After 9/11 magnificent violent stories developed petri dish experiments.
Stories invented cultures, languages, art, music, and historical futures. Myths. Facts. Truths. Tales evolved new identities named Fear & Uncertainty & Surprise and What If?
“Buy low and sell high,” Omar said. Sand shifted beneath their feet. Infinite sky was blue.
He was a man of few words. “Yes, it’s not that different now.”
They contemplated vast silent emptiness.
“What is life?” said Lucky.
“The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. Baraka is a supernatural power. Blessing. The universe is comprehensible.”
*
At that instant following a 90-minute chakra body massage in Luang Prabang, a Disneyland of world heritage distinction filled with French and German and Italian babbling idiots staggering on medical canes craning arthritic necks toward cold European winter memories grasping creased maps filled with blood red dots depicting wats, guesthouses and H’mong night markets featuring oval tongued storytellers minus canes, awkward packs, widows, orphans, or landmine survivors piloting bomb boats down the Nam Ou river and recycling Grade A ordinance as decorative garden planters and spoons, a foreigner piled gold on a table in Laos. He turned to a one-eyed father. “I will give you this gold for your daughter.”
“I want more,” said patriarch. “Her face and body and heart are Lao. She has Vietnamese blood. It’s supply and demand. Business is business. Politics is business and business is politics. It’s all about perceived value. No plastic. Cash only. See this machete?” waving it in the man’s face, cutting him off.
Nearby, two American males eating Indian curry and garlic pita bread hadn’t decompressed. Trying to communicate in complete sentences was impossible. One released sounds, nouns, impressive words, past and present participles, guttural phrases, heavy deep real sentences and like a game of chess war or blind love showing zero respect the OTHER cut him off at the throat with a sharp sophisticated annunciated verbal machete.
Frustrated and grimacing, he suffered irreparable brain damage. Short circuit. Transmission lines collapsed.
Crash. Burn.
The two Yankees were fresh off the banana boat. They’d sailed out of NY past the oxidized tall green torch lady, across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean, slid through the Suez Canal, and picked up a cargo of palm oil in Goa before translating the lack of wind into thermal icecaps near Ceylon surveying tea plantations where they harvested pure logic in a scientifically coherent genesis.
The ship’s captain texted his mistress in Kuala Lumpur, “I’ll be late for dinner.”
She was engaged to a dour celibate hypocritical burning monk disguised as a novice meditating in an isolated cave on the Tibet-Bhutan border at 21,451 feet. She missed his calm sense of intention and clear motivation. She prayed he’d complete his destiny to be One With Everything. Fearless he’d leave the cave and travel south inside fatigued winds to meet her at an undisclosed location. This was her secret desire, wish, dream and consistent memory.
She imagined him bargaining his flesh-covered skeleton in a brief life condition. Trading raw silk he negotiated passage with Silk Road nomads by communicating with Sumerian script etched on clay tablets. Brushing shard dust off shard dust revealed time-lines, sharp indentations, incomplete circles, zigzag lightning bolts and fingerprints of whirling dervish dancers.
Whorls reflected afternoon light into somnambulistic retinas.
A middle-aged Laotian dwarf in a well-cut gray suit coat, black baggy cotton pants and army issued green tennis shoes walked past. Pink sky streaked sunset. He’d been walking all day. His stride was steady. Other than a bowl of noodles near the Mekong he’d been raising dust. Headed home he passed golden Wats, orange robed monks sweeping leaves, women simmering pots of food on clay burners fired by kindling, laughing children, blaring TVs, noisy engine repair shops, a sleeping tuk-tuk driver and floating bamboo pavilions where courtesans composed haiku.
He passed a teashop sign:
Smile. We Will Help You Practice.
He walked across a narrow iron bridge above a raging river and down a muddy road to his bamboo home complete with a single watt bulb surrounded by dancing omnivorous insects.
His shoes went near the door. Slapping his jacket against a wall released day’s dust. He hung it up. Splashing water on his face he smiled at his incomplete reflection. He poured a cup of green tea, ate a handful of sticky rice and prepared his table.
He spread out a large sheet of rough handmade silk paper, camelhair brushes and black ink.
Memory spoke: After they cut my tongue out during my re-education through shit labor experience I started writing script. I found a compressed black Chinese ink stick with yellow dragons breathing fire.
I added a little water to a recessed gray stone surface. I placed the ink in the center. Then, using my right hand, as Master Liu in Chengdu taught me, I rotated the stick in a clockwise motion. Black ink ebbed into liquid as a drop of water rippled a pond.
After collecting ink I selected my white wolf hairbrush. After soaking it in water for three minutes to relax it’s inner tension I spread out thin rice paper. I placed my right foot at an angle, left foot straight, with my left palm flat on the table and fingers spread.
I dipped the brush in the recessed part of the stone to absorb ink and slowly dragged it along an edge removing excess. I savored the weight and heft. My brush has it own personality and character. There are 7,000 characters in my written language.
My Chinese script is about unity of mind and spirit.
I have much to see and a long way to travel with this unknowing truth.
My teacher recited a poem.
A mountain loses its spirit without cloud,
loses its peculiarity without stones,
loses its elegance without trees,
and loses its life without water,
and in painting,
one should concentrate the mind,
and hold the breath,
with concentration of the mind,
serenity is maintained,
with the breath held up,
preciseness is attained.
One should be as serene as an old monk in meditation and be as precise as a silk worm in spitting silk.
The spirit and real fun of painting are from nature and beyond brushes and paints.
I stood up straight inhaled three deep breaths and exhaled into emptiness. I centered my unconscious on blank paper filled with nothing. Respect white emptiness.
My wisdom mind of intent became water. It was quiet, calm and still with concentration and focus. I listened to brush, ink and paper. I am a conduit. Be the brush, be the ink, be the water, be the paper.
Each essence is pure, free, clear and luminous.
My useless tongue flapped like a prayer flag in Himalayan winds. Stories and songs are nightingales. I heard children laughing and singing. They greeted each other in the babble of play with laughing word pearls. They dream with their eyes open.
When we are asleep we are awake.
Life gave me art and I used art to celebrate life.
“No language, no culture,” Omar sang on a dune. Shooting stars played celestial tag.
Omar translated global media manifestations selling fear, double-edged messages, disinformation, misinformation, bias, lies, half-truths, myths, whispers, paranoia, propaganda, and irrational transmissions issued by philistine government authorities in every language on a spinning space rock.
Human brains overflowed with data. The remote control device was broken with too many channels. Idiots loved distractions.
Omar and Lucky did not take possession of that event. They meditated as mindfulness was gifted to tribes. They inhaled global suffering and exhaled healing evolving wisdom, clarity and compassionate awareness. They practiced harmony and gratitude.
Scholars educated at elitist universities and institutes of erudite psychoanalytic study related Latin stories about the rise and fall of 4,000-year old civilizations.
Survivors created 26,000-year old Paleolithic cave painting stories of the real world. Omar doodled archers, hunters, dancers, and bison, fish, awkward time slashes on stone.
Caves overflowed with survivors.
“A tisket a tasket we need a casket,” sang multi-lingual children.
Omar envisaged historians, politicians, talking heads, taxi drivers, fortune-tellers, beauticians and morticians taking hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially. Suicide search and rescue teams were alerted. Citizens packed hospital emergency rooms screaming, more drugs. Medical schools increased enrollment to meet manufactured needs.
Selling fear and consumption, Demand overwhelmed Supply.
The Language Company
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