Hunters

He rode his beautiful dirty black mountain bike over to "old" student street in Utopia for a 60 cent dumpling lunch. Delicious.

He prefers the "old" to the boring "new" commercial student campus street. He enjoys mature green leafy trees filled with small wild sparrows darting down to feed in garden patches. He savors a wide blue sky and orphaned clouds.

He always sits outside swallowing sky, well removed from blaring omnipresent bland TV soap operas and cell phone addicted youth.

"Text me baby! Reveal your passion in 5,000 characters. Say things with electronic letters and symbols you'd never find the courage to speak out loud. Your silence is deafening! Hold my hand.

"Better yet, when we walk covered in our innocent adolescent shyness, slowly rub your elbow against my skin so I know you care, reveal your shy desire with deference and longing. Our skin pours hormonal activity into the possibility we may eventually dance. Text me baby!"

A boy approached the table.

"May I sit here?"
"Sure."
"May I talk with you?"
"Sure. You talk and I listen."
"I don't know what to say."
"You will think of something. You are developing an English mind."
"Yes, maybe."

"What's your name?"
"Francis."
"That's a great name."
"All the good English names were taken by my classmates. I found it in the dictionary."
"I see. It's a fine and strong name. My name is Nature."

"Oh. What's that for?" he said, gesturing at my worn Moleskine notebook.
"I am a writer. I make notes when I travel."
"Where are you going?"
"Here."
"I like to travel," he said. "I am a hunter of foreign teachers."

I smelled raw instinct. "Interesting. How do you hunt?" 
"Do you know the gate near the teachers' apartments?"

This place was surrounded by walls, sleeping guards and gates.

"Yes."
"Well, I go there and wait. When a teacher comes out I talk to them while we walk. Then, when they say good-bye I return to the gate and wait for another teacher."
"You are a clever hunter."
"Maybe. But I don't know what to say."

"Talk about the weather."
"We don't talk about the weather here. We ask people if they have eaten."
"I know," I said, pointing at his noodles and sliced vegetables. "Your delicious food is getting cold."

Silence welcomed two hunters.

A Little Zen Tale

Only the dead know the end of war. - Plato

*

“We storytellers, enchanters and teachers,” said Omar, “know the world is made of stories and not atoms. Here’s one for your history. Or is that hiss-tree said the snake?”

Somebody told a story about somebody telling a story in a story.

“It came to pass an old woman seer who shared the beauty, magic and mystery of life with friends and strangers took a pencil in her bone white hand on a cold, snowy evening and looked into flames of creation. Embers smoldered in front of her crystal glass. She dreamed she loved a blind stranger. Her friend and lover were spirit guides, blind shooting stars. They flew away from their village with a tribe of survivors.

“They left behind skeptics, cynics, frauds, charlatans, liars, cheats, fools, scoundrels, knaves, demons, and ghost shadows. They dissolved taxicab drivers, beauticians, janitors, doctors, and lawyers, Indian chiefs, cooks, nurses, busboys, lackeys of every sort of makeup and verifiable description including animal trainers and circus performers.

“They moved through the wilderness of their youth, following Raven, their spirit guardian. They carried provisions to satisfy hunger, thirst and desire. They never knew, appreciated or realized desire until they were tricked into eating a piece of fruit. They scattered seeds at an oasis in the desert.”

“What happens next Omar?” said a kid.

“It was raining in the desert before Christmas as Gulf Air Flight 212 departed Kuwait. We encountered gray turbulence in neutral airspace where Islamic law against the consumption of alcoholic beverages had no influence. I savored a cold Carlsberg. By Carlsberg numero dos we were at 25,000 feet in blue sky and white thunderheads. Airmobile again.

"In Bahrain I collected a visa stamp, took a cab to the Diplomat Hotel and room 621 with an excellent view of the aquamarine Gulf and new civic center construction project. I opened windows, an ice cold beer, calibrated rock and roll music on the radio and ordered a three-egg omelet with hash browns, whole-wheat toast complimented by thick Turkish coffee. A Filipino waitress in pink room service motif brought it up.

"The next afternoon I took Taxi #1 into Bubba Bahrain, a maze of haphazard streets. I bought vitamins at a pharmacy and escaped expensive shopping zones entering the old suq lined with herbs, spices, textiles, fruits, vegetables, secondhand watches, goats, sheep, brooms, tea and ancient emulations.

