Gonzo journalism. Creative nonfiction. Jazz prose poetry.
Systems analysis. Social autopsy. Storytelling.
Five kid friends learn, share, explore and grow in China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Turkey and Vietnam.
Everything you need to know is in this book.
This volume contains material suitable for +18.
Having no destination I am never lost. - Ikkyu (1394-1481)
Chapter 79
War on terror experts discussed global strategies in a play with many acts. A play on (s)words. Some acts were hard to follow let alone comprehend. Reviews would be mixed when it ran off Broadway flagging down a Berber slave caravan inside an air-conditioned nightmare looking for a Caravanserai along Route 66.
“What’s the name of the first act?” asked a playwright.
“Patriot,” said General Consensus.
“How does The Patriot Act sound?” said the scribe, a former loan shark and energy consultant.
“I like it, I really like it,” said Asscroft a general Attorney. He was a neo-conservative hard nosed right wing crazy religious fanatic from the State of Misery. “It has teeth with wide ranging constitutional subversive powers, perfectly timed for our agenda. Let’s push it down the legislator’s throats.”
“Does that mean the gag rule will be in effect?” cracked a comedian on welfare.
“Sure does. Anyone who so much as expresses concern about this constitutional urinary tract act will be blacklisted, hounded, ridiculed, ostracized, and labeled unpatriotic. They will never work again in this great beautiful free country. This is the home of the scared and enslaved. We will revoke their voting rights and cancel their citizenship. I’ve had it up to here with this liberal democratic crap. Our culture is to kill. Take no prisoners. Abuse the hell out of the detainees. Tell the peace makers and tree huggers to take a hike through old growth forests,” Attorney added with a smirk.
“Let there be no doubt about our honorable intentions. We are on a holy mission from God. Our destiny is to install democrazy in the Middle Eats,” said chef Boy R. Dumbed Down Dee, “whether they like it or not. They’ll eat what we give ‘em or starve. This is an ala’ carte, carte blanche military menu.”
“Should we continue bombing?” queried an intelligence asset in deep cover. Plame as day.
It was days, weeks, months and centuries since angels sang after dialing 911.
English hawks warbled about taking the campaign into winter. They needed hawk food. As predators they knew the terrain, the sweet sound of wings whistling through clouds with laser guided precision. Their talons were sharpened by their inherent power and Manifest Destiny. They were ready, willing, and able to establish and sustain new economic empires. They’d raped, pillaged and plundered plenty of old world civilizations and would not be deterred in their quest for more power and influence.
They had the perspective and experience of establishing colonies and global power under the crown, under the gun, establishing The Rule of Law. They were experts at economic terrorism, and exploiting natural resources using cheap labor.
“Yes, absolutely,” said another intelligence agent, an N.O.C. disguised as a cleaning woman with Gypsy blood.
Nonofficial cover was their nom de plume allowing them to work for foreign proprietary front companies while spying. Fronts were numerous: airlines, travel agencies, banks - world currencies and blood - military tribunals and civilian courts, oil and gas companies, construction firms, cafes, telecommunications, land, sea, and air shipping firms, brothels, juke joints, casinos, tailors, clip joints, beauty salons, crematoriums, and mortuaries.
The downside was being left out in the cold if their cover was revealed to compliant sheep citizens and transparent independent muckraking media. They’d be left blowing in the wind. A hard rain would fall. Everyone in the food and information chain was expendable.
A buttoned down butler brought them a mandate for an appetizer and they dug into their personal caves of hunger. They had all the Neolithic or "new science" tools at their disposal. The garbage disposal clogged and someone called for maintenance.
“Maintenance!” demanded a shrill counter intuitive pro-active and very demanding defensive individual named Bumsfeld with lipstick on his collar from a one-night stand. “Get up here on the triple and bring your torch. Stuff happens. It’s the unknowable knowable.”
“Sorry sir,” said Maintenance, “stuff happens and my torch is down for maintenance, if you get my drift.”
“Drift, draft, fore and aft,” said a divorced right wing conservative senator up for erection. He washed his hands of the whole affair in dirty water. Finished, he threw the baby out with the bath water into the world’s endless suffering where 17,000 children died every day from starvation and economic terrorism.
Where 4,000 and then send some more American soldiers named Casualty in Iraq slept their dream of dreams in black body bags.
Agents returned to deep cover operations funneling arms, explosives, communication gear, maps and cyanide capsules to homeless, nameless volunteers.
A Spanish woman in black with an ear for dialogue mopped her stairs and pavement along the narrow Rue Castanets. Finished, she dumped the water into the gutter watching it flow to the ocean, evaporate into clouds and rain flowers.
“This is no time to be surrounding ourselves with incompetents. Find someone who knows the lay of the land,” said a junior fellow named Full Bright on a scholarship. He unrolled a parchment for all the knights to see.
“Now see here,” countered Deli, “what it’ll be gents?”
“Make mine ham on rye,” said El Salvadore from the divan where he fondled his Dali. She was in no mood for this intentional violation of her writes.
“You know I don’t eat meat,” she said.
“Yes my dearest,” said Salvadore, “I’m well aware of your passion for fruit. You are my passion fruit, my darling. We’ll see what they have in the queen’s pantry. Perhaps a nice juicy banana?”
“Yes,” sighed Dali dearest, “peel it down for me. I am a bed rabbit. Elementary my sweet.”
“Yes, darling, he who wants to enjoy a fine fruit must sacrifice its peel. Let’s turn the lights down low and make whoopee.”
Salvador turned to his friend. “What do you make of this Pablo?”
“Hmm,” Pablo said, “it’s fairly abstract standing alone. It needs definition, stronger emphasis, a wider range of implicit specific graphic detail.”
“I agree,” said Salvadore, “perhaps broken orange melting time machines. Dashing surrealistic nature enveloping warriors disappearing into exile, fighting real and imaginary foes is called for.”
“Yes, a nice touch, that,” said Pablo. “Many are called few are chosen. We may consider this, my dear colleague, an experiment, an expanded vision. An extension of a red or blue period.”
“Well put dear comrade speaking of the blues. Less is more.”
“Agreed,” said Pablo, “let’s not put in anything extra or take anything extra out.”
“Such a novel concept,” said Don Q., an unemployed literary agent sitting on a nag and wearing a battered bedpan for a helmet.
“Excellent,” said Salvadore. “My friend Cervantes said the exact words to his companion Pancho. One rode an ass into history. Shall we have a go then?”
“Yes,” said Pablo. “Be my guest. Let’s take a line for a walk with Klee.”
“It’s glee Pablo. Joy. Such a silver tongue you have. Have you thought of a name for your new work my wise friend?” asked Dali.
"Guernica comes to mind,” Pablo said.
“How appropriate,” Dali replied, stroking his exquisite mustache. “It will become a classic. It will connect the wild subconscious and rationality. It’ll make you famous, old boy.”
Picasso’s Guernica commemorated the small Basque village of 10,000 in northern Spain. It was market day on Monday, April 27, 1937. In the afternoon waves of planes from the Condor Legion, Heinkel 51s and Junker 52s piloted by Germans blasted Guernica. Survivors found 1,660 corpses and 890 wounded people in the rubble.
“Be that as it may,” Pablo replied. “Art historians and critics will have their say hey kid. It will shock supporters of social realism and propaganda art in France and Spain.”
“How did you do it?” Dali queried.
“From May 1st to June 4th in 1937 I made forty-five drawings on blue or black paper. I incorporated the bull, the horse, classic bullfighting figures, and the lantern from my 1935 Minotauromachy. I used the weeping Dora Maar because she has always been a woman who weeps. Guernica is a bereavement letter saying everything we love is going to die. And that is why everything we love is embodied in something unforgettably beautiful, like the emotion of a final farewell.”
“I still think your vision aspires to greater heights,” said Dali. “Your work contains fantasies meeting the objective violence of history.”
“You are too kind my dear Dali. People have started talking about your work. Your intentional dreams, so strangely manifested, in the way you have masterfully allowed your subconscious free rein on the canvas. Most amazing, your Persistence of Memory.”
“You are too generous Pablo. I merely reflect the ongoing crisis in society, the surreal absurd nightmare, with, shall we say, a twisted rather sordid but truthful elusive creative beast we must acknowledge to allow our perverse authenticity freedom wherever it leads us.”
“So true my friend, for we are only the conduit of the magic,” said Pablo. “We paint what we see with our innermost senses, born by authentic inner visions.”
