The Diamond Seas of Sutra

Do you thank someone for altering the course of your personal history? Do you tell the person next to you, who's recounting her lifelong goal of looking up at the Sistine Chapel while her daughter is upset about the hotel swimming pool, that you appreciate her getting you your midlife retirement started when, in fact, you had other plans even though the retirement took you down a more comfortable path? See what I'm saying about destiny. Your moments are not yours - they belong to everyone and everything around you. Make believe all you want about why but the fact remains they do.

More gifts from the temporary library ownership of my parents who received these treasures from Bill:

• Deutsche Bildkarte (Panoramic Map and Index of Germany's Outstanding Sights), with Index and Interpretation, Edited by Karl-Otto Gassdorf, Darmstadt, 12,60 DM ($3), (c) 1954
• 44 Irish Short Stories: An Anthology of Irish Short Fiction from Yeats to Frank O'Connor, Edited by Devin A. Garrity, (c) 1955
• Ireland: A Terrible Beauty, by Jill and Leon Uris, (c) 1975
• The Great Cities: Dublin, by Brendan Lehane and the Editors of Time-Life Books, (c) 1978
• The land of Ireland, by Brian de Breffny, (c) 1979

Now why would I be going on about such books and maps as these were it not for a wee bit of both past, present and future history/business? Do I know some savory/unsavory characters from Savoy Row who've wandered into parts they oughtn't've? Well, that's for them to be telling ye, not me. I'm no feckin' ejit. May've been born under a tri-part state cabbage leaf but I wasn't born yesterdy. Seein' as how you've trodden in my muddy footsteps w'me, let me tell you a thing or two. I'm no Saw Doctors fan from way back. I haven't got sheep's wool in me lungs from workin' the shears all me life. I'd know better than to leave Wales and land in Dingle, rather than Cork, and find me way to Dublin via Tipperary, unless you're wantin' to shoot scenes in arbitrary places in Ireland for a film about "Leap Year" that feels a bit summery, or not, what with the gorse blooming and the weather all warm and sunny-like...in February. Why not just say the cameras are rollin' on the Aran Islands or other Galway County locations and be done with it?

But an hour or so watchin' a spirited redhead, whether it be Amy Adams or Julie Y., is a moment one never forgets. Always a soft spot in me heart for the scandalous Scandinavian orange flames in the follicles of one's hair. A long list, including Robyn, Annette, and many others best not mentioned on this worldwide broadcast. Kissin' on the steps of castles, especially one between Shannon and Ennis...dear, sweet memories. No O'Grady or Callaghan or odd leap days occurring on Mondays.

I've lost me place in me thoughts. Where was I? Why the sudden thought of Quigley Down Under or losses on NCAA basketball courts?

This is my Internet. This is my history of our people. This is what I know about what has happened and what will happen. I know that Obama has suddenly become unpopular. I know I didn't vote for him because of his party affiliation (I didn't vote for his predecessor, either). I know that political parties are old news. Politicians are going the way of dinosaurs in this and many other countries. Corporations run the real show. A show of hands on who agrees with me? Ah, yes, see the CEOs, the CTOs, the CFOs, the movers and shakers shaking hands and wining and dining each other to keep the deals moving along smoothly. This, my friends, is real life - no illusions necessary. We will find a way to make Obama popular again when it becomes necessary to get certain deals done in the not-so-distant future. Right now, we need to follow the age-old pattern of pleasing the people in the portion of the population who did not vote for the current U.S. president so that they do not resort to means that further slow down the economy. After that is taken care of, we'll wheel precedental public opinion back around just in time to approve plans that make public education more educating and improve test scores to show the presidential administration likes improving the future lives of its country's children. All the other fuss about universal health care coverage, "green" goods/services and more jobs will get jumbled together and poured into a mold that will come out in watered-down bills on Capitol Hill to satisfy some of the people some of the time.

So relax. Sit back. Have a beer with me and set your feet up on the coffee table. Be a man or woman or whoever you want to say you are. It's all right. We're family. There are no secrets between us. We can watch television or tune our Internet tablets to the same website and synchronise our thoughts and feel the buzz and excitement of mass hypnosis. Everyone repeat after me: "Ommmmm, my kneepad's me bum, ommmm."

It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, all those people who've volunteered so hard in Haiti get a free ride on the Disney cruise ship back to Disney World for their free day at the amusement park.

Do you have a fix on the Irish sense of humour? Can you enjoy a moment with Jennifer Rudley at Beauregard's and know what I'm talking about? Or bite into a bagel at Bruegger's and feel the love? Or play chauffeur to your wife as she takes you from Tuesday Morning to Bed, Bath and Beyond to Marshall's to Pier One to TJ Maxx to Wal-Mart to not find a set of matching twin bed covers and curtains?

