Akiko

“The fear of living, observing and experiencing in absurd detail where others lack the self-scrutiny or courage to voice them,” said David Foster Wallace.

*

            Sheep fear watching other people make things happen and not knowing what the fuck is going on, said Z. Sheep and robots fear taking a risk. They know it’s easier to do nothing than take a chance, said Leo.

            I cut useless meaningless vague words blocking the narrative river. I am innocent, happy, empty and brave. I am not afraid to make wise selections when it comes to editing this massive amount of verbiage, said Zeynep.

            Where’s the burn bag, said the janitor.

            I fear Room 101, said Winston Smith in 1984.

            Poor schools makes it easier for SYSTEMS to control ignorant citizens.

            Leo - In Utopia we learn the less we do the fewer mistakes we make. The fewer mistakes we make the less we are criticized. I remain safe and happy. It’s called THE SYSTEM. Brainwashed. You see this in every Asian education system.

             Students shuffle in, remove their brains, soak them in a cleaning solution that is not the solution for fifty tedious minutes and replace said gray matter at the end of class. It’s endemic. Social conditioning.

            A teacher is Parent #2. School is your first dictator.

            Big Brother is watching. Save face. It’s your karma.

            The fear of humiliation is greater than the fear of death, said Death.

            Karma is the universal law.

            Will your characters discuss moral ambiguities? Yes. They will speak with nouns and verbs and use specific adjectives for description, playing with words like Joyce. They will play with ideas, like Borges, said Zeynep.

Attributes of good ideas said Devina.

a.         Simple

b.         Unexpected

c.         Concrete

d.         Credible

e.         Emotional

f.          Story-containing

            Good writing is clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. There are people who talk about things, said Zeynep, People who talk about people and people who talk about ideas. The life of the mind.

            Is a place a character, asked Tran, Sure, said Devina, A place has character like Kroma, Cambodia, a sleepy river town, famous for pepper, Sunflower’s hands, Milling Around and the SIGN ones, said Rita.

            Writers use a specific location in their work, said Omar. Cadiz, Spain worked its way into my morning pages. I traveled with a nomad after 9/11.

             His laughing axe synthesized metaphors of death, sacrifice and letting go. His mirrors became gifts (hello beauty) and gifts multiplied gifts with gratitude. The gift keeps moving. It was imperative to leave the united states of confusion and Morocco behind.

            Exile suited our spirit. It was the irony of ironies, pressed irons with heavy starch in the collar please I told the world’s dry cleaner. Wash and wear. Dry a tear.

            Nothing is true & everything is permitted, Omar told Akiko, a Japanese fashion designer in Cadiz.

            Everything is permitted with fabric and threads, naked in the dark exploring their personal puzzle maps, tracing contours through the Sierras in Andalusia toward beaches woven with linen and silk.

            They were two orange and black butterflies dancing in a courtship ritual. They slept together in a Hokkaido love hotel filled with mirrors.

            At 2 a.m. Cadiz garbage workers in fluorescent yellow tiger stripes collected discarded words along narrow streets.

            Omar wrote the morning down as sky painted orange, pink and cerulean colors. A crescent moon hung in the west. He walked down Benjumeda Street as uniformed school kids gripped parental hands passing veiled grandmothers wearing widow market black at intersections on their daily economic briefing. Roman cobblestones rested in white shadows. Cool clear air dusted lungs.

            The Plaza de Falla Moorish red brick extremities shimmered in soft light. Arches formed prayer hands. Golden, cast iron, bronze, brick, tile, and papier mâché arch models in the world prayed for non-violence, dialogue, a ceasefire and arms control.

            Arms out of control waved goodbye to sanity and millions of orphans.

            Weary serious sad med students gripping texts crossed plazas toward class. Matriculation was a fading dream. Two men grimaced a ladder past a hospital and a fortune teller selling lottery tickets. Gambling was a big deal in Cadiz. Machines in bars with three virgin cherries rotated. ONCE lottery tickets bought the population where 40% were unemployed.

            Pay now pray later. The best is yet to come, said an unemployed Roma fortune teller.

            A nurse in white perfection entered a cafe for coffee. Old people hobbled in and out of a hospital. A woman left the hospital carrying one crutch. Needing Grave Digger she walked past an ambulance. I’m busy, said Digger, See my calloused hands.

            Death stood watch 24/7 in the big leagues.

            Book of Amnesia, V1.

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

The narrator, a soldier, talks to a priest while serving in Vietnam.

