1st International Children's Conference

“We are not here for a long time. We are here for a good time,” laughed Meaning, a twelve-year old survivor wearing a ragged Beware of Land Mines skull and crossbones t-shirt and prosthesis leg scampering a random life pattern across fields near a stilted bamboo home in Cambodia.

“Are you with us?” pleaded a landmine child survivor removing shrapnel with an old rusty saw after stepping in heavy invisible shit, “or are you against us?”

She’s been turned out and turned down faster than a housekeeper ironing imported Egyptian threaded 400-count linen. No lye.

The thermostat of her short sweet life seeks more wattage. She faces a severe energy shortage if she doesn’t find food.

She’s one of 26,000 men women and children maimed or killed every year by land mines from forgotten conflicts. Reports from the killing fields indicate 110 million land mines lie buried in 68 countries.

It costs $3.00 to bury a landmine.

It costs $300-$900 to remove a mine. It will cost $33 billion to remove them. It will take 1,100 years. Governments spend $200-$300 million a year to detect and remove 10,000 mines. Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Laos are the most heavily mined countries in the world.

40% of all land in Cambodia and 90% in Angola go unused because of land mines. One in 236 Cambodians is an amputee.

Expanding her awareness of mankind’s genetic stupidity, Lucky showed Zeynep a Laos map illustrating Never-Never Land.

Lao Please Don’t Rush is the most heavily bombed country in history.

25% of villages in Laos are contaminated with UXO.

Upwards of 30% of the bombs dropped on Laos failed to detonate.         

80 million unexploded bombs remain in Laos.

More than half of the UXO victims are children.

Meaning hears children crying as doctors struggle to remove metal from her skin. She cannot raise her hands to cover her ears. Perpetual crying penetrates her heart. Tears of blood soak her skin.

The technical mine that took her right leg away one fateful day as she played near village rice paddies expanded outward at 7,000 meters per second. Ball bearings shredded everything around her heart-mind.

It may have been an American made M16A1, shallow curved with a 60-degree fan shaped pattern. The lethal range was 328 feet. Or maybe it was a plastic Russian PMN-2 disguised as a toy.

She never saw it coming after stepping on the pressure plate. Fortunately or unfortunately she didn’t die of shock and blood loss. A stranger stopped the bleeding, checked her pulse and injected her with 200cc of morphine. Strangers in a strange land carried morphine.

*

Cut the heavy deep real shit, said a female Banlung shaman.

Fear is a tough sell unless it’s done well, well done, marinated, broiled, stir-fried, over easy, or scrambled.

Fear is blissful ignorance.

*

Meanwhile, the 1st International Beggar Conference convened in Toothpick, a wasteland near Bright Hope - a rusting rustic dream of exploratory ways and means with scientific cause and effect and logical rational certainty.

It was chaired by a distinguished group of Cambodian orphans.

NGO Fascists rented 12,000 orphans out to fake humanitarian organizations. Abandoned youth pleaded with ill-informed rich donors for marketing and branding money to feed international guilt and shame.

“Let’s eat,” said a fat banker moments before his yacht hit an iceberg in 2008.

“What you don’t see is fascinating,” said Zeynep, “like roots below the surface of appearances.”

“We have so much ice and they have so little,” said an Icelandic chess player attacking Death.

“Everyone comes to me. My patience is infinite,” said Death. “I make only one move and it’s always the correct one.”

Beggars, landmine victims, genocide survivors and sick and tired dehydrated dying starving neglected humans from 195 countries convened in sequestered committee rooms filled with suits, scholars, academics, UN personnel, CIA analysts, NGO profit motivated scam reps, IMF bankers and plastic ornamental steering mechanisms.

“We agree to disagree,” said Rich Suit.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Wage Slave.

Orphans, beggars and children spoke about:

slave labor, hunger,

exploitation, corruption,

human trafficking

and the terrorism of economic poverty.

 “Bad luck,” said a rich slave. “That’s a you problem, not a my problem.”

Children addressing global media held press conferences focusing jaundiced eyes on lenses, recorders and bleeding pens. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Sound bites sang starvation’s misery.

If it bleeds it leads.

Incoming! Bleeding hearts ran for cover.

Orphan motions for adjudication, arbitration, fairness, equality and equity were tabled for further deliberation and discussion nowadays.

The average monthly wage was $96 in a Bangladesh clothing factory.

Cambodian women making $190/month stitched garments for export companies.

Give someone a sewing machine and with a little luck they’ll feed their family.

Let’s Eat.

Jungle Story

Once upon a time in the long now there was a continent, a landmass floating on water. White barbarians called it Asia on dusty maps. Deep inside Asia were vast lands, rivers and mountains.

Overtime, a historical bandit with a reputation for laughter, magic, fear, superstition, and an insatiable appetite for diverse languages and cultures lived in jungles and forests.

Jingle, jangle, jungle.

