Golden Garbage

Gold draped Cadiz women.

Inanimate visual remnants of Reason, Enlightenment, Illumination and Prosperity revealed gifts from the Magus.

Alchemists transformed base metals into heavy symbolic chains weighing wrists and necks of Spanish matrons and patrons.

The Fleischer - a butcher - wore no gold.

Paring fat his sharpened edge severed layers of gristle. A steel mesh glove protected his left hand. He slammed a sharp hatchet blade through tendons, muscles, bone and meat. Blood littered his table. 

Customers gathered to buy their favorite cut. Slabs of acorn fed pigs dangled in windows with funnel tags attached to cloven hoofs collecting fat. Wild boar and stag heads rested above color photos of famous Ronda bullfighters partying with Orson Wells and Ernest Hemingway. Red was the cape’s color. Bull’s blood rivers flowed down muscular necks.

Mandalay, Burma

People in deep state covert operations discussed ambiguities in conspiratorial coded languages.

Airliners slammed into towers of Babel on televised reruns between detergent, automobile and sherry commercials.

I murdered words in their sleep after they had their say. 

Word garbage was hauled down to green plastic curbside trash containers. Midnight men in blue garbage uniforms with yellow safety stripes rolled through Cadiz. Teams of men hosing down narrow cobblestone streets sang, “Don’t be fooled by cheap imitations. Everything must go. Going out of business sale.”

Water flooded grateful city grates. Spanish civilization collapsed without street cleaners and women with mops.

Humanity’s narrative explored adventures, quests, dreams, relationships, and historical facts mixed with courage, curiosity, joy and serenity.

Yellow streetlights illuminated a man walking his arthritic Labrador. The well-dressed bald gentleman with Romani DNA wearing polished black wing-tip shoes carried a newspaper and paperback entitled, A Century is Nothing by Omar.

He collected his dog’s shit from cobblestone using the financial section. He downloaded it into a metal trash basket nailed to a wall. Five minutes later a neurotic woman cleaning everything after midnight because she hated chaos and disordered dust in her ground floor flat wailed, “What in the hell is that smell?”

“History baby, history,” he said, walking toward the sea. “The more I see the less I know.”

One if by land, and two if by sea…

Easy Rider.

Oh say can you see? Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might dream the impossible dream and throw the first pitch for a called strike on the inside corner.

“We’re headed to extra innings and the bullpens are empty,” cautioned a radio announcer on armed forces shortwave, “and now this,” cutting to a commercial from a mechanic offering an interest free no down payment deal on the finest internal combustion machine money could buy.

“Drive it away today.”

Every vehicle on the road is used.

This was followed by an ad for cheap fuel and a political proposal to open Alaskan wilderness for drilling. Unemployed dentists signed up. Their mantra was, “The more you drill the more you bill.”

Two unemployed poets holding hands walked down a cobblestone street discussing Spanish deficit economics, European financial bailouts, 40% unemployment numbers and financial insolvency. Andalucía was the poorest province in Spain.

Sexually repressed women pacing poverty’s alienation prowled streets seeking future lovers, husbands and fathers for contraceptive children. Lonely-heart club ads assaulted missing persons with conjecture, possibilities and probabilities. Hope floated in a breeze.

Cadiz scooter boys felt genital heat as their girlfriend’s arms held them tighter than tomorrow. After escaping narrow traditional parental attitudes they zoomed past pedestrians.

An old couple supporting their fragile bipedal existence took immediate steps into a long now. Small significant gestures of love and affection rained flowers.

I wrote under a desk lamp with jazz music providing rhythm, harmony and improvisation.

Dreaming of a new environment I studied a provincial map tacked on the wall.

Spanish church bells buried in the Plaza de Dreams, a fictitious conglomeration of unpleasant historical true facts in this tale tolled as mystics hearing hollow Zen bells toiled.

Mary sells seashells by the seashore before crossing to the other side of paradise after paying the troll a toll. 

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Mandalay, Burma

Hammam

Twice a week I traversed a rubble path from #187 past plastic bags, small broken trees and rubbish to a hammam. The Turkish styled public bath cost seven dirhams or seventy cents.

Women left. Men right. A shy veiled girl accepted coins. I crammed clothes in a plastic bag and handed it to the smiling toothless attendant. He gave me two buckets made from old tires, reminding me of the souk zone where boys cut the rubber, hammered and sold them.

I pushed open a heavy wooden door. Three low-vaulted white tiled rooms had variable degrees of heat and steam. Men reclined on heated tiled floors or collected cold/hot water from faucets in buckets, soaping and scrubbing themselves.

Entering a heat mist dream of forms, I walked through the first two rooms to a space along a wall. I filled one bucket with scalding hot water, another with temperate liquid. Closing tired eyes I stretched out absorbing heat on my back. It penetrated skin, muscles and bones in a respite from poverty’s chaos and hospitality.

Sweating men scrubbed in steam and water music. Working out kinks an old wiry man bent a man’s arms and legs into pretzels. The skinny bald man worked wrists, elbows, and shoulder joints to the point of snapping them off a skeleton. Rolling a patron over he pummeled a spinal chord, slapped a back and bent knee joints leaving the man spread-eagled on tiled floors. Customers welcomed his torturous attention.

I soaped and scrubbed off layers of dusty skin with a rough hand cloth. Oceans flowed from tiles to drains.

I retrieved clothing, dried off with a sarong, slipped into fabric and gave the attendant a tip. The old man smiled, rolled his eyes shook his head. I dropped more coins into arthritic brown fingers.

“Shukran. M’a ssalama.”

Clean skin felt cool night air. The dusty path was filled with scooters, boys playing on abandoned rusty cars, scavengers probing trash and mothers dragging black gowns on the ground. Yellow slippers slapping earth flashed golden dust particles.

Children sang, “I never promised you a rose garden.”

A one-eyed mendicant looking for alms stumbled past.

Cafe men watched perpetual terrorism reports at full volume on a television hanging from a ceiling.

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

“Yes, no sugar please,” gesturing I’d sit at a table outdoors on cracked pavement away from media. Dejected shoeshine boys tapped wooden boxes as their dark unemployed eyes inspected shoes of chronically unemployed men drinking endless tea.

Another waiter cut mint tea leaves, crammed them into a silver plated kettle, dumped in a brick of sugar, closed the lid and poured a light brown steady stream of tea into a small embossed glass. He poured it back into the pot. He put the pot, glasses, spoons and sugar cubes on a tray to be delivered to patrons.

A subtle red sunset spread across adobe walls. Atlas snow patched mountain ranges on the southern horizon turned pink. Women in billowing blue cloth tread sand from clustered stone villages to take a local bus to the shimmering Red City or sit on broken cement talking with friends.

Dusk and twilight married, creating night children. More field hands, more economic resources and more offspring futures destined for trades making $1.00 a day. Women sat talking on fractured pavement surrounded by trash. People discarded their lives going through it.

A small single tree in a patch of dirt epitomized local life. People had stripped off branches and leaves leaving a sharp broken piece of wood sticking out of the ground.

People wandered aimlessly or sat on hard packed earth. Unemployed men on haunches stared at dirt.

A fruit seller with green grapes on a rolling cart waved at flies circling a light bulb. A young man in his wheelchair poured bottled water over a handful of grapes. Water disappeared into dust around his wheels of fate. Savoring one grape at a time he observed boys weave past on broken bikes.

A bearded man paced the street collecting discarded cardboard in his recycled life. Cardboard made excellent cheap sidewalk seats, foundations in rolling carts to keep stuff from falling out, sun hats, beds and shop doormats after infrequent deluges.

Shredded telephone wires dangled from the wall of a telephone office as men lined up to make calls on the single working phone while holding mobile phones and punching digits.

Disconnected grease covered boys with their tools spilling into the street manipulated mammoth truck tires along broken sidewalks. The area buzzed as people with survival instincts scrambled to make a living.

On a side street two men unloaded shoes from the trunk of a car. Location - location - location. One seller spread a bright blue tarp on the ground anchoring it with bricks. His partner arranged cheap running, dress and casual shoes. No Adidas Berber shoes for these guys. They fired up a propane lamp.

After a day of oppressive heat residents prowled looking for a bargain and telling stories.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Burma

Emergency Legislation

Omar and I collected grains for his hourglass.

In the United States of Amnesia emergency fear legislation was passed by congressional lame ducks with rancor. They wanted to get home for turkey with shallow stuffing.

Debate was minimized by official decree. Polls forecasted approval. It was a plutocracy.

The people with the most money had the biggest free speech, tax loopholes and influence.

In Amnesia it’s Special Interests.

In other countries it’s Corruption.

Democracy is the best government money can buy.

This invisible truth-story enhanced ratings on the media’s Big Show. They programmed simple moronic happy endings for distracted, misdirected, blind, stupid sheep.

Tax dollars were allocated for immigration detention prisons, pork projects and massive military expenditures. Full employment became the norm. Factories hired Norm to build washing machines with eternal spin cycles.

Rally parades marched across the land. They began playing near the Atlantic pounding war drums, eating, sleeping, procreating children, raising them, marrying them off, burying their parents and burning incense to feed dead ancestors.

Rising before dawn they soldiered west like conservative Christian zealots to reach the Specific Ocean. They dived into a shining sea to be baptized in the name of the father, son, holy ghost, suicidal veterans, orphans, internally displace humans and marginalized indigenous people. They gave thanks.

“Praise the Lord,” sang a woman stripping her clothes off in a cold ocean. A Nebraska man seeing a naked woman yelled, “This takes the cake.” He blew out celebration candles.

“Mission accomplished,” said Bush Wacker.

They did not have naked women or oceans in the corn husker state. They had combines, fields of amber waves, rusty factories and cow shit. Someone was all wet and he loved it.

“My, oh my,” said a woman escaping her wheelchair prison. Fighting gravity she crawled through falling sand inside an hourglass.

Children observed everything from a Council Bluff where Native American tribes of The First Nation gathered for a Ghost Dance ceremony.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Attitude

I boarded a small plane from Richland to Seattle and sat next to a fat couple. We flew over the Cascades.

“Hi,” they said.

“Hi. Where are you going?” I said.

The man said, “Oh we’re going to Atlanta and then ... ” his heavy bejeweled wife interrupted, flashing lidded eyes above pancake makeup and perfect teeth ... “and this seating is just terrible. I mean, look at the space on this poor thing. There’s absolutely no room to move. When we get to Atlanta we’re flying first class to London.”

Her white pearl ring would’ve fed half of Bangladesh.

“We own a travel agency in Bend Over,” he continued. “We’re on our way to meet friends in London and then we’re going to sail down the Danube River, drink wine and have the time of our lives. Yes indeed. We’re going first class all the way.”

“Sounds like a relaxing vacation.”

“That’s only the beginning,” he said.

“Say more.”

“After Europe we’re going to an antiterrorist convention in Cuba and then,” his spouse interjected again … spitting her words into an overbooked air tight tin can where syllables floated with half-baked ideas meeting angry frustrated voices complaining about time, weather, seat selection, lack of dietary choices, cramped cattle conditions and the high price one paid to be human … she shut up and her husband sighed ... “then we’re going to China for a tour. We’re going to hit all the sights in ten days: Bee Jing, Shanghai, Xian, see Terracotta warriors trapped in dirt, walk the Great Wall, swim in the Gangster River and prowl open air markets filled with exotic animals like lions, tigers and bears oh my, dying of loneliness and neglect in cages, yes sir ree and you buy them and they’ll cook it right up in front of you. We’ll drink cobra blood. It’s a sexual aphrodisiac.” He rubbed his crotch.

His wife blew more smoke ...

“Isn’t freedom, democracy and free trade with open markets wonderful? Isn’t it a shame these planes are so small. You’d think the FAA would require carriers to operate planes with more legroom. They treat us like pigs. Some pigs are more equal than others, by George oh well ... And, if that wasn’t enough, those smelly immigrant security wage slaves made me remove my shoes and underwear before I passed through detectors. I hardly understood a word they muttered and stuttered. Can you imagine? I need another drink and I need it bad.”

“Yes, dear,” said hubby patting her pasty fingers, “this country is going to hell faster than you can say Osama who’s your mama.”

She inhaled a double gin and tonic. “You be careful whom you talk to now dear,” she whispered. “You never know when someone might be listening. There may be bugs planted on this plane. I need another drink.”

“You worry too much,” he said. “It’s been disinfected.” He got her a double G&T.

“It’s a wonderful life,” I said. A couple of fat happy complacent mediocre Yankee doodle dandies.

“What do you do?” said hubby.

“I work for Death Deferred Ink as a mercenary ghost. I freelance as a wordsmith gravedigger designing mysterious plot projects. Busy 24/7. I’m taking a break from my heavy, deep, real responsibilities. Headed to Marrakesh to meet a friend at a Storyteller’s Convention ... She’s a blind nomadic weaver in exile from exile. She lives in a cave with cannibals outside Rhonda in Andalucía. When someone passes on we strip the flesh off bones for writing parchment ... We grind the bones into sex medicine dust. We sell left over human organs and upright pianos in China. It’s an expanding market with tonal variations on a theme. No women and no kids ... Diversity and flexibility is key. Always be closing.”

This revelation took care of their first class attitude.

ART Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Children in Laos carry the world on their back.

Iraqi Campaign

Chapter 80

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

“Perfect,” said the V.P. “Where’s my cut?” staring at a fleischer dripping blood.

A security advisor spoke. “Last March we launched the largest psychological operations in our 225 year history. We have eleven Psychological Operations Companies with 1,000 PSYOP personnel working to sway Iraqis 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 side of our occupation and walk on the bright side of life.”

“It's a fine line, but propaganda is more based on untruth,” said a philosopher.

“Their illiteracy rate is pretty high,” snarled a shoeless major in education from Oxford. “We understand many of the fliers are being recycled as crap toilet paper. Maybe we should have included lexicons?”

“Too expensive,” said a primary teacher named Laurie Lie. “We have standards to maintain. Standards of excellence. No child will be left behind. Unless we kill them all. This is our destiny of glory, redemption, truth, principles, and democratic values. Freedom to develop independent critical thinking children is our 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 may be generations before we’re able to gauge the effectiveness of paper propaganda,” said a wood products CEO raising the value of his options. Adjusting his golden parachute, he grabbed the ripcord in case he needed to bail out when shares plummeted.

A silent blind man on the edge of their deliberations knew they were from a distorted time zone. A twilight zone. Beyond sight and sound bites.

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

“We need to make sure, absolutely sure we connect the dots between 9/11 and Iraq,” said a military analyst. “If we are successful,” he sighed, “the politicians will get out of the way and give us a ton of money - maybe even 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 the terrorists is our message to the world.”

“Yes,” barked Faustus, Director of General Incompetents, “these malicious vermin are the obstacles that stand 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 and Kabul is endless. This campaign will be well received. We will liberate the oppressed,” said an old white haired man named Regime wearing a pacemaker. He loved a girl from Why O Ming with a big spread.

Esteemed, well qualified, and duly elected members of a House on Main Street and their colleagues from a Congress seeking another do nothing term and automatic pay raises looked at him with contempt, disdain, incredulity, suspicion, amazement and pure terror.

“We ain’t in no fucking jungle on this jack,” sneered a nautical seal looking for approval from his ringmaster. “This war is on track jack.”

“Collateral damage is a sorry fact of life,” said a man with a whip. He cut through red tape and everyone got out of his way.

“Bring them on I say,” yelled Bumsfeld. “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, so, we’ll create false claims of nuclear and biological threats which plays into the 9/11 fear. Sell it on nightly news. Let the hounds chase the fox.”

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

“Where what is?” asked Bumsfeld.

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

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

“Look,” said Curveball. “I gave German intelligence the high hard stuff. But 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 Bumsfeld, “a classic case of split personality, bi-polar disorder and your mother wears combat boots. Anyway, then we distort flimsy evidence from a worthless intel source saying the dictator is an immediate and direct threat to our national security. He’ll attack us in forty-five minutes.”

“But,” said Resident President, waving his one-way tickets to Argentina, “that won’t give me time to finish reading the story about goats to the elementary kids.”

“No butts sir,” said his spokesperson. “You’ll just have to skip a few pages.”

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

“Vague and deceptive shit happens all the time,” said the man cracking his cool whip. “What planet are you from, amigo? We have the national media eating out of our filthy hands with all this flag waving patriotic bullshit. So, we con the world with these fictitious stories about the dictator being a threat to us with his weapons of mass distraction and start a war to remove him from power.”

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

“It’s easy. We know the dictator’s been bluffing all along to maintain his power base. Just ask Curveball here when he sobers up. He’s never had weapons of mass destruction except for the munitions and sarin gas we gave him to support his eight-year war with Iran and commit genocide against the Kurds, but the world doesn’t know that unpleasant fact. His military will collapse like a house of cards. We send in, what, maybe 150,000 military forces, - mostly 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 right, while we establish a quasi-official coalition government with us in total control of everything.”

“What about the local people?” asked a relief worker.

“Screw them I say. 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 desert sand thanking us.”

A Century is Nothing