loo-e Leuwen

10.30.14

2:29pm—The university orientation began 29 minutes ago and I decided to stay at my desk, twiddle my thumbs, spin a few pencils and write right here.  How was your week, then, sir? 

Tomorrow it’s a border crossing we go, a night at the Hilton and an evening of music at the sand course.  It was at the sand course on 9/11/01 I saw the second tower go down.  Mike Douglas from Gary Indiana and I had just finished a round of nine and we sat in the empty lounge, save for two Irish folks, one tending bar, a black and white television had been rolled out and we watched a scratchy Omani station feed of a reporter on ABC describing what had happened earlier when the second plane crashed. 

This morning we learned one of our students jumped out of a window at the hostel.  Suicide isn’t very common here.  Last night before I gave my class their weekly quiz, I was reviewing questions for their speaking assessment next week and this girl pleaded with me to let her go, I don’t know what the problem was, but I said of course, get out of here, but could you take this quiz first?  She got a 16 out of 20 so I don’t know if it was her who jumped.  God be with her.

I have learned about a university in Belgium that offers an MA in theological studies for an incredibly low price.  I know you’ve talked about going back to school in the states to study the business of selling photos and the business of improving your writing, but a school of theology?  I was a bit awed to learn the school, in a city called Leuwen, east of Brussels, once had Erasmus as a lecturer.  The father of Christian humanism. What is it you’d like to accomplish if you were to go there?  I would have to explain and persuade and justify to a publisher the significance of reshuffling and printing a new new testament.  Do you need to back to school to do that?  Only in a university would I have the network of people for and against me and only in a university would I find the motivation to push myself to produce such a historically 21^st century revision of the ancient texts.  Mind you, I wouldn’t be removing a single jot and tittle from the texts. There is nothing heretical about taking all of Paul’s letters and putting them after Revelation.  Of course such a move would need a preface and a title to the revision would need to explain such a shift.  Could I call it, “The Commentaries of St. Paul, the 13^th Apostle” with little controversy?  How about “The Sacred Commentaries of St. Paul, the 13^th Apostle”?

Every day I am here I tell myself there is no way I am going to stay another year.  My life in the desert has been mostly even, a few downs and ups, but I am tired and feel a need to socialize a little more.  I had a nice chat with a Korean instructor in the cafeteria.  Chou (?) I’ve already forgotten his name, was a CPA in San Jose for eight years and now he’s been here for four, his wife is home schooling his two young children because the elementary schools are not designed for anyone in particular.  And we shared our love of baseball.  It was nice to talk about baseball again and we took our hats off to the Giants by the Bay, that is something else, isn’t it Chou?  Or is it Orchou?

An Omani colleague comes in.  I don’t feel too bad about not attending the orientation.  Two other dissenters talk about what is the worst beer and they shift to Korean beers.  The label free green bottle pints in Tianjin were pretty good if I remember correctly. 

So, anything else?  The short week was good.  Reading QB VII in the morning was hard to put down.  Students gave me descriptive paragraphs of their home, one said she has a deep freezer in her bedroom.  This kind of writing is great and I can’t ignore it so I asked the woman what she keeps in the deep freezer in her bedroom, a dozen chickens, a couple of mutton, a disgruntled maid, I don’t know but she thought it was pretty funny.  On Monday we were discussing the use of ‘wish’ and its subjunctive mood relevance and one student sitting in the front said “I wish I weren’t a student.”  Of course I can’t leave that alone:  so, Aysha, what do you want to do?  Do you want to work in Lulus?  This is a supermarket chain in almost every Arabic speaking country, and it’s the place to go, but she thought my suggestion of being a cashier or a bagger was quite funny and we know how contagious laughter is for soon everyone was laughing with or at the girl who didn’t want to be a student.  What do you want to do if you don’t want to be a student, Aysha?  She didn’t know so I told her she could be the best cashier in the world if she didn’t want to be a student and they all just laughed together like that was the craziest idea they’d ever heard.

what to do.

dog-eared dogma

10.24.14

I heard it again:  ‘we’re all a small adjustment away from making it work.’  If I know how to make that adjustment, if I knew what that adjustment was, I’d be happy, in an unselfishy happy way that is. 

Breakfast at McDonalds, a coffee at Caribou and lunch at Burger King.  If I did this every day I’d buy zantac in bulk.  The 9am mass was standing room only, it was good to be among the faithful again.  Crossing the border was a piece of cake, such a liberating walk, even at seven in the morning.  Pacos was closed because of the new year and I found a new shirt the fella at Nauticas let me try on first, 50% off what a deal. 

