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.
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.
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