Red Power Dust

Greetings,

Once upon a time there was a little river town. Zak was recharging his laptop and noticed the wires from the power unit attached to the unit attached to the plug processing energy from the Nebula galaxy was exposed, open and subject to disintegration. Like humanoids. It needed replacing if he was to maintain warp speed through the universe in his space ship.

He went to a taxi stand. It wasn't a taxi stand. It was a place to practice patience as drivers ran around flagging down cycles with passengers yelling "Pen, Going to Pen!"

When the car was full they left. To make more profit the driver, a dark thin man in a frayed t-shirt gave Zak shotgun. The driver arranged yellow pillows in the middle to sit while driving, operating the gas, brake and steering. A woman slept in the driver's seat.

They escaped river city and discovered the one single road under construction. 

They bounced, shuddered and sped along red dust roads in waves of tropical heat. The road was holding a convention of road graders, dump trucks, steam rollers, gravel, crushed silver rocks, ruts, canyons, pot holes, detours and red dust. Earthmoving equipment dusted red pressure.

Impatient black glass tinted 4-wheel drivers blasted impatient horns to alleviate boredom and abundance of red dust. Drivers remembered swallowing dust when they were poor, hustling any and all possible economic resources to improve their quality of life.

Red dust obscured Earth. Zak imagined traversing central Africa following herds of zebras and gazelles across the savanna. It was thrilling, this sensation of movement through billowing red dust.

The city was Pen and filled with ink. It's famous for a massive killing field, a museum with photographs of 2.5 million murdered humans and lonely bar hostesses filing their nails waiting for a rich hammer. A miniature Saigon. Groups of cycle men hustled taxi passengers. "Yeah, yeah," they yelled. 

He found iOne, a derivation of a fruit called Apple. The young sky shy lady helped him select a new 60W power adapter. It came in a hermetically sealed black box. "This is perfect for my space ship and universal explorations. Thanks."

He paid her in Leaves, a well known and universally accepted form of currency. He went to a used bookstore. The owner was asleep. His son played a virtual reality computer game behind stacks of dusty leaves.

He found three tomes, Lolita, The Orient Express and an unofficial autobiography of Bruce Chatwin, a travel writer. Pen had gleaming pagodas, parks, wide open plazas and historical triumphs in the form of cement people conquering land, sea, and hunger.

He tried to visualize Pen being empty of life. Humans were not allowed to stay in 1975 when a military group invaded. They forced the entire population, maybe a million, to vacate the city. To become peasants. To practice the art of socialism. Nine years before 1984.

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.

Everyone ran away from the city into the countryside to escape terror, famine, death and execution. He tried to wrap his mind around this historical reality and comprehend the totality. The entire city was deserted and very quiet leaving ghosts and memories. Year Zero!

He saw a very expensive white U.N. jeep on a Pen street. It had a secured flag on its front bumper. The driver wore a bush hat and clean pressed khaki clothing. On the rear of the jeep it said, "World Food Program." Zak didn't see any food. Where's all the food, he wondered.

He went to the fancy Lucky Market supplying the massive N.G.O. population.

"We Have Everything You Need, Want or Desire," sang advertising. Endless aisles of food products waited for foreigner customers. Zak left after 30 seconds and returned to the taxi stand.

The driver hustled passengers. It was a challenge because the cheaper mini-van taxi business was nearby.

The driver sat on his yellow pillows blasting south through red dust, creating a fake orange sunset near wild mountain waterfalls and dense jungles passing emaciated pure white oxen dragging primitive wooden wheeled carts filled with lumber, bamboo, watermelons, red bricks made of red dust, and human cargo wearing colorful red, green, blue, purple Kroma scarves filtering dust from their respiratory system.

Inside the river galaxy he recharged his space craft.

Metta.

Priests Fool with boys

Greetings,

(Editor's note. Due to extreme pressure from conservative groups, abused children and hysterical media corporations involving the Catholic Church scandals revealing deep dark secrets, here is an excerpt from the vaguely popular epic, A Century Is Nothing.)

“May we resume our deliberations now?” said a pedophile priest with a Big Unit mobile attached to his ear. He listened to a long distance confession from Boston. Not wanting to make an ass of himself in public, he knew he’d face felony charges when they found his big hand had been on the little hand. 

 He’d knew he’d never make Cardinal being a stool pigeon without a prosthetic leg to stand on. He whispered to the congregation. “We have to make plans for the conquest. The heathen are massing their calvary as we speak, as we procrastinate on these most important matters of church and state.” 

They were in rapture and supported his religious ideology. A woman named Faith based her initiative in him.

Worm Hole, a mathematician, manipulated division tables on a child’s place mat covered with carnivores from a cereal box high in fiber. He created a series of black holes to explore their gravitational pull. Space, to him, was more beautiful and more mysterious than Time. 

“And now we’re here,” he said pointing to a small blue marble floating on a universal map. “Did you know the amazing thing is how many people don’t know it or get it?” 

“Yes,” said a knight errant, “and there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the earth’s beaches. Try putting that into your hourglass!” Everybody laughed except Bumsfeld and his buddy Dicky Chainsaw from Why O Ming.

Some knights spinning around the round table predicted the campaign might end by spring. They didn’t know what year so they surmised seasons. 

Veterans, children and women knew it’d be years if not decades. Someone had to take the fall. Someone had to clean leaves clogging rivers of tears out of the way. Seasons were theirs for the taking. It was a crap shoot and they all knew it. 

The dice man played his hand. “Snake eyes!” he shouted and the room became quieter than a field of mass graves where children played with unexploded ordnance. 

“We hit a Blue Cross building yesterday,” a psychotic coalition general said. “Was it red or blue, I can’t remember. You know how confusing things get in war.”

“Oh no,” said the priest, “not another cross to bear.”

At the word bear the mathematician looked up from his predator place mat in horror. A huge Alaskan brown bear with red fire in his eyes charged out of the forest carrying a decapitated wildlife ranger. 

“We have a situation,” radioed a Cobra helicopter pilot circling the grizzly scene.
“You have permission to fire,” crackled his radio. 

He pressed his magic red button. A $50 million dollar Hellfire Tomahawk Missile blasted the beast to kingdom come.

“We’re saved!” yelled gangs of orphan children. They gutted the beast immediately with their knives and daggers salvaging every part of the animal. A kid named Export packed the testicles in Ice-9 for shipment to a Hong Kong pharmacy. 

Easy money.

Authorities arrived and took the priest away for questioning after numerous children accused him of sexual abuse. He requested to speak with someone at the Holy See.

“We’ll see what we can do,” said a member of the Vatican SWAT team busy preventing anguished angry parents from strangling him with his rosary.

“Crucify the hypocrite!” yelled the high masses.

Priests in crisis management modus operandus looked at new cardinal points on their compass. They needed a new direction, an alibi. 

“Roast him over an open friar,” sobbed a sacred heart mother of all prattle battles.
“Rest in Peace,” sang a choir of angels.
“Let him write a check,” a banker said. 
“There’ll be a penalty for early withdrawals,” drawled a teller selling used condoms.

“Any causalities?” queried a Foreign Legion officer just back from the North African front where he was shortlisted as MIA. He’d hitched a ride with a camel caravan across Oman heading to southern Iraqi marshlands.

“Friendly fire wiped out a few of our forces which is to be expected,” reported an analyst. “Some journalists, photographers and an Italian intelligence agent bit the bullet so to speak. They’ve filed their final report. Wrong coordinates I’d suggest. They’ll be embedded forever. We also have unconfirmed reports that local Iraqi and Afghan hospitals are overwhelmed with dead, dying, mangled, amputees, grieving mothers and widows. 500,000 and rising.”

“So it goes,” said a historian turning their hourglass over watching Sands Of Time fall in love with gravity.

