Raven

The next day the tribe crossed a plain and reached a raging river. As they knew from their ancestor’s tales, the river was deepest here because deaths upstream created tears as souls migrated on their journey through the Bardo.

What’s the Bardo? asked Jamie.

A place between life and death. A transition zone. Where, after you die, for nine days, you confront ghosts and demons wearing your old masks. We need nine days to take another form and during these nine days we meet all these demons reminding us of our temporal existence.

The tribe dreamed as wood evolved into ashes. Their fire dream consumed itself as sighing sensations tingled through Raven’s body. Night winds played around her heart. She danced with stars. Diamond crystal swallowtails flew from her hands into silent endless space. Her breath released peaceful feelings. She fell awake.

Sunlight streamed through ferns, plants, and roses as a morning breeze delivered petals of a wild rose to her feet. She stretched like a solitary snow leopard feeling freedom’s wildness. She glanced at the fireplace. Her shattered glass lay on the brick floor near a charred pencil and scraps of paper. She gathered word edges, lines, drawings, and blurred prisms of light.

She felt a searing pain in her heart, released the papers and touched her third eye. She went deep inside. A calm feeling blessed her. A warm breeze carried her into the center of a sacred wisdom circle. Her essence was joy, delight and happiness. It was a world of pure being. She recognized the world of appearances was full of suffering, desire and illusion.

Discovering her essence, her spirit energy breath renewed her heart, her passion and vision. People seeking to know their future and wisdom sought her out for guidance. She opened her heart to them finding solace, peace, strength, and dignity in the sacred flames of regeneration through quiet simplicity. She kept her own counsel knowing others would have to find their own way in their personal and collective wilderness.

Her hair caught fire as she gathered flames while lighting a piece of bark in a Paleolithic cave. She mixed volcanic ash with water, creating a thick paste of red ocher, a cosmetic balm to gain entry and passage through the spirit world of ancestors. She walked through fire, dancing in her inner light of pure intention in a magical world realizing childhood’s innocence.

She became an angel of light. Her Jinn emanated fire, life and consciousness. This fire consumed ignorance, and my memory of her became a meditation on the physical process of identifying with higher energies through form, sensation, perception, sense impressions and consciousness.

Her meditation inside the cosmic dance dissolved the self. Fire became her driver, sexual kundalini yoga burned soft and hard wood together. The sleeping serpent coiled at the base of her spine was fed by the energetic fires. The Jinn manifested by the fire of the telling.

Yes, said Omar, Jinn are summoned through spirit ceremonies as the world of men communicate with their world by means of music and dance.

I am a character in my own story, said Omar, a hakaawati, a professional Persian storyteller inside the shadow of my imagination. I manifest an oral way of transmitting khurata, fanciful stories, inside the ocean of stories.

A Century is Nothing

South of Mandalay Part 1

Fog shrouds trees before dawn on a chilly December morning.

Mornings are fraught with mist as an orange burning orb rises over forests and rice paddies.

Crows caw sing wing wind songs above monks chanting sutras at a pagoda. A bell reverberates.

Leaves dance free from The Tree of Life.

This raw, direct immediate experience reminds a traveler of Phonsavan, Laos near the Plain of Jars, long ago and far away in the winter of 2013. A Little BS came of it.

Here at 5:45 a.m. below trees with yellow leaves,

100 grade ten female students with dancing flashlights trace a dirt path.

They've escaped the comfort of hostel dreams.

They dance toward classrooms and a cavernous dining hall for rice and vegetables.

Hot soup if they are lucky. Mumbling voices scatter singing birds.

Female student voices reciting scientific lessons at 6:15 a.m. echo from classrooms at the Family Boarding School.

Dystopian wrote memorization. Utilitarian. Repetition. Learning by heart. It’s not about learning. It’s about passing the exam and marks. Vomit the material.

The wisdom of the heart is deeper and truer than knowledge in the head

They drone on huddled, hunched over wooden benches in jackets and yarning caps with swinging tassel balls. A bundled teacher scratches white words on a blackboard

Today is the day of my dreams

A narrow garden of hanging pink, orange, purple, white orchids reflect shadows before scattered light sings. An office girl sprays H20 diamonds on petals and green leaves

A distant solitary bell reverberates
Monks chant sutras at a pagoda

Focus

Flower whispered, I don’t like sleeping alone.

Easy to remember Flower’s soft deep tactile sensations. Practice the Middle Way  ... The Middle Way is deep breathing and mindfulness  ... The Middle Way is loving kindness. Metta. It is wisdom, patience and gratitude.

Discover harmony between detachment and sentimentality. Eat the world with your blind eyes. Yes, my Flower, yes. Dead or blind, there’s no difference. People who cause you difficulties are valuable teachers. They give you the opportunity to develop patience, said Omar a blind mystic amanuensis.

Q. What else did you experience during the massage?

A. All explanations have to end somewhere. An explanation is a well-dressed mistake.

What is a spotlight focus? A spotlight is on a specific. A breath. A flame. A sound. Pure sensation. Give me an example. Spotlight: the universe reflected and refracted in a single drop of water on a pink lotus flower.

Floodlight is the big general picture: sunlight reflects off a single drop of water on a pink lotus flower petal membrane veined with green umbrella fan leaves caressing cool fresh air growing from a pink lotus in mud below gray clouds near mottled moldy white streaked paint on yellow Khmer walls wearing brown, green, white shards of glittering glass to keep out cunning thieves and devious land pirates as tall singing palm trees dance below white cumulus clouds flying across blue skies above green forested mountains and jungles teeming with beauty, leopards, wolves and 232 species of butterflies.

Question? How much does silence cost? Depends.

Deep silence = deep bliss.

In my silence only my voice is missing, said Fernando Pessoa in The Book of Disquiet.

Money buys silent bribes.

Bamboo Nomad said, Open your head, heart and mouth if you want to practice speaking tongues with me, I am a facilitator.

I am a storyteller, said Zeynep from Bursa, Turkey. We communicate telepathically. A-dolts don’t get it.

Q: How many types of people are there in the world? Three: people who make things happen, people who watch people make things happen and people who don’t know what the fuck is going on.

Funny sad true unpleasant facts. Like exploding galaxies, a meaningless universe and orgasms. Reality is the funniest thing happening. It’s difficult to take any of this seriously. People should play more.

How did I grow?

The bigger the fear the bigger the defense. Can you hear yourself think? Yes, it’s important to keep a running monkey mind dialogue going to express emotions, ideas and awareness of illusionary sense details, distractions and existence.

You are critical mass expressing art.

Socrates asked the big question: HOW TO LIVE?

Establish character nuance with emotional honesty and a sense of the fantastic. It’s essential to establish a conte\x/t. Give me an example of compression.

They came, burned, raped, pillaged, trussed up their loot and gone. Excellent.

I know everything and can say nothing.

I know nothing and can say everything.

Tell me about hanging out. Travel writing uses novel techniques. It explores a place, discovers and/or invents characters, selects and tailors experiences and arranges the action to give the narrative shape and motivation.

Time is history.

Space is geography.

Book of Amnesia V1

Feed Baby Blues

Trickster ... authentic aesthetic bliss.

Magic yellow jacket visits / hovering / inspecting / curious / explores near table / darts in / out / we communicate  / hi / hello / welcome / away

Nature's fragile ephemeral beauty

Silent singing

Wing free light fire spirit

Djehuti (Thoth) - Egyptian god of writing, moon, wisdom, science, magic, art

Imagination & precision - poetry, painting, photography

Glimmer

Hobbling along, a boy described the song. Children followed. He is the poet.

Fairy tales - truth and wisdom.

The sentence finds a way to speak itself.

Writing is an adventure.

Hexagram #20. Examining. Washed but not offered. Confidence in discretion. What is w/o action.

A glimmer of clarity.