darkness is a friend

8:21am

At twelve twenty three this morning I woke up wide awake furious what’s going on the bright light outside my room robs me of my sleep and I can read in the dark this is enough.  When the housing department dude was here yesterday I asked him to move it because I couldn’t sleep it illuminated the room and I have to be in the dark when I sleep, especially when I sleep so poorly.  He smirked, ‘it’s for security’. 

I removed the light.

with the end of a squeegee.

And I did eventually return to sleep.  This mattress is also uncomfortable as is this blanket.  I’d like a bed sheet between me and this blanket is that possible I don’t know I didn’t bother to ask and I don’t know how I could get a new mattress but perhaps if I find a place that sells sheets I’ll buy my own.

Is busting a light grounds for dismissal?  Do you want to be dismissed?  I am again discontented today, another night of poor sleep though the laughter is the best medicine as a karmic tool may have helped my congested sinuses, thanks to the ten people who found something humorous in skinny legs and plaid shorts.  Gracias.  I’m sure if I am relatively healthy my mental disposition will lighten up.  Meanwhile I think I’ll lay down again, a headache behind my ear is emerging.  Lord have mercy.

8:50pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBUc00Dhu9M

I can’t hear deep healing music because the rain has just started and it falls hard on the corrugated tin roof outside my room. 

And I simply can’t believe I am almost out of decongestant.  Why didn’t I stock up in Tbilisi or at least in Dubai’s terminal two?  Dumb dumb dumb.  I was informed that the German clinic has medicine from Germany and I should avoid the items that come from Pakistan or Iran in the local pharmacies.  Well, ya take what ya got and going to the German clinic is 45 minutes away and honest I don’t know what transport thinks of having to give teachers lifts for errands.  I mean there are a lot of teachers.  I sat at the long wood table preparing a syllabus for a business class I was asked to teach in ten days and five times between 5:30 and seven  the white van pulled into the guesthouse and every time there was only one person getting out.  Hey this is their problem, they know that, if taking a taxi wasn’t poo-pooed I’d take a taxi, at least to normalize an absurd and oppressive way of living. 

In July I met Anna from Europe somewhere at the guesthouse and this morning I met her again and she of course didn’t remember me.  ‘You changed’, you mean shaved, yes.  She’s a sweet kid and is considering returning to school in Ireland this fall.  Two years is enough she said, I understand, staying in one place for two years is a luxury in my beat up book and to do it here. 

I swear I feel bad but I also feel indignant, if I get another tattoo it will have to be ‘live free or die’ and lord all the Afghans in the rain that changes everything into mud, you think they don’t have problems worse than yours?  I’m sorry to be so selfish, Lord they are yours and the rain is supposed to continue for four days?  Really?  I’m sick.

Can you end this blog on a positive note?  Your writing has been a real kind of bummer recently.  I know, I’m sorry again.  Ok, good news….no one replaced the bulb I whacked to smithereens.  I will have darkness as my friend tonight.  

karmic medicine

10:23am

In reply to my query the US embassy recommended I get fingerprinting done in the states.  SQUASH!  I can do that at the end of July and that might be then too late to submit for a student visa.  I could take an unpaid leave between now and July but my classes begin today and end in May.  I could go at the end of May.

I could also wrap this business up here at the end of May and return to the states.  And?  And do the paperwork and so forth and begin classes in September.  I would need something between June and September if this were to happen because leaving the job two months early is a bit of change I’d be giving up my friend, you’re not a baseball player who can walk away from 13 million bucks, seriously.    Summer schools are options, would you like to return to Harvard for eight weeks?  I’m so much more mature now than when I was there in 1999, ha ha.  Oh right, like they’ll take you on again, the director didn’t like me because my students gleefully announced they enjoyed learning English with me.   

Enjoyed?  They used the word ‘fun’ and that word used in the hallowed halls of ivory rang oddly inappropriate. 

I don’t know let’s check it out.

Men from the housing department came by to clean and make ready the air conditioner that hangs above my bed.  The heaters have been officially turned off, I guess we won’t have any more sub-freezing days, Lord help us.  I noted to the man in charge, the man whose name I’ve already forgotten, shame on you, about the one sharp knife in the kitchen and two rusty forks.  We’ll see.  I told him I bought the colander and he said he could reimburse me.   

Please, consider it a gift for the next schmuck, sorry next teacher.

How do you feel today, yesterday you were bummed.  I still am but it’s time to get ready for the bus and sticky gooey snot goes up and down my throat. 

9:51pm

I left the campus after I finished my classes around seven thirty and auto lights on the main road revealed men sweeping the dirt of the street and I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish other than make me cough and gag more than usual.  It has to be spring, it has to be this, palatable visible pollution and in two days rain is in the forecast.  I love rain but not this kind of rain, it’ll be a cold one, a flu baiting rain and I have to take something I don’t have, I should have stocked up in the Dubai duty free of cough medicine and other stuff, I’m running dry but my nose isn’t.

And I was told in a few weeks I’ll be teaching a bunch of fellas from the country’s largest telecommunications company.  This could be fun and whoa watch time fly a good thing but Lord I can’t work if I feel like shit.  My sinuses started aching right in the office, the slime quickly goes right down my throat if I sniff big, ok I won’t do that, people across China all looked up, wooah, one of us.

Do you miss those days in Tianjin?  Do you think the hoarking and spitting of huge green splotches by bicyclists this winter has changed since I was there 25 years ago?  Ha, really.  Tianjin 25 years ago.  I should post it on facebook, go ahead embarrass yourself, make someone laugh at your expense, perhaps I’ll feel better when I wake up tomorrow.  What?  How is there a connection?  Laughter is the best medicine and if only a few laughed at my expense, surely I should feel better, no?  Just coming at the karma with a new approach.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

blow up the blues

10:23am

Before the shuttle van could reach the main road we turned around: “lockdown, a missile was fired at the new parliament building…” and then I got the ubiquitous sms confirming the campus would be closed until further notice.   A typical day I asked my colleague and boss, right get used to it.  Well, I don’t think I’ll get used to any of this. 

And here I sit at the long wooden table that sits in the hall which connects the four rooms.  Cecil, the professor from Hong Kong slipped out, a ride was waiting for him.  The television is on with no one watching, a curious habit I assume from not remembering how to turn it on every morning and ya know what I’m not gonna turn it off but I will lower the volume. 

A mass murder in Pakistan on Easter apparently aimed at Christians in Lahore, the media is giving it a lot of coverage as they should but the feeling is one of resignation and gee another senseless act of violence in the name of God in a country whose middle name has been violence since 1947. 

Snow covered mountains are very close but they are shrouded by a gray dull smog, what a shame.  Can I say anything good about a country that hasn’t been at peace with itself since the 1970’s, the people on this campus are friendly so far.  I hate to read how beautiful this city was less than a century ago because outside my bedroom window is a pile of bricks and a room that stores coal.  We're using coal to keep the heat on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvPgndy5frA&ebc=ANyPxKrR19Ux42kTZyu_yGDIJqDkQEnIAdQH69OdjC-h4i-UHblRJtcvf3UGpAXC_wg_Cl23N7zzGGUcu0YMWq8X3Mz9QdgD2Q

And listening to ‘Kundun’ is supposed to brighten your day? 

http://au.reachout.com/self-help-strategies-for-depression#

A lot of good common sense advice here and what can I do to blow up the blues.  Writing it all down it says helps, look I’m doing that now, how do you feel?  No different.  Do something new?  Exercise?  Exercise would definitely help but I already took a shower, talk to someone, I see no one here, no one is here except for the guards outside the guesthouse wall armed to the teeth, fingers a centimeter away from the trigger. 

Eat well, this morning I had a glass of juice with a lot of sugar in it, a bowl of cheerios and an instant cup of coffee, nothing too healthy there, eh?  Wait, I had a skinny banana as well.

  
Learn to relax.  I know how to do that if I am not bummed, what an oxymoron, next.  Learn something new, find some nature, I’m starting a new job essentially that should count, and nature?  Looking out the front window and across the street are four large pine trees, the kind that have survived fifty years of war.  I find solace looking at them albeit it’s such a limited solace and one wonders when they’ll be cut down for yet another boring building.   

Talk to someone you trust, sure, next, join a support group, sure, for surely I can’t be the only bummed person around here.  No, you selfish twit, millions in this city are so worse off, I’m embarrassed to listen to you anymore.

Ok, that’s enough, I think I’ll lie down but not for long I’m getting hungry again and I look forward to…sms, lockdown has been lifted.  Let’s go.

8:03pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19nm5_nAwQg

If I were the skin on my thumbs I’d protest loudly, why am I ripping them apart?  Do you know how painful it is to cut onions and tomatoes with raw thumbs?

Here’s a question:  take these ingredients:  pasta of any kind, black pepper, salt, rosemary, tomatoes, onions, garlic, cucumber and olive oil.  How many ways can you cook a meal with just these items?  Feel free to suggest, I’m boring the crap out me.

I’m trying to relax so I listen to flute music and it isn’t working too well.  I see the time, I’d like to go to bed but I don’t want to wake up at four in the bloody morning.  I’ve never been as exhausted as I was sitting in the office today trying to stay busy with work that wasn’t keeping me too busy.  I shivered inside and outside, walked around and I just didn’t wear enough clothes.  It was 61 today warmer than six days in Georgia, warmer than the last two months in Kandahar.  Perhaps I’m fighting a bug, a couple of pandadol when I got back to the empty building at 4:30 and a few more in 27 minutes and all I want to do is sleep and wake up four months from now.  Lord take me in.

I saw a job in Pittsburgh and the deadline to submit is tomorrow.  Shith.  You know how long it is to write a personalized cover letter when your thumbs are taped up?  Some things weren’t meant to be and in my life that’s a lot of shith. 

Why don’t you email the US Embassy in town and ask them about the damn fingerprints.  If they tell me I can do it the dream lives on, barely.  If they say sorry kid then I will have to email KU and give ‘em the bummer news.  And who knows maybe I can’t produce thumbprints because I’ve ripped off all the skin. 

Shanti go to sleep my friend and take a rosary with you, a few icons and Buddha sit on your bedside table and pray like Moses almighty that when you wake up you will be in the loving arms of someone with healthy thumbs.

thanks George Will

Easter Sunday morning

I didn’t sleep well last night and before six this morning the room was bright and I’ve been blowing out nasal and chest gunk from a week in cold Tbilisi.  Kabul temps are cold and I’d like to crawl back into bed and recoup some needed sleep but no you have to go in today and God help me rise to the occasion, no pun intended.

The American university gives everyone Christmas off but it’s never true for Easter.  I understand, the former is a birthday party, the latter is a crucifixion and a raising of God.  Pretty heady stuff for Muslims who believe Jesus didn’t die, rather he ‘swooned’ and some even insist once he got out of the cave he made his way to Srinagar and lived until he was 80.

So?  You’re looking at four months to go and you don’t know which direction to head?  It’s pathetic.  Yesterday I went to the campus and discovered not too many staff come in on Saturday.  I hung out in a chilly library until lunch was served in the cafeteria and by two-ish it was enough so I came back to the Apollo, borrowed a drying rack and a sharp knife, did laundry and cut a tomato for the evening’s so-so pasta dinner.

And now, it’s time to get ready.  The shuttle bus leaves in an hour.  I have to take a shower, maybe I don’t, but I have to get ready, have another coffee, smoke a cigarette that does me absolutely no good, and consider for the next four months I will be in de-tox. 

5:32pm

There is another person living on this floor but he is on holiday.  For now it is empty.  The room, the tomb, happy easter to those who believe.

My new classes begin on Tuesday and will finish in the third week of May.  My contract is done in the third week of July. 

A person shouldn’t write in an empty building.  I got the tv working in the tv room and the movie ‘Last Vegas’ is on, four old men who are good friends and deal with sadness because they have each other.

How did the aesthetics do it, sacrificing friends, sacrificing the social animal in them.  I’m just not religious enough to keep doing this year after year after year. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQkxryu8UQM&ebc=ANyPxKohDuNWfPKgdgFbdJSL5Y_Q3YTrDsVUO5N1Il8EfHmyhm_YnSYd43eOk4RBhNlXgAO7w9C1yz2enS77paZCy_BxSt6rCA

George Will makes me want to believe in a political process again.

9:23pm

The other man who lives on this floor has returned, I know he has lived here all by himself for eight months or more and I know if I were him I’d be leery of losing ‘my space’, we have a kitchen, we have to share what is in it.  We have a tv room which I will stay away from only because I don’t need it.  Can two adult men live peaceably together, sharing communally?  I will defer and give him his space, I do wish he’d wash his dishes instead of leaving them for the Afghan lady who comes in each morning to clean the place up.  I believe in cleaning up my own mess.  If I enter the kitchen in the morning and find dishes I need are dirty, well, what am I going to do?  I’m going to wash his dishes?  I don’t know how it’s going to play out, I hope by example he will be reasonable and clean up after himself.  I am not a colonial, I’ll wash my own dishes.  Please do yours.

God bless, Happy Easter again.