“We suspect they are executing their own,” a common house junior minion added. “Meanwhile, we’ve bombed beans, rice, blankets, cooking oil, water treatment facilities, power plants and oil refineries. The price of crude is escalating as members of OPEC agree to disagree. Over $50 a barrel by now. Any sheik maintaining four wives has to keep pumping. Basic staples went through the roof at the fire sale. The cost of staples are driven by supply and demand.”

“Humanitarian aid is a noble casualty for the price of peace,” said an officer from a Rio slum waiting for extradition on mass murder charges. “Politically cheaper than body bags.” 

“Those are back ordered,” said a supply clerk from Kansas City with an 8th grade education. “77,000 body bags were shipped to a southern Italian military installation before we invaded with the intention to occupy. Boxes of imported democracy lie stranded offshore of drained Basra marshes. Pallets of democracy on trucks are melting in desert heat along the road from Damascus and Kuwait.”

“We can’t wait. We’re screwed,” said a two-faced selected Fascist president from O-Zone. “They bought the ranch and I’m moving to Argentina a.s.a.p.”

“No we’re not,” whined a minimum wage slave. “When the factories are finished making more precision weapons of mass destruction, recycled petroleum products for happy meals and flags, they will reconfigure their machines and production quotas.”

“May I speak?” requested a poet. 

“If you must,“ replied an officer long in the canine tooth buffing his medals with Brasso.

The poet tuned his Arabic oud instrument of mass distraction.

Parts were back ordered 
including body bags
their future called for heavy lifting
 
heavy duty cleaning materials
manipulation of material 
inside entropy
 
Refugees streamed into screaming 
broadband media found work 
in multinational international conglomerates
 
manufacturing sectors grinded poverty 
constructing their dream for export
 
Near the door to their cave of hunger 
at refugee camps 
they blended barley seeds 
with leaves of grass for delicious breads

“Ingenious,” said a literary critic from The Times. “Uses language in free imaginary and metaphorical ways. Gives it a goof feel.”

“We’ve allocated a percentage to Asian sweat shops,” said a textile importer. “To be specific, China, Thailand, Saipan, Malaysia, Burma and Cambodia - where one-third of the 14 million people make less than 56¢ a day - and Laotian factory slaves are working overtime. They have absolutely no choice in the matter and a buck a day is a hell of a deal. Once the feds and W.T.O. leave us alone we should realize a handsome profit when all is said and done.”

“That’s nothing,” said an analyst, “it’s a two prong effort. We construct air bases and military installations to control Middle East air space and two, we let American corporations buy all the Iraqi assets. We’re sitting on vast oil fields. Sweetmeat.”

“Perfect,” said the V.P. “Where’s my cut?” staring at a fleischer dripping blood.

A security advisor spoke. “Last March we launched the largest psychological operations in our 225 year history. We have 11 Psychological Operations Companies with 1,000 PSYOP personnel working to sway Iraqis and Afghans to join the rebuilding effort.”

“Are the PSYOP leaflets proving effective?” asked Colonel Sanderson with extra crispy clipped wings on his shoulders. He was molting. “We want them to see the democratic side of our occupation and walk on the bright side of life.”

“It's a fine line, but propaganda is more based on untruth,” said a philosopher.

End of transmission.

Metta.

Fooling and Tooling

Greetings,

On Earth inside the Milky Way galaxy filled with 100 billion stars is a small town. In the town is a market where people meet, eat, drink, walk around, sleep, talk, gossip, sell, barter, trade, buy, cry, beg, laugh, and use tools to make things.

What are tools? Tools are things to make things. They make something and use it to make other things. This is called human activity. People once used stones to sharpen other stones to make tools.

Can you show us someone making something?

Ok. Here is a man using a mechanical tool to make a gold bracelet. His tool is made of iron, steel and other materials. It uses energy to work.

Where does the energy come from? The energy comes from machines converting sun, wind, ocean currents, burning coal and processing high grade uranium 235 isotopes into energy. 235 is capable of sustaining chain reactions producing energy to run machines called plants.

Do you mean a plant is a tool? Yes. A plant is a living organism and very valuable. As well, there are plants that kill humans, like hemlock. Plants collect energy from the sun to grow. Humans harvest plants for medicine and food and so on.