"The histories speak about humans shedding old habits, attitudes, values, and beliefs and loved ones to go on journeys with new opportunities and compassion.

"How they renewed their spirit with pure gratitude and joy. It’s amazing. I mean here I am sacrificing my youth, desire, ignorance and anger to be cleansed, to be made whole, to integrate my unconscious into oneness with the ALL as an authentic being. We are stardust. We are one third the life of the universe.”

“Yes, my son, using religion I sacrificed bodies and souls. I created sorrows and depravity. I wandered through Sumerian, Greek, Roman, and Spanish villages where I administered suffering, pain and death. I burned 12,000 innocent men, women and children at the stake during the Inquisition. Ah, such a time I had condemning heretics to damnation and life everlasting. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

“Did you record these events?”

“I dictated my myths, legends and story-truth to Omar, a blind Touareg scribe. My amanuensis. You’ll meet him in Morocco on 9/11. You will combine stories and adventures in this tale. Anyway, to continue my little saga, I licked civilization’s fire. As a fire-eater in a traveling carnival I blessed sinners with ashes on Palm Sunday. I drove a tank through Middle Eastern deserts converting the heathen with fire and brimstone. I kneeled and prayed in mosques facing Mecca five times a day.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yes. I survived in Afghan caves near destroyed statues of Buddha hearing Taliban confessions. I tended to suicide cases in GITMO. I meditated in Tibetan caves for three centuries, three decades, three years, three months, three weeks, three days, three minutes and three breaths. Ah, the blessed trinity. At Tibetan sky burial ceremonies north of Lhasa after flaying skin off bodies, I ground human bones to mix with blood for vultures so the departed spirit could, would, should be reborn. Karma and reincarnation.”

“You did all that?”

“Yes. I walked the length of the Silk Road from Venice to Guangzhou bringing comfort to the lame, blind and destitute. I traveled with Italo Calvino from Italy a scribe blessed with magical realism insight when he created Invisible Cities in Kublai Khan’s court. Perhaps you know of it?”

“Yes, he and the great Khan played chess.”

“Ah the great game and a metaphor of life. Castle early. Control the center. Divide and conquer.”

“Checkmate,” whispered Death.

ART

Myths, Legends, Stories

Down in the southern province of Suhag in Egypt where King Scorpion lived 5,300 years ago I worked with archeologists discovering clay tablets.

Humans recorded taxes on oil and linen - a material Egyptians considered ritually pure under the protection of the goddess Tayt. The hieroglyphic line drawings of animals, plants and mountains revealed stories of economies and commodities.

In Nevali Cori we found 9,000 year-old shards of ceramics pottery depicting dancers.

“These images,” said a metaphorical digger, “reveal a common ancestor creating to integrate their community.”

A camelhair brush cleaned shards. “Anything else?”

“Well,” one said sifting dust, “we surmise these images established a collective discipline in their community. See how the figures are holding hands? What do you see now?”

“I see a circle of movement. A connected unity, a language in space.”

“It’s more than that. There are five rhythms in dance. You start with a circle. It’s a circular movement from the feminine container. She is earth.”

“Earth?”

“Yes, then you have a line from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.”

“Fire is the driver.”

“Chaos is next, a combination of circle and lines where the male and female energies interact. This is the place of transformation.”

“I see. And then?”

“After chaos is the lyrical, a leap, a release. This is air. The last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.”

Language dances in space.

Every fourteen days a living language dies on Earth. The last speaker says good-bye.

6,100 and counting.

Storytellers sing oral traditions. They memorize stories, songs, poems, seasons, celebrations, rites, magic and ceremonies. They create and exchange family, clan, tribal myths and legends. Their children listen, memorize, chant and recite ancestor songs.

An historian’s job is trying to understand what happened through time.

An anthropologist’s job is to understand how people told their creation stories.

Mircea Eliade, a historian of religions, said, “Myths tell only of that which really happened.”

Myths suggest that behind the explanation there is a reality that cannot be seen and examined.

A myth is a story of unknown origins.

Myths are sacred stories of religion based on belief, containing archetypical universal truths.

They are in every place and no particular place. The world is sacred.

Myths, legends, stories.

Magic words grow here.

Intensity propels ten claws across twenty-six keys. Reed-like digits reflect use and neglect.

Psychology handles the branches. Mindfulness swims with roots.

Evolution flashes flickering beams of incandescent auras and pulsating electro-magnetic fields evolving character, attitude, values, behaviors and intention.

Intention is karma.

Perpetual transformation.

Weaving A Life (Volume 4) - Kindle Edition

 

Burma