Writing is a river with many tributaries.
Photography: intuitive, creative impulse, timeless, presence, aura of death, a diary, essence.
The Divine Comedy. A romantic dreamer wanders Earth.
Act. Find the truth. Emotional honesty. Don't be afraid.
Dance is freedom. Movement never lies.
What I want to report is that I've done nothing of value and that is my accomplishment.
What is your myth - the myth in which you live?
“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
Mandalay, Burma
clowns decorate random acts of kindness
with the gravity of tenderness
look and leave people dance
as death
chases them through life
go go go
Mont Blanc rollerball stands tall purple thin strong
Tell me about the frugal gambling foreigners investing in Kampot
the sleepy little town with corroding French architecture
How Italian, French and German expats describe their passion
for becoming along rivers of life with restaurants, bars, movie theatre of the fantastic,
OM Hindu therapeutic Moringa powdered elixirs, guesthouses with miniature golf hole in one, pepper plantations, organic yoga retreats, sunset river boat cruises
opportunities for physically challenged humans signing
“Hello” as blind masseurs knead muscles trekked out
after paying Chinese casino gambling debts hiking through deep unconscious jungles
hearing silent footsteps of serene orange robed boy monks
meditating on compassion chant sutras in gratitude
Pure mind: illusion
Create
Imagination
Experiment
Dream
Play
Smiling makes you happy
Be happy for no reason
Your compassion is greater than your fear
Grow Your Soul
Foreign couples wearing polarizing shades of ignorance incredulous doubt and wonder stroll sand staring inland at strangers staring back.
Walking eyes survey tables, chairs, people and eateries.
Strangers all. Scarce few see sea.
No drugs. No weapons. Leave your ego at the door.
Sweating runners with pulse armbands tread grains.
Workers set up beach lounges, switch on espresso machines, fire up kitchen stoves, hack ice, replenish beer supplies.
Waves erase footprints. Sleeping canines cur into sand.
Beach orchestra builds its daily tempo.
A young Italian woman unfolds a blue towel on sand. She lies face down. Pushing up with her arms she assumes a yoga posture eyes straight ahead on a blue green sea. Her spine weaves vertebrae like a wave. Calm centered grounded and focused.
Visitors stagger from beds, walk foam, eat, stare at waves evolving from a flat lined horizon holding green island hideouts. People plan to sit or go. Yes go. Go for a walk, a swim adventure.
1) kick boxers attack mangoes, chop ice while shifting gears after school in the wind
2) six month cradle infants wail at the hospital for a blue placebo pill
3) oven fired waffles scrapes a boy pedaling his bike seeking recycled trash before wicker baskets say hello
4) spare change searches for user value collecting cardboard images in a squall
5) red ink meets onion paper at an intersection whispering secrets without speaking sparrows
“I want to know the truth mother. Living safely is dangerous.”
“The truth,” she said, “is that life is an absurd comic process. If you laugh you last. Our illusionary insecurities and real authenticities evolve. Life is a celebration, a dance and process of becoming. It is a beautiful harsh short messy dream come true. It’s magic. We adapt, adjust and evolve. There’s no rhyme or reason. Life is not a career, it’s a game.
"I have captured the light and arrested it's flight. The sun itself shall draw my pictures."
- Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) One of the fathers of photography.
*
“Sounds like you’re fishing again,” said a patient kid, “with a line long enough to hang laundry on. Anyone here know anything about reading palms?”
“I know what I don’t know. Mine are too small to read.”
“Mine are deeper than water carved canyons,” said a voiceless voice from a formless form.
“Ain’t that grand? Water stone. Yin yang. Gestalt. They sustain each other in a correspondence. The lifeline marries the heart line.”
“Do you see a connection?”
A child with dyslexia spoke, “It’s tough. I’m trying to learn 1,100 ways letters are used to symbolize the forty sounds in the spoken English language.”
“You mean to say, or say to mean,” said a child, “it’s difficult for a learning reader to connect verbal sounds with the letters or symbols that spell that sound?”
“Absolutely. Maybe that explains why there are ten million children in this country with severe reading problems.”
“Show us where the sound of speech has no alphabet.”
“Good on ya. Was it William - the kid from Kansas who lived in the Burroughs - who said language is a virus from outer space, a form of control? Where is he?”
“They took him away for treatment,” said Rose. “Some lab coat rat said he was delirious and firing a Colt-45 at an apple on his wife’s head in Mexico. William said hallucinating improved reality. Reality makes you crazy. It’s empty, dull, boring, tedious and filled with inconclusive abstracts.”
“He ate his Naked Lunch.”
“He dreamed with his eyes open?”
“You got it backwards. He was fast asleep with his eyes open and he woke up by closing his eyes. Everything is a meditation. Everyone is a Buddha. You are a stream-winner.”
“Connect the dots forward.”
“Figures,” said a kid, releasing cost benefit results scribbled on an artificial medical insurance form with a co-pay deductible.
“Some people never learn. They get older sooner and smarter later.”
“You change subjects faster than the weather,” said an observer. “How are we supposed to stay on task here?”
“Buy a ticket,” suggested a kid.
“Are you a ticket taker or a risk taker?”
“If you want to do amazing things you need to take amazing risks and suffer greatly.”
“Anybody have any spare change?” asked a panhandling waif on an aspirator with wealthy aspirations.
“Hmm, I see a faint star at the conjunction of the head and heart life lines. Does that mean anything?” said a kid fingering green palms approaching Easter Is-land on a bamboo raft.
“Depends,” ranted a child orator standing on a soapbox. “Do you mean faint as in non-distinguishable or feint meaning to throw one off a socially agreed upon tacit path implied by pretending to understand anything while processing information with a deft movement?”
“Yes,” philosophized a child with the wit of Camus, “it’s a sublime paradox, this absurd metaphorical life theater. We have aspects of knowing. We know so much and understand nothing. We are affected, infected, rejected or injected by how we feel not what we think we understand. Life is short and sweet. Art is long. Our lives are works of art. It’s not so much that there is something strange about time. What’s strange is what’s going on inside time. We will understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.”
“You’re just saying that,” said a voice.
“Sounds like a description of the food they serve here, speaking of strange,” one resident commented to no one in particular.
“No lie flutter by,” sighed a Monarch’s wings in Greek.
“What’s that have to do with the conservation of angular momentum and a parabola?” queried a child spinning wheelchair tires on a tennis court and making a racket while performing real alignments for friends.
“Do I love you because you are beautiful?” said Rose, “or are you beautiful because I love you?”
“Both,” sang the Greek chorus.
“You get what you pay for,” said a kid ironing words with grit, perseverance and discipline.
“The map (words) is not the territory (perception),” said a child reading The Dictionary of Symbols. They shared a story about dance.
“Dance is a process. Becoming. Shiva symbolizes the union of space, time and destruction. Dance is an ancient form of magic. People wear masks hiding their transformation. They seek to change their dancer into a god or demon. Dance is the incarnation of eternal energy.”
“Well all right then,” said a kid dancing in their death mask. “Let’s trip the light fantastic.”
“You get the face you deserve,” said a makeup artist. “Your mask eats your face.”
A couple of engaged children practiced lines in a theatrical play.
“I thought you’d never get here.”
“Sorry, I was delayed.”
“Obviously. Are you staying?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, you’re such a mystery child to me.”
“You talk too much.”
“Cut!” yelled a director.
“Was it the line or the delivery?” said a kid.
Rose said, “Welcome to Earth. Hello babies. It’s round, wet and crowded. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. You may make it to 100 if you’re lucky. There’s only one rule. Just be kind.”
Laughing children in wheelchairs gathered at a starting line outside the hospital.
“Ready? Get set. Go.”
They raced to the Denver Art Museum to meet Tibetan monks arriving from Santa Fe. They worked together for a week creating an intricate Kalachakra Wheel of Time sand mandala. Plant a seed.
Share Article