Memory

Tribal adults and children survivors of 9/11 sifted through leftovers searching for sustainable resources. They needed essentials: food, shelter, water, air, sex and stories.

"This is the day of my dreams," said a girl with a diamond in her mind watching fireworks explode over the Willamette Valley in Eugene on the fourth of July. Her wisdom mind reflected 10,000 things.

Omar opened his book, traced braille and read.

“The honorable monkey mind trickster wandered through her expansive museum sensing pure intention, motivation and reflections. If she is not careful and paying complete attention the monkey mind will run wild splashing green jealous slashes, red anger strokes, and blue attachment colors on her beautiful canvases. While some ignored it at their peril others respected monkey mind and kept an eye on it with respect and dignity.”

“It was a mindfulness,” said a woman sketching shadows.

"Now I see why Picasso painted Guernica in 1937," said a blond kid kicking stones, raising dust.

"Everything we love is going to die."

"Yes, we accept loss forever."

She cleaned her canvas with a camelhair brush while leaning against a wall of sound. The echo was deafening. Silence is the loudest noise in the world.

"Picasso was a great thief," said a museum curator. "When you see his work you see the influence of all great artists."

"The ancient texts predicted this," said Other, a seer.

He sat in a pile of splintered wood sharpening the edge of his knife on a small piece of flint taken from his old sweater pocket. Sunlight glistened off his finely honed Spanish blade as he worked it under the skin of a pear. 

"They talked about choices and unintended consequences," said a woman digging for water.

"I’m thirsty," said Little Nino.

"Be patient my child."

"Yes, said Jamie. "It takes faith."

"You can’t take faith to the bank," replied a girl.

"True," said Other, "faith doesn’t know where the bank is."

"A bank is what holds the river together," said a child.

"Faith is a woman in this tribal tale."

"It will take more than Faith," someone said stumbling over piles of discarded twisted logic.

"Speaking of falling faulty towers, it will require firm resolve, an unyielding capacity for vengeance, retaliation, and retribution in this living memory," said Lloyd, an unemployed insurance underwear writer from classless London. His three-piece Brooks Brothers suit was in shreds.

"It’s because of the amygdala," counseled a doctor.

"What’s that?" said Little Nino.

"It’s a location of the brain where fear lives. It’s a knot of nerve cells and tissues. We think anger lives there as well but we don’t know for sure."

“Yes," said Alfredo Jari, “memory is the duration of the transformation of a succession into a reversion. In other words, any internal obstruction of the flow of the mobile molecules of the liquid, any increase in viscosity is nothing other than consciousness.”

“Can you put that in plain English?" pleaded a lit major.

“Yes I can but I won’t.”

“Their collective archetypical memory was heavier than collective unconscious and lighter than consciousness,” said an analyst named Jung.

Lighter than wind.

Fat democratic spectators cheered from sidelines. Consumers swallowed bitter tears of greed and desire.

Let’s go shopping to reduce our fear of poverty, said nations of sheep.

“The archetype can't be whole or complete if it doesn’t allow for the expression of both good and evil in the conscious or unconscious,” drooled a sedated American soldier in a VA hospital wheelchair. He needed an exit strategy.

“More drugs, nurse!” he screamed. “I coulda’ been somebody. I could'a been contender!”

All he received was his pitiful wailing voice echoing in empty chambers.

On a movie set medicated military reservist wives dressed as cheerleaders jumped up and down in wild mind agitated states of abandon. They filed for divorce after taking lovers while their husbands looked for improved body armor in oppressive Middle East desert heat.

They were the undereducated doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.

Other visualized their death while poverty’s heirs prayed that instant replay would change reality.

Weaving A Life V1

The Priest Confesses

“May we resume our deliberations now?” said a pedophile priest with a Big Unit mobile attached to his ear. He heard a long distance confession from Boston, “Why me? Not me.”

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 knew he’d never make Cardinal as a stool pigeon without a prosthetic leg to stand on. He whispered to the congregation.

“We must make plans for the ordained conquest. The heathen are massing their cavalry on the mount of Venus as we speak on these vital matters of church and state.”

Idiots in rapture supported his religious ideology. Faith based her initiative in him.

Worm Hole, a mathematician, manipulated statistics on a child’s carnivore place mat. He created black holes to explore their gravitational pull. Space was more beautiful and mysterious than time.

