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A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
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Thursday
Dec142023

Let's Go Shopping

“The fact is,” mused Phil a philosopher of unknown erudite style and substance, “the people who are most resilient have a learning reaction, not a victim reaction to bad events. The question is do they have a learning and coping reaction or a victim and blaming reaction?”

“Resilience is more spiritual, said Raven. “It means going back to your childlike nature, your curiosity and questioning nature, your playfulness, the innate morality and nobility that children have.”

“I am a teacher, ana usted,” said Ahmed, a Touareg Berber in Tamashek dialect.

“My tribe lives in the Souss valley southwest of the High Atlas Mountains. It is a land of two races. We are called Imazighen. We speak Tashelhit or Chleuh. Our written language is called Tifignagh. North Africa has been our home since before the Arabs. Our culture is 4,000 years old. Between the 11th and 13th centuries we had two great dynasties - the Amoravids and the Almohads. They controlled large parts of Spain and all of northwest Africa.

“Berbers traditionally maintained an oral culture and transmitted storytelling and song from generation to generation. We became internally displaced persons or IDP according to the United Nations. We had no knowledge of the United Nations. Our language is eye contact, gestures, sky, sand, silence and community.”

“How did you get here?”

“I walked. Touareg nomads migrated from Mali, Southern Algeria and Mauritania. Prior to 1956 there were six million Touareg on nine million square kilometers of desert. Before borders when there was no government control of movement. Now there are 7,000-10,000 in the Sahara Occidental. We call ourselves Imohagh or Imajughen, the noble ones.”

He wore a fine blue cotton robe. His eyes were far away. “Hurl your lightning bolt even unto death,” he said.

Abracadabra.

*

Centuries earlier or later depending on reference points along Time’s thin line on an event horizon as infinity and eternity played post 9/11 dirges, fugues, and blues with a full orchestra in the pits Ahmed resumed his story in the Sahara.

“Fate bites you when you least expect it,” he said waving his hands like wild kites. “Her appetite is insatiable.”

I was removed from 9/11 reality at Ground 0.

I took no possession of that event. I read Ahmed’s open palms and eyes. My facility for unspoken tongues was legendary. It was all body language and I was fluent in every language. Gestures were a work in progress.

Gestures use people.

Ahmed described airplanes and two tall towers. “I’ve read Superman by Nietzsche in Arabic. He said ‘God is dead’ and God said, ‘Nietzsche is dead.’”

He waved his arms like a Moroccan eagle condemned to freedom yet a prisoner of the sheltering sky. He raised a hand indicating height and smacked his flying hand into his stationary hand. The impact echoed across caramel dunes. He smiled through black teeth. His dark eyes held all the world’s secrets.

I had no idea where, who, how, why, or when Ahmed received his information. Perhaps from slave and gold trade caravans, perhaps through osmosis.

“Yes,” Ahmed said, “2,974 people from 80 countries died.”

“I see.”

We were two nomads in the Sahara. We did not talk about Being and Nothingness. We tweaked reality by breathing.

I handed Omar’s book to Ahmed. “Have a look-see.” Ahmed read Tifignagh words.

“He was not as surprised, stunned and scared as all the well meaning myopic tax paying, allegiance singing populace would have the world’s citizens believe in their us or them attitude. He knew they’d be catapulted into a new heavy deep reality, grounded fast, sifting soil, searching for answers, breathing through death masks, deconstructing and revising history while pleading for meaning to their existence. Postmodern dialectics.

“Now they had to figure out the big answer to the big question. Why? It’d keep them busy for life. Their children taught them to ask why? Being extremely impatient and under extreme pressure to be successful in their all-consuming reality, they became extremely frustrated with the “why” question from their children. Parents wanted to be the boss, the grown-ups in complete control. They figured they had all the answers.”

Whoops!

“In the BIG game people with a long history rolled their dice when it was their turn to play and everyone had to go back to the start. They had to read the rules. They had to read the small fine print. The details they casually accepted carte blanche, data they skipped because they didn’t think it was important, the stuff made in Hollywood, the fictional entertainment stuff with happy endings. They were well conditioned to violence, sex and reality television. Now they digested so-called reality television in real time.”

*

I pointed to a faded yellow page marked Empirical Evidence for Ahmed’s crash course in creative nonfiction techniques. Formless forms.

“Somebody off stage had triggered the light switch and their fragility was exposed. Evaporated their sense of humor. The audience sat stunned in silence when the curtain came down. It was full of holes, loopholes and wormholes. The apple was rotten. Survivors needed a card from the deck of life and did not want to see the one with the guy wearing the funny hat with bells. A small minority studied history. They knew, in a vague way, being experts on vagueness, how history repeated itself. They’d supported totalitarian regimes in the Persian/Arabic Gulf for decades burning imported Middle Eastern oil well past their bedtime.”

Only fools and madmen speak the truth.

This was a sobering reality. Ahmed continued reading.

“It was extremely frustrating. People in their illusionary magic kingdom assumed they were always supposed to be going forward to bigger, better, faster things. There was talk about a shift in Teutonic plates of awareness. Many plates showed their age being cracked, badly needing repair, requiring immediate unequaled madness assistance or UMA. Someone tried a cell connection. It was busy, snagged on assorted Fear, healthy Uncertainty and promising Doubt. F.U.D.

Minus surprise.

“Connections were a flashback to a simpler existence of peace and prosperity with model tract homes, two car garages, appliances, fast and faster food, weapons of mass destruction in the closet, renewable bonds, treasury notes, love notes, and notes on the edge of a cliff waiting for patients streaming out of their personal and collective asylums on holidays as prescribed medications rendered them insolvent, compliant and mute.

“A secure line of clear communication was caught in the undercurrent, the violent raging delight of human nature doing her infinite playful thing below the realm of consciousness. She stirred things up in a big way.

“Humans had a lot of explaining to do. Explaining how the world worked. Explaining all the moral ambiguities of truth and reality, all the fill-in-the-blank final exams. They were in big fucking trouble.”

“‘Because I said so,’” was their old standard dull, tedious and monotonous refrain when their sweet, ever-so-kind little intelligent monsters asked why for the umpteenth time. The adult’s ignorant facades had developed huge cracks. It was time to straighten the whiners out once and for all.

They went shopping to satisfy their fear of poverty and overcome their fear, a small fear growing stronger day by day being fed by hysterical know-it-alls in 24/7 media ivory soap towers of higher intellectual reasoning based on empirical evidence.

“More channels!” someone screamed. “We need more channels!” There was a preponderance of rumors. Mucho evidence was charred beyond recognition. It would need DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating.

According to Ahmed with the gift of foresight, “Teams of social workers swarmed across Earth extolling virtues of well being, hope, trust, and bravery in the face of adversity, values, free choice, and impending sales at outlet stores. People seeking outlets and outlet stores found solace in their ignorance of how the world worked on molecular, political, religious, economic, philosophical, and cultural levels. Long festering animosity and cultural bias had come full circle. An invisible Orobus constricted their heart. Their myth was part idealism and realism standing on its head.

“Socially, culturally, geographically and emotionally deprived children listened, shaking their heads, learning a very hard life lesson. One that escaped their well meaning parents. Kids knew when adults were bullshitting them.

Kids have a built-in shockproof shit detector.

“Scholars educated at global universities started speaking Arabic, reciting Sufi poetry and 1,001 stories about the rise and fall of civilizations written before their time with hieroglyphics and cave paintings. Survivors filled caves. Candles sales were brisk.

“A tisket a tasket we need a casket,” sang multi-lingual children.

“Historians, political scientists, talk show experts, taxi drivers, fortune tellers, beauticians, and morticians took hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially. Suicide search and rescue teams were put on alert. Citizens packed hospital emergency rooms. Medical schools increased graduation classes to meet the growing need. Demand outstripped supply when it came down to fear and consumption.”

“Wow, that's some heavy sociological shit, Ahmed,” said I.

“What happens when they run out of insecurity control programs?” a girl asked her mother. She was the mother of all answers.

“Don’t worry my sweet,” said the neurotic mother living her worst nightmare, “they’ll invent something new and improved. The manufacturing sector will rebound when shelves are empty. We’ll always have sugar and we can always go shopping.”

“How long will it take?”

“Hard to say. Could be we won’t live to see it.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“There is only F.U.D.,” said her mother twisting her hair until it caught fire.

“What is F.U.D. mother?”

“Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Been with us a long time and now it’s back with a vengeance.”

“How long?”

“You ask too many questions child,” she said fanning her daughter’s flame. “A long time. A Century is Nothing.”

“It’s good to know some things,” said the girl.

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I’ve already told you a lot.”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Tell me the truth mother. I want to know the truth.”

“The truth is, it’s all a lie. Our insecurities are evolving. I believe in my heart-mind that life is a celebration. It is beautiful, harsh, nasty and short. A Hobbesian dream scream. There’s no rhyme or reason or social contract. It’s about realizing peace in your heart and community. Inhale suffering and exhale healing. Cultivate heart awareness.”

“I will be authentic and mindful mother. May we go out and play now? May we take the day off dear mother and be creative?”

“Yes, let’s invent a game theory my sweet daughter,” and they went out of the world.

Omar knew children suspected parents, teachers, social workers, bureaucrats, philosophers and homeless people living in cardboard shelters did not control the market on clear answers. Adults searched for the remote. They knew something better just had to be on the idiot box.

Big brown rats with sharp teeth scrambled out of dark dens scurrying through dead matter looking for food. The little animal named Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt was starving. It had a vociferous vain appetite for glorious political/economic systems. It ate it’s young with relish at picnics. It had no principles, morals, ethics or 20th century rationale, no religious ideology or neo-conservative agenda. 

It was not a vegetarian or a peace activist burning candles, sitting around wringing their bloody hands mumbling, “Oh what a pity,” or, “Somebody should have seen this coming.”

It avoided focus groups like the plague and read Arabic history and poetry by Rumi.

“A true story,” said Ahmed pointing at the sky. “Look, the north star.”

A Century is Nothing

 

Friday
Nov172023

Hunters

He rode his beautiful dirty black mountain bike over to "old" student street in Utopia for a 60 cent dumpling lunch. Delicious.

He prefers the "old" to the boring "new" commercial student campus street. He enjoys mature green leafy trees filled with small wild sparrows darting down to feed in garden patches. He savors a wide blue sky and orphaned clouds.

He always sits outside swallowing sky, well removed from blaring omnipresent bland TV soap operas and cell phone addicted youth.

"Text me baby! Reveal your passion in 5,000 characters. Say things with electronic letters and symbols you'd never find the courage to speak out loud. Your silence is deafening! Hold my hand.

"Better yet, when we walk covered in our innocent adolescent shyness, slowly rub your elbow against my skin so I know you care, reveal your shy desire with deference and longing. Our skin pours hormonal activity into the possibility we may eventually dance. Text me baby!"


A boy approached the table.

"May I sit here?"
"Sure."
"May I talk with you?"
"Sure. You talk and I listen."
"I don't know what to say."
"You will think of something. You are developing an English mind."
"Yes, maybe."

"What's your name?"
"Francis."
"That's a great name."
"All the good English names were taken by my classmates. I found it in the dictionary."
"I see. It's a fine and strong name. My name is Nature."

"Oh. What's that for?" he said, gesturing at my worn Moleskine notebook.
"I am a writer. I make notes when I travel."
"Where are you going?"
"Here."
"I like to travel," he said. "I am a hunter of foreign teachers."

I smelled raw instinct. "Interesting. How do you hunt?" 
"Do you know the gate near the teachers' apartments?"

