the timeless stare

it's still Monday.

john: hello, transport, it’s 11:45 where are you?

transport:  hello, no transport today holiday

john:  holiday! 

transport:  yes holiday, email sent last night.

john:  what time was that email sent out?

transport: (laughter) you didn’t check email.

john:  I don’t know why I didn’t check my email this morning.

and there it is.  A loss, or a gain depending on how you play it, a loss of class for sure, for everyone.  Why didn’t I check I don’t know, the thought never crossed my mind that the official call comes from the Afghan government, not the AUAF, who emailed everyone four days ago stating the holiday would begin on Tuesday.

And on this Monday

do I swear

to never take for

granted the timeless

stare.

So a one day holiday in bed recovering from the blahs becomes a two day holiday and tonight I guess, after seven, shops will open, they’re probably open now.  I’d wager the streets are empty.  I’ll never know it if I don’t take a walk right now.  What the hell else am I going to do today?  The dreaded treadmill beckons a floor below me. 

It is bright and cloudless, temps looking at 90 for the first time I’ve been here.  Ninety in June is good.  A hundred and ten is not so good.  The mid-day call to prayer.  twelve-thirty.  I wanna be where it is timeless.  All the reminders to keep on track are good if they are leading me to a place that is timeless.  That’s all. 

I could start the novena with that request for the first nine days of this peculiar festival.

I am guessing, only guessing, but I’d wager the Afghan thinks more like Turkey with regards to fasting. 

And that is a good thing.  It is between God and the believer.  Thanks for the reminder in the calendar, it comes 11 days earlier every year I’m sure, because some need it and some can’t and some won’t.  The won’ts, now what can you do about the won’ts, well, again it’s between God and the believer, final.  Family and social customs to practice together are noble indeed, but it is still must be left to the individual unless those individuals are uneducated sheep herders and need sheperding. 

12:45pm

It is a little alarming, surprising to see that I am reading Moby Dick now.   I knew one day I was gonna read it that’s why I’ve been carrying it with me since Hikkadewa in February 2015. Well if you’re worried if it is going to end badly for everyone on that boat maybe I shouldn’t identify myself with any of them. 

It still feels strange, it can’t be coincidental ok maybe it can but it is also predestined a Calvinist would say, austere morality and that kind of thinking.  John Calvin spent a decade in exile to write the apocryphal institutes of the Christian religion.  What drove him to think like this and why did so many follow and how convincing and clever was he to equate work and salvation. 

predestination—a doctrine holding that God chooses those who will enter Heaven based on foreknowledge of their good deeds. 

God’s foreknowledge, right?  He sees ahead being the timeless one God is.  And he got that out of the Bible no doubt somewhere in a few places but look how it spread to specific North European joints where governments said, yes of course, self-discipline keeps the crime rate down, let’s be Calvinists.  It’s in the Bible and those folks came to America and look at what they built and continue to do so I guess I don’t know really, but in history it’s an economically divine sort of grace that one can’t deny.  Such motivation, they glorified God and built some nice stuff to go along with it. 

Nevertheless one day, not today, but one day I will read if I am so inclined a little bit on the internet regarding the fate of those unelected folks.   Sounds like an impenetrable dogma from an intelligent man in self imposed exile. 

I was planning on eating lunch at the university today.  I have one egg.  I have beef stew and grilled toast, that is a possibility.  I still have pasta that isn’t very good, I can cook it if need be.

I sit at the long wooden table and wonder beyond the gates if life is any different right now and can only assume.  Tomorrow I think things will return to tomorrow or will they, oh time is one who makes me suffer.

4:29pm—I ate a can of beef stew and pan toasted three slices of bread with a small glass of dr. pepper and then I watched television, a documentary about a matchmaker, I think in Lebanon, a nice story it was, and then the news and a cup of tea but before that that cereal looks good and I have a bowl of the new special K with peaches and then finish off the cheerios box.  I didn’t know I was that hungry I guess.

Thirty minutes before sunset I’ll walk to Zoom and buy eggs, butter, bread and I hope the fella and his little assistant are open for business.  Right now the sun wrestles with clouds and it is warm when the sun wins otherwise if I’m gonna have a mental meltdown at least do it in nice weather.

The next time I go into that corner shop with the vegetables they are gonna know I forgot my eggs.  I must certainly under no circumstances go shopping there if I need to buy any eggs that’s all I’m setting out to do here.  That’s all, take your profit, put the eggs back, put the plastic bag back. 

For someone who didn’t sleep well I am somewhat surprised you haven’t taken a nap when you had the chance, good question, and I haven’t lifted Melville today but perhaps I will in the next hour.

In the meantime I question everything.  This place is doing it to me.  It’s terrible isn’t it.  I can’t read Melville without thinking too much, I can’t watch the news now and not think too much typing and mobile meditating, that’s what I need to do.  Shut myself up even more!!

6:33pm—I returned from Zoom and bought bread, eggs, butter and cheap caramel chocolate biscuits that are pretty good.  A warmer evening indeed just from my absurdly brief walk, from what I saw it was business as usual, people shopping, bakeries open.  We’ll see tomorrow how they look at one in the afternoon when it’s ninety degrees. 

7:08pm—the first iftar can begin.  I think I’ll eat soon.  French toast ok?

8:43pm—If for reasons not understood now KU doesn’t become and then the little voluntary effort opportunity in Tblisi doesn’t pan then I will buy an old car and with a list of cities I will go to each and apply for jobs and live in the car that I’ll have pimped with little curtains to pull down around the windows and the back seat has to be long enough to really sleep well. 

I think this is enough for one Monday.