no metaphors

I'm one of those people who’s learned through living that there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to.

I am a metaphor looking for a meaning. There are no metaphors, only observations.

I feel free to move away from safe familiar places and keep moving forward to new unexplored areas of life. Drifting some would say.

If I had one red cent for every time someone asked me when I’d settle down I could afford a world hypothesis! Settling down was never an option.

Yes. I could bid on blessings. I’d sacrifice pre-linguistic symbols and create silent metaphorical abstractions. My linguistic skills would evolve into love into discursive logic.

26,000 year-old Paleolithic iron and copper paintings create a secret symphony of ancient stories in a Spanish cave.

No lengthy drawn out off-the-wall abstract explains my small empty self to anybody by virtue of who I was, am and will be.

Life is a palimpsest.

“There are only two stories in the world,” I said to the Moroccan. We carried boarding cards through the Casablanca terminal. 

“A stranger arrives in town or a person goes on a journey.”

“Yes,” said Omar, a blind writer overhearing our conversation, “we might add there are also stories about love between two people, stories about love between three people and stories about the struggle for power. Stories are about characters revealing emotion through dialogue and action.”

The world is made of stories, not atoms.

He handed me a pile of yellow papers wrapped in rushes.

“A gift for you. A Century is Nothing. It contains a farrago of evidence. Keep it simple.”

“Thank you. Where do I find you?”

“In the caves south of Ronda. It’s a long walk.”

He disappeared into Baraka.

Mandarin Duck

Omar remembered a daughter in Cadiz.

Faith worked at Mandarin Duck selling paper and writing instruments. She practiced a calm stationary way.

“May I help you,” she said one morning greeting a bearded stranger. She knew he was a forcestero - a stranger from outside.

His eyes linked their loneliness minus words. She averted her eyes. He was looking for quick painless intimacy and ink.

“I’d like a refill for this,” I said, unscrewing a purple cloud-writing instrument with a white peak.

Recognizing the Swiss rollerball writing tool she opened a cabinet and removed a box of thin and medium cartridges.

“One or many?” she said.

“Many. I don’t want to run dry in the middle of a simple true sentence.”

“I agree. There’s nothing more challenging than running empty while taking a line for a walk.”  

“Isn’t that the truth? Why run when you can walk? Are you a writer?”

“Isn’t everyone? I love watercolors, painting, drawing, sketching moistly.”

“Moistly?”

“I wet the paper first. It saturate colors with natural vibrancy.”

“With tears of joy or tears of sadness?”

“Depends on the sensation and the intensity of my feeling. What’s the difference? Tears are tears. The heart is a lonely courageous hunter.”

I twirled a peacock feather. Remembering Omar’s Mont Blanc 149 piston fountain pen, “I also need a bottle of ink.”

“What color? We have black, blue, red. British racing green just came in.”

“Racing green! Cool. Hmm, let’s try it.” Omar would be pleased with this expedient color.

I switched subjects to seduce her with my silver tongue.

“Are you free after work? Perhaps we might share a drink and tapas? Perhaps a little mango tango?”

“I have other plans. I am not sexually repressed. I am liberated. I have a blind secret lover. Here you are,” she said handing me cartridges and inkbottle with a white mountain.

I paid with a handful of tears and a rose thorn.

My ink stained fingers touched thin, fine and extra fine points of light.

Faith and her extramarital merchandise were thin and beautiful. She was curious.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” she said. “How old are you?”

“Older than yesterday and younger than tomorrow.”

“I see.”

“It was nice meeting you. By the way, have you seen the film, Pan’s Labyrinth, written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro?”

“No, but I’ve heard about it. Something about our Civil War in 1944, repression and a young girl’s fantasy.”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s really a beautiful film on many levels. It reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.”

“Wow,” she said, “I loved that film, especially when Alice meets the Mad Hatter. Poor rabbit, always in a hurry, looking at his watch.”

“Funny you should mention time. A watch plays a small yet significant role in the Pan film.”

“Really? How ironic. I’ll have to see it.”

“Yes, it’ll be good for your spirit.”

I pulled out my Swizz Whizz Army stainless steel, water resistant Victoriabnoxious pocket watch.

“My, look at the time! Tick-tock. Gotta walk. Thanks for the ink. Create with passion.” I disappeared.

Faith sang a lonely echo. “Thanks. Enjoy your word pearls. Safe travels.”

Under a Banyan tree I sat in weak sun, fed cartridges into a mirror and clicked off the safety.

It was a rock n’ roll manifesto with a touch of razzmatazz jazz featuring Coltrane, Miles, Monk, Mingus and Getz to the verb.

 A Century is Nothing

ice girl in banlung 7.5

I was a virgin and he was my first man. It hurt like hell, he was rough but I handled it and didn’t cry in front of him. I swallowed silent bitter tears. He fucked me all night. It was brutal.

  In the morning I could hardly walk. He paid me in cold hard cash. Five clean crisp hundreds. I couldn’t believe it. I gave Miss Tan her cut and she was very happy.

  The pain will pass, she said. Get used to it. I was in business. Easy. Turn on the charm, smile, dress up, be smart, gamble, be open to suggestions, don’t drink too much and be ready, willing and able. Negotiate. Be a passive machine. Close your heart. Pretend you’re somewhere else.

  That’s how I became a taxi girl. I was beautiful and tough.

  Before fucking a stranger I’d take a shower, come out, drop the towel so he could get an eyeful, throw a condom on the bed, lie down, open my legs close my eyes shut down my feelings and let him have his fun. I dressed his hard sausage in a sock. Easy money honey.

  They paid for my time using my body. I gave Miss Tan her a share. I learned about business. I learned how to gamble. Bet big, win big.

  For two years I worked hard and saved money. I sent money to my mother every month like a good daughter. I told her I worked in a hotel.

  Now I live in Ho Chi Minh City. I work as a cook and domestic servant. I wear round cigarette burn marks on my wrists. They are my internal-external permanent anger memories.

  I don’t know how to write so I told this story to a man I met while working as a domestic in a Saigon guesthouse. He was a good listener. I worked with another girl. She changed sheets and dumped trash. I cleaned the toilets by hand. I was sweeping the garden balcony on my first day and a stranger said hello. He was drinking water and smoking.

  Hi. I saw you downstairs. You were waiting for an interview for a job here. I was shocked. He knew too much. I kept sweeping.

  I needed a job.

  You have too much class for this place. Come up tonight and we can talk.

  Ok, I said. That’s how it started. Talking at night on the balcony away from the mean old street.

  After two days I was fired because the woman owner was jealous and pretended I couldn’t do the job. She figured I was hustling foreign men. I had plenty of that job experience.

  I took advantage of his kindness because it was a short-term fix. A woman needs fucking, emotional security and cash.

  I felt open and honest with him. One night on the balcony we talked and watched stars until 2 a.m. He listened to my story. Sometimes I cried remembering everything.

  We became friends and lovers for a week.

  We can’t stay here, he said. He rented a room nearby. A place where we could sleep together and I’d be safe until I found a place to stay.

  The first night together I felt shy. I undressed in the bathroom and took a shower. I put on my underwear and blouse, wrapped a towel around me and came out. My short black hair was wet.

  Low lights were yellow. Classical music came from his phone on the desk. He wore blue shorts. You are beautiful, he said.

  I curled next to him and we held each other. I have a scar from my son, and my left breast is smaller than the right one, I said.

  It’s ok, he said. I liked feeling his arms. He stroked my hair. I closed my eyes.

Ice Girl in Banlung

1st International Beggar Conference

“We are not here for a long time. We are here for a good time,” laughed Meaning, a twelve-year old survivor wearing a ragged Beware of Land Mines skull and crossbones t-shirt and prosthesis leg scampering her random life pattern across fields near a stilted bamboo home in Cambodia.

