Cadiz Barber

An old barbershop thrived near Plaza de San Juan de Dios, the neoclassical town hall from 1800.

It had cracked blue-white tiled walls and a yellow-blue mosaic inlaid floor. A well-dressed retired man sat outside smoking a cigar in a shaft of light.

We exchanged pleasantries. “Buenos Dias.”

An old barber in a stained white smock smiled. “Buenos Dias. What’ll it be Senor?”

I pulled a worn bilingual phrase book from a back pocket and thumbed to page 131. A trim please - showing a phrase gesturing over and down my long white beard painting a little.

Living in the Land of Gestures, Smiles and Body Language I spoke every tongue on Earth using fingers and hands. People attached meaning to gestures, facial expressions and guttural tone. Gestures were an international passport. They expressed truth-value meaning to communicate ideas, beauty and mystery. Gestures were sleight-of-hand performances. They sealed deals using people.

The dialect of hands expressed everything.

As a flying finger expert meeting tolerant people I expressed gratitude with real and imaginary sign words. A familiar forcestero, they trusted me in a vague clear way.

The barber looked at the book. He studied quick hands.

“Yes, fine, I understand what you want. Here,” gesturing to a chair, “sit here.”

I tabled my Moleskine journal, camera and glasses, faded filthy S.F. Giants baseball hat, received the cloth and closed eyes.

As the barber prepared tools I contemplated how Cadiz citizens loved balmy weather. People moved in and out of small flats like actors and directors on a set. Natives framed long telephoto shots to establish the big picture. They focused a spotlight lens tight on details and emotional truth in a long story.

See through soft eyes.

Their DNA spilled oral discourse wandering Earth looking for sanctuary. For centuries their ancestors intermarried with Berbers. Now 18% were practicing Catholics compared with 98% fifty years ago. Guilt, sin and liberation from repression ate ethics with cognitive dissonance. C’ la vie.

Scissors and comb danced in the barber’s hands. A finger tilted my head left then right.

A walking stick on tiles shattered sound. Acquaintances paid their respects to Omar. Language music floated.

Omar greeted an old friend. “Ola, we meet again,”

“Welcome back, my friend. You have been away a long time.”

“Yes, forever and a day. We were in the Sahara before, on and after 9/11,” said Omar, pointing to the man being trimmed. “Economic terrorism and fear of poverty is a hell of a never ending story.”

“True,” said his friend, “such devastation, suffering and retribution by angry, scared, poor people. Speaking of Sahara, how goes it...I know it like the back of my old veined hand. Trade caravans are moving north this time of year, carpets, silk, and spices are selling well yes?”

“Yes. Trading is good. You are fortunate my friend,” said Omar.

“Yes. I’ve been blessed with good health.”

“And your family? How are they?” said Omar.

“They are well, thanks be to God. Allah be praised. The most beneficent is shining their love on us. Have you heard from 9/11 survivors?”

“Word travels slower than a camel passing through a needle’s eye,” said Omar. “Tribes formed after nine eleven. Many migrated toward mountains and subterranean caves. Others resumed journeys along the Silk Road toward Constantinople and the Mediterranean.”

“How did they survive?”

“They created safe havens and new artistic opportunities. Eco tourists seeking simplicity, sanctuary and serenity from global tragedies and personal heartbreak supported spiritual retreats to practice meditation and compassion with healers, poets and prophets.”

“Love and the art of living reveals clear truths,” said his friend.

A woman in luminous red fabric floated through their conversation.

“The forcestero and I journey today. We have exploring, gathering and revising to do. He is my amanuensis.”

“Ah, you are fortunate having a well versed scribe. It is a long walk. Such is the life.”

“And your family?” said Omar.

“Allah and God be praised, they are in good health. Fatima Zamora is two-years old now. Learning to walk.”

“Walking is the preferred form of travel to make the road.”

“Have you learned anything useful from the barbarians?” said his friend.

“Very little. They know many words but have forgotten the essential music. In the 12th century Arabic and European languages created new forms based on 1,001 stories. They used imaginative prose, telling stories inside someone else’s story,” said Omar.

“Ah, you mean somebody in a story is telling a story about somebody telling a story about somebody?”

“Absolutely, my friend, like time’s labyrinth with a complete center. Seeing itself from the outside.”

“Fascinating. It appears you know 1,001 Nights?”

“Yes,” said Omar. “We discovered through this literary effort how people reflect art, culture, history, and myth through stories.”

“I’ve heard of this,” said his friend. “How tribes moved from India across Persia into Arabia and beyond. You are a manifestation of Naghali the storyteller meaning the transmitter.”

“Aren’t we all?” said Omar. “Your story is being retold in Arabic with 1,001 permutations.”

“Yes, from Arabic to a Latin form of learning. Scholars say the four languages with the longest tradition are Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese and English. English is the language of the barbarians.”

“Ah, so it is,” said Omar. “Some are gentle and kind. Others behave like spoiled ill-tempered children. Rather crass and despondent types, prone to violence and whining at high decibels with abysmal ignorance. The Chinese stayed home, the English colonized and enslaved people in distant lands. Sanskrit, the most beautiful of all languages for its precise beauty evolved from India. Our Berber-Arabic tongue has been well received.”

“Magicians, shamans, Griots and storytellers have much to learn and share with you.”

“They are descendants of the Jinn,” said Omar.

“We celebrate cultures, shamans and spirit guides.”

“I am a Sha’ir, a feared and respected poet musician in my tribe,” said Omar. “Here’s a verse for you.”

Earth reflects sky

Landscape migrates

Listening wind sings spirit of Raoul

The Drummer of Death

Touareg the Blue Men of the desert

“Beautiful.”

“Poetry began as song,” said Omar. “Music and drama were grief songs for the dead.”

“Your unconscious is a deep river. Art reveals an interconnected universe. Interdependence. Sensations trigger electrical impulses, heartbeats and speech. Poem speaks.”

“My bearded friend here is Li Bai, a Shi sheng, an exiled Chinese poet sage,” said Omar. “He creates San wen, an intersection between prose and poems.”

“I am pleased for you. I wish you, your family and your companion all peace and prosperity.”

“Safe travels. Ensha’llah.” Their hands touched their hearts.

The barber handed me a Neolithic black obsidian mirror from Anatolia created in 6200 BC. My face was invisible.

“Objects in the mirror may appear closer than they are,” said Omar.

I felt lighter. “It’s fine, a good length. Gracias.”

He trimmed eyebrows, brushed off dead cells, removed the sheet, smiled and accepted Euros.

“Gracias. Adios,” I said to the barber.

“Gracias, adios Senor,” said Seville.

ART - A memoir - Adventure, Risk, Transformation

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Knives

On the flight from Amsterdam to Casablanca September 1, 2001 a woman sitting across the aisle used a small knife to skin an apple. Her right thumb measured thin red working a blade down fruit.

She was delicate and firm manipulating the sharp tool. Observing others using a sharp edge I remembered her.

One winter afternoon as the sun sang past Sierra Mountains, a man on a cane labored uphill to a gazebo overlooking Grazalema with his small dog. We exchanged pleasantries.

He pulled a folding blade out of a crumpled brown sweater pocket and a pear in a white paper napkin. He had the same precision as the woman. Finished slicing a piece he kept it on an edge eating off steel. He tossed the core to his barking mongrel, wiped the blade, folded it, pocketed it and stabilized himself to the potable water stone fountain. He removed his upper teeth, washed them, put them back in his face and wiped his mouth with the napkin.

Garcia the village Fleischer had the skill.

Grazalema families had it butchering pigs on plywood slabs in their garage on freezing January mornings as laughing women flayed with surgical precision. Disemboweled pigs covered the floor. A man stirred a steaming cauldron removing fat from bones.

A cafe man with a long thin blade slicing strips of ham off pig bones for hungry Seville day-trippers had it.

In February 2002 friends butchering sheep in Casablanca for Eid al-Adha, or “Feast of the Sacrifice” had it. Sacrifice with a capital S. Abraham dreamed he wanted to kill his son and God said, “No, I will send you a ram.”

Three sheep were slaughtered, one for each married man in the family. The sheep spent their last night in the furniture factory attached to a warren of rooms constituting the family home in an industrial part of town.

We started at 9 a.m. after a breakfast of crepes and tea. Ahmed, Tofer, Saad, and their father secured wooden beams and ropes above a red and gray tile floor. We held the first sheep down and sliced its throat. Breath and blood flowed across checkerboard tiles.

