a utopian footstool

11.18.14

All night the absurd gunning of engines, pealing tires, backfiring exhaust, horns blazing robbed my sleep and earlier this afternoon three young boys on white horses whipped their flags and marched east on Sohar Road, a train of honking cars followed.  The university celebrated number 44 and one hooligan got a little excited and burned rubber inside the parking area, billows of blue smoke drifted into the main hall where we gathered for speeches and cake and dancing.  Classes were cancelled, said the Vice Chancellor’s email, because of everyone's powerful patriotic enthusiasm.  I wore an Omani flag pin.  A colleague told me to get a scarf or a hat.  Lady, the day they offer citizenship I’ll wear a hat. 

I wish it was 9:30 when it’s only 7:30.  

                                                       shalimar gardens, Kashmir

11.20.14

I sat in the barber’s chair for 45 minutes staring at the arc ‘UTOPIA’ insignia on the footstool.  What is utopian about a footstool?  When the Bangladeshi man with the gelatin handshake finishes he gives me a hair and scalp massage and there we are, utopia for 25 seconds. 

It’s impossible to watch the news and imagine utopia exists anywhere on earth.  Wealth, family, nature, it’s all impermanent and subjective.  I try to separate the good and bad and the effort never ends, one minute there is a contemplative moment of silence free of anxiety the next hour we suffer.  Any utopia on earth is temporal.  “Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Why is it God’s will to keep us waiting now that we know 24/7 people suffer and we can't do anything about it?   I’m sounding like the man with one talent again.  It’s a cruel world, and your inaction isn’t endearing.

Where were you ten years ago?  In Seattle.  Twenty years ago?  Ten minutes away from where I sit now.  In 1984 I lived in Sparks, Nevada.  I don’t know where I’ll be in ten years, I guess I’ll still be alive and heaven will still be somewhere else.

So I light candles to remember a crazy ancient spirit, I remember my father, he would have been 94 today and probably in a nursing home.  I don’t ever wanna find myself in a nursing home.  I light candles when I arrive at St. Mary’s for my mother.  I don’t doubt my parent’s place in heaven.  Life is a bitch, an unfair game we have to muddy through trying to do what is right, trying not to do what is wrong and then we’re dead!  That’s it, the body is buried or burned and the soul flits somewhere else, landing in heaven, in the middle, on the peripheral, in billions of live carcasses plodding along on our flaming planet, and some land among the fires. 

Of course heaven has its antonym, another relative whereabouts on the map.  Do you think on any given day the bulk of humanity experiences more hell than heaven on earth?

Before he died John Stott threw his theological dice into the pit of annihilation.  I don’t know if the worst of the worst of God’s creatures ought to get off that easily.  Execute the Hitlers and their spirits should remain in perpetual separation from anything remotely good.  Not even the shadow of a wilting yellow daisy should ever come near them but that darn idea of forgiveness nags like unattended hemorrhoids.  Wait a second, do you think God is ever going to forgive Satan? Is God even capable of forgiving Satan?  I think Buddhism makes a little more sense here. 

Tomorrow I’ll go to Dubai, the big mall basically, buy some books, eat something different, see what flicks are on, and return.  Next week we have a four day holiday so I hope to rent a car and go to Muscat for the day, perhaps to visit a place or two to photo.  I didn’t get too many likes on the last batch of FB photos.  I wonder if posting images manipulated by a mode are beneath my ability to produce a fine story.  I gave the pics to Salim, the young fella who was in three or four I posted.  He loved them and wanted to know how I did it.  I wanted to do something different with the same imaginings I’ve looked at for 14 years.  You gotta constantly see things differently to be relevant. 

11.21.14

On Friday Dubai’s Metro raises its gates for business at 1:00pm.  A gathering crowd waited forty minutes for the first train to slide in  and it was packed. A few came out, certainly not enough, like popped zits, the impatient crowd became a mob pushing and screaming and this was horrible so I left the building and caught a taxi to the bus station and returned to Al-Ain enjoying last week’s New Yorker and David Remnick explain why there will be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians.  I suppose I shouldn’t say enjoy there. There’s no chance there’ll ever be a two state solution because of the settlements.  A one state proposal is feasible but there are no guarantees Palestinians would be given equal status with the Jewish tribe nor will the Arabs ever give their allegiance to a tantric Hindu star. 

And social media has turned the Israelis into a pretty vicious bunch.  Everyone has an opinion now and consensus has become impossible.  Sound familiar?  Were Americans better off sixty years ago with less information?  Was faith meaningful before we heard everyone’s take on how to believe?  Could the church have reformed itself without the printing press?  We became empowered and we don’t when or how to stop thinking.  I think therefore I am, what?  In a relentless state of mental motion.

I spent two hours in the bookstore and I could have left with a dozen titles but chose three, one, a biography about Margaret Fuller who I never heard of, chosen instead of the large Woodrow Wilson bio I’ve wanted to read since it came out two years ago.  Well, I hope this woman’s story is good and there’s a reason I bought it.

9:08pm--The end of the day comes mercifully, a candle burns gently, I yearn for sleep.  At Al-Ain’s bus station I paid 150 dirhams ($40) for an unlicensed taxi to Dubai.  Saib the Afghan really wanted to be my driver for future journeys and I took his number.  Insha’allah, I don’t know when I’ll return, probably not this year.  Taliban no good, glad to hear that, and glad to hear you’ve had some kind of work since you came to this country 25 years ago.  Say, can I ask you something?  Saib speaks about 20 words of English.  I know your holy book says Jesus will return before the world ends, does anyone really believe that is going to happen in their lifetime?  Do you ever get the impression we’ve all been hoodwinked into believing in something that wasn’t supposed to go on this long?  What do you think, shabob?  Chia? Want chia?  Five minutes.  Let’s stop and share a drink.  Smoke?  Do you have any eschatological leanings?  Does Islam have a pre, mid, post and an a way of thinking about the yawning end?  Ok, let’s drink.