Surprise!

Question?

Is the problem or surprise the form, a formless form or the form of the formless forming sea foaming form? If so, can it be understood by reducing, redacting, paralleling, associating another journey? Can you break the continuity of the journey with memories of an ephemeral I ? Yes … It’s not a problem, it’s a surprise, said Impermanence.

Who am I?

I am a who to what I am.

Why am I here?

How did I get here?

How did I grow?

Q has three parts:

a) What is an objective, universally acceptable definition of good and evil?

b) What is the nature of evil? The question is the answer. It is not in this tale, play or manuscript.

c) What is the relationship between consciousness and matter?

Q. Where does the real end and the artificial begin? I am a superficial person, said Grave Digger … I pretend to be who I am in my future. I know two things. My hands. My work is never finished.

Q? Does fate control our free will? Yes.. Fate cannot lie. If fate doesn’t make you laugh then you don’t get life’s joke, said Laughter Therapy … Ha, ha, ha.

Q? Should we worry about the style? No. Should we worry about the form? No. Worry is interest on a bill yet to come due. No guilt, regret, fear, or monkey mind. Monkey loves the circus of sensory overload. We live in a world of forms.

Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

Northern Laos

A C-19 virus transmitted by Chinese bats to humans in late 2019 is not a surprise. A pangolin ate bat shit. The pangolin was trapped, died and ended up in a wet market. Consumers bought it, sliced it, cooked it, and served it at parties in Wuhan. Delicious. Infected humans traveled and transmitted C-19 to millions around Earth. So it goes.

Holy bat shit! said Robin a cape crusader wearing a mask practicing social distance.

Q: do we have to capitalize the first letter of every sentence? no is the short answer no.

Q: what is strange? Life is strange, bizarre, comic, tragic and very short … Life is a brief clear precise concise life sentence. How do stories, vignettes, jazz prose poems, journalism fragments, and system analysis communicate with each other?

A: They walk dirt paths, ford rivers, scale mountains, explore jungles, valleys and estuaries and cross metaphysical existential borders … they build sandcastles near the sea. They practice telepathy … they are time travelers. Aliens.

They meditate on the process of their death.

The dance and dancer are one.

As a mystic and prescient person, Zeynep you have the responsibility to be honest. Be light about it. Think big and stay in the particular. Know what keeps you motivated and happy. Autotelic. 

Next question Z, How do you stay fresh and centered? You make it new day-by-day, said Z, Make it new. A storyteller staying in one place goes blind, we move around before becoming native and dull. Before we think and act like local sheep.

Lost confused passive ones living in Inertia, a state of mind, perfect the art of MILLING AROUND in Country ABC, said Rita, They speak in monosyllables Yeah, yeah. Big vocabulary. 2% are awake. 98% are asleep. The majority are afraid to ask the WHY question.

Fear is a killer. Life is a killer.

People asking questions get slaughtered. See the Killing Fields on page 101 - the last room you want to enter. Keeping your big fat fucking mouth shut is wise and prudent behavior to survive post-genocidal truth ghosts. It is an unpleasant fact. If you open your trap someone cuts out your tongue.

In this peculiar particular situation expert scientific witnesses have proven beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt and doubt has a shadow with logical coherence … that WE, being expert witnesses, reliable narrators and noble natives living with our DNA genius bear witness to alienated, lonely, bored, listless, passive, Earthlings meandering with no purpose, lost, unimaginative having zero curiosity and staring with blind eyes - due to severe emotional, mental, physical traumas with memories of suffering, genocide and ghosts.

They remain childlike, tender, sweet, kind, and hospitable with a terminal case of confusion and loss forever, hiding in deep shadows, addicted to dumb phone entertainment boredom.

Their beating hearts caress resignation, despair, depression, lack of initiative or incentive based on fear of punishment, or loss of face or humiliation with hard-wired SHAME.

They grow and live a meditative Buddhist spiritual way of identity and culture.

They are easily distracted. Kids play. Forever young. Adults have perfected the art and style of Pretending To Be Busy.

What art. What beauty. What style. What form. What context. What a formal pertinacious way. What objective truth. What verisimilitude.

Here are some true facts, said Rita an orphan and independent author. Unpleasant facts are littered in this epic like lovers, countries, butterflies, social systems, food and transformation.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Fear is a killer

Question?

Is the problem or surprise the form, a formless form or the form of the formless forming sea foaming form?

If so, can it be understood by reducing, redacting, paralleling, associating another journey? Can you break the continuity of the journey with memories of an ephemeral I ? Yes … It’s not a problem, it’s a surprise, said Impermanence.

Who am I?

I am a who to what I am.

Why am I here?

How did I get here?

How did I grow?

Q has three parts:

a) What is an objective, universally acceptable definition of good and evil?

b) What is the nature of evil? The question is the answer. It is not in this tale, play or manuscript.

See Ukraine - visualize beyond wild.

c) What is the relationship between consciousness and matter?

Q. Where does the real end and the artificial begin? I am a superficial person, said Grave Digger … I pretend to be who I am in my future. I know two things. My hands. My work is never finished.

Q? Does fate control our free will? Yes.. Fate cannot lie. If fate doesn’t make you laugh then you don’t get life’s joke, said Laughter Therapy … Ha, ha, ha.

Q? Should we worry about the style? No. Should we worry about the form? No. Worry is interest on a bill yet to come due. No guilt, regret, fear, or monkey mind. Monkey loves the circus of sensory overload. We live in a world of forms.

Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

Q: what is strange? Life is strange, bizarre, comic, tragic and very short … Life is a brief clear precise concise life sentence. How do stories, vignettes, jazz prose poems, journalism fragments, and system analysis communicate with each other?

A: They walk dirt paths, ford rivers, scale mountains, explore jungles, valleys and estuaries and cross metaphysical existential borders … they build sandcastles near the sea. They practice telepathy … they are time travelers. Aliens.

They meditate on the process of their death.

The dance and dancer are one.

Visually impaired man receives help making change

As a mystic and prescient person, Zeynep you have the responsibility to be honest. Be light about it. Think big and stay in the particular. Know what keeps you motivated and happy. Autotelic. 

Next question Z, How do you stay fresh and centered? You make it new day-by-day, said Z, Make it new. A storyteller staying in one place goes blind, we move around before becoming native and dull. Before we think and act like local sheep.

Lost confused passive ones living in Inertia, a state of mind, perfect the art of MILLING AROUND in Country ABC, said Rita, They speak in monosyllables Yeah, yeah. Big vocabulary. 2% are awake. 98% are asleep. The majority are afraid to ask the WHY question.

Fear is a killer. Life is a killer.

People asking questions get slaughtered. See the Killing Fields on page 101 - the last room you want to enter. Keeping your big fat fucking mouth shut is wise and prudent behavior to survive post-genocidal truth ghosts. It is an unpleasant fact. If you open your trap someone cuts out your tongue.

In this peculiar particular situation expert scientific witnesses have proven beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt and doubt has a shadow with logical coherence …

... that WE, being expert witnesses, reliable narrators and noble natives living with our DNA genius bear witness to alienated, lonely, bored, listless, passive,

... Earthlings meandering with no purpose, lost, unimaginative having zero curiosity and staring with blind eyes - due to severe emotional, mental, physical traumas with memories of suffering, genocide and ghosts.

They remain childlike, tender, sweet, kind, and hospitable with a terminal case of confusion and loss forever, hiding in deep shadows, addicted to dumb phone entertainment boredom. Their beating hearts caress resignation, despair, depression, lack of initiative or incentive based on fear of punishment, or loss of face or humiliation with hard-wired SHAME.

They grow and live a meditative Buddhist spiritual way of identity and culture.

They are easily distracted. Kids play. Forever young. Adults have perfected the art and style of Pretending To Be Busy.

What art. What beauty. What style. What form. What context. What a formal pertinacious way. What objective truth. What verisimilitude.

Here are some true facts, said Rita an orphan and independent author. Unpleasant facts are littered in this epic like lovers, countries, butterflies, social systems, food and transformation.

The Book of Amnesia, V1

Visually impaired guitar player

Destiny

“Books are an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us.” - Franz Kafka

+

After a war everything is easy.

In 1969 he volunteered for the Army, left the world and flew over the pond to Nam. He walked out 364 days later with his shadow - a bag of bones.

He is a ghost driving a meat-covered skeleton made of stardust riding a rock floating through space.

Fear Nothing.

Transformed, he experienced free time in the long now.

This is what happened, more or less.

One of his names is Lucky Foot. What does that mean?

He elucidates in simple, clear, precise, concise English the language of savage barbarians.

It means, as an experience junky possessing genetic variant DRD4-R7 addicted to new adventures, he brings prosperity to merchants, rest-a-rant owners and nondescript sad, neglected, abandoned and emotionally well adjusted hot to trot red sheen women among humans struggling to survive life’s labyrinth without a center.

He gifts luck to money changers, manicure girls, beggars, banana women, landmine amputee survivors, ice and rice sellers, student-teachers, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, spies, textile merchants, weavers, artistic genius children, orphans, noodle mama, tea and java purveyors, gardeners, gravediggers, literary outlaws and craggy faced Dan, a boat captain in Hoi An who worked as an interpreter at MAC V during the Vietnam War.

Fate and destiny is the same thing.

If he grows up he dies.

Security is an illusion.

He presents good fortune to Rita, author of Ice Girl in Banlung, barbers cleaning his ears, high-heeled sandal ladies, love sock purveyors and rent-a-life companies.

HCE. Here comes everybody.

