God's fires

9.25.14

Democracy can’t be transplanted.  It comes from economics.  The approach to extremism is ill advised.  Ok, Rouhani, let’s give the west your slant to ending extremism.

Entrusting leaders in the Middle East to end extremism is necessary.  Right. The blunders of the west have created the fire on both sides of my country. The west has put blades in the hands of madmen.  Tony Zinni would agree with this, with exception I think to Assad.  Iran is a tranquil nation.  Right.  Cooperation is necessary to end the death of thousands of Palestinians at the hands of the Zionist regime.  How about recognizing Israel’s right to exist?  How could the regime continue to resist your nuclear ambitions if they accept your right for them to live?

Sure, Israel, make peace with your enemies across the wall and may your enemies do the same but please stop building on land that is not yours anymore.  Ya gotta forgive, it’s that time of year.

Is Iran supporting terrorists?  A myth?  Know your people, Mr. President. 

The west can’t fight evil if it has intentions Islamic countries fear.  America wants peace but not with hopes one day Hollywood and Coke will find new markets.  Forget the oil, I think that’s happening.  The idea of democracy works if there is cooperation.  How could the colonies defeat the British if they weren’t one in mind and thought? 

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21606284-civilisation-used-lead-world-ruinsand-only-locals-can-rebuild-it

Nevertheless while we blunder about in a far distant land, the locals have kept their literal heads in the sand.  No more, ‘it’s not my war’, no more ‘it doesn’t threaten us’.  Fight your battles in the name of a faith that proclaims peace. 

Ninety two percent of Saudis believe ISIS is correct in its interpretation of Islam’s divine prophet, so says an Arabic newspaper. I don’t want to believe this but if it were true it’s the imams who spread it and no one questions them and makes me wonder what the imam behind me is saying to his flock right now.

The UN is cutting food programs to refugees by 40%.  We are out of money.  There’s no bleeping way I can stiff a beggar with a baby with a few bucks when I can give more.

9.26.14

Last night I sat across from the pastor who has an uncanny resemblance to a cousin in Chicago and asked him if he had any affiliation with the folks at Oasis hospital. Stan Rubesh is my boss.  The pastor at the church I attended in 1993, what a funny memory after service Stan would take out a white handkerchief which he’d open ‘hey interested in some rubies from Sri Lanka?”  beautiful blood red stones, say support is low this month, Pastor? 

I am not interested in attending a house service though it could be better than nothing, no I’d argue over the finer points of theology and leave more skeptical.  The Al-Ain fellowship asked me to preach once, the Good Friday service and I talked about the five views of sanctification and ended the service with a negro spiritual

                                    Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

                                     OoooOOOooo sometimes it causes me to tremble tremble tremble

                                     Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

This evening I will go to the Yaz Medical Clinic and reschedule my next dentist appointment.  The root canal job hurt like the dickens last night and while I thought I should at least let the man look at what is going on but two more potassium pills and an after dental surgery pill I picked up in KohSamui it is ok.  I simply do want to travel with post trauma throbbing.

A coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. Wait, if you’re connecting the coincidence with God then God isn’t anonymous, right? Is Einstein credited with saying this?  I have to completely disagree, a coincidence is God’s way of remaining in the human loop.  There is nothing anonymous about a coincidence.

This quote appears on page 850 in my copy of The Goldfinch.  Something good can come from something bad, sometimes though nothing good comes from war and disease. A coincidence is a simple sign of the active spirit world.  Why spirits don’t engage more often in human endeavors I don’t know but if you’re looking hard for answers, if you’re thinking hard for meaning, the greater the likelihood there’ll be an intervening connection but you can’t expect them to happen because then they’ll never happen. 

9.27.14

Is divinity obligated to reassure the inhabitants on planet earth we’re supposed to live in harmony?  It’s been a couple of millennia since any kind of message was given and time has changed that message.  Second, nature’s chaos isn’t enough because it’s too personal, too volatilely impermanent.  To what end do the greatest mountains, forests, and oceans bridge the two worlds and bring a collective peace. 

I’m glad I didn’t visit the dentist for a third week in a row.  The root canal continues to heal, my mouth needed to rest from the trauma. 

