Dance

“We climbed up. We descended,” said Zeynep breathing through her shamanic mask.

“Is it carved from tribal memories?”

“Masks are symbolic manifestations in diverse cultures. Mask dance is a ritual, worn in a dance trance. Wearing a mask you become the thing you fear the most, your essential nature. Masks hide a human’s consciousness of fear.

“Dance is about process, becoming from stillness, from nothing. Shiva symbolizes the union of space, time and destruction. Dance is ancient magic. People seeking transformation wear masks representing gods or demons. Dance is the incarnation of energy from the source. We are from the source. Have courage to wear your natural face mask. The entire universe is a vast theatre. Death does not exist.”

“Humans evolved their ability to scheme and deceive behind masks,” said Lucky. “How do they manifest compassion and love without projecting guilt and shame on others while wearing their mask?”

“That's an eternal life quest,” said Z. “It requires daily practice and letting go of ego. Cogito ergo sum. They think their mask is reality. It's not. It’s artificial, an illusion, a myth, a projection of their fear.”

“What's your greatest fear is an essential quest-ion. We become the thing we fight the most. Our true self,” said L.

“My greatest imaginary fear is not experiencing truth and bliss beyond the self, passion and cravings,” said Z.

“That’s Nirvana. You break down before you break through. Authentic people confront their shadow. They evolve as a higher being. Scared, conditioned masked ones project their fears and insecurities onto others. It’s a survival behavior, a defense mechanism to avoid being honest and real. To avoid facing their mortality their darkest fear in room 101 the last room you want to enter, they deceive themselves. They lie to themselves and others avoiding the truth. They mask their pain. Truth is painful. Pain and suffering are different. Pain is a sickness leaving the body. Existence is suffering.”

Desire - Attachment - Loss - Suffering

Desire creates suffering. Kindness is a healing energy.

Your mask eats your face.

“Two critical elements of social intelligence are humor and curiosity. Do you remember James Joyce going into exile with silence and cunning?”

“Yes. He knew how to put seven little words in order. He was a cunning linguist. He said, ‘everything I do is an experiment,’” said Z. Exile is a form of suffering.

“So it is. Survival and creativity are raw instincts. Self awareness separates humans from lower life forms like apes, plankton and sea enemies-anemone fish eating animals and androgynous androids in the deep subconscious.”

“Writers lie for a living. We make stuff up. We write it down. We treat our mental illness every day. We have stories, poems and adventures to finish we haven’t started yet.”

“Imagined or invented conversations and episodes,” said L.

“Literature is a tool for unveiling, not obscuring the truth. It’s the best way to make fun of people.”

“Literary fiction expounds historical truth.”

“I prefer healthy doubt to certainty. I am more interested in traces than object. My notebook is essential,” said Z.

“We are the only animal who laughs and the only animal who knows they will die. We die every day. We imagine our death, our mortality. This fills some with dread, psychological neurosis, paralysis and lack of purpose. For others it’s a release joy and a dance. To live one has to die at least once. Once you die you realize how to live. Freedom is unconditional.”

“Freedom is an absence of choice. Are you a clown? Perhaps a clownfish?” L said.

“Look in your dream mask mirror. You get the face you deserve. Not all the clowns are in the circus. Let’s dance.”

“When you're looking good you're feeling good and when you're feeling good I just live to see your face.”

“We are wise calm lunatics whether we dance or not so we may as well dance. Let’s invent the world. Let’s invent reality. Wisdom-mind of intent not the emotion mind of fire & water.”

“I’m with you. We were born dead and slowly came to life.”

Flame your life.

The Language Company

Ice Girl

  Red dust Banlung town turned windy.

Swirling quality gem stone particles and degrees of indifference spiraled through air.

Redwood slats covered open sewer drains.

  Locals watched Leo with curiosity and suspicion.

They stared from a deep vacuum.

When he made eye contact they glanced away with fear, uncertainty and doubt.

They didn’t see many strangers here.

They listened at 49% or less saying yeah, yeah with panache.

  Leo's questions were constantly repeated.

  Questions grew tired of repeating themselves.

This is so fucking boring, said one question.

We are abused. We are manipulated and rendered mute. Useless.

It's a test, said another question. Patience is our great teacher.

I’ll try, said another question.

Yes, said a question, these non-listeners

have a distinct tendency to say more

and say it louder when they’re leaving,

when their back’s turned away from eye contact and potential real communication.

I’ve seen that too, said a question, who, until this moment had remained silent.

My theory is that it’s because of the genocide and fear. It’s also a delicate mixture of stupidity or indifference, said another question. Why is the most dangerous quest-ion, said one.

  Can you explain, asked a question.

Sure, people ran away to survive. People started running and others would ask them a question like

why are you running, who’s chasing you, where are you going

or what’s the matter or when

did you become afraid or why don’t you

stay longer and the one running would keep going

trailing abstract question words behind them

like memories or disembodied spirits or molecules of indifferent breath.

I see, said a question.

That explains it. Yes, said a question. Being correct is never the point. Tell me why oh my.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Performance Art

Glimmering cube of melting ice
Language of chopsticks
Incense smoke curls
Passing reflections
In death’s mirror

10

Street photographer works the image
 Subject - light- composition
 Move like a ninja
 Geometry angles
Follow the light
Performance art

Grow Your Soul

Writing Adventure

“’I did that,’ says my memory. ‘I can’t have done that,’ says my pride, and remains adamant. Finally memory gives way.” - Nietzsche.

The interpreter in the left brain strings experiences into narratives. A novelist in our heads. A novelist called memory ceaselessly redrafting the short story we call “My Life.”

Writing and telling a story is all about detail and realising the significance of the insignificant.

"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public." - Goethe

...In both Irish and Welsh myth and saga, the art of foretelling the future is an essential part of the story. More often then not, it is to escape their fate, prophesied by the Druid, that leads the protagonists into adventures which inevitably lead them to the fate they seek to avoid. 

...At one point, the narrator irreverently criticizes the author and the book, saying: "You've slapped together travel notes, moralistic ramblings, feelings, notes, jottings, untheoretical discussions, unfable-like fables, copied out some folk songs, added some legend- like nonsense of your own, and are calling it fiction!" - Soul Mountain by Gao

"I want to know one thing. What is color?" - Picasso 

Mother's SHARP TONGUE

Inside Moleskine notes. Hiding under the bed. Slick. No answer. Locked door. Suspicious? More like stupid idiot. Pick up the remains. Tell me a story.

They hope for a lot. They get a little. She disappears. The tease does her job. Just enough desire and temporary distraction - stay down! - no getting down - just enough stimulation as the skinny dude hears her speak - now it's ok.

She's stacked everything on the floor at the end of the bed. This was a dream her uncle told her in the village. "Daughter, you need to be careful in the city. People will cheat you. They are clever. Don't let emotions control you - be reasonable - cold as ice when it comes to business. If you sleep with strangers, know where the exit is."

His scary story imagined a monster under the bed - whispering secrets to her before she fell fall feel asleep.

You have to love a stranger's stupidity, noise, sad face, confusion and chaos. Did he mention irony and entertainment value? So much for a fundamental shift in consciousness. Dying of boredom. Buried with boredom's memory.

Throw the sunset away with syntax. Treat silence with elegant love, respect and dignity.

The orange yellow moon rose.

Is a rose a moon?

How does the moon rise into a black voice of emptiness?

Into endless pyramids of joy with the beauty of simplicity?

Where do butterflies go at night?

Mandalay, Burma

Understory

“Learning is easy. Remembering is difficult. We have storage ability and retrieval capability. Speak memory,” whispered Zeynep in Bursa doodling with magic pens on transparent paper in her elegant universe.

He'd had heard ALL of this before.

“Ha, ha,” he laughed seeing through their world of transparent stupidity temerity fear and never ending sense of confusion and so forth.

He’s seen it in the land of five red star golden Xiamen dragons

spilling black calligraphy ink on parchment and now witnessed it in Asia Minority

where bored tired people ate grilled meat played backgammon

and twiddled retired thumbs as metro cars

carried morose living dead humans dressed in black

mirroring their soul out to industrial wastelands

on the far edge of Ankara, before returning at night

filled with heavy hand carved simple wooden

caskets spilling wasted youth from the PKK war front near Serious on the Iraq border.

Gravediggers and headstone carvers had steady work everyday everywhere.

Emergency crews pried a suicidal man from below Bursa subway engines after being struck by lightning.

He walked through an old expansive cemetery. It was spring. Wild flowers, white headstones, names, dates, and memories rested below tall pines and thick evergreens.

A woman sat on a grave pulling weeds. Tending soil. Nearby, her friend, sister, mother, aunt and grandmother from Asian Steppes speaking Tamashek whispered to a child, "She is cleaning the spirit entry. She is drumming remembering."

The child sang to the woman on the grave, "Auntie! Auntie," but the woman didn't say anything. She played soil like a drum. She was sad remembering her son, father, husband, uncle and grandfather. Their love and kindness.

Her tears watered red, yellow and white roses. A thorn pushed a white haired woman in a wheelchair along a path inside a humid rain forest covering 6% of the planet.

Smoke from burning bamboo and coconut leaves circled it's veins through a heart's four clamoring chambers. Smoke and love echoed from the Forest Floor to the Understory, rose to the Canopy and emerged through the Emergent.

Bird of Paradise, Eagles and Macaws lived here.

He passed chiseled stones wearing Arabic script.

There was a quick explosion of metal on stone. A man with a sledgehammer pounded a collection of memories around a grave. He paused, removed fragments and slammed his sledgehammer again.

The sun went into hiding. It rained. A woman played musical notes on Earth.

Kathmandu, Nepal