MARCH 2004

Years ago, as a pre-teen, a teen or even in my twenties I would sometimes find myself in a situation with someone much older--someone who might have been at the time, the age I am now, a forty-something, or older--a fifty or sixty-something.
I have always had a yen for imagining my future. Futuristic visions in movies or Disneyland never excited me because I thought these space shuttles, instant meals, bubble cities on a desolate planet, video phones, people flying more than driving were no brainers. In the sixties, we had these things either as proto-typical versions or in blueprint form.
What I wanted was my own forecast--not from a Ouiji board or a French Quarter tarot charlatan. I wanted my vision to come from someone who had, as my friend Raymond says, "been there, done that and bought the t-shirt."
Eventually, the one question I would ask that brought despair to their tones of voice and seemed to sop the life out of their eyes was this one: "Do you have a family?"
An answer would come back. "Well, yes, I have a brother. Last I heard he was living in Ohio. But I haven't spoken to him in years."
I didn't ask the next obvious question--why? I didn't want to know. I didn't want to see how one day through a series of events and miscommunications, actions like unpaid loans or acts betrayals or for no other reason than envy, these family members had lost touch. How? How could family not find judiciousness resolve or a language of diplomacy? How could it be that one day, the final tie would be cut with a letter from an in-law--"You're brother has died." And what rattled me more than imagining this was what else I knew the letter would say. "Just before he died, while he was taking a lot of medication for his pain, he told me that he regretted what had happened and that the two of you had lost touch. I want you to know that in then end, he was thinking of you."
Mother. Fucker. How does a person get from here to there? Which sin was the hatchet man? Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities, which interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride? Desire for what the other owned or could do? Gluttony? Unnatural or excessive cravings for the pleasures of naked flesh? Anger or furious resentments? Greed or selfishness? Sloth? Could simple moochers eventually cause two people, conceived from the same parents to avoid one another for the rest of their lives?

I am here now, in the future. I have lived in my bubble cities in desolation. I have avoided moving sidewalks in airports usually because I am in a hurry. I have eaten my prepackaged banquets heated in minutes. I have flown long distances much more than I have driven them. The only thing keeping me from living in space is money.

Now, I only get my futuristic computerized family missives if someone needs to vent anger towards another family member or towards me, or if someone needs some money. I have some sisters. I haven't spoken to them in months. I have a brother living in Ohio. I haven't spoken to him in years.

"All you need is a little slow music and you'll have a third-class funeral." Heinrich Boell, Billiards at Half-Past Nine (Signet, 1962)


He could not rebuke her. She lied to him, stole from him, betrayed their intimacies, and even once punched him in the nose.
She needed forgiveness and she would have it. The inclusion of so much tragedy in her life is the foundation for her absolution. She can't be held accountable anymore than a mother who is certain that God is her soul's administrator. and that He demands she drowns her babies or crushes their skulls with heavy stones.

He couldn't get his mind around this paradox. There were many people he knew who belived all actions in life were results of personal choices and personal responsibility. It is an AM talk radio ethos that has much of the country by the throat. Yet, these same people base their arrogance and demands on the Power of God. How can it be both ways? How can there be a God who has already made all of our choices for us even before we were, yet, He is not responsible for what happens?

If you believe that a woman (or a man for that matter) has no choice but to run into a blazing house to save a life, possibly the life of her child, that she is moved to action because she is powerless over her actions. She is not the commander of her soul.
If we accept this as part the mystery, and I do mean THE Mystery, then how can we rebuke a person who is equally powerless over spontaneous but damnable actions? Haven't we accepted beyond our understanding there is a force?

Suppose it's true? Suppose the devil is real, and he walks among us? What else could it be that would so bedvil this woman? Why would she teach her children and her students about moral responsibilities, about personal choices, about canvasses--negative space, foreground, color combinations, about Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim responsibility when she herself cannot commit her life to her own moral relativism?

And what's more, when she gives her children or students examples in such a way that they’re practically forced to believe in them, then where is her grace? When will she finally live in the illusive moments of grace that are beyond her reach?
Could the answer be as simple as a lack of money and a daily craving for alcohol?

Money is not transcendental. Truth is.

There is no veritas in vino.
He was afraid of her. She feared me. He now has to choose to believe that there was much more going on than we could understand.

He misread her smile.