  “Are you with us?” pleaded a land mine child survivor removing shrapnel with an old rusty saw after stepping in heavy invisible shit, “or are you against us?”

  She‘s been turned out and turned down faster than a housekeeper ironing imported Egyptian threaded 400-count linen. No lye.

  The thermostat of her short sweet life seeks more wattage. She faces a severe energy shortage if she doesn’t find food.

  She’s one of 26,000 men women and children maimed or killed every year by land mines from forgotten conflicts. Reports from the killing fields indicate 110 million land mines lie buried in 68 countries.

  It costs $3.00 to bury a landmine.

  It costs $300–$900 to remove a mine. It will cost $33 billion to remove them. It will take 1,100 years. Governments spend $200-$300 million a year to detect and remove 10,000 mines. Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan and Laos are the most heavily mined countries in the world.

  40% of all land in Cambodia and 90% in Angola go unused because of land mines. One in 236 Cambodians is an amputee.

  Expanding her awareness, Lucky showed Zeynep a Laos map illustrating Never-Never Land.

  Laos Please Don’t Rush is the most heavily bombed country in history.

  25% of villages in Laos are contaminated with UXO.

  Upwards of 30% of the bombs dropped on Laos failed to detonate. 80 million unexploded bombs remain in Laos.

  More than half of the UXO victims are children.

Meaning hears children crying as doctors struggle to remove metal from her skin. She cannot raise her hands to cover her ears. Perpetual crying penetrates her heart. Tears of blood soak her skin. The technical mine that took her right leg away one fateful day as she walked along village rice paddies expanded outward at 7,000 meters per second. Ball bearings shredded everything around her heart-mind.

  It may have been an American made M16A1, shallow curved with a 60-degree fan shaped pattern. The lethal range was 328 feet. Or maybe a plastic Russian PMN-2 disguised as a toy. She never saw it coming after stepping on the pressure plate. Fortunately or unfortunately she didn’t die of shock and blood loss. A stranger stopped the bleeding, checked her pulse and injected her with 200cc of morphine. Strangers in a strange land carried morphine.

Cut the heavy deep and real shit, said a female Banlung shaman.

Fear is a tough sell unless it’s done well, well done, marinated, broiled, stir-fried, over easy, or scrambled.

Fear is ignorance.

Meanwhile, the 1st International Beggar Conference convened in Toothpick, a wasteland near Bright Hope - a rusting rustic dream of exploratory ways and means with scientific cause and effect and logical rational certainty.

It was chaired by a distinguished group of Cambodian orphans.

 NGO Fascists rented 12,000 orphans out to fake humanitarian organizations. Abandoned youth pleaded with rich donors for marketing and branding money to feed international guilt and shame.

“Let’s eat,” said a fat banker moments before his yacht hit an iceberg in 2008.

“What you don’t see is fascinating,” said Zeynep, “like roots below the surface of appearances.”

“We have so much ice and they have so little,” said an Icelandic chess player attacking Death.

“Everyone comes to me. My patience is infinite,” said Death. "I make only one move and it's always the correct one."

Beggars, land mine victims, survivors and sick and tired dehydrated dying starving neglected humans from 195 countries convened in sequestered committee rooms filled with suits, scholars, academics, UN personnel, CIA analysts, NGO profit motivated scam reps, IMF bankers and plastic ornamental steering mechanisms.

“We agree to disagree,” said Rich Suit.

“The enemy of your enemy is my friend,” said Wage Slave.

Orphans, beggars and children spoke about slave labor, hunger, exploitation, corruption, human trafficking, corrupt police states and the terrorism of economic poverty.

“Bad luck,” said a rich slave. “That’s a you problem, not a my problem.”

Children addressing global media held press conferences focusing jaundiced eyes on lenses, recorders and bleeding pens. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Sound bites sang starvation’s misery.

If it bleeds it leads.

Incoming! Bleeding hearts ran for cover.

Orphan motions for adjudication, arbitration, fairness, equality and equity were tabled for further deliberation and discussion nowadays.

The average monthly wage was $37 in a Bangladesh clothing factory. 350,000 Cambodian women making $61/month stitched garments for Korean export companies.

Give someone a sewing machine and with a little luck they’ll feed their family. Let’s Eat.

From a novella to be abandoned.

Sidi Ifni, Morocco

It was high noon.

He yelled out, “Sidi Ifni.”

The lot director deserted his friends in the shade of a solitary tree gesturing to a battered car in the throng of vehicles. The “grand taxi” in the hot, dry, dusty sand choked Tiznit parking lot was an old blue and yellow Benz. Dreaming drivers waited for passengers.

“Thanks.”

The driver was crashed in the back.

Knowing it might be hours, days, weeks, months, years, or centuries until they had a full load, he wandered off for bottled water and bananas. Yellow peels raised dust as he released skin from a fresh skeleton. Locals did not eat bananas in public and he wasn’t interested in dietary protocol. 

They departed Tiznit when the car was full of smiling toothless Berbers returning to stone homes far away. They zoomed through barren scrub desert past rocky hills and distant menacing adobe fortresses.

He sat smashed between the window and a friendly French speaking young Gendarme en route to his garrison in Sidi Ifni. The gendarme protected a worn crumpled green canvas satchel.

It was empty - however - the stories inside were real.

It’d survived invasions, standing orders, foreign legions, armed bandits and salt and slave caravans moving north across the Sahara returning south with gold. It held letters to mistresses locked in harems, declarations of intrigue, suspense, tension, conflict, and treaties.

It revealed bilingual conversations about moral ambiguities between characters in comedies and dramas. It divulged wild tales about distant mirages, instruction manuals for training hunting falcons, intentions, motivations, meditations, aqueduct plans, mosaic fountain designs, and extensive agricultural necessities inside tiled adobe fortresses on hilltop positions overlooking a vast emptiness of silence.

The gendarme dozed off and the stranger peeked into the bag of tricks.

It contained irrefutable empirical evidence.

Dear Commanding Officer of the Garrison,

My first secret hostel was buried deep in Wicklow Mountains, an old bare bones mountain hut without running water or electricity tucked up a long canyon at the base of Lugnaquilla Mountain.

The two-story house was built in 1955 and donated to An Oige by a woman doctor. The view is excellent, down a long sloping valley surrounded by mountains. To the left is a roaring 10-15’ wide river suitable for drinking and bathing, full of trout with wild water rushing and roaring downhill gathering speed trailing moss, polishing stones, nourishing ferns, wild hedges and rock walled paths, remaining from glaciers and the gravitational forces of time and pressure.

It’s a small hostel catering to travelers on foot or bike with a warden sleeping room upstairs and ladies room suitable for six. Gentlemen sleep out back with sixteen bunk beds and outdoor toilets. We have plenty of extra blankets and mattresses. The small intimate common room has an old fireplace and kitchen with gas cookers. Refined elegance.

It’s a mixed bag of students, city workers, mercenaries, poets, playwrights, hardy hikers, orphans and a mishmash of European and Arabic languages. I keep it open all day long, register arrivals at 5 p.m., making sure there are enough beds to go around, manage cookers, gas, and toilet paper supply.

It’s the perfect repository for extended day hikes. I explore high glens in thick forests with dark brown pine floors and trickling brooks, rivers and streams cascading from the mountain. Feeding deer flash soft golden rust brown with white markings bounding away as I stumble through soaked green moss. I traverse to Glendalough through fields and pastures way back and beyond.

I fish the river in solitude, peel potatoes and carrots for stews, paint, write, share road adventures with vagabonds and play chess by firelight.

Pawn takes pawn as players attempt to control the middle of the board attacking and defending positions simultaneously. It’s about position and material. We make necessary sacrifices from the beginning game through the middle game to the end game.

Andy, a German visitor said, “Chess provides an outlet for hostile impulses in a non-retaliatory way. The therapeutic value is enormous.”

“Chess gives me discipline, direction and power,” I said.

