Amnesia

Imagination tells the truth, said Zeynep. It is curious how this beautiful monster evolved. It began in 2010. The working title was Big Work.

It’s raw material, mirrors, reflections, experiences and journeys in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia. The journey is the destination. I’m happy to get it down now and make sense of it later.

Live every day like it’s your last because one day it will be.

My responsibility is to document stories from diverse cultures. A record of people, places and growth with Direct Immediate Experience.

D.I.E.

I will create a small book about Amnesia. I am an experience junky and a hack journalist gifted with the ability to see the future. I murdered many darlings. Some darlings survived. I already revealed I am also a gardener and word janitor collecting vignettes, flash fiction, and diamonds cutting through desire, anger and ignorance, with be-bop jazz poems, dreams, visions, fragments, word plays and miscellaneous elements of truth-story and fiction-memory threads whistling like a blind person in the dark.

This is not a novel. It is not linear characters detest the formulaic A to Z. I am Z and the beginning needs work.

What will you be at night when you reach the end of the road?

It is experimental in nature, like Omar’s literary memoir, A Century is Nothing. In fact, unpleasant as it is and I’ve faced many unpleasant enlightening facts. Part of his epic performance is included here for your dining and dancing pleasure.

Question. Did children invent infinity and eternity? No. They are abstract concepts. Like elastic time. Time is a circle. Children live forever. WE are immortal.

We begin with children’s voices. I say WE because it is everyone. The WE are you and I, us, them, he, she, it, all universal pronouns. Language is communication not rules. Grammar means rules … tedious shit.

One voice many voices. Storytellers. The world is made of stories not atoms. They are essential with heart-mind. Wisdom mind burns bright. The Mind-at-Large spirit is motivation. Karma. Here is one of my kid friends.

Hi. This is the day of my dreams, said Tran, 10, amputee and dust collector, Da Nang, Vietnam.

Let’s create a book, said Zeynep, And we’ll be in it. I am a central scripter because I am young enough to know how much I don’t know which means I don’t know anything the first thing, the last thing, the only thing, the main thing about the literary publishing game.

I imagine literary means being accepted and commercial means selling and establish marketing platforms and becoming addicted to social media because media buys people.

Many humns drown in a glut of low quality information.

I understand the meaning of meaning, subjective truth values, I am curious and question everything and like my friends in this chess game of life experiences I am fearless.

I never take yes for an answer.

Bhaktapur, Nepal

We are Bushido warriors with Zen clarity insight and wisdom. The majority of adults are, in my little clear, concise, precise deadly specific opinion based on empirical experience, tyrants, rigid, autocratic, blind in one eye, easily distracted, idiots, depressed, angry, insecure, resentful, neurotic, suffering from illusions, greedy for money and power and CONTROL and so on. I love their personality and character faults.

They take drugs or escape into phone madness to erase pain and memory. They struggle to forget. They take Soma to BE on a perpetual holiday from mind numbing tedious monotonous life. They become soft and pliable sheep…easily manipulated by viral media machine messages. Burroughs called it The Soft Machine.

Every person counts.

To relieve a low level of fear called anxiety they need a high dosage of feel good prescription drugs and/or phones. Same-same but different.

Here in Turkey, said Z, Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, is prescribed for the nationalist sheep. It is safe, effective, addictive and abused. Adults take the easy way out because they are lazy, anxious and afraid after July 2016. They live their personal FEAR.

Adults boss us around because we are small. Big ones manipulate us through fear, intimidation and bribery. Eat your vegetables and you can have desert.  Don’t tell your parents what happened in the dark chapel and I’ll give you some money. Give me a bottle of expensive French wine and you’ll pass my class.

Give me your daughter and you can have some land. Give me your sword and I’ll spare your life.

I buy your freedom with candy, money and things.

Give me your tomorrows and you can have some food. Give me your soul and you can go to heaven and live with twenty-four virgins after I kill you.

I will give you clothing

shelter and food

if you give up your free speech.

What a great deal. And so on.

Adults think they are omnipotent. They are physical giants but believe you me many are smaller than a neutrino quark in my humble estimation, interpretation, elaboration, shun. This creates a tragedy.

“Life is a tragedy when seen closeup but a comedy in long shot.” – Charlie Chaplin

Book of Amnesia, V1

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

Full Moon

Grazalema.

I was blessed to see many full winter Sierra moons. A bone white marble rode clouds. Undulating valleys dreamed of planting and harvest. Mad as hell caged hunting dogs howled high anxiety below western mountains.  

Grazalema men in sturdy boots carried lifetime labor tools through fields. After dusk when Luna was full they didn’t visit fields, river, forests or mountains. They lived the day. Spirits lived the night. They respected magic and ghosts.

Dogs bayed sunset to dusk. Rising orange clouds danced with a yellow moon. Men passed the cemetario toward harvest.

A heavy open thick bolted brown wooden church door led to the vestibule of an old Republican resistance memory.

A Virgin Mary crying blood decorated the altar. A woman in black performing her daily life penance through action and devotion changed the white lace cloth. She soaked blood out at Roman public baths below the village where water flowed from stoned carved angelic mouths.

A forcestero with a camera obscura passed her. She recognized his ghost. Yes, that’s all it was, a spirit visiting friends.

She blessed herself twice with bird wing fingers at the end of a warm winter day. Sun went home. Egyptian vultures danced in blue. She locked the black gate leading to the crypt. She remembered the forcestero doing his reconnaissance after yesterday’s funeral.

Today he worked in the crypt zone. Four walls held departed. Engraved stones with names, dates, in memoranda of children and adults to 1896. He made images below smoky green eyes of a wild Siamese cat on a red tiled roof.

Crypt construction tools, bricks, cleaning solution, trowels, broken black buckets, and rags dressed empty crevices. Rectangles waited for ornate boxes from a casket factory miles and lives away.

Caskets with simple bronze handles for six pairs of weathered hands. Brown and black religiously lined caskets and satin pillows. Pillows softer than language mumbling living tears. Hearts beat long personal and collective drum solos.

Every heartbeat contains a universe of possibilities.

Caskets in black cars with wreaths of infinite floral scents reached the black gate where they were hoisted on strong shoulders, carried past a palm tree, past a small church, another black gate on rusty hinges and slid into empty domain names. Cold gray cement cavities wore red brick ceilings.

I studied a desolate crypt space. It was long. It was empty. It was cold. It was a permanent change of address marked Eternity.

Leaving death’s shadow I heard men’s tools dig hard winter ground. They were above ground.

Black was the night and cold was the ground.

“Any day above ground is a good day,” whispered a gravedigger.

“I’d rather be a tiger for one day than a sheep for 1,000 years,” chanted a Tibetan monk at Sera Monastery outside Lhasa. He sat on a raised platform swathed in burgundy robes holding the Vajra diamond thunderbolt and bell in his left hand.

Ringing muted tones he chanted sutras. Chanting voices, drums, incense, and bells. After spinning copper prayer wheels pilgrims climbed narrow slick stone temple steps entering through a worn door hanging. Three ornate, copper-plated Buddha’s faced them.

Past, Present and Future Buddha’s contemplated rows of flickering butter lamps, fruit offerings, khata scarves, paper money and coins. Two wooden benches sat against a wall. On the floor was a pan of round clay balls. Devotees took one, rubbed paste on faces and hands, dropping it into a used pan.

They joined people waiting to be blessed. Gathered with bowed heads at the chanting monk’s feet were impatient, playful, devout jostling pilgrims. He cycled through sutras, chanting, touching people on heads with the thunderbolt before pouring holy water on their heads. Long life!

They eased away, others moved forward. He was in a trance state of awareness. Beyond wild.

An old woman in a heavy sheepskin chuba sat down next to a foreigner. Sharing a smile she mumbled kind pure words.

“Namaste. Blessings to you.”

Babbling tongues sang. The bell rang.

After this visualization I returned to Spanish crypts. Humming Estimated Prophet by The Grateful Dead, I manipulated a visual tool recording interments with names, flowers and passages of memory in love, loss, and chiseled historical pueblo connection. I imaged cavity shells of rectangular vacant passages where invisible stories dreamed. They illuminated desire, conflict, ambiguities, metaphors, and silence.

They waited for air to carry them to the listening faithful. Silent stories, silent night of the pious, silent in collective breathing with stories inside stories.

“The rest is silence,” said Shakespeare.

The church woman turned away from shadows crouched over rocky fields, shifting stones, fence plans and pruning dead growth from olive trees along the Rio. She saw her pueblo. Romans cleared fertile land now blanketed with yellow and purple wild flowers. They built stone homes and village roads.

They named it Lacilbula. They designed baths below mountains. Their road wound below towering cliffs. Ten-foot wide dolomite gray scraped stone roads twisted from the pueblo down to the valley. They built towers and walled fortifications with defensive mountains behind them for future legions expanding their empire. Soldiers treading west branched north to Seville or south to Cadiz.

Grazalema men loaded cork on tired tractors. Using bedsprings for gates they built pens for sheep, chickens, dogs, goats, and children. Twisted rusting bed coils lay scattered. Survivors used everything trying to tame poor rocky land. Men assembled fences using blackberry brambles with sharp thorns.

They decorated fences with stones and sticks, recycled old tires, tin cans, metal struts, old cars, discarded cooking stoves and bathtubs. Chipped tubs became watering troughs for livestock. Small stone dams diverted Rio streams to small fields.  Everything was done by hand. Labor worked dawn to dusk, day in day out. Labor cleared erosion’s debris marking land with tools and footprints.

Her husband slept in the Catholic crypt. Dusty light danced through palm leaves. She remembered his final whisper swallowing diamond ice. “I almost wish it were true.”

She was a full silent moon above his bone white memory. Her spirit guide served spirits.

A ghost worked among dead memories. Finished sacrificial rituals he flew above river stoned fields where men worked trust. His cloud vapor danced away from the cemetario.

Spirit energies manifested destiny with a full moon.

Caged mad dogs howled fear in gathering darkness.

A Century is Nothing

Adapt

Adapt, the balloon man lived below the hammam. Yes mam.

Adapt, Adjust and Evolve collected everything for a fire. One morning he flamed his life below a stone memory hut where someone - he didn’t remember whom - lived, worked and expired.

Internal passions blazed yellow and red.

Sparking a majestic canvas Adapt carried his bouquet of air-filled flowers across spring fields firing dawn with pink, red, green, yellow, and blue. Dreaming purple violets and daffodils spilled balloon imagery into children’s retinas.

His voice sang across time’s river, Create like a God, order like a King and work like a Slave.

Walking through spring with Courage, a personal pronoun, his flowing mind-stream movie flashed into around through a fine unknowing knowing starlight universe. Pure images were diamonds in his mind.

First thought, pure thought.

Sky mind.

Cloud thought.

His flaming life energy sang, What is life?

A game of experiences we get to play. Help others.

Expanding energy waves created screaming eagle dancers.

Two Golden Eagles fought in tall grass to dominate a female. Flashing anger with yellow lightning eyes and striking out with a sharp talon she balanced on a strong extended leg. A curving white tip slashed at males circling with desire, cunning and stealth. Pirouetting she danced between them protecting her flank near a fallen tree trunk. Her wings extended over green forests, Uludag, blue shorelines and across oceans.

Nearby trapped behind high voltage fences on a desolate brown hill studded with boulders twenty wolves died of heartbreak.

One wolf’s eyes were a fluorescent emerald green Aurora Borealis retina patina, refracted surreal prisms.

I am a lone wolf, like you, said Lucky. We share an R7 variant dopamine receptor gene DRD4, a chemical brain messenger for learning and reward. R7 is found in 20% of humans.

DRD4-R7 increases curiosity and restlessness, said Lone Wolf. Humans with R7 seek out new experiences with known pleasures, take more risks and explore new places, ideas, foods, relationships, and sexual opportunities. They embrace movement, change, adventure, migration and a nomadic lifestyle. I am dying here. I was born free.

I feel your pain and alienation.

Wolves needed mountains, valleys and wild rivers. They were hungry to escape an artificial prison.

Lucky knew why midnight welcomed Howling Wolf.

Weaving A Life, V1

Book of Amnesia V1

Inarticulate Questions Mill Around.

Editing is form of self-censorship.

Punctuation is a nail…Be the hammer not the nail.

Language is a virus.

Today in the long now WE are literary outlaws. Many people … Multiple selves. A reliable heroine scripter named Zeynep and her storytelling friends.

“The scripter has no past but is born with the text.” – Roland Barthes

They de-storied all the rules. Like deconstruction and postmodern and literary osmosis. Play with it. There are no arbitrary drivel rules.

Five kid characters play literary outlaws. System Analysts. An amanuensis, word janitor, Grave Digger, a blind seer and others in the stream of life share stories. Get it down now and make sense of it later.

Death joins them for laughs. Everyone comes to me at the end.

 Book of Amnesia, V1