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Entries in existential (3)

Friday
Dec252020

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

Sunday
Aug232020

Grow

draw poem
breathe zen
explore calligraphy line
play shape shadow
imprint experiment
love future

synthesize beauty
form truth dream imagine
creativity
color destiny



adventures
nature sings
ink poetry
adaptation song music laughter
potential

meditation
delight process
weave thread
needle leads a conversation
draw doodle paint

storyteller senses wisdom
focus fate
touch now
jazz improv intensity
emotion

motivation intention
formless
blues spirit intuition

wander
dancing down all the days
live moment

tranquility
salute sun smiling intention meaning
beauty white butterfly sunlight
waves & particles
walking meditation

edges
existential theatre of absurd
stars decorate your hand

flame your life



feeling sensation
meaningless universe
value, quality of life, excellence

calm mind move body
point, line shadow color
wushu movement balance composure
observing vs seeing
Beckett - futility of words

random chance
magic day

Grow Your Soul - Prose and poems from Laos/Cambodia

Sunday
Feb282010

Bliss

Greetings,

Nature is what you can be. Culture is what you are.

Two French women arrived at the Blissful Guesthouse in Kampot. Kampot is famous for pepper, old French colonial buildings along a river flowing to the sea and packs of roving wild vicious dogs, mongrels and starving, desperate canines.

One said, "Hello." A traveler in the shade of waving sunsplashed ferns said, "Welcome to paradise."

"Is this paradise?"

"Paradise is wherever you are."

One woman with a cloud of white hair smiled and said, "You give us a great power."

"You already have the power. You are a light warrior."

"We can talk about that later." 

"I am a now, not a later."

They went to reception. There were no rooms available. They wheeled their bags away, through the sand of time discussing life's vagaries in fluent French, laughing at the absurdity of it all with innate existential wisdom.

Metta.