After mass I went to the parish office and the Belgian sister behind the counter sold me the Catholic Edition of an RSV Bible with a most interesting section at the beginning entitled “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation” Dei Verbum, 18 November 1965:

“In determining the intention of the sacred writers, attention must be paid, among other things, to literary genre.”

“The fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression.  Hence the exegete must look for that meaning which the sacred writers, in given situations, and granted the circumstances of their time and culture, intended to express and did in fact express, through the medium of a contemporary literary form.  (St. Augustine) Rightly to understand what the sacred writers wanted to affirm in their work, due attention must be paid both to the customary and characteristic patterns of perception, speech and narrative which prevailed in their time, and to the conventions which people then observed in their dealings with one another”. (Pius XII)

This is the greatest story ever told, it can’t be denied, at least in the west.  In today’s homily the priest reminded us two commandments that summated six hundred and the application, simply put, is reasonable, relevant and universally true but reading a two thousand year old text with a twenty first century mindset results in different deductions.  Our intentions may be noble and righteous when we quote scripture for the touchdown or the new job but contemporary truth couldn’t be further from ancient truth. The spirit of the faith is sacred and thus must be implicit in light of the times we live in, intended solely for an audience that accepts it. 

“I am the way, the truth and the life.  No man comes to the father but by me.”  But if you are a committed and practicing Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or even a Jew, you’ve been given a different roadmap and this proclamation doesn’t apply to you.  It applies to those who seek.

Islam, on the other hand, skirmishes with change and fears it will erase or skewer the intentions of the writers of their holy book.  Muslims look at the west and see democracy and Christianity entwined, interpreted to fit with manifest destiny.  Jefferson embraced the libertarian spirit but refrained from crediting human achievement with a personal providence, and unlike Islam, our third president trusted the human spirit would consider each other's needs before their own, if not for Jesus’ sake but for natural truth.  In hindsight it was, and is, noble though John Adams wasn’t as optimistic and said man needed to be governed. Islam’s rule of law is a social contract with little room for rapidly changing interpretations and that is disconcerting. 

10.25.14

A thirty five minute walk along the dusty roads, past a row of water pump repairing shops and hundreds of darkly lit caves filled with auto accessories, slightly cool breezes couldn’t hide an irritating rash between a fold.  Where did that come from? 

I am glad I picked up a laptop this summer.  A few hours this afternoon making a review sheet for my students was well spent.  Last week I sent a similar study guide to the teachers and included in the bottom right corner; ©jon.  Five years ago I submitted the lit up coffee pot photo to the university’s online journal and hey it won, though there was no money attached.  The next year I went to the tesol Arabia conference and found the university booth with the image plastered on their brochures and propaganda.  The university didn’t tell or ask me for permission and I didn’t know a submission suddenly became their property so I was somewhat irate.  Now this university/company wishes us to submit our work into a sharefile which is not protected and which anyone can take so I’m sticking the copy write symbol on it even though I know anyone can remove it.  I will freely share my original material with anyone but really, credit ought to be given to the maker, that’s all. 

Churning in the Arabian Sea is a tropical depression and no one knows if it’ll turn into a cyclone or turn westward and plow into Oman, though if it does we here 350 plus kilometers away may catch some of it and all classes will be called off.  Yeah, I know, I love the fall semester.

10.26.14

8:37pm—Nothing on television, it’s too dark and my eyes are too tired to read.  The daylight hours were spent reading QB VII and it is good.  This is the second Uris book I’ve read where one of his characters is a promising writer who makes it into the publishing world.  It isn’t talent, he says, it’s the relentless pursuit of telling a good story.  And in both stories they started young.  I had a good story 28 years ago, Henry, the Russian Jew who cut my hair for years.  I wrote his story for a creative writing class at Tyndale.  Why didn’t I pursue writing then, I do not know.  I went to China after that college and that was it.  A tailspin into a decade of the oblivious.

I need to get the internet into the grotto so I may pursue because I’ll never snap this solitary lethargy without that portal of knowledge.  Praying and praying and praying and where has it led me?  Praying for a portal to pursue with passion could be pleasantly pleasing to the spirit.  What happened to the excursions across the border that were to improve a desired quality of life.  I know, it’s so surreal over there, every street has memories and I don’t belong, it’s a peculiar melancholy.

Today I finished marking student’s descriptive essays of their cities.  One described Sohar as a place where the night sees hustlers on the streets, more so on the weekend.  Ninety minutes away, it is undergoing a serious boom and for all the foreigners flooding in with it comes the illicit.  Last year the government closed all Indian nightclubs throughout the country and hotels without a four star status can no longer serve alcohol.  Sohar appears to be the exception.  Am I interested in checking it out?  No, desire is met handedly with a sigh, a suck of a cigarette, and sleep.

pedagogical suppository anyone?

