Vision

I don't know who wrote this but I love it:

May a good vision catch me

May a benevolent vision take hold of me

And move me

May a deep and full vision come over me

And burst open around me

May a luminous vision inform me, enfold me.

May I awaken into a story that surrounds,

May I awake into a beautiful story.

May the wondrous story find me:

May the wildness that makes beauty

Arise between two lovers arise

Beautifully between my body

And the body of this land

Between my flesh and the flesh of this earth

Here and now

On this day

May I taste something sacred.

So Be It.

Since roughly last October I have been envolved in a strange passport dilemma which keeps getting worse and not better.

 I had an appointment at the British Consulate here to swear an afidavit to get one step further on the track of divorcing.On that fated morning, the passport was nowhere to be found. I only ever keep it in my bedside table, and it was NOT THERE.
 I have to cancel the appointment, then later search high and low with no result.
I am lucky, really lucky, as the lady at the consulate agrees to do the swearing process with copies of my now 'temporary miss-placed' passport. May I add at this point, that there is only one person at the consulate in Muscat who can do it, so I have already waited 2 weeks while she was out of the country.

Wow. The emotion hits me by surprise as I hold the Bible in the right hand and my other on the divorce papers.
Whar bitter-sweet mixed feeling.
I leave the consulate with the sun on my back, feeling melancholy and relief and wondering if it is too early for some chilled alcoholic beverage.

Anyway, I am in complete denial about the passport and I am convinced it has slipped behind something or under something. I comb the house in stages and then I comb the house again. I pretend to ignore the issue.
 Then comes the note from the lawyer that the court has thrown out the papers for some unknown reason.
 I mean this is the simplest divorce in the history of divorces, no money, no children ,no property, nothing, but still some problem with the formulation of the papers. I can't say I am really blaming the lawyer, but yes, I am blaming the lawyer.

He has to redraft the papers and send them again and I have to swear the afidavit again. But to do it without a passport? They won't use the copies again, I should have reported it missing by now and have applied for a replacement.

Up to that point I had spent a lot of time blaming Andy, and then the lawyer, and then suddenly and ironically all the blame shifted to me in one of those 'fine line' moments.

By now it is close to Christmas and I am booked to spend a week in Germany with my friends Norbert and Brigitte enjoying a sublime Christmas in the snow eating traditional cookies and drinking schnaps.

What to do?

 I am going to have a cup of tea with melktert now... to be continued.....

a fine line

Have you ever noticed how you tell people stories and then you realise that you are telling them so that you can hear them yourself? Have you noticed how the glass turns from half full to half empty overnight or even in a split second?
I often think about how fine the line is between safe, happy, secure and crying dithering wreck!

So this is a story I have found myself telling quite often recently.

A father had twin sons, the one was an optimist and the other a pessimist. On the ocassion of the boys' 10th birthday, the father decided to play a little game.
Now the pessimist brother had his heart set on a beautiful bicycle, and the optimist who was an animal lover, had been asking for his own pony.
The father filled the pessimist's room with wrapped presents, but no bicycle. He filled the optimist's room with horse manure.

On the morning of the birthday, the father first went to wish the pessimist, who was sitting in the middle of his presents, ripping paper, yelling and feeling very sorry for himself.
"Where's my bike daddy, where is my bike?"
Proceeding down the hall to wish the optimist twin a happy birthday, the father was greeted by laughing and giggling.
He opened the door and said, 'Happy birthday, son, why are you so happy?'

The son replied as he dug joyfully through the manure, 'Thanks dad, thanks dad, with all this shit there must be a pony in here somewhere!'

Chocolate and helicopters

The only thing better than a good friend, is a good friend with chocolate.

I had a great conversation yesterday with a friend reminding me of one of Hester Clark's stories. You can be sure to be hearing many of those in times to come.

My mother always used to say,
'Your blessings are flying around your head like pink helicopters, just dying to land and bring exhuberance to your life..  but you are too stupid to open your heart and put on the landing lights.'

So my wish to me and you before this well-deserved Muscat weekend is that we all find our ways to switch on the landing lights of our hearts and invite those blessings to land.

May one of those blessing be a friend at the door with chocolate... or champage...or both!

I am going to listen to the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra  at the Al Bustan Palace hotel with a colleague tonight. We shall be enjoying a Far Eastern buffet with champagne before. I look forward to wearing my fishnets. 

Illnesses

I have to, have to, have to share a text I received from one of my students today. She has been absent for several days. I sent her an sms earlier in the moring to say that I was worried about her.

'Hi my darling. How are you? Really I am so happy for ask. I am fine but I think I have chicken box. I miss you a lot'.

 May I never be struck down by that affliction. Say no more.

Sunshine

I have a special relationship with the people that work in the library at my university. I think that is because I love people who touch books every day and let books touch them.

We have such a challenge as educators, as the young people just don't read at all, and have no relationship to printed material. They don't know how to approach a book, they don't know how to touch a book, stroke it, ask reverently for entry.... let alone how to read it, absorb it, study from it or grow because of it. It is an issue I am talking to my colleagues about all the time.

I was so desperate about it recently that I went to the one Borders in Muscat ( Halleluja!) and bought 18 copies of the Alchemist and am reading it with my Language and Culture class. I have been showing them how to hold, smell, open, sense, start to make friends with it...
Several of them have never bought a book or owned a book personally in their lives other than the Holy Quran. These are bachelor students majoring in Geosciences, and others in IT.

May I add that I am supposed to be doing listening and note-taking, summary writing and seminar skills with them. Naughty me. And just in case my boss is following this blog,.. I do promise to cover all of the above before the end of the semester.Oh, and did you ask me recently why my attendance is almost always complete, even at 3.30pm in the afternoon?

I'm dwelling off the point.
I an wearing an Omani dress today. I have been debating with myself for a few months about whether this is appropriate dress or not for lecturing. But it is light and comfortable, colorful and certainly not against the dress code ( a different topic entirely). I thought to myself, if I can't carry it off, who can?
In any case, I walked into the library and started doing some copies. I  also started having a little conversation with Jovelyn, our lovely Filipino library lady. Muneer, the other librarian on duty was quiet behind his desk.
In a lull in the exchange, he looked up and asked with a straight face, 'Stefani, have you noticed that it is quite cloudy today?' It is  indeed quite cloudy and muggy today and I answered in the affirmative.
With a little smile on his face, he quipped, 'That's because the sunshine just walked into this library'.

I do love Oman!

And I have to be honest and say that I blushed. What a great feeling!

When last did you blush from your little toe up?

Another one by Brian Patten

He has been one of my favourite poets for more than half my life. I always keep a book of poems on my desk, next to my rocks. Do you sometimes read something and wish you had written it yourself?

Poem written in the street on a rainy evening

Everything I lost was found again.
I tasted wine in my mouth.
My heart was like a firefly; it moved
Through the darkest objects laughing

There were many reasons why this was happening
But I never stopped to think about them.
I could have said it was your face,
Could have said I'd drunk something idiotic,

But no one reason was sufficient,
No one reason was relevant;
My joy gobbled up by dull surroundings
But there was enough of it.

A feast was spread; a world
Was suddenly made edible.
And there was forever to taste it.

On writing

As most of you know, one of my passions in life is India, such a pity I haven't had the opportunuty to visit in a long time. My intention is to visit the backwaters of Kerala soon, so let me know if anyone would like to join me! Need the passport first of course....

In one of my favourite places, Pushkar, place of vegetarians, huge yearly camel fair, awesome spiritual festivals and very decent mind-altering substances, lives a soothsayer. This was 1996, and I strolled with my friend Tricia past the door where he sat . I am sure it was the day that we walked by the nose-piercing joint at least 7 times!
It seemed the most natural thing to sit down with this gentle soul with the translucent eyes and give him my hand.

"You are a writer", he says emphatically and smoothly, no question in his voice.
My instinctual gutlevel response, " Yes, I know... I am".
His reply," So what are you writing?"

This was not the first or the last time that I received a similar message from the forces that be.

This is the cosmic joke of course. I had no answer. I can think about something for half my life and compose stories and poems in my head and appreciate beautiful rhythms and words and compositions, but if I don't put the pen to paper....or the finger to the keyboard...

So nice to be with you, and to be doing this to be in touch with you, but also to be in touch with me.

The sea is beautiful today and the temperature is rising. My students are in class writing about Zamzam water. I'll tell you about it later.

The small dragon

PDF

I`ve found a small dragon in the woodshed.

Think it must have come from deep inside a forest

because it`s damp and green and leaves

are still reflecting in its eyes.

I fed it on many things, tried grass,

the roots of stars, hazel- nut and dandelion,

but it stared up at me as if to say, I need

foods you can`t provide.

It made a nest among the coal,

not unlike a bird`s but larger,

it is out of place here

and is quite silent.

If you believed in it I would come

hurrying to your house to let you share my wonder,

but I want instead to see

if you yourself will pass this way.

Brian Patten

Cameos

Some days I feel like a collector of images and impressions, the blessings lie in the small details of color and taste.A vanilla pudding, the texture of the bread's crust, Leo's fur against my cheek. he is usually a silent cat, so his spontaneous purring makes me so happy. Shefa who was staying with me for a while said that he was extremely articulate when I was not around!
 Sitting in my newly decorated front room and just savouring the colors the gold honey mustard, and rich wine burgundy.

I sat with my good friend in the break, we often communicate without words, just gestures. To the studetns who wlak by this often seems strange. In this instance we were talking,  however,and as we were parting said the usual cliche, keep in touch.
I said,'We will keep in touch like praying hands'.
I often wonder where these words come from!

My friend whose nickname is Tiger, describing himself. 'When I am sleeping with my two girls I feel like a mother duck with her chicks.' His face softens. How the innocent unconditional love of babes tames the wild cat.

I discovered quite late in my life that I have vertigo. This coming from someone who is determined to try skydiving in this lifetime! I had a dream during my afternoon nap on Friday. I was on the viewing platform of a skyscraper, looking over a vast blue city; sitting, hugging my knees. I felt incredible calm and free,enjoying the view, no fear. Someone with me, I don't know who.

Thinking of Nic Cage in City of Angels now.

I'm off to send yet another fax concerning my passport. Wish me luck.