Sophia from Panama

The Iberian drama evolved with whiners on one side and complainers on the other. They blamed the weather. Weather laughed at the idiots. Pedestrians on the shady side of the street complained about the cold instead of walking across the street into the sun.

You have to cross the street to learn something, said Education.

A tossed coin landed on its edge. Fate and destiny are two sides of the same coin.

A woman said to her friend, “I think God and Death are two sides of the same coin.”

“I thought it was fate and chance, or tragedy and comedy,” replied her friend. “Life is something to be lived, not talked about. Let’s go shopping.”

Picaros the card tricksters traveled through neighborhoods selling a game of fortune. “Pick a card. Any card. Take a chance.”

Howling Wolf, my word machine, shifted into full automatic sensing a Nothing is true everything is permitted universe.

The Spanish Inquisition lasted from 1478-1831.

In 1492 a bankrupt Isabel and Fernando monarchy expelled 200,0000 Jews from Spain who refused Christian baptism. The church, state and landlords decimated the middle class.

Money & Power & Control

Church bells pealed melancholy songs of salvation and redemption across from the Citadel Castelilo de Santa Catalina built in 1598.

An exhibition from Central America entered a new story-truth.

Sophia from Panama pointed to an exhibit in a room. Inside a large glass rectangle were glowing yellow candles, religious icons, sandy footprints and a huge black and white sepia image of a jungle warrior. Panamanian women danced rituals in a video. Exotic travel brochures collected table dust.

“Adults are afraid to go in there,” said Sophia, pointing to the exhibit.

Her dark eyes were rich.

The music of men hammering grandiose plans to improve their quality of life faded as crashing Atlantic waves cleaned the world of sensation and perception.

“Maybe they’ve lost their innate curiosity,” I said annunciating each letter. “Adults are afraid of death. They run away carrying memories, guilt and fear. It’s the human condition.”

“It appears so. We have to encourage them to go in.”

“It’s a time warp. In the flower market I saw four smiling faces in an hour. The people wear a sadness.”

“It’s the way they live,” she said. “Their attitude. Their Catholic guilt is all conditioning. It’s a bag of heavy deep and real imaginary bricks. They study the stones at their feet when they walk.”

“Yes. They love the street, the beauty and perpetual sadness of the mean old street. It’s an old love.”

“A century is nothing here,” she said.

“That’s a good title for a jazz epic opus by a blind writer named Omar.”

“We are all a work in process. We know so much and understand nothing.”

She danced with an unlit cigarette in her hand. We stood on white marble steps hearing ocean erode land. She spelled words on her palm. “You need to learn Spanish.”

“Yes. I am lazy. When I was a kid I dreamed I could speak-talk every Earth language. I could live anywhere. Language is the cultural key. English is the language of cultured barbarians.”

I wanted her. I wanted to tell her she was beautiful in her language, her oral tradition spilling memes, nouns, verbs, proposals, phonics, magic, dreams, gardens and pure land poetry.

“Will you be here tomorrow?”

Sophia danced away. “It’s all random when I will be here.”

While we were talking someone blew up a Coca-Cola plant in India. There were some pissed off marginalized humans in a world inundated with too much sugar consumption in caste systems. A low fat diet of fear satisfied their daily requirements.

I walked to an exhibition in the Citadel. Narrow white oval corridors displayed black and white photographs of Nicaraguans fishing, polling canoes through jungles, chopping forests, sitting for the camera, laughing and contemplating their natural world.

One hall was filled with delicate black handmade fans and tributes to Federico Garcia Lorca.

Considered the greatest poet and playwright of 20th century Spain, he was assassinated by members of the Escuadra Negra (Black Squadron) a Franco death squad in August 1936 for his left-wing sympathies and homosexuality.

Lorca belonged to the Generation of 1927 with Dali, Miro, Picasso and Luis Bunuel a filmmaker, identifying with the marginalized Romani and Spanish women chained to conventional social expectations in Andalucía. Their art introduced symbolism, futurism and surrealism into Spanish literature and life.

Lorca wrote about entrapment, liberation, passion and repression.

“Then I realized I had been murdered.

They looked for me in cafes, cemeteries and churches

They opened the wine casks and wardrobes

They ravaged three skeletons to gouge out the gold of their teeth.

But they did not find me.

They never found me?

No. They never found me.”

By Federico Garcia Lorca, 1929

A long red scarf lay draped over a single rattan chair. Invisible wires held black fans decorated with peacock feathers and suspended rainbows.

This silent beauty contrasted with stark white walls and a wild blue sea. Relentless waves smashed ramparts.

A passenger ship running lights stem to stern sailed toward Lisbon filled with people afraid to fly and losing their baggage and fears in a pressurized tin can at 30,000 feet.

They carried a life vest with pockets of heavy change that would drown them. Sleep with the fishes.

They waited for the captain to yell, “All hands on deck, everyone into lifeboats,” after reaching Brazilian jungles to evolve new survival strategies among noble native savages.

Natives said, “We have the time but you have watches and machines to measure and control the time.”

A native ran across water to a ship. “We are so glad you are back. We forgot how to preach.”

A fat white priest said, “When you retire they give you a gold watch but not enough time to wind it. Turn back the dial.”

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Old Rooms

Cadiz flamenco students practiced in small oval rooms once used for storing cannonballs to attack ships.

A Romani dance, flamenco was introduced in the 18th century. The essence of flamenco is the depth of a deep song or cante jondo, a lament of the marginalized Gitano. Early forms featured a single hammer striking an anvil as Romani work-music.

Inlaid flooring resounded with black-heeled thunder. A teacher clapped a steady rhythm. “Faster, faster, spin on your toes, stay light. Be the dance, be the single sharp note,” she shouted. “Eyes straight ahead.”

The small room echoed with exploding hands and feet.

In Essaouira, Morocco similar rooms with thick oval wooden doors during Portuguese exploration became working art studios for leather, metal, stone and Thule woodcarving. An artist held a sharp blade steady with one foot while spinning a wheel turning sweet smelling wood. Mint tea aroma filled the air.

“See my shop mister, buy a carpet,” a chorus of boys sang to a ghost. They called me Ali Baba - thief - because my beard was white from life and my apparition scared them.

“Hey, Ali Baba,” implored a destitute youth. “See my shop. Only the best price for you.”

“Just passing through.”

Boys pounded metal, carved wood, tore mint leaves, sat on haunches babbling dreams and beat dusty silk carpets hanging from rusty nails in the sun.

Fernando Pessoa

In Cadiz I collected new material in an old city as stories and songs drifted on sea trade winds. Short-wave reception was clear. A classical Spanish station. A British announcer on World Outlook said, “... in twenty-five minutes we discuss the British solution and new world order to solve poverty, racism, violence, hatred and greed.”

I knew it’d be a great program as the world waited to hear how it would all be decided. Flip a coin. Buy a lottery ticket.

U.S. Rota Navy military radio network mumbled about “disease, helmet safety, unified field states, crashed helicopters, fatalities, future funerals and getting your uniform in order at old Roman navel bases.”

Bases were empty in the top of the ninth. Looks like extra innings. Stay tuned for sustained climate crisis and global financial catastrophe.

At Benjumeda #3, Omar my amanuensis and I shared a round table and open doors on a green and black tiled balcony. Yellow streetlights led up a narrow way below a sliver of cobalt sky. Starlight met star bright. No cell phone. We were connected with friends and strangers through transmutation. Perfecto.

Lost, forlorn, dejected Francophone and Germanic tourists inside the labyrinthine maze of Cadiz streets carried local maps, guidebooks and optical equipment. Men lugged all the heavy stuff on their Homeric voyage of discovery; water, packs, video machines and high tech 35mm point and shoot optics. They were intent on recording their experiences with miles to go before they slept, perchance to dream their impossible dream.

They craned sunburned necks toward balconies trying to interpret street signs. Looking for a way away anyway. They looked up, down at maps, talked, argued, pointing in opposite directions. They had to make a decision. They were confused and lost down at the crossroads making a pact with Satan in a Catholic country.

The women on their traveling team intuitively knew where they were and where they were going. With infinite patience they sighed and plodded on in a spouse’s shadow. They admired history, cathedrals, plazas, the Atlantic Ocean, museums and cafes.

Nobody understood them. Spanish smiles disguised as apathy followed their quest. Visitors appreciated how rising middle class economics and artistic vision allowed craftsmen to work on themes other than religion. Tourists suffered from religious art overload.

It was everywhere. Laminated images of Jesus on key chains dangled from men’s pockets. Carved Virgin Mary icons crying bloody tears decorated store windows. Her statute of limitations hung from dusty rafters in shops and bars. She watched people suffer. She was their redemption and lottery ticket to paradise. Gilt and guilt reflected sacrifice. Marbled voices sang choir hymns.

High solid wooden doors with brass reinforcements protected a woman’s hospital. Reception rooms overflowed with crying children needing a mother’s connection and intention. Widowed women in eternal black followed church bells to catered Immaculate Receptions for spiritual visions.

Spanish smokers crowded streets. Two young lovers hid in a doorway. He groped his girl’s firm small breasts. Rosebud. She slid a cautious hand inside stone washed denim releasing his hard desire. She salivated.

“Kiss it,” he moaned.

“What if I get pregnant?”

“We’ll get married, raise piglets and live off the state.”

“A state of mind?”

Explosions rocked their being.

Satisfied and wrapped on scooters they blasted their way down cobblestone streets looking for sanctuary. Children ate junk food, chips, and sweets before tossing empty packages on the street with satisfied oral gratification and they couldn’t care less.

Jeans and mountain climbing boots were the latest fashion rage. Extended families walked through stone passages inside their waking nightmare. Half the population pushed prams as the other half struggled on canes and crutches toward Lourdes.

It’s a long walk.

Bitter unemployed Andalusia men stood silent on wrought iron rusted balconies. They watched singing gremlins gnomes and sheep propelled by market forces escape caves… “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of OZ.”

Mothers and wives heated water, poured in Ace detergent, scrubbed, washed and rinsed baby clothing, hanging them on balconies with iridescent green, yellow, and blue plastic clothes pins. They peered up and down the street from Moorish entrances and disappeared into darkness safe from the mean old world.

It was a great city for discovering shadows and passageways with nooks and crannies, secret hideouts, alleys and recessed caverns. Now you see them now you don’t reminded a ghost of tribes in Afghan mountain caves.

The quick and the dead remembered Senior Drill Sergeant Prude in Misery. I felt right at home.

Spanish women intent on cleaning embedded rocks assaulted cobblestones with brooms and mops. Water and stones discussed time’s erosion. Spanish women did all the heavy work.

They were emancipated. They were free from conservative repressive social norms and expectations.

They did not sing. I did not hear joy escape their throats. Their faces manifested resignation.

They emptied buckets of dirty mop water in the gutter. Sparrows found salvation. Seeing free relatives take flight caged balcony birds sang sad Romani songs about loneliness and alienation.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Cadiz Life

After moving through Moroccan dust, chaos, beauty and impermanence since September, Cadiz was a perfect base for hunting and gathering stories and images.

My second-floor room in a neighborhood of abandoned warehouses overlooked a 200-year-old intersection. A wrought iron balcony faced a narrow cobblestone street. Benjumeda Street extended past shops, churches and plazas.

I was a translucent blue monarch butterfly gathering wing heat for future flight. Inside, outside and all around I wandered Cadiz.

I freelanced for the Bureau of Wandering Ghosts.

Burma

Outside Plaza de Las Flower stalls shoppers pulled provisions home in wheeled shopping carts. Women pushed wheelchairs filled with groceries and cement uphill in their utilitarian universe. Their rolling world was hard rubber spinning in a galaxy. Wheelchairs indicated an invalid family member sat at home in a rocking chair watching game shows and talking heads. Waiting for the goods.

Exploring visual epiphanies, I opened my aperture to f/2.8. Write with light. In exile with silence, cunning, humor and curiosity I discovered Sunday flea market images: old photos, stamps, phonographs, typewriters, dolls, tools, locks, religious paintings, seafood, books, discarded clothing, toys, glass, buttons, broken phones, watches, faces, hands and lottery tickets.

Bar slot machine games called the Wheel of Fortune flashed lights as men drank cheap sherry and pumped 100 peseta coins into hungry devices. Unemployed men and women prowled streets, corners and shops selling lottery tickets called ONCE.

The Champion grocery store across from the old market sold sixteen different lottery tickets. A city this old believing in a religious hereafter had a gambling addiction. Pay now and pray later. Poor people needed all the hope money could buy.

Hope was broke.

I exposed streets, parks, cathedrals and beaches with sun-greased white haired ladies knitting and playing bingo and children dressed in gaudy black and red sashes for religious festivals. Men cut fish, hands held creased maps or thick Cuban cigars, children grasped parental fingers.

Tourists gripped each other in lost wild desperation. Lovers slept in sunlight. Men hammered stones as pigeons fought over bread scraps. Obscure dark faces in doorways greeted neighbors. A crescent moon floated between television aerials.

Burma

Juxtapositions of hammers and crucifixes rested on red fabric. Brown nuns supporting their habit passed brass Moorish door knockers as historical debris laughed before and after Chris Colon sailed west.

I wandered the city carrying a Moleskine and piston driven fountain pen spilling Midnight Blue ink.

Businesses had signs reading, “This establishment has a book for claims and complaints.”

In a cafe I ordered a meal of nouns and verbs with a side order of flat dirty realistic cardboard character development.

“Hold the adverbs,” I told the waitress.

I scribbled seven serious mystical mischievous words. Seeing this a man behind the bar whispered to a woman. They began cleaning. They hauled out crates of empty bottles, swept and mopped the floor with determination, efficiency and fear suspecting I was from the CLEAN authorities.

Fear is a great motivator.

Kitchen women suffered a panic attack. Jabbering like irate birds they scrubbed gleaming appliances with profound intention and motivation. They feared they’d be closed down for an imperfection in their life.

After fresh tomatoes I spread my wings.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Burma

Golden Garbage

Gold draped Cadiz women.

Inanimate visual remnants of Reason, Enlightenment, Illumination and Prosperity revealed gifts from the Magus.

Alchemists transformed base metals into heavy symbolic chains weighing wrists and necks of Spanish matrons and patrons.

The Fleischer - a butcher - wore no gold.

Paring fat his sharpened edge severed layers of gristle. A steel mesh glove protected his left hand. He slammed a sharp hatchet blade through tendons, muscles, bone and meat. Blood littered his table. 

Customers gathered to buy their favorite cut. Slabs of acorn fed pigs dangled in windows with funnel tags attached to cloven hoofs collecting fat. Wild boar and stag heads rested above color photos of famous Ronda bullfighters partying with Orson Wells and Ernest Hemingway. Red was the cape’s color. Bull’s blood rivers flowed down muscular necks.

Mandalay, Burma

People in deep state covert operations discussed ambiguities in conspiratorial coded languages.

Airliners slammed into towers of Babel on televised reruns between detergent, automobile and sherry commercials.

I murdered words in their sleep after they had their say. 

Word garbage was hauled down to green plastic curbside trash containers. Midnight men in blue garbage uniforms with yellow safety stripes rolled through Cadiz. Teams of men hosing down narrow cobblestone streets sang, “Don’t be fooled by cheap imitations. Everything must go. Going out of business sale.”

Water flooded grateful city grates. Spanish civilization collapsed without street cleaners and women with mops.

Humanity’s narrative explored adventures, quests, dreams, relationships, and historical facts mixed with courage, curiosity, joy and serenity.

Yellow streetlights illuminated a man walking his arthritic Labrador. The well-dressed bald gentleman with Romani DNA wearing polished black wing-tip shoes carried a newspaper and paperback entitled, A Century is Nothing by Omar.

He collected his dog’s shit from cobblestone using the financial section. He downloaded it into a metal trash basket nailed to a wall. Five minutes later a neurotic woman cleaning everything after midnight because she hated chaos and disordered dust in her ground floor flat wailed, “What in the hell is that smell?”

“History baby, history,” he said, walking toward the sea. “The more I see the less I know.”

One if by land, and two if by sea…

Easy Rider.

Oh say can you see? Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might dream the impossible dream and throw the first pitch for a called strike on the inside corner.

“We’re headed to extra innings and the bullpens are empty,” cautioned a radio announcer on armed forces shortwave, “and now this,” cutting to a commercial from a mechanic offering an interest free no down payment deal on the finest internal combustion machine money could buy.

“Drive it away today.”

Every vehicle on the road is used.

This was followed by an ad for cheap fuel and a political proposal to open Alaskan wilderness for drilling. Unemployed dentists signed up. Their mantra was, “The more you drill the more you bill.”

Two unemployed poets holding hands walked down a cobblestone street discussing Spanish deficit economics, European financial bailouts, 40% unemployment numbers and financial insolvency. Andalucía was the poorest province in Spain.

Sexually repressed women pacing poverty’s alienation prowled streets seeking future lovers, husbands and fathers for contraceptive children. Lonely-heart club ads assaulted missing persons with conjecture, possibilities and probabilities. Hope floated in a breeze.

Cadiz scooter boys felt genital heat as their girlfriend’s arms held them tighter than tomorrow. After escaping narrow traditional parental attitudes they zoomed past pedestrians.

An old couple supporting their fragile bipedal existence took immediate steps into a long now. Small significant gestures of love and affection rained flowers.

I wrote under a desk lamp with jazz music providing rhythm, harmony and improvisation.

Dreaming of a new environment I studied a provincial map tacked on the wall.

Spanish church bells buried in the Plaza de Dreams, a fictitious conglomeration of unpleasant historical true facts in this tale tolled as mystics hearing hollow Zen bells toiled.

Mary sells seashells by the seashore before crossing to the other side of paradise after paying the troll a toll. 

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Mandalay, Burma

Hunger

I passed an old man smoking a Cuban cigar in shafting light.

Well-heeled Cadiz women with and without children in wheeled prams shoveling sweets into infantile mouths paraded past palms on Iglesias de San Juan de Dios navigating inlaid stones near a cafe with Novelty metal chairs holding tired tourists and relaxed locals smoking, drinking coffee, talking in tongues, devouring soft hot pastries and studying creased maps filled with historical referential diagrams.

Furrowed foreign brows watched humanity find its way.

Shirt starched waiters scurried from table to table. They placed orders with women behind counters wearing white lab tech coats.

The lone plaza resident, a tall black-bearded Romani madman with untied tennis shoes roamed perimeters looking for someone to hustle. Looking for Charity’s leftovers.

A sign around his neck said, “I came here in the 9^th century and I’m not going away.”

I remembered the Bedouin woman in her heavy black chador revealing her eyes to the world hovering in Marrakech shadows. I ate chicken, rice, and bread away from birds basting on gas fired yellow circles.

Her motivation? Hunger. Hunger for freedom, dignity, and love.

She approached me with her hand out, speaking Arabic, “May you have blessings and prosperity.”

“May God make it easy for you. I will leave food for you. Wait.”

She stood across the street seeing through fabric slits. Her eyes were the world. She was silent and invisible.

Wild cats roamed malnourished skeletons around tables escaping a waiter’s swift shoe. She watched and waited. I fed scraps to hissing cats fighting over bones. We were all surviving in frail circumstances.

Remembering Omar’s wisdom about consumption and hospitality I didn’t eat everything. I left to pay. The waiter couldn’t clear the table because he was figuring the charges. Her blackness closed in. We were a team. She was free to collect everything. She produced a plastic bag from her chador, picked up the plate and dumped in bones, meat, rice, and tomatoes. The works.

She glided into shadows. I walked past. Our eyes locked. I was naked. She was covered in her belief. Her invisible clear eyes flashed a brief recognition. I nodded. She smiled under her veil. Our relationship of mutual respect ignored verbal language.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Bhaktapur, Nepal