a 4,000 year old story

After three years exploring Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Orphan and Elf looked at a world map.

Our creative and healing work here is complete for now, said Elf.

I agree, said Orphan. I feel restless and need renewal. Where shall we go?

Make it new day by day. Make it new. Let's see, said Elf, tracing the map. Did you enjoy Turkey four years ago?

Yes, their hospitality is kind.

Ok, how about an ancient eastern town near the Black Sea with mountains? Pine, maple and evergreen forests? Fresh air, olives, tomatoes, cheese, hot bread and pastries? The Greeks and Romans lived there.

Sounds perfect for our never ending adventure. It's on the Silk Road. Did Marco Polo visit there?

Yes. He passed through. Like us. Maybe we will meet him or a wandering relative. We will share tea dancing silver spoons with new friends.

To travel is better than to arrive.

Ok. Let's go to Trabzon.

memory 5, 2

this is memory 5. let's see what we don't know through a turkish lens. light and angle. a woman waiting at sophia for someone she's dreamed of in a future arranged marriage, a boy at a sewing machine, an old man walking, a shaft of light on a carpet, yellow pipes and a white cloud at a metro stop, a door surrounded by stone, arches, a halloween ghost. 

this is memory 2. a mudanya baker with his art, a fisherman repairing a net, empty oilve cans, shoes and yellow wall, pans waiting for burnishing, farm tools. life is simple in turkey. 

Marco's Future

Early one morning Orphan and Elf jumped on the local Vomit Comet bus from a rural village to Quanzhou.

They rolled through green Fujian foothills and lush farmland. Men worked oxen in rice paddies. Woman lugged baskets of greens and califlower to market. Children burned plastic trash along the road. Half-finished new rising middle class brick construction projects littered the landscape. The bus stopped. People crowded on. 

45 minutes later they reached the town. Maybe it was a city or a large village. The bus station was packed with peasants, sellers, noodle slurpers, and hustlers among grateful masses. 

They walked through a maze of alleys into the old heart. The heart is a lonely hunter. 

On a sidewalk a man hacked at a fawn selling fresh cuts. People scrambled to buy fresh meat. A woman pedaled past selling yellow carnations. A boy ran pulling a kite. A girl fed her sister. Women scrubbed clothes. An old man smoked in shadows.

At a venerable tea house made of bamboo in a shaded garden surrounded by jasmine they met Marco Polo.

I am on my way West along the Silk Road, he said. I don't know it yet but I will meet Kubliai Khan and stay with him for 3 incredible years. Maybe around 1271. We will play chess together. He will show me his plans to conquer the known world.

Orphan said, Such a grand adventure. We come here every weekend to explore and meet fascinating people and world travelers like you.

Elf said, Yes, and we know a Chinese fortune teller at a pagoda. He's excellent.

May I meet him, asked Marco. Sure, said Elf, Let's go.

They traveled through twisted, convoluted mazes and discovered an enormous pagoda. Red, yellow, golden roofs curved into blue sky. Five-clawed yellow dragons holding white pearls curled corners. Men, woman and children burned incense, mumbling prayers. Red cloth covered Buddha statue faces. Not ready to see. 

There he is, Orphan said, pointing at Confucius behind a table.

Marco introduced himself, What is my future.

Confucius asked Marco questions about his birth date, place, and family lineage. He opened a big brown book with faded yellow pages. He ran a bony finger down lines. He spoke in tongues, Among other adventures you will be imprisoned in Italy. You will tell your stories to another prisoner. You will be famous.

I only told half of what I saw, said Marco, smiling, scrawling notes. Elf made an image for historians.

A Jungle Story

Once upon a time in the long now there was a continent, a land mass floating on water. It was labelled Asia by white people 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 insatiable appetite for peoples of diverse languages, customs and cultures lived in jungles and forests. Others preferred living in distant and remote mountains. 

Jingle, jangle, jungle. Using natural materials they created musical instruments, simple weapons, homes, fish traps, snares and tools like 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 in extended families. 

One day a boat filled with white men sailed down the river to a village deep in the jungle. They wore shiny clothing, spoke a language the people didn't understand and carried weapons which made a lot of noise and scared the people.

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 down the 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 historical evolution on other continents. Their mantra was, Cheap labor, Cheap raw material, Cheap goods, Cheap markets and much Profit.

They said, We are civilized and you are savages. We have religion. It is called Wealth.

We are on a mission from the great chief. We control fire. We control time. We control people. We control nature. We have machines. We take what we want.

The village gave them hospitality and shelter and friendship. The white men were greedy. They took control of the village, the people and the 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. Against each other. History had taught them 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 move to a new jungle forest tomorrow, said a village shaman. Far away.

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

Deeper

‘Quick! Into the tunnels!’

They sat sweltering, crying, still. Hearing the dull roaring threaded whoosh as steel and iron napalm canisters thudded, this tremor, shredding forests, fields, homes danced into flames. Heat soared over tunnels bathing them in sweat. They went deeper. Deeper, following hollow carved earth trails. The earth swallowed their breath, their bones fertilized soil. Ancestor bones cried in their sleep.

The sweet silence, save all the crying and wounded after all the foreign devils packed and left, fleeing in terror as peasants streamed down from the mountains, out of caves and tunnels, poling rivers, attempting to escape, walking on water, drinking all the oceans in their creation myth, draining lands of blood, driving them into the sea. A blue green sea danced red.

This easing down of their voice flowing between crumbling sand, crushed red bricks laid haphazard. Cement walls blocked everything but the sound of their anger, frustration and repressed bitterness in life’s twisted fateful reality.

Their memory was a fiction and this fiction created their memory.