“We are the mysteries speaking through the mysteries,” said Salvadore.
“We are ceaselessly redrafting the short story we call our life,” said a scribe.
I was in Morocco on 9/11. Call it luck or destiny. I wrote about it in Morocco, Spain and the States.
So it goes.
Chapter 24
Centuries earlier or later depending on reference points along time’s thin line on an event horizon as infinity and eternity played post 9/11 dirges, fugues, and blues with a full orchestra in the pits Ahmed resumed his story in the Sahara.
“Fate bites you when you least expect it,” he said waving his hands like wild kites. “Her appetite is insatiable.”
Point was so far removed from 9/11 reality he took no possession of the event. He read Ahmed’s open palms and eyes. Point’s facility for unspoken tongues was legendary. It was all body language and he was fluent in every language. Gestures were a work in progress. Gestures used people.
Ahmed described airplanes and two tall towers. “I’ve read Superman by Nietzsche in Arabic. He said 'God is dead' and God said, 'Nietzsche is dead.'"
He waved his arms like a Moroccan eagle condemned to be free yet a prisoner of the sky. He raised a hand indicating height and smacked his flying hand into his stationary hand. The impact echoed across caramel dunes. He smiled through black teeth. His dark eyes held all the world’s secrets.
Point had no idea where, who, how, why, or when Ahmed received his information. Perhaps from slave and gold trade caravans, perhaps through osmosis.
“Yes,” Ahmed said, “2,974 people from 80 countries died.”
“I see.” They were two nomads in the desert. They did not talk about Being and Nothingness. They tweaked reality by breathing.
He handed Omar’s book to Ahmed. “Have a look-see.” Ahmed read Tifignagh words.
“He was not as surprised, stunned and scared as all the well meaning myopic tax paying, allegiance singing populace would have the world’s citizens believe in their us or them attitude. He knew they’d be catapulted into a new heavy deep reality, grounded fast, sifting soil, searching for answers, breathing through death masks, deconstructing and revising history while pleading for meaning to their existence. Postmodern dialectics.
“Now they had to figure out the big answer to the big question. Why? It’d keep them busy for life. Their children taught them to ask why? Being impatient and under extreme pressure to be successful in their all consuming reality, they became frustrated with the “why” question from their children. Parents wanted to be the boss, the grown-ups in complete control. They figured they had all the answers.”
Whoops!
“In the BIG game people with a long history rolled the dice when it was their turn to play and everyone had to go back to the start. They had to read the rules. The small fine print. The details they casually accepted carte blanche, data they skipped because they didn’t think it was important, the stuff made in Hollywood, the fictional entertainment stuff with happy endings. They were well conditioned to violence, sex and reality television. Now they tasted so-called reality television in real time."
Point pointed to a faded yellow page marked “Empirical Evidence” for Ahmed’s crash course in gonzo journalism.
“Somebody off stage had triggered the light switch and their fragility was exposed. Evaporated their sense of humor. The audience sat stunned in silence when the curtain came down. It was full of holes, loopholes and worm holes. The apple was rotten. Survivors needed a card from the deck of life and did not want to see the one with the guy wearing the funny hat with bells. A small minority studied history. They knew, in a vague way, being experts on vagueness, how history repeated itself. They’d supported totalitarian regimes in the Persian/Arabian Gulf for decades burning imported Middle Eastern oil well past their bedtime.”
Only the fool spoke the truth. This was a sobering reality. Ahmed continued reading.
“It was extremely frustrating. People in their illusionary magic kingdom assumed they were always supposed to be going forward to bigger, better, faster things. There was talk about a shift in Teutonic plates of awareness. Many plates showed their age being cracked, badly needing repair, requiring immediate unequaled madness assistance or UMA. Someone tried their cell. It was busy, snagged on Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The big F.U.D.
“Connections were a flashback to a simpler existence of peace and prosperity with model tract homes, two car garages, appliances, fast and faster food, weapons of mass destruction in the closet, renewable bonds, treasury notes, love notes, and notes on the edge of a cliff above the abyss waiting for patients streaming out of personal and collective asylums on holidays as prescribed medications rendered them insolvent, compliant and mute. Very compliant.
“A secure line of clear communication was caught in the undercurrent, the violent raging delight of human nature doing her infinite playful thing below the realm of consciousness. She stirred things up in a big way.
“Humans had a lot of explaining to do. Explaining how the world worked. Explaining all the moral ambiguities, all the fill-in-the-blank final exams. They were in big trouble."
“‘Because I said so,’” was their old standard refrain when their sweet, ever-so-kind little monsters asked 'why' for the umpteenth time. Their ignorant facades had developed huge cracks. It was time to straighten the whiners out once and for all. They went shopping to satisfy their fear of poverty to overcome fears, a small fear growing stronger day by day being fed by hysterical know-it-alls in their ivory soap towers of higher intellectual reasoning based on empirical evidence."
“More channels!” someone screamed. “We need more channels!” There was a preponderance of rumors. Part of the evidence was charred beyond recognition. It would need DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating.
According to Omar, “Teams of social workers swarmed across the land extolling virtues of well being, hope, trust, and bravery in the face of adversity, values, free choice, and impending sales at outlet stores. People seeking outlets and outlet stores found solace in their ignorance of how the world worked on molecular, political, religious, economic, philosophical, and cultural levels. Long festering animosity and cultural bias had come full circle. An invisible Orobus constricted their heart. Their myth was part idealism and realism standing on it’s head.
"Their socially, culturally, geographically and emotionally deprived children listened, shaking their heads, learning a very hard life lesson. One that escaped their well meaning parents. Kids knew when adults were bullshitting them.
"Scholars educated at global universities started speaking Arabic, reciting Sufi poetry, and 1,001 stories about the rise and fall of civilizations written before their time with hieroglyphics and cave paintings. Survivors filled caves. Candles sales were brisk."
“A tisket a tasket we need a casket,” sang multi-lingual children.
"Historians, political scientists, talk show experts, taxi drivers, fortune tellers, beauticians, and morticians took hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially. Suicide search and rescue teams were put on alert. Citizens packed hospital emergency rooms. Medical schools increased graduation classes to meet the growing need. Demand outstripped supply when it came down to fear and consumption."
"Wow, that's some heavy sociological shit, Ahmed," said Point.
“What happens when they run out of insecurity control programs?” a child asked her mother. She was the mother of all answers.
“Don’t worry my sweet,” said the anxious neurotic mother living her worst nightmare, “they’ll invent something new and improved. The manufacturing sector will rebound when shelves are empty. We’ll always have sugar and we can always go shopping.”
“How long will it take?”
“Hard to say. Could be we won’t live to see it.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“There is only F.U.D.,” said her mother twisting her hair until it caught fire.
“What is F.U.D. mother?”
“Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Been with us a long time and now it’s back with a vengeance.”
“How long?”
“You ask too many questions child,” she said fanning her daughter’s flame. “A long time. A Century is Nothing."
“It’s good to know some things,” said the girl.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I’ve already told you a lot.”
“Tell me the truth,” mother. “I want to know the truth.”
“The truth is, it’s all a lie. Our insecurities are evolving. I believe in my heart-mind that life is a celebration. It is beautiful, harsh, nasty and short. A Hobbesian dream scream. There’s no rhyme or reason or social contract. It’s about realizing peace in your heart and community. Inhale suffering and exhale healing. Cultivate heart awareness.”
“I will be authentic and mindful mother. May we go out and play now? May we take the day off dear mother and be creative?”
“Yes, let’s invent a game theory my sweet daughter,” and they went out.
Omar knew children suspected parents, teachers, social workers, bureaucrats, philosophers and homeless people living in cardboard shelters did not control the market on clearly defined answers. Adults searched for the remote. They knew something better just had to be on the idiot box.
Families of big brown rats with sharp teeth scrambled out of dens scurrying through dead matter looking for food. The little animal named Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt was starving. It had a vociferous vain appetite for glorious political/economic systems. It ate it’s young. With relish at picnics. It had no principles, 20th century rationale, religious ideology or neo-conservative agenda.
FUD was not a peace activist burning candles, wringing their bloody hands mumbling, “Oh what a pity,” or, “Somebody should have seen this coming.” FUD avoided focus groups like the plague, read Arabic history and poetry by Rumi. Their appetite was legendary and tremendous.
“Such a true story,” said Ahmed. He pointed at the sky. “Look, the north star.”
Share Article