desert autumn

No, you can’t watch and read the news and not become depressed.  You need to live your life and think of all that is good on earth and most importantly, you have to put out of your mind all who suffer.  You have to forget them.

We have to forget.  Sounds pretty selfish and I don’t know how to handle this imbalance.  Ya do what you can when you can, meantime enjoy what is good and that requires forgetting. 

I like looking at my wardrobe because 95 percent of the clothes hanging haven’t been worn for… coming up, a month.  I like not washing.  My blue kameez though has taken on a lot of food and markers and just dirt collecting at the cuffs, but...nothing is smelling.    

Is Kandahar better now than it was ten years ago.  An astounding yes.  Unfortunately that astounding change isn’t felt among all and many still want to get out. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im_8kv2xGYk

the present and the future.  It looks like a long long term plan.  Unless they’ve shaken hands with them Chinese looking for those precious metals that no one knows about yet. 

8.31.15

Your jumping from job to job is as if you are constantly turning the wheel.  You don’t want the wheel to stop y…wait a second, I do want the wheel to stop and I do want to get off and settle down and have a yard with flowers and kids and a wife though that seems absurd, so does having a yard.  So, I don’t want to get off the wheel that I am spinning?

That begs another comment, what if I am not spinning the wheel but someone else is, my fate is not in my hands because everything that happens has already happened.  So just go with it and stop yer whinnying. 

I have to give a 90 minute seminar in a week’s time on resume writing.  What the hell, and it has to be a power point presentation, what the hell.  In a week’s time I also have to begin the writing component of the toefl, what the hell, and I still haven’t figured out how I am going to teach this bulky obnoxiously laid out skill that I’m sure is helpful.  When will I have time to read the last 130 pages of All the Light We Cannot See?  I’ll have to get up earlier.

It was the coolest of mornings, I turned off the fan around 3am and I rose from the mattress on the floor, put on some flannel and my old stained pea-green ultra lite fleece jacket/pullover/shirt, I don’t know what it is.  But it was nice to feel the beginning of a desert’s autumnal finest.    

8.25pm

Today’s lunch was a very local dish and I ate from the plate in front of me very carefully.  And as a result I am hungry and I got sugar free biscuits and a handful of the p. nuts left and a handful of cheerios and a box of juice.  and that’s it.  The kitchen is empty of all food.  Nevertheless I am thankful for all the meals I have enjoyed here.  I don’t ask how or who is buying it when they’re not making it but it’s greatly appreciated.  And if it weren’t for my painful left leg says no to yoga sitting concern, I’d perhaps eat more?  I don’t know. 

Going back to university is a daunting decision and I’m getting a few cold feet.  Serious reading, serious organizing, serious research on a topic I will have to take other classes to get to the classes I want to take.  Hebrew.  Oy vey.  I have no use of Hebrew but Greek.  That kind of terrifies me.  I think, I hope, if I make this leap it has to be one in faith.  The doubts have to disappear and stories on the random FB feed that is kind of telling me to go. 

 
Oh, right, it’s all algorithms, click on one interest story and they track you and send you more of the same interest stories increasing the chance there’s a story that might more likely say something about what you’re going to do.  And to note these are not coincidences. 

Biddy Biddy Bum

Door-de.  I was asking Hannuka for bread.  Remember that word next time because I don’t do good pantomiming for Pashto bread. 

I asked Fezel how to say ‘how much’ in the market and I repeated it twice three times and then it’s gone, I’ve completely forgotten it.  We walk down Main St the street lights are on thanks to a private benefactor and with every vegetable I ask for the local word; cucumber, onion, eggplant (banjan?) and tomato, (ro-me-ah)  or something like that.  and You ok?  Sen-gay and I’m ok, shaym or khaym depending what kind of Pashto you’re talking to. 

I get the impression sometimes that they expect me to learn Pashto.  They are under no obligation to learn English because a native speaker lives and works here.  Am I really obligated to make an effort?  Of course.  Learn a word a day.  Remember a word a day is more like it.

The end of the month approaches and it’s three weeks to a holiday.  I expect to learn in a day or two that my first salary has been deposited.  Then we’ll learn, shall we, how to send money.  For lunch warm bread, cut up vegetables, fresh, and two kinds of baked dal.  And a large glass of the yogurt drink.  How about a cup of coffee before you go to the barber in a few hours?

What are you doing when you Biddy Biddy Bum all day?

My afternoon class watched and listened to Tevya lament the joy of conditionals.  I told them to listen once and then I gave them a gap fill and no one completed it fast enough for me so I played it again and they wrote down the words they heard as they read along.

No, one of the words wasn’t synagogue. 

And rabbi?  problems that would cross a rabbi’s eyes? 

oh Solomon among the wise. 

I think Paul has been misinterpreted and misunderstood more than any other man in the Bible.  How would the Bible read if Paul’s 13 letters were found after Revelation?  No one will deny the Book of Revelation is the final book of the book indeed, so a new title, and a new introduction to "the commentaries and _______________of St. Paul, the thirteenth apostle and smartest guy on the block".  or something like that.    

How would it feel?  I don’t know but one could read the Book a little differently and with a lot less theology.

We’re gonna start our own denomination because it’s our inalienable right to do so.  Nothing so much theological, just the way we manage and interpret the gray areas that give us room to think the way God and Paul would find acceptable. 

 It is the big leap; the last chapter of the Book of Acts and then bam!! You’re at the end of the story on the Island of Patmos.  The Acts book is the bridge, which way does it need to go?  It needs to stay on the left, after John and before John, protected because it is the transition point from the beginning of the church to the end of the church.

“Every theologian, inspired by Augustine, should pray for the grace of a burning intellect that flames out of, and in service to, the mystery of divine love.”

There were two hours of city electricity this morning.  Two hours is better than no hours.  The problems with energy and who manages it are managed in the managerial department of whoever is in charge.  law enforcement is here but politicians, how does that work, I don’t need to know right now.  What do I know, it’s time for a cigarette. 

11.29.15

How much do I really need a university for to get this accomplished by October of ’17?  A serious expensive commitment would keep me on task.  I write all these crazy schematics and what happens to them after a while I go on to something else.  Studying from a computer is not what I want or need.

C’mon, you’re getting itchy.  I have to learn Greek or Hebrew or something else if I returned to university.  How the hell am I gonna learn another language when I am still working on my own.

And surely every important history I want to look at surely has been translated well enough to be trustworthy in English?  

In this evening’s toefl class the men went for their prayer break and I ran up to the roof to see the new moon.  I told an afternoon class it was called a super moon and explained why and I predicted it would rise around 6:38.  I missed it by 12 minutes.  I should have given them a writing assignment on describing the moon. 

I have some sharp students in the afternoon class, three in fact are not afraid to call me on grammar shit or worse they ask questions and I think they’re goading me on for some strange elliptical reason. 

There are six conditionals, sir what are they?

Six?  There aren’t six conditionals, there are…four, three…shit

a quick reference check thank god for an in class internet connection sometimes.  There are four, thank you from the front row for keeping me sharp. 

I think the sons of  former mujaheddin are getting more Fiddler songs this week.

ripping air

The afternoon call to prayer, no power today, the shadows resolve to what cannot be resolved is mercifully, resolved. 

Today toefl students learn a listening skill called pragmatic understanding.  A most favored word among leaders and greats in our world of constant fires. 

“PU questions ask about the more subtle understanding of spoken English”

You mean suprasegmentals?

http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/glossaryoflinguisticterms/WhatIsASuprasegmental.htm

yeah, sure, ok, “watch your tone you little shite”  it’s all about lengthening your vowels and nasalizing and aspiring  consonants and it is sarcasm and not scorn. 

“I insist you stop aspiring your u’s and nasalizing your o’s at me you little roach.”

In any case, my left leg did not let me get up very gracefully from a breakfast of bread with yesterday’s chicken.  You are very old johnukka.  Only one leg is old. 

A full moon in two days and today the afternoon wind kicks up.  I will be in class when it rises, I’ll have to make a demonstration and go up with my camera, just for five minutes.  A super moon is coming up tonight.  Let’s see it big. 

How do you aspire a vowel?  with the measured amount of air that comes from your lungs you produce a sound with shared meaning based on your unconscious decision to pitch and stress.

And what is inside your mouth may also have other effects of suprasegmentals, right?  If someone doesn’t have teeth to pronounce letters and words intelligibly, then the man or woman with no teeth uses other forms of behavior to communicate.  And that could produce comedy where the general tone of the engagement between the elderly woman and the Zambian model is so fun to watch ‘cause we’re ripping air… 

I am out of breakfast food I eat on waking up, juice, I need juice, cereal with cold milk has been well received and some biscuit cookie.  The Malaysian sugar free almond cookie used butter naturally sweetening.  I would like to find a morning sweet loaf of something to go with peanut butter and apple jam which survives fluctuating fridge abuse.

1:30pm

the hottest part of the day.  I should go make a cup of green tea, something, a cigarette, this is the time lunch is normally served but it is quiet, a big meal this morning, a big meal last night,  meat in every meal. 

Wait, I have pistachios. 

Carrying a cup of green tea upon return to the room and power of some kind has also returned.  Now I can take a nap.  After a cigarette and further review. 

8:38pm

They turned on the fluorescent purple lights on the big mushroom fountain and it was a nice sight to see and bring out the camera. 

By seven pm the moon is right above me.  I don’t understand this dude’s trajectories. And the date for the moon rising above the horizon on Saturday I thought I knew I need to keep looking. 

8.28.15

I’m waiting for the cue to begin making an omelet.  It shouldn’t be too hard to make one of these, right?  It’s all about flipping the properly cooked eggs half way.  And if the omelet is for six?

Here one eats a kind of egg dish in the morning and uses bread to pinch a piece of the egg dish.  I have no bread.  I am going to blindly play dumb here and assume / hope someone arrives with bread. Or I'll go ask someone to get some.

It is essential to get eight hours of sleep once in a while. The solar buzzed all night and the room was comfortable.  I wonder how much of a difference it would be if I didn’t bring the silk liner. 

What is the plan today, Friday, a teacher’s job is never finished.  I need a bigger desk to lay out four classes of papers and books.  Keeping organized on a four by four foot desk requires a lot of time consuming shuffling and looking. 

I left with 40 thousand in June, stopped in Nepal and returned to the states in October with 12 thousand and by April I stood in line at the St Vincent De Paul soup kitchen in glorious San Diego.  

What was your question again?

at some point

Clouds.  They cross the morning sun for the first time in three weeks. 

Students have to take notes in the listening component and everything has to be right to understand a lecture;  the lighting, the sound, room comfort, seat comfort, the sharpness of your pencil, the space between the lines of your paper and most importantly, the air between your ears must be clean of any cobwebs, dustbowls, distractions and sleep waves that want to take you back to a safer place. 

I thought I was going to walk this morning but didn’t and wound up on the roof, missing the sunrise.  On the front grass three sleep.  Mornings are very comfortable and if I had a right mind I’d go look for a square fan and stick in the east window and pull in that good sleeping air. 

I tell the toefl students I’ve read Kandahar is famous for fruits of abundance and I can’t find a decent banana in Ayno Meena, a wealthy idea with no apricots.  The season for pomegranates is a month away. 

Another day of no city power.  I’m sure the city has solar powered tv stations and a newspaper and anyone who wants to know knows.  I am simply detached. 

Though this morning I wish I was in sync with men who share a light meal in the morning.  and it’s seven thirty in the evening and Rezek comes in with a plate of cooked potatoes and two snowshoe racket size pieces of bread, good grief.  Am I in sync with someone else’s stomach, I’m not.  Manana manana

And I forgot cold water tasted so good.

And the generator is off and darkness brings the crickets with contented chirping

At some point.  The power returns this time with Solar.

At some point I will be given the opportunity or at some point I will make the opportunity.  At some point another points begins.  And when does that nonsense stop, when the point is taken.  Point taken, where to now?

The sunrise here is 5 thirty eight in the morning.  I’d like to see one now, maybe the moon will still be lingering around for no good reason.

Youtube has produced at no cost I’m aware of this my mix if you scroll down a while and hey, a little Nightnoise, The Who, Bach,  Metallica and ‘I am the Walrus’ in a row.  Is it a sign of age or growing up in Detroit that I am ok with ‘won’t get fooled again’ once a week.

I have lost count how many times the power has gone off and on and it’s not even nine. 

8.26.15

7:55pm--The 5.46 sunrise was unspectacular.  It probably doesn’t help that buildings next to the big house interfere with the horizon…  In any case, the skies were clear, the temps a tad warmer than the day before but still pleasant.  South of the building a small home on a vacant enclosed plot about 70 yards long and 25 yards wide has chickens, ducks, and two warbling turkeys.  I should buy a turkey from the man for Thanksgiving.  And there’s no oven to cook a turkey?  Chop it up and turn it into a stew?  That’s not good at all.

11.08pm

An evening at the Arena Sportsclub with eight men, we eat succulent Bambi Lamb kebabs and drink cokes then tea and cigarettes in the courtyard under the stars.  One man tells me he was an interpreter for the ASF and hopes to study in the US and he asks if I am bored because I don’t engage in a language I don’t know.  Not at all.  If you have any questions you can ask us.  I have to think for a minute…

“I read on the internet that Kandahar is famous for its variety of fruits and yet here in Ayno Meena there are no fruits.  Some call this neighborhood Beverly Hills but there are no bananas in the markets.”

You see, he says, fresh fruit is too expensive so one buys.  And none of the people who live in these hotel-homes have money? 

There is money here but it’s not going towards stocking at least one market with fresh fruit and vegetables.  A lot of talking ensues and the man who asked the question doesn’t have a satisfactory answer much to the humor of two or three.

What do I think about when I know not a word?  There’s always something to consider and that’s enough.  What is a little different from sitting amongst the Nepalese is that these men are a lot more animated in their gatherings and I would like to know because it’s been at least ten years when I worked and lived with men who used to laugh like these men.  I miss that.