“And now we’re here,” he said pointing to a small blue marble floating on a cosmic map. “It’s amazing how many people don’t appreciate their existence.”

“Yes,” said a knight errant, “there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the earth’s beaches. Try putting that into your hourglass.”

Everybody laughed except Bumsfield and his greedy buddy Dicky Chainsaw from Why O Ming.

Knights spinning around the round table guessed the military-industrial campaign might end by spring. They didn’t know the year so they surmised seasons.

Veterans, children, orphans and women knew it’d be forever. Someone had to take the fall and remove leaves clogging the Rivers of Tears. Seasons were theirs for the taking. It was a crapshoot. They all knew it.

Dice man played his hand, “Snake eyes!”

The room became quieter than 1.7 million unmarked Cambodian graves where orphans played with unexploded ordnance.

“We hit a Blue Cross building yesterday,” said a psychotic coalition general. “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 in horror from his predator place mat. A huge Alaskan brown bear with blazing eyes charged out of a forest carrying a decapitated wildlife ranger.

“We have a situation,” radioed a Cobra helicopter pilot circling the grizzly scene.

His radio crackled, “You have permission to fire.”

He pressed his magic red button. A $50,000,000 dollar Hellfire Tomahawk Missile blasted the beast to kingdom come.

“We’re saved!” yelled orphans. Gutting the beast with Berber knives and Tibetan daggers they salvaged every part of the animal. A kid named Export packed the testicles in Ice-9 for a Hong Kong pharmacy.

Authorities arrived. They dragged the priest away for questioning after numerous Irish 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 preventing anguished angry parents from strangling him with his rosary.

“Crucify the hypocrite,” yelled the high masses. Priests in crisis management modus operandi looked at new cardinal points on their compass. They needed an alibi.

“Roast him over an open friar,” sobbed a sacred heart mother of all transfusions.

“Rest in peace…” sang an angelic choir. “RIP it into shreds.”

“Let him write a check.”

“There’ll be a penalty for early withdrawals,” salivated a Vietnamese hooker lying on a thin mattress caressing a big hot strawberry flavored OK #1 condom.

“Any causalities?” queried a Foreign Legion mercenary just back from Yemen where he was shortlisted as MIA. He’d hitched a ride with a camel caravan across Oman heading to Kurdish/Syrian refugee enclaves near Turkey.

“Friendly fire wiped out a few of our forces which is to be expected,” reported an analyst. “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 have unconfirmed reports that Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghan hospitals are overwhelmed with the dead or dying, amputees, grieving mothers and widows. 500,000 and rising.”

“So it goes,” said a historian turning their hourglass over as sands of time fell in love with the gravity of thinking.

“We suspect they are executing their own,” said a junior minion. “We’ve bombed beans, rice, cooking oil, water treatment facilities, power plants, and oil refineries. The price of crude is escalating as members of OPEC agree to disagree. They’ve had us over a barrel for decades. Any sheik maintaining four wives has to keep pumping. Staple expenses went through the roof at a fire sale. The cost of staples is driven by supply and demand.”

“Humanitarian aid is a noble casualty for the price of peace,” said a coalition officer 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 Iraq with the intention to occupy. Boxes of rancid democracy lie stranded south of Basra marshes. Pallets of freedom sit abandoned along the highway of death between Damascus and Kuwait.”

“Is the democracy smooth or crunchy?” said the chef.

“We can’t wait. We’re screwed,” said a selected two-faced Fascist puppet president from O-Zone. “We bought the ranch. I’m moving to Argentina A.S.A.P.”

“We’re not screwed,” whined a minimum wage slave. “When factories are finished producing expensive weapons of mass destruction, recycled petroleum products for happy meals and flags they will reconfigure their machines and production target quotas.”

“May I speak?” requested a poet.

“If you must,” said an officer buffing his medals with Brasso.

The poet tuned his Arabic oud instrument of mass distraction and sang a sad lament about a person dreaming they were free in a free country.

“Ingenious,” said a literary critic. “Uses language in 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, Vietnam and Cambodia, where one-third of sixty million people make less than $1.00 a day. Factory slaves are working overtime. They have absolutely no choice in the matter. A buck a day is a hell of a deal. Once the feds and W.T.O. leave us alone we’ll realize a handsome profit when all is sewn and done.”

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

“Perfect,” said Chainsaw, the greedy VP staring at a Spanish butcher dripping blood. “Where’s my cut?”

A security advisor spoke. “Last March we launched the largest psychological operations in our 225 year history. We have 1,000 PSYOP personnel working to sway Iraqis, Afghans, Iranians, and Syrians 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 rationale of our occupation and walk on the bright side of life.”

“Propaganda is more based on untruth,” said a philosopher.

“Their illiteracy rate is high,” snarled a shoeless education major from Oxford. “Many of the fliers are being recycled as toilet paper and novels. Maybe we should have included lexicons?”

“Too expensive,” said a primary teacher named Laurie Lie. “We have standards to maintain with excellence. If we kill all the children no child will be left behind. This is our destiny for glory, truth, and democratic economics. The freedom and opportunity for children to go to school and develop independent critical thinking skills is our global educational platform. I suggest we set up a tax-free book foundation in Nebraska.”

“Excellent suggestion. Let’s call it Omaha Beachhead Incorporated with a buffet table.”

“It’ll be generations before we’re able to gauge the effectiveness of paper propaganda,” said a wood products CEO raising his options value. Adjusting his golden parachute, he grabbed the ripcord to bail out when share values plummeted.

A silent blind Touareg living on the edge of their deliberations knew they existed in a twilight zone beyond sight and sound bites.

“Who let him in here?” said Butler, pointing at Omar. “He should’ve been sent to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation and deprived of his civil rights with no access to legal counsel. He’s clearly a war criminal or a literary outlaw. Bag his head, shackle and torture him until he confesses or dies. To hell with the Geneva Convention I say.”

Knights ignored him. “Just bring us some food. Now,” yelled starving warriors rattling Moorish sabers. Blades flashed Chinese white, Permanent Orange, Pale Green, Cadmium Red, Viridian Hue, Lemon Yellow, and Prussian Blue.

“We’re experiencing limited success distributing electricity, food, water, medicine and a new artificial currency,” said a civilian. “We need to focus on fixing water treatment plants and restoring their infrastructure after 8,000 smart bombs laid waste.”

“Where does The Waste Land end?” said T. S. Eliot. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

“The end is the beginning,” Omar said.

“If your rough draft changes by less than 10% you’re done,” said an unemployed literary agent arranging DNA syntactical building blocks on a marketing platform.

“We need to make sure we connect the dots between 9/11 and Iraq,” said Intelligence. “If we are successful, coerced politicians will get out of the way and give us a ton of money like a glorious $600 billion or more to rebuild what we’ve destroyed. It’s our way or hit the heavily mined highway of death. You’re either with us or with terrorists is our message to the world.”

“Yes,” barked Faustus, Director of General Incompetents, “these malicious vermin are obstacles standing between the Iraqi people and security. They are terrorists...no, they are rebels...no, they are freedom fighters...no, they are guerillas... no, they are...insurgents.”

“Whatever. The road through Babylon, Tripoli, Tehran, and Damascus is endless. Our campaign will be well received. We will liberate the oppressed,” said an old white haired man named Regime Change wearing a pacemaker. He loved a girl from Why O Why Ming with a big spread near Bend Over.

Members of a House and their corrupt nefarious Congressional colleagues, doing nothing but squabble and bicker and delay and waste taxpayer money playing party politics for another term with automatic pay raises, looked at him with contempt, incredulity, amazement and pure terror.

“We ain’t in no fucking jungle on this,” sneered a nautical Delta Seal with ringmaster approval. “This war is on track Jack.”

“Collateral damage is a sorry fact of life,” said a man with a whip cutting through red tape.

“Bring them on I say,” yelled Bumsfield. “Our God is bigger than their God for God’s sake. Look, it’s easy, here’s what we do. We know the United Nations is useless. We’ll create false claims of nuclear and biological threats feeding 9/11 FEAR. Then we give the sheep a solution.”

Create a problem. Create a solution. Save the world.

Curveball came in for short relief. “I know where it is.”

“Where what is?” asked Bumsfield.

“All the non-existent Iraqi mobile labs full of toxins and nerve agents.”

“For an alcoholic spy and fabricator you have a lot of nerve,” screamed Tenant. He used to be Lew but now he was just plain Jane Tenant from a defunct housing project. He was on a speaking tour making big bucks after his slam-dunk fell well short of the net.

“Look,” said Curveball. “I gave German intelligence the high hard stuff. They don’t understand the American pastime. They said I was past my prime. They co-opted me with women and booze. A hell of a lethal combination let me tell you. They grilled me over a hot flame. I became a double agent. I was beside myself.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Bumsfield, “a classic bipolar case and your mother wears a straight jacket on the 5^th floor. We distort flimsy evidence from a worthless Intel source saying Sad Man is an immediate and direct threat to our national security. He’ll attack us in forty-five minutes.”

“But,” said President Bush League, waving his one-way ticket to Patagonia, “that won’t give me time to finish reading about goats to the elementary kids.”

“No butts sir,” said his spokesperson. “Skip pages. Get to the verb.”

“Isn’t this strategy too vague and deceptive?” asked a garbage collector in Marrakesh.

“Vague and deceptive stuff happens all the time,” said the man cracking his cool whip. “What planet are you from, amigo? We have the national propaganda media machines eating this flag waving patriotic bullshit. We con the world with these fictitious stories about Sad Man being a threat to us with his weapons of mass distraction and start a war to remove him from power. Problem and solution in one enchilada.”

“Brilliant,” said a civilian military contractor from Texas, “What then?”

“It’s easy. We know the dictator’s been bluffing all along to maintain his power base. Ask Curveball when he sobers up. Sad Man never had weapons of mass destruction except for the mustard gas and expensive munitions we sold him to support his eight-year war with Iran ...

The world doesn’t know or care about that fact. His military will collapse like a house of cards. We send in 150,000 young, poorly trained National Guard units from America’s middle and lower class mind you, take some losses sure, but that’s the price of doing business while we establish a quasi-official coalition government with us in total Control of everything. After a decade we send any military survivors to Afghanistan for 20+ years. Money & Power & Control, yes sir, the American way.”

 * Forbes: In the 20 years since September 11, 2001, the United States has spent more than $2 trillion on the war in Afghanistan. That’s $300 million dollars per day, every day, for two decades. Or $50,000 for each of Afghanistan's 40 million people. In baser terms, Uncle Sam has spent more keeping the Taliban at bay than the net worths of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and the 30 richest billionaires in America, combined.

“What about the local people?” said a humanitarian aid rep.

“Screw them. We’ve liberated them from a dictator for God’s sake. They should be eternally grateful to us and get down on their knees in sand thanking us.”

A public relations flack spoke. “For propaganda purposes we’ll let them form a provisional government so they’ll be distracted and think they have real input in how their country is going to be run. It’s like we’ve controlled Kuwait and Saudi Arabia oil production for years. They increase crude when we tell them. They shut it down when we hit the off button.”

“When do we get the contracts?” said a Texas oilman washing his bloody hands.

“All in good time. Rebuilding the oil industry will be tied to larger deals. We’ll start you off with easy contract stuff like mail delivery, detention camps, prisons, roads, schools, building hospitals and supplying food to the troops. That will keep your people busy for what, 20-30 years, easy.”

“Sounds great,” said the contractor. “This is going to make a lot of my friends very happy.”

“Hey,” said Hally Burden, “war is good business. Politics is business and business is politics. I love it.”

Everyone had an agenda. Blazing a trail, beaters eliminated environmental impact statements. The grass was very high. Inhaling, they found Kyoto on a map and deleted it from their servers while Pablo and Salvadore created art for an upcoming show at the asylum. It was sold out. Standing room only. Their accountant was pleased beyond words. It was an excellent return on their intuitive investment.

A child said, “It’s not so much that there is something strange about time...the thing that’s strange is what’s going on inside time. We will understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.”

“This show is X-rated. Get your ass out of the room and get to bed,” yelled their divorced, manic-depressive father, “or else I will beat you with this stick and stone your mother to death for adultery. If I have to tell you again I will send you to Drapchi prison outside Lhasa where, in 1997, five Tibetan nuns committed suicide after being beaten with clubs, belts, and rubber hoses filled with sand for refusing to sing Chinese Communist regime songs. Don’t for one minute believe they killed themselves with honorable intentions to end their suffering.”

A bearded fellow from the Taliban Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice spoke.

“We agree. Lashes, stoning, amputation of limbs, hanging and crucifixion for flaunting our rigid Islamic laws is true justice. Women lose their virginity if they drive a car. It’s a scientific fact.”

“What does that have to do with anything we can measure?” said a nuclear physicist.