She couldn't love a peripatetic, fuck him, yes, love him, No..
And he now knows that even if he had given her the life she'd told me she wanted, she would see it in the end as a waste of time.
It is his belief now that her divorce from the father of her children was the result of two identical counterparts whose commandment and prohibitions worked them like two nodding finger puppets. he'd like to see their despair resolved.



If you believe that a woman (or a man for that matter) has no choice but to run into a blazing house to save a life, possibly the life of her child, that she is moved to action because she is powerless over her actions. She is not the commander of her soul.
If we accept this as part the mystery, and I do mean THE Mystery, then how can we rebuke a person who is equally powerless over spontaneous but damnable actions? Haven't we accepted beyond our understanding there is a force?


Could the answer be as simple as a lack of money and a daily craving for alcohol?
Money is not transcendental. Truth is. There is no veritas in vino.
He was afraid of her. She feared me. He now has to choose to believe that there was much more going on than we could understand. He misread her smile.
She couldn't love a peripatetic, fuck him, yes, love him, No..
And he now knows that even if he had given her the life she'd told me she wanted, she would see it in the end as a waste of time.
It is his belief now that her divorce from the father of her children was the result of two identical counterparts whose commandment and prohibitions worked them like two nodding finger puppets. he'd like to see their despair resolved.3/28/Sunday, March 28, Timmy, Jimmy and Mimi, my ...Sunday, March 28, Timmy, Jimmy and Mimi, my latest hairball hackers, now have their feline passports. In the next day or two I will go through the mechanical process of leaving for the airport, checking in cats and guitars then board a plane for. . .at this point, who knows. The job in Kuwait is supposed to be a flying me out in a day or two. I received an Email from Oman. There is a job in Salalah--which is like Taif, mountainous, but not like Taif because it is verdant and fecund with forests and fauna. I have taught a few Omanis in the UAE and found them to be the hardest working of the Gulf Arabs. Their dress is colorful, their head gear is embroidered. Christina Vogt, and I once ate dinner at the Hilton in Muscat.

The top of the tower restaurant was called La Louisiane. I ordered the blackened red fish, but it wasn't what we know as blackened red fish in N'awlins. It was grilled Hammour with a lot of pepper--Samak Meshwi.

There was a duo playing jazz standards. A Brit husband on the piano. His wife scatting like Ella Fitzgerald. I remember requesting two songs. One was "Summertime" because Christina used to sing it whenever we gigged in Kuwait. The other was "Night in Tunisia". Lisa Palumbo used to sing this in a small band we'd assembled for poetry reading/blues and jazz Sundays in New Orleans at the Maple Leaf.

Lisa, by the way, is part of my four degrees of separation from my mentor, my hero, the riff meister and junkie God supreme--Keef Richards.

Lisa was once married to Mean Willie Green, the drummer for the Neville Brothers. Before Willie, she used to live with Ivan Neville.

Ivan Neville used to be Keef's solo band's pianist in The Expensive Winos. So, from 1. me to 2 Lisa 3. Ivan to 4. Keef.

Should I keep going with this? Sure, I'll give it a shot.
Nicholas Roeg directed Donald Sutherland in "Don't Look Now" He also directed Mick Jagger starring Keef's girlfriend Anita Pallenberg in Performance: Donald Sutherland and Kevin Bacon were in "JFK". Have I done it?1. Bacon to 2. Sutherland to 3. Roeg to 4. Jagger and Richards to 5. Ivan Neville and 6 Lisa Palumbo to me. 3/27/Of course they called it love. Perhaps it was just...Of course they called it love. Perhaps it was just that.

They invigorated one another. They knew it way back then, and they haven't forgotten it even up to the present days. She was indispensable to him. He needed her like a weary mule needs an act of kindness.

He was integral to her not because he'd tried to make her happy, but because he taught her what little he knew of the importance of self preservation.

But their kindnesses always fell short. They were not integrated at all. Integrity is an even division, the same road with two paths, two parellel lines running forever in the same direction but never intersecting except in an illusory sort of way, up ahead, on the horizon, they seem to merge.

Plus, there are no halves or thirds, or any fractions in an integrated whole. Their life together was a patchwork of split seams, pulled apart by the minor points, by those who were less than whole.

All kindnesses fractured for the both of them. And as for those years that they'd pledged to one another? They passed on too quickly.

In groups, they were both at the center of all the dynamics crucial to all small parties, to all those threadbare conversations and old ideas. They kept many evening get togethers from dying early. It was a gift they both had and they shared it freely, easily, like the first recognizable notes of a Protestant hymn.