“That’s the price of creativity. I have recoiled from the emotional discomfort of my life through transference and make myself master of the situation through games,” he said.

“Yes, it’s a drive for perfection and it’s irrationality.”

“Every game is a challenge I must meet.”

“Do you know Capablanca?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. His accuracy was pure position and logic. His play was accurate, tenacious, patient, with a disciplined imagination.”

“Jose Raul Capablanca once won 168 games in a row during an exhibition tour. He said, ‘I see only one move ahead, but it always the correct one.’”

“His knowledge-guided perception or apperception was excellent because of his training. He’s regarded as the greatest ‘natural’ chess player of all time.”

 “Your move.”

I reminded Andy of Queen Isabella’s passion for conquest.

“She was responsible for giving the queen piece more power during her reign. They say she was playing one night in Cordoba when Christopher asked for ships and supplies intending to find India. She initially declined but her Abbot convinced her to reconsider.”

We played in the illuminated dark of night as peat fires roared up the flue. Quick moving violent storms pummeled the place.

“That’s a dangerous move,” he said as my knight escaped a pin.

“Yes, but it’s elegant.”

“We destroy ourselves eventually,” he said.

“Yes, as long as we enjoy the process. Your move.”

One clear day while sitting near the river doing her nails Susan related a literary dream from a poem by Brian Merriman she was reading.

“Have you heard about The Midnight Court?”

 “No,” someone said. “Tell us.”

“It’s about a fellow who falls asleep and has a dream where he’s taken before a court of women who condemn him to be punished for all the men in their knowledge. How women should have the right to marriage and sex but often meet with disappointment and rejection by men who could easily have become their lovers and husbands.”

“Sounds like a Greek tragedy,” someone said before jumping into the wild river grabbing a fish fighting on a hook, line and sinker.

Another traveler remarked, “Yes, for those who think, life is a comedy and for those who feel, it is a tragedy.”

Fish blood flowed downstream.

Every misty morning I dragged a table outside and rolled thin parchment paper into and through the Smith Corona portable. The irony and simple joy working under the table and on a table at the Smithy was pure simultaneous rapture.

It was not a job it was a joy because I did it in an artistic way. It was a new day, new paper, new energy, new and improved attitude with imagination and discipline.

Late one fall day while strolling down the valley enjoying moist air and kicking a rock past waterfalls in the rain with Andy on our way to check mail and have a pint two miles away, Joe Murphy, the area manager, arrived in his little dark blue Morris Minor chugging along the narrow road.

“We’re closing you down for the winter.”

“Fine. Gotta new place?”

“Yeah.”

It took thirty minutes to get the pack, word machine and Evidence sheets together. We slammed the wooden shutters closed from the inside, bolted them, turned off the gas cookers, locked the door and left. Quick and painless, like love.

“We need you to go to Donegal.” Murphy said driving the rocky road to Dublin one, two, three. “We’re having a problem up there with the locals.”

“What kind of problem?”

“It’s a big place, gets a lot of visitors. Mr. Johnson, the warden, is from somewhere in England and married to a girl from the south. The locals don’t take kindly to him being from across the water if you know what I mean, so there’s been some trouble.”

“What kind of trouble? Is it spelled with a capital T?”

“Well, I heard someone may have spray painted some words on the house,” he said. “You’ll have to see for yourself and if so get it cleaned up will ya? Besides, you may want to pay a visit to the neighbors. Smooth things out ya’ know.”

“Sure. My specialty is smoothing things out. What happened to the manager?”

“They left after almost three years. She has family in Mayo although I heard they went to Glasgow or Iceland.”

Floating images.

We evolved out of Wicklow mist covered mountains leaving the river’s long song behind us, melting our perception of primitive nature as humming tires reflecting sound exchanged high wild rivers and mountains for overgrown suburbs of estate houses, manicured lawns, chip shops, pubs, and oppressive church steeples humming humanity’s guilt.

Bless me father for I have traveled.