And all the while you're tracking some satellites you aren't sure about, using your friend's quasi-magical rocket ship to get closer and point your X-ray vision at the circuit boards on board those geonongeosynchronous orbital solarionpowered orbs, making sure your sevenbillionperson-strong simulation program takes into account more junk in Earth's trunk so you can tell your friendsinouterspace what to expect next just so they can pad your untraceable retirement account that has no meaning to those who count currency exchange and real estate as spare change in one's portable percevalian tale. Have you ever seen a castle with intricate interlocking stones and wondered how they were able to build a fortress that has withstood time and motion?

You see, I consider myself fortunate. Those few days when I was on my own...well, there have been many moments when I had days that no one could account for but anyway...anyway, those first few days when I was traveling the monorail tour of America, I missed telling you about a chance meeting I had with a young Italian named "Fred." Fred was a previous acquaintance of mine from my days in the old student slums of Knoxville, a place many of you call Fort Sanders. Back before all the condo developers took away the personality of the place and turned it into schizo-highville. Fred had a few connections that...well, let's just say he was connected. Or is.

So here I was, thinking I was doing my own thing, charting my own course when I discovered Fred had put someone on my trail. How he did it, I don't know. I'm not a paranoid person. I don't suspect someone's following me around all the time so I don't have this keen sense of people tracking me. I just assume that I'm famous in my own thoughts, paparazzi taking me pictures and recording my conversations for the day I get my Tiger stripes and have some 15 minutes of infamy worth pawning for gold at whatever sensational news outlet that holds people's attention during that time in peopled history.

I stopped at a random freeway exit and pulled into a petrol station. I walked into the bathroom to relieve myself of the water I'd downed at the last rest stop. Fred stood beside me at the next urinal and quietly told me he had some business to take care of with me.

You don't know Fred, do you? He's what I can only guess is a real Sicilian straight out of the old stories - olive skin, short in stature, slicked-back black hair and a friendly manner without being over-friendly.

Fred and I retired to the back of the petrol station where Fred had a beatup Toyota Corolla and a driver waiting for us. We rode around the little desert town while Fred explained to me what he had in mind for me to take care of for him the rest of our lives in business together.

Those of you who do business with me know I ain't a squealer. Occasionally, I slip some of our business dealings into my stories but never enough to pin down exactly what we've been actually doing.

Don't get me wrong. My business in on the up-and-up. I have no qualms about waking up in the morning with a clean conscience (having a clean consciousness is a different subject entirely). However, because of who I am and what I know and the connections I can make between the past, present and future, certain associates of mine get information they can use to...how do I put this? My friends know what I'm talking about so let's keep it open and honest here. My friends know what I'm capable of. How they deal with what they get from me is their own business.

After all is said and done (and it never is, is it?), I'm just a storyteller. I spread it on so thick that there's no longer any truth that those who don't know what I'm talking about can know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? If you only knew!

There've been other sets of days when no one knew where I was or what I was doing when I ran into other associates like Fred who wanted information that benefited us both. You see, it's all about casual conversations and dropping hints and three-dimensional messages written in time and groups of the same people standing at bus stops everyday in different arrangements that my life's all about. It's junkyards that are rearranged for amateur pilots to fly over and take pictures of. It's small stores in outoftheway places where no one buys anything but produce moves off shelves allthesame. It's speaking Spanish and Hindi and Russian allatonce. It's nonsense phrases and character sketches. It's not speaking at all and getting the story told clearly to those who speak no languages that you know. Do you speak organic circuitry? Do you see without seeing time-based movement?

I wish I didn't know what I know I don't know I know. I'd like to say what I think I know I think. But I can't. It's not a secret. I'm not hiding anything. It's just that these symbols, these words, are useless to tell you what I know. I'm not the only one who knows what I can't tell you I know I think I know. All I can do is communicate with those who know and get accomplished what we know we know how to do with those who know others who know. No kidding.

It's not about the money. It's not about power. At least for me. I've got more of those than I'll ever need. No, for me it's just about access to words and phrases like these.

Some call it bargaining with the devil. Some call it singing with the angels. Some call it being the one past the lives of all the previous lives one had to get here. It's more than that. It's all of that and none of that.

Some days I can run into some of you who know what I'm talking about and put up my "I don't know what you're talking about" mask of living shallowly in the moment. Some days I can't. Some days I want to do one but do the other, instead. In other words, I want to pretend the old illusions still exist. Ignorance is bliss they say but they're wrong.

Many of you are old beyond your years, older than anyone can imagine, old in knowledge and the ways of the ways things really work. For you, I bow my head in acknowledgment of what you know, what we know, what we still have to learn. Oglala, Amazonian, Celtic or Zambian, it doesn't matter. Old World or New World. East or West. We accept that people can just be people and let it be done like that. Everyday worries are just as important as anything else one can do. The solid facts of life. Birth, love, death.

When one has seen one's life written on the sands of history and erased by the rapid winds of change, one knows enough to know all - the people can have what they want - one needs nothing anymore.

Peace, power, war, weakness, fleeting, forever, ignorance, doubt, knowledge, assuredness... Orwell said it best: it's all the same. The rest is history.