There were problems, though. He knew her to be more in touch with her feelings, and less in touch with truths; still, he cared. He cared deeply.

Alone was a dangerous time for them. By themselves, they were in constant danger of free falling into earth shatering moods that ran along shifting plates and fault lines, and when they'd had too much wine, that is to say, just about every fractious night (except for those when he returned to the church basements and the readingsod the steps and traditions), if one those slobbering, staggering night they couldn't resist one another, then they schemed to avoid complacency.

She could set fire to the night with a look, a smirk, an aside. He would set fire to the night using words like raging flames and slamming doors that caused sonic booms.
They both had their talents.

She said of him, "He sees beyond."
He of her, "She thinks outside the box."
Perhaps it was this choice of words that caused them to wonder why?

Why when they were alone, why could they never see things harmoniously, the way they did when they were in a room with others.

Alone, too often, their ideas and theories collided and they defended themslves with rotting examples. When they fought, the fought outside the box, fought beyond Queensbury rules.

It might have been nothing more than simple enviousness which finally drove them apart. If they had relied more on their strengths and resourcefulness and less on their doomnities and gloomnities, had they learned to create those best of all possible worlds that they dreamt up during the first few months when their love making had no timing and had yet to settle into their preferences and their dislikes, and had they figured out how to slip away from and evade their Godforsaken moods, then maybe with this seed in hand, they could've sown an ability to live fully in the present moment.


3/26/
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Devotion, fidelity, truthfulness, promises. . .these are like odd numbers.
The first odd number is "One" It can never be divided neatly by an even number.
Devotion, fidelity, truthfulness, promises--two wholes assembled to become one.

Odd numbers are unable perform the simplest operation; they can be divided by two of course but not without losing integrity, that state of grace, wholeness, undividedness.

Still odd numbers can be a potent force. They not only have the ability to turn our worlds upside down, they can easily become those missing pieces of a Transcendentally crafted jigsaw puzzle, that thing we think of as our souls.
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In my dream last night, I saw her deft fingers at work. In her hands, the odd and even numbers became ordinals. First, she told me to lay back. Second, she told me to take a deep breath, third. . .fourth. . .

Finally is not an ordinal number. Finally is a touchstone and a tombstone, finally becomes the rope or the the cross around our necks; finally is our last sunrise; finally can be drinking muddy water and sleeping in a hollow log.
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Mont Blanc Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)The everlasting universe of thingsFlows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,Now dark--now glittering-no", reflecting gloomNow lending splendor, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters-with a sound but half its own, Such as a feeble brook will oft assume In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, Where waterfalls around it leap forever,Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

3/24/What to do? This friend Miss A has everything and ...What to do? This friend Miss A has everything and more than I have ever sought. Unlike tk, unlike cv--the truith seems to carry weight. She is stunning beauty: clear, tanned skin, deep, intelligent round eyes, powers of observation only other men's wives have--never mine; she has a healthy, naturally toned body. Great ankles. And bosoms the size of tennis balls. Though she's been in my life now five or six weeks, last week was the first time we held each other.


Tonight I breathed in her fragrance and tasted her.
But what I feel from her, in this timeless moment of perdition is a familiar avariciousness. I am easily convinced that if she were to straddle me tonight, she could blom a rose in the bottom of my heart.

The other night. in my dream, she lay on her stomach while I felt her wetness through her legs, tasted the moisture and breathed in her heard sighs.

Codeine. That's what they've given me. Three days worth, twice a day. It takes the pain of having a camera rammed up your intestines. 3/24/The Arabs have a saying: 'Leyum asal w/leyum basal...The Arabs have a saying: 'Leyum asal w/leyum basal.One day honey. The next day onion.

The Poles have a cure for a cough. Place a sugary substance like honey on an onion, wait one day, then drink the honey flavored with onion.




3/24/He came from New York to save the south from itself
He wasn't a handsome man;he wasn't a kind man. But he had enough time on his hands to sell a concept of an alternative school to city of Baton Rouge. His idea wasn't paricularly fresh or a stroke of genius. It wasn't even the brainchild of someone with above average intelligence. But like most of the local artist in town, his derivative works had earned him a scapbook filled with generic reviews, not unlike the local artist who bought an alibaster foot in Cairo and presented it a local show as her own--got a good generic review too.

The New York man shook the right hands and assembled the right set of egos to open a school in an old bank building, ironically and conveniently next to the city jail. For students he combed the city for those troubled teens who'd been expelled from their district school, then expelled from the last chance high school for youth-at-risk.

And the students came, loaded to the gills on Corcedrin or Mydol. Some on crack. Others from juvenile halls and homes for the mentally infirmed.

He called the school EBRATS--East Baton Rouge Arts and Technical School. He hired teachers who'd at one time or another worked in certified schools but whose drinking and drug problems had pretty much made them as much outcasts as their students.
And this is how they sell the idea to the board of trustees and the state comptrollers, the state grants benefactors and the federal funders.

EBRATS offers an intimate environment, with small student to teacher ratio. The intimate environment is a delipidated building still insulated with asbestos.

School day runs 8 A.M.–5P.M. Monday-Thursday with enrichment programs on Fridays from 8 A.M. – 3 P.M. Enrichment sounds less dire than development. The hours coincide with the absent parents who in a world that makes sense, would have been sterilized during puberty.

Now enrolling grades 9-12 for the 2003- school year There will probably not be a -2005. Even a state as slow on the uptake as Louisiana has figured out what a money pit this parish prison prep school is.

Enrollment is limited, so please contact us immediately at ebrats@ebrats.org Enrollment is limited because there aren't enough two time expellees in the city to fill the ranks.

And to think, I was in the process of repeating the same grevious error for tk--trying to get her a job here making fistsfuls of dollars. Have I mentioned in the last three minutes that I love the person, but loathe the disease. You should hear her laugh.







What is a connection of the heart really except the closing of a wound, feed for desire, a replacement heart for a heart disconnected.
Words can polish the heart. Words can stain it.
Your sins and my sins rendevous in secret. We love it.My heart listens to your cunt. Your kiss becomes an exhalation of empty promises.

There's only what we need, what we can take. Yup. The mongoose today. The snake tomorrow.

3/21/I headed for Jeddah Tuesday night.



Today I gave a lesson on shopping malls, and in the book there was a diagram with a first and second floor of block which were supposed to be mapped out shops numbered 1 -20. Number one was a department and we discussed the variety of goods one finds in a department. Number six was a food court and we talked about the sorts of fast foods one finds in a fod court. Nu,mber seventeen was a New Age bookshop.

"Teacher, what means New Age?"

A capital offense in Saudi Arabia is mysticism; that is, folk cures, bells, books and candles are not only forbidden, but anyone caught practicing magic will have his or her day in chop chop square. Weekly decapitations is a much anticipated event and one of the few events in this country where crowds are allowed to gather.
New Age? "Well, for one, they sell candles and incense. . ." what else? "You can buy greeting cards and nice stones like geodes." I was surprised the publishers allowed it.

Then again, no student would argue that Jins in Oman fly on palm trees like witches on brooms. Jins we know as genies.
In the Hadeeth, the book of sayings by the prophet, we are warned that if we piss in a hole, we'll wake the Jins.

Oh, and you are not allowed to poop on a toilet facing Mecca.
Strange place.
Human Soft, Kuwait Human Soft, "Human Soft" Kuwait Human Soft
Today, more than three quarters of the villas on the compound are empty. There is a skeleton crew of defense contract teacher and trainers. The slides and swingsets sear and corrode unused in the heat. The pool is always open for lane swimming.





Of course the pragmatic Saudis schooled in concepts of real politik and international trade are still hoping for the best. But it is that conservative element again who are giving no ground. They seem to have developed a seige mentality and they've circled the wagons. Hence, the 60 mm German MGs and 22mm guns posted around my compound's barricades of concrete and concertina wire.


Saudis were running the show in Afghanistan--who could argue that they weren't.

Perhaps the western educated editorialists for the Arab News and Dubya's hunting buddies (and most but certainly not all of the royals) are quick to point out bin Laden is a wanted man here as well. But if music wasn't the devil's doing, the shebab would be singing his praises.

If the madrassas' curriculum conflicted with wahabi's twisted spin on one the world's most exceptional faiths--for example, if the madrassas taught that women were the equal of men and had the same rights and privileges--do you think the funding would have still been provided?

I teach soldiers--enlisted--the rank and file, sons of the great unwashed not-so-silent majority. This isn't a matter of defending their faith; it is a matter of ridding the world of infidels (with extreme prejudice) because what's been drilled into them is that in the best of all possible worlds, tending one's own gardens is passe.
Saudi Arabia is a freakish country made the more freakish by its veneer of modernization. The abuse of women is appalling and this one issue alone, in my immodest opinion, makes it one of the world's largest pariah states and should receive no less than those sanctions imposed on Libya or South Africa.

After the massacres in Spain, there was much high fiving and a general mood of jubilation among my students. Sickens me to think about it.

I'm doing what little I can here and elsewhere--blogs, discussion threads. Letters to hometown newspapers. I don't doubt that I am simply whizzing in the wind, jousting with windmills, what have you, but it's better than doing nothing.

I've lived in Kuwait. UAE. I know the abuse of TCN labor occurs in each, but I do recall the English dailies in both countries reporting abuse and government action in each country resolving the problems.

As for the UAE, well, can there be a more enlightened visionary in these parts than Zayed or Maktoum? The Crown Prince in Kuwait seems to also be a pretty decent fellow, a square shooter. There, Sheikh Jaber has the backbone to tell the mutawa to bugger off each time they propose limiting women's rights to equal education.

Sanctions. Boycott. Maybe under better leadership, Iraq can become the world's chief supplier of oil. Then I for one would be glad to tell the Saudis to go eff themselves until they mend their barbarous ways. Or they can just send home all the infidels and live in isolation behind their sealed borders ala China before Nixon or Nepal before the the late fifties--until their own low profile visionaries have the cajones to tell the barbarians to make haste for Mecca and Medina and stay there.

Why are these enlightened Saudis so freaking gutless anyway? ARen't they the majority?
Saudi money is without doubt killing innocent people in Moscow, Madrid, have murdered over 3,000 Americans, just murdered another 200 or so in Baghdad.

Still, the forward thinking Saudis dare not speak out against the (what?) the ten percent who insist that their brand of Islam is THE brand of Islam. and who run the show here. The bearded ones are outnumbered. Their ideals are more than just a little responsible for the murders of non-Muslims throughout the world.
Now that Spain is pulling out as a direct result of the recent slaughter, expect more of the same.3/20/So here's the plan if these things are not benign....So here's the plan if these things are not benign. I'm going to Nepal and checking into the Excelsior. I'll have Hari make runs to the drug stores for Over-the-counter codeine, valium, percodans. I'll give it a week, maybe two, then poof! Maybe I'll do the Al Pacino thing and have a nice meal and order up a rental.
I 've enjoyed my life. I'm pretty sure they'll find nothing they can't remove and I'll have another chance. But what if? Since finding out, I've asked myself this question time again--what have I missed? What's left? I met my daughter last year. I used to worry that that would never happen. My insurance has her college covered.
I can't think of any mysteries (worth solving) haven't I solved. There hasn't been a new lesson in 20 years. The mistakes I've made in recent years were the same I made in earlier years. I'll never be any more focused than I am now--in fact, I'm probably on the brink of becoming less and less focused.
I really don't care what next year will bring. I could wish for more satisfaction, contentment, love, and laughter. Money is easy to come by, easy to lose, easy to get back, easy to throw away. Pussy? Sure. I'll miss it. Probably more than anything else. But how will I know I'm missing it? Music? I can't remember the last time someone said to me, "Wow, you're really good," and it meant something.
Frankly speaking, death is a pretty fair trade for not having to put up with anymore bullshit.












3/7/

J. seems to have been blessed with a contented character. I am sure he prays daily, asks for nothing in prayer but protection of his wife and children who are not here with him. J. was on one of the Riyadh compounds that was bombed last May. The explosions broke windows in his house.

S. is a pariah. He won't stop talking about himself. Worse than that, he won't let those around him stop listening. How can this fellow not be aware that a person who won't make eye contact and who only lets out an occasional, non-committal grunt hears only static? With my face hidden behind a book, how can he not understand that I wish him to shut up? I am not listening to him when he is talking about his ex-wives, talking about his last job, talking about his hobbies, about where he's been, why he only goes out with women half his age, how many important positions and how much prestige he's previously held.

Yesterday, I returned to the office. J. hadn't returned from class. S. looked busy highlighting exercises in a book. There was a comfortable moment of silence that lasted 15 seconds before S. asked me, "So where do you think you'll go your next time out?"
"I haven't decided." I mumbled then buried my nose in a book.
"Me? I've decided I'm going to the United States for several reasons, and I'll tell you why." he began, gorging himself on that defenseless moment of silence.

3/7/
One day fades into the next. I need to believe that what happens next will be different. This is what has always sustained me. This is also why routine brings on decay. I have always and will always choose change over survival.

3/6/
I sit in an office waiting for classes to begin, thirsting for patience. Two years on this job means early retirement to Hua Hin, Thailand. That's how long most fellows stay. It's a matter of remembering what I will want versus what I want now.

The last time I had a job in the magic kingdom--post CV/pre-TK-- I constantly thirsted for nothing else except for weekly escapes to the two star hotels of Bahrain. I lasted nearly a year, but saved no money. The spirit was willing but the flesh was impatient. I'd either forgotten or ignored my purpose, that is, to keep moving on to another place, leaving all behind except for a suitcase, a guitar and a couple of cats.

Unlike every other country on the planet, Saudi Arabia suffers from a lack of female energy in the work place. At work there is no sense of life, sense of self, of death or regeneration. It is all male contempt for one another and quiet competition to lead the pack.



3/6/
Here in Saudi Arabia the highway is the bread and wine changed to that of the body, blood and soul of God's will. God speaks through the holy spirit of drivers making sudden turns in any direction at top speeds without warning. Traffic lights and speed limits are blasphemous signs of infidelity. What we call "road rage", drivers in the kingdom think of as His will be done because according to Islam, nothing happens haphazardly or by chance. Drive from Jeddah to Taif at night, climb the escarpment that winds through the mountain passes. Caution won't protect you from the oncoming eighteen wheelers trying to over take other trucks. Having the right of way is irrelevant. Drivers are not responsible for their actions. If an eighteen wheeler bashes head on into you, it is no accident.

Last night I caught a late ride back to Taif with D. and M. The full moon glowed like a pearl in the handle of a dagger. The road cut through a chain of battered, bald mountains; for thirty miles the road was one wide undivided, unmarked lane with trafic headed in both directions. Several times, beams of light up ahead shone on both sides of the road forcing D.to swerve onto a gravelled shoulder creating a great cloud of dust. For an instant, I saw myself as nothing more than a mote in that gray dust and I felt my spirit preparing to leave my body behind and head into the light.

3/5/Rehearsal with the Filippino dance band lasted tod...Rehearsal with the Filippino dance band lasted today from noon until 6 pm. I now know the chord progressions for "It's Raining Men" and "I Like the Night Life". I'm beginning to like pancit.

How the mighty have fallen.

3/4/Polish third date lines I've rehearsed today. P...Polish third date lines I've rehearsed today.
Potrzebuję (chcieć) żeby mówić wam niektóre tajemnice.(I want to tell you a secret)
1. Wy jesteście bardzo eleganckimi i piękny *dancer*.(You are a beautiful and elegant dancer)
2. Wy jesteście bardzo *sexy* kobieta.(You have a very sexy back)
3.Wy ma bardzo piękne oczy.(You have beautiful eyes)
4.Mam nadzieję my mieć wielka ilość zabawy dziś wieczorem.(I enjoy my time spent with you)
5.Jeżeli JA jestem proste późniejszy, proszę nie czuje niechęć mnie.(If I act rude tonight, please forgive me)
6.JA jestem tylko ludzkie.(I am only human)
7.Wczoraj wieczorem, cieszę się (sprawił przyjemność) dotykać pleców waszego *neck*.(I enjoyed caressing your neck last night)
8.*Inshaillah*, wczoraj wieczorem był po prostu (dopiero co) rozpoczęcie.(God willing--an Arabic idiom--we'll get to know each other better soon)
*David* 3/4/Tonight A. and I will go on our third date. She ha...Tonight A. and I will go on our third date. She had asked me what should she wear? It's a consulate party, a fund raiser, casino night. I'll wear one of my Tony Soprano knock-offs that I had made in Thailand for a tenth of what it would have cost in the US.
I told her something casual yet elegant.
She then asked, "Tell me Dafeed. V'at would you like my to wear?" (I wish they all could be former Soviet-bloc girls).
I gave her specifications as though I was on the phone with an agency during an overnight in Holland.
On our first date she wore something shear and gauzy, transparent enough to see through, to see that she'd worn a thong.
I asked if she had a similar dress only in black, a little black dress perhaps, an LBD.
She said,"No, I'm not having black, but I'm having silver." (She pronounced it slowly "Am haffing seeel-vair.") "But I have problem. No silver shoes."
This morning she took her compound bus to the mall to buy shoes. (women are prohibited from driving in Saudi Arabia)
This morning I went to the motor pool and requested the silver Chevy Caprice--the car of choice for Saudi suidice bombers. The US consulate guards will get as much a kick out of this as she will I'm sure.
RevisionMy driving force, my impulsion has always been my scrutiny of my lacking. I would look around and see that though I had my basic needs in stock (and more often in surplus) I had nothing that I really wanted. Whatever I had, I'd give away. I could have sold things, but usually there was not enough time between my decision to skedaddle most lickety-split and the day of my skedaddling.Airline tickets? Check. Passport? Check? Money? Double check. Cats in their cages and their papers in order?
"And he's off."
Whomever I depended upon for comfort and sympathy, I'd try to forget about. I could imagine that some day, somewhere as a result of providence or coincidence, there would be this roomful of irritated women with this to say, "well, the sex was better than OK, but there were issues."
So, wherever I had settled and found safety and familiarity, I'd leave. Of course, I'd miss it all the moment I'd find someplace else, but by then, the road back was inaccessible. Or if I could clear a path, when I returned I quickly found out that though everything had changed; nothing had changed. I'd scrutinize my life, look around and see that there was nothing I wanted. I'd begin to crave all those things I knew I lacked. "And he's off." 3/2/When I sit and listen to the songs carried on the ...When I sit and listen to the songs carried on the wind, I hear that life is softer than I think. There is only one small problem. I can sit, but I have a hard time listening. 3/2/Time Warp I sometimes have these moments which ...Time Warp
I sometimes have these moments which occur too quickly like deja vu, a misfiring in the brain. During these moments the past and present exist simultaneously much as patterns are displayed on a tapestry. During these moments, consequences and effects do not seem to be the end result of my weather beaten determination nor do they appear to be the logical outcome of every choice I've ever made--the good ones and the bad ones. They seem to be more like the weft across the warp.

These intricate patterns, like all the geometrical beauty in the natural world, I recognize (but only briefly) as the work of deathless, celestial hands.

And when the moment passes, I am left once again to wonder what have I done with my life? What has happened to my life while I've been arriving and departing from concourses, loitering around luggage carousels, waiting to clear customs, waiting for a knock on my door in a hotel room with a view?

My nearest family has become my distant relatives and all of my friends have become these people I used to know. I am to them a loose cannon with a fuse ablaze. They are still back there, pretty much as I left them, carefully managing their lives with some help from television and movies, from whiskey and wine or doctor-prescribed whatevers that get them through their safest and happiest days.

Maybe I have finally muddled my way through the maze of years to find a home on top of this mountain. For now.

3/1/As I walk through the house, I look around and see...As I walk through the house, I look around and see that I have everything and more than I need. I no longer wonder how or when I will put into motion change. Change used to be a high-priority; the thought of change was an indivisable constant. In the past, wherever I'd finally arrive became the place where change needed to occur. It's what I did--pushed away, pushed on then tried to go back. There was never any confusion about my purpose.

There were never any limits to my impulses of hope and passion, my exhalations of aspiration, my dreams of obtaining the unobtainable.
My driving force, my impulsion has always been my scrutiny of my lacking. I would look around and see that though I had my basic needs in stock (and more often in surplus) I had nothing that I really wanted. Whatever I had, I'd give away. I could have sold things, but usually there was not enough time between my decision to skedaddle most lickety-split and the day of my skedaddling.Airline tickets? Check. Passport? Check? Money? Double check. Cats in their cages and their papers in order?
"And he's off."

Whomever I depended upon for comfort and sympathy, I'd try to forget about. I could imagine that some day, somewhere as a result of providence or coincidence, there would be this roomful of irritated women with this to say, "well, the sex was better than OK, but there were issues."

So, wherever I had settled and found safety and familiarity, I'd leave. Of course, I'd miss it all the moment I'd find someplace else, but by then, the road back was inaccessible. Or if I could clear a path, when I returned I quickly found out that though everything had changed; nothing had changed. I'd scrutinize my life, look around and see that there was nothing I wanted. I'd begin to crave all those things I knew I lacked. "And he's off."
Tomorrow night or the night after that, in all likelihood, I will have to explain when and where I got that crappy tattoo on my chest. They never notice it at first. We have other things to do. But sooner or later, wrapped up in our first overnight embrace, they see it and ask about it. The story will begin, "When I was fifteen years old, I never thought anything I could do would last a life time."