currency exchanges, military and civilian courts, oil and gas companies, construction firms, NGOs, global telecommunications, shipping firms, brothels, juke joints, casinos, tailors, beauty salons, crematoriums, mortuaries and cemeteries.

Everyone in the food chain was expendable.

The downside was being left out in the cold if their cover was exposed to compliant media sheep and the public. Accountability disappeared. A hard rain fell.

A buttoned down butler brought experts a mandate appetizer. They dug into their personal caves of hunger. They had Neolithic tools at their disposal. A laughing axe clogged the garbage disposal. Someone called maintenance.

“Maintenance,” demanded a shrill counter-intuitive defensive individual named Bumsfield with lipstick on his collar from a one-night stand. “Get up here on the triple and bring your torch. Stuff happens.”

“Sorry sir,” said Maintenance. “Stuff happens and my torch is down for maintenance if you get my drift.”

“Drift, draft, fore and aft,” said a divorced right-wing conservative senator up for erection. He washed his hands of the whole affair in dirty water. He threw the baby out with the bath water.

Baby swam into global suffering where 17,000 children died every day from starvation.

4,000 and then send some more American soldiers named Casualty in Iraq and Afghanistan slept their dream of dreams in black body bags.

Agents returned to deep cover operations funneling cash, arms, explosives, uranium-235, and communication gear and cyanide capsules to homeless, nameless volunteers. The number of American veterans committing suicide approached warp speed.

A Spanish black widow with an ear for dialogue mopped stairs and pavement along the narrow Rue Castanets in Cadiz. She dumped water into a gutter. It flowed to the Atlantic evaporated into clouds and rained flowers.

“This is no time to be surrounding ourselves with incompetents. Find someone who knows the lay of the land,” said a junior fellow named Full Bright on a scholarship. He unrolled a parchment for knights to seesaw.

“Now see here,” countered Deli, “what it’ll be gents?”

“Make mine ham on rye,” said El Salvadore reclining on a divan fondling his Dali. She was in no mood for his intentional violation of her writes.

“You know I don’t eat meat,” she said.

“Yes my dearest,” said Salvadore, “I’m well aware of your passion for fruit. You are my passion fruit my darling bed rabbit. Let’s see what’s in the queen’s pantry. Perhaps a nice juicy banana?”

“Yes,” sighed Dali dearest, “peel it down for me. I am your bed rabbit. Skin the bunny honey. Elementary my sweet.”

“Yes, darling, they who want to enjoy a fine fruit must sacrifice its peel. Let’s turn the lights down low and make whoopee.”

Salvadore unrolled a painting. “What do you make of this Pablo?”

“Hmm,” said Pablo, “it’s fairly abstract standing alone. It needs definition, stronger emphasis, a wider range of implicit specific graphic detail.”

“I agree,” said Salvadore, “perhaps broken orange melting time machines. Dashing surrealistic nature enveloping warriors disappearing into exile, fighting real and imaginary foes is needed.”

“Yes, a nice touch, that,” said Pablo. “Many are called few are chosen. We may consider this, my dear colleague, an experiential vision. An extension of a red or blue period.”

“Well put dear friend speaking of the blues. Less is more.”

“Agreed,” said Pablo, “let’s not put in anything extra or take anything extra out.”

“Such a novel concept,” said Don Quixote, an unemployed literary agent sitting on a nag wearing a battered bedpan for a helmet.

“Excellent,” said Salvadore. “My friend Cervantes said the exact words to his companion Pancho. One rode an ass into history. Shall we have a go then?”

“Yes,” said Pablo. “Be my guest. Let’s take a line for a walk with Klee.”

“It’s glee Pablo. Joy. Such a quicksilver tongue you have. Have you thought of a name for your new work my friend?” said Dali.

“Guernica comes to mind,” said Pablo.

“How appropriate,” Dali said combing his exquisite greasy mustache paying lip service. “It will be a classic. It will connect the wild subconscious and rationality. It’ll make you famous, old boy.”

Picasso’s Guernica commemorated the small Basque village of 10,000 in northern Spain. It was market day on Monday, April 27, 1937. In the afternoon waves of Heinkel 51s and Junker 52s from the Condor Legion piloted by Germans blasted Guernica. Survivors found 1,660 corpses and 890 wounded people in the rubble.

“Be that as it may,” said Pablo. “Art historians and critics will have their say hey kid. It will shock supporters of social realism and propaganda art in France and Spain.”

“How did you do it?” said Dali.

“From May 1st to June 4th in 1937 I made forty-five drawings on blue or black paper. I incorporated the bull, the horse, classic bullfighting figures and the lantern from my 1935 Minotauromachy. I used the weeping Dora Maar because she has always been a woman who weeps. Guernica is a bereavement letter saying everything we love is going to die. And that is why everything we love is embodied in something unforgettably beautiful, like the emotion of a final farewell.”

“I still think your vision aspires to greater heights,” said Dali. “Your work contains intuitive fantasies meeting the objective violence of history.”

“You are too kind my dear Dali. People are talking about your work. Your intentional dreams, so strangely manifested, in the way you allowed your subconscious free rein on the canvas. Most amazing, your Persistence of Memory.”

“You are too generous Pablo. I merely reflect the ongoing crisis in society, the surreal absurd nightmare, with shall we say, a twisted rather sordid but truthful elusive creative beast we must acknowledge to allow our perverse authenticity freedom wherever it leads us.”

“So true my friend, for we are only the conduit of the magic,” said Pablo. “We paint with our innermost senses born by authentic visions.”

“We are the mysteries speaking through the mysteries,” said Salvadore.

“We are redrafting the short story called our life,” said Omar.

 ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Yangon, Burma - 2015