Feed Love

“Years ago, I broke a bunch of roses

From the top of his wall

A thorn from that is still in my palm

Working deeper.”

- Rumi

“I almost wish it were true,” said my father in our final visit, April 1999. He was 77.

I opened a bedroom curtain so he could see a radiant blue sky and free birds.

Sitting in the garden I burned incense and fed sparrows as green spring blossoms gestured beginning. Calm non-attachment. No desire. Breathing in – out with diamond mind clarity. Love and letting go.

“May I have more ice please?” he said.

I needed to break it up. In his red tool box under the yellow shelf in the kitchen where I was half-beaten to death by a crazy woman in a wheelchair were steel crescent wrenches.

I selected the heaviest one with the widest aperture. It was well oiled and ready. The small wheel turned slow scraping my fingers down to the bone. I rolled destiny’s wheel closing the vise, narrowing space with bleeding fingers. Rolling The Wheel of Time.

Turning the cold steel wheel I remembered ceremonies in Bali: Painters creating on canvas, wood carvers chipping at unexplored rough textures and a wife weaving an intricate basket of reeds into an offering filled with sweet smelling jasmine flowers surrounding a mountain of rice. Lighting incense, she placed her daily ceremonial devotion in family compound corners to thwart demons and appease gods.

I absorbed daily acts of creativity and love in Bali. Everyday was a celebration in magic light. Twilight faded dark blue below pregnant skies. Rain slashed across jungles blasting calm surfaces of rice paddies. Runoff music exploded soil. A farmer stood in the deluge. His misty figure raised a wooden heirloom hoe into the sky. He released human thunder into wet soil. He turned over an exposed part of the planet. Rain slowed.

Shadow figures evolved from jungles chopping off paddy edges, hoeing soil, gathered dry wood and dead brush. Children sang on a dirt path going home from school.

Across a ravine on a mid-level terrace a farmer trailing oxen yanked iron in an arc turning beasts in a slow slog through mud. Flocks of white herons layered sky.

I dumped ice from a plastic tray on a small towel. I folded cotton threads as if folding a love letter, his bone white dress shirt and monogramed handkerchief. I curled fingers around the cold heavy wrench. I smashed crystals of frozen water into diamonds.

Everything collapsed. My daily celebration felt the heaviness. My heart accepted the doing and being. I hammered down, folded cloth, pulverizing cubes. I wiped blood on cloth streaking red. I funneled ice into a blue ceramic bowl. I put the wrench down and selected a small silver spoon.

I fed my father spoonfuls of clear white ice.

I fed him love. 

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Laos

Life Gift

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.

Saigon amputee, knife sharpening man.

*

I carried a copy of Omar’s book, A Century Is Nothing from Turkey to Indonesia to Nam in 2009.

Together with Omar we used fire, this crucible of alchemical combinations, diversities, sweat, blood and tears to create it so I’d use fire to release it. Save books, build a library.

Books are universes of ideas, experiences, feelings, visions, paths, and destinations obliterated through discovery, reminding memory. They are worlds of dreams, stories, dramas, plays, songs, histories and guides into new visceral experiences.

Pages sing their laughter with wisdom, song, and poetry. Preserve memory. Live forever with paper’s tactile voice. Voices of reason, comedy, and tragedy are skintight drum stories. They are oral transmissions recorded on parchment, vellum, and illustrated manuscripts in Irish Gaelic talking tongues, Sumerian clay and Asian scrolls.

I didn’t burn it, a way of sacrifice offering and letting go. Down the road in Saigon I gifted the brick to three Asian women. They had Chinese ancestry from Hong Kong and lived in Australia.

I said a friend wrote it so I signed it and laughed letting it travel with them. Thanks for the book. You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy it. It took all three to carry it. They staggered up guesthouse stairs with the tome.

After breaking down a wall they struggled to get it through an opening. People need to break down before they break through. Maneuvering it into a bag they discarded cheap Vietnamese souvenirs. We’ll have to check this monster all the way to Sydney.