10.20.14

‘Mister John Abu Dhabi has not sent the paperwork back to us.  We will call you when it arrives.’  I know every day I don’t have the pass days are subtracted from the ninety days and that is ok for now.  I want it this Friday and if I still don’t have it then it’ll be disappointing.  I assume the paperwork is sitting on a desk in an unadorned room with hundreds of other applicants and it’s simply not a priority.  But then I wonder if my name comes up red flagged.  What do they got on me really?  I broke no laws and was never arrested.  What they have is hearsay, wiretapped emails, nine weeks of CID surveillance, what do they have?  Why does he want a border pass, is he getting involved in communications with the spirit world again?

10.21.14

I return to the grotto around eight in the evening and I’m looking at the bed.  I have to eat and wait a few hours because I don’t want to wake up two hours before sunrise.  Sure morning is the most peaceful time, I open the sliding doors and let the cool breeze in and it ought to be a time to meditate and clear confusion, remove the negative uncertainties and focus on what is good, what is hopeful.  Cultivating an attitude of peace dissolves fear and it doesn’t come easy.  It takes practice.  It’s like training for a marathon, you need a schedule and you have to follow it.  Time isn’t an issue here, I have an abundance of it.  So?  What are you waiting for?

I look at jobs in the states, attractive ones in cities I’d be happy to live but there are papers I don’t have and can’t get.  A post at Michigan Tech asks for three confidential letters of recommendation.  Who can get a confidential letter except those who are recent graduates, let alone three.  Houghton is as isolated as Buraimi and probably its meteorological opposite but come spring, it’s another heaven.  What would be my chances if I simply moved there or to any desirable cities and applied in person, sure I’d have a decent chance of something part time and then if they liked me perhaps a contract would be offered.  That is the only way I could return and to do that I’d need a considerable nest egg.

My life is half over and what do I have to show for it.  Photos, marginally average writing and no pension.  It scares me, it bothers the crap out of me and yet lethargy seeps in and there is nowhere to turn but my present job.  I could stay right here ya know, but any quality of life requires mobility and spending money.  And I am too lethargic to spend money but if this border pass is rejected I will spend dammit.

10.22.14

Adaptive learning is nothing more than a pedagogical suppository.

Ideas are free, writers are thieves and liars.

Tomorrow I’ll return to Hili for my border pass, if it has arrived. A three day weekend approaches, the Islamic new year is acknowledged.  Is there a reason to celebrate another lunar calendar completed, not for the poor and embittered.  A colleague has been gracious, giving me lifts after evening classes and tonight we go to Lulus, a chance to stock up on French yogurt, three bean salad, a pastry of some kind, cheddar cheese.  I am grateful to spend money on food inaccessible on foot. 

I’m glad to finish another book of Theroux’s fiction.  Depressing really, a man uses datura to write his book and the addiction costs him his vision, an old story of selling the soul for something grand, well, it was well written, what is next, a Leon Uris thriller, a history of Vasca De Gama, E.M. Forester, the final novel of Pat Barker’s world war one trilogy.  When these are read it’s road trip time for more to the big shwarma.  There’s no rush now, with a laptop I am tempted to produce midterm exams, continuous assessments, writing exercises what the heck, at home and why not.  Empowerment is being prepared and I answer to no one but 24 presently eager and innocent minds.

Chatting with Jamuna yesterday revealed the non-coincidental woman has been angry with me for five years though she couldn’t exactly explain why.  I know why.  Every time I show up on the mountain she assumes I’m still hoping and that is not the case as I’ve told many. Her family life is a wreck and the bald fart who married Laxmi is a breach of all that is decent.  A Diwali pledge given to him by the second wife is non-binding and doesn’t give, at least it shouldn’t give someone license to be a leech and a scoundrel.  But I am the axiomatic outsider and there is nothing I can do but encourage my friend to take a stand in a society of unbalanced norms and fight for the rights of women.

10.23.14

The border pass is good for three months and I am happy to have it.  There is something, I don’t know the right word here, but it feels nostalgic, romantic, liberating, to cross into another country on foot. So, you’re crossing tomorrow?  Ya, Mcdonalds for breakfast, mass at 9am, hmmm., maybe breakfast after, then what…a meander in the mall until lunch at Paco’s.  What a life. 

teachers without borders

10.15.14

I walked to the bank at six thirty this morning and though it’s relatively pleasant I feel the drain.  In fifteen minutes I’ll walk ten minutes to the Hili border and apply for a border pass.  It’s good for three months and for 127 dollars, it’s more affordable than renting a car at 370 dollars a month.  Do I expect any trouble?  I don’t know.  I’m only concerned about walking in the rising heat. 

The first week of classes finishes today, the usual chaos swirls, a number of teachers haven’t arrived or returned.  I appreciate someone teaching my five hours of study skills classes so I can meander like a good coordinator and there are jobs I have to fix.  Why didn’t we learn how to use excel in graduate school.  It ought to be simple, right?  It’s all about formulas and math and algorithms and ok I see.  Math and formulas and algorithms.  I know how to measure flour and soda for a loaf of Irish Soda bread. 

10.16.14

On Sunday I’ll get my 90 day border pass.  I’ll save a thousand dollars and I’ll walk across the border and have a beer, order a chimichanga or a whopper, purchase cigarettes, a newspaper, everything that is not available here.  Will I wind up spending a grand on the greener side of the barbed wire, I don’t think so.  In the police station the three star captain sternly explained the pass is a 24 hour only pass, if I stay longer I’ll pay fines and really, I didn’t want the pass to spend money, I’d like a break, a change, a return, albeit it’s short, to the city I lived in for ten years and called a really good home.  I want to be a teacher without borders. Is that ok to say?

I don’t believe it’ll ever be that good home anymore.  Visits remind me of what was worthy and I accept the changes which came in whirls of dust and smoke and spun me out of there.  I took this job to be close and when the two years is up I’ll be ok to leave. 

Erin Brockovich is still a good movie the third or fourth time.  A woman fighting against polluters of nature and mankind inspires.  Is there a fight you’d like to take up?  Sigh, my fight is Sunday through Wednesday: overcrowded classes with nothing but a whiteboard and as coordinator I must step up for others who are exasperated in uninspiring classrooms you’d find in the 1950’s abandoned by plague and neglect.  Am I doing any good here?  Sure I’d prefer being on a mountain peeling garlic and making beds. 

And what about those students I try to help and then undress me with frivolous gawks and embarrassed larks?  Funny not, amusing, flattering, they practice the ancient art of flirting, perhaps for the first time and really they’re harmless progenies.

Being on the mountain means the world burns and dies and I don’t know it.  The villagers have enough troubles and why would they be concerned about islamists and ebola.  They’re not.  Twenty four hours seven days a week of struggling for water, checking the loadshedding schedule when do we have electricity this week, we need wood to keep warm and cook with this winter, will someone help us our home is freezing my baby is sick.  Small peanuts compared with Syrians living in tents, Palestinians living in rubble but really it isn’t right to compare.  Suffering is suffering is suffering.

10.17.14

A few days ago a local told me the Buraimi-ans would rather be Emiratis and this could explain Muscat’s reluctance and apathy towards its undeveloped western frontier.  Sixty years ago the Saudis and local tribes fought and vied for the oasis and today what keeps people here is the low cost of living which is what brings their neighbors across and the paradoxical desert life is simply nicer on the emerald side.

8.37pm—It’s comfortable enough outside now and a 40 minute walk has got me thinking I should start running again.  There isn’t enough time to prepare for any marathon in January but half marathons and 10k’s are plausible.  It’s always hard at first and these darn cigarettes may make it more challenging but it feels good to sweat, it feels good to lose a few pounds and what the hell, last year my only exercise was walking back from the university and when it’s hot again there’ll be nothing doing.  So?

The laptop has given me something to do aside from reading and watching the boob tube, the Leica photos and exercises for my class which I am more than happy to help are constructive and that is always a good thing, right? 

I have a 9am dentist appointment tomorrow and I don’t think I’ll go.  The Egyptian dude took care of the two painful problems and the choppers are ok for now so with the border pass I can go to one of the folks I’ve been to in Al-Ain.  I wonder if Dr. Ursula from Kiev is still around. 

A scary thought, if I have access to greener pastures it automatically improves my quality of life and that is what I lacked last year, so could I stay here longer?  Really?  I can think of nothing other than Salalah with a car, the beaches and the mountains call to explore.  Of course I’d have to fly to Dubai every six weeks or so to stack up on coffee and cigarettes and that would be ok because if I do land there it’ll be for the last lap.  Plans to change careers aren’t going anywhere without a break.

In my last night in Nepal I met three exuberant and marginally insufferable Australian blokes in a Thamel bar and they were off to the Annapurna circuit.  Did they die in the storm?  A story from a local newspaper said the cyclone that slammed east India continued to move westward and a freak current diverted its course and slammed the Himalayas.  In Sarangkot hard cold rain kept tourists away. I guess I was lucky to miss it but geez poor school children have to walk in it.  Damn.

