Keys and comfort

To the desert, to the wadi, to the mountain, or to chill at home? I just love this question! My Thursday morning teen group has finally ended. I have just finished writing their reports, and emailed them off. Joe came around last night especially to show me how to make a tick using Microsoft Word. Bless him.Terrible, I haven't had to make ticks on the computer since I co-ordinated the childrens' courses at CfBT. I officially begged off the final day party. the theme is "The Circus", I am sure it would be the end of me. Each class reminds me a bit of a circus, and I am so done with that for now.

 I haven't been able to get away from the city for a while, and I am looking forward to some escapes again as the end of the semester draws near. Well, not that near, I'll still be pretty busy till mid July.
My student from Jalan whose family I love visiting, told me today that they are building an "isbah" in the desert and that I should come soon soon. This is a kind of a desert house made of palm fronds, usually open on one side.

Muscat is now approaching the 'sauna stage', but I am still one of the die-hards having lunch outside with the geologists. The sweat is almost dripping into our plates of food, but we are tough!
So, the desert, in contrast, is dry and really nice at night. The afternoons can be pretty windy, but the sunsets are beautiful and the place is quiet. No tourists dunebashing and destroying the peace.

I am happy, the week has flown, I only just realised that I never wrote much about this week. The dinner in the Chedi with the girls was really lovely last Wednesday. I am truly enjoying my membership there and going really regularly for a swim in the sea and the pool. Yesterday in my derailed state I went first to Claire who picked me up and brushed me off, and then straight to the Chedi where I was swimming in the sea at sunset and sucking down a tall mochito. Perfect.

In any case, back to last Wednesday.. I came out of that superb dinner to find that I had lost my keys! My lovely Omani neighbours are supposed to have a spare house key, but they couldn't find it. Oh my goodness, Joe to the rescue again. He left his party and came to save me, screwing off the burglar bars of my back window. Take it from me peops, have spare keys for your house and car hidden in useful places. It was a little test I didn't need.

Monica came from the UAE on Thursday and it was wonderful to catch up. We were neighbours for 5 years, close friends for the last two and I really miss her. This is all part of the expat lifestyle I guess, people coming and going, and it is difficult to know who the keepers are, but Monica is definitely one of them.
We were up most of the night and luckily I could rest on Friday.
I went to the 'Beatification Saloon' in the afternoon and decided to go to join the taco thing with a group of South Africans at Left Bank. I had many reservations about this, I was feeling a bit anti-social, Left Bank is far too trendy for me and I usually attempt to avoid my own kind when out of South Africa. They can be so scary. I changed my outfit about 17 times, even resorted to ironing for the first time in 5 years. As my mother used to say, "the 'casually flung together look', so difficult to achieve."

But all worked out well, the people were fine, I enjoyed speaking my language, the tacos turned out to be tappas, which reminded me of my awesome time in Spain last summer. I felt much better after a bloody Mary and had such a good laugh when the the hill on which the restaurant is situated was compared to a certain spot in Bloemfontein.

 It reminded me of the path I have come, the way I have walked, and how only a few years ago Muscat was just an exotic name on a map. Now it is home.

Autobiography in Five Chapters

I thought my inner GPS was sending me on my way to a roaring party, and in contrast I have found myself very busy avoiding all sorts of crazy potholes, unexpected obstacles, old patterns and thorns on my path, having to focus carefully on where I put my little feet. I suddenly landed in the wrong film, 'When Harry met Sally' turned into 'Apocalypse Now' and I had to regroup really quickly. Luckily this lady has a bit of a warrior spirit behind the pussycat facade and I am negotiating the way just fine. Don't know what happened to the GPS, alias my unfailing intuition, but clearly a little blip in the system. Will let you know once I hit the freeway again! As they say, 'all roads lead to the same party'. 

A friend sent me an email last night which reminded me so much of this mindblowing quote from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying which I  immediately  would like to share. It will keep you going till I am back in full swing.

1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost... I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in...it is a habit.
My eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

Wishing you all to leapfrog over the holes of your old habits and find a beautiful new road to explore.

My space

I am sitting in a room; the paint on the walls starts to peal, like flames are burning, melting it away.

Behind the transparent walls is the cosmos in all of its glory and infinity; the purples and blacks and oranges of the planets and the nebulae and the supernovas .  I am sitting in the centre of the universe, I am floating in space. I am in awe, I am filled with joy.

The vision lasts only a split second; I will remember it as long as I live.

burning

It is the burning of the heart that I want;
it is the burning that is everthing
more precious than the empire of the world
because it calls God secretly in the night.

RUMI

Say no more!

Encountering the sacred

This is a story of mine from a while back, some of you may know it already, but I thought it would be good to share it here: 

I experienced the sacred today in the form of a battered up cat that I found under a truck as I was driving out of the car park at work.

He was finished, lying in his own urine, emaciated, and covered with flies and ants, maggots on his face. But he was still breathing.

I knew that this was my task, to love him for the last hours of his life.

I don’t work Thursdays, woke up feeling very reclusive, and decided I had to go in to prepare for Saturday. The students arrive, and I feel like an actress a couple of nights before opening night. No matter how many times you have experienced the curtain going up, you always get the rush, and you need to stay calm and focused before. I am alone in the office, alone on the campus, I shuffle papers, and I feel better.

I always have a very clear sense of those specific souls being put in my care, that I have something specific to bring across to them and I am always in a state of prayerfulness before.

I see this cat soul and immediately begin to protest, ‘No God  no, I have just had this most exceedingly vulnerable week. All I want to do now is put my costume on and go into the sea and then soak up the sun and be alone and heal and heal.’

To be honest I almost drive away, but I know that this is my task.

I call my animal loving friend who is busy with her weekly shop. Great. She gives me a number of the nearest vet.. I call and she says I can bring him by at 5pm. Again the voice in my head says, ‘He is dying leave him, that’s 3 hours away’. But my heart is breaking and knows that there is no way I can let him die alone.

No one deserves to die alone. Suddenly my Arabic teacher is there at my elbow. We communicate in German. I tell him I don’t know what to do. He says we don’t respect the animals because they can’t express their feelings to us. He says that if I care for animals this is a sign I care for people too. I say we all have souls. What I  don’t say is that I also believe that the trees, rocks and water have souls. I tell him that in my experience, the humans that have suffered the most are silent too, because they are so tired of talking, no one hears them.

But my ears are open, my heart is open, I am awake, and I am so thankful for that.

I assure Herr Ahmed he can leave. The cat is still breathing and moving his head to get rid of the flies. I pray with my whole heart that he dies, but he is hanging on for dear life. He looks like he was a real ginger monster, and now he is a soul struggling to cross over, just like any soul who has finished their work on earth.

I think of the little bit of hospice help I did in Germany, and the old people I took care of in England. And I know we are all the same. The soul clings to this life like a bee to a sugary stamen. I admire this cat. I don’t admire myself, I am still shirking from the task. I look around.

 An angel has appeared from nowhere. His car has a UAE number plate, he is wearing jeans and is smoking a cigarette and staring at the sea. I see him immediately, I mean truly see, and engage with him.. He helps me to get the cat from under the truck. We put him in my car on the front seat and cover him with the towel, my swimming towel. The last music he hears in his life is Led Zeppelin. I hope he liked it!

He is cold and he smells, but he is breathing and I find this so sublimely beautiful. The angel says, ‘Be careful of diseases’, and I respond ‘I have no problem with that’. I touch him softly and tell him he will be mine and I will be his, till it's time to go.

He spends the last hours of his life on my kitchen table in an open box. I am pottering around and telling him what a ginga beauty he is and how smelly he is. My kitchen is green, quiet and cool and I hope he doesn’t mind me joking with him. I don’t joke with him about the maggots on his face, because I don’t want him to know how bad it really is.  I tell him how strong and courageous he is and how much I admire him. I tell him my mother, Hester, the Great Cat Mother of the Cape, will be there to meet him and that he should run toward the Light with all his might.

