The Hanoi barber neighborhood is 150 years old, said Ha, a divorced male engineer with a six-year-old daughter. It is difficult to remarry when the girl’s father knows I’m divorced after they see my daughter and I alone and happy.
They were two characters looking for a third isosceles angle. 1+1+1
All the Hanoi barbers live here. Temple Cloud is dedicated to barbers. The temple has scissors, broken mirrors, lopsided chairs, cloth, shears, scythes, machetes, swords, sabers, rusty blades, plastic combs, dusty piles of black hair and talcum powder.
Tran hangs out at a small salon getting a haircut. A woman vacuums his ears to clean aural perception debris. Barbers have great stories.
Cadiz, Spain
Omar said, There is an old barber shop in Cadiz, Spain near Plaza de San Juan de Dios, the neoclassical town hall built in 1800.
The decrepit functional shop has cracked white and blue tiled walls and a yellow and blue star mosaic inlaid floor. A well-dressed retired man sat in a shaft of light smoking a Cuban cigar.
My nomad friend exchanged pleasantries, Buenos Dias. An old barber in a stained white smock smiled and welcomed him, Buenos Dias, what’ll it be Senor? Friend showed him a phrase from a book of sand gesturing over and down his long white beard painting a little.
Living in the Land of Gestures, Smiles and Body Language and speaking every tongue on Earth is an adventure. People attached subtle diverse meaning to gestures, facial expressions and vocal tone. Gestures dictated international Esperanto passport freedom, passing through, getting things accomplished, communicating visions like beauty, truth and hunger. Gestures sealed deals.
A flying finger expert was grateful to meet friendly accommodating people tolerant of his meager attempts to articulate real and imaginary words.
Having passed the barber often, seldom, never, occasionally, sometimes, always, while pausing, peering, staring, looking, seeing inside with innate curiosity, my friend knew they knew he was not one of them being a forcestero, an outsider. They trusted him in a vague familiar way.
The barber looked at the book of sand, studied quick hands. Yes, fine I understand what you want, here, gesturing toward a swivel chair, sit here. He put his Moleskine journal, fountain pen, glasses and faded filthy S.F. Giants baseball hat on a chair, took a seat, received the cloth and closed blue eyes.
As the barber prepared his tools friend contemplated how Cadiz people enjoyed balmy Mediterranean weather. Characters moved in and out of flats like nervous, agitated, obsessive-compulsive neurotic filmmakers manipulating a lens establishing a specific point of view, a definitive spotlight theme creating memory, abandonment, alienation, community, freedom, faith, and identity theories with narrative structure in a long talk story.
They recorded long distance location shots establishing the big picture and then zoomed tight. Floodlight and spotlight danced scene by scene.
It was their Gypsy DNA spilling oral discourse wandering Earth looking for sanctuary acknowledging their Roma heritage, how their ancestors intermarried Berbers a thousand years ago. How they survived omnipresent rigid authoritarian Catholicism in Sin City.
Only 18% of Spaniards were practicing Roman Catholics now, compared with 98% fifty years ago living with guilt, confession, morals, a breakdown of values and cognitive dissonance. C’ la vie.
The scissors and comb were musical instruments in the barber’s hands. A finger tilted his head left, then right. Language music floated. A bamboo walking stick dissolved shadows and silence with ripples of arriving. Acquaintances paid their respects to Omar.
Ola, we meet again, Omar greeted an old friend.
Welcome back my friend, you have been away a long time.
Yes, seems like forever and a day, we’ve been in the Sahara, before, on and after 9/11, pointing to the man getting his beard trimmed. A hell of a never ending story with numerous sub plots and twisted arcane elements of subterfuge.
Yes, such a scene of devastation, suffering and retribution by angry, scared, marginalized, misled, poor people speaking of Sahara, how goes it, I know it like the back of my old veined hand, trade caravans will be moving north this time of year.
Carpets, silk, salt, spices and slaves are selling well, said Omar.
You are fortunate my friend.
Yes, I’ve been blessed with good health.
And your family how are they.
They are well, thanks be to God. Allah be praised the most beneficent is shining their love on us. And the caves, have you heard from the survivors, any news. Word travels slower than a camel.
Tribes formed after the 9/11 attacks. They are moving toward serenity, sanctuary, and simplicity. Millions of refugees streamed into the screaming broadband media desperate to find work with international conglomerates and orphanages.
Manufacturing sectors grinding poverty constructed dreams for export.
Yes, said the blind seer. Internally displaced persons blended barley seeds with Leaves Of Grass according to Walt Whitman for delicious breads in refugee camps overflowing with multitudes of humanity. Human caravans migrated along Afghan valleys into rugged isolated pristine mountains to live in Paleolithic caves. I heard others resumed their journey along the Silk Road toward Constantinople, the Mediterranean and Cadiz.
How did they survive?
They carved on cave walls with Neolithic new science tools and rented caves out on weekends to eco-tourists seeking simplicity, sanctuary and sanity from personal and collective comic-tragic universal trials and tribulations they practiced the ancient art of equality fostered by Arabic prophets.
