the distance of the moon

Here is a delightful animated magical legend of Italo Calvino's story, The Distance of the Moon.

Enjoy.

http://youtu.be/EZ9cEZhiGPw

after morocco

Well before sunrise in March 2002 on his last morning in Morocco, before seeing a sunburst orange ball on skylines flying toward Amsterdam, west to Seattle, and east over the Cascades; before leaving Sad’s family furniture factory home in Casablanca, a scribe, who’d been up all night anticipating another Exit, took a gigantic shit over a hole in the ground before sweeping a sweet smelling kid’s sanitized paper wipe over his skinny little ass.

He poured water from an old green bottle into the holy plumbing system, waking the dead on their life highway crowded with whiners, complainers and ghosts, before stumbling through darkness with Rex the German shepherd on his heels.

The toilet paper was crap in Spain. In Morocco it was nonexistent.

It felt good to blast yesterday out of his system. He knew all the bilingual time and surprises were worth it. Miniature adventures were a refreshing drink of water, a desperate invigorating breath during a climb for a clear perspective.

Slanting dawn light wrapped tentacles around an anonymous scribe gathering unfiltered and uncensored evidence of post 911 fear. Light cut the sky severing white villages, crude broken stone paths, scarred Moorish brown doors, ageless idle men, shifty eyed one-armed merchants and sad-eyed unemployed dissatisfied immigrants surviving with poverty and despair.

The scribe traversed light, space, and time intervals near sixteen blue, yellow, and green starred mosaic vaulted arches. He kissed everyone on cheeks, shaking hands, confirming an exile's flight.

All the adults were tired, wasted, beat. Moroccans walked, stopped, looked around with hesitancy, this delayed boarding card question.

Their visa stamp bled through indigo robes piercing shirts, blouses, and woven fabric designed by millions of minimum wage children in twisted alleys without a visa. They needed a bread visa, a scrap of meat visa, a tea visa and a chance visa. They craved sweet green tea to mix life’s colors with dust.

The plane taxied down the runway. Rainbows illuminated western clouds. The moon danced in cobalt blue sky. Above clouds, thunderheads formed a white billowing future infinite dream machine of air and water molecules.

Zooming over Canadian ice fields toward heightened U.S. military airport security and stateside psychosis after 9/11, global FEAR merchants had a never-ending consignment sale.

A Century is Nothing.

Giving Back on The Road

June was from Stockholm, Sweden. She visited Cambodia for a month. 36-years young.

She was a tight bundle of burning anxieties. “I don't know what I’m running away from. I don’t know what I'm running toward.”

A traveler talked about Angkor temple labyrinths as an allegory of life.

One door opens and one door closes but the passages can be a bitch, whispered a Cambodian ghost.

June had evolved as a willing victim of old lies. She'd believed lying authority figures; family, husband, boss and friends. She’d believed old controlling attitudes and belief systems of others.

Her new day in Cambodia offered opportunities for awareness and growth. Like other humans, to become authentic she’d eventually face her deepest fears and shadows. Either that or keep running scared with a hellhound on her trail.

“I want to cut all my hair off,” she said in Siem Reap. It was long curling blond movie star mane quality. She went to a salon. She was nervous. She swallowed hard. A woman cut it off.

“I feel lighter now, transformed.”

June altered her outward appearance, releasing old anxieties. By cutting her hair with bright shiny silver scissors as a symbolic gesture, June realized how she felt was more essential than how her stone cold colleagues in stone cold freezing Sweden might react. It was a small significant step on her new path. 

One day she experienced the influence of a remote Khmer village on her consciousness. She visited My Grandfather’s House 53 kilometers from Siem Reap. They’d converted a two story building into a school.

“What do you need?” she asked the village chief.

“We need clean drinking water.”

She bought a water purifier.

“We need electricity after 6 p.m.”

She purchased a battery so they’d have lights after dark.

Another day, returning from Angkor she stopped in a village. She met children. The next morning she invited a traveler to join her. She purchased bags of toothbrushes and toothpaste. They rolled through dry brown flat countryside and palm trees past simple stilted bamboo homes, women selling, cooking, cleaning, washing and working.

They were far away from a neon town filled with tourists doing Angkor Wat.

June talked a blue streak, unloading her honesty, hopes and dreams mixed with anxieties and fears, “I feel good doing this. I've never done anything like this before. My past life was all about anger, problems and conflicts. Now that I’m in Cambodia, what, less than a week, I’m beginning to learn about myself, seeing how my life was empty with no meaning. How it was all about pleasing others, buying useless things to make myself feel better.”