90% of life is showing up. When he shows up their day, life, fate and glittering fortunes improve. Karmic destiny.

Fate laughed with him in Morocco on 9/11. He was in the Sahara. He did not take possession of that event and perpetual aftermath. Fear sells.

Destiny danced with him on the is-land of Amnesia in Southeast Asia and exploring Turkey, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Before returning to Nam in 2009 he lived on a string of 15,000 archipelago islands between Malaysia and Papa New Genie gathering evidence about the human condition.

Each island is a letter. If you string letters together you create a word. This word depending on your imaginary perception of truth-value may or may not have meaning for you like Beauty - your true reflection in still water.

Beauty has no tongue.

A small journey expands life’s tapestry. He’s a needle without a compass. His needle leads a thread. Threads weave a conversation.

Move like a river, rest like a mirror, respond like an echo.

The Language Company

Omar

I was on the fringe of the Sahara eight days later when someone dialed 9/11 taking a bite of the big apple.

Whoops.

There was a hungry little worm at work. I was so far removed I did not take possession of that event.

I learned what happened from a Touareg Berber named Omar.

I wasn’t surprised. Fate bites you when you least expect it.

Omar spoke with his hands. I read his open palms and dark eyes. My ability with unspoken tongues and universal gestures was legendary. Body language gestures using humans were works in process.

Omar waved one hand in air as a bird condemned to be free. He raised a hand indicating height and smacked his flying hand into his stationary hand. The impact echoed across emptiness. His eyes flashed universal secrets. I had no idea where, how, why, or when he’d received his information, perhaps from trade caravans or through osmosis.

“I see.”

In the desert we did not talk about Being and Time, existential philosophy, the nature of evil, principles or values. We tweaked reality by breathing.

“3,000 people from eighty countries died,” said Omar. “Dust to dust.”

“Ah, an attack against the world,” I said, sensing an abstract permutation with eternal ramifications and hidden opportunity costs.

Writing story-truth futures, Omar and I sat down in Morocco and then Spain imagining stateside and global aftermath reality in the long now. 

I wasn’t surprised this happened. Myopic allegiance singing sheep in the United States of Amnesia would’ve had world citizens believe in their US/ THEM attitude.

Survivors evolved multiple ground truths, sifting soil, searching for plausible theoretical logical rational scientific cause and effect answers. Meaning?

Reconstructing, revising and recalibrating history they were left gasping, choking and breathing death mask dust. They evaluated meaning, truth and consequences in their short fragile existence.

Welcome to Earth babies. Revenge is best served cold.

Now they tried to answer the big question. “Why me/us?” and like Phase II group addicts it would keep them busy forever.

After the attacks their children asked, “why?”

Impatient angry adults under extreme pressure to be financially successful in their all-consuming life were frustrated with this “why” question from kiddies. As parents they wanted to be the boss, the all-knowing grown-up in complete Control. They assumed they knew all the answers. Whoops.

In a circular karmic game called Civilization & Random Revenge, players with long historical memories rolled the dice when it was their turn to play. Everyone had to go back to Start.

Citizens under siege didn’t read historical footnotes. They avoided the small fine print. The stuff they accepted carte blanche or skipped because they didn’t think it was important, the stuff made in Hollywood, the entertainment make-believe crap of car wrecks, violence, revenge and moronic happy endings.

Their attention span was shorter than the lives of 17,000 world children dying every day from starvation.

Somebody off stage triggered the lights exposing human fragility and evaporating all sense of humor. Audiences were stunned into silence when the curtain descended. It was full of loopholes, black holes and wormholes. The forbidden apple was rotten.

Survivors needing a new card from life’s deck did not want to see the Joker wearing a funny hat with bells.

Some had studied history. They knew in a vague way being experts on vagueness, mediocrity, hypocrisy, ignorance and cynicism how history’s long memory and sweet revenge encapsulated itself. They faced frustrating futures because they’d been lulled into complacency and brainwashed by soft media machines.

Media buys people.

Humans had assumed they would always be consuming bigger and better things. “The one who dies with the most toys wins,” said a salesman.

Tectonic plates of awareness shifted below the surface of appearances. Out of sight, out of mind. Awareness needed serious attention.

Human relationships snagged on fear, healthy uncertainty, doubt, adventure and surprise. Dreams of peace and prosperity, mortgaged tract homes, green lawns, two car garages, fast and faster food, weapons of mass destruction, love and symphonic notes danced on the edge of an abyss with hope, regret and fear.

Checkmate, said Death.

We need more channels, yelled sheep.

Shocked screaming patients streamed out of personal and collective asylums. They digested and overdosed on media medication rendering them catatonic, compliant and mute.

Earth is one big insane asylum.

Human nature and revenge stirred things up big time. Secure lines of clear fear communication revealed unconscious intentions of human revenge. Humans struggled for meaning in a random universe.

