Adventure

This is a memoir from 1997-2002 with a Nam flashback when I cheated Death. I was in Morocco on 9/11. Call it luck or fate.

Humor and Satire dance with Courage and Creativity.

Travel meets storytelling, creative non-fiction and social autopsy in exile.

This is a flawed masterpiece.

He is a peripatetic traveler, literary outlaw, and street photographer. As a Vietnam Veteran, international TEFL facilitator he lives loves and laughs in Asia south of the moon.

Author Page

In Cadiz when citizens were old, toothless, white haired, slow and content with life, residents in Europe’s oldest city attended a different church every Sunday.

Family was all. Spanish culture fostered an implicit understanding of the collective.

Simplicity. Serenity. Harmony married balance. Yin-Yang.

The dancer and the dance are one.

Generations walked in the Parque Genoves along the Atlantic admiring sculpted trees. Well-dressed spoiled children whined and complained to their compulsive-obsessive guilt ridden parents.

Parents organized pram races for amusement, a new spectator sport. GO baby GO from birth. Spin them wheels.

A daughter supported her mother. Their olive faces had identical furrowed lines, brown eyes and black eyebrows. In drab gray clothing they turned their heads in unison glancing at the same thing. The only difference between them was time.

One morning I decided to get my beard trimmed before tripping on it and shattering fragility. I folded up a narrative map, finished coffee dregs, lowered jazz volume and backed up empirical forensic data evidence. I slipped into yellow wool socks and worn sandals.

“I’m off to see the Berber, I mean barber,” I said to blind Omar writing on the balcony. He spilled, smelled and spelled green racing ink on yellow legal paper. He loved the beautiful messy process.

Omar laughed at this tongue slip. “Ha. I know where to find you. Oh, by the way, a letter arrived today.” He handed it to me.

“It’s for you Omar. It has a New York postmark.”

“It’s from a literary nerve agent about my query letter from a gravedigger’s quarry. Please read it to me.”

Dear Mr. Omar,

Thank you for your recent submission to our literary agency. We read your cover letter and synopsis.

The Typist, Butcher, and Gravedigger is an obtuse title. Very bizarre indeed and we see a lot of eccentric, abnormal, unconventional, unorthodox, and supersonic weird work fly through here. We have peculiar stories stacked in a slush pile higher than Everest. We are drowning in words seeking a life preserver believe you me.

You are a fine writer yet we feel there is enough for here for five or six books. Less is more. We suggest you pick one time or geographical place and flush out the narrative with more exposition. We would like to see character development and social and political realities in 60,000 words. No more, no less. KISS for readers.

Boil it down baby. Refined elegance, if you will.

To make money in the publishing business we need mainstream books that appeal to the general reader. We are looking for our 15%. Publishing isn’t a business. It’s a casino.

As you know, 175,000 books were published in this country last year. Your typical hardcover book sells for $25.00. You, the author, make $3.00, if that. It’s a hell of a deal we’ve got going here. The shelf life of a book is, at best, four months and the mid-list is the Kiss Of Death. Remainders are shipped to furnaces in Ohio where illegal immigrants play with fire at Fahrenheit 451.

Give us a product with a platform. Our marketing department will drive literature consumers to independent bookstores before they kowtow to corporate giants and e-books, mind you.

Historically many cultures boil books and weave clothing rags from the raw material. The insight of your stories reveals your passion for weaving threads from diverse locales. We suggest you consider this viable and lucrative publishing option.

Imagine the reception when readers arrive wearing your book! You will autograph fashionable apparel. Paris and Milan catwalks will be filled with exotic tactile textile places like Tacoma, Vietnam and Spain starring blood donor clowns, terminally ill children, Tibetan monks and this is only the beginning.

We’ll live with addicts, a dying American father receiving ice from his son, a bipolar manic suicidal woman, Native Americans celebrating a Ghost Dance and secret oral languages transmitted on your loom of time.

Your prescient awareness of 9/11’s catastrophic global aftermath is psychic. It’s a sensitive subject considering readers want happy fiction. You need to edit references to fear and economic terrorism.

Cut the heavy, deep and real shit.

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

All your nomadic adventures from surviving Vietnam to your transformation in a 26,000-year old Paleolithic Spanish cave were tales from beyond wild. 

However, it’s a hell of a thread speaking of weaving metaphors in a nonlinear literary gonzo style.

We couldn’t decide if your work was a dispassionate detached journalist, a raving Vietnam veteran or a wandering mystical blind man. Get help. See a therapist or a shrink-wrapped doctor with a degree in abnormal personalities. Fast. Act now before it’s too late to save you from this dreaded literary disease.

Before closing I will relate one experience to you. The strangest thing happened in our office. One of our junior readers with a liberal arts degree making $30,000 a year suffered sensory overload while reading your manuscript and dozed off in a souk.

When she woke up she called herself Touareg, the noble ones, speaking fluent Tamashek. We didn’t have an interpreter for this oral transmission and called emergency services. They removed her from the premises citing The Patriot Act as justification.

She will be missed wearing her iridescent nacreous coruscating cobalt blue Moroccan robes begging from shadows where Poverty and Despair raise their children. Where one person supports thirteen and 90% of the population is unemployed. Where children are exploited w/o labor laws. Where parents see education as a waste of money and time.

Uncontrolled population growth, lack of job opportunities, substandard education and no medicine are unpleasant global facts.  

Handle With Care.

Please do not let this decision encourage you. We mold our client list from the many submissions we receive. The selection is subjective and based on our bottom line.

Money.

We hope you find an agent brave enough to consider this epic mess. Thank you for contacting Creative Artists Blink.

We wish you every success in your writing endeavors.

Sincerely, Just B. Kind, Literary Agent

Hanoi

Ice Girl

"We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe." - Upanishad

This is a work of literary journalism.

It’s fucking hysterical.

Now and then mean the same in Ratanakiri, Cambodia animist jungle languages.

Leo is incognito and invisible perusing the Wild West. It is replete with wandering literary outlaws, animists, shamans and 25,000 natives. Rambunctious young Banlung cowboys and cowgirls dance 125cc machines through spiraling red dust.

How long have you been here, asked a 12-year old girl cutting and selling ice along a red road.

All day. I started in China. I walked to Vietnam. Then Laos. I’ll stay here awhile. We can talk.

Ok, she said, cutting crystals. Is a day long enough to process a sensation, form an impression? Is it long enough to gather critical mass data about the diversity of the human condition in this total phenomena?

Yes, said Leo, If you slow down. How is life here?

I work, I breed, I get slaughtered, she said. This is my fate. My fate is a machete slashing through jungles. Fate and random chance are two sides of the same coin. Yeah, yeah are two of my favorite lazy words. Especially when I am talking with illiterate zombies ...

They are same word but I spit them out twice at light speed. You accent the last consonant, drawing it out like a sigh, a final breath, a whisper. Y-e-a-hhhhh. It’s crazy English believe you me. Impressive, eh? I can also say OK twice fast with a rising sound on the k sounding like a which means I understand without admitting meaning or personal truth-value. It’s vague. Why be precise? People love conversations using abstract metaphors. Ok?

Ok. Address the very low literacy rate, said Leo. Hello, literacy rate, how are you? she said.
I am well thank you and speaking with improved elocution. My English is getting better. The more I see the less I know. I open my head, heart and mouth.

Someone said literacy means reading and writing, said Ice Girl.

I doubt it, said Literacy. Who needs reading and writing? Humans need food, sex, air, water, stories and red dust. Hope is in last place. In fact, hope may be the greatest evil because it’s a myth, like evil.

Let’s not have this conversation in the abstract, said Ice Girl, sawing cold.

I thought you said eating and fighting, said Literacy. You must be fucking crazy. My survival depends on eating and fighting. Reading and writing is for idiots. Millions never learn how to read or write, let alone scribble stories. No chance. No money. No tools. Education is a waste of time.

I see, said Ice Girl. When I write my stories filled with immediate sense impressions and precise details they lose their magic. They are like ice. Ice loses its essence. It reverts to a primal form. Existence precedes essence. It’s lost between heart-mind-hand-tool-paper. Spoken stories lose their edge ...

Too many people talk out their stories. Magic is lost in the telling. Lost tales float around looking for ears. Talking kills magic and mystery. Ghost stories. World tribes memorize chants, rhythms, songs, tales and star trails with a side order of red dust. You never hear a kid say, Let’s take the day off and be creative.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Author Page

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Every photograph has an aura of death.  - Barthes

Detergent Molecules

On Christmas Eve in 2001 I met a tall funny animated physicist at Relax, a vegetarian restaurant owned by two English girls in Ronda, an hour from Grazalema.

Alex worked with molecular structures in Liverpool creating simulated computer programs for a detergent company. He was paid to have fun.

“Every couple of years I shift around,” he said in a drunken state of mind. “Well this looks interesting, I say to myself. I’ll try this for a couple of years.”

His height over the world was frightening at first. His companion, another physicist from Germany was Silent Night.

I listened. When he knew I was a writer he said, “Well then I’ll give you something for your book. I’m from Canada, my family is from Hungary, I spent six years in Athens, Georgia, then in Germany and now I am in England. The cord connecting me to my past has been cut, severed. I’m just floating around having fun. I just end up in these most fascinating places. I don’t even know what I’m going to be doing two or three years from now. I just end up in a place doing my scientific work and they pay me. It’s amazing. I think I am becoming less left-brained over time. I will tell you something that happened to me recently. I discovered music. I discovered the drums. When you play the drums you cannot be analytical about it, you have to be the drum.”

He shouted in Relax. We stood at the end of the bar. Languages blended with music, laughter and colliding holiday glasses. He was in the spotlight letting it all out feeling free.

His friend had driven down from Frankfurt and they met in Barcelona for a three-week holiday. They hoped to go to Morocco. Alex was anxious. “My friend’s passport expires in six months and we don’t know if they will let him in. We want to go in at Ceuta, travel to Fez, Meknes, spend New Year’s eve in Marrakech, then go over the Atlas mountains, swing through the Sahara and back north.”

“What happens if you can’t get in?”

Laughing from a great height he threw out massive scientific hands with manicured nails.

“Then we’ll just go where we feel like it, following old roads, seeing where they go, like we did today through white villages named Benacoz and Arcos. We have no plans other than trying to get into Morocco. Neither of us has been there. We don’t know it.”

“I don’t know it either,” I said. “I’ve been traveling so long I’m a stranger to myself. Other. Before here I was there for +/- 64 days.”

“Really?” he said, combining a question with an exclamation. “What is it like? I really want to know.”

“It’s a fascinating place. It may shock you and your friend the first couple of days and then you adjust to the rhythm, dealing with the hustlers, how to see in the light. Eight hours seems like twenty-four. You are the director, audience and player on location.”

“Really?” 

“Yes, really. You’ll have amazing experiences there. The people are kind and hospitable.”

“I will tell them I am from Canada even though I spent six years in Georgia. It took me six years to figure out how the Americans think and it was very strange. They live in their own little world. They don’t see out. I would talk to them and the frequency passed right through their transparent selves.”

“I know what you mean about their frequency,” I said rolling a cigarette. “Only 30% of the population has a passport. Their knowledge of foreign cultures is slight to nonexistent. After 9/11 some Americans abroad learned to say, ‘I am Canadian or Australian in Arabic.’ Others learned world geography fast.”

“I’ll bet they did. How long have you been here?”

”All day. I jumped through a window of Fate and left the states of amnesia on September 1st. After two months in Morocco I moved to Cadiz for a month and then came to this area.”

He ordered another beer. He was a tall smart kid in a brave new world. His excitement was absurd, scary, hilarious and full of repressed energy. Grabbing his space he streamed words as people squeezed past to bathrooms.

“Wow, this is really amazing. Why is this place so interesting and so full of people?”

“There’s an excellent Spanish language course at Mondragon Palace. Students come to Ronda for intensive 3-4 month classes. The city has Roman and Arabic culture, the weather is good year round and the social scene is nonstop. Plenty of recreational drugs are available, for medicinal purposes only ha, ha. It’s a good place for people to hang out.”

He laughed. “Well I’d be interested in the medicinal properties of course. Do you live here?”

“I live, hike and write in a Sierra mountain pueblo twenty-five kilometers from here. It’s called Grazalema. It’s an old Berber village. The Romans passed through on their way to Seville. I’m here for two days to see friends for the holidays.”

“Really? I never heard of it. We drove around today to a lot of places, just following the road. It was really great. This is a wonderful place,” he said, looking over people talking and drinking in candlelight. “Hey, I’ll give you something for your book. Then I’ll be in it.”

“Ok.”

“You won’t believe it but I work with a multinational company in one of their Liverpool labs. I use computer programs to create and analyze various molecules in their detergent.”

“Detergent?”

“Detergent. This is how it works. Some molecules are attracted to dirt. They adhere to it. They seek it out. Others like water. So, I assemble all these various atoms and molecules and see what they do. I introduce them to the materials and see how they react.”

“Fascinating.”

“Yes, and I get paid to have fun. They pay me to create these experiments.”

“So, you’re an artist using technology to create a canvas of detergent by painting molecules.”

“Exactly.” His enthusiasm blasted over a hip-hop rap bass beat. “You can put that in your book.”

“Why not? Readers will find your story-truth enlightening. I used to work in a town where there was a nuclear reactor and I knew physicists. Some worked with nuclear fuel waste containment, others developed hydrogen fuel cells for alternative energy sources. I never met a physicist working with detergent.”

“Yeah it’s pretty cool. And now we’re here. Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? Well, the remaining particle of atoms, a very small part is life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage.”

He laughed forever. “The amazing thing is how many people don’t know it or get it. The natural law is for things to get messy. That’s why people clean, rearranging molecules in some form of order. They think they’re in control of it. They’re afraid of change. Death and chaos freaks them out. Things happen outside their control or the plans of the creator. It expands the evolutionary process.”

“That’s cool. I took a statistics class once and while I wasn’t very good in statistics I learned one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Any individual or system will do whatever is necessary to perpetuate and sustain itself.”

“That’s it,” yelled Alex. “That’s a pure definition of how the world works. That’s the exact answer.”

ART - A Memoir

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Omar's Daughter

Omar remembered his daughter in Cadiz.

Faith worked at Mandarin Duck selling paper and writing instruments. She practiced a calm stationary way.

“May I help you,” she said one morning, greeting a bearded forcestero. Their eyes connected loneliness minus words. She averted her eyes. He was looking for pain free intimacy and ink.

“I’d like a refill for this,” he said, unscrewing a purple cloud-writing instrument with a white peak.

Recognizing the Swiss rollerball writing tool she opened a cabinet filled with boxes of cartridges.

“Fine or medium?”

“Hmm, lets try both.”

“One box of each?” she said.

“Yes please. I don’t want to run dry in the middle of a simple true sentence.”

“I agree. There’s nothing more challenging than running empty while taking a line for a walk,” she said.

“Isn’t that the truth? Why run when you can walk? Are you a writer?”

“Isn’t everyone? I love writing, sketching, painting, drawing, watercolors moistly,” she said.

“Moistly?”

“I wet the paper first. It saturate colors with natural vibrancy,” she said.

“With tears of joy or tears of sadness?”

“Depends on the sensation and the intensity of my feeling. What’s the difference? Tears are still tears in the rain. The heart is a lonely courageous hunter.”

I twirled a peacock feather. Remembering Omar’s Mont Blanc 149 piston-fountain pen, I said, “I also need a bottle of ink.”

“We have Black, Midnight Blue, and Cornflower Silk Red. British Racing Green just came in.”

“Racing Green. Sounds fast. Let’s try it.” Omar would be pleased with this expedient color.

I switched subjects to seduce her with my silver tongue.

“Are you free after work? Perhaps we might have a drink and some tapas? Perhaps a little mango tango?”

“I have other plans. I am not sexually repressed. I am liberated. I have a secret blind lover. He peels my skin to enjoy the fruit. Here you are,” handing me cartridge boxes and a bottle of green ink with a white mountain.

I paid with a handful of tears and a rose thorn. My ink stained fingers touched fine and extra fine points of light.

Faith and her extramarital merchandise were thin and beautiful. She was curious.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” she said. “How old are you?”

“Older than yesterday and younger than tomorrow.”

“I see.”

“It was nice meeting you,” I said. “By the way, have you seen the film, Pan’s Labyrinth, from 2006, written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro?”

“Are you crazy or what? 2006 is five years from now. How could you know about it?”

“I live in the future. It’s about your Civil War from 1936-1939, repression and a young girl’s fantasy. It’s a beautiful film on many levels. It reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.”

“Wow,” she said, “I loved that film, especially when Alice meets the Mad Hatter. Poor rabbit, always in a hurry, looking at his watch.”

“Funny you should mention time. A watch plays a small yet significant role in the Pan film.”

“Really? How ironic. I’ll see it in the future.”

“Yes you will. The future memory will inspire your spirit, art and life.”

I pulled out my Swizz Whizz Army stainless steel water resistant Victoria Abnoxious pocket watch, laughing.

“My, look at the tick-tock. Got to walk. Thanks for the ink. Create with passion.” I disappeared.

Faith sang a lonely echo. “Thanks. Enjoy your word pearls. Safe travels.”

Sitting on a park bench under a Banyan tree I fed cartridges into a mirror, clicked off the safety and turned a page.

It was a musical manifesto with a touch of razzamatazz jazz featuring Coltrane, Miles, Monk, Mingus and Getz to the verb.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Burma, 2015

Tangiers to Cadiz

After doing my work at ground zero for two months in Morocco I leaped on a ferry from Tangiers to Algeciras, Spain.

An American woman from a lonely-hearts club tour group in Scottsdale, Arizona said hello.

“Hi, my name is Jean.”

“Hi, I’m Timothy Grasshopper. Nice to meet you.”

She opened a small book of quicksilver questions about life as a nomad, how it worked, how one survived. She gave me a multiple-choice exam to satisfy her curiosity.

“How does it work?”

“How does what work? The universe?”

“Moving around like this. Do you get scared?”

“No. I pay attention. I avoid choke points on the street. I trust my instincts. I see everyone before they see me. I am a ghost in exile. Invisible.”

“I was petrified in Tangiers. We were hustled by every child in the city.”

“They’re hungry. There’s huge poverty in Morocco. Fear of hunger and starvation and loneliness is a daily reality. One person supports thirteen. The majority makes less than $1.00 a day.”

“Yes I suppose so but I hope not. This is my first time away from the states. Some of my friends were afraid to leave after 9/11. They stayed in Arizona and Boston.”

“The media sells fear after 9/11. It’s a snake eating its tail if you know what I mean. What goes around comes around. Hello karma. Why did you leave?”

“My husband died a few years ago and I just sat around and then some friends got me interested in social activities. They told me about this tour, you know, stay in a Spanish coastal resort and see the sights with a day trip to Morocco. Then they stayed home after 9/11. Afraid to get on a plane.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your husband. Grief is part of the process. Letting go. Were you married long?”

“Twenty years. We were high school sweethearts.”

“Did you travel much?”

“Only around the states.”

“That’s a good beginning. I hitched around the states in high school and survived a year in Nam. Then I explored Europe, the Middle East, China, and Tibet. It’s evolving like a dream. One life, no plan, many adventures.”

“That’s really exciting. I wish I had the nerve to do something like that, just get up and go. This has been really good for me, it’s opened my eyes to a lot of things.”

“If you want to do amazing things you need to take amazing risks. We adapt, evolve and adjust. What have you learned?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Things like handling my luggage, realizing I brought way too much stuff. Stuff I don’t need, things I could have left behind. But of course I didn’t know any better. Seeing other people and their expectations, their attitudes being American. How many are loud and boring, childish really, like they’re in some foreign amusement park, how they give the impression of being rich, rude and stupid. The way some of them treated the Moroccans was just terrible. Everyone has their bias and prejudices.”

“Welcome to the freak show. I’ve observed kindness and stupidity. There are way too many idiotic crass tourists on the loose. No sensitivity or tolerance. Others are kind and polite. A day trip is only a fragment isn’t it?”

“I didn’t know any better. It’s part of the package. I’d love to come back on my own or with a friend someday.”

“Morocco is amazing. Hospitality. If you return I suggest you travel south into the Atlas Mountains and west to the coast. Get away from cities. Stay with people in villages.”

“Yes,” she said seeing a blue sea. “It’d be nice to go further.”

“Travel is the real education. Experiences are teachers. It’s essential to slow down and see with new eyes. We see through our eyes not with our eyes. Sit down in one place for a long time. Engage your senses.”

“Yes, I feel a little better now. Where are you going?”

“I left the states September 1st for six months. I’m going to Cadiz for a month, sit down, write and explore. Satisfy food, shelter and unconscious creative needs.”

“How exciting. What will you write about?”

“Experiences in Morocco and beyond. I was there on 9/11. Two months absorbing diverse realities. Using humor and satire with imagination and truth I will write about governments and media creating fear to advance their dystopian goals of social and psychological Control and greed ...

 ... I’ll write about illusions of fear and suffering as characters discuss how propaganda manipulates people. How humans face personal and collective desire, anger, ignorance, adventure and surprise on their quest for individuation. We are all connected on emotional and intellectual levels of awareness. Cadiz is the oldest city in Europe ...

 ... After a month I will live in an isolated mountain pueblo for the winter. My discipline is 1,000 words a day or two hours of revision. Polishing is the party. Next spring I’ll return to Tacoma, build a tree house, plant roses, caress thorns and write a book. I have a gonzo attitude. Be a master journalist with the eye of a photographer and the balls of an actor.”

“That must be exciting. They tell us every day where we’re going, what we’re going to see, where we’re going to eat, what time the bus leaves, where we will sleep, and who knows what. It’s a bit too much.”

“Hey, it’s your first time out. Think of it as a test run seeing how a tour package works. What you like and don’t like. You can use your experience to plan new independent adventures.”

“Yes, I like the idea and potential of being independent.”

“It’s a test with compensations. You are a free spirit in a free world.”

“Yes I am. I’ve always wanted to go to Greece.”

“Good for you. You’ll make it.”

“I’ll research it when I get home. You’ve been a big help. Nice meeting you.”

“Be well. Forget the words and cherish the ideas.”

She joined her group wearing nametags for a photograph with the sea sparkling blue and green foaming white.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir