how to deal with stress

The headache came yesterday and it still persists.  I haven’t helped the cause either.  Last night I slept terribly, thinking too much about this morning’s car inspection which turned out to be too easy, and what a waste of worry.  Classes were cancelled as well today, a march to welcome the king back to the country did that.  I went to the office after the easy inspection and the place was empty.  I returned to the grotto and have been in bed most of the day.  The headache disappeared after my last nap but has returned and it's in the same place, the left temple and behind the eye.  I’ve resisted advil but I may give in and take some before crashing again.

A sickly new pigeon stoops on the terrace, its parents groom each other next to it.  I open the screen door and the parents flitter away leaving the sick thing alone.  Ten minutes later they return.  Do pigeons have emotions?  Are they grieving for their little production?  The ragged bird will most likely die, there are no pigeon clinics around here.  And the parents will have a go at it again to produce a healthy crapper.  I guess the parent’s presence may indicate some small measure of compassion, or it might be an instinctual thing, an obligation to protect.  Can you have obligation without love and compassion?  Ya you can.

3.31.15

A starbucks double espresso and out comes a teaching philosophy, BAM, and  a cover letter, BAM, and along with the cv, out it goes.  Where you ask?  Ya know I can’t say it here, I jinx myself every time, I know it.  So, I won’t.  Is it probable you’d be hired there?  I know the guy who I sent this too.  Did we have a good relationship?  I think it was mutually good.

Anyways, I was advised to submit my letter of resignation a few days earlier than the 12^th.  Fine.  I should do it now, what is going to persuade me to stay here any longer?  A woman?  ha ha hoo hoo.

I was looking through my curriculum files and found this listening exercise I made when I taught summer school in the Emirates in 2007.  Key words were missing and the students had to write the words in the spaces provided.  I read each sentence twice.  Some of the sentences I read made me smile, I don't know if the students found the humor in them, most unlikely. 

1. Angie demonstrated a culinary skill not seen around here since Julia Child left the building.

2.  If you stay up too late drinking coffee and red bull you may encounter a fuzzy state of mind.

3.  The officer said go straight ahead and I did and drove right into the corn field. 

5.  Dorothy, the best way to deal with stress is breathe deep, close your eyes, tap your toes and repeat there’s no place like home three times. 

6. Tony, I’m not sure organized crime is the best way to subsidize my income. 

10.  The crescent moon is a symbol with many meanings to many people.

11.  If the system breaks down again, go have lunch and we’ll call you.

13.  On many occasions but especially during the long days I tend to drink too much coffee.

14.  Read the text one more time and you may be dismissed.

16.  The topic of their conversation in twenty minutes ranged from nuclear war to how to braise a duck.  

17.  How do you know the difference between a tourist and someone who lives here? 

20.  I hope we all have the chance to take a nice long trip somewhere this summer. 

21.  Fashion trends among the teachers tend to be unique but not urbane.  Ok, sometimes they are.

22.  I was raised in an urban environment and always long for the rural. 

24.  The Red Crescent Society is always looking for a willing volunteer.  Are you busy?

25.  Let us remember that waste which doesn’t make haste is never a good thing.   

Evening movies are so badly edited here I wanna throw the tv out the window.  Last week they showed The Deer Hunter, one my favorites and I was so excited I got real comfortable on my lumpy sofa and I swear there was a wedding scene in this picture.  They cut the whole thing out including the celebration afterwards.  I was afraid to know what else they’d butchered so I turned it off in disgust. 

And then yesterday they had The Thin Red Line on, oh my another one of my favorites and a long one if I remember correctly.  But wasn’t there a whole scene when Jim Caviezel was in this village on the coast?  Not tonight, it was over in two hours and that included awful commercials.  Turn it off.  They have maliciously and for no good reason cut out scenes in Empire of the Sun (remember the Gone with the Wind poster in the town square?  Cut down like a sausage hanging in a German deli)  but the worst editing is Moulin Rouge and the first big dance scene.  It’s edited so badly you’re not even listening to a song, the nutty editors cut scenes every five seconds and then pasted them together.  It sounds like, like, it has been heavily edited.  Terrible, they shouldn’t even put the movie on because they did this to the rest of the movie.  Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so obvious if it weren’t a musical.

Tonight though while I prep for tomorrow The curious case of Benjamin Button is on and I don’t think they’ve edited anything.  Thank goodness.

palms up sunday

The Filipinos sat all around me making crosses with the palms they had been given.  A woman to my left saw me admiring her handiwork and motioned to me asking if I wanted my palm transfigured, no, thank you.  Such are the island people on Palm Sunday at St. Mary’s church this evening.  Playful, devoted and quick to make the cross. 

I hadn’t planned to cross the border for Mass but a colleague kind of left me feeling obligated, my excuses for not going the last few Fridays were quite lame and I remembered this day of my youth and was glad I went.  The reading of Mark’s account of Jesus and his last meal with his beloved followers until the moment he is taken down and placed in the cave is still moving.

Temperatures are going up tomorrow into the triple digits.  Welcome to the fourth season.  Today’s unruly students said there are two seasons in Al Buraimi.  I said there were four and this one is called ‘really really really hot.’  And I noticed unfortunately the temps while I ran around between classes and afterwards to get my new auto insurance which for a year cost me $250.  A headache behind the eye grew as I waited in the bank where I bought the insurance and it grew.  It didn’t help at all that the students were in an unwilling to learn frame of thinking.  And even now, close to nine pm, it lingers.

So tomorrow I will take the 13 year old car with its occasionally squeaky brakes to have it inspected at the main police station at seven in the morning.  If all goes well and they overlook the driver’s window that doesn’t go down completely, or the right side mirror that doesn’t move very much, I’ll get the new registration and return to the office.  A colleague will take my classes.  Om mani padme hom, Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

The end of the month, rising thermometers, it’s all according to plan.  It is hard to see global warming having an effect here.  If things got really hot, like 150, that would be downright scary.  I wonder how the a/c’s would cope with that.  Let’s hope that never happens because a lot of people would die and the first to go would be the laborers. 

Well, when Bach becomes a woman yodeling opera it’s time to turn it off and listen to Michael Card.  So, is that all tonight?  I’m not exactly ready tomorrow but it will be a half day of sorts.  I have all kinds of prep to do I just can’t afford to get headaches, drink water, drink lots of it even if it means loo stops every hour. 

na-strove-ea

Is there any sound more comforting than Bach’s air on the g string after two hours of shopping for  food in another country. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT-1BB3y94E

I must confess going to Mass was a toss up to the very end.  It isn’t Palm Friday ya know, maybe I should go this Sunday.  Is attending Mass on Fridays instead of the eighth day having an influence in not going the last two mornings?  What was the final decision you had to make before you knew what direction you’d go?  If I could wear shorts in mass I would have gone.  That is ridiculous. 

I took the car to a car wash and they cleaned it well inside and out.  Before I left the country I noticed a softball size single bird shit covered the entire left front light.  Yesterday a new pigeon had fallen before it had its wings and I gently walked around it, showing respect to its parents who sat above wondering the babe’s unfortunate predicament.  Now you’d think that kind of respect would be returned.  Not a chance.

Two days off to rest, albeit rest with planning for the next week of classes.  I have a few students who are good enough to keep me honest and that motivates me to be ready.  Grammar.  I explained to an Indian colleague Americans don’t learn grammar the way a non-native speaker learns it, it’s basically embedded, implied, in the reading and writing of elementary school.  I could read Upton Sinclair before I ever knew what the hell a past perfect was.  And a demonstrative pronoun?  That’s a pronoun with an attitude?  I didn’t know. 

A war in Yemen threatens the gulf states, so says the hungry media circus, but the locals don’t seem too bothered and as long as they are not bothered I won’t be bothered but I am changing my money now more frequently.

  The spread of Ibadism in Oman essentially represents the triumph of theology over tribal feudalism and conflict.^[8]  Ibadis have been referred to^{[by whom?]} as tolerant puritans or as political quietists due to their preference to solve differences through dignity and reason rather than with confrontation,^[3][10

The mosque parking lot fills, streams of men walk for Friday’s midday homily.  What will the Iman say today, surely he will remind the Moslems who are not locals of the Ibadi tradition that solving differences through dignity and reason is Godly.  How can you find fault with this logic, you can’t. 

I wrote up an ‘alternative’ resume yesterday and the only thing I’d need to change every time I sent it to prospective employers is the objective, but can’t I just say, “because I need money.”  Are employers looking for loyalty among the new aarp folks, I don’t know.  I’d be loyal if I were happy doing whatever it is I’d be doing.  I read some alternative careers  to teaching is in corporate training, yeah right, I’ve never owned a gray suit and don’t intend to, but if they paid me well, would I jump through their monkey hoops, perhaps long enough to save and go elsewhere.  What in God’s name do you want to do, I know what I’d like to do, if it’s feasible at all, I don’t know.

9:24pm

How is Islam taught and passed on to each generation here?  Does the 19 year old female Omani know the difference between Ibadi and Sunni?  Offer an alternative to the Saudis and Iranians, the Sunnis and the Shias.  Will either of them ever see the misfortune of their dogmatism? 

Three Anchor beers is enough, thank you very much mister hotel.  The only place in this god forsaken litter box with beer.  The big decision today, should I walk the 20 minutes to get there or drive, omigod, you’re gonna have a few beers and then drive.  Easy, honey.

I made it home, a mere 2km drive is safe and it’s well lit.  So, anything else you want to get off your chest before calling it a day? Nah, all minor stuff, why share it here.  Tomorrow I’ve got to prepare for Sunday classes.  And I’ll iron.  And I’ll continue with ‘No Ordinary Time’ which at times has been truly wonderful.  I didn’t know Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease helped the Russians THAT much, extraordinary.  I need to remind the next Kremlinite I run into how much we helped their country defeat the Nazis.  

distinguishing spirits

 The king returned to his country last night and the jubilation goes up and down main street, thank goodness the rattling air conditioner drowns out the excitement.

So what does this mean, we all wish him well.  He has been a good man doing the best that he can to keep his people together and let me tell ya, with all the nutcases right outside its dusty borders this country still feels as safe as any place I’ve ever lived.  Amen.

Two more days, we are dragging.  I finished the required work and now I’m making stuff up.  I’m mostly ready for tomorrow, but what about Thursday, man, this is definitely one of those days I’d like to show a movie if I had an overhead projector. 

The non-coincidental woman on the mountain has been proclaimed a princess again on social media and according to one, is in need of a prince, indeed, one who is completely nuts and twenty five years younger.  I’m so glad I am past this terribly misjudged time in life.  What good came from it, I killed desire I suppose that is good, it keeps me home a lot more and I am saving money. 

This weekend there is a lot of test making, upon request, and I need to whack out cover letters, teaching yawn philosophes, here it is in the shell, “teaching English, it depends.”    I know it’s easier to remain in the defaulted profession than the courageous and insane leap into fields I may have no business being in in the first place.  A part time job, attend classes, and line up at soup kitchens for one to two years.  ha

I applied for another school yesterday and I think it could be helpful to continue doing so. 

3.25.15

Every night this week I’ve used the a/c in the bedroom I’ve woken up in the middle of night to turn it off to return to a fitful sleep until daybreak.  Today I returned to the grotto eager for a mid day siesta and as I lay down, the fan whirring above I cracked open the good book to I Corinthians 12.  Paul’s guide to the gifts of the spirit and then I read verse 10:

            “…to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish spirits…”

If I go online and read anyone else’s opinion on who in the church today has the ability to distinguish spirits and to what end would the church employ such gifted individuals, I’d be reading only that, opinion.  And the other opinions would say some gifts are no longer necessary, like prophecy, it was all for the baby believers, the new church, and they needn’t apply to us today. 

So many opinions, the Corinthians may have known what the Anatolian was talking about, perhaps not, who like Peter and John scratched their beards and said, sure we know them spirits, the bad ones, the good ones, all around us, fighting each other for our souls. 

I saw the battles at the homeless shelters.  The mentally ill, the drug addicts, their souls lay bare and the legions moved in.  Sometimes the words out of the crazies could only have come from spirits who knew my spirit, these fellas always freaked me out, but I see and I understood.  Lower the inhibitory circuits with abuse and ill intention and the house fills with the mostly bad.  Chico was such a case, from out of his horrific past and heavy drug use a legion of dead Jews including Abbie Hoffman poured out of his head when Job called them out. 

Was Chico any better after that?  Probably not for the spirits moved right back in.

Do I have this gift, if so what is the purpose of the gift other than to edify the church and frankly I haven’t done much of that, but how would someone today use this gift for the glory and honor of God?  Well, one way is to recognize that the concept of God is bigger than any language man has used to define the unknowable and for this reason as a Catholic I have to accept understandings of divinity not found in my own faith.  With my spiritual run-ins I cannot deny the plausibility of reincarnation and its connection with energy. 

Catholicism and Buddhism only contradict each other if you compare them, so my advice is don’t!  Each stands alone on its own merits and was never meant to be compared.  Blame mankind and its never ending thirst for competition. 

So do I need to have this gift verified somehow?  Ya know, like an American, have myself tested and licensed, ha no bloody way.  It is what it is.  If you can distinguish spirits and you’re only learning this now, how am I supposed to live differently?

Maybe  I should update my resume:

“I have been an ESL teacher for 18 years and have the ability to distinguish spirits.”