“Everything and nothing,” said Rose, a psychic healer who was not, according to their official top secret Trilateral New World Order guest list, part of the elite inner circle.

“When we retire they give us a watch but we don’t have time to wind it,” said a blind watchmaker named Evolution.

The Lone Ranger, a civilian from a Special Ops Group, studied a satellite imagery map and pixel data. He was afraid to ask Pablo how to draw coordinates with a vanishing perspective. Knights considered him the Lone Stranger.

“Let us know if you find anything interesting,” said Macintosh, a Scottish bagpipe officer from the Guardian Angels, an invisible flying force. Squeezing hot air from a goatskin he played rational coherent necessity with cause and effect. His tartan was out of kilter. All dressed up and nowhere to go.

The sundial on the wall of honor at Langley’s house approached twelve.

Tick-tock.

Trick or treat.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Patriot Act

War on terror experts discussed tactics and strategies for a play with many acts. A dramatic play with word swords cut to the chase. Some acts were difficult to follow or comprehend. Reviews would be mixed when it ran off Broadway flagging down a Berber caravan inside an air-conditioned nightmare looking for a Caravansary on Route 66.

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

“Patriot,” said General Consensus.

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

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

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

“Sure does. Anyone who expresses constitutional concern about this act will be blacklisted, ridiculed, ostracized, and labeled unpatriotic. They will never work again in this great beautiful free country. We will revoke their voting rights, cancel their citizenship and deport them to Cuba. 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 detainees. Lock up all the immigrant children. Tell the tree huggers to take a hike through old growth forests,” smirked Attorney.

“There is no doubt about our honorable intentions. We are on a holy mission. 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 blanche military menu.”

“Perhaps we should we open diplomatic channels?” queried Plame as day, an agent with a blown cover.

Days, weeks, months, years and centuries after 9/11, English hawks warbled to Blare about taking the campaign into winter. They needed hawk food. As predators they knew the terrain, the sweet sound of droning wings whistling through clouds with laser-guided precision. Their talons were sharpened by inherent power, greed and historical imperative.

They were ready, willing and able to establish and sustain new empires by spilling native blood. They had the experience of controlling colonies using guns and fear to establish The Rule of Law. They’d raped, pillaged and plundered old world civilizations and would not be deterred in their desire for more money, power and influence.

They were experts at economic terrorism and exploiting natural resources using slave labor.

“Yes, open a channel,” said another covert agent disguised as a Spanish cleaning woman with Romani DNA.

Nonofficial cover was their nom de plume in proprietary front companies conducting espionage and money laundering. Fronts were social web networks, airlines, travel agencies, blood banks, world currency exchanges, military and civilian courts, oil and gas companies, construction firms, NGOs, global telecommunications, shipping firms, brothels, juke joints, casinos, tailors, beauty salons, crematoriums, mortuaries and cemeteries.

Everyone in the food chain was expendable.

The downside was being left out in the cold if their cover was exposed to compliant media sheep and the public. Accountability disappeared. A hard rain fell.

A buttoned down butler brought experts a mandate appetizer. They dug into their personal caves of hunger. They had Neolithic tools at their disposal. A laughing axe clogged the garbage disposal. Someone called maintenance.

“Maintenance,” demanded a shrill counter-intuitive defensive individual named Bumsfield with lipstick on his collar from a one-night stand. “Get up here on the triple and bring your torch. Stuff happens.”

“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. He threw the baby out with the bath water.

Baby swam into global suffering where 17,000 children died every day from starvation.

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

Agents returned to deep cover operations funneling cash, arms, explosives, uranium-235, and communication gear and cyanide capsules to homeless, nameless volunteers. The number of American veterans committing suicide approached warp speed.

A Spanish black widow with an ear for dialogue mopped stairs and pavement along the narrow Rue Castanets in Cadiz. She dumped water into a gutter. It flowed to the Atlantic evaporated into clouds and rained 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 knights to seesaw.

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

“Make mine ham on rye,” said El Salvadore reclining on a divan fondling his Dali. She was in no mood for his 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 bed rabbit. Let’s see what’s in the queen’s pantry. Perhaps a nice juicy banana?”

“Yes,” sighed Dali dearest, “peel it down for me. I am your bed rabbit. Skin the bunny honey. Elementary my sweet.”

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

Salvadore unrolled a painting. “What do you make of this Pablo?”

“Hmm,” said Pablo, “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 needed.”

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

“Well put dear friend 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 Quixote, an unemployed literary agent sitting on a nag 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 quicksilver tongue you have. Have you thought of a name for your new work my friend?” said Dali.

“Guernica comes to mind,” said Pablo.

“How appropriate,” Dali said combing his exquisite greasy mustache paying lip service. “It will be 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 Heinkel 51s and Junker 52s from the Condor Legion piloted by Germans blasted Guernica. Survivors found 1,660 corpses and 890 wounded people in the rubble.

“Be that as it may,” said Pablo. “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?” said Dali.

“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 intuitive fantasies meeting the objective violence of history.”

“You are too kind my dear Dali. People are talking about your work. Your intentional dreams, so strangely manifested, in the way you 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 with our innermost senses born by authentic visions.”

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

“We are redrafting the short story called our life,” said Omar.

 ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Yangon, Burma - 2015

Buy Low, Sell High

In the Sahara removed from death, chaos, tears and 3,000 funerals I suggested to Omar maybe it was about economic terrorism, poverty and empathy.

He understood the economics of survival, bartering, trade, exchange value, supply, demand and getting the best price. Not too low and not too high.

“A person cannot drink or eat more than they need. It’s about hospitality,” he said.

Omar’s tribe migrated from Mali, Southern Algeria and Mauritania. Prior to 1956 there were six million Touareg on nine million square kilometers of desert with no government borders controlling movement. Now there were 7-10,000 in the Sahara Occidental.

Berbers controlled the Iberian Peninsula as a colony from Marrakech castles. Fierce warriors, they resisted outside control while maintaining their language and culture during Roman, Vandal and Arabic rule.

“Your enemy is my friend,” said Omar.

His tribes conquered and ruled Spain for centuries.

He’d seen boring television images. He preferred human conversation. Omar knew television and cell phones were the most insane consciousness-stealing inventions of all time. They sold desire and greed designed by advertising companies pitching food, sex, self-esteem and illusions of false happy secure lies.

After the successful 9/11 attacks desperate stories, lies and myths evolved, adapted and adjusted like petri dish cultures.

They created new languages, art, music, attitudes, values, principles, weapons of mass distraction and historical chaos in the long now. They took on new fragmented impartial impervious identities.

“Buy low and sell high,” said Omar as sand shifted below a blue sky.

“Simple as ABC,” I said.

“It’s easy to comprehend at the heart-mind level.” He was a man of few words. We contemplated a vast silent world.

“No language, no culture,” he sang as shooting stars played celestial tag.

I visualized elements of fear, disinformation, misinformation, bias, lies, half-truths and paranoid propaganda bloviated by politicians, popes, prelates, mullahs, and animists in every oral language on a spinning blue marble in space-time. 24/7.

Fear sells. People buy.

Human brains overflowed with data and visual distractions. Incoming! Run for cover.

Free C-19 vaccines were administered to seven billion humanoids.

Survivors crammed mountain caves as orphans sang, “A tisket a tasket we need a casket.”

Peaceful people lived wisdom, empathy, and compassion. Meditation, deep breathing, harmony and forgiveness of Spiriti Sanctus were portals into clear awareness.

Arabic speaking scholars recited poetry by Rumi. They shared stories about rising and falling civilizations. Transmitting oral stories they diagramed hieroglyphics, cave paintings, metaphors and unconscious archetypes.

I envisaged historians, political scientists, talking heads, taxi drivers, unemployed fortunetellers and morticians answering suicide hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially.

Governments increased military spending.

They cut education, health care and social programs.

Citizens overwhelmed hospital emergency rooms pleading, “Give us drugs to alleviate our fears and illusions of desire and suffering.”

Fear and Consumption demand outstripped supply.

Scarcity was thrilled.

“What happens when they run out of CONTROL programs and advertising?” a girl asked her mother, the mother of all answers.

“Don’t worry my sweet,” said her mother living her worst nightmare, “They will invent, fabricate and illuminate something new. The manufacturing sector will rebound when shelves are empty. Advertising and propaganda never dies. We’ll always have sugar and we can always go shopping.”

“How long will it take to reduce these feelings of imaginary fear?”

“Healing, empathy and compassion require our individual intention. Many practice a calm way like there’s no tomorrow,” said her mother.

“Healing energies, peace and love sustain us.”

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

“What is F.U.D. mother?”

“Fear, uncertainty and doubt. It’s part of our DNA since we jumped or fell or were pushed from The Tree of Life 60,000 years ago. FUD evolved with a vengeance as hungry unconscious greedy demons.”

“What about adventure and surprise?”

“They are factors in our adaptation as a species. You ask great questions my dear,” fanning her daughter’s flame. “A long now-time. A century is nothing.”

“It’s good to know some things,” said the girl. “We know so much and understand nothing.”

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

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

“It’s a miracle we are here is my truth. It’s a big cosmic joke. Our insecurities are disappearing and our strengths are growing. Consider this. The letters F.E.A.R. can mean face everything and recover, or fuck everything and run away.”

“Life is a magical celebration, mother. We are flukes of the universe. We are miracles. Life is a beautiful short dream. There’s no rhyme or reason. It’s about realizing peace and gratitude in our heart. We connect with family, community and world tribes. Inhale other’s suffering and exhale healing. Cultivate our heart-mind awareness.”

“I love you,” said her mother.

“I will be present and grateful 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.”

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

September 1, 2001

I boarded a small plane from Richland to Seattle and sat next to a fat couple. We flew over the Cascades.

“Hi,” they said.

“Hi. Where are you going?” I said.

The man said, “Oh we’re going to Atlanta and then...” his heavy, bejeweled wife interrupted, flashing lidded eyes above pancake makeup and perfect teeth, “and this seating is just terrible. I mean, look at the space on this poor thing. There’s absolutely no room to move. When we get to Atlanta we’re flying first class to London.”

Her white pearl ring would’ve fed half of Bangladesh.

“We own a travel agency in Bend Over,” he continued. “We’re on our way to meet friends in London and then we’re going to sail down the Danube River, drink wine and have the time of our lives. Yes indeed. We’re going first class all the way.”

“Sounds like a relaxing vacation.”

“That’s only the beginning,” he said.

“Say more.”

“After Europe we’re going to an antiterrorist convention in Cuba and then,” his spouse interjected again…spitting her words into an overbooked air tight tin can where syllables floated with half baked ideas meeting angry frustrated voices complaining about time, weather, seat selection, lack of dietary choices, cramped cattle conditions and the high price one paid to be human…

... she shut up and her husband sighed, “then we’re going to China for a tour. We’re going to hit all the sights in ten days: Bee Jing, Shanghai, Xian, see Terracotta warriors trapped in dirt, walk the Great Wall, swim in the Gangster River and prowl open air markets filled with exotic animals like lions, tigers and bears oh my, dying of loneliness and neglect in cages, yes sir ree and you buy them and they’ll cook it right up in front of you. We’ll drink cobra blood. It’s a sexual aphrodisiac.” He rubbed his crotch.

His wife blew more smoke. “Isn’t freedom, democracy and free trade with open markets wonderful? Isn’t it a shame these planes are so small. You’d think the FAA would require carriers to operate planes with more legroom. They treat us like pigs. Some pigs are more equal than others, by George oh well.

"And, if that wasn’t enough, those smelly immigrant security wage slaves made me remove my shoes and underwear before I passed through detectors. I hardly understood a word they muttered and stuttered. Can you imagine? I need another drink and I need it bad.”

“Yes, dear,” said hubby patting her pasty fingers, “this country is going to hell faster than you can say Osama who’s your mama.”

She inhaled a double gin and tonic. “You be careful whom you talk to now dear,” she whispered. “You never know when someone might be listening. There may be bugs planted on this plane. I need another drink.”

“You worry too much,” he said. “It’s been disinfected.” He got her a double G&T.

“It’s a wonderful life,” I said. A couple of fat happy complacent mediocre Yankee doodle dandies.

“What do you do?” said hubby.

“I work for Death Deferred Ink as a mercenary ghost. I freelance as a wordsmith gravedigger designing mysterious plot projects. Busy 24/7. I’m taking a break from my heavy, deep, real responsibilities. Headed to Marrakesh to meet a friend at a Storyteller’s Convention. She’s a blind nomadic weaver in exile from exile. She lives in a cave with cannibals outside Rhonda in Andalucía. When someone passes on we strip the flesh off bones for writing parchment. We grind the bones into sex medicine dust. We sell left over human organs and upright pianos in China. It’s an expanding market with tonal variations on a theme. Diversity and flexibility is key. Always be closing.”

This revelation took care of their first class attitude.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A memoir