Freedom. Choice. Plenty.

The self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being.

*

Literary Agent: Give me international investment fund managers manipulating Goldilocks, NGOs skimming 70% off the top in Asian countries, greed, corporate monopoly play money profit and an orphan with no motivation but survival.

Give me heartbreak, emotional tragedy, drastic home foreclosures, massive unemployment, millions dying of C-19, jealousy, pride, and make sure pride is filled with glimmering prominence. It brings people down, crashes empires, creates and resolves conflicts.

Give me disabled homeless angry American war veterans struggling with PTSS, divorce, authenticity, domestic famine and revenge, a central motivating factor  ... Give me imaginary borders in a crazy fucked up world.

Crossing borders is a transcendental act of courage, said Z, Ascertain the intention before the motivation, said Zeynep staying on a true line. The agent climbed a literary mountain. If there’s no literary mountain, she said, The publishing road would be flat, short and paved with gold.

Give me a new paragraph with short dirty realism sentences, said lit agent … Give me a classic Greek drama in three acts … Give me romance and treason, deception, intrigue and mayhem  ... Humans are the only animals that can scheme and deceive. 

Give me a life sentence with no chance of parole … Give me 1.7 million Khmers on death row tormented by hungry ghosts … Give characters fear, forgiveness, shock and awe …

Like Orwell give me the unpleasant fact about a Burmese man, on his way to the gallows, stepping around a puddle of water … Give me his awareness of impending death and quick generous insight into his frail gentle human life.

Strap me into my chair living in a kingdom with twenty-four virgins. Virgins strike for equality. Give me a lethal literary injection. Drip by drip. Yes, the metaphor of a single drop of lethal mind numbing, fumbling, bumbling drama intrigue and chaos.

Entropy - the 2nd law of thermonuclear dynamics. The center cannot hold, said WB Yeats.

Find the big metaphor Zeynep.

Give me revenge and betrayal - the how and why wars began … Give me a dumb downed version of primordial Faust … Give me humans selling their soul to the Devil down at the crossroads at midnight to achieve immortality. Ain’t nothing but the blues … Give me a heart-wrenching tale of abandonment, loss, misery and redemption. Tie in hope, the last thing that dies with gravity and arc.

Hope walks through the fire. Faith leaps over the fire.

Allow your characters to explore their feelings, thoughts, and reactions with total comprehension knowing the scientific fact that the universe is 13.7 billion years old and approaching TOTAL COMPLEXITY. Some refer to total complexity as God.

You may want to move this fact to the brutal satisfying conclusion, said the agent. This means the long now or 20,000+ years of human evolution is speeding up. Period. It’s becoming more random and chaotic. There’s a huge difference between complicated and complex. If you can write in God’s voice, it may sell. Many have tried few are chosen … God has a huge slush pile.

Earth, this is God … I have someone who’s interested in the property and I want you OUT by the end of the month. How’s that? Imagine an accelerated space program? said Z, Only the very rich can afford a shuttle seat. So it goes.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Akiko

“The fear of living, observing and experiencing in absurd detail where others lack the self-scrutiny or courage to voice them,” said David Foster Wallace.

*

            Sheep fear watching other people make things happen and not knowing what the fuck is going on, said Z. Sheep and robots fear taking a risk. They know it’s easier to do nothing than take a chance, said Leo.

            I cut useless meaningless vague words blocking the narrative river. I am innocent, happy, empty and brave. I am not afraid to make wise selections when it comes to editing this massive amount of verbiage, said Zeynep.

            Where’s the burn bag, said the janitor.

            I fear Room 101, said Winston Smith in 1984.

            Poor schools makes it easier for SYSTEMS to control ignorant citizens.

            Leo - In Utopia we learn the less we do the fewer mistakes we make. The fewer mistakes we make the less we are criticized. I remain safe and happy. It’s called THE SYSTEM. Brainwashed. You see this in every Asian education system.

             Students shuffle in, remove their brains, soak them in a cleaning solution that is not the solution for fifty tedious minutes and replace said gray matter at the end of class. It’s endemic. Social conditioning.

            A teacher is Parent #2. School is your first dictator.

            Big Brother is watching. Save face. It’s your karma.

            The fear of humiliation is greater than the fear of death, said Death.

            Karma is the universal law.

            Will your characters discuss moral ambiguities? Yes. They will speak with nouns and verbs and use specific adjectives for description, playing with words like Joyce. They will play with ideas, like Borges, said Zeynep.

Attributes of good ideas said Devina.

a.         Simple

b.         Unexpected

c.         Concrete

d.         Credible

e.         Emotional

f.          Story-containing

            Good writing is clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. There are people who talk about things, said Zeynep, People who talk about people and people who talk about ideas. The life of the mind.

