she shoved me

I went to and returned from Dubai with no automotive troubles, the old car is amazing, but I picked up a scratchy throat, a few too many cigarettes in the car perhaps, but also four hours of sleep is contributing to a ‘ya, I’m not going out tonight’ feeling.

The bookshop had three of the titles on my list but I didn’t buy any of them.  I bought another map of Oman and a New Yorker.  I returned to Al-Ain for a Hardees frisco burger and then stocked up at Lulus which, according to a stockboy, ran out of Chobani yogurt two days after it came in.  Next shipment?  I don’t know.  Can you tell your manager to double the order?  Ok, sir, but I don’t know.

I don’t know. 

When hair feels heavy it’s time to cut it off.  It has been two and a half months, it’s good to feel it fall aside, sometimes I wonder how the head’d look bald, I can’t wonder anymore than just wonder.  So, it’s almost time to sleep again, a few photo postings on facebook, do you do that other than to seek acknowledgement, well, if someone likes it and they don’t say anything then I have done what God wants me to do, right?  I do not post for adulation.  I know the photos, most of the time, are ok, not world class, I don’t have that kind of camera.  If someone likes a photo does that make a person feel better about himself, the world, in life in general?  Well, how do you feel?  I feel if someone likes a photo then I’ve done what I intended to do. 

Before I took off this morning I walked out to the all-night coffee shop and took a few photos once the streetlights went off, which is usually around six am and it is still dark.  When I returned to the building I took some photos of the entrance.  The images on the LCD look very cool, this camera takes amazing images in low light, however, what I see on LCD isn’t always what I see on this laptop.

I had a couple of Indian-Scotch whiskeys with Dr. Pepper and I need to lay down, an early start, off to work on the weekend, whoa yay.  Sunday I’ll go in after mass and breakfast at McD’s.  Is that alright?

1.31.15

The end of the month, it went fast, didn’t it, that’s good.  February will go fast and I’m happy for that.  A meaningless reminder I am older, a consumer made holiday is absurd will go quickly, a brief yet appreciated holiday will fly by and then it’s March.  Anything good to look forward to, St. Pats, if I were somewhere else. 

Clothes are being washed, there’s a lot of clutter in the grotto, can I finish Pynchon today, I’d like to read two books a month, a reasonable goal, yesterday at the bookstore I was very tempted to buy very large books.  Does a 1000 page history book count as two?  

Two turkey pastrami pitas and I have to lay down and within twenty minutes between the awake and sleep, the rare moments I have when I know I am in that brief dream-state,  I am traveling in an airplane and all of a sudden I get a shove on the shoulders from behind, my eyes open, mom.  Was I actually shoved or was it a muscle twitch that coincided with an imaginary mother telling me to wake up, this is just a nap. 

9:45pm

I came out of the booth with a new haircut and there was Peter, in for his annual head shaving.  I wondered if I'd ever see the man I practically kept in business when he ran his antique and jewelry shops in Al-Ain.  Now he is general manager of the new hotel 25km out of town on the road to Sohar.  “lost our liquor license, business in the hotel has completely dried up, no pun intended.”  I said I’d pay a visit in a few month’s time and I’d bring me own.  No worries, we got a cellar full of it. 

We walked over to the tea shop and shared shwarmas, samosas, and tea while he regaled me with his experiences in Oman going back to 1969.   Perhaps the most interesting information aside from the largest British invasion in Oman since 1945, which consisted of six Marines in Duqm, pegged to be the next Hong Kong, or going stir crazy after six months in Salalah’s mountains, was the country’s plan to build light rail from Buraimi to Sohar, to Muscat and all the way down to Duqm, in the next four years.   Six international companies are in on this audacious construction and with it will come the infrastructure which will completely change Buraimi.  Is this something worth hanging around for I don’t know.  Next September the new campus opens and I told Peter I’d like to return to Salalah, to the mountains I didn’t see much of, to the oceans I didn’t swim in enough.  But we’ll see, I said.  I am tired of job hopping and a border pass is like my escape from this place that we agreed hasn’t really changed at all in 21 years.  “It hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years.”  Light rail may just change all that. 

don't know nothing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJS98i7Ci8Q

This is nice music to listen to when you have much to consider.  We submitted our grades today, fifteen of my remaining twenty students passed.  For the next two weeks there are a few more exams I’ll invigilate, there’s some paperwork to be done, perhaps even a little preparation for next semester would be prudent.  Or I could take Bleeding Edge to the office and finish it. 

I picked up my border pass this morning, another three months to enter the Emirates, so this Friday it’s Dubai for a few things. 

And what else have you been considering?  I am terribly overweight and burning indigestion ought to motivate me to exercise, do something you louse before it’s hot again and you can’t do anything. 

This past week chats of the written variety with old acquaintances put me in contemplative moods.  What good is it to look back, to remember what was good, to not repeat what was bad.  I know my future, I told her, I will die alone and be buried next to my mother and father.  Saying that used to bother me, such absurd self-pity but ten years on it’s still true and for what it is, it is what it is and strangely, it is ok to accept the fate.  When I divorced, my father changed his will, requested to be cremated and added my name into the will so that there would be space for me in the ground next to them in the Southfield cemetery.  I have never seen this will but I was told, I can’t remember by my mother or my oldest sister.  My father must have known something, his instincts, his spirit told him I would never marry again and I would live alone, as I have for the past 17 years.  I resisted this inevitability, fought with God, pleaded with the heavens to change this ultimatum but now I have tired and I accept.  Whatever, God.  Whatever the hell you want, I can’t change the future if the future has already been decided.  And that is especially true in relationships. 

I proctored a math class today and this young woman, lord o lord, if there were a reason to go to prison, my goodness.  Her eyes, sparkling golden brown, creamy coffee skin, freckles dot her cheeks, but I have too much common sense to do anything that would inevitably be worse for her.  Throw me in prison, fine, and what happens to her would be far worse than anything done to me.  Mind you, there is no lust in observing such beauty, it’s admiration, it’s wonder, there’s no desire here, there’s a child with a gift of extraordinary loveliness and I look at her and wonder.  That’s all, I wonder. 

 

1.29.15

How many men out there skip a shower now and then?  How many men sleep in the clothes they wear to work?  It is a fortunate to have that freedom once in a while, right?  When it’s cold enough clothes don’t stink up, when I only have to show up at the office and someone is eating canned tuna I am not noticed. 

I think about the summer, assume now I will stay here another year, going to the job fair in March doesn’t appeal at all though I still look online though not aggressively.  A border pass is appeasing, having a car settles my restless tendencies, ironically.  My deadline to decide is three months away and anything can happen but I know without effort I won’t be going nowhere.  Is that a double Detroit negative?   I don’t know nothing. 

If my car doesn’t give me troubles on the road to Dubai I have a list of books to look for, one that could accompany me to the tear drop island in two weeks.  Here is the list:

All the light we cannot see

The Romanov Sisters

Rainbow Rowell

Something other than God…

The Empathy Exams

Beethoven

Lila

Dept. of Speculation

Euphoria

I still have the dbl Economist issue which would be enough for eight days on the beach, mountains and gardens, and certainly it is light enough since I’ll only have a day pack, but I’d like something really engaging.  I don’t know nothing. 

This Saturday I must go in to invigilate an optometry exam.  I am afraid I will forget.  And why are you afraid of your car breaking down?  Well, it’s 13 years old, sometimes it makes noises.  Lord o Lord.   

300

The day closes.  I am not embarrassed to admit Coldplay’s latest work is growing on me.  I know people think Ghost Stories tell the tales of loss, but music is layered with multiple meanings and the themes going back to Viva La Vida play that same chord, a chorus that begins and ends here is cherubic.  I wonder if they even know they struck the dimensional waters again with resonating  ripples unheard by noisy souls. 

Well, a can of Hormel chili and two pieces of buttered pita didn’t stick around too long.  It is always disappointing when canned food puts me on the can.  There is a reason I never never eat fish in a can.  

1.25.15

I had a sore throat which woke me up last night and throughout the day I felt nauseous, blame it on Hormel, ok, then I went to the school canteen feeling icky and not knowing what to order because I wasn’t really hungry I walked out and stopped at the tea kiosk which is closer to the E building and my office on the ground floor and I bought two croissants with a hot dog meat product inside it, two tiny bags of bbq flavoured chips and a vitamene C drink and graded 20 final exams.  When I finally reached the grotto I should have taken a nap but I made a coffee and did my stomach hurt.  A cigarette was not a good idea and the pain increased so I sat and did nothing.  I caught the headline news,  that was enough.  My four English channels have been preempted for three days and today a Saudi described the attacks on the world trade center buildings and I don’t need to understand all of what he was saying but Islam changed forever that September morning and it hasn’t gotten any better for its followers. 

I really thought this was the beginning of the end.  How foolish mankind is, how foolish I have been, with all its techno know how we still fall so cosmically short when we try to predict, even the spirits are clueless about events out of their reach, but yet we still hope, foolishly.

