Imagine
Share Article 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, being all of 18 now, which is INFINITY standing sideways…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.
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. Coup de ta da. 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