They tried to explain and/or rationalize and/or comprehend with logical coherent rational scientific explanations while mumbling, stuttering, staggering, falling, fumbling and failing to see how the world worked.

They struggled to explain all the moral ambiguities, principles and ethics on fill-in-the-blank final exams. They faced huge evolutionary adventures.

“Because I said so,” was the standard refrain when their sweet little monsters asked “why” for the umpteenth time. Cool laid-back intellectual facades developed fictionalized fractured fissures.

It was time to straighten the whiners out once and for all.

They went shopping.

This alleviated their fear of poverty, death and airplanes. Shopping is the perfect distraction. Shopping conquered fears growing stronger day-by-day fed by hysterical media, totalitarian governments and liberal know-it-alls in melting ivory soap towers based on empirical evidence and pure speculation.

“More media channels!” screamed millions. “We need more propaganda, advertising, distractions and fake news.”

There was a preponderance of rumors, myths, innuendoes, and evidence charred beyond recognition. It needed DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating.

Social workers and therapists swarmed Earth extolling virtues of wellbeing, hope, tolerance, gratitude, compassion and courage in the face of adversity, free choice and impending sales at outlet stores.

People needing therapeutic outlets found solace in their blind ignorance of how the world worked on molecular, political, religious, economic, philosophical and cultural levels.

Long festering animosity, religious, economic and cultural karma evolved. An invisible Ouroboros eating itself constricted their heart. Their mythical existence was part idealism and realism standing on its head.

Socially, culturally, geographically and emotionally deprived children learned a hard life lesson that escaped parents. Kids knew when adults were bullshitting them.

They suspected parents, teachers, doctors, social workers, bureaucrats and orphans, amputees, suicidal veterans and displaced humans and gravediggers did not own or Control the market of absolute answers.

Blind sheep believed something better just had to be on the idiot box, computer or phone. No attention span? No problem.

Inside demon gadgets a little animal named Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Adventure was hungry. It had a vociferous appetite for all things vain and glorious. It ate its young with spicy relish at picnics. It had no morals, ethics, principles or 21st century rationale.

It had a neoconservative financial and political agenda for:

Money

Power

Control

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Let Go

“Take a good look at me!

I am an idiot, I am a clown, I am a faker.

Take a good look at me!

I am ugly, my face has no expression, I am little.

I am like all of you!”

-  Tristan Tzara

To feel better, clean my heart, purge old fears and improve the quality of life I climbed down to donate a pint at The Blood Bank. Good old hemoglobin.

Suffering from cancer, a hospitalized child I will never meet, know, or love needs platelets more than I do. It’s been sixty-four clicks of Earth’s rotation between donations. It’s the best re-cycling program on the planet.

Give the gift of life that keeps on giving.

My calmness meets a scared mother pacing sterile emergency rooms at Sacred Heart Hospital wondering if her daughter will receive essential ingredients in time. 

A solemn-faced, stressed out cardiovascular lab tech with his personal set of challenges and opportunities, said to her, “At this moment we have no matching donors. We’ve released a global search engine to see what’s available on the market. People are selling short to cut their losses. It’s all about supply, demand and the fear of poverty. Scarcity. There are indications of further interest rate cuts to stimulate consumer confidence. We have no immediate indication of a stimulus. We will keep you informed.”

The mother doesn’t need to hear this prattle from a white lab coat.

Fingering her bone prayer beads, skeleton heads shake, rattle and roll. Fingers caress thorns. Everything happens by accident on purpose in her life, speaking of destiny, fate and chance. Life for her and millions in the land of the free, home of the brave and broke is free will versus random chance.

Everything’s already happened. People need to experience it while confronting their shadow and alienation, loneliness and loving community in a corrupt, cynical, hysterical greed-based world where people try to Control their fear.

Write FEAR & ANGER on a paper napkin.

Burn it.

Let go.

Citizen sheep believed in fear and unsustainable consumption because they were afraid of being lonely and poor.

Happiness is a myth. The wish of desire said so.

Humans were willing victims of their fear, healthy uncertainty, and doubt. Their amygdala, a small almond shaped brain structure creating fear and emotional response fired up. Fight or flight?

Are you the hunter or the prey?

Manipulated by the collective unconscious and a pervasive system of socialization control mechanisms, consumer sheep were happy. The subtle influence of right wing conservatives and media addiction bought idiots. Facing their mind-numbing daily grind with heart breaking choices sheep needed someone/something to Control them.

Accepting responsibility for their freedom was scary.

Intelligent centered ones feeling gratitude and empathy in their heart danced with Death.

Everyone lives and dies.

“You work, breed and get slaughtered,” said an Asian child with a junior philosopher badge.

It’s essential to die once while you’re alive. Get it out of the way.

ART

Boarding school breakfast in Burma. Let's eat.