Lolly

Omar napped. Little Wing wove.

She looked up from threads. Want to take some signal equipment up to our ops at Firebase Lolly?

Sure.

Pick it up at 1000 hrs. Someone will drop you off at the chopper pad. Stay up there two days.

Lolly was a firebase ten miles from Camp Eagle and the 101st. I climbed into a Huey, the door gunner wearing fly goggles gave me the thumbs up, strapped myself in and we lifted off. 

Rotors thudded through air fighting gravity lifting off at an angle and forward as the pilot kept the momentum steady, increasing speed out over the perimeter. A winding river reflected sunlight in a gleaming stream. Mountains and hills blended elevations.

The gunner sat over his M-60 staring down and out at the green canopy below us with belts of shiny ammunition feeding into his machine from an open ammo box at his feet. Nestled inside the rounds was a cold unopened can of Bud's beer. Each ammo belt layer resembled a meticulous package wrapped to his exact specifications. He knew if he turned his quiet metal into a chattering signature of death he'd have no jamming worries.

A red mail sack lay in the corner.

I wrapped a faded green scarf around my face in the cold air, sat back and relaxed.

All fire base vegetation had been cleared to the peak. Staggered machine gun placements fortified with sandbags lay submerged inside layers of razor wire wrapped around the hill decorated with claymores.

On top was a small landing pad, commander’s post, miniscule mess hall, hootches and 105mm artillery positions in deep pits surrounded by stacked sandbags. Gunners rotated pieces by degree of slope and calibrated for firing relying on infantry patrol coordinates. Sunburned kids and pot bellied sergeants manned isolated mortar pits.

Fire in the hole, said a chicken fucking a GI.

Firebases allowed artillery support, infantry patrols into jungles and military intelligence was close to Viet Cong traffic patterns.

We set down on a PSP steel-landing zone in a swirl of dust. I got out, grunts heading for the rear climbed on, I gave the door gunner a high sign, turned and lugged the machine to the ops conex.

Ben, the African-American Vietnamese linguist had been there six months and planned to finish his tour at Lolly.

I love this shit, he said opening a can of peaches after we installed his machine. Better than the Eagle routine.

I know what you mean.

He was respected for his ability to decipher and transmit language information. He intercepted and processed good traffic. Grunts regarded him as a magician. They used his information to strike and intercept Cong units, harass them and stay alive in the jungle.

A grunt’s life expectancy was six months. 180 days.

He lived and worked in a small conex buried in the ground near the command post with electronic wings on his sandbagged roof. Wearing headphones in dim light he hunched over radio equipment writing on a sheet of paper. Spinning the dial. Dialects, frequencies, verbal traffic.

He reminded me of a resistance fighter in a film noir. A sewer rat with brains needing excitement content to spend a long year on top of a hill buried in a box.

ART, Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Omar's Dream

A month later Omar returned to the caves to wait for me. He had a dream.

“I’m afraid you will have take your boots off,” said a soldier wearing a 45-caliber sidearm with an M-16 slung over his shoulder when he saw my scarred climbing boots at SeaTac airport in March 2002. They had steel rivets.

“Anything interesting happen while I was away since September 1, 2001?”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Do you mean the half before the shift or the half after the shift?”

The G.I. answered with a dull blank stare.

A retired homeless bag lady approached security. “It’s good to know that 450 airports in early 2002 hired more than 45,000 workers. Maybe I can get a screener job here.”

“Why not?” said a T.S.A. official standing near an X-ray machine. “Each month, screeners take from passengers about a half-million things, including 160,000 knives, 2,000 box cutters, seventy guns.”

“Look like things have improved since I’ve been gone,” she said, pushing her grocery cart down the discount aisle. “Now I feel really safe.”

Along the concourse I studied glossy high definition pixel posters of airplanes slamming into towers with the admonition:

Beware!

This could happen to you.

Live in fear.

Report any and all suspicious activity.

Do not trust anyone.

Spy on neighbors and report them to the Secret Police.

Do your civic duty.

Be a Patriot Act.

Big Brother Is Watching 24/7

I’d created this reality with precise clarity.

Returning to the United States of Amnesia after centuries on the ground in Morocco and Spain I sat in my Tacoma tree house. I worked in a room bathed in light.

I had a maul, a hatchet, and a double bladed axe named Laughter.

Inside shifting forest tides, I was buried beneath 150- foot tall Douglas firs waving in wind.

A blade’s swinging, singing weight edge sliced through old growth tree time rings with ferns, moss, and rain.

I sat down spinning out tales, weaving spider webs on a loom of time. My mirrors reflected everything.

I carried Omar’s palimpsest through the forest. It was a bird song trill and spring music with owls, ravens, crows, eagles and vultures circling on thermals offering shamanic visions of clarity, insight and ancient wisdom.

I established a refuge from the storm with simplicity, serenity and sanctuary.

Living on the edge I savored shelter in a bird’s song. Trimmed cuticles spiraled into spring. It snowed flowers.

I looked deep into the forest of the mysterious manuscript. It was true and filled with sensory details. I connected new narratives with Omar’s animal skins revealing adventures, quests, dreams, conversations and awareness blended with joy, delight, courage and healing energies.

People wondered and wandered, chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of their eyes. We see through our eyes not with our eyes.

I resumed my Spanish exile.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Anais Nin

"The role of the writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say."

"I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits."

"I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls."

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

- Anais Nin

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

Transformation

Late one afternoon I helped Omar climb hundreds of stone steps to reach the entrance of Cueva De La Pileta (Cave of the Pool) south of Benaojan near Rhonda. We bowed through a small entrance arch to enter a small cave.

John, the grandson of Jose Bullon who discovered Pileta in 1905 after seeing bats flying from the mountain handed me a hissing yellow gas lamp.

In his mid 30’s, slender with dark hair and eyes, multi-lingual and friendly, John was the last member of his family guiding visitors.

“My brothers moved to Madrid, my sister to Seville and I live with my mother down in the valley.”

His grandfather, needing bat guano to fertilize tobacco fields, dug around the mountain entrance called the abyss of the bats. He roped in and descended. He discovered human remains and numerous red and black Paleolithic paintings.

In 1911 Colonel Willoughby Verner, a British author and ornithologist entered the cave. He published his discovery describing the cave and paintings in the London based Saturday Review.

Henri Breuil, a French archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnologist and geologist joined him for two months to study and draw the cave paintings.

Breuil interpreted the paintings as hunting magic to increase the abundance of prey.

It’s exhilarating and surreal to be here now.

I held Omar’s hand as we entered a gigantic cavern. We slowed on wet slippery passages.

We shifted from external modern civilization into ancient internal worlds. It was a massive dark mysterious space.

The labyrinth of caves extended deep inside the mountain. The path followed slippery rough stone stairs and muddy rocky floors. One huge chamber led to another.

Forests of calcium stalactites and stalagmites loomed in light. John paused near columns of living art formed by dripping water. Natural art creates art.

“Here, listen to this,” he said, cupping his hands and tapping on a carbonated lime spike, 2-3 feet in circumference, rising from the floor into darkness.

Heavy thudding echoes reverberated. My hands played 30,000-year-old intonations. Be the drum. The cave was a magnificent chamber of natural sound echoing through deep dark space.

Lanterns played yellow light/shadows everywhere. Each step returned us to a primal condition.

There is no I, self or ego.

I am a primitive essence.

I have no identity. No past. No future.

I am pure consciousness.

Every cell is alive and firing.

My body vibrates.

I am complete and empty where light and dark meet.

Singularity. Pure sensation.

I am stone and water.

Three humans in flickering light are small.

I burn in an ancient space where knowing and unknowing meet. Wisdom meets wisdom.

Awareness is all.

I am a wild still present.

We explored deeper chambers. John pointed to a rough beige wall. Our golden lights illuminated horses, deer and a fish inside a seal.

Rough, broken black comb-like marks slashed stonewalls. There were fish traps and bison. An archer with a bow and arrow stood silent. The hunter. Prey.

They were stone stories by hunter-gatherers, clans, tribes and families before chiefdoms and city-states, empires and countries.

Stories said I was here. I am.

“They sealed some images using animal fat. If you look close you can see their fingerprints on the pictures,” said John.

Human whorls edged where a finger pressed fat on stone. Magic images danced in the light. I was in a reality/dream of beauty and mystery beyond space and time.

The power and magic is art here now.

Grounded.

Immediate.

Direct experience.

I focused on minute black lines. The outline of a horse had thick black lines on her belly. She looked pregnant. Paired red slashes, perhaps signifying blood, marked her flanks.

Deeper in caves were sixteen more black comb-like drawings. 

“They may represent the passage of time or a number,” said John. Heavy vertical black lines had smaller descending lines slanting and curving at right angles.

In 1911 a group of scientists hypothesized the paintings dated 25,000 years to the Middle Paleolithic. This was confirmed by carbon 14-dating in 1985.

“We know there are human remains below us,” said John, pointing at a dark diversion. “The remains down there are off limits. We don’t know who they are yet. Only trained archeologists from the university are allowed down there with special climbing equipment. They visit twice a year for research.”

 “May I see?” 

“Of course, just be careful near the edge.”

If you’re not living on the edge you’re taking up too much space.

I felt my way over slippery stones and peered down. My lantern was too weak to penetrate infinity. Two rusty supports extended down. It was pitch black, cold, deep.

Dripping water in the caverns formed clear pools. The calcium rich liquid was cold and refreshing. We drank deep.

“It’s delicious,” said Omar.

Ripples from falling drops formed perfect circles on a surface. A single echo pinged infinite space. Plop. Plop. Plop.

Squadrons of bats zoomed over us. They lived in places we would not enter. Invisible wing music diminished toward twilight exits.

I felt the ancient connection with people dancing around fires, playing music, creating art, exploring language, cognitive ability and symbolic thought.

Where shamans retreated deep into caves, entered a trance state and painted images of their vision to draw power from the cave walls.

Where hunter-gatherers lived and died, laughed, cried, painted dream/reality images and told creation stories. Stories of people shared stories in Old Mountain’s story-truth.

We retraced our steps. Below night sky were black rugged mountains and billions of burning stars.

Down in a narrow valley lights glowed in windows.

I was now new and raw with pure senses.

From the cave womb I was reborn with clarity and peaceful mindfulness.

Transformed I danced forever.

 *

“Thinking neither good nor evil, what was your original nature before your parents were born?” - Zen master

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir