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Suicidal Clare
A cell phone sang on the train between Marrakesh and Tangiers.
Omar rummaged in his robes. A depressed suicidal woman named Clare in Washington State was on the Suicide Hot Line. It may as well have been shit out of luck S.O.L. He switched from Arabic to English.
“Yes?”
“I am trying to save my insecure relationship from jealousy.”
“Jealousy’s a disease. It eats people alive. What are you looking for?”
“I am looking for love and meaning. Can you help me?” She had all the questions.
“I am only an emissary between people. Between you and your dream.”
“It’s a nightmare. What’s going to happen to me?”
“You’d best be prepared for armies of touts, hustlers, beggars, thieves and economically loveless destitute men. They will want to escort, guide, lead, and administer their opportunity,” he said.
“Will they be gracious or benevolent with their tricks, traps, deviations and detours offering fake potential to save me? Will their well formed greed based on my desire, an illness of imaginary needs plead for my attention deficit disorder?”
“Yes. Eight hours on the ground in Morocco will seem like twenty-four. You’ll become a character in your own low budget film. It will open in small art theaters. You’ll be all the characters in the comic tragedy.”
Listening to Omar, I imagined everything as the suicidal woman’s voice assaulted the blind man.
Clare was too poor to pay attention.
She was beat. Omar knew Clare would be an expendable extra in an independent film. If she didn’t get real smart real fast she’d be lost in the drama. She needed a new identity theory. She’d change her name to Clarification.
The story was complicated with many jump cuts.
I remembered Ann, a New York literary agent’s advice. “Keep the big themes in mind and give us strong narrative structure.”
“Why? It’s not linear or logical.”
“I can only represent you if your work has these ingredients. Publishers want books for a general readership. It’s a tough market now. 175,000 books were published in this country last year.”
“I’ve survived markets in many countries Ann. It’s a miracle I’m alive to tell the tale. Traditional publishing is all about marketing, branding, product, price and placement with a hook.”
“True. It’s too disjointed and sporadic as it stands. You need to express more artistic and emotional beauty. I expected more from your time in Vietnam. I want to feel what you felt. I want you to expose your vulnerability. I want to detect patterns and opportunities.”
“Vietnam was FUBAR, Ann. Like Iraq, like any conflict.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.”
“Oh, I see.”
“This is honest work Ann. Memoirs and stories are about hunger. Some are even about food. This is edgy gonzo shit. It blends creative nonfiction with memoir, travel writing, literary journalism, social autopsy, and magical realism. I’ve asked myself, who or what has come alive? I’ve let it speak. I’m a conduit.”
“Tighten it up and send me your revisions. You can’t be a one-trick pony in this business. I need to make 15% off your genius because I’m the expert. What else are you working on?”
“At the moment I’m traveling with Omar, a blind Touareg Berber from Morocco who lives in a Spanish cave with a tribe of survivors after 9/11. He’s one hell of a storyteller and we’re sharing tales. He’s given me a stack of paper higher than Everest to read and revise. His daughter is a word-weaver working on a new narrative structure in an isolated Spanish pueblo. Together we’ve weaved 180,000 words so far. It’s about levels of personal and spiritual awareness, emotional growth, 9/11 repercussions, economic terrorism, religion, cultural prejudice, and healing.”
“What’s your hook in fifty words?”
“How oral traditions, myths, and truths are passed in verbal form from generation to generation in a metaphorical way. Stories are primarily a comic vehicle for moral instruction or spiritual guidance. Tragic narratives have been overused since the Greeks and Europeans. A tribe’s customs and structure...Themes are healing, authenticity, awareness, alienation, loneliness, boredom...it’s just a fucking book for God’s sake ...sheets of paper inside two pieces of cardboard...we’re breaking up Ann. I can’t live with him and I can’t live without him, this blind muse of a seer. I’ll call you when I get back to the states of conspicuous consumption. To the states of amnesia.”
Meanwhile, Clare changed long distance carriers to get a better plan. She failed to plan and planned to fail.
She whispered to Omar on a tenuous connection, “I played a willing manipulative victim. I wanted to kill myself. I wanted people who loved me to feel guilty and responsible for my suffering. My life is fear and ignorance. I collapsed inside my chaos, fear and grasping. I had to ask for help.”
“I see,” said Omar in a clear clairvoyant voice.
“I tried a walking meditation. It was really hard. I crawled. I walked. I tried to run. I collapsed into the quicksand of my neurosis. I wanted to fly like an eagle. My monkey mind went nuts. I slowed down sensing a new beginning inside me, inside my life. I walked on the curvature of the earth.”
“Marvelous. You have to break down before you break through.”
“I need to see you,” she said. “Where can I find you?”
“At Paleolithic caves south of Ronda.”
Before their connection died Clare related a quick story.
“There was a horrific accident.”
“What happened?” Omar knew what he didn’t know.
God and Allah and the devil are in the details.
“Crazy men took planes and crashed them into city sky scrapers. The big apple.”
“I see.” He paused to hear more. It was a learning tool he picked up moving through the world’s worst nightmare manifesting historical fairy tales where Poverty and Wealth raised children named Expectations.
“Yes,” she said, “it was shocking.”
“Has the healing started?”
“Healers are working overtime. It’s going to take forever,” she stammered.
“Yes,” he said, “17,000 children in the world starve to death every day. Poverty is the real terrorism.”
“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know that.”
“It’s just a thought.”
She couldn’t believe he didn’t know. Media masters in her right wing country had assembled their militant word/image arsenal and persuaded, cajoled, sold, exchanged, blasted, admonished, punished, harangued and scared them shitless, informing them how it affected their little world.
They ate fear like there was no tomorrow.
She was one weak sister. Being depressed and suicidal didn’t help. Friends, family and media convinced her the world was one huge scary place and she was a small expendable organism. Her habitat was on a well-exploited fault line. They sold her fear, healthy doubt and compassionate uncertainty in a nice neat little package. She consumed the whole enchilada.
“Omar and his friends knew many would remain in their complacent darkness,” said a veiled woman in the compartment.
They turned to her.
“It was very comfortable there. They would always live in shadows, oblivious to historical truths blinded by five senses, colors, sights, sounds, vibrations and frequencies. They were transparent sheep. It went right through them. Clear through.”
“How do you know this?” said Omar.
“Their world is made of glass, their vision obscured by ignorance and compliant stupidity. They needed a large dose of painkillers and glass cleaner for their belief windows. Tears softened their pain. They wiped down the days of their demise,” she said looking out windows flashing their reflections. She had old deep wise eyes.
“How do you see this prophecy?” said Omar.
“My name is Rose. I am a seer. I was born in the dark of the moon. I remember the future.”
“Where do you come from and where are going?”
“I’m like you and your companion here. Passing through.”
The three of us were very comfortable with the dark arts, energies and manifestations.
The Heart Sutra said, ‘emptiness was form and form was emptiness.’
Thorn Responsibility
I’m filled with wild passion. A mind-expanding drug of curiosity, delight and freedom increases my awareness. The eternal present is a long now.
My power is big medicine. It’s a sacred connection to Gaia after 60,000 years of paying attention to details.
I observe a spider meticulously wrapping an insect with thin microfilaments. Spider recycles her old web on the periphery. They haul it to a diamond center. It vibrates in a soft breeze.
Does the spider have any intention when building the web of catching the insect? Does the flying insect have the intention of finding the web? Where does instinct end and intention begin? One instinct is to sit in patience. Another instinct is to take risks.
To do great things you must take great risks and suffer greatly.
JUMP over the abyss.
My serenity is not purchased over the counter with pharmaceutical coupons. No dust collects on my mirror reflecting an elegant universe in my heart.
In my expanded state I am a breath of fire, a lightning bolt sacrificing fear, doubt and uncertainty. I shatter myth. Lightning bleeds off my charge creating transformation.
I am an unemployed fortuneteller. I am ahead of the future. The day after tomorrow belongs to me.
I am a gravedigger/archaeologist. Soil is my groundwork. Look at my hands. I know two things. See good dirt under fingernails. I am the soft sand of sleep calming tortured hearts.
Abracadabra! My feminine nature hurls her lightning bolt even unto death. She is a death deferred. She is on death row with a short reprieve. My tranquility is a lethal injection of travel.
It’s 100 degrees in blistering sun. I work hard and fast pounding typewriter keys, digging graves, discovering artifacts.
I dust history off of history. I destroy the present to discover the past.
I hammer keys in a new form of construction business. Before bits, bytes and gadgets. The world is made of stories, not atoms.
Shovels plow archaeological deserts reflecting passion and curiosity. An archaeologist inside a tomb waving Diogenes’s lamp yells, “Every bit we dig out tells a little more about the story.” They unearth a story revealing communities, customs and cultures.
A digger explains how it works. “This stuff we roughly estimate is between 1,800 to 1,990 years old. We use a method called carbon dating. It measures the amount of carbon-14 remaining in ancient material.”
“What is it?”
“Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon found in all organic matter. Scientists determine the age of fossils and artifacts by comparing test results to an international standard. We’ll send it to a lab for analysis.”
“Beautiful. Let me know what you discover, what you learn.”
Tourists find. Travelers discover.
Explorers sift discoveries through mesh screens. A delicate camel hairbrush caresses historical fragments. They dig toward 8,000 well-rested Chinese terra-cotta warriors in battle formation standing ready for excavation.
Chariots, horses and supplies with trapped Mandarin survivor voices echo toward the surface causing vibrational shifts.
Confucian scholars join them. Buried since 210 B.C., guarding Qin Shi-huang-di, the first Emperor of China, their collective consciousness breath creates tremor waves near Xian, the capital of Imperial China.
Warriors stand silent on the edge of the Gobi desert along the Silk Road. Voices sing swirling word storms. They hear brushes shovels, earth moving equipment and hammering keys approach their hidden truth.
“They are coming for us,” said a warrior.
In my inner garden of crimson stimulus I tend wild roses. Nostrils scent sense. I have a responsibility to the thorns.
Danger! Mines!
One morning June traveled along another dusty red road and stopped at a village shop selling the usual bags of soap and bananas. A young girl wore a t-shirt. It had a picture of a skull and bones.
It said:
Danger! MINES!
She wore a permanent tear on her left cheek. She was not smiling.
She said, here I am. I communicate my reality to the world. Do you like my shirt?
Can you read words or do you need a picture? How about a picture of a picture?
I don’t know how to read so I like to look at pictures. My country has 14 million people and maybe 6-10 million land mines. Adults say there are 40,000 amputees in my country. Many more have died because we don't have decent medical facilities.
Mines are cheap. A mine costs $3.00 to put in the ground and $300 - $1,000 to take out of the ground.
I'm really good at numbers. Talk to me before you leave trails to explore the forest. It's beautiful and quiet. I know all the secret places.
I showed my picture to a Cambodian man and he didn't like it. They call this denial. He said it gave him nightmares. He’s seen too much horror and death in one life. So it goes.
My village is my world. Where do you live?
*
Reports from the killing fields indicate there are 110 million land mines buried in 45 countries.
It will cost $33 billion to remove them and take 1,100 years. Governments spend $200-$300 million a year to detect and remove 10,000 mines a year.
Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Iraq and Afghanistan are among the most heavily mined countries in the world.
Khmer New Year
On New Year’s Day a Kampot guesthouse mother in blue cotton teddy bear pajamas decorates the family altar with cans and bottles of soft drinks, coconuts, durian, perfume, two crystal glasses of milk, candles, candy, bread, rice, oranges, apples, water, incense, photos of dead relatives, cockroaches, howling vicious canines, baboons, balloons, clouds, clones and clowns.
She has a terrible temper. Genetic truth. She is one of a million plain sad angry women. She turns on the TV. LOUD. Her daughters, 4, 6, are entranced and captivated by the visual circus. They never read books.
This is weird because their father was a bookseller in the capital for six years. What happened to literature, what happened to paper, books and education?
Now he sleeps alone having performed his sexual duty, rents out rooms and roars around the forgotten river town on a soaped up 125cc noise machine to alleviate his boredom, spinning his intellectual wheels, pretending to be important making noise, stirring up dust.
Survivors read empty streets on swivel necks. Survivors read food. Survivors read money. Survivors read blank faces in rear view mirrors. Survivors fall in love with their reflection pretending it is real. Hello Beauty. Survivors read the sky for rain.
Survivors read mad dogs yapping, growling, fighting and fucking in the middle of empty black streets without electricity. Screaming survivors read kick boxers killing each other on television. Survivors read their face squeezing pores in a bike mirror Waiting For Godot.
A guesthouse idiot box and cell phones allow the kids, servants, tuk-tuk drivers, families and foreign rats their big chance to give up their consciousness. Another distraction, another day on new years day.
April fools is a new day, replete with new diversions and new superficial heart breaking distractions of immense random chance as people pretend to be busy. Pretending to be busy is a full time job with no social security benefits.
People sing we are pretending to be exactly who we are because we have no initiative or incentive or ambition. We are the offspring of genocide survivors in a fairy tale. Tra-la-la.
On new year TV scream day Angkor Wat Hindu dancers in gold lame silk dresses with towering headdresses perform ancient rituals. Apsara fingers, delicate hand and finger food movements. They celebrate 1,000 tears and years of seasons, fertility, rice, fish, nature, courtship and joy. They are dancing storytellers.