They turned onto a thin dirt track leading to a bamboo thatched home in a field. Half-naked kids played. Women and men rested in shade. June met the kids and a young mother.

“Here,” she smiled, handing them toothbrushes and toothpaste, “these are for you.” They were amazed. An 80-year old woman, a former Apsara dancer, performed quick delicate hand movements. June copied her to the delight of everyone.

“I’ll be back,” she yelled as kids waved goodbye. 

“I now feel more fulfilled.”

They stopped in a market village for coffee. Young girls selling small colorful bamboo paper birds descended on them. “Buy something? Look at my things.”

June met Leaf, 13, in the 5th grade. Leaf learned English selling to foreigners at temples after school. She taught village kids English.

“I saw a leader in the girl’s eyes,” June said. “Maybe I can help her, get an English teacher for her village. Give her an opportunity to really grow.”

June had to modify her dream for the girl. “Let's be practical,” the traveler suggested, “finding a Khmer English teacher for $40 a month in this area is like finding clean drinking water.”

The next day June bought a brand new pink bike for Leaf with a bell and basket. It said, NEW STAR on the chain guard. She went to a bookstore. She bought a whiteboard, markers, 20 English learning books, picture dictionaries and storybooks. She loaded them on a tuk-tuk and returned to the village. Leaf, her family and friends were waiting. They raised pigs, dad kills them, mom sells the meat in the market, older sisters hope to find a foreign boyfriend, get married, and escape.

“Here Leaf all this is for you,” said June. “The bike will help you get to school, temples and home. The whiteboard, markers and books will help you teach English.”

Leaf smiled. “Thank you.”

Leaf pedaled through dust and brown broken leaves around the house. June spread the books out. Kids explored new images, words, ABC alphabets and colors.

“I feel real good about this,” she said returning to town. “Real good. I’ve made a small difference in a young girl’s life. I am so grateful.”

***

On another toothbrush run June traveled along a remote dusty red road. She stopped at a bamboo shop selling small bags of soap and bananas.

A young girl wore a permanent tear on her left cheek. She was not smiling. Her t-shirt had a picture of a skull and bones.

Danger! Mines!

She said to June: “Here I am. I communicate my reality to the world. Do you like my shirt? Can you read words or do you need a picture? How about a picture of a picture? I don’t know how to read so I like to look at pictures. 

"My country has 14.5 million people and maybe 6-10 million land mines. Adults say there are 40,000 amputees in my country. Many more have died because we don’t have medical facilities. Mines are cheap. A mine costs $3.00 to put in the ground and $1,000.00 to take out of the ground.

“I’m really good at numbers.

“26,000 men, women and children are maimed or killed every year in the world by land mines leftover from ongoing or forgotten conflicts. Reports from the killing fields indicate there are 110 million land mines buried in 45 countries. It will cost $33 billion to remove them and take 1,100 years.

"Governments spend $200-$300 million a year to detect and remove 10,000. Cambodia, Angola, Iraq, and Afghanistan are the most heavily mined countries in the world.

“40 percent of Cambodian land is unused because of land mines. One in 236 Cambodians are amputees. A prosthetic limb costs $3,000.

“Talk to me before you leave trails to explore the forest. It's beautiful and quiet. I know all the secret places.

"I showed my picture to a Cambodian man and he didn’t like it. They call this denial. He said it gave him nightmares. He’s seen too much horror and death in one life. So it goes. My village is my world. Where do you live?”

June's humbling life changing experience woke her up in Cambodia.

Patriots Act Out

Editor's note: originally published in A Century is Nothing. 

War on terror experts discussed global strategies in a play with many acts. A play on (s)words. Some acts were hard to follow let alone comprehend. Reviews would be mixed when it ran off Broadway flagging down a Berber slave caravan inside an air-conditioned nightmare looking for a Caravanserai along Route 66.

“What’s the name of the first act?” asked a playwright.

“Patriot,” said General Consensus.

“How does The Patriot Act sound?” said the scribe, a former loan shark and energy consultant.

“I like it, I really like it,” said Asscroft a general Attorney. He was a neo-conservative hard-nosed right wing crazy religious fanatic from the State of Misery. “It has teeth with wide ranging constitutional subversive powers, perfectly timed for our agenda. Let’s push it down the legislator’s throats.”

“Does that mean the gag rule will be in effect?” cracked a comedian on welfare.

“Sure does. Anyone who so much as expresses concern about this constitutional urinary tract act will be blacklisted, hounded, ridiculed, ostracized, and labeled unpatriotic. They will never work again in this great beautiful free country. This is the home of the scared and enslaved. We will revoke their voting rights and cancel their citizenship. I’ve had it up to here with this liberal democratic crap. Our culture is to kill. Take no prisoners. Abuse the hell out of the detainees. Tell the peace makers and tree huggers to take a hike through old growth forests,” Attorney added with a smirk.

“Let there be no doubt about our honorable intentions. We are on a holy mission from God. Our destiny is to install democrazy in the Middle Eats,” said chef Boy R. Dumbed Down Dee, “whether they like it or not. They’ll eat what we give ‘em or starve. This is an ala’ carte, carte blanche military menu.”

“Should we continue bombing?” queried an intelligence asset in deep cover. Plame as day.

It was days, weeks, months and centuries since angels sang after dialing 911.

English hawks warbled about taking the campaign into winter. They needed hawk food. As predators they knew the terrain, the sweet sound of wings whistling through clouds with laser guided precision. Their talons were sharpened by their inherent power and Manifest Destiny. They were ready, willing, and able to establish and sustain new economic empires. They’d raped, pillaged and plundered plenty of old world civilizations and would not be deterred in their quest for more power and influence.

They had the perspective and experience of establishing colonies and global power under the crown, under the gun, establishing The Rule of Law. They were experts at economic terrorism, and exploiting natural resources using cheap labor.

“Yes, absolutely,” said another intelligence agent, an N.O.C. disguised as a cleaning woman with Gypsy blood.

Nonofficial cover was their nom de plume allowing them to work for foreign proprietary front companies while spying. Fronts were numerous: airlines, travel agencies, banks - world currencies and blood - military tribunals and civilian courts, oil and gas companies, construction firms, cafes, telecommunications, land, sea, and air shipping firms, brothels, juke joints, casinos, tailors, clip joints, beauty salons, crematoriums, and mortuaries.

The downside was being left out in the cold if their cover was revealed to compliant sheep citizens and transparent independent muckraking media. They’d be left blowing in the wind. A hard rain would fall. Everyone in the food and information chain was expendable.

A buttoned down butler brought them a mandate for an appetizer and they dug into their personal caves of hunger. They had all the Neolithic or "new science" tools at their disposal. Suddenly the garbage disposal clogged and someone called for maintenance.

“Maintenance!” demanded a shrill counter intuitive pro-active and very demanding defensive individual named Bumsfeld with lipstick on his collar from a one-night stand. “Get up here on the triple and bring your torch. Stuff happens. It’s the unknowable knowable.”

“Sorry sir,” said Maintenance, “stuff happens and my torch is down for maintenance, if you get my drift.”

“Drift, draft, fore and aft,” said a divorced right wing conservative senator up for erection. He washed his hands of the whole affair in dirty water. Finished, he threw the baby out with the bath water into the world’s endless suffering where 17,000 children died every day from starvation and economic terrorism.

Where 4,000 and then send some more American soldiers named Casualty in Iraq slept their dream of dreams in black body bags.

Agents returned to deep cover operations funneling arms, explosives and communication gear, maps and cyanide capsules to homeless, nameless volunteers.

A Spanish woman in black with an ear for dialogue mopped her stairs and pavement along the narrow Rue Castanets. Finished, she dumped the water into the gutter watching it flow to the ocean, evaporate into clouds and rain flowers.

“This is no time to be surrounding ourselves with incompetents. Find someone who knows the lay of the land,” said a junior fellow named Full Bright on a scholarship. He unrolled a parchment for all the knights to see.

“Now see here,” countered Deli, “what it’ll be gents?”

“Make mine ham on rye,” said El Salvadore from the divan where he fondled his Dali. She was in no mood for this intentional violation of her writes.

“You know I don’t eat meat,” she said.

“Yes my dearest,” said Salvadore, “I’m well aware of your passion for fruit. You are my passion fruit, my darling. We’ll see what they have in the queen’s pantry. Perhaps a nice juicy banana?”

“Yes,” sighed Dali dearest, “peel it down for me. I am a bed rabbit. Elementary my sweet.”