            Is a place a character, asked Tran, Sure, said Devina, A place has character like Kroma, Cambodia, a sleepy river town, famous for pepper, Sunflower’s hands, Milling Around and the SIGN ones, said Rita.

            Writers use a specific location in their work, said Omar. Cadiz, Spain worked its way into my morning pages. I traveled with a nomad after 9/11.

             His laughing axe synthesized metaphors of death, sacrifice and letting go. His mirrors became gifts (hello beauty) and gifts multiplied gifts with gratitude. The gift keeps moving. It was imperative to leave the united states of confusion and Morocco behind.

            Exile suited our spirit. It was the irony of ironies, pressed irons with heavy starch in the collar please I told the world’s dry cleaner. Wash and wear. Dry a tear.

            Nothing is true & everything is permitted, Omar told Akiko, a Japanese fashion designer in Cadiz.

            Everything is permitted with fabric and threads, naked in the dark exploring their personal puzzle maps, tracing contours through the Sierras in Andalusia toward beaches woven with linen and silk.

            They were two orange and black butterflies dancing in a courtship ritual. They slept together in a Hokkaido love hotel filled with mirrors.

            At 2 a.m. Cadiz garbage workers in fluorescent yellow tiger stripes collected discarded words along narrow streets.

            Omar wrote the morning down as sky painted orange, pink and cerulean colors. A crescent moon hung in the west. He walked down Benjumeda Street as uniformed school kids gripped parental hands passing veiled grandmothers wearing widow market black at intersections on their daily economic briefing. Roman cobblestones rested in white shadows. Cool clear air dusted lungs.

            The Plaza de Falla Moorish red brick extremities shimmered in soft light. Arches formed prayer hands. Golden, cast iron, bronze, brick, tile, and papier mâché arch models in the world prayed for non-violence, dialogue, a ceasefire and arms control.

            Arms out of control waved goodbye to sanity and millions of orphans.

            Weary serious sad med students gripping texts crossed plazas toward class. Matriculation was a fading dream. Two men grimaced a ladder past a hospital and a fortune teller selling lottery tickets. Gambling was a big deal in Cadiz. Machines in bars with three virgin cherries rotated. ONCE lottery tickets bought the population where 40% were unemployed.

            Pay now pray later. The best is yet to come, said an unemployed Roma fortune teller.

            A nurse in white perfection entered a cafe for coffee. Old people hobbled in and out of a hospital. A woman left the hospital carrying one crutch. Needing Grave Digger she walked past an ambulance. I’m busy, said Digger, See my calloused hands.

            Death stood watch 24/7 in the big leagues.

            Book of Amnesia, V1.

Giants

“Try this,” said Raymond Carver a famous short story writer. “Write 25 words. Cut it to 15. Cut it to 5. This is what dead editors and hatchet men did to my work.”

Let me try, said Leo  ... here are 25  ... Once upon a time there was a tribe of orphans from Asia who escaped from captivity and abusive life where they were forced to … (haul shit, fuck evil men, work in a factory making electronic gadgets)

Fine. Next? Let me try, said Tran. Here are 15 … A tribe of orphans escaped the tyranny of forced labor and ran away to be.

Good. Next? Let me try, said Rita. Here are 5 … The scared orphans ran away. Precise, said RC, Keep it simple and short. Shorter is better. Less is more. Short, fast, deadly.

Character is action, said Omar. In a novel words reveal a character’s action. It’s internal and meditative. On stage in a play it’s all action.

Writers say what others are afraid to say.

They write naked.

They write in blood.

They write in exile.

See and smell their fear strength and authenticity. Heavy, deep and real. HDR.

Communicate without Voice words. WE sense their sincere authenticity. Writers confront their mental illness every day.

They love SIGN language. Gestures. Their awareness is misunderstood when speaking in SIGN because Speaking people ignore you. Voice Ones are illiterate and interrupt each other. See their fear being alienated, bored and alone. See, taste, hear, smell their fear to BE deaf, dumb and blind.

How do people cope using gestures, said Devina. Gestures control people. Asian Voice Ones talk over each other in their neurotic way. Loud and louder is their mantra. The loudest one is the BIG winner. Congratulations.

Here are my fears said Rita: The fear of living in Cambodia where you are always afraid looking over your shoulder and seeing the past with hard eyes because you have no imagination after twenty years of pure survival instinct with no incentive no initiative facing nightmare futures.

You are afraid someone will sneak up behind you and kill you. You suffer from fear and superstition. 1.7 million hungry ghosts swarm around you. Day in. Day out. We’re talking about some serious long-term trauma with a side order of shame and guilt. It will take another generation or two to clean our consciousness.

Rita: When I grow up, I will be a Fear & Superstition Manager. I’ll have booth on a red dusty road with an F & S sign. People will give me their fear(s) and superstition(s). I won’t say anything  ... I’ll smile and accept it. Thank you. Healed, they continue on their way. I burn it.

For example, they fear someone shows up in the middle of the night while they dream of peace and freedom and kills them. They fear armed strangers raping their screaming wife and daughters while they watch. They fear someone cutting out their tongue. They fear someone in their family not returning from the killing fields.

They suffer the fear of remembering & the fear of forgetting. They fear memory.

They fear losing their children, said Rita. They fear having no imagination. They fear asking why  ... They fear being distracted by stimuli in the environment … They fear controlling their environment … They fear their environment because it controls them … They fear living in Asian countries where, due to circumstances controlled by aliens, parents, teachers and authority figurines they live in perpetual childhood.

Adults keep you there with fake dependency & emotional abuse. They teach you fear. You eat fear three times a day. Delicious fear they say. Have some more. They are the great manipulators. Adults are giants with giant voices and giant control techniques. They threaten you with fear of pain, shame and guilt. It’s a vicious circle.

Life is a circle, a Fibonacci spiral.

The Wheel of Life is the universe.

When you meditate you are free from rebirth. Humans need love. Humans need compassion, kindness and empathy. They need to talk less and draw more. It’s a social and cultural thing. Giants never learned how to read or write. Giants fight, eat, fuck and sleep.

Un Pleasant factoid: 69 million children worldwide of primary school age will not  go to school this morning or tomorrow, next week, or next year.

I fear struggling to join the rising middle class in _______ without political connections and getting a degree in business, said Rita, After authority figures said a business degree was essential thousands got one. Many graduates don’t speak or care to learn English for future opportunities where they need it. They’re stuck working dead-end paper pushing menial jobs, sweeping dreams, chopping vegetables, doing boom-boom, sleeping or slaving in the tourism sector.

They need English to speak with foreigners or to get a job.

A teacher makes maybe $1,000 a month minus bribe fees. They lack initiative. Facing tiny sheep they fear losing control and acting like a fool in the theatre of life.

People fear questioning authority in Utopia before they execute you with a bullet in the back of your brain, said Leo speaking of historical awareness, I dance like nobody’s looking.

Yes, said Rita, I fear meeting my hungry ghost in a country where you:

a) are completely lost

b) have no comprehension what people say

c) suffer paranoia, a terminal disease

d) enjoy tedious ennui boredom carving a niche in your soul and you crave endless electronic distractions and gadget sensory overload

e) need food, water, clothing and shelter from the storm

f) have a humbling life changing experience of magnificent proportions    

g) hear a bell signifying enlightenment and satori, said Omar

Book of Amnesia, V1

Language Animals

Q: what’s the essential difference? People who think, experience life as a comedy. People who feel experience life as a tragedy. What did you expect? I ask you.

Archetypes are a universal collective unconscious symbolic truths. Humans are symbolic language animals, using abstract metaphors and cognitive ability to speak in tongues.

Oral (Voice) and gesture (Sign) languages dissipate.

Graphic (Art) languages are constant.

Incorporate your power of laughter and active imagination, said Devina. Ph.D., Education, Indonesia.

Hey, cool idea, said Rita, orphan writer from Banlung. We can use random precise episodes for stories.

To survive in this crazy world we need stories, air, water, sex, shelter, food and freedom, said Leo, activist monk. Everything here in Utopia is pure surface, said Leo, Air and water are free although the quality is dubious and getting worse … Sex is expensive like anger and stolen children. Shelters are ferns and rushes mixed with shoddy cement and crap bricks. Cheap building materials. Food is rice and gruel.

If it ain’t on the page it ain’t on the stage, said Tran.

Will our adventure have a themes like boredom, loneliness or alienation, with a plot looking for characters and conflict, asked Devina, Timeless metaphorical motifs of love, treachery, betrayal, revenge, choices, consequences, morals, ethics, free will vs. determinism, values and abandonment with humans struggling to get something, like a glass of water? Will it have satire, irony, symbolism, and sex?

Yes. It reveals user exchange value. It speaks about the power of using money for sex and using sex for money. One hand washes the other, said a limbless amputee with no emotional connection.

It was a warm summer day. They were naked in a meadow of sunflowers. She was blind. He was deaf. They held hands. Skin was their unified electromagnetic field of tactile language beyond feeble illiterate words. Fate introduced them at an NGO charity ball.

            Blind is a famous concert pianist.

            Deaf is an explorer at Angkor Wat.

            He scaled her keys.

She explored his mountains, jungle geography and intricate hand-carved limestone designs at Banteay Srei temple.

They had a tacit agreement to be gentle and kind with one another. Peel my skin like sweet aromatic fruit, she whispered, I am your skin mistress, one must sacrifice the peel to enjoy the fruit. Play my flute, he said.

Yes, said Omar, a blind writer and a nomadic storyteller. Omar wrote A Century Is Nothing in green racing ink using a Montblanc 149 fountain pen. Be the ink. Be the paper. Flow.

You need eye & hand & heart. Two won’t do.

Few read it. Fewer understood it said Omar, Our stories contain, if an empty container can contain anything, the basics of drama, action, conflict, rising action, a climatic orgasm, falling action, resolution and empowerment with heart-mind emotions and delicious mouthwatering freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Yummy.

The emotion is so thick you can cut it with a finally honed Turkish scythe, saber, or word sword.

Word machetes in Cambodia sever families and futures. You will experience what the characters feel, taste, touch, hear, and smell revealing themselves through action … Like neglect, poverty and illusionary potentials? Yes, if the characters were any thinner, they’d be Japanese Sumi-e rice paper, or 1,000 handmade paper cranes at a Shinto shrine. Fly me to the moon.

17,000 world children die of starvation every day, said Grave Digger. Look at my hands.

Wow, Zeynep said, Let’s make it heavy, deep real immediate and dramatic. Focus a lens. Floodlight or spotlight? Yes, said Devina, Shine a light on illuminated skin with sharp bamboo needles dipped in Sumi ink.

Focus on an existential puzzle palace… Our memories make us who we are … They define our values and character … We cultivate memory’s history to sustain our lives.

Everyone builds their sandcastle with layered memories. Everyone works on his or her own personal puzzle.

I’m going to need your help with inner dialogue where characters reveal their insecurity and strength, their desire for self-preservation with values like love truth beauty compassion instinct and intuition because they have to survive.

As Rita and Tran know if you survive you are a WINNER. Life loves a winner. The soft machine loves a winner. Survivors want to prolong the inevitable, said Death. Some want fame. Some want recognition. Some could care less and don’t try. Fail better. Do.

Let’s see their fears and strengths, said Leo  ... Their fear of hungry ghosts & the poverty of food, love, and security is strong, said Devina, Strength and trust releases ego and expectations  ... all the expectations are external  ... circumstances outside character affect their psyche  ... environment affects silly humans  ... smart humans affect their environment  ... see their struggle to accept their authenticity. It requires courage.

See their fear and courage when alone with others … see their courage accepting loss forever  ... see their fear of starvation on physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological levels  ... see their courage of adventure.

Write one true sentence. See their skill to write short sentences, said Omar.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Visionaries

The asylum is a prison and a protection. We shelter psychotic misfits, deviants, shamans, tricksters and uninhibited geniuses. The outside is the inside veiled in mystery. We escaped the maddening crowd to be on an island.

You’re either mad or innocent. A polite genius. Madness is healthy.

Do you work from the inside out or outside in? The outside objectivity is an illusion. The inside mind-at-large is flowing chemical and electrical energy.

The asylum is filed with writers, artists, musicians, dreamers, creatives and orphans exiled from many countries. You wouldn’t believe the input, output. In out, in out, click and clack quacks, scribble dribble quibble, maniacs, dancers, actors, poets, musicians, playwrights, and painters with canvases expand their dreams. They create a world of memory using active imagination.

You breathe in you breathe out.

My body, my breath, my practice.

We have dreamers, screamers, singers, schemers and bell ringers. Ding-dong. A monk ringing a bell walks down a Yangon, Burma street at 4 a.m. Everyone shuffles to the meditation hall. Sit in silence. Silence is a great blessing. Silence is the loudest noise on Earth. Deep silence = Deep bliss.

The bell is small brass with a clapper. What is the sound of one bell clapping? Meditators and artists see with their ears and hear with their eyes. Nature abhors a vacuum. Nature is my teacher. I see through soft eyes.

Janitors, Grave Digger and literary outlaws are essential artists. People make a beautiful mess and I clean it up.

 Blade Runner

What do inmates sing about? They sing about identity theories, art, sexual and spiritual love, freedom, addictions, ideas, suicide, hope, light, fragility, strength, integrity, beauty, truth and mystery. They sing the nomadic alliterative alternative.

Zeynep and her friends are visionaries. They are visceral realists. Why does the ONE STATE lock them up? They are a perceived threat to the stability and social harmony of the status quo. They’ve been branded, labeled, categorized, diagnosed, drugged, tortured and incarcerated. Perhaps incinerated. Set yourself on fire.

Burn like the sun, radiant … flame your life.

Give a person a match and they’re warm for a minute.

Set them on fire and they’re warm for the rest of their life.

If you catch on fire jump in the river.

Sounds like fear based propaganda. It is. Clearly. Precisely. Concisely ... Too many adverbs if you ask me, but what do I know, I’m only a word janitor. Every single fucking beautiful day I collect tons of word garbage in a Top Secret BURN BAG. I haul it to a gnat on life’s river, light it and leave it free flowing down the stream of life. Yes, said Death, Flowing.

Book of Amnesia, V1