It is cold enough to get out the gray pashmina and wool socks.  A little morning raga this evening while I ponder future events.  I do not, I cannot wait for someone to offer me an opportunity to use the gift in a broader lens.  I have to create my own opportunities and oh do I ebb and flow with muted optimism on that wave. 

Tomorrow I invigilate two exams and hopefully between I will pick up my documents for the renewed border pass and I switched to a dusk raga

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhuzYxmaPlc

and there that’s better, no buffering with dusk ragas don’t ask me why, so I pick up the border pass documents and will drive to Hili border and submit everything and Lord willing I’ll get it by Thursday because I’d like to go to  Dubai and look for a daypack.  What I have used for the last four years is poorly designed, the pockets in the front are so deep everything gets lost inside them.  A proper daypack has more pockets, my present has only two, and I can distribute and access everything more easily with a bag that isn’t designed for carrying a laptop, which mine is. 

If I don’t get the border pass by then that’ll leave me with one week to find something before it’s off to the tear drop island.  I offered to pay half of Laxman’s ticket but he wants me to buy the ticket now and then he’ll compensate me when he arrives.  What I don’t like is that Kathmandu to Colombo is 800km closer than Dubai is to Colombo and yet the former distance is twice the airfare.  It is a less traveled route, I can only figure.  And I wish he were a woman.  I wouldn’t feel a bit hesitant if I were buying a ticket for a woman to join up with me and head for the beach on a train.  

And!  This is my 300th blog!  A little horn music please.  I'm glad to have stuck with this thing for what is now in it's fourth year.  I'll be horn swallowed.  

peace, mercy, moderation

I’ve been looking at maps, I’ve been looking at hotels I don’t know what I am going to do this weekend but there is some need to move, west, east, to the mountains, to the sea, to a city, my back hurts moving desks, prepping rooms for Sunday’s final exams, such labor, how I longed to embrace it in Nepal.  Now I’d like a massage.  Or a stiff drink, or a nap.  Indecisive in every part of life today.  I think laying down is the most attractive option right now. 

I went to the new tex-mex restaurant called Cowboy Grill and it may be a while before, or if, I return.  The quesadilla was a slippery mess though I ate it all.  Well, it’s an alternative if it survives.

So the Pope wishes to meet the Dalai Lama and everyone can predict the belligerent Beijing Bullies response.  Crying and whining reveal again their insecurities and it just makes them so stupid looking.  Beijing hasn’t had diplomatic relations with the Vatican since 1951, don’t mind the Dalai Lama left Tibet eight years later and hasn’t returned.  The Pope raises the risk that meeting the Dalai Lama would bring grief  to the faithful but they heard, didn’t they, on short wave radio when he flew over.  Be not afraid.

The Dalai Lama has in fact met Pope John Paul and Benedict, last in 2006. For the sake of the 12 million Catholics in China, half of whom are 'house Christians' that is those who recognize the Pope, it would be a nice reassurance. I know Beijing is waiting it out with the Dalai Lama, for when he passes away they will elect their own Dalai Lama though no one will recognize him. But here is the kicker: the Dalai Lama has said he doesn't believe there will be another Dalai Lama after him and says perhaps reincarnation will end! Even if people don't believe in reincarnation or scientific reincarnation which postulates through quantum mechanics that matter comes from consciousness, the Dalai Lama is hinting at something no one dares believe. And meeting with this Pope, who has said, most recently in his Christmas message, that suffering has gone on too long, well, the meeting of these two could be a most cosmic occurrence. Beijing has a lot to fear, mostly the fate of their souls. 

I think the key word here, unfortunately, is a modal.  I’ve waited anxiously many times after meetings with ‘key’ individuals hoping something would come out of it.  If these two were to meet what of it.  Wishful thinking, but I like Pope Francis getting in God’s face and saying there has been too much suffering.  If God won’t listen to Peter’s successor what chance do we have to see heaven on earth in 

our lifetime?  He’s got the gold phone to God.

1.23.15

The king of KSA dies and the Sultan declares three days of mourning, today, tomorrow and Sunday, but my employer says the show will go on, final exams will not be cancelled.  In one way I’m relieved because chaos will ensue if everything is pushed off schedule, on the other hand, many may not know that they will be expected to come in and chaos will emerge.  On the other other hand, the ailing Sultan decrees three days of mourning for the public and private sector and my employer disses a decree from the ruler.  It smacks of disrespect, but ya know, it’s none of my business, I’ll come in whenever or wherever.  I got paid this month.

I need to get out of this grotto. 

Yemen falls into a black hole, the Saudis mourn a ‘reformer’ and Oman sits quietly, only expats wonder if or when something disconcerting will happen here.  I don’t know, I don’t think about it, I don’t worry about it.  This afternoon I went out to the desert to photo a grove of trees alongside a ridge.  It’s so quiet out there.

Peace, mercy, and moderation.  In all things, moderation.  Amen!  I like King Salman.  What?  He suffers from dementia?  Moderation in everything.  When I was out there among the trees and mountains, I would have liked a joint.  Just one, in moderation.  I think my photos would have turned out better.    

shot of yorkshire pudding please

Two days of rain, my goodness, drinking rum to stay warm, but it’s too early, what have you eaten today, not much, soon I’ll make some salmon wraps and perhaps I’ll have another dr. pepper and rum, Lord have mercy what is going on. 

Acha, tired of listening to the negative, it’s got me spewing what I don’t want to spew.  Good thing about chatting with someone far away, just cut it off, listen to melancholy, wait for darkness, and think of something good to say.

I have not slept well for the last two nights, thinking too much one night, congestion the other.  I went into work today wearing the raincoat and at my desk with the window behind me open I wrapped myself in a shawl because when someone opened the door in the cool breeze came right on my neck and that’s why I left early yesterday.  I felt feverish and so I returned to the grotto but threatening skies tempted me so I took some advil and a zantac and left with the camera, driving around the neighborhood, looking for reflections and I wound up on the road towards the hanging gardens I visited 22 years ago but still can’t locate it nor can anyone else around here, strange, but I continued to drive, turned left and followed the ‘wadi sharm’ sign, 11 km and I found the village and I know next to the village is the wadi but I didn’t drive to the village so I turned around and headed back and checked out the village of Madha with its pink mosque and the skies threatened so I headed back again and returned to the grotto just as the heavens opened up.  Amazing timing I have to say!  Was it just luck or did someone, something know when the big rain would begin?  Anyways, I think I got one or two nice pics. 

In 1990 I asked a university representative for the definition of human rights in China:  Chinese people have the right to exist.  Seventy years under communism-atheism-the state is always right and you will grow up not respecting a tree, or a stream, or birds in the air.  Survival is the primordial response for people without souls.  Brainwashing, surveillance, distrust, paranoia, the garlic in life’s kitchen says Pynchon, torture, murder, poverty, starvation.  Pay the neighbor to spy, you never develop understanding, mutual trust, companionship, security.  And one generation after another  produce zombies who eat their pets.   An interest in Buddhism is growing you say, sure, the fat jolly fella who will grant you riches and good luck, that’s all he’s good for.  Why not, we have suffered enough, it’s good to recognize your suffering, because it comes from Beijing, right?  But Buddha isn’t a shortcut to happiness and wealth, understanding your desire will never bring you contentment is the first step. 

It’s too early to sleep but another rum and coke is doing me in quickly.  So, under the influence would you like to discuss inhibitory circuits.  No.  Anymore on China?  No.  Though I hope this old friend who is in my thoughts is well and hasn’t gotten large knocking back shots of Yorkshire pudding in Liverpool. 

This week I try to reach the office by 7:30am and I’m one for three so far, two days to improve the average, but after 15 weeks of evening teaching it ain’t easy.  Even though I am getting up relatively the same time then as now, the casual, relaxing morning is gone when I have to eat and shower and dress before the sun rises.  I woke up to heavy rain at 6:30am and wondered if the ‘campus’ would be under water and if anyone would show up but I didn’t hesitate to make it there by eight and everyone was in, even students who don’t know what to do with themselves.  A few of mine came by and I asked if they wanted a lesson, a review of what was on the final and a big no thanks from happy smiling girls was it.  They hit this ceiling, and perhaps a smidgeon of confidence is all they’ll need.  I pushed them to understand and trust their instincts, in Arabic ‘ba-dey-Hah’, if you study well the first answer that comes to mind is usually the correct one.  So, there it is.

Tomorrow I will go to Hili and try and renew my border pass.  I don’t have a copy of my diploma with an embassy stamp on it because a colleague said it wasn’t necessary for renewal but I know these folks and they treat everyone differently, based on their amount of sleep the night before, and the color of my skin and passport, I hope what I have will be ok, otherwise I’ll have to drive to the embassy in Muscat and I am not keen to do that at all.  We will see.