Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The blog name comes from something I wrote shortly after D. died. Something about my thoughts like "Footless sparrows flapping against the black cardboard covers of my skull."
During New Years, I was out to Fallika Island with a visitor from Perth. We talked at great length, and at one point I wandered away to sit on a dusty bench while he photographed a bombed-out house. (Or took a pee.)
(Fallika Island was left largely untouched after the Iraq invasion)
I can still see him stepping over debris as he returned. "Here" he said, handing me the bird in the picture. "It better go up somewhere." A footless rubber sparrow, a child's toy.
Kuwait was liberated from the Iraqis exactly a month after my brother's death.
*******
I don't have a favorite memory of T. She runs through everything I do and say; to describe her impact on my life would be like trying to map out a system of veins and capillaries between stars. If I have a sense of self, if I am able to survive alone in a culture that does not place a high value on tolerance and unconditional love (like I do now), it is because I have been thoroughly loved and accepted for who I am by T. Not just by T, but by T and the people she collected around her. who simply never conceived of anything less.
I actually never thought about it until this minute, but how odd for me to be here.
Now I am thinking of a chat I had in another friend's car...his wife disapproved of the "Kuwait Bashing" that had gone on at a party earlier in the week, tone it down in the future, etc. I have my weak spots and spots of low and absurdly low tolerance. One of them would be wealthy people. Another would be people who choose to remain ignorant. A third would be wealthy people who choose to remain ignorant and sub-educated despite sitting on billions in oil money and resources. I'm only human.
I will always accept the person in front of me for exactly who they are, no questions asked. It also means I will demand that they be more than who they think they are.
During New Years, I was out to Fallika Island with a visitor from Perth. We talked at great length, and at one point I wandered away to sit on a dusty bench while he photographed a bombed-out house. (Or took a pee.)
(Fallika Island was left largely untouched after the Iraq invasion)
I can still see him stepping over debris as he returned. "Here" he said, handing me the bird in the picture. "It better go up somewhere." A footless rubber sparrow, a child's toy.
Kuwait was liberated from the Iraqis exactly a month after my brother's death.
*******
I don't have a favorite memory of T. She runs through everything I do and say; to describe her impact on my life would be like trying to map out a system of veins and capillaries between stars. If I have a sense of self, if I am able to survive alone in a culture that does not place a high value on tolerance and unconditional love (like I do now), it is because I have been thoroughly loved and accepted for who I am by T. Not just by T, but by T and the people she collected around her. who simply never conceived of anything less.
I actually never thought about it until this minute, but how odd for me to be here.
Now I am thinking of a chat I had in another friend's car...his wife disapproved of the "Kuwait Bashing" that had gone on at a party earlier in the week, tone it down in the future, etc. I have my weak spots and spots of low and absurdly low tolerance. One of them would be wealthy people. Another would be people who choose to remain ignorant. A third would be wealthy people who choose to remain ignorant and sub-educated despite sitting on billions in oil money and resources. I'm only human.
I will always accept the person in front of me for exactly who they are, no questions asked. It also means I will demand that they be more than who they think they are.
Monday, February 16, 2009
"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody is around- nobody big, I mean- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff- I mean, if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd like to be."
Catcher In The Rye
Catcher In The Rye
I feel partially melted to the bed, I'm so tired.
I don't know how I went through this before. I mean, I know I did because I recognize the fatigue; forgetting to eat and then eating too much of the closest wrong thing; dropping everything to stare into space. At least this time I'm aware- one burger tastes good at the time, one every day will not. Cigarettes still taste like shit, even if the people you're smoking with make you feel better. There is still life to live, even if the one person in the whole world you could never think of their heart stopping (how could that heart, T's heart, simply...stop?) has indeed stopped.
It's the most staggering oxymoron. T's heart. Stopped.
I think in the back of my mind I've been waiting for the four horseman to pull up next to me at the stoplight, all week. Watching the sun slide down my sky into S. and L. and C'las, my first thought was "How can a sun rise anywhere in a world without T?"
When my brother died in 1992, he left the house in the middle of the night. We woke up to an empty bed. Hideous, but there was a mercy to it, that in my own mind for years I was able to think that he had just gone off somewhere and that at some point I'd run into him (my oldest brother had done something like that when I was 14). It was enough to get me out of adolescence and moving towards adulthood with a grain of sanity.
Seventeen years later and I'm living in an Islamic country, looking out the window at the world sliding away from a sun that rises in a world without T. I have everything to tell me that T is right there when I need it- The Law of The Conservation of Energy, Islam, Christianity, Pop Rocks.
No amount of these things will fill the empty seat next to me. No hand to pass those Pop Rocks.
A fellow teacher about...7 years ago...told me that the one drive more powerful than sex is the drive for shared experience between humans. No one had put it to me quite that way before, but yes.
I don't know how I went through this before. I mean, I know I did because I recognize the fatigue; forgetting to eat and then eating too much of the closest wrong thing; dropping everything to stare into space. At least this time I'm aware- one burger tastes good at the time, one every day will not. Cigarettes still taste like shit, even if the people you're smoking with make you feel better. There is still life to live, even if the one person in the whole world you could never think of their heart stopping (how could that heart, T's heart, simply...stop?) has indeed stopped.
It's the most staggering oxymoron. T's heart. Stopped.
I think in the back of my mind I've been waiting for the four horseman to pull up next to me at the stoplight, all week. Watching the sun slide down my sky into S. and L. and C'las, my first thought was "How can a sun rise anywhere in a world without T?"
When my brother died in 1992, he left the house in the middle of the night. We woke up to an empty bed. Hideous, but there was a mercy to it, that in my own mind for years I was able to think that he had just gone off somewhere and that at some point I'd run into him (my oldest brother had done something like that when I was 14). It was enough to get me out of adolescence and moving towards adulthood with a grain of sanity.
Seventeen years later and I'm living in an Islamic country, looking out the window at the world sliding away from a sun that rises in a world without T. I have everything to tell me that T is right there when I need it- The Law of The Conservation of Energy, Islam, Christianity, Pop Rocks.
No amount of these things will fill the empty seat next to me. No hand to pass those Pop Rocks.
A fellow teacher about...7 years ago...told me that the one drive more powerful than sex is the drive for shared experience between humans. No one had put it to me quite that way before, but yes.
That sounded more arrogant than I meant- which is simply, to add and balance this to my life as carefully as possible.
A long time ago there was this TV program, Amazing Stories. I think Steven Spielberg had something to do with it but I don't remember. Anyway, one story featured this sadistic teacher who would punish his students by stacking books in their hands, arms outstretched to the sides and hell to pay if they dropped them. I don't remember the end, only the teacher naming titles as he stacked them in each hand.
I feel like that student sometimes.
A long time ago there was this TV program, Amazing Stories. I think Steven Spielberg had something to do with it but I don't remember. Anyway, one story featured this sadistic teacher who would punish his students by stacking books in their hands, arms outstretched to the sides and hell to pay if they dropped them. I don't remember the end, only the teacher naming titles as he stacked them in each hand.
I feel like that student sometimes.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
This
would be the second time that I've lost someone close within three weeks of my birthday and I'm getting slightly nervous. If you want to stretch it to eight or so weeks you could mark it up to the season and include my Grandma, making the winter sort of bottom heavy for death. I'd like to give fate the benefit of the doubt, but there really aren't any notable endings for me in April or July or even October. The older I get, the more I'd really like to start spreading this out over the year a little. I've still got a pal in the middle of Baghdad, dodging carbombs as of last week...
If there is any good news to be had with third time around, I don't repress it any more. I was on holiday at moment, and had made a brief outing for a soft ice cream cone, before going to a friend and tutoring her recalcitrant teen for an upcoming science test. I had slipped a disc in my back about ten days before and I came home to rest before going back out.
It was one glance at the message and I burst into tears. No more sitting stunned and wandering around in my head while my vision telescopes out. I still had ice cream all over my mouth.
If there is any good news to be had with third time around, I don't repress it any more. I was on holiday at moment, and had made a brief outing for a soft ice cream cone, before going to a friend and tutoring her recalcitrant teen for an upcoming science test. I had slipped a disc in my back about ten days before and I came home to rest before going back out.
It was one glance at the message and I burst into tears. No more sitting stunned and wandering around in my head while my vision telescopes out. I still had ice cream all over my mouth.
Approximately 6 Days, Sixteen Hours
and forty minutes since I sat down at my computer and read that T had passed. On the other side of the world.
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