This place was surrounded by walls, sleeping guards and gates.

"Yes."
"Well, I go there and wait. When a teacher comes out I talk to them while we walk. Then, when they say good-bye I return to the gate and wait for another teacher."
"You are a clever hunter."
"Maybe. But I don't know what to say."

"Talk about the weather."
"We don't talk about the weather here. We ask people if they have eaten."
"I know," I said, pointing at his noodles and sliced vegetables. "Your delicious food is getting cold."

Silence welcomed two hunters.

Wednesday
Nov012023

Book of Amnesia, V1

ACT 1

(Fade In)

The beginning needs work, thought Zeynep.

It’s flatter than a 24-year-old on her back in a plywood room fucking a customer in Asia. Her heart beats like a drum. She’s been away from her village for five desperate years. Her mother and father slaughter pigs for the market.

Their lost daughter survives in a meat market. Supply and demand economics 101. She ran away and joined a sex money food circus. Moral: Wrong choice for the right reasons.

You pay and take your chances. She considered the heroine’s dilemma. It’s strong, honest and REAL. What’s her quest?

Stay alive.

Stay sane.

Make money.

Send money home.

Get home.

Join a woman’s support group.

Avoid HIV and C-19.

Live to tell the tale.

Write it down.

Get it to a literary agent’s slush pile. Fat chance, it’s not mainstream.

Self-publish.

Get a life. Get married. Breed.

Have babies named Faith, Hope and Charity.

Enjoy temporary happiness.

Celebrate impermanence.

Eat incense.

The end.

Happy endings make me cry, said a blind editor waving her machete. Many true stories don’t have happy endings. People escape, disappear or die.

Take it easy. These are abstract letters and words on paper. It’s not about you Z. It’s ten claws scratching at twenty-six letters.

All writing is garbage. Take out the garbage. Burn baby burn.

I don’t see any humor in the girl’s hardcore reality, said the editor. Reality is an imaginary word crutch and time is a strung-out pimp looking for an exit.

Love is a blind whore with a mental disease and no sense of humor, said Z.

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

Friday
Oct272023

Hagoshrim Kibbutz

We flew to Israel and tight security at Ben Gurion airport. Arrived at dawn, walked down stairs past soldiers, across the tarmac to a black van with open doors flanked by soldiers with machine guns. A man sat with his pistol on a desk. We showed him our passports. He checked for Arabic visas. He scrutinized our faces.

“Why are you coming to Israel?”

“To work in a kibbutz.”

“How much money do you have?”

“A couple of hundred dollars.”

“Do you have a return ticket?”

“Yes,” I said pulling out a ragged open ticket from Air Icelandic marked Chicago. He looked over our papers, opened an inkpad, hammered a stamp on a page, placed an entry visa in our passports and handed them back.

“Ok. You may go.”

 

We walked cross the tarmac, placed packs on a conveyor belt and followed a maze of chest high metal anti-bomb partitions. A female soldier scanned our luggage for explosives. She marked them with chalk, checked our papers, peered into my typewriter and waved us through.

We grabbed a bus into town past fields and industrial zones. We had an address for a kibbutz office.

“Welcome, or Shalom as we say here. My name is Sharim. We are pleased to have you come to Israel and volunteer to experience the beauty, joy and culture of living and working on a kibbutz.”

Bleary eyes looked at a map with colored pins showing settlements. “What are the pins for?” I asked.

“They designate types of kibbutz and locations.” Red, blue, yellow and green pins pricked a weathered map with a heavy concentration in the north.

“The red pins are religious kibitzes, the blue ones are agricultural farms, the green ones are primarily factories. Yellow pins designate combination farms near the border with Lebanon.”

“What kind of farms?” asked Joan.

”Oh, all kinds. Most produce their own food. They grow fruit and vegetables and have fish farms with a combined industrial production kibbutz operation.”

I pointed at a red pin up north. “What’s this one?”