We passed Sandymount and Martello Tower where Joyce wrote, staring at his unknown future exile in Italy with silence and cunning. He realized the exile’s holy Trinity: language, culture and friends.

“There’s Martello,” I said.

“Aye, Joyce was a strange bird,” Joe said shifting gears and hitting the gas.

“Yes. But man could he write. He said, ‘Wipe your glasses with what you know.’”

“There’s some truth in that,” Joe replied.

“Do you know what an epiphany is?”

“Sure. Isn’t it some kind of insight?”

“It’s something quickly revealed. Joyce wrote tight short scenes where something happened to a person.”

“Maybe it’s like getting hit by lightning.”

“He once commented to a friend when they asked him about his daily writing after seeing Joyce was agitated. 'I wrote seven words today,' Joyce said and his friend replied, “What’s the problem then?” and James said, “but I don’t know what order they are supposed to be in.” I laughed.

“I never heard that,” Joe said.

How’s that for troubled? I thought.

“I thought it rather clever of him to have a character named Daedalus,” I said. “Figured it out he did. Broke it down into the heroic manifestation of human frailty he did, Daedalus.

“You know what I imagine?” as the Mini blasted around corners plowing an asphalt path, “Joyce was a wonderful word trickster he was, he loved language with playful passion, he invented new language. He made it up. It was consciousness without the editors, minus the critic. He left them stewing in Ireland. You know the name Daedalus? Well, if you pronounce it really slowly and enunciate it out it sounds like die day lie us, or some such thing. We die day by day. Fascinating. What do you think?” 

Joe gripped his small black wheel. “It’s possible. Joyce said a lot of things.” 

“Yes!” I shouted sticking my head out the window feeling sharp Irish sea winds slash my face.

I turned to Joe, changing the subject. “Yes, Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce tribe said, “My heart is sick and tired. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

“I never heard of him,” Joe said.

“White people discovered gold on their territory in 1863 and moved them off their land. It’s everybody’s land. That’s what the Native Americans told them. We’re only caretakers of Mother Earth.

“In 1877 he tried to lead his people to a reservation in Idaho. Seven hundred warriors battled 2,000 U.S. soldiers across 1,400 miles in a beautiful tactical retreat. They were massacred by  palefaces.  His people froze to death near the Canadian border. They took survivors to a concentration camp in Oklahoma. It was pure genocide. On the reservations soldiers gave the Indians corn to eat and they fed it to their meager livestock. Chief Joseph was finally allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest in 1885 where he died of a broken heart.”

 “I see.”

We traveled along the rocky road to Dublin in silence. One, two, three, four, five down the rocky road all the way to Dublin leaving them all broken hearted.

The gendarme shifted in his sleep.

The stranger slipped the papers into the green satchel.

Outside the dirty taxi window in an endless hazy future of rocky dune hills, black shrouded women on donkeys balancing large ceramic brown jugs plodded miles to a shallow well inside circular stones.

The city may move but the well remains.

The two-lane road ran forty kilometers south to Sidi Ifni, a Spanish enclave with 15,000 people on cliffs over the Atlantic. In a lush valley beneath old Moorish castles were two cinder block construction enterprises, wadi oasis palms, gardens, and tributaries running to the sea. Thin men sifted sand and gravel through wire screens. Belching machines pressed out bricks. Another man hauled them to trucks.

Part of Spain until 1969, facades suffered from emptiness, wind, and water. Sharp white cubist block homes scattered on hills broke light. It was an old art deco town full of decayed deserted buildings from an elegant forgotten history. European expats bought holiday apartments for $2,000-10,000.

He found a room in a cheap hotel overlooking the Atlantic and rested for three days.

Mosque masters called five times a day. Trick or treat. Sleep deprivation became the norm. Late to bed and early to rise makes a man crazy.

He walked on a beach with an unemployed Internet worker from North Carolina. Bill had never been out of the states before. He was shocked and fascinated by Morocco. 

“The poverty levels are amazing,” he said.