Art reveals strange twisted truths.
Yes, it’s the madness of art. One cannot escape art. Art doesn’t solve a thing. We live in a vast art museum.
A woman in red luminous flowing fabric danced through their dream in a state of perpetual transformation.
The forcestero and I journey in new directions. We have exploring and revising to do.
He is my amanuensis, said Omar.
Ah, you are fortunate having a well versed nomad scribe. Such is life, and your family.
Allah and God be praised, they are in good health, Fatima Zamora is two years old now learning to walk.
Ah, this is good. It’s a long walk. Have you learned anything useful from the barbarians,
A little - they know many words but have forgotten the essential music.
In the 12th century Arabic and European languages invented new traditions based on 1,001 stories. They used imaginative prose by telling stories inside someone else’s story.
Ah, you mean somebody in a story is telling a story about somebody in a story telling a story about somebody, people talking about people.
Absolutely, my friend.
Fascinating, perhaps you’ve read 1,001 Nights, Yes, and Borges, Calvino, Pessoa, Saramago and Pirandello among others.
We see through their literary efforts how they reflect art, cultures, languages, and love telling stories, how they adapt a mask in their social context.
I’ve heard of this also, how they moved from India across Persia into Arabia with clarity.
Pardarar is Persian for storyteller. I am the Naggal which means the transmitter in Persian. Naga is The Serpent King in India.
Your story is being retold in Arabic with 1,001 permutations.
Yes from the vulgar Arabic tradition to a Latin form of learning.
Scholars say the four languages with the longest tradition are Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese and English. One can say English is the language of the cultured barbarians.
Ah, so it is. They are spoiled ill-tempered children, rather crass and despondent types, prone to violence, whining at high decibels practicing cold-blooded expensive revenge.
The Chinese stayed home, the English colonized, enslaving distant lands and Sanskrit some say, the most beautiful of all languages for its precise beauty, extended from India to the Southeast. Arabic has always been our tongue and well received.
Magicians, shamans, Griots and storytellers have much to learn from you.
Omar handed him a book of stories. This is a historically intractable farrago of empirical evidence.
I see, said a blind man off stage.
Many thanks, said his friend, accepting the parchment.
Have you noticed, Omar said, How people here have a talent, a unique ability to disappear.
Yes, I’ve seen how, after experiencing inner visions they vanish. Mysterious manifestations are invisible energy. Poof. Everything is pulsating pure energy.
They are descendants of the Jinn. According to The Book of Imaginary Beings, by Borges, Islamic tradition holds that Allah created angels from light, Jinn from fire and men from dust. Jinn were created 2,000 years before Adam. They begin as clouds or strange pillars and depending on their desire, take the form of men, jackals, wolves, lions, scorpions, or serpents.
By listening to the conversations of angels in the lowest heaven they obtain knowledge of the future and impart this to chosen humans capable of using talismans and invocations for magical performances.
Yes, said Omar. The stronger their identity and the deeper their connection to the spirit world, the easier it is for them to manifest in a place when they need to be there. They disappear like magic. They don’t leave a trace, or perhaps I should say they leave a sensation depending on the perception of the seer. It’s all light energy.
Can you do this.
Yes, when it’s necessary and people request help. I’ve lived with them, paying attention to how they listen, laugh, love, absorbing the knowledge, wisdom, and creation stories. It requires a kind of, how do I say, a presence, an empirical intuitive awareness of an ultimate spirit world.
We are flukes of the universe. It’s similar to cultures where people use their energies to become invisible. Being shapeshifters, tricksters, shamans and spirit guides, storytellers jump through a Time-Space portal. I am a sha’ir, a feared and respected poet shaman in my tribe.
Here’s a verse for you.
earth is made of sky
sky is emptiness
landscape migrates
wind drums the spirit of Raoul
Drummer of Death
Tuareg
blue men of the desert
Beautiful. Poetry began as song with music and drama, a song of grief for the dead.
The mind-at-large is happy & empty. Art is a revelation of an interconnected universe. Life is short art is long. We trigger the nerve impulses, muscle tremors with sensation and speech. We let the poem speak. Perception is the path of authenticity. It is a liberation outside one’s self.
Omar pointed at the nomad. My friend here is Li Bai, a Shisheng exiled poet sage in the Chinese tradition. He creates Sanwen, an intersection between essay, poems and fiction.
I am pleased for you. I wish you, your family, and your companion all peace and prosperity. Safe travels, Insha’Allah. Their hands touched their hearts with mutual respect.
The barber handed nomad an obsidian Neolithic black mirror from Anatolia created in 6200 BC. His smiling face was smaller. Hello Beauty. He felt lighter by a value of 1.
Objects in the mirror may appear closer than they are, laughed Omar.
It’s fine, a good length. Gracias. The barber trimmed eyebrows, brushed him off, removed the sheet, smiled, accepted Euros. Gracias.
Adios, he said to the barber.
Gracias, adios Senor, said Seville.
Book of Amnesia Unabridged
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