watching your back

I approached the ATM machine on campus to find it was out of order.  I had less than a dollar to my name.  I’ve used the machine at least six times and it has always functioned.  Today it was out of order.  But lo and behold what did I have with me today but a Mr. Franklin.  I never carry American money with me if I don’t have to.  Apparently today I did.  So I walked over to the Finance department and the cashier’s window was open and the man changed me money.

Thank you mister Tocharian, hell, right?  My instincts told me to bring money but not to change it because I never expected the ATM would be out of order.  My instincts, from out of the blue such a decision to be made it is not coincidence.  It’s someone looking out for my back.  Dude, you’re awesome. 

Or is it something else.  Is it because I sing john Michael Talbot in the shower, is it because I look at the transport schedule for next week and with Ramadan beginning my time at the campus will be the same length of time, and not shorter.  Ramadan at AUAF without a cappuccino, without a French fry.  I can manage seven hours a day here if I need to but to not have access to anything other than the water in my bag, which I’ll have to sneak swigs under my office desk, and no smoking unless I go to the toilet and no one guesses it’s me or no one comes in because everyone is fasting and therefore no one will need to use the loo, I don’t know but I didn’t complain to anyone but myself and now I do so sort of here. 

In any case, what started out as an overcast day of one invigilating duty and nothing else, I do have money to buy eggs, cigarettes and something else I cannot remember after I am back in the grotto.  What I also know is that in twenty minutes I’m getting up from my squeaky office chair and am leaving.  My boss who sits to my left scrupulously bent over his tiny laptop, will not have anything to say other than see you later and oh, I told the chef from South Africa about non-muslims needing a speakeasy to sip coke and take hits of tobacco.  They’re working on it. 

5:06pm—What keeps a man in place other than a woman?  That is all there is to it.  A man marries he is nesting whether he believes it or not.  A woman has to build the nest and the man well, he has to sit on the egg once in a while, right?  I don’t know anymore.

I took a Cuban woman to see David Gray perform at the Dubai Jazz Festival and he was excellent, he sounded fantastic meanwhile the Cuban woman was clearly disappointed because she didn’t know Gray’s music and she was hoping to hear jazz.  No jazz at da Dubai Jazz festival tonight, senorita.

Another strange thing happened so I’d like to explain it as clearly as possible.  Two mornings ago I am sitting in the transport van waiting to go and the driver asks if I lost 10afs, five cents, and he’s holding this ten af note and I’m telling him it’s not mine and he continued asking me if I lost this money and I finally told him I don’t lose money and he laughed and stopped insisting it was my money.  This morning on the ground under my office desk is a ten afs note. 

Someone must have assumed I had lost ten afs on the transport and decided to put the ten afs on the floor under my desk?

ha ha, anything else odd today oh wise one, one more but I don’t have to explain it here, ok I will, sometimes coughing a bit too much brings up all that bad mucous stuck in my upper chest and larynx from cigarettes and it comes out and where was I but in the loo nonchalantly walking around in my grotto.  Not a coincidence if our subconscious is anticipating everything we do.  In spiritual terms my spirit knows where I have to go or be before I am cognizant of what and why and where I am going.   

The ATM, the ten afs, convenient porcelain nearby, I don’t know, but it sure can be exciting around to guess what's going on on the spiritual side of things, you know that other side of the bookcase, the unseen one at the end of my nose, the fourth dimension, well what would this Tocharian be doing if he weren't with me if I were dead, well he’d go somewhere else and where would I go, ol buddy?  Do what you’re doing?  I didn’t think so, I know, I’ll be in some old fella folding up chairs after a church service. 

It’s getting dark, let’s walk to the shop.

The rain falls, the final moments of the day illuminated in dark orange from above.  I opened the box of Ritz Crackers and looked at the box, ‘cheese flavor’, they’ve added flavor have they it’s been a while, and then on the side of the box it reads ‘safe for vegetarians’. 

I could eat an entire box of these and I will probably, in the next 25 days or so and it will land me in the hospital.  Don’t eat them all at once.  The NBA finals begins tomorrow at five thirty, can I get up, sure why not.  This could be fun to follow.  Ok, I’ll try. And get up.  And enjoy.