the quintessence of talk

With yesterday’s solar supply depleted we go through Saturday underfed, hot and very tired.  Or I should say I go underfed, hot and very tired.  Big blue is turned on again at five pm.  At noon I gave Rezek a thousand Afs note ($13) and he returned with five huge chicken sandwiches.  I should have asked for cokes too.   Will I need to eat again today?  I should walk up to the ‘supermarket’ and get shampoo and some kind of morning and evening biscuit.  I hope this new market soon carries fruits and vegetables.

After my two pm class three students come to me with lists of vocabulary words they don’t understand.  What is ‘essence’ sir?  Sir, the word ‘confirm’, what does this mean?  It means to make sure of something or to receive approval, like you reserved and bought a plane ticket.  You want to confirm your seat and make sure it is ok in the system.  What is ‘make sure’?  It means to confirm.  Sir, ‘essence’?  The ideal of life, the soul, the spirit, the quintessence.  Synonyms.  I don’t know these synonyms, sir.  Such an abstract word, to define it rather than experience it.  We google the word and click ‘images’ and oh, lipstick, beauty products, magazines, go to Merriam Webster, the basic nature of a thing.  Find a flower, a pile of sand.  The essence of this flower is, it is red, it is, to some perhaps, pretty.  The sand?  Ah, times up.  I need the loo.

8:51pm

“It’s good to have someone bad in your life.  Really.  That person makes you stronger.”

A profound utterance.

And who is it that has made you who you are today other than those who made you angry?  Am I stronger, yes.  Is it because of this?  Absolutely.  What drove me asunder was confusion and the pain I inflicted and it put me on a crusade with enough questions to choke God off a little air.  That drive to understand took me to all of SE Asia and the subcontinent and the UAE enough times and look, look where the hell I’m working right now.

I walked to the local market after class and I saw what I haven’t seen in three weeks.  Commerce.  Restaurants, shops of various kinds, fruit and vegetable but pickings were pretty lame.  I met an American there from New Jersey and told him I found Amstel Beer here.  The 0.0 kind. 

That could be taken for a slap.  A few minutes earlier:  I have to fly to Dubai to order a beer. 

Yesterday’s complete solar loss means we are in the dark tonight.  Windows open, a fan whirls at my side, it’ll cool by three.

And yes Mary, I know this very much.  It was no coincidence that on the seventh day of my Novena, I was contacted by someone for the first time in eleven years.

We should all write novena’s, you think?