cobwebs in my eyes

It is foolish to whine about a toaster but the toaster is emblematic of the absurdities one must manage to get electricity in this cavernous house.   Our new coordinator, I will call him IU here for brevity, has an electrician looking at the four sources we get our juice from and one of those, city power, has not come to the house for nine straight days.  In any case, my requests have been reasonable, few I hope, but to have light in the evening is a priority and in the morning it would be nice to have toast with my coffee.  Is this too much to ask, it is when it involves waking the guard up and asking him to turn the generator or the big solar on so I can toast my toast for five minutes. 

1:44pm—my first toefl class begins in three long hours.  I have prepared as well as I can considering the circumstances require a slower pace in which to process what I need to do.  In the quiet of the morning there is no rush to get ready. 

In the Dubai airport I bought Karen Armstrong’s book ‘The Bible, The Biography’ and in the introduction she completely lost me

A major characteristic of a peak religious insight is a sense of completeness and oneness.  It has been called coincidentia oppositorum, things that seemed separate and even opposed coincide and reveal an unexpected unity. 

Ok, I’m ok with it now that I’ve read it a few more times, though I’d hardly call synchronicity with an ancient spirit who had blond hair and blue eyes merely a peak religious insight.  She goes on to say this coincidentia opporsitorum is evident in Islam and Judaism, this learning from paradoxes the things which unify. 

Or, I smelled the contradictions disguised as paradoxes and I pursued truth with such reckless determination I had to get more pages inserted in my passport and in the end, unexpected unity I kind of saw coming but I’m not sure, I understood the aura of inevitability a little better.  What I discovered behind the veil of paradoxical contradictions was the unified theory.  I imagined the Gulf Arab men wearing black and the women would wear white and everything would be alright.

Men are preparing lunch, I have had two cups of tea and another coffee and I woke up twice last night.  I’m foraging fast through my Dove chocolate cherries, soon they will be mercifully gone. 

I got fitted for a new Kameez last night at the Kandahar Supermarket because the front of my kameese got too close to the space heaters and torched it a bit, not bad enough, I thought, to have the coordinator say he was going to pay for a new one, or is he expecting me to buy it?  In any case, it’s new and it’s a nice cotton.  And I met a very kind American woman with her grandchild who is fluent in English and they were heading to Virginia tomorrow (or today as I write).  How strange it always is to suddenly hear a native speaker, their delivery is so smooth.

8:53pm—I should go to sleep now and try to get back on a morning schedule. 

1.25.16

I was planning to go to Kabul this Thursday but I feel they are thinking I don’t need to come just to give my passport to HR.  This is true but I was hoping to see some people and is it really important to see them, well, there’s nothing critical going on, I’d like materials for any future conversation classes I might be asked to teach. 

No, I don’t have to go to Kabul this Thursday. I’m sure the PDI office is thinking what a pain in the ass it is to provide transportation from the barricaded and virtually impenetrable airport and back just for lonely ol’ me.  Well,  ok.  I can do every fucking thing online and when I resign I’ll leave from here though you know they’ll want to see me off personally as would I I guess, leave on friendly terms but until then we play cat and moose. 

7:58pm—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4WlNj1TTqA

“Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.” Hopi Prophecy

It was cloudy today but I don’t remember thinking cobwebs when I looked outside the kitchen window, thank god for that. 

On my way to the shops Said Wali walked with me and we stopped on the way to look at a house for rent, and this isn’t just a house.  A palace is what it is, maybe a mini palace, I’ll have to look this up, but the 23 rooms two kitchens and a swimming pool I joked could keep me here another year and spacious manicured lawns and an abundance of flowers in a garden only the wealthy could afford to keep, and two balconies to special rooms span the western sky with no neighbors a half kilometers away. 

A big wow indeed.  Ok, let’s buy some sliced bread, cake, eggs and a few other items like sour cherry jam from the land of Iran looks really good I’ll have to try it tomorrow for breakfast because the men are turning on the generator so I can have toast.  When I finished the last of the toasted poundcake I told Fezel to kill the generator.  What can I do but feel grateful for light in the kitchen at night.  I am.

          

a cobweb sky?  Thank God I took the photo 13 years ago.   Off the north coast of Bali.