begging questions

11.29.14

Most of the tenants must still be on holiday because I’ve had a strong internet connection all afternoon and listening to the Beatles on youtube this evening is a surprise and delight and it is strange because I almost went to Omantel to get a private line into the grotto before I dropped the creaky car off this morning but the almost empty of petrol light came on and I had no intentions of putting a plug nickel into this thing so there it is.

So from the living room I see the Lions won two days ago, I posted on the blog and uploaded photos into earlier blogs because the pc at the office doesn’t let me, posted photos of the beach on that social media site and watched Daily Show clips all afternoon.  I started feeling guilty while the unfinished McEwan novel and Times newspaper looked kind of lonely, I gave up reading for a day tangled in a world web.  Well, I’m waiting for the minute my neighbors return and I’ll be off the grid again.

This coming Thursday students take their mid-term exams.  The first seven weeks haven’t gone as fast as most would like, just wait until March comes we say, 15 weeks of no breaks and temps rise in all matters is a killer. 

Oh, I lost the Beatles, let’s try Brahms, can you name any of his compositions, I cannot.  Can you identify one of his, let’s listen. 

India has now introduced the tourist visa on line, but the restrictions are kind of lame:  I cannot visit for longer than a month at a time and only a month after that each year.  Sure I’ve never stayed for longer than a month but five years ago a multiple entry visa good for six months let me fly as much as I wanted to Delhi and Mumbai which was as far as I could go on five day holidays. 

Ah, at 6:11 I know this ‘tune’ but there is no title noted, very nice.  Imagine today’s youth listening to this instead of the Biebers boobs and Iggy Azeala whatever the Australian’s name is.  You can’t even compare the two and yet youth must have listened to him, right, because no one had a choice?  Was it called classical music then?  I mean there was nothing else, perhaps folk music with tin flutes and tiny drums.  And we didn’t call rock n roll 'classic' in the seventies, it was just rock and roll, I suppose Brahms was called whatever it was performed as, as chamber music, symphony sonatas I don’t know.

After thirty minutes of Brahms now it's Chopin.  Surely I’ll recognize something here.  Seventeen million hits, I’ll wager mostly from Western middle aged white people.  On Dateline London, Gaven Hester hosted today’s panel of journalists on the subject of racism in America and class in England.  I feel fortunate I didn’t grow up in a racist environment.  My home and education until I graduated from high school were free of the anger and resentment seen just about everywhere today.  The Arab journalist said President Obama must be, according to the US media, the most disrespected president ever and never again would Americans vote for a man of color to the highest office.  Everywhere else in the world the President is held with the highest esteem, how strange Americans are.  The previous president did far worse and is partially, not wholly, responsible for what is happening in the Middle East today.  Obama has done nothing to betray his country and has managed to pull our troops out of two countries at war by the end of this year.

Perhaps I’m reaching here but can you think of another man who tried to make peace for all people and was crucified because he didn’t deliver to the people what the people wanted.  I know I was out of my mind with this reincarnation slash messiah thing and I don’t look for the day he finishes his term because I know I’m gonna be around for a while unless Nyima’s spirit got it wrong and who am I to challenge a medium.  Then again….

I still believe a spirit knows the future only as far as the end of my nose, that being a half second.  Nyima’s spirit said I’d need another puja when I was 80.  It does beg the questions.