Cadiz Life

After moving through Moroccan dust, chaos, beauty and impermanence since September, Cadiz was a perfect base for hunting and gathering stories and images.

My second-floor room in a neighborhood of abandoned warehouses overlooked a 200-year-old intersection. A wrought iron balcony faced a narrow cobblestone street. Benjumeda Street extended past shops, churches and plazas.

I was a translucent blue monarch butterfly gathering wing heat for future flight. Inside, outside and all around I wandered Cadiz.

I freelanced for the Bureau of Wandering Ghosts.

Burma

Outside Plaza de Las Flower stalls shoppers pulled provisions home in wheeled shopping carts. Women pushed wheelchairs filled with groceries and cement uphill in their utilitarian universe. Their rolling world was hard rubber spinning in a galaxy. Wheelchairs indicated an invalid family member sat at home in a rocking chair watching game shows and talking heads. Waiting for the goods.

Exploring visual epiphanies, I opened my aperture to f/2.8. Write with light. In exile with silence, cunning, humor and curiosity I discovered Sunday flea market images: old photos, stamps, phonographs, typewriters, dolls, tools, locks, religious paintings, seafood, books, discarded clothing, toys, glass, buttons, broken phones, watches, faces, hands and lottery tickets.

Bar slot machine games called the Wheel of Fortune flashed lights as men drank cheap sherry and pumped 100 peseta coins into hungry devices. Unemployed men and women prowled streets, corners and shops selling lottery tickets called ONCE.

The Champion grocery store across from the old market sold sixteen different lottery tickets. A city this old believing in a religious hereafter had a gambling addiction. Pay now and pray later. Poor people needed all the hope money could buy.

Hope was broke.

I exposed streets, parks, cathedrals and beaches with sun-greased white haired ladies knitting and playing bingo and children dressed in gaudy black and red sashes for religious festivals. Men cut fish, hands held creased maps or thick Cuban cigars, children grasped parental fingers.

Tourists gripped each other in lost wild desperation. Lovers slept in sunlight. Men hammered stones as pigeons fought over bread scraps. Obscure dark faces in doorways greeted neighbors. A crescent moon floated between television aerials.

Burma

Juxtapositions of hammers and crucifixes rested on red fabric. Brown nuns supporting their habit passed brass Moorish door knockers as historical debris laughed before and after Chris Colon sailed west.

I wandered the city carrying a Moleskine and piston driven fountain pen spilling Midnight Blue ink.

Businesses had signs reading, “This establishment has a book for claims and complaints.”

In a cafe I ordered a meal of nouns and verbs with a side order of flat dirty realistic cardboard character development.

“Hold the adverbs,” I told the waitress.

I scribbled seven serious mystical mischievous words. Seeing this a man behind the bar whispered to a woman. They began cleaning. They hauled out crates of empty bottles, swept and mopped the floor with determination, efficiency and fear suspecting I was from the CLEAN authorities.

Fear is a great motivator.

Kitchen women suffered a panic attack. Jabbering like irate birds they scrubbed gleaming appliances with profound intention and motivation. They feared they’d be closed down for an imperfection in their life.

After fresh tomatoes I spread my wings.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Burma

Grow

draw poem
breathe zen
explore calligraphy line
play shape shadow
imprint experiment
love future

synthesize beauty
form truth dream imagine
creativity
color destiny

adventures
nature sings
ink poetry
adaptation song music laughter
potential

meditation
delight process
weave thread
needle leads a conversation
draw doodle paint

storyteller senses wisdom
focus fate
touch now
jazz improv intensity
emotion

motivation intention
formless
blues spirit intuition

wander
dancing down all the days
live moment

tranquility
salute sun smiling intention meaning
beauty white butterfly sunlight
waves & particles
walking meditation

edges
existential theatre of absurd
stars decorate your hand

flame your life

feeling sensation
meaningless universe
value, quality of life, excellence

calm mind move body
point, line shadow color
wushu movement balance composure
observing vs seeing
Beckett - futility of words

random chance
magic day

Grow Your Soul - Prose and poems from Laos/Cambodia

El Carnicero

Big black hungry Spanish flies buzzed and fought around fresh red meat dripping warm blood into dust dancing along the devil’s whiplash.

A mangy cur dog rolled over in shade, ribs scraping grounded dust, begging for water.

A drop in the ocean, where it’s all H2O no matter how deep you dive. Waves washed shores singing stones.

Sausages retained a sharpness inextricably swaying like dancers in choreography. Tired, frayed strings bent under dead meat weight mass, substance, context.

Remembering the Spanish Civil War, Manuel the butcher stared through a jagged broken glass window. His facemask spoke a weary solemn stillness quiet lying fury.

His silent words were exaltations, evaluations, a surcharge, a value added tax in an empty stomach for services rendered by reinforcements riding hard through Basque valleys listening for waves of German bombers over Guernica 1936.

Beleaguered men inside stone shepherd huts trapped in desolate Pyrenees mountains stood spinning, surrounded by empty canteens, bread crusts, discarded family heirlooms, spent shell casings, and decomposing bodies relishing solitude.

He’s required to remember old Fascist propaganda spreading information.

He is El Carnicero, one who slaughters.

In order to put food on the table and provide for his family after peace was declared with celebrations of music, church services, baptisms, wine, street dancing and tear streaked burials, economics forced him to slaughter his remaining beast of burden.

His bull was his calling card, vision, hope, dream and village identity. Dictators, thieves and Fascists had stolen everything else. Dignity, integrity and self-respect survived.

Destiny arrived minus sympathy, sentiment or condolences. Shaded from a brutal sun he sharpened his axe, honing steel across a grindstone. New edges were sharpened with passionate ambivalence.

Laughter’s axe was ready.

He walked into a red clay ring surrounded by a white clapboard fence. The bull stood in the far corner.

He held out his hands lined with pulse-rivers. The bull emerged from shade. Manuel collected reins. In the animal’s eyes he saw memory reflected in his soul. Sighing, he clapped his hands twice, bowing to the bull as a Shinto priest pays his respects to Bishamonten, the Kami god of benevolent authority.

He asked for forgiveness, this act of fate, raised his laughing axe and brought it down hard and fast on the bull’s neck. The bull froze, slumping, straining to escape steel carving tough weathered skin, muscles, tendons, sinew, arteries, veins, snapping final bones.

Front legs folded, rear legs buckled. The carcass shuddered. A final breath exploded red dust.

He clapped his hands, severed the head and dragged everything through dust to his shop. He hung the severed head in his broken window.

“For Sale.”

His wife served portions to family and neighbors. They consumed his life’s work, toasting his wise sacrifice for the greater good. Sharing is caring.

I am an accomplice to death. I could have stopped it. No. This is a lie. Truth lies. Truth hides in the mystery of interpretation. I couldn’t prevent death. I tried to speak and save the bull. Words. I was afraid. Language strangled me. My voice was dust. I was five.

He was my father.

Which is greater, real pain or pain’s premonition I wondered as Manuel’s silver blade melted reflections into diamonds of glittering light. The quick and dead burned. Manual and death danced inside my childhood, inside time’s compressed memory where rivers of stained glass mosaic memory melted. I took ownership of laughter’s axe.

Mirror reflections retained red river blood and sweat dancing on Manuel’s temple. Blood and sweat congealed in red dust creating tributaries and oceans in Spanish heat one swift irrevocable summer.

The world is a strong sense of Guerencia, a Spanish term for homeland, “a place, like a bull facing death in the ring, where you feel comfortable dying.”

Surviving along the Mediterranean meant controlling trade routes in slaves, salt, textiles, gold, silver, copper, limestone, turquoise, red granite, alabaster, bananas, sugar cane, cotton, sorghum, ivory, timber and purple dye.

Land and sea trade routes flowed with cuneiform, hieroglyphics, Phoenician alphabets, Mandarin, Meso-American, Runic and Indus script, coins, wooden tally sticks recording the number of animals killed, religions, amber, animals, royal purple clothing, grains, horses, incense, olive oil, silk, spices, tin, wine, tortoise shells and slaves.

Commodities.

Witnessing everything from a small Spanish village at the edge of the sea I seized cold-blooded mercenary opportunities. I evolved through determination, persistence and perseverance. Trial and error danced with cause and effect hearing The Art Of The Fugue by Bach.

Thin calm detached hungry dancing spirit fingers hummed down a necklace of threaded skeleton bone beads of catastrophic karmic actions near contemplative Gomchen mystic Tantric hermits north of Sera monastery in Tibet. Monks sat chanting and praying in sight of Chomolungma, the Mother Goddess.

Butchers, the untouchables, flayed corpses before smashing bones for vultures to reincarnate a spirit in a sky burial.

Frozen earth informed archeologists there would be no work here with their soft brushes.

I absorbed Tibetan dialects by swallowing bone dust. Transmissions of spirit energies, renewal and transformation evolved with joy, beauty and gratitude.

I sat meditating, breathing, digging, absorbing creation stories, illusions between what was and what is.

Realizing amazing journeys I discovered childlike laughter, curiosity and joy.

You are either innocent or mad.

Flip a coin. Magic nature opened my third eye to see what will be. Mirrors are free of dust and illusions. I dissolved.

The day after tomorrow belongs to me.

The Gomchen taught me how to meditate on the process of death. It centers a person fast. First thing in the morning, shapes my motivation with clarity.

“What is the motivation behind my desire to acquire _______ and the things that come with it?”

Motivation and its effects were determined by reading The Roots of Wisdom by Ming.

Mountains and rivers and earth are already nothing but dust.

Man, of course, is but dust within dust.

Bodies made of blood and muscle will surely return to bubble and shadows.

If the highest wisdom is not obtained, there will be no heart of understanding.

All is vanity.

One ought to live a life of peace and quietude.

What’s the point of unrelenting pursuit of external things?

El Carnicero, archeologists and I cherish our illuminated rolling stoned spirit energies.

Our choice is simple.

Sit or move. 

Weaving A Life (V1)

Jung Institute

“A dream is an unfulfilled wish,” answered a kid with a Ph.D. in Psychoanalysis from the Jung Institute.

“What else did he say?”

“He said, ‘There is no royal road to wisdom. To arrive at the future I must journey into the past. To attain the sanity of oneness with the One, I must risk the whirling madness of the possessed.’”

One year I spent three days at the Jung Institute of Psychoanalytical Study while hitching south toward the Mediterranean and Israel.

In June 1976, I slept on the lawn behind a stonewall at a biological institute on the outskirts of Zurich. Every morning women cleaning glass sang, Get up. Get up. I stashed my sleeping bag and backpack in a garden, walked to the Banhof for a roll and coffee and uphill to the Institute that opened at 11 a.m.

In a fine old brown stone residential castle with turrets and secret unconscious passages the institute offered classes and lectures on Jungian work. Professionals from around the world studied, attended seminars and completed their post-graduate education or audited classes for personal growth.

Between lectures, lawyers, theologians, teachers, philosophy majors and academics, some with a Ph.D. in Life, discussed Jungian thought.

The common thread was how their life, their quest for knowledge and greater insight into the human condition had led them through various disciplines and years of study to the institute. They said something totally incomprehensible was missing from their lives.

The truth is in the mystery.

The only book I pulled at random from a shelf in the Jung library was The Third Eye by T. Lobsang Rampa.

One morning people crowded into a lecture room. Languages filled space waiting for a lecture on the “Symbolism of Fire.” I took a small hourglass out of my pack and turned it upside down. Sand flowed.

“Jung talked about the spiritus contra spiritum, a god of ecstatic vision,” said the speaker. “He talked about the need for ecstasy without the chaos and how the archetypal ecstasy was for a god and soul.”

“Is the female ego in charge of the animus?” said a man.

“Yes. The animus speaks of women with a deep connection. It is a force that can seize you.”

“Is that why there is pain and delight in human relationships?” said a woman.

“Yes. The collective unconscious is too big to live out our personality so we create outer projections saying ‘bear my anima for me.’ This creates the pain and suffering. When there is individuation there is a strong ego personality.”

“Can you please give us an example?”

“Well, war is like a falling in love experience. The shadow, the dark side exists with the bright side and is misunderstood. The shadow is projected in dreams. Veterans carry images of losing, darkness, violence, destruction and evil inside them.”

“What is the healing tendency?”

“One must find meaning. It requires self-honesty. One respects dreams and the unconscious. They play. Fantasy is good, dynamic play. It is about symbolic levels. The collective unconscious is manifested in all cultures. This is why Jung was attracted to Asian symbols. He believed they existed near the bottom of their unconscious in an instinctual life.”

“People in the western cultures are afraid of death. Why?”

“Old age is a value feeling. Unfortunately, in some cultures it is perceived as insulting. It is the archetype of the old fool. It is fuller than the wise man. We create meaning. The imagination is the reality of the psyche combined with pure play. We listen to the wisdom of the dream. Everything we do is from the heart.”

When I was Jung I was Freudened. Ha.

I attended a lecture on the symbolism of fire. Cosmic creation energy...fire or water first in Oriental thought, quality of energy and quantity of substance. Satori fire-power emanating life and consciousness. Fire is spirituality. Yogic symbolism. Applied in India the thunderbolt kills the enemy and brings rain.

Surya is reception and light. Dream analysis symbolism of passions. Negative burning fires of hell.

Dream interpretation changes psychic energy into new conscious arrangement.

Bohme, said ‘then your heart is a dark valley where the devil kindles the heat. Leads to forty questions of the soul.’ In yoga Indian texts the soul essence is energy consciousness. Fire consumes ignorance: source of fire in soul and spirit. The yogic fire meditation is with the noon sun, meditating on physical process, digestion, and identifies with sun and fire to reach experience. Tapas transform energy. Concentrated introversion consciousness.

A Tibetan fire mandala with five colorful flames is a spiritual place. Created as psychic energy with five elements through creation. Fires of transformation creates spiritual regeneration as catharsis. Solar and lung energy and integration through dream interpretation.

Tibetan Book of The Dead = freedom. Fire is a driver, sexual desires. Soft wood and hard wood together create energy. Psychological use of fire, inner psychic fire from the lowest chakra spine sleeping serpent rising, united through to ‘eat the fires of energy’ as the libido is a power of regeneration through consciousness.”

During the lecture a worn copy of the I Ching, the Chinese book of divination translated by Wilhelm fell out of my bag. A female lawyer preparing to unlock the unconscious motivations of incarcerated juveniles saw it.

“Ah,” she said in a German accent. “I see you are reading a great book.’”

“Stumbling through it. I am curious about it.”

“Interesting. Have you heard of Madame Chang?”

“No. Who is she?”

“She’s a Sinologist. She is an authority on the I Ching and gives consultations. She has her office near here. Perhaps you could visit with her.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I called her up and made an appointment to see what would happen. I arrived at the house, went through the back gate, approached a door and rang a bell. I entered a foyer. I looked up through a long ornate spiral staircase. At the top stood a woman. I climbed and climbed. Madame Chang was slight with close cut brown hair, glasses, about fifty.

“Hello, I’m the fellow who called your secretary asking to see you.”  I offered my hand.

“Yes,” she said taking my hand momentarily and then dropped it. “I was expecting you. I am Miss Chang. Won’t you come in?” She gestured to the open door.

The room was narrow. Along the walls were shelves holding stacks of books. To the left was a table with old Chinese books. One was open to a map. She offered a chair in the middle of the room under a slanting roof. I took a seat and she sat opposite me where she could gaze out the small window into blue sky.

She didn’t say anything for a moment and then looked at me. I felt penetrated as a fraud. Her gray eyes were distant. My first impression after sitting down was that I was in way over my head, that I was after some arcane knowledge and she knew it. Madame Chang sat silent and never said anything forever. She just sat there and let me look around. I realized I was out of my depth.

“I shouldn’t have come,” I said. “I am wasting your time.”

“Why did you come?”

I knew that her wisdom of the book was greater in scope than I’d ever begin to understand. Her vision was far away. I realized my small self.

“I’m not sure,” I blurted frightened by the sound of my voice. “It’s something about the I Ching about finding out the truth.”

“I usually give consultations to groups but am willing to meet with individuals. What is it you wish to know?”

“I came because someone said you could answer questions about the I Ching and I am curious about the book.”

“How many times have you thrown the coins?”

“Once. What should I do?”

“You should just study it. I would advise you to read the hexagrams and see the symbolism in the meanings of the text. See the intentions of the summary. It’s a very powerful book.”

I sat there looking at her and her books. It seemed like forever as my mind whirled around trying to come up with some semi-intelligent conversation. 

“It’s a long walk. Nothing more. It’s a long walk,” she said.

As if in a dream I got up and walked to the door.

“I usually accept contributions,” she said. I fumbled in my pocket, brought out a note and asked for half of it back in change. She returned the balance and showed me out.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your seeing me.”

I descended the spiral staircase to the ground floor. When I looked up she was standing on the top looking down at me. We waved goodbye.

Out on the street I looked up at the window. It was impossible to see the crease in the roof. There was only sky. I walked down the street as if in hypnosis, bought an apple and sat on a stone sidewalk meditating on our meeting. I opened the Book of Changes to #25, Wu Wang, Innocence, The Unexpected. “The firm comes from without and becomes the ruler within.

“I like it,” said a listener. “Inner directed like Rumi. What else?”

“Well, here’s a cool thing Jung said. ‘I liken the formation of a character to weaving a garment. You know what happens when you make a mistake? The whole pattern is spoiled. Then you have a choice: you can finish the garment, but it will always be botched and ugly, or you can unravel the weave right back to the first mistake and start again. That’s basically what analysis is about. It’s a tedious job. The patient is sometimes scared and hostile. The analyst has to lend patience, honesty and courage.”

A Century is Nothing

Intention and motivation

Attention

To: Secret Agent Wordsmith.

From Godot: Nobody shows up. Nothing happens.

Discernment is everything in his mute Turkish life. Silent speculative tongues babble on community islands. Hustle tea with brown details. Clown town. Mother leads fashionable daughters. An old man’s shoulder weights a box of hazel’s nuts. A battered pewter teacup sits empty. A flaneur primps.

Inbreeding statistics reveal genetic truth and future medical issues at rural population control centers. Confront basic Turkish insecurities – loss and awareness with repressed aggression, sullen anxious attitudes, pervasive psychotic disorders and phobia.

What you don’t see between unemployed words is fascinating.

A cripple without legs heard laughter’s lymphatic memory. They were amused by a smile stirring sugar’s anger. A reader read a weather forecast to a friend. Rain. A black bearded man carried a chainsaw into a Giresun forest with intention and motivation.

The Invisible Ghostwriter

Down below love’s labyrinth looking for sexual partners 50,000 symbolic woodcarvers gesturing possibilities fostered benign footsteps telling 4,000-year old stories behind fish markets hearing catatonic voices seek meaning.

Quest-ions ran around looking for answers, Where are you? Come out come out wherever you are my bright little star.

Worry beads between male fingers worried themselves to death.

Alone and feeling cold, an old man stirred tea with ambivalence.

Love conspirators sang the blues.

Harmonic convergence polished black dress shoes.

A beautiful Trabzon university girl with shattered dreams and zero hope of being a boat captain attended an economics class.

Do the numbers. ABC. 

Chance

It’s come to our attention, said Deep State, we need more police – yes that’s correct...more police...moreguns, ammunition, uniforms, plastic hats, plated belt buckles, shields, face masks, tear gas canisters (made in Brazil) water cannons, green parks in Istanbul, collapsed mines in Soma killing 301, authoritarian boredom, fear, self-censorship, zero social networks, NO judiciary, more imprisoned journalists, more GREED and less wisdom, compassion, freedom and tolerance.

A new directive was issued. Verb 3.

Eating is important for a balanced diet.

Turkish female robots with bored black eyes conducted international surveys wearing skintight jeans promoting small chattels.

Remember to accessorize your demeanor with high heels and a serious facial expression of:

1) disgust

2) stupidity

3) monochromic awareness

4) worry

5) anxiety

6) fear

The die was cast.

Fate and Destiny sang a duet.

Timing played Danishan melodies at 1644 hours.

Giresun Before Dawn Mid October 2012 6:02 a.m.

Mild air outside designer storm windows fitted with rubber air current verb modifiers played through grammar-based pine trees eating kabobs in The Department of the Forest.

Mother, may I sleep forever? Yes my sweet, she purred stirring tomatoes content in the context of creating a lifetime of dependency while baiting a sharp fishhook sentence snaring a gentle reader, Let’s Eat the alphabet.

Are you a victim or participant, asked Quest-ion.

A victim, said Turkish student-citizens. We are (free) willing victims. We eat loss for breakfast with twenty-eight varieties of olives. I am a proactive participant, said a linguistic Chinese waif. You are Other, said victims, a barbarian and a rouge element. We share everything, said Other. Eat your freedom like Lone Wolf, said a reliable narrator having their ears cleaned with sanitized stainless steel tools by a Cambodian woman waiting for Mr. ATM.

I have nothing to say and I’m saying it. That’s nothing, said Milling Around in Asia. I have nothing to do and I’m doing it. I sleep, eat and fuck. So what, said Curious, I have no reason to live except to find out what happens next in this adventure. I don’t have time for negative losers. Get a life.

Inside a frozen sterilized room planning his great escape under the cover of Sacrifice, a national holiday 26-31 October, Lucky scribbled by tenor sax. Blue Train echoed through empty rooms with acoustic memory.

This geographical derivation detour wasn’t his glass of tea or chai in local lingo.

I agree, said Z, Ya got get a move on. Get back where you belong. You did your work here, brought people some luck, helped others develop courage, made field notes and street photography, I don’t belong anywhere, he said, It’s ok, where you go there you are, your heart’s in Asia.

Where’s Franz Kafka when u need him? He’s living in Anatold you so as an unmuting amusing assumed mute protagonist so he is. The bureaucrazy night dream mare plays on...

Write another chapter, said Z to calm your tortured heart.

Scene: Giresun, 4,000 years later. I’ve been here before, said a fish in a bowl. What’s water? It’s all I know. It’s the first thing an infant needs and the last thing a dying person requests.

I am amused by Freedom said a woman opening her legs getting to the verb.

One word. One vision. One day. One dream. One chance.

Make it new day-by-day. Make it new.

Opportunity cost. Return on investment. Cost-benefit ratio.

Lucky paid now.

Putting profit before people, Trabzon English Language School paid later.

The Language Company