Using natural materials villagers created musical instruments, simple weapons, homes, fish traps, snares and looms. The women had babies, wove cloth and prepared food while the men fished, planted crops, domesticated animals. Children played and learned life lessons from nature with extended families. 

One day a boat filled with white men sailed up river to a village deep in the jungle.

They wore shiny clothing, spoke a language the people could not understand and carried weapons that made a lot of noise and scared everyone. They pretended to be friendly by offering gifts. The leader of the village welcomed them. They had a party.

Every day more white people came up river on boats named Destiny. They were on a quest for gold and slaves. Owning, using and discarding slaves had proven to be an essential part of their evolution on other continents.

Their mantra was: cheap labor, cheap raw materials, cheap goods, cheap markets and much profit.

White people said, we are civilized and you are savages. We have religion. It is called Wealth & Greed. We are on a mission from the great chief. We control people. We control nature. We have machines. We take what we want.

The village gave them hospitality, shelter and friendship.

The white men took control of the village, people and jungle. Every day the white men marched their slaves deep into the jungle singing, “We control Nature. We shall overcome.”

They spread diseases. They planted fear. They planted envy and jealousy. They manipulated villages against villages. They divided people against people. Divide and conquer. History taught barbarians well.

They harvested wealth in the form of people, precious stones, rubber and every raw material of value. They were never satisfied. Their appetite grew and grew.

If we want to survive we have to move to a new jungle far away, said the village shaman.

This is the story they told their people one night below stars singing with their light.

Death Worship by River

Rumors of intelligent life in Hanoi is an exaggeration, said Leo. Rumor control reports existence.

Take my neighbors Sam and Dave for example, said Tran, Sam is the kid, Dave is the father. Their names and roles are interchangeable. These are not Viet names. If they were, they’d be named Binh and Thin and New Yen, like new Yin or old Yang.

Dave had kids so he and his wife can yell at them. So they will have someone take care of them in old age when they are lying or dying on bamboo recliners absorbing 10,000 wafting kitchen smells.

It’s an Asian thing. It was an arranged marriage after a three year courtship. Her parents demanded $50,000. Cash or no deal. Virgins have high value in the marriage market. They are have been sequestered behind fear and insecure superstitions and trapped by hovering in-laws and outlaws for centuries.

Marriage is legalized prostitution.  

Father knows best. You don’t marry the girl in Asia. You marry the family.

Cash gives them security. You pay and get the girl. The fun begins. Grandparents need kids to support them in old age. When you’re young pregnancy is always the only option. The tyranny of motherhood.  

Accelerate production comrade. Many procreating humans have more desire thinking about providing offspring for their security than the physical pleasure of sex. So it goes.

Sex is a DUTY. It ain’t about pleasure. It’s easy to have kids in the 13th most populated country on planet Earth. Get on. Go for the ride. E jack U late. There are 90 million hard and fast parenthood rules according to the popular Vietnamese Party book, Produce & Consume. Get married early erotic pressure is on and off, on and off. Savior a small death in 8 seconds.

You do not want to be unmarried, sad, lonely and forgotten. Loss of face and shame haunts singles with vengeance. Fear of loneliness increases the possibility and probability of heart attacks, strokes of genius and arterial vestiges of debilitating forms of social upheaval and social instability in a socialist society. They’ve taken their hormonal cues and social control systems from Uncle China.

Extreme pressure is on girls to find a husband. Sapa females in the NW, a future fragment of this tale, illustrate the value and necessity for rural girls to marry at the ripe old age of sixteen and produce genetic replicants. Petri dish. More Y chromosomes. It takes courage to raise kids with integrity, respect, and authenticity.

            Humans crave less suffering and neglect and more love.

Dave’s voice releases anger, bitterness and frustration allowing him to relax, expend and expand the sound. Dave is startled to hear the sound of his voice ricochet off cold molten gray interior Hanoi cement or is Ha Noise the block wall? His life is one long cold cement wall.

Echoes dance through his brain like sugarplum fairies. He knows the echo because he made the WALLS. He stacked red crumbling bricks, mixed the fine sand gemstones and quick dry cement.

He slathered it over red bricks with coherent circular logic fulfilling an abstract desire to create a work of realist art lasting forever which is how he remembered it the day he trow welled the paste. His voice manifestation expresses human primitive guttural sounds in a tight enclosed space near his gigantic liquid plasma television.

It is permanently implanted on a wall blaring news propaganda and perpetual adolescent dancing drama programs about life next door where the family sits on red rose cold tile floors hunched over with spinal deficiencies ... slurping from cracked bowls shoveling steaming rice and green stringy vegetables into lost desperate mouths and yelling over each other in tonal decibels ... competing with their gigantic plasma television featuring dancing bears and uniformed military pioneer patriots devouring acres of rubber plantations, palm trees, teak forests, beach front property and farmland ... with a double bladed axe singing a high Greek-like chorus their national anthem about land, sea, air, water and big profit with peasants as small players.

            Everyone’s being played.

Book of Amnesia, 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

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