I don’t know enough of Hinduism to make any connection with my arrival on the mountain on the biggest and most important day of Dashain and my unforeseen breakdown in front of Laxman’s parents.  Sure 37 hours of no sleep played a part in lowering my defenses as did a liter of Gorka beer and a few hits from the chillum but the tika, the puja, the blessing, I wish I could understand why I unknowingly timed my arrival with the auspicious day.  Only some nut case entity could have known and he isn’t telling me a damn thing. 

10.18.14

Every three months one of the four stations I have shows ‘Fever Pitch’ and every darn time I watch it.  It’s not even close to being my favorite movie and to boot I can’t stand the Red Sox since Martinez tossed a 76 year old man with a plate in his head to the ground so why do I always keep it on? 

Jimmy Fallon is funny, he plays a teacher, it’s a baseball movie and they finished filming it at the same time the team won the series and simply wrote the improbable into the movie.  Was there an absurd coincidence right there?  

What am I doing here?

10.2 Thursday = Colombo Fort Train terminal to Kandy

Kandy:  Hotels-Majestic Tourist Hotel, Hotel Mango Garden, Hillcrest Home

10.4  Saturday = Bus to Dalhousie via Hatton

Dalhousie:  Hotel-Slightly Chilled Guesthouse

10.6  Monday = Hikkaduwa

10.9 Thursday = Colombo

Colombo:  Hotels-Drift B&B, House of Art, Mt Lovinia

10.3.14  1:08am Sharjah

What the hell.  You planned this trip for a month, you bought the ticket a month ago and eight hours before departure you bought another ticket to KTM and on the way to the airport you buy a Leica!  Ha.  Oh wait it’s a low end compact Leica, ha ha.

Boarding in 2.5 hours, ha ha.

Job interview in Beijing

Employer:  Explain in brief your current employment situation.

Man:  I inspect pigeon butt-holes.

Employer:  And what is it exactly you are looking for?

Man:  explosives, subversive propaganda

Employer:  And could you tell us why you believe you are qualified to work at McDonalds.

Man:  It’s all the same shit, dude.

I’m so tired I can’t believe Beijing anymore.

So the plan is to fly to Kathmandu on this 4am red to purple eye, and then I'll go direct to the domestic terminal for a flight to Pokhara.  I want to reach Sarangkot by dusk.

There must be a reason I am going to Nepal.  And it can’t be Laxmi, and it can’t be Jamuna.  I can give them money, even children, and I get my visa, not good motives, son.

Air Arabia, the discount airlines, buy what meager offerings they have.   My ninety minute taxi arrives at Wafi Mall at 10:30pm and the glitzy place is empty, really and I walk around looking for a camera.  I wasn’t thinking Leica and I didn’t expect I’d buy it in minutes. At 11:00pm there’s a Starbucks and I buy one of them pumpkin lattes I hear about and for the next hour I breakdown the purchase and it fits easily in my half empty day pack. 

10.3.14  2:30pm

A ninety minute wait in KTM’s airport, October’s high season has arrived with the masses, how is it I stayed on my feet I don’t know.  Five American girls are ahead of me in the line but they are not in the line and they consider jumping the queue but I am looking right at them and I conceded a night’s sleep and I don’t think their idea is smart and two girls see me burning holes in their overpriced backpacks and they know they’re in the wrong and move to the end of the horribly long line and finally I reached the customs counter, to my left, hundreds of tourists waiting to get their two week visa, to my right two people waiting to get a month visa. I’m staying a week and I don’t want to stand another hour.  Yes, a month visa, please.  A ten minute walk to the domestic terminal, outside very large monkeys roam freely foraging in garbage cans, and inside I buy my ticket to Pokhara and wait three hours in a fairly miserable waiting room.  How am I staying awake, small cups of tea, cigarettes.

I arrived in Pokhara at 3:30pm and took a taxi to the beginning of the steps up to the top.  We drove through an empty city for today was the first day of Dashain.  I didn’t know I’d arrive on such an auspicious day. 

The sun, the clouds, the fresh air intoxicates and hardly had I known I was sweating when I reached the Himalayan View Guesthouse and had a beer with Balram, a man who is too angry for his own good and needs help and what kind of help can be offered on top of a mountain I don’t know.  I said my goodbyes, promised I’d try to come back. 

