Women Hear with Heart

In an unprecedented wave of support, millions of sad, yet strangely serene women facing callously arranged marriages filled with empty hopes and vague promises of love and happiness have enlisted to engage strangers on distant borders. 

This wave of support resembled the open handed movement in the moment, the long fare well gesture a mother reluctantly gifted her daughter recently watching her disappear into the teeming stream.

"Be well my love," sang the mother. Her daughter joined a band of women, singing and sighing.

Living their dream, making their sacrifice with clean and clear motivation, determination and focus, the entourage of waving, singing women danced through distant valleys, climbed jagged mountains of regret and entered a no-name village where males hammered war's drums.

Where males argued over a slice of bread, a slice of earth, studied imaginary maps and spit in the dust.

"Where is this place?" said the leader of the women, in a strange village in a strange world.

"It is far away," said a grave digger with vast earth moving experience. "It is a distant land where bronze statues of fallen soldiers, warriors and testosterone fueled fools rust and congratulate each other on their mutual stupidity. Where, if you listen closely to the wind, you will hear it whisper, 'Go home, return to your children, your families and friends. Live in peace with your brothers, sisters.'"

The women listened with the their hearts. 

Peace.

 

Arranged Taxi Music

It's tough living in a land where the women are beautiful and sad. At the same time. It appears many don't know whether they are coming or going, going, long gone. They've fashioned these really amazing well defined masks out of loss and hopelessness and confusion and serious misgiving doubt using tears, wrapped in silence. Many are waiting for an arranged marriage.

The fathers get together and draw lots. They draw with ink and pastels and charcoal. The charcoal comes from a deep black well where their wives, tired of waiting, sing, "Give us a child, give us someone to love and protect and carry forever and cherish and spoil with benign neglect. Give us your future. We don't really care about love, it's all arranged. It's a matter of principle and practicality. Here, accept this man, this stranger into your heart and just give us a child."

Their daughter wraps their words around her heart. A constrictor in love's tangled jungle.

This explains why you never see women taxi drivers here. It's a male thing, these bright speeding tire spinning toys on wheels. Kinda like a Toy's For Tots game show. Live. Same goes for cafes where retired guys sit around all day long from opening to closing and play backgammon. Little wooden pieces carved from youth's forgotten toys.

Young macho guys spin their shiny yellow taxi wheels and play arranged symphonies in the horn section. The women know better which is why they live longer.

Why they may, given the heart, stand up and say, "I respect your ideas about arranged marriages, however, to be really honest with you, it's old fashioned conservative thinking. This is 2007 not 1987. I am a member of a new free thinking generation. I am not willing to be a victim, a willing victim of your narrow minded attitudes. I will choose my own friends, lover and companion, based on my needs. I know why the caged bird sings."

Mr. Lucky Foot

One of my secret names is Mr. Lucky Foot. What does that mean you may ask, well let me tell you in simple, plain, clear and concise English, the language of barbarians.

It means wherever I go and pause to meet people; like shopkeepers, merchants in Venice, rest-a-rant owners and various non-descript sad, lonely, neurotic and well adjusted humans struggling to find their personal way inside the labyrinth, when I show up, because 90% of life is Showing Up, their day, life and fortune changes. For the better. It happened in the Middle KIngdom and it's happening in Asia Minor.

Take yesterday for example. I wandered through a gleaming atrium filled with your standard array of badly dressed silver bald dressed dummies fronted by glass, screaming ineffective indifferent bored mistresses out on good behavior and pram wheeled infants.

I happened into a shop hidden well behind the "upscale" zones where, to my delight, I discovered five varieties of carved chess sets; Roman, Ottoman, Egyptian, English football motif, and the Middle Ages. All the sets were realistic and well done. The game of kings. The owner also had sizable sculptures of Black jazz musicians; sax, trumpet, clarinet, keyboard, drums, singers and electric guitar. He also had a good selection of Swiss Army knives. Sharp and to the point.

Anyway, so, at first it's just the two of us, talking and drinking tea. Then a couple of university girls arrived, bought Zippo lighters for gifts and left. They were followed by boys looking for lighters. Then a well dressed man, maybe 60, in a worn beige leather jacket came in with a school boy, wanting a lighter and pen. Simple tools. Another man followed them standing nearby. He looked Russian or Tartar; thick neck, alert eyes, short hair, and stocky in a light brown suit with expensive wing tips. He clasped his meaty hands together watching the man negotiate with the owner. He was the bodyguard and he never moved.

We made brief eye contact. He swiveled his gaze back to the man and boy. There was a problem with the credit card transaction. The man reached into his right leather pocket, pulled out a cell phone and called his bank. He spoke a few words and disconnected. The owner punched in numbers and the sale went through.

Satisfied, the man took his purchase and we spoke - How do you like it here? What is your job? Where are you from? His gray eyes were meticulous and direct. We shook hands then he and the boy left. The bodyguard slid out the door close behind.

"Who do you think he was?" I asked the owner as we resumed drinking tea.
"Maybe the boss of a big organization, maybe a bureaucrat. Well connected. I never saw him before."

More people entered his shop.
"Goodbye," I said.
"You brought me good luck today," he said. "You have a lucky foot. Thanks."
"Perhaps. You're welcome."

Lady Di's Letter

Lady Di, doing her healing work in Arizona wrote post 9/11 history to him in Spain.

“Someone punctured a huge bubble protecting people living in their wildest consumer dreams. They thought they were impervious, isolated in their greed, consumption and apathy. All illusion.

“It’s rumored they had little knowledge or insight into poor disenfranchised people living their lives far away. They knew next to nothing about geography and how the world works. Scientists are still analyzing the data. Crunching numbers.
    
“Members of revolutionary tribes living outside this self perpetuating ideal perceived altered reality where children were groomed to avoid dangerous things let alone ideas and contagious diseases which might infect the group, have been informed. This is a scary time. 8.5 million people here are unemployed. The economy is facing collapse.”
    
He turned a page.

“It’s rumored the masses didn’t see it coming. The irony is not lost of some of them. Perhaps those paying attention lived outside transparent media ideology.
    
“They had their eyes open when others slept. They listened with their eyes while seeing with their ears.         
    
“Yes, they paid attention in significant ways. They visualized the approaching point with a clarity that astounded those who believed tomorrow would be exactly like yesterday.
    
“And so, it dawned over Camelback Mountain above Paradise Valley haciendas in real and symbolic height, depth, and width. Light filtered into wide open eyes. The tribe gathered to discuss their situation.
    
“Take care of yourself.
“Love.”

Make a blood donation

Ah, the great feeling of donating blood. When you travel you give. Giving blood is giving the gift of life. As I have learned from experience, a wonderful little teacher, for the last twenty odd years, giving blood helps someone who needs it more than me.

I have A- which is fairly rare. So, last century, I started donating and yesterday allowed me to donate. The blood mobile is parked downtown near a busy intersection. You walk down the street past pretzel sellers, cascading water fountains, statues of frozen soldiers firing rusty iron guns into cobalt skies and get on the bus.

A smiling nurse from Bulgaria asks you health questions in broken English. Another nurse takes your blood pressure. She attaches a tourniquet to your left arm and says, "You have excellent veins."

She swabs the vein and slides the needle in. Open and close your left hand. Blood flows.

Outside the tinted windows parents hold hands with their children in blinding sun. Scraggly faced men unload boxes of fresh red tomatoes from a white truck. Sunglasses on pedestrians reflect light. Teams of boys fold and crush cardboard boxes in their salvage operation and load them on metal rolling carts. Recycle sales potential.

Sad, oh so serious SAD looking businessmen carry their briefcases filled with secrets. Such a heavy burden.

Blood flows. A little gift.