John Elder, an adjunct professor at the Multimedia part of the Museum of Art & Design at University of Central Oklahoma, was also the curator of the Red Earth museum at the Omniplex in Oklahoma City. My Digital (non-linear) Editing and Multimedia Design classes in college was inspired by him.
He was well connected with the Americans (the real ones) in Oklahoma. I composed the ‘Seminoles of Oklahoma’ booklet with Macromedia Freehand – a software that was a contender of Adobe Illustrator.
I was then invited to video-tape an annual gathering of the Chieftains in Oklahoma City. I was the only non-native there. They decided to present me with a hand-made gift – a keychain – at the end of the show.
When working at the museum, I came into contact with a former Shaman’s apprentice – a medicine-woman. Karen’s life’s path is probably just as bizarre as mine has been. She moved to Oklahoma as she was chosen to me the mediator for the first meeting between the Tibetan Monks and native Americans.
The meeting took place in the Art department of the Universal of Central Oklahoma – same place we worked. The Monks created a sand-portrait. When it was complete, they picked up every grain of sand and poured it into the Red Earth river flowing through the middle of the city (by route 66).
On the day of the full moon in 1999 which was supposedly spiritually unmatched for decades, she decided to read my future. Before I left, she asked me to take some Red Earh from the river.
I still have some of that red sand. The irony in this story is that I grew up in ‘Lal-Matia’ in Dhaka – which translates to ‘Red Earth.’
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