September 1, 2001

I boarded a small plane from Richland to Seattle and sat next to a fat couple. We flew over the Cascades.

“Hi,” they said.

“Hi. Where are you going?” I said.

The man said, “Oh we’re going to Atlanta and then...” his heavy, bejeweled wife interrupted, flashing lidded eyes above pancake makeup and perfect teeth, “and this seating is just terrible. I mean, look at the space on this poor thing. There’s absolutely no room to move. When we get to Atlanta we’re flying first class to London.”

Her white pearl ring would’ve fed half of Bangladesh.

“We own a travel agency in Bend Over,” he continued. “We’re on our way to meet friends in London and then we’re going to sail down the Danube River, drink wine and have the time of our lives. Yes indeed. We’re going first class all the way.”

“Sounds like a relaxing vacation.”

“That’s only the beginning,” he said.

“Say more.”

“After Europe we’re going to an antiterrorist convention in Cuba and then,” his spouse interjected again…spitting her words into an overbooked air tight tin can where syllables floated with half baked ideas meeting angry frustrated voices complaining about time, weather, seat selection, lack of dietary choices, cramped cattle conditions and the high price one paid to be human…

... she shut up and her husband sighed, “then we’re going to China for a tour. We’re going to hit all the sights in ten days: Bee Jing, Shanghai, Xian, see Terracotta warriors trapped in dirt, walk the Great Wall, swim in the Gangster River and prowl open air markets filled with exotic animals like lions, tigers and bears oh my, dying of loneliness and neglect in cages, yes sir ree and you buy them and they’ll cook it right up in front of you. We’ll drink cobra blood. It’s a sexual aphrodisiac.” He rubbed his crotch.

His wife blew more smoke. “Isn’t freedom, democracy and free trade with open markets wonderful? Isn’t it a shame these planes are so small. You’d think the FAA would require carriers to operate planes with more legroom. They treat us like pigs. Some pigs are more equal than others, by George oh well.

"And, if that wasn’t enough, those smelly immigrant security wage slaves made me remove my shoes and underwear before I passed through detectors. I hardly understood a word they muttered and stuttered. Can you imagine? I need another drink and I need it bad.”

“Yes, dear,” said hubby patting her pasty fingers, “this country is going to hell faster than you can say Osama who’s your mama.”

She inhaled a double gin and tonic. “You be careful whom you talk to now dear,” she whispered. “You never know when someone might be listening. There may be bugs planted on this plane. I need another drink.”

“You worry too much,” he said. “It’s been disinfected.” He got her a double G&T.

“It’s a wonderful life,” I said. A couple of fat happy complacent mediocre Yankee doodle dandies.

“What do you do?” said hubby.

“I work for Death Deferred Ink as a mercenary ghost. I freelance as a wordsmith gravedigger designing mysterious plot projects. Busy 24/7. I’m taking a break from my heavy, deep, real responsibilities. Headed to Marrakesh to meet a friend at a Storyteller’s Convention. She’s a blind nomadic weaver in exile from exile. She lives in a cave with cannibals outside Rhonda in Andalucía. When someone passes on we strip the flesh off bones for writing parchment. We grind the bones into sex medicine dust. We sell left over human organs and upright pianos in China. It’s an expanding market with tonal variations on a theme. Diversity and flexibility is key. Always be closing.”

This revelation took care of their first class attitude.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A memoir

Cadiz Barber

An old barbershop thrived near Plaza de San Juan de Dios, the neoclassical town hall from 1800.

It had cracked blue-white tiled walls and a yellow-blue mosaic inlaid floor. A well-dressed retired man sat outside smoking a cigar in a shaft of light.

We exchanged pleasantries. “Buenos Dias.”

An old barber in a stained white smock smiled. “Buenos Dias. What’ll it be Senor?”

I pulled a worn bilingual phrase book from a back pocket and thumbed to page 131. A trim please - showing a phrase gesturing over and down my long white beard painting a little.

Living in the Land of Gestures, Smiles and Body Language I spoke every tongue on Earth using fingers and hands. People attached meaning to gestures, facial expressions and guttural tone. Gestures were an international passport. They expressed truth-value meaning to communicate ideas, beauty and mystery. Gestures were sleight-of-hand performances. They sealed deals using people.

The dialect of hands expressed everything.

As a flying finger expert meeting tolerant people I expressed gratitude with real and imaginary sign words. A familiar forcestero, they trusted me in a vague clear way.

The barber looked at the book. He studied quick hands.

“Yes, fine, I understand what you want. Here,” gesturing to a chair, “sit here.”

I tabled my Moleskine journal, camera and glasses, faded filthy S.F. Giants baseball hat, received the cloth and closed eyes.

As the barber prepared tools I contemplated how Cadiz citizens loved balmy weather. People moved in and out of small flats like actors and directors on a set. Natives framed long telephoto shots to establish the big picture. They focused a spotlight lens tight on details and emotional truth in a long story.

See through soft eyes.

Their DNA spilled oral discourse wandering Earth looking for sanctuary. For centuries their ancestors intermarried with Berbers. Now 18% were practicing Catholics compared with 98% fifty years ago. Guilt, sin and liberation from repression ate ethics with cognitive dissonance. C’ la vie.

Scissors and comb danced in the barber’s hands. A finger tilted my head left then right.

A walking stick on tiles shattered sound. Acquaintances paid their respects to Omar. Language music floated.

Omar greeted an old friend. “Ola, we meet again,”

“Welcome back, my friend. You have been away a long time.”

“Yes, forever and a day. We were in the Sahara before, on and after 9/11,” said Omar, pointing to the man being trimmed. “Economic terrorism and fear of poverty is a hell of a never ending story.”

“True,” said his friend, “such devastation, suffering and retribution by angry, scared, poor people. Speaking of Sahara, how goes it...I know it like the back of my old veined hand. Trade caravans are moving north this time of year, carpets, silk, and spices are selling well yes?”

“Yes. Trading is good. You are fortunate my friend,” said Omar.

“Yes. I’ve been blessed with good health.”

“And your family? How are they?” said Omar.

“They are well, thanks be to God. Allah be praised. The most beneficent is shining their love on us. Have you heard from 9/11 survivors?”

“Word travels slower than a camel passing through a needle’s eye,” said Omar. “Tribes formed after nine eleven. Many migrated toward mountains and subterranean caves. Others resumed journeys along the Silk Road toward Constantinople and the Mediterranean.”

“How did they survive?”

“They created safe havens and new artistic opportunities. Eco tourists seeking simplicity, sanctuary and serenity from global tragedies and personal heartbreak supported spiritual retreats to practice meditation and compassion with healers, poets and prophets.”

“Love and the art of living reveals clear truths,” said his friend.

A woman in luminous red fabric floated through their conversation.

“The forcestero and I journey today. We have exploring, gathering and revising to do. He is my amanuensis.”

“Ah, you are fortunate having a well versed scribe. It is a long walk. Such is the life.”

“And your family?” said Omar.

“Allah and God be praised, they are in good health. Fatima Zamora is two-years old now. Learning to walk.”

“Walking is the preferred form of travel to make the road.”

“Have you learned anything useful from the barbarians?” said his friend.

“Very little. They know many words but have forgotten the essential music. In the 12th century Arabic and European languages created new forms based on 1,001 stories. They used imaginative prose, telling stories inside someone else’s story,” said Omar.

“Ah, you mean somebody in a story is telling a story about somebody telling a story about somebody?”

“Absolutely, my friend, like time’s labyrinth with a complete center. Seeing itself from the outside.”

“Fascinating. It appears you know 1,001 Nights?”

“Yes,” said Omar. “We discovered through this literary effort how people reflect art, culture, history, and myth through stories.”

“I’ve heard of this,” said his friend. “How tribes moved from India across Persia into Arabia and beyond. You are a manifestation of Naghali the storyteller meaning the transmitter.”

“Aren’t we all?” said Omar. “Your story is being retold in Arabic with 1,001 permutations.”

“Yes, from Arabic to a Latin form of learning. Scholars say the four languages with the longest tradition are Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese and English. English is the language of the barbarians.”

“Ah, so it is,” said Omar. “Some are gentle and kind. Others behave like spoiled ill-tempered children. Rather crass and despondent types, prone to violence and whining at high decibels with abysmal ignorance. The Chinese stayed home, the English colonized and enslaved people in distant lands. Sanskrit, the most beautiful of all languages for its precise beauty evolved from India. Our Berber-Arabic tongue has been well received.”

“Magicians, shamans, Griots and storytellers have much to learn and share with you.”

“They are descendants of the Jinn,” said Omar.

“We celebrate cultures, shamans and spirit guides.”

“I am a Sha’ir, a feared and respected poet musician in my tribe,” said Omar. “Here’s a verse for you.”

Earth reflects sky

Landscape migrates

Listening wind sings spirit of Raoul

The Drummer of Death

Touareg the Blue Men of the desert

“Beautiful.”