The head was severed and thrown to the side. We cut a hole in a back leg near tendons and bone, ran a rope through and hoisted the carcass. Covered in blood, laughing, sweating and struggling we raised the carcass into blue sky.

Blood paints tiles. Rex II the German shepherd drank his fill.

Sliced wool coats were thrown on a ladder to dry in the sun. They’d be collected by a man and made into family prayer rugs.

We inflated the body with an air compressor to facilitate skinning. Blades were honed. We worked fat off the skin of the poorest animal.

Organs tumbled into plastic tubs. Women carried them to a kitchen upstairs. The interior cavity was washed with hot water. Large sections were cut up with a band saw, wrapped in plastic bags and frozen.

Liver skewered with fat was grilled over red-hot coals and served at noon with tea, bread and olives. We ate in the shade of pink and red bougainvillea flowers. Casablanca was dead quiet.

At 3 p.m. we swallowed the stomach with lemon, olives, fresh bread, fruit and water.

Across the street itinerant men cooked sheep heads on a makeshift grill of coals with synesthesia.

The sound I saw

Smells a lamb’s head crying

Music of embers

Wool glazed eye calm

Cadence of a blade

Releasing blood

Touch hears the poorest skin

White intestines

Black liver on red coals

A single piece of charcoal

Welcomes a skull

Horns curve from blue sky

Into quivering dark-eyed knives

Slashing flesh

The feast lasted three days.

Sacrifice with family and hospitality.

Knife art.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

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Memory Spoke

“I’d rather be a tiger for one day than a sheep for 1,000 years,” chanted a Tibetan monk in a small chapel near the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa.

He sat on a platform swathed in burgundy robes holding the Vajra diamond thunderbolt and bell in his left hand. Ringing the bell he chanted sutras in muted tones.

Pilgrims entered the room through a worn door hanging after spinning copper prayer wheels in a narrow alley and climbing slick stone steps.

Three tall ornate, copper-plated Buddha’s faced them. Past, Present and Future Buddhas contemplated rows of flickering yak butter lamps, fruit offerings, khata scarves, coins and paper money.

Two wooden benches were against a wall. On the floor was a pan of round gray clay balls. Devotees rubbed one on faces and hands before joining others waiting to be blessed. Gathered with bowed heads at the chanting monk’s feet were playful, devout jostling travelers.

He cycled through sutras chanting and touching people on their head with the thunderbolt and pouring holy water on them saying Long Life. They eased away as others moved forward.

He was in a trance state.

An old woman with sky blue turquoise stones woven into her long plaited black hair and wearing a long heavy sheepskin coat sat down next to me. Sharing smiles she mumbled, “Namaste. Blessings to you.”

Whispering ‘Om Mani Padme Hum,’ she fingered prayer beads.

Babbling tongues sang. The bell rang.

Nepal

Awake, I returned to Spanish crypts with my camera. I imaged interments of chiseled names and pueblo connection. Invisible stories dreamed in occupied or empty crypts. They illuminated desire, conflict, ambiguities, metaphors, and silence.

Dreams floated to the listening faithful. They were silent stories of the pious as silent breathing revealed stories inside stories.

“The rest is silence,” said Shakespeare.

The widow observed crouched shadows in rocky fields shifting stones and pruning dead growth from olive trees along the Rio.

Wild yellow and purple flowers blanketed cleared land.

Romans built stone homes and designed baths near the river. They made walled fortifications with defensive mountains behind them. Ten-foot wide dolomite roads twisted from the pueblo down through the valley and beyond for future legions expanding their empire. Soldiers marching west branched north to Seville or south to Cadiz.

Grazalema men loaded cork on tired tractors. Using bedsprings for gates they built pens for sheep, chickens, dogs, goats, and children. Twisted rusting bed coils lay scattered. They used everything trying to tame poor rocky land.

Men assembled fences using blackberry brambles with sharp thorns. They reinforced fences with sticks, recycled old tires, tin cans, metal struts, old cars, and discarded cooking stoves. Chipped bathtubs became watering troughs for livestock. Small stone dams diverted Rio streams to small fields.

Everything was done by hand. Labor worked dawn to dusk, day in day out. Labor cleared erosion’s debris by marking land with tools and footprints.

The widow’s husband slept in the Catholic crypt. Dusty light danced through palm leaves.

She was a full silent moon above his bone white memory. Her spirit danced with spirits.

Spirits treasured clear impermanent memories. Finished sacrificial rituals his cloud vapor danced free from the cemetario to manifest with the full moon above stone fields, yellow flowers and flowing river where men worked their trust.

ART - A Memoir

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

 

Vietnam

Full Moon

I was grateful to see three full moons in the Sierras. Undulating valleys dreamed of planting, water and harvest.

Mad as hell caged hunting dogs below mountains howled high anxiety.

Grazalema men in sturdy boots carried lifetime labor tools through fields. When Luna was full they didn’t visit fields, river, forests or mountains. Men respected magic and ghosts. Men lived the day. Spirits lived the night.

Chained hounds howled dusk to sunset. Rising orange clouds met a yellow moon.

A heavy bolted brown wooden church door at the small church led to the vestibule of Republican resistance memories. A Virgin Mary crying blood decorated the altar. A widow in black performing her daily penance through action and devotion changed the white lace cloth. She soaked blood out at Roman public baths below the village where water flowed from stoned carved angelic mouths.

A forcestero with a notebook and camera passed her. She recognized his ghost, Yes a spirit visiting friends.

She blessed herself twice with bird wing fingers at the end of a warm winter day. Sun went home. Egyptian vultures pirouetted with the yellow moon evolving white.

She locked the black gate leading to the crypt. She remembered him doing his reconnaissance after yesterday’s funeral.

He worked in the crypt zone. Four long walls held the departed. Engraved stones with names, dates, in memoranda of children and adults back to 1896. He made images under the smoky green eyes of a wild Siamese cat on a red tiled roof.

Crypt construction tools, bricks, cleaning solution, trowels, broken black buckets and rags decorated empty crevices. Rectangles waited for ornate boxes from a casket factory miles and lives away. Caskets with simple bronze handles for six pairs of weathered hands. Brown and black lined caskets with satin pillows. Pillows softer than language welcomed living tears.

Survivor’s hearts beat long personal drum solos.

Every heartbeat contains a universe of possibilities.

Yesterday a casket in a black car garnished with wreaths of floral scents reached a black gate. Men carried it past a palm tree, through a church door, another black gate on rusty hinges and slid it into an empty domain name. Cold gray cement cavities had red brick ceilings. A desolate crypt space was long. It was empty. It was cold. It was a permanent change of address marked Eternity.

Men’s tools scraped hard winter soil. They were above ground.

Black was the night and cold was the ground.

“Any day above ground is a good day,” said an unemployed gravedigger. He looked at his hands. “I know two things.”

Resting outside the church seeing the concave valley and rising cubist pueblo I remembered a sitting meditation in Lhasa, Tibet.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Mekong Blue, Stung Treng, Cambodia

Lacibula Bells

“Those who dance are considered insane by those who can’t hear the music.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

*

A church bell tolled four. I paused writing in mid-sentence, threw on a jacket, locked Moorish doors and walked down a cobblestone alley.

A black Mercedes hearse covered with flowers waited outside a small church. Pueblo men stood with friends across the street. The bell was all. Black mourners escaped religion. Women and children scattered home.

Six men carried out a simple brown wooden casket.

He was forty and single.

They fed the hearse.

The bell ceased.

Flashing red lights, the village Guardia led the procession down a narrow winding road. 200 men followed the hearse. They crossed a small bridge above the Rio Guadalete River and past fourteen golden Aspen trees saying farewell by waving leaves.

Solemn men passed grazing sheep, horses, wildflowers and winter orange trees. They stopped at a small white church in a grove of palm trees. Pallbearers carried the casket past a black rusty gate and into a long white crypt zone. They slid it into an empty cement slot. The parish priest whispered final prayers.

Men paid their last respects and returned to cafes for sherry, thin sliced ham, coarse bread and conversations about the man who died alone.

Laughing, singing children played soccer or skipped rope in front of the main Grazalema church in the plaza. Heavy wooden doors were locked tighter than a coffin.

ART - A Memoir

Adventure, Risk, Transformation