| Carpets II, and such |
[May. 3rd, 2009|06:21 pm] |
Those of you who were on pins and needles waiting for the outcome of the great rug cleaning extravaganza will be happy to know that the third time appears to have been the charm and the thing smells--if not "like unto the rose" at lest not like unto a moldy sock. It actually feels lighter as well--though I find that hard to believe. That was the small rug. Will I ever have the courage to tackle the big one?
The outcome was nearly spoiled by the weather, which has clouded up and threatened rain all day, a few speckles coming down now and then. I went to work feeling anxious about a meeting with one of my staff, who had indicated last week that she had something personal and work-related to discuss. All weekend long I worried myself into an early grave imagining the worst--various sorts of worst, among them all the criticisms that I would have made about myself and my performance here during the last year. Of course it turned out that I can imagine far worse things than anyone else: even the least thing I had expected it to be was far beyond the reality. The meeting went well and there were no serious issues.
Mohandas Ghandi is reported to have said something to the effect that anyone who truly believes in God ought to be ashamed for worrying about anything. I understand Ghandi's point to be that when we achieve a reasonably clear understanding of our own true nature and consequently of our path of service in the world, we find that along with that comes a pretty good idea of what is, and is not, in our power to control. We find that more (about ourselves) is under our control than we thought, and what is not under our control interests us less--in the sense of "Fear God, and God will give you knowledge." True strength produces calm, confidence and joy. It is in fact weakness--or perceived weakness in regard to someone who we see as otherwise much like ourselves, that generates aggression, belligerance and hostility.
Anyway, having learned my lesson with the meeting, I managed to keep my mind off the impending rain and off my rug lying out on the back terrace--a helpless victim to anything that might come down from on high. All day the weather was strange: dark sky, light hot wind, the sea a rough leaden color overlain by a peculiar yellowish mist that became thicker and thicker toward the western horizon as if that really were the edge of the world and the ocean out there were boiling. Cargo ships clustered together on the dull water far out away from the shore--perhaps waiting for something--I don't know. Dark birds croaked in the trees (of course they do that every day). The mountains of Lebanon looked as though they had been chiseled out of rusty metal, and threads of white lightning were striking among their peaks as I hurried home. The carpet was still dry, and smelled--if not entirely like unto the rose... |
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| Carpets |
[May. 2nd, 2009|11:57 am] |
Today I washed my rug for the third time. I have two rugs in my apartment, both of which were here when I moved in (and had been here for many years before that). They are old machine-made imitation "Persian" carpets, I believe a blend of synthetic and natural fibers, and were solid with decades of accumulated dirt and grease. My first attempt involved a carpet cleaning machine that I borrowed with considerable difficulty and hassle.
Results were mixed. The machine was heavy and so loud in my small apartment that I was driven to wearing my stereo headphones and wrapping the cord around my neck while I worked. Lots of dirt came out of the rugs but when all was done and dry they still reeked with an exceedingly unpleasant musty odor. So yesterday I took the smaller of the two out on the back patio and washed it with hose, bucket and brush, scraping out a lot more dirt, long black hairs and other unpalatable debris. Then I let it bake and dry in the sun. The result: an exceedingly unpleasant musty odor. This morning I tried again, with very hot water and triple strength commercial carpet cleaning soap. More gobs of brown filth came out. Now it is drying again but I do not anticipate success. The truth is that both of these rugs need to be rolled up, taken to a shop and run through a machine that vibrates them and drives hot soapy water--or dry cleaning fluid or some darn thing--through them. I do not know where such a business can be found, or how to communicate with it. I will let the thing dry thoroughly and then give it a sniff, and proceed from there. Sometimes there is just no alternative to doing things the right way. |
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| Wrestling with demons |
[Apr. 2nd, 2009|10:09 pm] |
For some time I have become more and more certain that something in the way I live my life has gone wrong. I don't want to make more of this than it's worth: other people use their blogs to complain about work and life and this is no more serious than that. But upon longer and deeper reflection it becomes increasingly clear to me that something is wrong, and my suspicions about the cause--or at least the triggering mechanism--of what is wrong are circling around the word "Internet."
Regular access to the Internet is bad for my health. I must admit that I can't stay away from it, when it is on and available all the time. I have a Netvibes account that links to several hundred feeds, many of them journalism or comment sites that, in turn, aggregate feeds from many additional sources. I read tons and tons of essays, junk and "comment" online and flick through thousands of Flickr pictures, remembering nothing of it five minutes later, while books on my shelf that I felt are so important that I hauled them halfway around the world go unread, and my own work goes unwritten.
I don't have writer's block: I just have a bad case of Internet. I do not actually believe that I could fully unplug myself from the 'Net. Living overseas as I do, there are too many things that it makes easy, which would be extremely time consuming and annoying to do otherwise. But some kind of solution must be found.
It probably starts with no Internet after 12:00 p.m. Yes, that's the sad fact of it--as simple as that. You all know how those kind of resolutions go: fifteen minutes after we make them some terrible test comes up: a sudden panicky need to file taxes, a tormenting word one can't quite recall, the desperately urgent compulsion to hear some old pop song. Those kinds of demons inevitably spring into view whenever we act so bold as to make a change in life. But unless I change, this behavior, certain things I want to accomplish in the time I have left to me will not happen. Little things like this, done day after day, can kill us--or if not killing us, can lead us into a state where we drag out our lives from point to point, and retreat at last beneath the "couch of earth" for good, never lifting our heads from the slumber of inattention.
In any case it's making it hard for me to get enough sleep. So good night. |
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| A stone house |
[Mar. 31st, 2009|09:32 pm] |
If I ever have the resources to build my house just the way I want it, I would build it out of stone: strong, fixed, immovable. It would be nearly square, a little wider than it is tall and a little taller than it is thick, with two storeys. The roof would be of slate stone, with a pitch appropriate to the climate, set off by a small classical moulding. There would be two windows flanking the door, and three on the second storey front, two on each storey on the sides, and three each on the back. The windows would be classically shaped, taller than wide and not too large, with carved stone frames and multi-paned windows with wooden mullions. Such a building would weather the storms of time. It would be a valuable thing to hand down to the next generation (whoever that may be), and defensible in a pinch. And it would be a clean house, as orderly and neatly swept as a Japanese shrine.
Chances are that I will never have the combination of energy, resources and determination to build a stone house. I'm more likely to drift from place to place during all the downhill slope of my life--as I did on the uphill slope--and end up living on social security, in a trailer parked on a highway median in some poor desolate sunbelt town like Raton, New Mexico, with bean cans and take-out boxes littering the floor. I'll walk on linoleum over thin plywood, and have walls of sheet aluminum and paper mache with pictures cut from old calendars hanging on them. It'll be sort of sad, really.
But perhaps, despite all that, I might start now with the home I have--as poor as it is, as ordinary and ugly as it is--sweeping it to make it clean and putting it in order. Perhaps I might begin to make a few plans about where I might build, and how. Just in case the chance should arise, against all odds, to have a stone house, and a family in it. |
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| Every act of life |
[Mar. 7th, 2009|06:52 am] |
The Baha'i fasting time has begun, when we neither eat nor drink from sunrise to sunset for a period of 19 days, and are supposed to meditate upon our lives, what we're doing here and what changes we might make to do it better. People who fast for religious reasons often feel under some obligation to explain why we do it: whether it has some medical virtue, or whether it makes those of us who are in comfortable circumstances more aware of the sufferings of the poor, or whether willing endurance of hardship helps us develop self discipline. And various answers could be framed along all those lines. But in fact the purpose of fasting, as of all our activities during this short and-often-inconvenient life, should be detachment from the material world (one might say escape from the traps that are set for us in the material world) and attraction to the source of reality which is mirrored in the things of this world, but not contained by any of them. Because we ourselves are an eternal source, reflected for a time in a material body which must, in the course of years, break down and go back to the earth.
In the past--and to some extent still today--spiritually minded people sought refuge from (what they called) the world by living in cloistered communities. In some cases they punished their bodies, believing that the body is evil and the source of sin. We are not asked to do that today; austerities that insult or damage our bodies and minds are not acceptable. The things of the world are not evil, in fact they are good things, because all creation is good. But they have their place, and they should not be allowed to rule over us. Choosing to abstain from some basic material need for a while can remind us that we are able to do so, which is helpful. The things we possess do not possess us. Growing plants turn their leaves toward the sun--the source of their nourishment--by compulsion: they don't have the choice to turn away. But humans have the power to choose whether to turn ourselves toward the source of our being, or to turn away from it and allow something unworthy to rule us. From the day we were born, our physical bodies have been running their course toward eventual reunion with the earth, but the greater part of us can never die in the earth, because it was never contained by the earth to begin with. Every act of life may be seen as an opportunity to approach that greater part. |
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| update |
[Jan. 24th, 2009|02:19 pm] |
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I have three stories to finish and send out this week. Making better progress on the novel & plan to finish it this year. Received some wonderful holiday cards from various friends. Hope you all are doing well. |
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