"From an inside secret pocket of a worn olive drab photographer’s vest, I pulled out a very small, simple and technically precise European designed 35mm rangefinder camera loaded with 125 ASA black and white film. A gift from gods of optical ingenuity. A well-designed tool. A work of art.

"I started with an image of a donkey’s head covered by a burlap feed bag to prevent attacks on unsuspecting humans. Down twisted alleys I wandered, shooting old men and women, trapping their spirits on negatives. Children’s faces wearing cartoon character masks with innocence preserved behind wide glowing eyes were captured forever. Delicate eroding architecture, thatched reeds on woven bamboo poles embedded in mud, iron grated windows and intricately carved balconies made of blue and white mosaics were threaded into a black canister.

"In early evening out of curiosity I stopped at a Persian carpet retailer to learn about his business. Over endless cups of tea he shared these facts.”

1. There is a difference between “expert” and “well knowledged (sic).”

2. Carpet making is based on tradition, history, quality and time. Takes 14 months for some carpets.

3. Design and a particular technique is required to produce a good quality carpet.

4. His carpets were woven and stored in a warehouse in Iran before being smuggled by dhow to a Dubai wholesaler. A buyer in Bahrain purchases them by the bundle paying a single price for the lot before shipping them to the shop.

5. Cotton costs BD (Bahraini dinar) 2/lb.

   Neck wool BD 7/lb.

   Silk BD 9/lb.

6. Good prices were available now with the recent devaluation of the Iranian Real.

7. One needs to be aware of specifics. Is it pure silk or combed wool? What is the precise number of knots per square inch?

“I thanked him and walked to the Dolmen Hotel, an old foreign oasis constructed for air crews. Interior pseudo classic Arabic architecture featured vaulted windows, wattle thatch and poles on low ceilings. Dave, from the Twin Cities, sat at the bar complaining about needing a third operation to correct poor metatarsal bones in his left foot. He said Saudi doctors messed him up twice so he came to Bahrain for, hopefully, a final operation.

“I saw three Filipino males have their right hands cut off in Riyadh for stealing,” he said, meaning Sharia law. “Justice is served every Friday at high noon in the town square. Authorities tied their arms down on boards to support the wrists.”

 “Amazing,” I said.

“Yes,” Dave said. “The multawa, an official, approached one man, flashed his sword into the air and severed his right hand off. He screamed. The multawa moved down the line doing his job. Another man carrying a blazing torch applied fire to the stump to cauterize the wound.”

“Lynnette, a 31-year old Filipino waitress at the Dolmen was pleasant, lonely and bored. After five years doing cashier work in Manila she found a job in Bahrain.

“My dream is to save money and buy a house back home.”

“Do you like it here?”

“Not really. The wages are poor, they give us lousy Indian food and there’s no social life.”

“Why’s that?”

“Hotel management locks us in at 7 p.m.”

“Sounds like slave labor. Been going on in the Gulf for a long time.”

“Well," she sighed, “it’s just a job. It's not forever.”

I wandered away.

“At happy hour, the Intercontinental Hotel was jammed with Arabs, English investment suits and punkers. I ordered a beer at the bar. A small Bahraini man crowded next to me started asking questions.

“Where are you from?”

“Everywhere. I am the mother of all grasshoppers.”

“What do you do?”

“I kill people. I'm a mercenary.”

“I don't believe you,” said his eyes. 

“Yes. I kill people with kindness. It’s a living. I am busy 24/7. It’s a job. It passes time. People pay good money for me to take care of their problem. I’m paid to clean up other people’s messes. No women or children.”

He wanted to know something about his life. I predicted his age, family history, occupation and future. He left me alone.

“Outside the Kuwait suq battered red and white rusting water trucks with chipped paint stood idle inside a wire compound leaking their loads into dust. Two solitary Bedouins sat on metal folding chairs with crushed plastic buckets and sacrosanct rags collecting dust near the Fifth Ring Road waiting for drivers needing a car wash. Waiting was their patient life in the desert, waiting for dusty cars, waiting for oil to be discovered below sand, waiting inside an omnipresent yellow haze swallowing everything.”

Weaving A Life, V1

Book of Amnesia, V1

ACT 1

(Fade In)

The beginning needs work, thought Zeynep.

It’s flatter than a 24-year-old on her back in a plywood room fucking a customer in Asia. Her heart beats like a drum. She’s been away from her village for five desperate years. Her mother and father slaughter pigs for the market.

Their lost daughter survives in a meat market. Supply and demand economics 101. She ran away and joined a sex money food circus. Moral: Wrong choice for the right reasons.

You pay and take your chances. She considered the heroine’s dilemma. It’s strong, honest and REAL. What’s her quest?

Stay alive.

Stay sane.

Make money.

Send money home.

Get home.

Join a woman’s support group.

Avoid HIV and C-19.

Live to tell the tale.

Write it down.

Get it to a literary agent’s slush pile. Fat chance, it’s not mainstream.

Self-publish.

Get a life. Get married. Breed.

Have babies named Faith, Hope and Charity.

Enjoy temporary happiness.

Celebrate impermanence.

Eat incense.

The end.

Happy endings make me cry, said a blind editor waving her machete. Many true stories don’t have happy endings. People escape, disappear or die.

Take it easy. These are abstract letters and words on paper. It’s not about you Z. It’s ten claws scratching at twenty-six letters.

All writing is garbage. Take out the garbage. Burn baby burn.

I don’t see any humor in the girl’s hardcore reality, said the editor. Reality is an imaginary word crutch and time is a strung-out pimp looking for an exit.

Love is a blind whore with a mental disease and no sense of humor, said Z.

Inarticulate Questions Mill Around.

Editing is form of self-censorship.

Punctuation is a nail. Be the hammer not the nail.

Language is a virus.

Today in the long now WE are literary outlaws. Many people. Multiple selves. A reliable heroine scripter named Zeynep and her storytelling friends.

“The scripter has no past but is born with the text.” – Roland Barthes

They de-storied all the rules. Like deconstruction and postmodern and literary osmosis. Play with it. There are no arbitrary drivel rules.

Five kid characters play literary outlaws. System Analysts. An amanuensis, word janitor, Grave Digger, a blind seer and others in the stream of life share stories. Get it down now and make sense of it later.

Death joins them for laughs. Everyone comes to me at the end.

Book of Amnesia, V1

A Century is Nothing

Centuries earlier or later depending on reference points along time’s thin line on an event horizon as infinity and eternity played post 9/11 dirges, fugues and blues with a full orchestra in the pits Ahmed resumed his story in the Sahara.

“Fate bites you when you least expect it,” he said waving his hands like wild kites. “Her appetite is insatiable.”

I was so far removed from 9/11 reality I took no possession of the event. I read Ahmed’s open palms and eyes. My facility for unspoken tongues was legendary. It was all body language and I was fluent in every language.

Gestures were a work in progress.

Gestures used people.

Ahmed described airplanes and two tall towers. “I’ve read Superman by Nietzsche in Arabic. He said 'God is dead' and God said, 'Nietzsche is dead.'"

He waved his arms like a Moroccan eagle condemned to freedom yet a prisoner of the sky. He raised a hand indicating height and smacked his flying hand into his stationary hand. The impact echoed across caramel dunes. He smiled through black teeth. His dark eyes held all the world’s secrets.

I had no idea where, who, how, why, or when Ahmed received his information. Perhaps from slave and gold trade caravans, perhaps through osmosis.

“Yes,” Ahmed said, “2,974 people from 80 countries died.”

“I see.” We were just two nomads in the desert. We did not talk about Being and Nothingness. We tweaked reality by breathing.

I handed Omar’s book to Ahmed. “Have a look-see.” Ahmed read Tifignagh words.

“He was not as surprised, stunned and scared as all the well meaning myopic tax paying, allegiance singing populace would have the world’s citizens believe in their us or them attitude. He knew they’d be catapulted into a new heavy deep reality, grounded fast, sifting soil, searching for answers, breathing through death masks, deconstructing and revising history while pleading for meaning to their existence. Postmodern dialectics.

“Now they had to figure out the big answer to the big question. Why? It’d keep them busy for life. Their children taught them to ask why? Being extremely impatient and under extreme pressure to be successful in their all-consuming reality, they became extremely frustrated with the “why” question from their children. Parents wanted to be the boss, the grown-ups in complete control. They figured they had all the answers.

“Whoops!

“In the BIG game people with a long history rolled their dice when it was their turn to play and everyone had to go back to the start. They had to read the rules. The small print. The details they casually accepted carte blanche, data they skipped because they didn’t think it was important, the stuff made in Hollywood, the fictional entertainment stuff with happy endings. They were well conditioned to violence, sex and reality television. Now they tasted so-called reality television in real time.”

I pointed to a faded yellow page marked “Empirical Evidence” for Ahmed’s crash course in documentary fiction techniques.

“Somebody off stage had triggered the light switch and their fragility was exposed. Evaporated their sense of humor. The audience sat stunned in silence when the curtain came down. It was full of holes, loopholes and wormholes. The apple was rotten. Survivors needed a card from the deck of life and did not want to see the one with the guy wearing the funny hat with bells. A small minority studied history. They knew, in a vague way, being experts on vagueness, how history repeated itself. They’d supported totalitarian regimes in the Persian/Arabic Gulf for decades burning imported Middle Eastern oil well past their bedtime.”

Only the fool spoke the truth. This was a sobering reality. Ahmed continued reading.

“It was extremely frustrating. People in their illusionary magic kingdom assumed they were always supposed to be going forward to bigger, better, faster things. There was talk about a shift in Teutonic plates of awareness. Many plates showed their age being cracked, badly needing repair, requiring immediate unequaled madness assistance or UMA. Someone tried their cell. It was busy, snagged on assorted Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The big F.U.D.

“Connections were a flashback to a simpler existence of peace and prosperity with model tract homes, two car garages, appliances, fast and faster food, weapons of mass destruction in the closet, renewable bonds, treasury notes, love notes, and notes on the edge of a cliff waiting for patients streaming out of their personal and collective asylums on holidays as prescribed medications rendered them insolvent, compliant and mute. Very compliant.

“A secure line of clear communication was caught in the undercurrent, the violent raging delight of human nature doing her infinite playful thing below the realm of consciousness. She stirred things up in a big way.

“Humans had a lot of explaining to do. Explaining how the world worked. Explaining all the moral ambiguities, all the fill-in-the-blank final exams. They were in big trouble.

“‘Because I said so,’” was their old standard refrain when their sweet, ever-so-kind little monsters asked “why” for the umpteenth time. Their ignorant facades had developed huge cracks. It was time to straighten the whiners out once and for all. They went shopping to satisfy their fear of poverty, to overcome their fear, a small fear growing stronger day by day being fed by hysterical know-it-alls in ivory soap towers of higher intellectual reasoning based on empirical evidence.”

“More channels!” someone screamed. “We need more channels!” There was a preponderance of rumors. Part of the evidence was charred beyond recognition. It would need DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating.

According to Omar, “Teams of social workers swarmed across the land extolling virtues of well being, hope, trust, and bravery in the face of adversity, values, free choice, and impending sales at outlet stores. People seeking outlets and outlet stores found solace in their ignorance of how the world worked on molecular, political, religious, economic, philosophical, and cultural levels. Long festering animosity and cultural bias had come full circle. An invisible Orobus constricted their heart. Their myth was part idealism and realism standing on its head.

“Their socially, culturally, geographically and emotionally deprived children listened, shaking their heads, learning a very hard life lesson. One that escaped their well meaning parents. Kids knew when adults were bullshitting them.

“Scholars educated at global universities started speaking Arabic, reciting Sufi poetry, and 1,001 stories about the rise and fall of civilizations written before their time with hieroglyphics and cave paintings. Survivors filled caves. Candles sales were brisk.”

“A tisket a tasket we need a casket,” sang multi-lingual children.

“Historians, political scientists, talk show experts, taxi drivers, fortune tellers, beauticians, and morticians took hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially. Suicide search and rescue teams were put on alert. Citizens packed hospital emergency rooms. Medical schools increased graduation classes to meet the growing need. Demand outstripped supply when it came down to fear and consumption.”

“Wow, that's some heavy sociological shit, Ahmed,” said I.

“Get this next part,” said Ahmed, turning a page.

Get is the joker word in English.

“What happens when they run out of insecurity control programs?” a child asked her mother. She was the mother of all answers.

“Don’t worry my sweet,” said the anxious neurotic mother living her worst nightmare, “they’ll invent something new and improved. The manufacturing sector will rebound when shelves are empty. We’ll always have sugar and we can always go shopping.”

“How long will it take?”

“Hard to say. Could be we won’t live to see it.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“There is only F.U.D.,” said her mother twisting her hair until it caught fire.

“What is F.U.D. mother?”

“Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Been with us a long time and now it’s back with a vengeance.”

“How long?”

“You ask too many questions child,” she said fanning her daughter’s flame. “A long time. A Century is Nothing.”

“It’s good to know some things,” said the girl.

“A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I’ve already told you a lot.”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Tell me the truth,” mother. “I want to know the hard irrefutable truth.”

“The truth is, it’s all a lie. Everything we know is a lie. Our insecurities are evolving. I believe in my heart-mind that life is a celebration. It is beautiful, harsh, nasty and short. A Hobbesian dream scream. There’s no rhyme or reason or social contract. It’s about realizing peace in your heart and community. Inhale suffering and exhale healing. Cultivate heart awareness.”

“I will be authentic and mindful mother. May we go out and play now? May we take the day off and be creative?”

“Yes, let’s invent a game theory my sweet daughter.” They went out into the world.

Omar knew children suspected parents, teachers, social workers, bureaucrats, philosophers and homeless people living in cardboard shelters did not control the market on clearly defined answers. Adults searched for the remote. They knew something better just had to be on the idiot box.

Families of big brown rats scrambled out of dark dens scurrying through dead matter looking for food. The little animal named Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt was starving. It had a vociferous vain appetite for glorious political/economic systems. It ate it’s young, with relish at picnics. It had no principles or 20th century rationale, no religious ideology or neo-conservative agenda. 

It was not a vegetarian or a peace activist burning candles, sitting around wringing their bloody hands mumbling, “Oh what a pity,” or, “Somebody should have seen this coming.”

FUD avoided focus groups like the plague, read Arabic history and poetry by Rumi. Their appetite was legendary and tremendous.

“Such a true story,” said Ahmed closing the book. He pointed at the sky. “Look, the north star.”

A Century is Nothing

A 3,000 Year Old City

“Once upon a time,” Nino said one bright future day as the tribe rolled along, “and such a strange time it was, the gravity of thinking played music in a new century. There was a Spanish man with a hammer. At exactly 9 a.m. on an overcast Cadiz morning he began chipping away at unexplored caverns. The Alio modo Fugue a 2 Clavier by Bach drifted in the background.

“He was building an extension on a roof where housing was scarce and straight up. The only split-level ranch duplexes with multiple garages in sight were American reruns on old battered televisions. He hammered stone the sheltering sky. It was over 100 degrees. His hands bled. Blood seeped through an old Moorish roof splattering into a room where a writer in exile lived with a blind prophet. Hemoglobin landed on a keyboard. On the B. He let it dry. He treasured sudden rare immediate insights. Drops fell and congealed.”

“Fascinating,” Omar said turning a page. “And then?”

“Down below in deep morning shadows Rosario swept her front stoop on Benito Perez Galdos. Her white apron was clean and starched. She swept away yesterday’s accumulated debris and the fine mist of pedestrians coming and going. Old shit, dog urine and dust received her mop’s holy water. Their accumulated real and imaginary sins littered Galdos, heading for the gutter.”

“Let me guess,” said Omar, picking up the thread, “church bells pealed eternal melancholy songs of hope and redemption across from the Castelilo de Santa Catalina, the main citadel of Cadiz built in 1598.”

“Exactly,” Nino said. “Inside tight white oval corridors, an exhibition of black and white photographs depicted Nicaraguan people fishing, polling canoes through tangled jungles, chopping down forests, sitting for the camera, living and laughing. One room held beautiful black handmade fans in tribute 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. He belonged to the Generation of 1927 with Dali and Bunuel identifying with the marginalized Gitanos and woman chained to conventional social expectations in Andalucía.

"He wrote about entrapment, liberation, passion and repression. A long red scarf lay draped over a single rattan chair. Invisible wires held black fans decorated with peacock feathers and rainbow colors suspended in silence. Outside a dark window Atlantic waves smashed ramparts.”

Nino took a breath. Omar sacrificed an orange skin to enjoy the fruit.

Weaving A Life, V1