6:00pm—Twenty four hours ago I left my flat in Oman and here I am, at the top, holy shit, a sunrise for kings and queens, great comforted fatigue, Laxman’s parents are set up in the dining room administering the puja which consists of tikas and blessings on this special day to family members and I sit down in front of them and the exhaustion, the beer, a little bit of the chillum and I lost it, the overwhelming emotion that I was supposed to be here but didn’t discern it left me awash in tears. 

Instincts, anticipation = spirit

Instincts are a result of our spirit knowing the future.  Anticipation is a by-product of the spirit world’s presence in our heads.  Suman understands it. 

10.04.14

The sunrise is perfect, free from man’s influence, thank god for that.  The buildings are a little taller, five weeks since I stood in the village. 


Women jockeying for water at the pump below, this is a little early in the season to be fighting for water, folks. 

Laxmi and Maya have a chat.  Laxmi is in the house next above the Superview.  Her new digs are a month away from completion, what about this place to live in, a gallery, a family.  Look, Maya’s new washing machine.  I admit I was wrong to think anyone should be denied an appliance that makes life easier.  Washing clothes and bedsheets by hand is back breaking labor, but darn it,  Nepali taxes make this necessity out of reach for almost everyone.

Tourists climbing up ask for ice cream, sorry, someday, hey look, the first washing machine in the village.  Progress is good.

Suman had an enlightening experience with instincts and anticipation and I asked him to relay this experience in my journal but he never did.  What was it?  I explained the connection between humans and spirits in August and when he was in school these ideas came up in a class and a light bulb went off in his head.  A coincidence occurred I can’t explain it but I knew it had to be true.  My spirit gave me the answers at just the right time.

10.6.14

I woke up two minutes before the alarm, 3:28am.  I do it every time, is this normal?  God forbid I’m late for my own cremation. 

Back in room six by 11:30am.  Highlights and a lowlight on our trip to the Peace Pagoda:

Tea in the dark with Suman and Krishna, our driver at a tea shop below the stupa.

A glorious sunrise

Suman and I walked down to the boats that took us back.  We crossed a terrible landslide that occurred in August, killing four people. The landslide began directly under the pagoda leaving twisted metal and trees at the water’s edge. 

Mike’s breakfast, American pancakes, scrambled eggs, orange juice, coffee refills along lakeside.

On the first night I used the chillum for the first time in five weeks and that first higher consciousness smack down I whooped and laughed and believed I knew why I was here, why I changed my itinerary at the last minute to everyone’s surprise.

10.7.14

A typical serene silenced sunrise, all is good, all is quiet.  The overwhelming epiphany has tempered and I wonder how true it is, I am no closer to a handshake agreement regarding my future here on the mountain.  Laxman called a woman who is looking for a husband and she sat across the steps and we checked each other out and there was nothing.  This is the easiest way to get a visa but if my heart says nothing for crying out loud how can I do it?  Suman is eager to look at ways to renovate the house Laxmi stays in.  We inspected the two rooms, an ideal set up for a gallery and an office to produce a line of photos, calendars, key chains promoting Sarangkot.  This has to be the reason I am here. 

10.8.14

This is a phenomenal camera seeing light I don’t see, and without a lick of knowing what I am doing, 90% of this machine’s functions are unknown right now, a few modes and playing around I’m lucky so far.  How much credit goes to the man when the machine does all the work.  Ok, composition is mine and clicking the dial, choosing the mode, focusing and snap.

The monochromatic mode is stunning on the lcd, sharp, vivid, clean.  I am kind of shocked. 

What do Sanilurfa and Salalah have in common and why am I in the middle of them.  One can have ambition without the dangers of pride and that is ok.  Share the gift and I’ll go back to the states, a small Midwestern town, South Bend, get a part time job, take classes in management, writing, photography.  Am I too old for this, have I missed the boat to change?  Learning the business, if you’re ambitious, is what motivates your leap.  Have a plan, find motivation, it’s not a cliff you’re jumping off, you got your default profession it’s only age that hinders the change. 

Maya finishes making the beds and emptying the trash from all the rooms, which have been full since I showed up, surprisingly.  She lays down on the single bed and breathes a sigh.  They are short of help, Ram the wild child hasn’t returned and probably won’t.  Everyone is pitching in and there is talk of building another 14 rooms for crying out loud you need more water you need more reliable people working here, get me a damn working visa and I’ll clean the toilets for a hundred dollars a month. 

It is good to go somewhere where you don’t need to make a reservation.

The highlight of the kitchen:  Suman cooking 17 meals in ninety minutes!  Wala.  I’m telling him he should go to chef school and he’d probably make more money than running a business manufacturing airplane parts.  Ok, maybe not. 

Andy from Cologne and his six week pregnant girlfriend stayed two nights and the dude drank 22 liters of beer, two of which I shared.  ‘Look we have a photo’, the peanut should have a name, look, honey he’s got your dimples.  Badem, Nepali for peanut, name the kid if he’s a boy Andy Badem Wurslitcher. 

A blood red moon was mostly orange as it lowered into the west, and the Leica’s nighttime hand held mode is remarkable.  Wow, such luminescence mischievous light you capture, they look life changing on the small screen.  What’s there not to like about a Leica?

South Bend, Detroit, Pittsburgh, any place else?  Remain in the gulf, it’s your net.  Salalah is still ideal, close to the ocean and a ring of mountains I barely explored, a place to begin a new business on the side, bring in the equipment, spend the money, develop.. 

3:20pm

Upon request Suman made some delicious apple fritters, spot on with a cup of tea.  Maya gave me a ¼ full bowl of noodle soup and back in room six Laxman came by with a liter of Ghorka and a half dozen fried chicken momos, yum!  Room service is good and always surprising here.

Thunder rumbles, rain spits, it’s been a good stay, Laxman told me to call ahead next time, why, you don’t like surprises, shit, I didn’t know I was coming until I bought the ticket a day earlier.

We talked about the house, let’s wait until February.  This is my last year here in Buraimi, where I go next is unsure, Laxman could get me a business visa and I could wire him money every month to renovate the house.  He is reluctant I understand, I am like the wind and it is hard to nail down a breeze. 

Rain falls harder, the remains of a monsoon. 

10.11.14

I don’t mind the seven hour bus back to Pokhara.  Theroux’s ‘Blinding Light’ is engaging but geez he is unmerciful with the foreign tourist and they always end up bad in his books.

Omanis are closer to nature, naturally, therefore are more likely to make decisions using nature’s wits.  Can you teach logic in an ESL classroom?

Making choices, discerning puzzles and patterns, life really sucks when you have to flee your home.

Logic and memory work together with practice and in the room of knowledge who knows, reach one individual and you’ve done your job. 

I miss seeing women in western clothes.  The black monoliths suppress me totally though a pretty smile and twinkling eyes restores civility, albeit in brief. 

Let us trouble the heavens

9.28.14

My intentions aren’t to antagonize and if thoughts and ideas do that, it ought not to be necessary to apologize.  Ishmael got a bum rap and the Arab people have been behind the eight ball for their entire existence despite few intervals of achievement.  Are they to blame for being cut out of the Warrior God Yahweh’s covenant with Abraham and Isaac?  Do you sometimes wonder if the Genesis story was simply a case of one tribe having better scribes? 

A true source of divinity wouldn’t have made such a choice if the source knew the consequences would lead to thousands of years of dissent and war. 

One could almost see why the Arabs on the peninsula questioned the canonicity of the ‘book’ since the covenant and later Paul’s affirmation of the covenant left them high and dry, no pun intended, with paganism.  Seriously, where are the Arab people in the New Testament? 

And still you have to wonder if the true source of divinity saw its effects of choosing one tribe over another and gave humanity’s last revelation five centuries after Jesus to Mohammed because a cosmically colossal oops was committed.

God doesn’t make mistakes, dude, you’re losing it, yeah I’ve been saying it a long time, and found folks like Elie Wiesel who think the same.  Religion is flawed because of an error in transmission and therefore so is mankind.

So what do we do now?  Islam, Judaism, Christianity, they think they’ve cornered the truth.  Will Islam’s battles eventually pass and become tolerant of itself, like the Catholics and Protestants?  Christianity was lucky to finally connect with democracy via an enlightement, could the same be said of Islam in the Middle East? 

And what about violence as a means to any end?  The Sudanese woman who refused to renounce her faith, a draconian response to an individual’s right to choose her belief.  Islam wants to kill those who don’t believe the same as them?  What sura says that?  How can one verse be interpreted like this? Who wants to be told how to live and then be threatened with death if one doesn’t?  No God condones death.

And you have to wonder how the Spanish Inquisition would have played out on CNN and Youtube.

9.29.14

If I don’t get on this plane Thursday I would like to join the students in Hong Kong and protest the meddling of the Beijing bullies.  By not allowing the people to choose their own candidates to vote for, the commies demonstrate their complete lack of faith in the people.  Do you know what’s in my best interest, wanker Wu?  They’re reinterpreting the meaning of ‘universal suffrage’ and they blow smoke blaming foreign influences and the protesters for not following the rule of law.  Well if you wrote the rule of law it’s time to rewrite it.

