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Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.50)

The Language Company The Language Company
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

Subject to Change Subject to Change
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Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
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Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
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Entries in farrago (2)

Wednesday
Sep212022

Abracadabra

The one who dies with the most toys wins. Congratulations.

Besides writing, gardening and storytelling are you Grave Digger, Yes, said Zeynep, I am a Grave Digger by day and a literary prostitute by night. I made my own shovel. I cut down the tree … I shaved the bark, fashioned the long handle, extracted iron from earth, created fire, heated the iron ion particles, forged the iron and fitted it. It’s a custom-made job. One of a kind, like you. Unique … I am very busy doing nothing, a kind of jazz poem. Musical flow feeds the writing. Rhythm, harmony and improvisation.

Music is the fuel.

Most humans are busy, busy, busy. You never hear a dying man say, I wish I’d spent more time at the office … I bury failures and successes in the same grave. It’s a job and puts food on the table. I develop and cultivate plots where I plant symbolic and metaphorical empirical roots.

I love good dirt … I also perform cremation ceremonies for families needing ashes, bones and dust. WE are radiant stardust and 1/3rd the life of the universe. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. Our bodies are nothing but recycled atoms and quarks from exploding stars.

I am fire, personified. Shamans control fire … I am a lightning bolt singing Abracadabra. Translation - hurl your lightning bolt even unto death.

It’s an alchemical process. Grave digging is a full-time honorable job with dignity and respect. Look at my hands … Look at your hands …You know two things … Look at a blind potter’s hands, a blind smith’s hands, the blind laundry woman’s hands, the blind seamstress’s hands, the blind beggar’s hands, the blind writer’s hands, the blind executioner’s hands, Death’s hands … all the hands dancing, gesturing, pleading, laughing, loving, touching, holding, grasping, signing hands, all the non-VOICE hands.

An open hand holds everything.

People say the world is a big place. By the time you get to your plot Earth is a very small place, ha. Put that in your opening remarks at a literary festival.

Do you have a night job? Yes, I am a word janitor in an insane asylum.  It’s a good place to jot down ideas and sketch. I am a literary outlaw. I violate all the writing rules.

Rules are for rulers. A ruler is a tool to measure something. A human ruler is an autocratic dictator in the Middle East, North Korea, Burma, China, Turkey, Russia and serious Syria among other places. You name it. They sit on a fancy papier mâché throne … Older wiser slaves offering sage advice to save their ass and protect their bureaucratic position OBEY the boss and do what they are told to do. Or else.

They Rule. Some rule out of kindness and compassion. They accept freedom and responsibility and accountability for their actions to be just and empathetic.

Many rule using FEAR and intimidation. As an outlaw word janitor knowing ambiguities, contradictions, paradoxes and false identities, I collect evidence.

I take out the garbage, like adverbial labia. The garbage is a mixture of fact and fiction. Some garbage is true factoid and some garbage is invented farrago. Janitorial work is fun, useful and necessary. I meet fascinating patients living free from fear now. I discover cool stuff people discard. Many patients wallow like pigs in regret, drown in guilt pools or die in future fears.

Earth is one big insane asylum.

No memory means no guilt and no guilt means no fear. Sweet.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Sunday
Jul042021

Floating

 

I'm one of those people who has learned through living

that there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to.

I am a metaphor looking for meaning.

I feel free to move away from safe familiar places

and keep moving forward to new unexplored areas of life.

Drifting some would say.

Floating.

If I had one red cent for every time someone asked me when I’d settle down I could afford a world hypothesis! Settling down was not an option.

Yes. I could bid on blessings.

I’d sacrifice pre-linguistic symbols and create silent metaphorical abstractions.

My linguistic skills would evolve into love into discursive logic.

26,000 year-old Paleolithic iron and copper paintings create

a secret symphony of ancient magic stories in a Spanish cave.

No lengthy drawn out off-the-wall abstract

explains my small empty happy self to anybody

by virtue of who I was, am, and will be.

Life is a palimpsest.

 

“There are only two stories in the world,” Leonardo said to the Moroccan. They carried boarding cards through the Casablanca terminal. “A stranger arrives in a village or a stranger leaves a village.”

“Yes,” said Omar, a blind writer overhearing their conversation, “we might add there are also stories about love between two people, stories about love between three people and stories about the struggle for power. Stories are about characters revealing emotion through dialogue and action.”

He handed Leonardo a pile of yellow papers wrapped in rushes.

“A gift for you. It contains a farrago of evidence. Keep it simple.”

“Thank you.” Where do I find you?”

“In the caves south of Ronda. It’s a long walk.” He disappeared into Baraka.

A Century is Nothing