Later I drive him to the vet; I have never met her before.. She is so tender with him, shaves a little patch on his foreleg and as she injects the green liquid, she says, ‘I am so sorry, so sorry’.

I have my hand on his ribs and I push my love into him as he breathes his last breath. He lets out his last meow; I am astounded at his life force. My breath sticks in my throat.

I am privileged and in awe.

I cry. I am glad I did not run away. I helped a soul have a good death. Thank you thank you. The vet kisses me and we get on with our lives.

Yes, one of my encounters with the sacred today.

Confetti and sun salutation

I'm alone in the office and its quiet,  and it is almoooost the weekend. I am just sorting out a few papers and clearing my desk, mostly into the bin. It was starting to buckle under the papers. My colleagues' desks always look so pristene, but that's just not me. We have a crazy sandstorm in Muscat today, as I was driving to work, the dust, bougainvillaea petals aand leaves were blowing like confetti all over the road.

I woke up feeling quite upbeat this morning. Very unusual for moi. Bear, the bikini boy, had jumped onto the bedside table in the middle of the night and knocked off several items, namely the alarm clock, the phone, my panadol nights and several pens, purple of course. I threw him out of the room and locked the door, yes locked. He has a way of jumping up to the door handle and opening the door otherwise. Weird cat.

So, when I woke up, I was surprised to see that it was an hour later than it should be. Mmmmm, I didn't check that the alarm was still properly set before going back to sleep. Luckily I didn't have any classes, so didn't have to rush around in a blind panic. The extra hour in bed probably did me some good! I also had a lovely conversation with Junaline last night. I am always carrying on about wanting to incorporate yoga in my life, and I never do, so she asked me last night if I wouldn't start with one sun salutation in the morning. One? Well, in the morning, no, impossible. One? What's the use of one? Why not in the morning if it is only one, and one is a start, isn't it? Well, yeeeees.

I had the internet on, and thought I would check my office mail just to see if my boss hadn't called some meeting or something else important I should know about. Can you believe that I only just recently learnt how to check my office mail from another computer. What a handy little thing to know!

As I was logging in, the Skype thingie started flashing.. what?? Skype is supposed to be blocked. Did someone unblock Skype in Oman, what happened? I suppose I should actually be keeping my big mouth shut. But I am relatively sure that big brother is not reading my blog.. mmm, how can I be sure? Any case, there was Shlomit, my soulmate from Australia calling to me from cyberspace. I didn't have headphones handy, but we just had a tiny chat and it was just excellent.

After that I was so happy, which is so unusual for me in the moring that I immediately thought that I would do the one sun salutation. It was great, it was perfect. My body protested and creaked and squeeked, but I enjoyed it. I will do another one tomorrow!
Take it from me friends, no small step is too small. Sneak that tiny change up onto yourself. I will keep you posted, I hope to keep up the sun salutations for 21 days, who know I might even progress to 2 or 3 or 4?

I watched a little television last night, and caught a small scene in some or other soap where a woman was giving a  male friend who was in love a bit of advice. She said, don't ever resist change in your life that could possible influence it for the good. Isn't it incredible how we resist change, how I can even resist one salutation..yet change is the only stable thing in our lives. Talk about paradox. I like that, I wrote it down, Don't resist the change that could transform your whole life for the better. Breathe and let go.

Happy weekend! Dinner at the Chedi with the girls tonight, my beloved ex-neighbour Monica from the UAE tomorrow, and  a possible taco fest with Joe on Friday. Can only be good.

Begin it

This has to be the best inspiring quote of all times. Doing me a lot of good at the moment, nurturing all my dreams and visions. Thanks June for reminding me again. I have often discussed it with my students over the years. Bless Goethe for his wonderful poetry

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative and creation,

There is one elementary truth

The ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sort of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of event issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man  (or woman) could have dreamed would come his (or her) way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe