Tangiers to Cadiz

After doing my work at ground zero for two months in Morocco I leaped on a ferry from Tangiers to Algeciras, Spain.

An American woman from a lonely-hearts club tour group in Scottsdale, Arizona said hello.

“Hi, my name is Jean.”

“Hi, I’m Timothy Grasshopper. Nice to meet you.”

She opened a small book of quicksilver questions about life as a nomad, how it worked, how one survived. She gave me a multiple-choice exam to satisfy her curiosity.

“How does it work?”

“How does what work? The universe?”

“Moving around like this. Do you get scared?”

“No. I pay attention. I avoid choke points on the street. I trust my instincts. I see everyone before they see me. I am a ghost in exile. Invisible.”

“I was petrified in Tangiers. We were hustled by every child in the city.”

“They’re hungry. There’s huge poverty in Morocco. Fear of hunger and starvation and loneliness is a daily reality. One person supports thirteen. The majority makes less than $1.00 a day.”

“Yes I suppose so but I hope not. This is my first time away from the states. Some of my friends were afraid to leave after 9/11. They stayed in Arizona and Boston.”

“The media sells fear after 9/11. It’s a snake eating its tail if you know what I mean. What goes around comes around. Hello karma. Why did you leave?”

“My husband died a few years ago and I just sat around and then some friends got me interested in social activities. They told me about this tour, you know, stay in a Spanish coastal resort and see the sights with a day trip to Morocco. Then they stayed home after 9/11. Afraid to get on a plane.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your husband. Grief is part of the process. Letting go. Were you married long?”

“Twenty years. We were high school sweethearts.”

“Did you travel much?”

“Only around the states.”

“That’s a good beginning. I hitched around the states in high school and survived a year in Nam. Then I explored Europe, the Middle East, China, and Tibet. It’s evolving like a dream. One life, no plan, many adventures.”

“That’s really exciting. I wish I had the nerve to do something like that, just get up and go. This has been really good for me, it’s opened my eyes to a lot of things.”

“If you want to do amazing things you need to take amazing risks. We adapt, evolve and adjust. What have you learned?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Things like handling my luggage, realizing I brought way too much stuff. Stuff I don’t need, things I could have left behind. But of course I didn’t know any better. Seeing other people and their expectations, their attitudes being American. How many are loud and boring, childish really, like they’re in some foreign amusement park, how they give the impression of being rich, rude and stupid. The way some of them treated the Moroccans was just terrible. Everyone has their bias and prejudices.”

“Welcome to the freak show. I’ve observed kindness and stupidity. There are way too many idiotic crass tourists on the loose. No sensitivity or tolerance. Others are kind and polite. A day trip is only a fragment isn’t it?”

“I didn’t know any better. It’s part of the package. I’d love to come back on my own or with a friend someday.”

“Morocco is amazing. Hospitality. If you return I suggest you travel south into the Atlas Mountains and west to the coast. Get away from cities. Stay with people in villages.”

“Yes,” she said seeing a blue sea. “It’d be nice to go further.”

“Travel is the real education. Experiences are teachers. It’s essential to slow down and see with new eyes. We see through our eyes not with our eyes. Sit down in one place for a long time. Engage your senses.”

“Yes, I feel a little better now. Where are you going?”

“I left the states September 1st for six months. I’m going to Cadiz for a month, sit down, write and explore. Satisfy food, shelter and unconscious creative needs.”

“How exciting. What will you write about?”

“Experiences in Morocco and beyond. I was there on 9/11. Two months absorbing diverse realities. Using humor and satire with imagination and truth I will write about governments and media creating fear to advance their dystopian goals of social and psychological Control and greed ...

 ... I’ll write about illusions of fear and suffering as characters discuss how propaganda manipulates people. How humans face personal and collective desire, anger, ignorance, adventure and surprise on their quest for individuation. We are all connected on emotional and intellectual levels of awareness. Cadiz is the oldest city in Europe ...

 ... After a month I will live in an isolated mountain pueblo for the winter. My discipline is 1,000 words a day or two hours of revision. Polishing is the party. Next spring I’ll return to Tacoma, build a tree house, plant roses, caress thorns and write a book. I have a gonzo attitude. Be a master journalist with the eye of a photographer and the balls of an actor.”

“That must be exciting. They tell us every day where we’re going, what we’re going to see, where we’re going to eat, what time the bus leaves, where we will sleep, and who knows what. It’s a bit too much.”

“Hey, it’s your first time out. Think of it as a test run seeing how a tour package works. What you like and don’t like. You can use your experience to plan new independent adventures.”

“Yes, I like the idea and potential of being independent.”

“It’s a test with compensations. You are a free spirit in a free world.”

“Yes I am. I’ve always wanted to go to Greece.”

“Good for you. You’ll make it.”

“I’ll research it when I get home. You’ve been a big help. Nice meeting you.”

“Be well. Forget the words and cherish the ideas.”

She joined her group wearing nametags for a photograph with the sea sparkling blue and green foaming white.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Book of Amnesia V1

Creative nonfiction, systems analysis and social autopsy.

Five genius kid storytellers meet, explore and share adventures in Cambodia, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam and Utopia.

Everything you need to know is in this book.

"Writers are shamans. We go into the mountains and come back with visions for our tribes. Our holy assignment."

Book of Amnesia, Volume 1

Available for Kindle and in paperback. O joy.

Hammam

Twice a week I traversed a rubble path from #187 past plastic bags, small broken trees and rubbish to a hammam. The Turkish styled public bath cost seven dirhams or seventy cents.

Women left. Men right. A shy veiled girl accepted coins. I crammed clothes in a plastic bag and handed it to the smiling toothless attendant. He gave me two buckets made from old tires, reminding me of the souk zone where boys cut the rubber, hammered and sold them.

I pushed open a heavy wooden door. Three low-vaulted white tiled rooms had variable degrees of heat and steam. Men reclined on heated tiled floors or collected cold/hot water from faucets in buckets, soaping and scrubbing themselves.

Entering a heat mist dream of forms, I walked through the first two rooms to a space along a wall. I filled one bucket with scalding hot water, another with temperate liquid. Closing tired eyes I stretched out absorbing heat on my back. It penetrated skin, muscles and bones in a respite from poverty’s chaos and hospitality.

Sweating men scrubbed in steam and water music. Working out kinks an old wiry man bent a man’s arms and legs into pretzels. The skinny bald man worked wrists, elbows, and shoulder joints to the point of snapping them off a skeleton. Rolling a patron over he pummeled a spinal chord, slapped a back and bent knee joints leaving the man spread-eagled on tiled floors. Customers welcomed his torturous attention.

I soaped and scrubbed off layers of dusty skin with a rough hand cloth. Oceans flowed from tiles to drains.

I retrieved clothing, dried off with a sarong, slipped into fabric and gave the attendant a tip. The old man smiled, rolled his eyes shook his head. I dropped more coins into arthritic brown fingers.

“Shukran. M’a ssalama.”

Clean skin felt cool night air. The dusty path was filled with scooters, boys playing on abandoned rusty cars, scavengers probing trash and mothers dragging black gowns on the ground. Yellow slippers slapping earth flashed golden dust particles.

Children sang, “I never promised you a rose garden.”

A one-eyed mendicant looking for alms stumbled past.

Cafe men watched perpetual terrorism reports at full volume on a television hanging from a ceiling.

“Ah, Ahab,” said a smiling young waiter in a purple vest balancing his silver tray of cups and water glasses. “Coffee?”

“Yes, no sugar please,” gesturing I’d sit at a table outdoors on cracked pavement away from media. Dejected shoeshine boys tapped wooden boxes as their dark unemployed eyes inspected shoes of chronically unemployed men drinking endless tea.

Another waiter cut mint tea leaves, crammed them into a silver plated kettle, dumped in a brick of sugar, closed the lid and poured a light brown steady stream of tea into a small embossed glass. He poured it back into the pot. He put the pot, glasses, spoons and sugar cubes on a tray to be delivered to patrons.

A subtle red sunset spread across adobe walls. Atlas snow patched mountain ranges on the southern horizon turned pink. Women in billowing blue cloth tread sand from clustered stone villages to take a local bus to the shimmering Red City or sit on broken cement talking with friends.

Dusk and twilight married, creating night children. More field hands, more economic resources and more offspring futures destined for trades making $1.00 a day. Women sat talking on fractured pavement surrounded by trash. People discarded their lives going through it.

A small single tree in a patch of dirt epitomized local life. People had stripped off branches and leaves leaving a sharp broken piece of wood sticking out of the ground.

People wandered aimlessly or sat on hard packed earth. Unemployed men on haunches stared at dirt.

A fruit seller with green grapes on a rolling cart waved at flies circling a light bulb. A young man in his wheelchair poured bottled water over a handful of grapes. Water disappeared into dust around his wheels of fate. Savoring one grape at a time he observed boys weave past on broken bikes.

A bearded man paced the street collecting discarded cardboard in his recycled life. Cardboard made excellent cheap sidewalk seats, foundations in rolling carts to keep stuff from falling out, sun hats, beds and shop doormats after infrequent deluges.

Shredded telephone wires dangled from the wall of a telephone office as men lined up to make calls on the single working phone while holding mobile phones and punching digits.

Disconnected grease covered boys with their tools spilling into the street manipulated mammoth truck tires along broken sidewalks. The area buzzed as people with survival instincts scrambled to make a living.

On a side street two men unloaded shoes from the trunk of a car. Location - location - location. One seller spread a bright blue tarp on the ground anchoring it with bricks. His partner arranged cheap running, dress and casual shoes. No Adidas Berber shoes for these guys. They fired up a propane lamp.

After a day of oppressive heat residents prowled looking for a bargain and telling stories.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Burma

Buy An Eagle?

Omar meditated as workers drilled, hammered, poured, pounded, sifted, sorted, packaged, shipped, received, laughed, cried and analyzed their efforts to make it heavy, deep and real.

A newspaper in the Marrakesh souk whispered about trillion dollar foreign wars. An endless labyrinth of global deficit spending prospered in a radiant mathematical certainty.

At Djemaa El Fna I perused old Touareg jewelry, rainbow carpets, silver bowls, cracked dishes, green ionized utensils, long leather bullwhips, elaborate Berber bags and junk. Dealers bought and sold pots, pans, brass and silver.

The day was hot and the souk was cool. I evolved into F/stop sense trapping light and freezing time.

Writing with light I followed leather smells along narrow corridors into a zone of low wages, unregulated workshops and child labor exploitation. Poverty’s people hung scraps of clothing on thin lines in stale air.

Inside a small room, a ten-year old boy slaving his six-day week for $6 applied coats of thick viscous liquid paste to leather.

“May I make an image?”

“100 Dirhams,” said an older boy punching holes in leather.

Metalworking, jewelry and mosaic making were the most hazardous jobs for children because of the chemicals. Children making slippers were exposed to glue vapors. Dust caused respiratory problems for children working in pottery sheds. Child labor was linked to the politically sensitive question of educational opportunities.

Poor families globally see education as an expensive waste of money & time.

There’s little pressure from local political parties, trade unions, or wider public opinion for any legislation on child labor.

UNICEF targeted Moroccan authorities to persuade artisans to stop hiring children under twelve and release those already employed for a few hours of schooling each week.

The bare room was 8x10 and filled with noxious fumes. No ventilation. I negotiated without inhaling. One dim bulb heaven, empty walls with leather punching tools and piles of treated leather needing a brush.

“Too much.”

We engaged in a broken animated conversation. No deal. I walked. Show them the soles of your shoes. Singing boys glued magic slippers. 

*

Animal pelts hung from wires in the old slave market. Leopard, fox, and rabbit complemented long wide boa constrictor skins. There was a falcon in a cardboard box and a young nervous eagle in a cage.

“How are you?” said a boy.

“Good, thank you.”

“Is everything ok?”

“Yes, I’m just having a look. How much is your eagle?”

“For you I make a special price. Morning price. Two thousand.”

“Two thousand? ($200) Expensive. How old is it?”

“It is two-years old. It is from the Atlas Mountains. For you I make you special price, morning price. Brings me good luck.”

“You make your own luck. I’ll think about it.”

I wanted to buy the eagle, get on a Super Tour bus, reach the Atlas Mountains, hike to a stone village in a blue-fogged valley and release the predator. Trapped in humanity’s cage starving for food, water and freedom I needed someone to release me in clear mountain air.

I turned to photograph men pushing and pulling a donkey dragging a cart through a broken wooden gate.

“Where are you going?”

“Maybe I’ll be back.”

“Come, mister,” said the desperate boy grabbing my vest, “come here see this animal skin. It makes a strong medicine. It helps you with your wife.”

“My wife doesn’t need help.”

“Where is she? We have many perfumes.”

“She’s wandering around. She smells a good deal when she nose it.”

“Maybe spices, maybe you like spices.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe you are looking for something more powerful,” he said, “something to take with your tea, a special blend from the Rif Mountains?”

“What is it?”

“Ah, it is a fine, how do you say, potion, a special blend from a mysterious plant. Hash helps assassins forget their troubles. It protects them in heroic battles against sticks, stones and drones. No hash? Then perhaps a little of this balm might interest you. Here, try a sample. Rub a little on your temples. It takes away pain.” He opened a tin and smeared red paste on his fingers.

“No thanks, I’m ok. Pain is a sickness leaving the body. Suffering is an illusion. See you later.” 

I dissolved into a swirling unedited film where sense data, memory and imagination were unified as director, player and audience.

The sun burned through the Red City reflecting shadows and dust. As men shoveled dirt others hauled bricks in broken wheelbarrows to a lot. A man with bleeding hands laid them to infinity.

Donkeys clipping along a fractured road dragged carts overflowing with boxes of fruit and vegetables. They pulled loads of mattresses, end tables and cabinets to distant destinations.

Homes were all cinder block. Men made the blocks and loaded them on pallets so donkeys could pull them to sites where they waited for generations to finish their education and get to work.

Beasts of burden labored past men and boys repairing bikes and inoperable scooters.

Poor people took bus 11. Walk.

Women with babies strapped to backs drifted through red dust. Old men in jellabas hooded against wind shuffled in bright yellow slippers.

In dusty alleys men chopped tea bought from an old man on his bike offering fresh mint spilling from crushed baskets.

Men crammed leaves into a dented tea kettle, poured in boiling water, threw in blocks of white sugar, closed the lid, filled a small glass, swished it around and poured it back into the kettle with ballet dexterity.

Bad teeth decayed in hungry mouths.

A beggar shuffled past reciting the Qur’an. Waiting to feel a coin his open hand held everything. On Fridays someone gave him Dirhams.

Swarms of flies and starving cats patrolled perimeters near a butcher removing white fat. Young kittens in deserted dark corners waited for inevitable death. Happy children returning from school sampled dates, calendars and centuries. Girls carried fresh kneaded bread to a neighborhood oven for baking. Veiled babbling women haggled with sellers of henna, saffron, turmeric and aromatic spices.

At Djemaa El Fna a dancer in white robes, red sash and maroon hat wearing bells and clappers twirled as friends pounded drums. Sedated white tourists dropped coins in a sorting hat. Europeans entered the show of shows.

A musician played his flute. Black cobras fanned diamond skinheads. Exchange rates were favorable. Water sellers worked crowds selling H2O from goatskin bags. They poured life into jangling brass bowls hanging from their creased necks. Photos with tourists cost extra. 

Packed tour buses competed with humans, petite cabs, grand Mercedes taxis, pedestrians and horse drawn carriages. Desperate shoeshine boys banged on wooden boxes inspecting shoes of idle men sitting in cafes watching idle people watch idle people.

A boy draped in clothing wandered through a cafe trying to interest men to purchase a khaki vest with many pockets, the latest fashion statement. Men wore them buttoned and well pressed with empty compartments. A man tried on a couple. They discussed price. The boy was tired and persistent. The man found a reason or excuse not to buy it because of price, size, or too embarrassed to admit he didn’t really want it or need it. The boy put the vest on a hanger, gathered clothing, trudging toward idle men at another cafe. They read newspapers, drank tea, smoked and chatted with friends in their city oasis.

Red, blue and yellow carpets draped over ochre roof edges created a patchwork of adobe, blue sky, white mosques spires and a cold crescent moon.

Rows of men squeezing orange juice yelled for customers, “Come here my friend, I have what you need.”

Salesmen bagged fresh dates, figs and nuts.

Souk seller beckoned people, “Have a look at my shop.”

Shops were crammed with leather, ceramics, swords, clothing, lamps, rugs, hats, spices, shoes, knockoffs and scented cedar tables.

Men in a one-light bulb heaven scrapped scented wood or pounded leather on steel platforms as well manicured idle wealthy men in clean white shirts, pressed pants and leather shoes slouched near their Berber carpet shops discussing prosperity and idyllic life.

Young men up and down alley mazes competed with each other for Dirhams as young sellers advertised Adidas Berber merchandise. The world was full of merchandise. Buyers and sellers competed for the best steal deal. The art of negotiation played a litany.

Always Be Closing.

At Djemaa a black Cobra gunship helicopter emerged from under a thin goatskin drum to unravel its three-foot long body on a threadbare carpet. When tourists approached, a young boy waved his hand close to the reptile grabbing its attention. Rearing with a flared black hood it weaved with the boy’s gestures. Playing an old game of survival, they danced and darted toward each other. Tourists dropped spare change on the carpet and wandered away to get lost.

An old stoic Berber in shade hoping to sell red yarn played with the dial on his dusty portable radio looking for a new frequency and better reception.

Hustlers plying language skills switched from German to English to French to Japanese trying to initiate conversations with blind tourists. Everybody wanted a slice of a diminished post-9/11 pie.

Humanity floated through broken reed shadows.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Patriots Act Out

War on terror experts discussed tactics and strategies for a play with many acts. A dramatic play with word swords cut to the chase. Some acts were difficult to follow or comprehend. Reviews would be mixed when it ran off Broadway flagging down a Berber caravan inside an air-conditioned nightmare looking for a Caravansary on Route 66.

“What’s the name of the first act?” asked a playwright.

“Patriot,” said General Consensus.

“How does The Patriot Act sound?” said Sir Scribe, a former loan shark and energy consultant.

“I like it, I really like it,” said a general named Attorney. He was a neo-conservative right wing religious fanatic from the State of Misery. “It has teeth with wide ranging subversive constitutional powers perfectly timed for our agenda. Let’s push it down the legislator’s throats. We rule and Control by fear.”

“Does that mean the gag rule will be in effect?” cracked a comedian on welfare.

“Sure does. Anyone who expresses constitutional concern about this act will be blacklisted, ridiculed, ostracized, and labeled unpatriotic. They will never work again in this great beautiful free country. We will revoke their voting rights, cancel their citizenship and deport them to Cuba. I’ve had it up to here with this liberal democratic crap. Our culture is to kill. Take no prisoners. Abuse the hell out of detainees. Lock up all the immigrant children. Tell the tree huggers to take a hike through old growth forests,” smirked Attorney.

“There is no doubt about our honorable intentions. We are on a holy mission. Our destiny is to install democrazy in the Middle Eats,” said chef Boy R. Dumbed Down Dee, “whether they like it or not. They’ll eat what we give ’em or starve. This is an ala’ carte blanche military menu.”

“Perhaps we should we open diplomatic channels?” queried Plame as day, an agent with a blown cover.

Days, weeks, months, years and centuries after 9/11, English hawks warbled to Blare about taking the campaign into winter. They needed hawk food. As predators they knew the terrain, the sweet sound of droning wings whistling through clouds with laser-guided precision. Their talons were sharpened by inherent power, greed and historical imperative. They were ready, willing and able to establish and sustain new empires by spilling native blood. They had the experience of controlling colonies using guns and fear to establish The Rule of Law. They’d raped, pillaged and plundered old world civilizations and would not be deterred in their desire for more money, power and influence.

They were experts at economic terrorism and exploiting natural resources using slave labor.

“Yes, open a channel,” said another covert agent disguised as a Spanish cleaning woman with Romani DNA.

Nonofficial cover was their nom de plume in proprietary front companies conducting espionage and money laundering. Fronts were social web networks, airlines, travel agencies, blood banks, world currency exchanges, military and civilian courts, oil and gas companies, construction firms, NGOs, global telecommunications, shipping firms, brothels, juke joints, casinos, tailors, beauty salons, crematoriums, mortuaries and cemeteries.

Everyone in the food chain was expendable.

The downside was being left out in the cold if their cover was exposed to compliant media sheep and the public. Accountability disappeared. A hard rain fell.

A buttoned down butler brought experts a mandate appetizer. They dug into their personal caves of hunger. They had Neolithic tools at their disposal. A laughing axe clogged the garbage disposal. Someone called maintenance.

“Maintenance,” demanded a shrill counter-intuitive defensive individual named Bumsfield with lipstick on his collar from a one-night stand. “Get up here on the triple and bring your torch. Stuff happens.”

“Sorry sir,” said Maintenance. “Stuff happens and my torch is down for maintenance if you get my drift.”

“Drift, draft, fore and aft,” said a divorced right-wing conservative senator up for erection. He washed his hands of the whole affair in dirty water. He threw the baby out with the bath water.

Baby swam into global suffering where 17,000 children died every day from starvation.

4,000 and then send some more American soldiers named Casualty in Iraq and Afghanistan slept their dream of dreams in black body bags.

Agents returned to deep cover operations funneling cash, arms, explosives, uranium-235, and communication gear and cyanide capsules to homeless, nameless volunteers. The number of American veterans committing suicide approached warp speed.

A Spanish black widow with an ear for dialogue mopped stairs and pavement along the narrow Rue Castanets in Cadiz. She dumped water into a gutter. It flowed to the Atlantic evaporated into clouds and rained flowers.

“This is no time to be surrounding ourselves with incompetents. Find someone who knows the lay of the land,” said a junior fellow named Full Bright on a scholarship. He unrolled a parchment for knights to seesaw.

“Now see here,” countered Deli, “what it’ll be gents?”

“Make mine ham on rye,” said El Salvadore reclining on a divan fondling his Dali. She was in no mood for his intentional violation of her writes.

“You know I don’t eat meat,” she said.

“Yes my dearest,” said Salvadore, “I’m well aware of your passion for fruit. You are my passion fruit my darling bed rabbit. Let’s see what’s in the queen’s pantry. Perhaps a nice juicy banana?”

“Yes,” sighed Dali dearest, “peel it down for me. I am your bed rabbit. Skin the bunny honey. Elementary my sweet.”

“Yes, darling, they who want to enjoy a fine fruit must sacrifice its peel. Let’s turn the lights down low and make whoopee.”

Salvadore unrolled a painting. “What do you make of this Pablo?”

“Hmm,” said Pablo, “it’s fairly abstract standing alone. It needs definition, stronger emphasis, a wider range of implicit specific graphic detail.”

“I agree,” said Salvadore, “perhaps broken orange melting time machines. Dashing surrealistic nature enveloping warriors disappearing into exile, fighting real and imaginary foes is needed.”

“Yes, a nice touch, that,” said Pablo. “Many are called few are chosen. We may consider this, my dear colleague, an experiential vision. An extension of a red or blue period.”

“Well put dear friend speaking of the blues. Less is more.”

“Agreed,” said Pablo, “let’s not put in anything extra or take anything extra out.”

“Such a novel concept,” said Don Quixote, an unemployed literary agent sitting on a nag wearing a battered bedpan for a helmet.

“Excellent,” said Salvadore. “My friend Cervantes said the exact words to his companion Pancho. One rode an ass into history. Shall we have a go then?”

“Yes,” said Pablo. “Be my guest. Let’s take a line for a walk with Klee.”

“It’s glee Pablo. Joy. Such a quicksilver tongue you have. Have you thought of a name for your new work my friend?” said Dali.

“Guernica comes to mind,” said Pablo.

“How appropriate,” Dali said combing his exquisite greasy mustache paying lip service. “It will be a classic. It will connect the wild subconscious and rationality. It’ll make you famous, old boy.”

Picasso’s Guernica commemorated the small Basque village of 10,000 in northern Spain. It was market day on Monday, April 27, 1937. In the afternoon waves of Heinkel 51s and Junker 52s from the Condor Legion piloted by Germans blasted Guernica. Survivors found 1,660 corpses and 890 wounded people in the rubble.

“Be that as it may,” said Pablo. “Art historians and critics will have their say hey kid. It will shock supporters of social realism and propaganda art in France and Spain.”

“How did you do it?” said Dali.

“From May 1st to June 4th in 1937 I made forty-five drawings on blue or black paper. I incorporated the bull, the horse, classic bullfighting figures and the lantern from my 1935 Minotauromachy. I used the weeping Dora Maar because she has always been a woman who weeps. Guernica is a bereavement letter saying everything we love is going to die. And that is why everything we love is embodied in something unforgettably beautiful, like the emotion of a final farewell.”

“I still think your vision aspires to greater heights,” said Dali. “Your work contains intuitive fantasies meeting the objective violence of history.”

“You are too kind my dear Dali. People are talking about your work. Your intentional dreams, so strangely manifested, in the way you allowed your subconscious free rein on the canvas. Most amazing, your Persistence of Memory.”

“You are too generous Pablo. I merely reflect the ongoing crisis in society, the surreal absurd nightmare, with shall we say, a twisted rather sordid but truthful elusive creative beast we must acknowledge to allow our perverse authenticity freedom wherever it leads us.”

“So true my friend, for we are only the conduit of the magic,” said Pablo. “We paint with our innermost senses born by authentic visions.”

“We are the mysteries speaking through the mysteries,” said Salvadore.

“We are redrafting the short story called our life,” said Omar.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir