Pay Attention

A monk asked Yang-chi.

How to escape the clamor of the mind?

Read the ancient text.

What is the ancient text?

The moon is bright in space. The waves are calm on the ocean.

How does one read it?

Watch your step.

*

Creative Hanging Out by Tran

Please put the blue sky on the white table. It is fragile and creased along the horizon.

Pay Attention.

There are:

People who want to control you

People who want to blame you

People who want to distract you

Samuel Beckett was very precise. He didn’t want theories or any level of intellectualization. He paid a lot of attention to the tone of voice and to the relationships among the characters. He cared a great deal about the silences and the pauses. It’s as beautiful as the chance encounter on an operating table of a sewing machine and an umbrella, the essence of surrealism.

Freedom is being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience, said David Foster Wallace.

DFW had the courage to express in absurd detail what it feels like to live, observe and experience life. He knew many humans lacked the sincerity and honesty to really voice their awareness. He gave us deep exquisite work and then checked out. He suffered from depression. Pale King.

Every feeling waits for its gesture. Gestures use people as their instruments, bearers and incarnations. Impressions exist in a distinct serene zone of imprecise calculation. Observations dance with empirical data structure. Art, symbols and metaphor.

Language is a virus, like C-19.

Blue dragonfly eyes create a lightning bolt. Flashes of brilliance in the DNA helix reveal spiritual and truth-value meaning in your play. The poetic inspiration rebels against science and math.                                 

Dancing color spectrum

Jellyfish aqua laughter smells sweet fresh cut grass

Yellow butterfly voices perspiration’s inspiration

Transparent wave energies wash your interior/exterior dream

I love to doodle, said Zeynep. It’s my meditation. Everyone doodles their noodle while splashing in their life puddle.

Good travel writing is The Art of Creative Hanging Out, said Tran.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Natasha From Kiev

Zeynep said, I read about how women are treated in many countries. Here in Turkey health care workers report 65% of all wives are beaten by their husband.  It’s considered normal behavior because women are treated as property.

We’ve all read stories about arranged marriages, child marriages and the desperate plight of women on Earth. Men never learned how to kiss and make up, the women know about makeup and suffering in silence, women are literally and figuratively screwed, she said.

I tell the truth. I don’t have to remember what I said, said Rita.

Zeynep’s story about domestic abuse reminded Omar of Natasha.

On September 1, 2001, ten short days before an Apocalypse in the big apple, passengers at the Amsterdam airport waited for their flight to Casablanca. There was Your Self, a Moroccan man from Fez living in San Francisco going home to see his family after many years. He would stay three months.

There was a woman from Kiev with her 5-year-old son. Her name was Natasha, tall, slim and beautiful. She was married to a Moroccan man. They’d met at the university in Kiev and now he lived in Amsterdam. She had not seen him for three years and he didn’t know his son. He did not come to the airport to see her because he didn’t have the correct papers nor was she able to leave the airport and see him because she lacked the correct papers so she waited for her flight to her new home.

Natasha had heard rumors, myths and fabricated lies about her fate but had never seen it because she was blind. She was taking her son to Morocco where they would meet her husband’s family and live. She did not speak French or Arabic.

Her cheap red, white and blue plastic Russian baggage fell apart at the seams. Her son pissed his pants leaving a trail of urine in the departure lounge. Natasha was beside herself.

I’d finished a draft of A Century is Nothing that summer. I was jumping through a window into hunting and gathering adventures discovering new material.

Everyone spoke the same language as unanimous night collapsed around roaring planes leaving gravity taking people somewhere. We were buried at graveyard gate 54D, miles from gleaming duty free shops with exotic perfumes, electronics, banks, casinos, toy stores, restaurants, diamond rings, watches, customs, clothing stores.

Wealthy shoppers carried yellow plastic bags saying, Buy and Fly.

A homeless Asian elf dragged a purple bag saying, Buy & Cry.

A destitute shadow of a former self had a clear bag saying, By the By.

An orphan had an empty bag saying, Why Tell Me Why.

No one in particular had Papa’s Gotta Brand New Bag.

Everyone carried his or her bag of skin & bones to the graveyard.

At midnight in Casablanca passengers walked through a towering hall of intricate inlaid blue mosaic tiles and waterfalls. Huge framed images of a smiling monarch watched people.

Customs was a formality and the baggage conveyer belt broke down as frustrated passengers waited. Small wheels on useless baggage trolleys were bent and stuck. They careened left and right as people wrestled impossible loads through nothing to declare green zones toward friends and relatives.

I helped Natasha load her broken bags on a cart and she disappeared into humanity with her son. Her husband’s Berber family approached - his father, mother, brother-in-law and grandmother in traditional jellabas. They welcomed her with a hug speaking words Natasha did not understand. They scooped up the boy. As the old couple walked away I knew they would take him forever, this progeny of theirs, their DNA connection to their son.

Natasha, an alien aberration in their world would be relegated to a harsh new reality. She moved into their world with a Ukrainian passport, speaking an unknown tongue to be a slave serving her new family. She would be many things to them. They would manifest their loss on her. She’d carry water and chop wood. She’d cook, clean and slave away. Fate gave her new opportunities.

She’d carry their fading light, hopes, dreams and memories. Their grandson would realize everything. They disappeared into a sprawling chaotic city of five million.

Their son in Holland relied on his mobile. He could do no wrong. He was a grand man in their eyes and hearts. Many women came and went in his dark eyed nomadic destiny life. When Natasha was trapped in the airport he was with a prostitute and he didn’t have the correct papers anyway. He wasn’t lying when he said his family would take care of her.

Omar whispered this fairy tale to Natasha. She didn’t believe it.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Books

I invite them to Phu Bai. We stood in the shade of the old small faded airport building. It’s a clear memory of my arrival when I was a green nineteen. I needed to see and feel the area again.

I’ve carried a copy of Omar’s book, A Century Is Nothing from Turkey to Indonesia to Nam. I considered making a sacrifice in Nam. Burn it.

First thought, pure thought, said a Zen monk.

Together with Omar we used fire, crucible alchemical combinations, diversities, sweat, blood and tears to create it so I’d use fire to release it.

Save books, build a library.

Books are universes of ideas, experiences, feelings, visions and paths, destinations obliterated through discovery, reminding memory. They are worlds of dreams, stories, dramas, plays, songs, histories and guides into new visceral experiences.

Pages sing their laughter with wisdom, song, and poetry. Grow Your Soul.

Live forever with paper’s tactile sensation. Voices of reason, comedy and tragedy are skintight drum stories. They are oral transmissions recorded on parchment, vellum and illustrated manuscripts in Gaelic talking tongues, etched on Sumerian clay and painted on Asian scrolls.

I didn’t burn it. Down the road I gifted the brick to three Asian women passing through Saigon in late 2009. They had Chinese ancestry from Hong Kong and lived in Australia. I said a blind friend named Omar wrote it so I signed it laughing letting it go with them.

Thanks for the book.

You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy it.

It took all three to carry it. They staggered up guesthouse stairs with the epic opus. After breaking down a wall they struggled to get it through an opening.

People need to break down before they break through.

They discarded cheap Vietnamese souvenirs to maneuver the monster into a bag. We’ll have to check this beast all the way to Sydney.

People use words to make walls, said Zeynep.

People use words to make bridges, said Rita.

Bridges over walls, said Devina. It’s a mind map.

Show someone a rectangle, said Z. Ask them is this a door or a wall?

When you build a wall think of all the things you leave outside, said Tran.

Yes, said Leo who knew a lot about dynasties and firewalls.

Some veterans return to Europe, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and the South Pacific. Others remember to forget or forget to remember returning in their memories, dreams, reflections, flashbacks and nightmares. Some write it down and make sense of it later.

Don’t try. Do.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

– Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BCE)

Akiko

The fear of living, observing and experiencing in absurd detail where others lack the self-scrutiny or courage to voice them, said David Foster Wallace.

Sheep fear watching other people make things happen and not knowing what the fuck is going on, said Z. Sheep and robots fear taking a risk.

They know it’s easier to do nothing than take a chance, said Leo.

I cut useless meaningless vague words blocking the narrative river. I am innocent, happy, empty and brave. I am not afraid to make wise selections when it comes to editing this massive amount of verbiage, said Zeynep.

Where’s the burn bag, said the janitor.

I fear Room 101, said Winston Smith in 1984.

Leo - In Utopia we learn the less we do the fewer mistakes we make. The fewer mistakes we make the less we are criticized. I remain safe and happy. It’s called THE SYSTEM. Brainwashed. You see this in all Asian education systems. Students shuffle in, remove their brains, soak them in a cleaning solution that is not the solution for fifty tedious minutes and replace said gray matter at the end of class. It’s endemic. Social conditioning.

A teacher is Parent #2.

Big Brother is watching. Save face.

The fear of humiliation is greater than the fear of death, said Death.

Karma is the universal law.

Will your characters discuss moral ambiguities? Yes. They will speak with nouns and verbs and use specific adjectives for description, playing with words like Joyce. They will play with ideas, like Borges, said Zeynep.

Attributes of good ideas said Devina.

a.         Simple

b.         Unexpected

c.         Concrete

d.         Credible

e.         Emotional

f.          Story-containing

Good writing is clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. There are people who talk about things, people who talk about people and people who talk about ideas, said Z. The life of the mind. A wave in the mind.

Is a place a character, asked Tran, Sure, said Devina, A place has character like Kampot, Cambodia, a sleepy river town, famous for pepper, Sunflower’s hands, Milling Around and the SIGN ones, said Rita.

Writers use a specific location in their work, said Omar. Cadiz, Spain worked its way into my morning pages. I traveled with a word butcher after the Spanish Civil War. His laughing axe synthesized metaphors of death sacrifice and letting go. His mirrors became gifts (hello beauty) and gifts multiplied gifts with gratitude.  

The gift keeps moving. It was imperative to leave the united states of confusion and Morocco behind.

Exile suited my spirit. It was the irony of ironies, pressed irons with heavy starch in the collar please I told the world’s dry cleaner. Wash and wear. Dry a tear.

Nothing is true & everything is permitted, Omar said to Akiko, a Japanese fashion designer in Cadiz.

Everything is permitted with fabric and threads she said naked in the dark exploring their personal puzzle maps, tracing contours through the Sierras in Andalusia toward beaches woven with linen and silk. They were two orange and black butterflies dancing in a courtship ritual. They slept together in a Hokkaido love hotel filled with mirrors.

At 2 a.m. Cadiz garbage workers in fluorescent yellow tiger stripes collected discarded words along narrow streets.

Omar wrote the morning down as sky painted orange, pink and cerulean colors. A crescent moon hung in the west. He walked down Benjumeda Street as uniformed school kids gripped parental hands passing veiled grandmothers wearing widow market black at intersections on their daily economic briefing. Roman cobblestones rested in white shadows. Cool clear air dusted lungs.

The Plaza de Falla Moorish red brick extremities shimmered in soft light. Arches formed prayer hands. Golden, cast iron, bronze, brick, tile, and papier mâché arch models in the world prayed for non-violence, dialogue, a ceasefire and arms control. Arms out of control waved goodbye to sanity and millions of orphans.

Weary serious sad med students gripping texts crossed plazas toward class. Matriculation was a fading dream. Two men grimaced a ladder past a hospital and a fortune teller selling lottery tickets. Gambling was a big deal in Cadiz. Machines in bars with three virgin cherries rotated. ONCE lottery tickets bought the population where 40% were unemployed.

Pay now pray later. The best is yet to come, said an unemployed Roma fortune teller. A nurse in white perfection entered a cafe for coffee. Old people hobbled in and out of a hospital. A woman left the hospital carrying one crutch. Needing Grave Digger she walked past an ambulance.

I’m busy, he said, See my calloused hands.

Death stood watch 24/7 in the big leagues.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Giants

Try this, said a famous short story writer named Raymond Carver. Write 25 words. Cut it to 15. Cut it to 5. This is what dead editors and hatchet men did to my work.

Let me try, said Leo…here are 25…Once upon a time there was a tribe of orphans from Asia who escaped from captivity and abusive life where they were forced to … (haul shit, fuck evil men, work in a factory making electronic gadgets)

Fine. Next?

Let me try, said Tran. Here are 15 … A tribe of orphans escaped the tyranny of forced labor and ran away to be.

Good. Next?

Let me try, said Rita. Here are 5 … The scared orphans ran away.

Precise, said RC, Keep it simple and short. Shorter is better. Less is more. Short, fast, deadly.

Character is action, said Omar. In a novel words reveal a character’s action. It’s internal and meditative. On stage in a play it’s all action. Writers say what others are afraid to say. They write naked. They write in blood. They write in exile. See and smell their fear strength and authenticity. Heavy, deep and real. HDR. Communicate without Voice words. WE sense their authenticity. Writers confront their mental illness every day.

They love SIGN language. Gestures. Their awareness is misunderstood when speaking in SIGN because Speaking people ignore you. Voice Ones are illiterate and interrupt each other. See their fear being alienated, bored and alone. See, taste, hear, smell their fear to BE deaf, dumb and blind.

How do people cope using gestures, said Devina. Gestures control people. Voice Ones talk over each other in their neurotic way. Loud and louder is their mantra. The loudest one is the BIG winner. Congratulations.

Here are my fears said Rita: The fear of living in Cambodia where you are always afraid looking over your shoulder and seeing the past with hard eyes because you have no imagination after twenty years of pure survival instinct with no incentive no initiative facing nightmare futures. You are afraid someone will sneak up behind you and kill you. You suffer from fear and superstition. 1.7 million ghosts swarm around you. Day in. Day out. We’re talking about some serious long-term trauma with a side order of shame and guilt. It will take another generation to clean our consciousness.

Rita: When I grow up, I will be a Fear & Superstition Manager. I’ll have booth on a red dusty road with an F & S sign. People will give me their fear(s) and superstition(s). I won’t say anything  ... I’ll smile and accept it. Thank you. Healed, they continue on their way. I burn it.

For example, they fear someone shows up in the middle of the night while they dream of peace and freedom and kills them. They fear armed strangers raping their screaming wife and daughters while they watch. They fear someone cutting out their tongue. They fear someone in their family not returning from the killing fields.

They suffer the fear of remembering & the fear of forgetting. They fear memory.

They fear losing their children, said Rita. They fear having no imagination. They fear asking why…They fear being distracted by stimuli in the environment … They fear controlling their environment … They fear their environment because it controls them … They fear living in Asian countries where, due to circumstances inside the control of aliens, parents, teachers and authority figurines they live in perpetual childhood.

Adults keep you there with fake dependency & emotional abuse. They teach you fear. You eat fear three times a day. Delicious fear they say. Have some more. They are the great manipulators. Adults are giants with giant voices and giant control techniques. They threaten you with fear of pain, shame and guilt. It’s a vicious circle.

Life is a circle, a Fibonacci spiral.

The Wheel of Life is the universe.

The universe is transformation. Life is an opinion.

When you meditate you are free from rebirth. Humans need love. Humans need compassion, kindness and empathy. They need to talk less and draw more. It’s a social and cultural thing. Giants never learned how to read or write. Giants fight, eat, fuck and sleep.

Un Pleasant factoid: 69 million children worldwide of primary school age will not  go to school this morning or tomorrow, next week, or next year.

I fear struggling to join the rising middle class in _______ without political connections and getting a degree in business, said Rita. After authority figures said a business degree was essential thousands got one. Many graduates don’t speak or care to learn English for future opportunities where they need it. They’re stuck working in dead-end paper pushing menial jobs, sweeping dreams, chopping vegetables, doing boom-boom, sleeping or slaving in the tourism sector.

They need English to speak with foreigners or to get a job.

A teacher makes maybe $1K a month minus bribe fees. They lack initiative. They fear losing control facing tiny sheep and acting like a fool in the theatre of life.

People fear questioning authority in Utopia before they execute you with a bullet in the back of your brain, said Leo speaking of historical awareness. I dance like nobody’s looking.

Yes, said Rita, I fear meeting my hungry ghost in a country where you:

a) are completely lost

b) have no comprehension what people say

c) suffer paranoia, a terminal disease

d) enjoy tedious ennui boredom carving a niche in your soul and you crave endless electronic distractions and gadget sensory overload

e) need food, water, clothing and shelter from the storm

f) have a humbling life changing experience of magnificent proportions    

g) hear a bell signifying enlightenment and satori, said Omar

Book of Amnesia Unabridged