ART

Saigon piano practice

Wisdom Seeks Wisdom

In Brave New World

You shift from truth and beauty

To comfort and happiness

I ate civilization

Aha ha

A new notebook deciphers emptiness

The fisherman

In a long blue boat

Cuts the engine

Drifting with current

Cool cornflower silk red ink

Slashes memory's fascination

With forgetting

All the letting go

Becoming silence inside the labyrinth

Dancing shimmering red

Blazing wisdom seeks wisdom

In a Lao motorcycle culture

Wats glow golden

A sleeping Buddha

Dreams of compassion

Direct immediate experience

I am twinkling 

Fujian, China

Diamond in your mind - TLC

Secret literary agent accepted a covert mission. 51 days led here.

He knew in mid-September, after being in Trabzon, Turkey for two weeks doing street photography at dawn, writing field notes, helping students develop speaking courage and bringing prosperity to everyone along a wandering path, his essential choice for freedom brought him to today October 25^th.

Savoring thick java and sweet flaky pastry in a Trabzon establishment he observed people on Sacrifice.

Every day is a celebration when you practice the art of letting go.

You either let go or get dragged along.

Miniature buses disgorged humans: head scarfed heavy-set women clutching canes, swaggering males, well dressed couples, a sleek woman twirling a red rose, old men trailing texting generations and desperate parents gripping children’s hands.

A tan joyful man released from his daily grave digging soil toil danced away from angry confused faceless ones anticipating a long uphill walk past shop windows where they’d purchase flaneur reflections.

Shoppers entered to buy pastries, cakes and cookies. We have to show up with something a wide wife said to her mousy husband. Children begged for sugar, Feed me.

Three obese Saudi males bought bags of hand wrapped candies. Our caloric families will love this stuff said one from the house of Saud cramming it into his designer bag on plastic wheels of fortune.

You brought us good luck today, said the smiling woman behind the counter when Lucky prepared to walk on. You’re welcome. It’s a never-ending adventure.

A Trabzon taxi driver taking him to the airport said, “Today is like Christmas in Turkey.”

Deck the halls with boughs of folly tra-la-la-la.

Near the check-in zone a girl of four didn’t see her mother’s knife-like eyes inside the chador. A black veil masked her face. Closed for respectful preservations.

Everyone stared in amazement as a literary outlaw enjoying random encounters with evanescent beings sang your life is a work of art. We are stardust riding a blue marble through space.

The flight from Instant Bull to Backpack took eight hours.

In a transit zone he discovered Mont Blanc Fine and Medium Rollerball refills and a large bottle of dark blue fountain pen ink for Omar. He bought a 12-pack of multicolored pens for Zeynep.

Do you travel the world, asked the clerk as look n’ leave passengers examined the art of writing instruments. It is my destiny, You brought me good luck today, I am a calm lunatic assassin, I am not saving anyone.

The plane to Seems Ripe banked left to the imagination before climbing to 33,000 feet in an invisible night as he journeyed to the center of the Earth.

The Language Company

Ride like the wind.

A gravedigger is never out of work.

My new little life - TLC 69

Whew, what a first week it was for my little existence, my little humanoid adventure. I began a new strange scary awkward weird and transforming evolutionary experience in two big human’s lives.

I begin at the beginning. It’s a start.

I fell out of my mom a female production company last week. Talk about letting go. She was big and fat and released me after pushing and pushing and she exhaled an infantile projection of freedom feeling her painful release and my pleasure with shock and awe as I came slathering, slipping through some universal ectoplasm fluid, like a gusher, whoosh, into millions of bright shining suns.

A crescendo of angels, luminous spirits, formless forms and shapes swirled like whirling Sufi dervishes in light waves and particles. Such splendor. My last nine months did little to prepare me or allow me to know anything.

I was born dead and slowly came to life.

My tiny black eyes welcomed light energy into my being. I am a galaxy.

Mesmerizing.

I am an Eagle nebula, a gathering of space dust melding, morphing into a solid state, a unified field theory. I am beside myself with wonder and delight. I joined seven billion in the stream of life.

Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen?

The remaining atom particles are life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence.

The rest of the pyramid is garbage. Existence precedes essence.

What was your original face before your parents were born?

The Language Company