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
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