If a man and woman combine their tools can they make things grow like plants? Yes. More like weeds. This human activity is called procreation. Earth has about 6 billion examples and signs of intelligent life is rare.

Show us another tool. Ok, A woman's fingers are tools. She uses her tool to sew colorful objects on a piece of fabric with another tool. The tool is a metal needle. Humans evolved opposable thumbs enabling them to grasp objects. Her thumb is opposable to her forefinger allowing her to use the tool with precision.  

We have time for one more tool. Show us a good one.

This man lives in a poor rural village in Sichuan, China. He is a tool like the gold worker and the seamstress. They are controlled by others and used to perform unpleasant tasks for someone else. They are the means of production in a social and economic sense.

He is using a tool to make new tools. I said this at the beginning of today's story. The stone tools he makes will be used to make a wall, another tool. 

Why do they need to make another wall? They already have a famous wall.
The Chinese have been building walls for 5,000 years. It's in their genetic makeup. 
What is genetics?
A sledgehammer. 

Thank you for your attention.

Metta.

Fools

Greetings,

I'm a fool weather I dance or not so I may as well dance. This is what one fool said to another fool.

They fooled around behind naked dark glasses studying human fool stupidity, volatility of desire's rampant manifestation inside a radiant energy field. Fools are particle colliders, small sub-atomic energetic expanding fields with a distinct glowing full moon dancing overhead.

Dancing fools practiced calligraphy with a calm open mind. Fools danced with silence between notes. The infinite white space is silence.

• it's clear because there is no meaning
• laughter forgets everything inside dawn's vapor
• a young girl remembers how to draw outside the lines
• a tongue quickly adapts to a violin
• colors become silent inside forests
• a wok needs heat to play the piano
• fireflies are dead relatives of stars remaining on Earth to help fools
• dancing memories create a new fiction
• sleep is popular among large groups of sheep
• destiny is determined without knowing
• a mountain and a sword create harmony
• whistling causes earthquakes
• a good fool is hard to find
• fools speak of joy and poverty's boredom with theoretical lightness
• how can we speak of joy on this dark suffering planet asked a fool
• how can we speak of anything else, said a fool. we've heard enough of despair
• 1984 is a reality in many countries where a woman carries the world on her back
• this is what some fools learned, dancing

Metta.

Listless the listener

Greetings,

Before I became a storyteller I was a listener. I traveled the world listening, collecting creation stories, myths and legends. I listened and collected sharing these stories with others so they would know, understand and feel the energy, the power inherent in the stories. They listened. They absorbed the creation stories into their creation stories, expanding their universe. They became storytellers. They accepted their nomadic storyteller destiny to listen, walk and tell stories. 

One listener in a village was not really a listener. Listless was, in their language, lazy. Pure and simple laziness. Listless passed their lazy disease to others like a story, or in Listless's universe, a nightmare. Listless was a living, breathing artifact of Neanderthal survival instincts. Hunt, eat, sleep, procreate, dream.

Listless loved dogs. Listless was clever, trapped wild dogs and beat them. Listless was the Alpha animal. 

Every night Listless and their pack of dogs hunted. It was around midnight when the dogs began barking. They patrolled around rusty steel gates, junk yards filled with broken machines, abandoned colonial buildings, detention centers and narrow paths near caves where women addicted to controlling their men continuously gave birth to howling children. 

Around midnight wild dogs flushed rats. Big rats. Rats prospered because humans casually discarded fruit rinds, meat gristle, fat, corn, fish paste, vegetables, and children in trash containers fashioned from old tires. Listless sent 20-30 dogs after the rats, all yipping, baying, quarreling, angry, hungry for blood. They cornered a rat, it cried Yip! Squeak! as sharp white teeth pierced its neck. 

All the dogs howled, shrieking long guttural ravishing celebrations of the kill. Deep, shallow, sharp. This chorus echoed inside a black night, as Listless listened to Hellhound on My Trail by Robert Johnson.

Metta.