“That’s Hagoshrim. It’s an old kibbutz. There are about 200 families, ten kilometers from the Lebanese border and twenty east of Syria.”

“How is the life on the kibbutz?” Joan asked.

“It’s straightforward,” he said. “Volunteers usually stay for six months. They are given a place to stay, meals and encouraged to join in the daily activities. They have duties on the kibbutz, usually from early morning to noon and then for a few hours in the afternoon. We organize cultural tours to parts of the country for volunteers. They meet many people from other countries while also gaining a deeper understanding of the Jewish faith. The experience makes a deep impact on many people’s lives.”

“Can we work on more than one kibbutz?”

“Yes. That’s possible after you stay and work the minimum of six months in one location.”

We chose Hagoshrim. He called the kibbutz and gave us bus fare and directions. We thanked him and went to the crowded central Egged national bus station. 

The bus skirted brown fields, lush green agriculture and desert wasteland. Fatigued soldiers with grease guns and collapsible stocks napped.

We passed tilled soil, fruit trees and villages. We bounced along awkward roads past the Sea of Galilee. A nervous girl, 23, twirled a yellow Kleenex into a knot with long red fingernails.

We rolled into Kiryat Shimona, a town of 20,000 in the north tucked into a corner near Lebanon and Syria. Famous for rocket attacks at night. Sounds familiar.

We hitched a ride on a fruit truck full of soldiers doing their two-year compulsory service passing ochre colored fields of fruit trees and olive orchards.

 

At Hagoshrim we registered, heard pre-induction volunteer procedures and were assigned separate sleeping quarters in basic army barracks from 1948. We sat in a well-manicured garden with flowers and fruit trees.

A thin gray haired man explained how their society worked.

“Welcome. Shalom. This is one of the oldest kibbutz in Israel. You will be assigned daily and weekly jobs by the volunteer coordinator. We are a multi-purpose kibbutz. Everything you see around you has been planted, grown, built and developed over the last twenty years. When my parents came here there was only desert and we were fighting wars against our enemies. We stayed. We dug the ground. We planted. Our parents had children and they built schools and bomb shelters.

"We are always ready to defend our land. Our families converted the desert into productive land. We grow fruits and vegetables, harvest them, keep some for our own consumption and sell in the market. We have fish farms providing a source of income. Everyone takes meals in the cafeteria, volunteers and families. It’s good food and you will not be hungry here. Work starts at 5:30 a.m. when it is cool. We take a midmorning break with lunch at 12:30. The afternoons are for personal activities although there are some afternoon assignments.

"Saturday is the Sabbath when no work is done. This is not a religious kibbutz, which means you have the choice of taking part in our ceremonies from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. In exchange for your labor you receive accommodations, clothing, food, free international postage and a small amount of payment in the form of a card which is used in the small store for essentials like toilet paper.”

“What kind of jobs do you have?” Joan asked.

“We are totally self sufficient. Volunteers work everywhere and do everything but pull guard duty. We take care of the children, staff the nursery, kitchens, and tend gardens and farms. It’s comprehensive.”

The kibbutz segregated children from parents and allowed visitation rights one night a week.

“Hey this is great,” I said to Joan walking to an old wooden building.

Joan was enthusiastic. “It’s not bad, plenty of sun. That’s probably why we start work so early in the morning. It must get pretty hot here in the afternoon."

Weaving A Life, Volume 2

Saturday
Oct212023

A Century is Nothing

Centuries earlier or later depending on reference points along time’s thin line on an event horizon as infinity and eternity played post 9/11 dirges, fugues and blues with a full orchestra in the pits Ahmed resumed his story in the Sahara.

“Fate bites you when you least expect it,” he said waving his hands like wild kites. “Her appetite is insatiable.”

I was so far removed from 9/11 reality I took no possession of the event. I read Ahmed’s open palms and eyes. My facility for unspoken tongues was legendary. It was all body language and I was fluent in every language.

Gestures were a work in progress.

Gestures used people.