“Yes, darling, he who wants to enjoy a fine fruit must sacrifice its peel. Let’s turn the lights down low and make whoopee.”

Salvador turned to his friend. “What do you make of this Pablo?”

“Hmm,” Pablo said, “it’s fairly abstract standing alone. It needs definition, stronger emphasis, a wider range of implicit specific graphic detail.”

“I agree,” said Salvadore, “perhaps broken orange melting time machines. Dashing surrealistic nature enveloping warriors disappearing into exile, fighting real and imaginary foes is called for.”

“Yes, a nice touch, that,” said Pablo. “Many are called few are chosen. We may consider this, my dear colleague, an experiment, an expanded vision. An extension of a red or blue period.”

“Well put dear comrade speaking of the blues. Less is more.”

“Agreed,” said Pablo, “let’s not put in anything extra or take anything extra out.”

“Such a novel concept,” said Don Q., an eavesdropping unemployed literary agent sitting on a nag and wearing a battered bedpan for a helmet.

“Excellent,” said Salvadore. “My friend Cervantes said the exact words to his companion Pancho. One rode an ass into history. Shall we have a go then?”

“Yes,” said Pablo. “Be my guest. Let’s take a line for a walk with Klee.”

“It’s glee Pablo. Joy. Such a silver tongue you have. Have you thought of a name for your new work my wise friend?” asked Dali.

"Guernica comes to mind,” Pablo said.

“How appropriate,” Dali replied, stroking his exquisite mustache. “It will become a classic. It will connect the wild subconscious and rationality. It’ll make you famous, old boy.”

Picasso’s Guernica commemorated the small Basque village of 10,000 in northern Spain. It was market day on Monday, April 27, 1937. In the afternoon waves of planes from the Condor Legion, Heinkel 51s and Junker 52s piloted by Germans blasted Guernica. Survivors found 1,660 corpses and 890 wounded people in the rubble.

“Be that as it may,” Pablo replied. “Art historians and critics will have their say hey kid. It will shock supporters of social realism and propaganda art in France and Spain.”

“How did you do it?” Dali queried.

“From May 1st to June 4th in 1937 I made forty-five drawings on blue or black paper. I incorporated the bull, the horse, classic bullfighting figures, and the lantern from my 1935 Minotauromachy. I used the weeping Dora Maar because she has always been a woman who weeps. Guernica is a bereavement letter saying everything we love is going to die. And that is why everything we love is embodied in something unforgettably beautiful, like the emotion of a final farewell.”

“I still think your vision aspires to greater heights,” said Dali. “Your work contains fantasies meeting the objective violence of history.”

“You are too kind my dear Dali. People have started talking about your work. Your intentional dreams, so strangely manifested, in the way you have masterfully allowed your subconscious free rein on the canvas. Most amazing, your Persistence of Memory.”

“You are too generous Pablo. I merely reflect the ongoing crisis in society, the surreal absurd nightmare, with, shall we say, a twisted rather sordid but truthful elusive creative beast we must acknowledge to allow our perverse authenticity freedom wherever it leads us.”

“So true my friend, for we are only the conduit of the magic,” said Pablo. “We paint what we see with our innermost senses, born by authentic inner visions.”

“We are the mysteries speaking through the mysteries,” said Salvadore.

“We are ceaselessly redrafting the short story we call our life,” said a scribe.

 

My new life

Whew, what a first week it was for my little existence, my little humanoid welcoming. I began a new strange scary awkward weird and transforming experience in a couple of human’s lives.

I begin at the beginning.

I fell out of my mom, a female production company last week. Talk about letting go. She was big and fat and she dropped me out, pushing and pushing and exhaled an infantile projection of freedom feeling her pain and my pleasure and I came slathering, slipping through some universal ectoplasm fluid, like a gusher, whoosh, into millions of bright shining suns. A crescendo of angels, luminous spirits, formless forms and shapes swirled like whirling Sufi dervishes along light waves and particles. Such splendor. My last nine months did little to prepare me or allow me to know anything.

I was born dead and slowly came to life.

It’s all sensation.

My tiny black eyes welcomed light energy into my being. I was a galaxy. It was awesome and mesmerizing. I was an Eagle nebula, a gathering of space dust melding, morphing into a solid state, a unified field theory. I was beside myself with wonder and delight. I joined seven billion others. I am another in the stream of life.

Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? The remaining atom particles are life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage.

Existence precedes essence.

Most people merrily exist.

Never trust an atom. They make up everything.