I Punctuate Myself

 I am, in large measure, the selfsame prose I write. I unroll myself in sentences and paragraphs. I punctuate myself. In my arranging and rearranging of images I'm like a child using newspaper to dress up as a king, and in the way I create rhythm with a sense of words I'm like a lunatic adorning my hair with dried flowers that are still alive in my dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 193

I think this passage jumped out at me because I've begun to write again. Now that I've made it to the other side of two student trips and Ramadan and the semester is coming to a close I can envision longer stretches of time when I can lose myself in writing. I've made myself a promise that I'm going to finish the epics book this summer, inshallah. Of course, I've made myself this promise before and failed (as I do in most things). Just thinking about it brings up all the insecurities that have plagued my writing for years. If I had half the confidence I seem to exude on a daily basis I would have finished four books by now. Instead, I faff around and never seem to  accomplish much of anything. I blame being busy (and it's not as if I'm not busy), but mainly I think it's a lack of confidence; and finishing the book, and its inevitable rejection, would simply justify and re-enforce all my profound self-loathing. To a certain degree I suppose Pessoa may have faced the same demons, with the obvious difference that he produced thousands and thousands of pages, both prose and poetry, the core of which was eventually turned into The Book of Disquiet a few decades after this death. The key to that statement being "a few decades after his death," of course. A few decades - if not years - after my death my memory and legacy will be as cold as two day old ashes in the wood stove.

Oddly, after saying that, one of the things I'm struggling with right now is another writing project. I've been kicking around this project that I've been calling "Ramadan in Winter," which I've discussed previously, and lately it's starting to come into view. I think in the end it's going to be more of a personal memoir of faith and converting at an older death and ruminations on aging - as compared to my original idea of a book solely on what Islam means as you age. I've started writing a few notes, but I need to keep at at arm's length until next fall.

Fridays

 The weather here in the #yankeehellhole is finally starting to break, which means the front porch has come back to life. I snapped this picture last Friday as we eased into the weekend.

I'm very happy and very blessed. Life is incredibly unpredictable.

Sheikh

 On the last two trips to Jordan, November 2022 and March 2023, we were fortunate to meet with a tribal sheikh in Petra. He hosted us in his house and fed us some delicious mansef (the national dish of Jordan). He's a wise, humble, and very gracious man, who sat and patiently answered questions from students on both trips. 

I look at death's door here, but I still love this picture. At the end of the session he said he wanted our picture together and proposed that I sleep over at his house on my next visit. That would be an extraordinary honor.

Post Ramadan Mischief

 Which my great friend Erik says would be a great name for a band. Yes, I've survived another Ramadan, and my dear friends Kevin and Marcelle took me out to El Gato for dinner to mark the occasion. As always I fasted, although I was a little more gentle on myself than in previous years (see previous blog post on general health); sometimes I started my fast a little later or ended it a little earlier; and I didn't fast on Easter Sunday - we were heading down to visit Janet's family and I thought passing on dinner at her mom's place would have been more performative than spiritual. 

And as my son noted, "Don't you and Marcelle have the same hair?"

It's hard to put into words what extraordinary friend Marcelle and Kevin have been to me over the years. I'm very blessed.

Some Ancient Djinn

 One of my students snapped this picture on the recent trip to Jordan. It was a bittersweet trip because it's the last student trip that I'll ever lead overseas. There are several reasons for this decision: I want to spend more time with Janet; the college simply makes it so hard to run the trips; and I simply can't do it anymore with my declining health. On this last trip I had to ride through the Istanbul airport on the return leg in a wheelchair, an event that I found even more humiliating than it probably was.

It was strange, although I suppose appropriate, that I spent so much time sitting there alone. It's one of my all-time favorite places on earth, perched above Suleyman's Rainbow Camp in the Wadi Rum. I'm sure I'll be back there again someday, inshallah in November, but one never knows. If that was it, well, the Wadi Rum owes me nothing else.

Huge News

 I guess it wasn't a total surprise - or even much of a surprise - but my son recently asked his girlfriend Ali to marry him. Naturally, I couldn't be happier or prouder. I shared the news with a friend of mine recently and she said, "Oh, is that the singer whose info you're always sharing on Facebook?" Yep, that's her. He seems happier and more contented than I've ever seen him, and that's all I could ever ask for.

I don't know if he's going to carry out his long-time threat to never have children or not. If he doesn't it's probably for the best because their children would simply be too beautiful. Of course, my experience has been that he'll be the last to know on that front. One day he'll come home and there will be a note on the counter, "Hey, G, you should probably drive to the hospital, I'm in labor."