And can we talk about the Unified Field Theory?  Some day?  I am so guilty of expecting a force greater than humanity will save us.  What a mess divinity has given us.  We are always putting out God’s fires. 

hello mrs goldfinch

9.22.14

It is a scientific fact that your body can’t differentiate between fake laughter and real laughter.  Well, let’s laugh because there cannot be anything selfish about laughter.  Do you laugh when you watch 200,000 Kurdish Syrians flee for their lives?  No, so I shouldn't watch the news when I wanna be happy?   I can't be happy and watch the news at the same time.  Sigh, I am so tired of this. I wanna be happy and not feel selfish when I know there are children fleeing for their lives.  WTF? 

There’s no place for compassion when you confront evil.  What do the swamis say when those opposites collide?  Well, when your home is invaded you don’t offer the perp a cup of chamomile, you defend and if necessary God forbid, you kill.  What an awful predicament.  Hey God permits evil's existence and when mankind is left to his own defenses he is once again one with the animal kingdom. 

How do we inspire ourselves when no one else can?  Consider others before you consider yourself.  What?  I am the master of my fate.  I am the captain of my soul.

Complacency is my enemy. 

Today is the last day of summer.  I enjoy Autumn though not necessarily here.  There are no blazing reds and yellows and oranges, no oaks and maples for thousands of miles in either direction.  How does one ever know when the season is changing in the hottest place on the map?  The sun’s rise in the east moves to the right.

9.24.14

Dark times, light times, we’re all stuck between the realms.  Poverty has been cut in half.  The achievements of mankind have made now the best time in history to be alive, and yet a collective unease is pervasive.  Disease and war reveal an international failure to maintain security and hope in constant change. 

I want to choose hope over fear.  I reject (?) fate and believe there is hope.  Hope in peace but seriously, as long as mankind lives between the chasm of light and darkness there will always be evil, always, and peace will elude when there is selfishness and narrow-mindedness.  You got an agenda?  You think your faith is the only faith?  Faith's original intentions were not to compete with each other.  God didn't see this coming?  Tsk tsk.  God sees the evolution of thought and permits evil to exist via screwy ways of interpreting divinity.  What the hell. 

Obama speaks to the UN Assembly and there's no clapping.  I like that.  They’re listening but there’s no need for approval and bravado.  The Pharisees and Sadducees wanted to stone Jesus.  Obama is no Jesus, though many would like to throw stones.  Or lattes.

He’s too hopeful.  The world is safer and healthier today than ever before.  Is the media to blame for showing us the evil 24/7?  The perversion of Islam.  The extremists kill their own, that’s extreme.  They kill the infidel.  The Koran teaches peace and the interpretation and pervasive poverty draws flies to their fire.

Twenty five percent of the youth in the Middle East are unemployed.  The extremists had no jobs and is this really why they joined up to kill?  They steal their food, they bond, the camaraderie intensifies until you drop bombs on them.  How romantic.

And it is time the Muslims in the Middle East speak out against extremism.  There should be an end to the intolerance of people who think differently.  C’mon shout out the Saudis.  The ideology of evil will wither and die as long as it is exposed.  Declare war on war, establish an Islamic reformation and get everyone on the same crystalized page. 

Sectarian conflict.  Christianity had it.  Proxy wars, Islam isn’t winning this one.  The two will never win.  How to find peace.  It is madness.  And isn’t it time they looked at each other and said, God, we’ve been dumb.  Why did we believe an ideology, submission to Allah at all costs, was more important than peace and love for each other.  The Golden rule is fool’s gold dude. 

Speaking to the muslim youth.  Innovation, the dignity of life, not murder. Education that doesn’t teach indoctrination but openness.  Change ought not to happen at the expense of tradition and faith.  Right.  Hope is not copywrited in the west.  Reject ideologies that believe in hate and death and do not respect someone else's belief.  If your faith is right you don't need to impose it on anyone.  Christian-Muslim-Hindu folks too smart for their own good become legalists and that is not what divinity is about.  At all.

A universal declaration of human rights.  C’mon a shout out at Beijing.  Diversity and tradition work together if you can imagine that.  Where do universal human rights begin?  Roosevelt said they begin at home.  The Arab world is slow to understand this.  China is slow to understand this. 

The Nepalese man is silent.  He might disapprove of the mistreatment of women but he won’t say anything.  Is that fatalism plus tradition plus chauvinism?  The poor rural bound woman has no chance if man doesn’t look at his wife and think differently.  How do you reach this man? Religion is flawed because man is flawed.

A week from now I am scheduled to take a holiday but I am anything but up for it.  Constant dental discomfort is a bummer but staying in the grotto is also a bummer.  I gotta get out but I feel blah, but what the bleep should I do?  What the bleep will I do?  Why not take off to Europe, five days is enough.  Ha at what expense, pray tell, is worth wandering from one fantastic museum to another.  Maybe the goldfinch is there.  Is that even real?  Inspiration awaits somewhere but not here.

noshing mandarins

9.19.14

The Scots vote no, Islamists continue their violent overthrow of common sense, it is over a hundred degrees outside, no shade to hide on the Sohar road, darks hang on the line, the faithful stream out after the afternoon service, threats from a madman put a family on edge in a Himalayan village and I wish I had something to take me out of the third dimension, even for a few hours.

The Goldfinch has been my only escape but I’ll finish it soon.  What would I give to write like this, another life, does it encourage to keep it in mind while you twiddle away great ideas, yes and no.  How profitable would it be to have an epiphany for that outline, a plan of attack, however trying, is still a plan.

Laxmi didn’t need to marry the man, traditional social fears, tepid family consent in light of financial stress, and now he says he’ll kill a man who raises chickens.  Tukla (the bald one) opened a tea shop along the path to the top and himself is raising chickens along with a few turkeys and pigs for lower caste residents.  Laxman gave me a tour of the ‘farm’ a few months ago, I expressed surprise Balrum had also started a chicken farm not more than 200 meters away but the demand in Pokhara is high.  I’ve been in touch with Balrum’s daughter who fears for the safety of her brother who manages his father’s 1500 chicks and says police won’t intervene in the dispute, a great injustice in a self-governed community.  It is the problem, the great one, for a village that has survived on keeping its own in check with ancient Hindu rules and norms.  But Tukla is not from the village and even though he took Laxmi as a second wife, he has to be held in suspect especially since the suicide of his son.  Can anyone ever not be changed when tragedy falls in your lot?

This evening’s meal will be at McDonalds.  Whatever is in the meat doesn’t dissuade me.  My choices here are limited to the omnipresent shwarma kiosks or one of the few hotels I haven’t stepped into all year.  Tomorrow it’s back to the dentist and I know it’ll be soup for the day. 

Wow, I have the internet in my flat.  What, how, when.  And it’s fast and when I return from my burger run we’ll see how fast it is.  Can I hear music from youtube, can I watch video, my life has been for the last twenty minutes so uncloistered. 

How can gross food be so good?  It is a mystery.  Wolfing down the big mac which is smaller than the American kind a family of eight Pakistanis came led by grandmother who sat at the end of the table with her two daughters and a little girl.  Four teenagers sat adjacent to them and yalla! Go ahead and use both hands to eat, it’s ok to use your left hands here, we’re in an all-halal establishment.

I’m taking a zantac before bedtime that’s for sure. I’ve eaten at the golden arches twice in the last three weeks.  Is that too much?

My short-lived connection to the internet came to an end in the middle of an interview with Hunter S. Thompson.  If I ever write something meaningful on my own I’ll need some inspiration from the likes who have done it.  Hemingway, Steinbeck.  I listened to the latter’s Nobel acceptance speech and he could be talking about today, by golly. 

Hemingway worked hard to write masterpieces and one could say, the harder he worked, the luckier he got, but Hemingway had a gift.  Steinbeck had a gift as did Faulkner and ok, Donna Tartt.  Anyone can write a good sentence and maybe they can connect a couple good sentences but it’s the story that requires the gift.  Talent one may have but if they don’t have the gift, then it’s blah, mediocre. 

Ok, let’s hear your ideas.  You want to put them here for someone to steal?  It’s nothing I haven’t already blogged go ahead.  Hemingway and Atwood recommend pencils and paper and spilling it all out.  I’ve filled journals and they are winding up in the fire.  Here at least it’s legible. 

Here’s the premise:  Nope I’m not gonna put it down.  I did but I deleted it. 

9.20.14

Today we start here.  And for two hours  the Egyptian dentist x-rayed, drilled, chopped, sawed, saudered, scraped, sucked and when I staggered out of the plastic chair I noticed the next patient; an eleven year old boy, Ayoub.  What did he do at birth to be named Job?

Oh right, there’s a connection there, eh?  A lesson, sure, my temporary discomfort is nothing compared to those who suffer from war, disease and being married to professional football players.

A root canal it was, on the broken tooth in my lower right quadrant, next to the space where the Thai dentist yanked the broken one two years ago, and next week we’ll go back for more and then my humbled teeth will take three weeks off.  The Novocain wears off in five hours or so but Dr. Mohammed instructed me to start taking the granulated ibuprofen in an hour.  Let’s take everything you got now, dude.

Yesterday’s twenty minutes of internet access was a damn tease and if I didn’t have a compelling read with me I’d be more bummed than usual.  With the right side of my mouth off limits I carefully noshed a mandarin and now it’s a cup of tea with soft biscuits filled with vanilla cream.  Excellent, more sugar.

Ya know I have the one thing every writer needs.  Solitary confinement.  So why don’t you exploit that need?  Well, there’s this blog.  That doesn’t count.  Ok, it’s taking that original idea and running with it. 

Ok, maybe tomorrow.

interpret this

9.15.14

I told a colleague of my feigned interest with a university in Kabul and he thought that was a perilous idea.  Why, it’s dangerous in Missouri, I’d more likely die in a Los Angeles heatwave than in a compound in Afghanistan. 

No clouds from the east today, it is clear and the evenings stifle.  Yesterday the university/company gave placement tests for new students and today I graded two sets.  Five out of forty will begin in the highest level of the foundation program, the rest will start from the beginning.  How difficult is it to learn a second language at 18?  According to a few English is the most accessible language in the world. 

I looked at MFA’s in writing this afternoon and it is enticing to return to school but how much more difficult is it when you’re one of those ‘non-traditionals’?  It would be a return to borrowing money, a part-time job with a stack of books to read and papers to write and living in a tiny room albeit in a city with culture that would mostly be out of reach on a fixed income. But such voluntary hardships are the risks one must accept.  I must be persuaded.

How about one of these low-residency programs, the kind that would let me pursue my ‘dreams’ while I am right here?  You want something to really keep you busy in your furnished grotto?  I’ll keep looking.

This might be strange reading this but I am grateful for living alone.  I know the few relationships I’ve had in 51 years weren’t supposed to happen, I mean if they did work I wouldn’t be where I am now, right, but I value the enormity of time to contemplate, though somewhere in the shadows there is always this speck of hope someone will enter my life, someone who’d inspire, who’d be a muse to jumpstart those reveries with reckless ambition and bring the kind of passion that changes everything. 

In the meantime I have to be thankful, to God, to Om, what else can I do,  silence beats me down and I have to look up, what other choice do I have but to trust who I am and where I am is supposed to be? 

So, if you mean it are you expecting something good now to happen to you, a break, an insight, desire, the kind of desire even an Indian prince would approve?  I am not trying to manipulate an ancient archetype or squeeze a cosmic inaugural call out of the darkness for some grace and karma.  I cannot and will not ask for anything. 

9.16.14

“risk is justified in perilous moments…”  The empty space in my mouth throbs and brings with it a piercing pain to my left temple.  I can’t believe I agreed to let a dentist clean up my dental horrors for the next four weeks.  I will go this Saturday to have the sutures removed and let him perform one more ‘job’ and then that’ll be it until after the holidays.  When I return we’ll do this every two weeks.  What is the point of keeping pain present all the time?  It is a prescription for overdosing on lame ass over the counter medications.

I also learned today the government keeps the strong pain-relievers in their government hospitals.  It makes sense.  They don’t trust pharmacies and doctors with the stuff. So why don’t we all go to government hospitals instead of private clinics?  I don’t know.  I haven’t visited a government hospital, I don’t know if people are afraid of MERS, which is still occurring I read, in hospitals, spread by staff who aren’t washing their hands after contact with patients. 

9.17.14

A mesmerizing peach sun hung above the horizon before it slid into an oblivious west and I was headed for the pharmacy for something, anything, stronger than ibuprofen.  The work week has almost finished, Thursday is a dud day, dudder than others, the halls echo, a few teachers meander in and out, the canteen staff sit on their hands.  The teachers who taught summer classes begin their three week hiatus and the new teachers, boldly or ignorantly will come before the Eid holiday starts.

So, any final thoughts, anything inspire you this week, any insights, epiphanies, right, anything worth sharing in these waning moments? 

The clergy of the American south believed slavery was supported by the Bible because of its inerrancy.  The opposition couldn’t refute the hundreds of references cited but they objected on the grounds that it was the spirit of Christianity which found slavery wrong. 

The abolitionists did not believe in literal interpretation because the spirit changes people’s interpretation so why would anyone think that spirit has stopped changing how people interpret the divine word?

dees decay and dees decay

9.12.14

I was returning from Maha market yesterday evening, ten minutes from my flat when lightening flashed in the east and then the wind picked up ferociously the sand and my head was down, eyes pinched open enough to see trash and dirt flying up.  Inside circular fans in the bathrooms and kitchen madly whirled, a sandstorm and strikes in the sky but no rain and thunder.  This morning I swept up the sand collected under the sliding window door, a fine layer on the coffee table, a film on the tv screen.  I’m always concerned about my eyes, the implanted staples in my corneas irritated and I can’t rub them hard, a punch, a large object hitting them would be a serious matter.  The doctor who put them in nine years ago is in Dubai, at least I think she is still there, and as far as I know, is the only one who does the intacs around here and she’d be getting a visit from me and how long would it take to reach her office, five hours, I should carry her number.

I am glad my colleague didn’t go to Muscat after we left school. I know I shouldn’t drink beer when I am on antibiotics and if I had gone well I would have ignored the sensible and had two or three pints.  I haven’t had a drink in two weeks back in the flat land of beer-free Oman. The pharmacy gave me Diclofenac Pottasium for pain relief and ibuprofen works better than these, nevertheless my stomach continues to trouble me and I’m not sure why.  I can usually trace discomfort back to food but if the food is the same I’ve been eating for a year I wonder what else is going on. 

Friday morning without a car in this city with temps already at a 100 by ten the routine is set; headline news, breakfast, a load of darks and settling in with a book until it’s time to eat lunch, then it’s back to the book until four or five and a surf through my seven channels until it’s seven and then a 15 minute walk to the Safeer market that carries Al-Ain mango yogurt and boxes of 2% milk and on the way back I stop and buy three schwarmas for 900 baisa.  Today though I will stop at the barber and get the one rial haircut and where I usually give the Bangladeshi a one rial tip.  This is not an exciting life.

9.13.14

I hope the dentist can pull this darn tooth then and there and I can return to the grotto and suffer in silence. 

I did not sleep good last night, indigestion at 3am which I predicted before I looked at my mobile and most annoying, the air conditioner on the third floor above my bedroom air conditioner drips onto the metal surface and I need ear plugs because wrapping a pillow around my head only muffles.  I am always thinking about what my ex would do if she were here.  She’d complain on and on.  It would take a huge ladder to reach my air conditioner outside and place a piece of foam on top of it, something to absorb the loud and constantly shrieking metallic pings.  Of course I see the ex confronting Fazoni, the Iranian teacher who resides above me, and telling her to keep the air conditioner off at night, a most absurd but expected request. 

I don’t know if this a temporary thing but cigarettes are leaving me sick.  I guess it’s good, right?  I’ll quit if it continues and then I’ll have no vice.  Nothing to alter my way of thinking, God forbid straight thinking is a bore.  Perhaps that is what I’d need to put together something, photos, writing, for a daring and completely surprising move to publication. 

I have been reading two stories and editing is the most demanding.  When I come across something I am unsure of, to delete it questions why I wrote it in the first place.  And to delete means it’s gone forever, a thought, however unsure, is forgotten. 

12.45pm

The Egyptian dentist used his halogen camera and chronicled each disaster and put the feared images on the monitor above me. “Deeses decay, the black, and dees decay between the teeth, and dees two also decay.  Dees tooth in the back right root canal and dees one root canal and behind lower front…you need remove…ok we extract dees remaining tooth” and for 67 Omani Rials including the x-ray dees wisdom tooth is gone.  Next Saturday Dr. Mohammed Abdullah Mohammad will remove the sutures and begin in each quadrant. “Four visits we finish.” 

With enough Novocain you could remove all my teeth and anything else and it wouldn’t hurt but without real painkillers this impaction surgery may hurt later on. Ibuprofen granules?  Just mix it up in a non-alcoholic malt?  I need whiskey.

In the waiting room I watched a baseball size goldfish suck up aquarium stones from the bottom and poof them elsewhere for 15 minutes.  I have no doubt incarcerated fish go crazy.  Tonight the fish will reverse his project and fill the hole.

Lord have mercy.

unwanted wisdom

9.10.14

Why do dentists laugh when they look inside my mouth?  She said the wisdom tooth was infected.  She gave me antibiotics and told me to come back on Saturday and Dr. Mohammed, not her, not the one with a designer tika nestled on her forehead, would take an x-ray and consider if surgery was necessary.  Surgery?  The crown has been moving around, we don’t know how deep that root is.  Well, surgery, they can knock me out with something.  I am ok with that. 

Liberia is in danger of disappearing so says their ambassador to England.  We need money yesterday, not now.  Why help other countries and not us? 

If I am offered a ride to Muscat tomorrow I’ll go.  The Oman Air office is in the airport and we can confirm this ticket.  Today I got an sms from the bank notifying me to get a password to verify my debit card.  Maybe I should go to the bank first?  The sms told me to go to their website and guess what, it doesn’t work.  I am never surprised with anything dysfunctional online around here and that is why things are done face to face. 

Discount dollar stores fighting to buy each other out.The irony of ironies?  Turn off that damn tv.

I sat in the canteen with a colleague who at the end thanked me for the great discussion.  Elementary teachers can’t converse with students who know only a handful of words.  “You see they say the universe is expanding and there is an opposite to everything, the Hadron Collider found this particle and it was believed that the smallest of particles would reveal the fourth dimension or a portal for time travel, and yes at the end of your nose, on the tip of a pin sit a thousand angels and imagine in our present darkness the day when humanity and the spirit world are mixing it up.”

And I gave her my theory of slavery and the disappearance of a society’s interpretation and rambled further with mankind’s responsibility to everything we know now.  You can’t sing what a friend I have in Jesus while Syria burns.  It’s not my fight, I’ll pray for those who suffer.  And then you’ll go back to your smart aleck phone with fifty apps and feel good about life?  It’s selfish, it is I hate to say it, ungodly.

How did all of this start, your journey into other dimensions?  I’ve never talked about it because it sounds like I started it, 2008 was the tenth year of my divorce and I thought, with no justified reason I am afraid to admit, that my penance was up.  I married someone I shouldn’t have, and I paid for it and ten years I thought ought to be enough now for me to meet someone and fall in love and live a life worth living and my frustration grew and I had questions about everything and the search for an answer led me to the events that upended me and didn’t answer the questions because as you know I was wrong and we are all still here. 

I have to accept that the spirit who performed the purgation has to be who he is because of the cave in Sanilurfa and the tomb in Salalah.  Coincidences, confirmations. And what have these confirmations done for you?  Well, nothing today, I am no better or worse off now and is there something there you were supposed to have learned? I don’t know, my second year in Buraimi will be the same as the first year, a life of semi-seclusion. 

I need a haircut.  I was going to go tonight and yesterday.  This weekend for sure, if I don’t go to Muscat.  And I should wash my feet before I climb into bed.  Why, who’s gonna complain?  Well they smell when you pick the calloused skin from your heels and toes.  So don’t pick your calloused heels and toes for crying out loud but wash your hands at least. 

I take a taxi to school every morning and every driver asks me where I am from. ‘Obama good, Obama very good.’  Patrick, the canteen manager is greatly encouraged when America takes charge.  Ya know, the president met with the Pope and with the Dalai Lama and he is reluctant because he doesn’t want to fight but isn’t there enough holy inspired literature in your favor here?  Fight evil.  And pray the good guys don’t die doing it. 

And can we pray to the reluctant creator to carry his weight on this one?  Fight disease, fight domestic violence, fight evil.  Just imagine for a second, John Lennon returning to earth with a new song, what if the creator showed his holy face and all faiths came together.  Wow, a universal history of violence would end.  Wow, we can’t do it, that’s obvious.  C’mon, it’s time.