Rocket Storyteller

Content is the payload. The rocket is the story.

We begin new as I, the Invisible Rocket Storyteller - IRS for short - visit Earth. I am looking for lost poets and visual realists.

One dear friend, a retired defense attorney, lives near Flagstaff, Arizona writing poetry about Mountain Wizards while living, laughing and loving under evergreens and firs with mountains, waterfalls, blue skies, clouds and Eagle wing shadows.

He lost sixteen pounds training for a marathon in Norway. Can you imagine running 26 miles and 365 yards in Norwegian rain, sleet and freezing cold? He did it. He’s a warrior of agony and accomplishment.

Originally from Country Claire, Ireland, he is a world-class marathon runner. He’s run in Oslo, Traumas, Stockholm, Dublin, Paris, Kyoto, Shanghai, Lhasa, Boston, Santiago, Tir An Og, Cadiz, Damascus, Rome, Hanoi, Istanbul and one more. You’re only as good as your last marathon, he says. It ain’t about starting it’s about finishing, like writing.              

He is an expert fly fisherman. He catches and releases.

A vociferous reader and Fluent in Gaelic, his multi-lingual translations of illuminated manuscripts includes:

The Book of Kells

Hells Bells, Personal Demons

The Book of Sand by Borges

The Unbook of Knowing

A 12-Step Clean Personal Perception Program

The Housekeeper of Reality

What Is Meaning?

Rumi Dances In Trances and the infinitely popular

Book of Gnomes, Trolls, Fairies and Fantastic Creatures Disguised as Humans and

Rock The Metaphor are among the finest academic and literary examples dancing through world paper libraries. Now available on Kindling.

They are sources of wisdom because he is a brilliant source of fascination, delight and he-man activities.

Together with his wife, Sunshine, a famous St. Paul graphic artist, photographer and painter, using ancient platinum and silver developing and printing techniques, they created a wonderful series of soft, muted, diaphanous images displayed in SEE, a Phoenix gallery. They travel Earth. They run. They explore. They hold hands while crossing streets.

He speaks fluent French. This allows them to survive in French-speaking African countries while translating texts in Timbuktu libraries, some of the oldest on terra firma.

Mrs. Sunshine has seen and HEARD Museum orchestras playing skin drums with a nomadic group of Tuareg men in the Sahara.

Omar is the Nomadic Laughter Inspector and Scribe Dude. A Griot, he pounds the skins. The skins are used for utilitarian purposes like drums, writing parchment, artistic canvases, shelter, vessels, clothing, blankets, umbrellas, prophylactics, toys, games, trampolines, birth shrouds, burial shrouds, cloud shrouds and surround around sound.

Skins make wonderful writing parchment, said Leo. Difficult to create, easy to use, portable, durable and recycle while rolling and unrolling your little calligraphic life.

Mandalay

Punctuation is a nail in agreement with a tool, said Tran driving his point home using his plastic leg as a hammer.

A frozen 5,500-year-old well preserved leather shoe was discovered in Armenia. It was stuffed with grass. The workmanship was superb. Footwear experts determined it to be of the finest craftsmanship.

Walking is the way to travel. The soul is pure white light and travels at the speed of a camel, said Leo.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Yangon

Pack Light

After completing a one-year English teaching-facilitating job with Devina as my mentor near Jakarta, Indonesia in 2009 I returned to Nam.

Farewell to the tyranny of a private school with dusty clanging Catholic church bells. Devina guided the educational program with unconditional love and compassion.

Omar advised: Travelers need to remember when packing for adventures like going to the grocery store or the eye doctor to see clearly, because eyes lie…or walking across rice paddies to see friends  ... break bread, have sex, visit neighbors  ... greet strangers, marry aliens and burn or bury relatives whispering GOODBYE  ... I’m off to join the circus maybe forever  ... because one never knows if they’ll return, to pack their sense of humor.

Why do people look back at their bamboo shack, camp, home, village, invisible city or continent as their stone cold empty lost eyes see & remember with terrible clarity?

They are Visceral Realists.

They need to remember it because they are afraid they’ll never ever see it again.

They need to burn the image into their heart-mind memory in case it’s potentially, probably, possibly their final chance. In other words Don’t Look Back.

Nothing behind, everything ahead.

Are your needs being met, Rita asked Tran.

Yes, I have a prosthetic limb, I get around.

Omar walked the walk and talked the talk. Many travelers forget to pack their sense of humor. Perhaps they don’t consider their sense of humor essential on their super serious adventures into foreign worlds.

Worlds are filled with transcendental borders, beauty, humans, languages, sensations, smells, sights, sounds, dirt, dust, sweat, mirrors, and reflections without a GPS, compass or app.

It’s a long walk.

You’re never lost, there’s only healthy uncertainty about your position, said Rita, speaking of landmines, rice paddies, napalm, orphanages and terrified acid scarred abused girls and women.

Strange, said Omar, You’d think they’d remember to keep it light, stay calm, focused, let go of ego and expectations and enjoy their travails, I mean travels with a sense of humor… packing a sense of humor means less baggage and less fear.

Before you swim past a wand man/woman at airport security you don’t need to put your sense of humor in the plastic box so it can roll through the x-ray machine, said Devina, You don’t see travelers collecting their sense of humor after passing through security, intuitive travelers keep it with them  ... Many forgot it at Home Sweet Home where Serious lives.

After you pack everything cut it in half. Caress your sense of humor. After immigration laugh through the Nothing To Declare green zone, said Omar … Walk into freedom.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged