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. 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 aint on the page it aint 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 hot 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 Bantey Srey 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 Asia 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, said Zeynep, Let’s make it heavy, deep real immediate and dramatic. Focus a lens. Floodlight or spotlight?

Yes, said Devina. Shine a light on illuminated parchments etched on skin with sharp bamboo 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 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 Unabridged

Imagination

Imagination tells the truth, said Zeynep. It is curious how this beautiful monster evolved. It began in 2010. The working title was Big Work. It’s raw material, mirrors, reflections, experiences and journeys in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Tibet, Cambodia. The journey is the destination. I’m happy to get it down now and make sense of it later.

Live every day like it’s your last because one day it will be.

My responsibility is to document stories from diverse cultures. A record of people, places and growth with Direct Immediate Experience.

D.I.E.

I will create a small book about Amnesia. I am an experience junky and a hack journalist gifted with the ability to see the future. I murdered many darlings. Some darlings survived. I already revealed I am also a gardener and word janitor collecting vignettes flash fiction, and diamonds cutting through desire, anger and ignorance, with be-bop jazz poems, dreams, visions, fragments … word plays and miscellaneous elements of truth-story and fiction-memory threads whistling like a blind person in the dark.

This is not a novel. It is not linear … characters detest the formulaic A to Z  ... I am Z and the beginning needs work.

What will you be at night when you reach the end of the road?

It is experimental in nature, like Omar’s literary memoir, A Century is Nothing. In fact, unpleasant as it is and I’ve faced many unpleasant enlightening facts part of his epic performance is included here for your dining and dancing pleasure.

Question … did children invent infinity and eternity? No. They are abstract concepts. Like elastic time. Time is a circle. Children live forever. WE are immortal.

We begin with children’s voices. I say WE because it is everyone. The WE are you and I, us, them, he, she, it, all … universal pronouns. Language is communication not rules…grammar means rules … tedious shit.

One voice many voices. Storytellers. The world is made of stories not atoms. They are essential with heart-mind-spirit. Wisdom mind burns bright. The Mind-at-Large spirit is motivation. Karma. Here is one of my kid friends.

Hi. This is the day of my dreams, said Tran, 10, amputee and dust collector, Da Nang, Vietnam.

Let’s create a book, said Zeynep, And we’ll be in it. I am a central scripter because I am young enough to know how much I don’t know which means I don’t know anything…the first thing, the last thing, the only thing, the main thing about the literary publishing game…I imagine literary means being accepted and commercial means selling and establish marketing platforms and becoming addicted to social media because media buys people.

I understand the meaning of meaning, subjective truth values. I am curious and question everything and like my friends in this chess game of life experiences I am fearless.

I always take yes for an answer.

We are bushido warriors with Zen clarity insight and wisdom. The majority of adults are, in my little clear, concise, precise deadly specific opinion based on empirical experience tyrants, rigid, autocratic, blind in one eye, easily distracted, idiots, depressed, angry, insecure, resentful, neurotic, suffering from illusions, greedy for money and power and CONTROL and so on. I love their personality and character faults.

They take drugs or escape into phone madness to erase pain and memory. They struggle to forget. They take Soma to BE on a perpetual holiday from mind numbing tedious monotonous life. They become soft and pliable sheep…easily manipulated by viral media machine messages. Burroughs called it The Soft Machine.

Every person counts.

To relieve a low level of fear called anxiety they need a high dosage of feel good prescription drugs and/or phones. Same-same but different.

Here in Turkey, said Z, Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, is prescribed for the nationalist sheep. It is safe, effective, addictive and abused. Adults take the easy way out because they are lazy, anxious and afraid after July 2016. Coup de ta da. They live their personal FEAR.

Adults boss us around because we are small. Big ones manipulate us through fear, intimidation and bribery. Eat your vegetables and you can have desert.  Don’t tell your parents what happened in the dark chapel and I’ll give you some money. Give me a bottle of expensive French wine and you’ll pass my class.

Give me your daughter and you can have some land. Give me your sword and I’ll spare your life. I buy your freedom with candy, money and things. Give me your tomorrows and you can have some food. Give me your soul and you can go to heaven and live with twenty-four virgins after I kill you.

I will give you clothing, shelter and food if you give up your free speech.

What a great deal. And so on.

Adults think they are omnipotent. They are physical giants but believe you me many are smaller than a neutrino quark in my humble estimation, interpretation, elaboration, shun. This creates a tragedy.

Life is a tragedy when seen closeup but a comedy in long shot. – Charlie Chaplin

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

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.

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. Magic.

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.

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, kindness 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 Unabridged

Music is the fuel

The one who dies with the most toys wins. Congratulations.

Besides writing, gardening and storytelling are you Grave Digger?

Yes, said Zeynep, I am a Grave Digger by day and a literary prostitute by night. I made my own shovel. I cut down the tree. I shaved the bark, fashioned the long handle, extracted iron from earth, created fire, heated the iron ion particles, forged the iron and fitted it. It’s a custom-made job. One of a kind, like you. Unique.

I am very busy doing nothing, a kind of jazz poem. Musical flow feeds the writing. Rhythm, harmony and improvisation.  

Music is the fuel.

Most humans are busy, busy, busy. You never hear a dying man say, I wish I’d spent more time at the office … I bury failures and successes in the same grave. It’s a job and puts food on the table. I develop and cultivate plots where I plant symbolic and metaphorical empirical roots. I love good dirt … I also perform cremation ceremonies for families needing ashes, bones and dust.

WE are radiant stardust and 1/3rd the life of the universe. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. Our bodies are nothing but recycled atoms and quarks from exploding stars.

I am fire, personified. Shamans control fire … I am a lightning bolt singing Abracadabra. Translation - hurl your lightning bolt even unto death.

It’s an alchemical process. Grave digging is a full-time honorable job with dignity and respect. Look at my hands … Look at your hands …You know two things … Look at a blind potter’s hands, a blind smith’s hands, the blind laundry woman’s hands, the blind seamstress’s hands, the blind beggar’s hands, the blind writer’s hands, the blind executioner’s hands, Death’s hands … all the hands dancing, gesturing, pleading, laughing, loving, touching, holding, grasping, signing hands, all the non-VOICE hands.

An open hand holds everything.

People say the world is a big place. By the time you get to your plot Earth is a very small place, ha. Put that in your opening remarks at a literary festival.

Do you have a night job?

Yes, I am a word janitor in an insane asylum.  It’s a good place to jot down ideas and sketch. I am a literary outlaw. I violate all the writing rules.

Rules are for rulers. A ruler is a tool to measure something. A human ruler is an autocratic dictator in the Middle East, North Korea, Burma, Russia, China, Turkey and serious Syria among other places. You name it. They sit on a fancy papier mâché throne … Older wiser slaves offering sage advice to save their ass and protect their bureaucratic position OBEY the boss and do what they are told to do. Or else.

They Rule. Some rule out of kindness and compassion. They accept freedom and responsibility and accountability for their actions to be just and empathetic.

Many rule using FEAR and intimidation. As an outlaw word janitor knowing ambiguities, contradictions, paradoxes and false identities, I collect evidence.

I take out the garbage, like adverbial labia. The garbage is a mixture of fact and fiction. Some garbage is true factoid and some garbage is invented farrago. Janitorial work is fun, useful and necessary.

I meet fascinating patients living free from fear now. I discover cool stuff people discard. Many patients wallow like pigs in regret, drown in guilt pools or die in future fears.

Earth is one big insane asylum.

No memory means no guilt and no guilt means no fear. Sweet.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Kid Genius

Good travel writing is creative hanging out.

Can Zeynep do this? Yes, she’s around 19 now in 2023.

Fate introduced us when she was 5. I was 50 going on 10. We connected immediately. It was about trust and authenticity. She’s a fine storyteller and visual artist. She has stories to share.

She contributed to The Language Company.

She travels with storytelling kid friends: Leo from Lijiang, Utopia, Devina from Jakarta, Indonesia, Tran from Danang, Vietnam, Rita from Banlung, Cambodia, Omar a Tuareg Berber from Morocco, a harlequin, a word janitor and Grave Digger.

Omar is blind. Eyes lie. Real eyes realize real lies.

Question? What is your interpretation of visual sensation?

Data based evidence is impermanent impaired observation … Energy, frequencies and vibrations. Storytelling, exposition, myth, jazz poetry, and system analysis flow in the stream of life. Glow with your flow … Many stories are recycled, retransmitted and translated from, into and beyond languages, like SIGN speak.

Language is a virus. You need it to get in. You need it to get out. Input & output. Language in language out.

There are word photographs. You cannot photograph a memory … Every photograph has an aura of death. A photograph is a kind of haiku. Life is a grand experimental adventure in evolutionary nature … Nature is the teacher. Language is a living organism … a repository of culture. No language means no culture.

Kid storytellers have the courage to speak the truth. Speaking truth they don’t have to remember what they said. They express in absurd detail what others are afraid to say. They speak with pinpoint precision. They speak using Voice.

There are VOICE Ones and SIGN Ones. SIGN ones speak love.

Curious kids live now without expectations or discrimination. They play the long game. Adult’s biology, culture, social conditioning and fear of shame, humiliation and death focus on limited narrow results … outcome … product … they eat, live, fuck around and breathe product … end game … pawn traps King … Checkmate.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Mandalay, Burma