“Poetry began as song,” said Omar. “Music and drama were grief songs for the dead.”

“Your unconscious is a deep river. Art reveals an interconnected universe. Interdependence. Sensations trigger electrical impulses, heartbeats and speech. Poem speaks.”

“My bearded friend here is Li Bai, a Shi sheng, an exiled Chinese poet sage,” said Omar. “He creates San wen, an intersection between prose and poems.”

“I am pleased for you. I wish you, your family and your companion all peace and prosperity.”

“Safe travels. Ensha’llah.” Their hands touched their hearts.

The barber handed me a Neolithic black obsidian mirror from Anatolia created in 6200 BC. My face was invisible.

“Objects in the mirror may appear closer than they are,” said Omar.

I felt lighter. “It’s fine, a good length. Gracias.”

He trimmed eyebrows, brushed off dead cells, removed the sheet, smiled and accepted Euros.

“Gracias. Adios,” I said to the barber.

“Gracias, adios Senor,” said Seville.

ART - A memoir - Adventure, Risk, Transformation

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Omar's Reply

“I’m not surprised they passed on it,” said Omar. “Anticipating their response I just finished a retort. Would you care to give it a read?”

“Sure.”

Dear Literary Agent, (insert name here)

Many thanks for your letter in response to my submission. As a matter of fact I have 60,000 specific succinct precise concise words floating around my small cabin here in a Zen bamboo forest. I will seduce them onto blank 20/lb. bond white sheets. Their text will be an artistic marvel of design.

I will wave my magic word wand over said words to rearrange them in a simple easy to follow linear form aligning nouns, verbs and direct objects with clear syntactical structure and so forth.

I love ironing. I share this passion with Haruki Murakami.

I will iron sheets of words with discipline, passion and persistence.

My egotistical profit driven anal editors will cull all unnecessary adjectives, adverbs and useless verbiage from the manuscript. An expert at practicing, I will write short fast and deadly.

My well-honed Berber knife and laughter’s Labrys axe will kill darlings with panache.

Deleted suspects will be stripped, blindfolded, water boarded and deprived of due process as part of my polishing action under the International Geneva Font Scribe Protection Act as described in The Book of Kells, Illuminated.

Subversives deemed unfit, dispensable, extraneous, and gratuitous for literary service will be executed by Executive Order #Zero123 with no emotional attachment. Next of kin will be notified in Braille. Fatalities will be a footnote in history where the sound of speech has no alphabet.

The epic will have the intellectual density of an essay, lyric cohesion of poetry and a structure resembling a documentary film incorporating cross-referenced evidence.

To write and to draw is the same Greek verb.

When Mr. Butcher and Mr. Barber, my insolvent intrepid illiterate editors finish cutting I’ll get back to you with a revised manuscript. A.S.A.P.

No publisher is going to drink champagne from my skull.

Sincerely yours, Omar the Blind

“I love it Omar. You’re the man with passion and wisdom.”

“Just doing my work. Few have read it. Fewer have understood it. Post it please?”

“With pleasure. See you later.”

“I’ll see you when I see you,” said Omar whirling his kaleidoscopic protean prism pen.

“Excellent. I imagine Rose, Faith and Tran will be joining us,” I said.

“Yes. They’re walking to Benaojan caves.”

“Delightful. Walking makes the road. We can share stories. I heard from Little Wing this morning.”

“Great. How is she?” said Omar.

“Excellent. She’s weaving threads in Grazalema.”

“Lovely. I look forward to seeing her new creation.”

“Let’s hope she didn’t destroy everything and begin again near the beginning,” I said.

“She realizes life’s tapestry contains flaws, missed stitches and rough edges. We’ll see her clear intentions,” said Omar.

“We will. Her weaving contains frayed edges and severed threads. Like our stories.”

“Yes,” said Omar. “Seeing the front gives one a feeling of totality with holistic harmony and perfection. An organic pattern appears from random elements like a lotus growing from mud.”

“See the beauty and cruelty without hope or fear.”

“No memory means no guilt, no guilt means no fear,” said Omar.

“It’s the Middle Way with detachment and discernment.”

“You sleep with the tiger,” said Omar.

“It’s process with passion. We act and let go. Adios amigo.”

“Adios.”

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

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Mandalay, Burma

Adventure

This is a memoir from 1997-2002 with a Nam flashback when I cheated Death. I was in Morocco on 9/11. Call it luck or fate.

Humor and Satire dance with Courage and Creativity.

Travel meets storytelling, creative non-fiction and social autopsy in exile.

This is a flawed masterpiece.

He is a peripatetic traveler, literary outlaw, and street photographer. As a Vietnam Veteran, international TEFL facilitator he lives loves and laughs in Asia south of the moon.

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In Cadiz when citizens were old, toothless, white haired, slow and content with life, residents in Europe’s oldest city attended a different church every Sunday.

Family was all. Spanish culture fostered an implicit understanding of the collective.

Simplicity. Serenity. Harmony married balance. Yin-Yang.

The dancer and the dance are one.

Generations walked in the Parque Genoves along the Atlantic admiring sculpted trees. Well-dressed spoiled children whined and complained to their compulsive-obsessive guilt ridden parents.

Parents organized pram races for amusement, a new spectator sport. GO baby GO from birth. Spin them wheels.

A daughter supported her mother. Their olive faces had identical furrowed lines, brown eyes and black eyebrows. In drab gray clothing they turned their heads in unison glancing at the same thing. The only difference between them was time.

One morning I decided to get my beard trimmed before tripping on it and shattering fragility. I folded up a narrative map, finished coffee dregs, lowered jazz volume and backed up empirical forensic data evidence. I slipped into yellow wool socks and worn sandals.

“I’m off to see the Berber, I mean barber,” I said to blind Omar writing on the balcony. He spilled, smelled and spelled green racing ink on yellow legal paper. He loved the beautiful messy process.

Omar laughed at this tongue slip. “Ha. I know where to find you. Oh, by the way, a letter arrived today.” He handed it to me.

“It’s for you Omar. It has a New York postmark.”

“It’s from a literary nerve agent about my query letter from a gravedigger’s quarry. Please read it to me.”

Dear Mr. Omar,

Thank you for your recent submission to our literary agency. We read your cover letter and synopsis.

The Typist, Butcher, and Gravedigger is an obtuse title. Very bizarre indeed and we see a lot of eccentric, abnormal, unconventional, unorthodox, and supersonic weird work fly through here. We have peculiar stories stacked in a slush pile higher than Everest. We are drowning in words seeking a life preserver believe you me.

You are a fine writer yet we feel there is enough for here for five or six books. Less is more. We suggest you pick one time or geographical place and flush out the narrative with more exposition. We would like to see character development and social and political realities in 60,000 words. No more, no less. KISS for readers.

Boil it down baby. Refined elegance, if you will.

To make money in the publishing business we need mainstream books that appeal to the general reader. We are looking for our 15%. Publishing isn’t a business. It’s a casino.

As you know, 175,000 books were published in this country last year. Your typical hardcover book sells for $25.00. You, the author, make $3.00, if that. It’s a hell of a deal we’ve got going here. The shelf life of a book is, at best, four months and the mid-list is the Kiss Of Death. Remainders are shipped to furnaces in Ohio where illegal immigrants play with fire at Fahrenheit 451.

Give us a product with a platform. Our marketing department will drive literature consumers to independent bookstores before they kowtow to corporate giants and e-books, mind you.

Historically many cultures boil books and weave clothing rags from the raw material. The insight of your stories reveals your passion for weaving threads from diverse locales. We suggest you consider this viable and lucrative publishing option.

Imagine the reception when readers arrive wearing your book! You will autograph fashionable apparel. Paris and Milan catwalks will be filled with exotic tactile textile places like Tacoma, Vietnam and Spain starring blood donor clowns, terminally ill children, Tibetan monks and this is only the beginning.

We’ll live with addicts, a dying American father receiving ice from his son, a bipolar manic suicidal woman, Native Americans celebrating a Ghost Dance and secret oral languages transmitted on your loom of time.

Your prescient awareness of 9/11’s catastrophic global aftermath is psychic. It’s a sensitive subject considering readers want happy fiction. You need to edit references to fear and economic terrorism.

Cut the heavy, deep and real shit.

Fear is a tough sell unless it’s done well, well done, marinated, broiled, stir-fried, over easy, or scrambled. Fear is ignorant bliss.

All your nomadic adventures from surviving Vietnam to your transformation in a 26,000-year old Paleolithic Spanish cave were tales from beyond wild. 

However, it’s a hell of a thread speaking of weaving metaphors in a nonlinear literary gonzo style.

We couldn’t decide if your work was a dispassionate detached journalist, a raving Vietnam veteran or a wandering mystical blind man. Get help. See a therapist or a shrink-wrapped doctor with a degree in abnormal personalities. Fast. Act now before it’s too late to save you from this dreaded literary disease.

Before closing I will relate one experience to you. The strangest thing happened in our office. One of our junior readers with a liberal arts degree making $30,000 a year suffered sensory overload while reading your manuscript and dozed off in a souk.

When she woke up she called herself Touareg, the noble ones, speaking fluent Tamashek. We didn’t have an interpreter for this oral transmission and called emergency services. They removed her from the premises citing The Patriot Act as justification.

She will be missed wearing her iridescent nacreous coruscating cobalt blue Moroccan robes begging from shadows where Poverty and Despair raise their children. Where one person supports thirteen and 90% of the population is unemployed. Where children are exploited w/o labor laws. Where parents see education as a waste of money and time.

Uncontrolled population growth, lack of job opportunities, substandard education and no medicine are unpleasant global facts.  

Handle With Care.

Please do not let this decision encourage you. We mold our client list from the many submissions we receive. The selection is subjective and based on our bottom line.

Money.

We hope you find an agent brave enough to consider this epic mess. Thank you for contacting Creative Artists Blink.

We wish you every success in your writing endeavors.

Sincerely, Just B. Kind, Literary Agent

Hanoi

Knives

On the flight from Amsterdam to Casablanca September 1, 2001 a woman sitting across the aisle used a small knife to skin an apple. Her right thumb measured thin red working a blade down fruit.

She was delicate and firm manipulating the sharp tool. Observing others using a sharp edge I remembered her.

One winter afternoon as the sun sang past Sierra Mountains, a man on a cane labored uphill to a gazebo overlooking Grazalema with his small dog. We exchanged pleasantries.

He pulled a folding blade out of a crumpled brown sweater pocket and a pear in a white paper napkin. He had the same precision as the woman. Finished slicing a piece he kept it on an edge eating off steel. He tossed the core to his barking mongrel, wiped the blade, folded it, pocketed it and stabilized himself to the potable water stone fountain. He removed his upper teeth, washed them, put them back in his face and wiped his mouth with the napkin.

Garcia the village Fleischer had the skill.

Grazalema families had it butchering pigs on plywood slabs in their garage on freezing January mornings as laughing women flayed with surgical precision. Disemboweled pigs covered the floor. A man stirred a steaming cauldron removing fat from bones.

A cafe man with a long thin blade slicing strips of ham off pig bones for hungry Seville day-trippers had it.

In February 2002 friends butchering sheep in Casablanca for Eid al-Adha, or “Feast of the Sacrifice” had it. Sacrifice with a capital S. Abraham dreamed he wanted to kill his son and God said, “No, I will send you a ram.”

Three sheep were slaughtered, one for each married man in the family. The sheep spent their last night in the furniture factory attached to a warren of rooms constituting the family home in an industrial part of town.

We started at 9 a.m. after a breakfast of crepes and tea. Ahmed, Tofer, Saad, and their father secured wooden beams and ropes above a red and gray tile floor. We held the first sheep down and sliced its throat. Breath and blood flowed across checkerboard tiles.

The head was severed and thrown to the side. We cut a hole in a back leg near tendons and bone, ran a rope through and hoisted the carcass. Covered in blood, laughing, sweating and struggling we raised the carcass into blue sky.

Blood paints tiles. Rex II the German shepherd drank his fill.

Sliced wool coats were thrown on a ladder to dry in the sun. They’d be collected by a man and made into family prayer rugs.

We inflated the body with an air compressor to facilitate skinning. Blades were honed. We worked fat off the skin of the poorest animal.

Organs tumbled into plastic tubs. Women carried them to a kitchen upstairs. The interior cavity was washed with hot water. Large sections were cut up with a band saw, wrapped in plastic bags and frozen.

Liver skewered with fat was grilled over red-hot coals and served at noon with tea, bread and olives. We ate in the shade of pink and red bougainvillea flowers. Casablanca was dead quiet.

At 3 p.m. we swallowed the stomach with lemon, olives, fresh bread, fruit and water.

Across the street itinerant men cooked sheep heads on a makeshift grill of coals with synesthesia.

The sound I saw

Smells a lamb’s head crying

Music of embers

Wool glazed eye calm

Cadence of a blade

Releasing blood

Touch hears the poorest skin

White intestines

Black liver on red coals

A single piece of charcoal

Welcomes a skull

Horns curve from blue sky

Into quivering dark-eyed knives

Slashing flesh

The feast lasted three days.

Sacrifice with family and hospitality.

Knife art.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

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