“You get used to economic realities, touts and price gouging. It’s a poor country. The people are kind and hospitable.”

“Fez was amazing, then I got sick for three days in Meknes. Had to rest.”

“It’s easy to get lost in the labyrinth. Why did you pick Morocco?”

“My partner, Sam, a world traveler, had it in mind and then we were laid off. He asked me if I wanted to come along. I had three weeks to get it together; shots, pack and stuff. It was pretty crazy but I made it.”

Sam was a savvy cynical traveler. He told people he was Australian. A well rehearsed diversion after 9/11.

“The Greek islands are cheap, specifically Santorin,” he said one night over bad fish and rice in the hotel restaurant. “Thailand and Laos are good bargains as well.”

Deserted Sidi Ifni beaches stretched for miles. Renegade surfers relishing excellent conditions camped to the north.

“North Carolina is somewhere over there,” Bill said, pointing west. “Imagine that. I’ve never been away from home before.”

“You either adapt or get back where you feel comfortable.”

I shared ideas about writing goals and publishing.

“You need a hook, a marketing platform, be willing to fail, rejections are part of the process, murder your darlings, overcome the fear of making it perfect and be passionate about your work. I've learned this through trial and error. Publishing is a business, a casino. The bottom line for an agent is, can they make 15% on your book? The shelf life of a book is maybe six months. It’s about the joy of creating, writing for your self and not worrying about the market. Keep it real.”

“What’s real?”

“Give your characters desire and conflict in the first five pages. Let them show and tell. Take them on some kind of journey with character arc. It’s about dialogue and action and using all your senses. Have fun with it. Nobody in 200 years will want to read it.”

“Well, knowing that takes the pressure off.”

“No fear. Finally, make your query letters human, don’t kill your query in the synopsis, reduce the synopsis to a single sentence for your pitch, and establish your marketing platform.”

“Thanks. I’ll give it a shot when I get back.”

“My pleasure. Enjoying your trip?”

“Yes, it’s been very interesting. I rode a camel out into the dunes south of Zamora. It was really the only thing I wanted to do on the trip.”

“He paid way too much,” Sam said. “They ripped him off. He went out at 4 p.m. they rode for an hour, camped overnight, had breakfast and returned to the hotel. It’s strictly for tourists. He could have found something cheaper.”

“It was really cold out there,” Bill said. “I couldn’t sleep and stayed awake almost all night. The stars were amazing. They were so close I stayed awake staring at them until dawn.”

It was a place of truth and beauty for him.

Bill and Sam were nervous about returning to states coping with terrorist siege mentalities and media produced fear.

Their days in an old Moorish civilization were numbered. They faced the unknown like getting their stuff out of storage when they returned and finding new jobs.

In their country of birth people loved storage facilities. Through history they accumulated tons of stuff and needed a place for it. It was precious to them. They were attached to it. They birthed it, raised it, and married it, dragging it around behind them for years, lugging it into and out of new apartments and homes, before burying it in caves filled with a deep fear of loss. They stored it someplace else because their palatial homes, caves, hovels and shopping carts were filled to the brim. They consigned it to cement storage facilities hidden behind mazes of security gates, security fences, and secure double-padlocked doors in run down industrial zones trapped in the bowels of decaying cities. Where it collected dust. Buried memories, artifacts, time capsules and all the forgotten stuff.

In The Red City after Sidi Ifni, he packed light. He was ready, willing, able, and well prepared for invasions and grounded Special Forces with the latest killing technology. Exploring general theories of relativity he assembled his Zone II medical kit, dehydration packets, emergency space blanket, climbing boots, Swiss army knife, short-wave radio, R-11 telephone jack, energy adapters, battery charger and a zippy drive for backups.

He carried phrase books, geographical maps, a water purifier, modems, lip balm, chopsticks, dental and mental floss, a sarong, Honer blues harp, immunization record, watercolors, a resume of seasons, fountain pen, ink bottles, blank Moleskine, a warm heart and cool mind.

A Century is Nothing