Ahmed described airplanes and two tall towers. “I’ve read Superman by Nietzsche in Arabic. He said 'God is dead' and God said, 'Nietzsche is dead.'"

He waved his arms like a Moroccan eagle condemned to freedom yet a prisoner of the sky. He raised a hand indicating height and smacked his flying hand into his stationary hand. The impact echoed across caramel dunes. He smiled through black teeth. His dark eyes held all the world’s secrets.

I had no idea where, who, how, why, or when Ahmed received his information. Perhaps from slave and gold trade caravans, perhaps through osmosis.

“Yes,” Ahmed said, “2,974 people from 80 countries died.”

“I see.” We were just two nomads in the desert. We did not talk about Being and Nothingness. We tweaked reality by breathing.

I handed Omar’s book to Ahmed. “Have a look-see.” Ahmed read Tifignagh words.

“He was not as surprised, stunned and scared as all the well meaning myopic tax paying, allegiance singing populace would have the world’s citizens believe in their us or them attitude. He knew they’d be catapulted into a new heavy deep reality, grounded fast, sifting soil, searching for answers, breathing through death masks, deconstructing and revising history while pleading for meaning to their existence. Postmodern dialectics.

“Now they had to figure out the big answer to the big question. Why? It’d keep them busy for life. Their children taught them to ask why? Being extremely impatient and under extreme pressure to be successful in their all-consuming reality, they became extremely frustrated with the “why” question from their children. Parents wanted to be the boss, the grown-ups in complete control. They figured they had all the answers.

“Whoops!

“In the BIG game people with a long history rolled their dice when it was their turn to play and everyone had to go back to the start. They had to read the rules. The small print. The details they casually accepted carte blanche, data they skipped because they didn’t think it was important, the stuff made in Hollywood, the fictional entertainment stuff with happy endings. They were well conditioned to violence, sex and reality television. Now they tasted so-called reality television in real time.”

I pointed to a faded yellow page marked “Empirical Evidence” for Ahmed’s crash course in documentary fiction techniques.

“Somebody off stage had triggered the light switch and their fragility was exposed. Evaporated their sense of humor. The audience sat stunned in silence when the curtain came down. It was full of holes, loopholes and wormholes. The apple was rotten. Survivors needed a card from the deck of life and did not want to see the one with the guy wearing the funny hat with bells. A small minority studied history. They knew, in a vague way, being experts on vagueness, how history repeated itself. They’d supported totalitarian regimes in the Persian/Arabic Gulf for decades burning imported Middle Eastern oil well past their bedtime.”

Only the fool spoke the truth. This was a sobering reality. Ahmed continued reading.

“It was extremely frustrating. People in their illusionary magic kingdom assumed they were always supposed to be going forward to bigger, better, faster things. There was talk about a shift in Teutonic plates of awareness. Many plates showed their age being cracked, badly needing repair, requiring immediate unequaled madness assistance or UMA. Someone tried their cell. It was busy, snagged on assorted Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The big F.U.D.

“Connections were a flashback to a simpler existence of peace and prosperity with model tract homes, two car garages, appliances, fast and faster food, weapons of mass destruction in the closet, renewable bonds, treasury notes, love notes, and notes on the edge of a cliff waiting for patients streaming out of their personal and collective asylums on holidays as prescribed medications rendered them insolvent, compliant and mute. Very compliant.

“A secure line of clear communication was caught in the undercurrent, the violent raging delight of human nature doing her infinite playful thing below the realm of consciousness. She stirred things up in a big way.

“Humans had a lot of explaining to do. Explaining how the world worked. Explaining all the moral ambiguities, all the fill-in-the-blank final exams. They were in big trouble.

“‘Because I said so,’” was their old standard refrain when their sweet, ever-so-kind little monsters asked “why” for the umpteenth time. Their ignorant facades had developed huge cracks. It was time to straighten the whiners out once and for all. They went shopping to satisfy their fear of poverty, to overcome their fear, a small fear growing stronger day by day being fed by hysterical know-it-alls in ivory soap towers of higher intellectual reasoning based on empirical evidence.”

“More channels!” someone screamed. “We need more channels!” There was a preponderance of rumors. Part of the evidence was charred beyond recognition. It would need DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating.

According to Omar, “Teams of social workers swarmed across the land extolling virtues of well being, hope, trust, and bravery in the face of adversity, values, free choice, and impending sales at outlet stores. People seeking outlets and outlet stores found solace in their ignorance of how the world worked on molecular, political, religious, economic, philosophical, and cultural levels. Long festering animosity and cultural bias had come full circle. An invisible Orobus constricted their heart. Their myth was part idealism and realism standing on its head.

“Their socially, culturally, geographically and emotionally deprived children listened, shaking their heads, learning a very hard life lesson. One that escaped their well meaning parents. Kids knew when adults were bullshitting them.

“Scholars educated at global universities started speaking Arabic, reciting Sufi poetry, and 1,001 stories about the rise and fall of civilizations written before their time with hieroglyphics and cave paintings. Survivors filled caves. Candles sales were brisk.”

“A tisket a tasket we need a casket,” sang multi-lingual children.

“Historians, political scientists, talk show experts, taxi drivers, fortune tellers, beauticians, and morticians took hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially. Suicide search and rescue teams were put on alert. Citizens packed hospital emergency rooms. Medical schools increased graduation classes to meet the growing need. Demand outstripped supply when it came down to fear and consumption.”

“Wow, that's some heavy sociological shit, Ahmed,” said I.

“Get this next part,” said Ahmed, turning a page.

Get is the joker word in English.

“What happens when they run out of insecurity control programs?” a child asked her mother. She was the mother of all answers.

“Don’t worry my sweet,” said the anxious neurotic mother living her worst nightmare, “they’ll invent something new and improved. The manufacturing sector will rebound when shelves are empty. We’ll always have sugar and we can always go shopping.”

“How long will it take?”

“Hard to say. Could be we won’t live to see it.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“There is only F.U.D.,” said her mother twisting her hair until it caught fire.

“What is F.U.D. mother?”

“Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Been with us a long time and now it’s back with a vengeance.”

“How long?”

“You ask too many questions child,” she said fanning her daughter’s flame. “A long time. A Century is Nothing.”

“It’s good to know some things,” said the girl.

“A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I’ve already told you a lot.”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Tell me the truth,” mother. “I want to know the hard irrefutable truth.”

“The truth is, it’s all a lie. Everything we know is a lie. Our insecurities are evolving. I believe in my heart-mind that life is a celebration. It is beautiful, harsh, nasty and short. A Hobbesian dream scream. There’s no rhyme or reason or social contract. It’s about realizing peace in your heart and community. Inhale suffering and exhale healing. Cultivate heart awareness.”

“I will be authentic and mindful mother. May we go out and play now? May we take the day off and be creative?”

“Yes, let’s invent a game theory my sweet daughter.” They went out into the world.

Omar knew children suspected parents, teachers, social workers, bureaucrats, philosophers and homeless people living in cardboard shelters did not control the market on clearly defined answers. Adults searched for the remote. They knew something better just had to be on the idiot box.

Families of big brown rats scrambled out of dark dens scurrying through dead matter looking for food. The little animal named Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt was starving. It had a vociferous vain appetite for glorious political/economic systems. It ate it’s young, with relish at picnics. It had no principles or 20th century rationale, no religious ideology or neo-conservative agenda. 

It was not a vegetarian or a peace activist burning candles, sitting around wringing their bloody hands mumbling, “Oh what a pity,” or, “Somebody should have seen this coming.”

FUD avoided focus groups like the plague, read Arabic history and poetry by Rumi. Their appetite was legendary and tremendous.

“Such a true story,” said Ahmed closing the book. He pointed at the sky. “Look, the north star.”

A Century is Nothing