Syria’s foreign minister is going to speak at the UNGA.  People in complete denial are so hard to listen to.  Meanwhile why would I not be permitted on this Thursday flight?  I booked the flight on line and a bank withdrawal from the airline hasn’t happened. The airline website has confirmed my flight, twice and that’s why I go.  Is there a sign here I need to understand?

The man speaks.   What is your priority?  We’ve stopped waiting for the international community to help us.  What?  Should they have taken your failed leader out?  Deflect your dysfunction with the extremists.  Oh yeah, ISIS is bad and makes you look cherubic.  Sure let’s stand as one now to fight the enemy.  Come on admit you’re the cancer here.  Please let us cut it out. 

It’s hard to believe anything this man says.  Who’s supporting ISIS?  Name names, not naming Saudi or Iran (?) belies what’s left of your government’s integrity.  He doesn’t see anything wrong with his country’s murderous methods.  Come on, five million of your own have left the nation.  Come on, reiterate this, clown, request airstrikes on your capital, it can’t be worse if a new government rises from the ancient rubble. 

The Free Syrian Army is managed by its Western masters.  What do the masters want in Syria?  Something more than peace, perhaps?  Am I just a little too naïve here?  You should not be allowed to use the word terrorism, stop saying it.  You guys wrote the biggest chapter in the book, thank God Lebanon kicked you out.  The will of the Syrians aren’t in your country anymore, dope.  The will of Syrians did not vote for Assad again, fraud, you don’t speak for the Syrian people.  Who is this guy, is there anyone in that assembly, wait, I see a lot of empty chairs, is there anyone who is taking this seriously? 

Sharia for Belguim, thousands of Moroccans fighting in Syria.  Well, do I have to say it again,a new interpretation of an ancient revelation must be the beginning point to change.  It doesn’t have anything to do with democracy.  So why would any moderate refuse to look at reinterpreting sharia for a 21^st century civilization?  It’s the spirit of the law, shabob, not the letter of the law.

Forty years after John Nash discovered his original thought he was awarded the Pulitzer for it.  In his acceptance speech he found the logic in the mysterious equations of love.  If I ever find my original thought there won’t be any love in the equation.

Iran is a greater threat than ISIS?  An indivisible militant Islam spreads and more will eventually accept it. Netanyahu may have a point there, the legitimacy of a government in the Middle East is established when one demonstrates strength instead of common sense, and when strength weakens loyalty fizzles. Why?  Because Muslims aren’t taught, nor encouraged, to question authority in the mosques and yagotta wonder sometimes they act like Catholics a thousand years ago. 

Seriously, where’s your Luther?  Hamas is a threat to Israel, ISIS is a threat to everyone, Iran is the worst of them all.  Israel are you stretching a general truth?  C’mon, if Iran has a nuclear weapon do you really think they’d launch it at your cities before you obliterated their millions?  Shanti Shanti.

Success is showing up at the right time.

9.30.14

Beijing the evil empire.  There is no genuine election when it’s rigged.  Shameless atheists, here it is put an atheist in power and you got Beijing. 

For a month I planned this trip and in five minutes it went poof.  I feel bad I wasted so much time looking at how I was going to spend nine days as a pilgrim and a tourist.  What happened?

I thought I could skip a day of work and today my boss asked me to be at the new teacher orientation Thursday morning.  My flight was Thursday morning.  I don’t know what it is, my conscience, skipping out felt wrong when I booked the ticket thirty days ago, I worried about doing it yet I told myself it was alright, shoot, I’m surrounded by people who don’t even show up or do for ten minutes and then leave.  Why can’t I go a day earlier.  Flights on Friday to this island in the Indian Ocean cost $250 more and yet, while I could afford to pony up I am not sure of this uneasiness.  What to do.  What?  Return to Sarangkot?  Oy vey.

10.1.14

Let us trouble the heavens. 

Faith hope and love and the greatest of these, you know, is love.  And how much of a stretch do I need to connect love with the horrors of war and disease?  You can’t, they’re opposites.  You need faith and hope to end evil so that love will emerge.  Perfect love casts out all fear and everything else tagging along. 

Cheeky bastards the Beijing bullies are.  Universal Suffrage doesn’t include the right to nominate candidates and that’s all Hong Kong wants. It is a reasonable request.  Why are the bullies so hungry for power?  Blocking coverage in the mainland, leaving your people ignorant for fear of revolt.  There wouldn’t be a revolt if you were open and honest.  Never never trust an atheist communist and never trust the Chinese who says he’s Buddhist and looks to the jolly fellow only for good luck.