That wonderful silly goose!

Congratulations to my Silly Goose who keeps laying beautiful golden Eggs! An A in Philosophy this time! Awsome!

An internet visit on St. Nicholas Day

Peter the Pirate and the Christmas Ship

This is the first of the three St. Nicholas Day stories that I wrote to my Children. I wrote the first two stories many years ago and would read them on the eve of St. Nicholas day. Last year I posted the third story because it was the last of the three and my children had never heard it before, so I wanted to share it with them from my residence in Abu Dhabi and thus try to keep something of our St. Nicholas Day tradition alive.

So this is now my third Christmas here in this land of sand and palm trees, where the snow never falls and there’s never a hope of a real pine tree. This year, I’m backing up to create this Audio story of “Peter the Pirate and the Christmas Ship” the first of the three. There are several more Peter the Pirate stories other than the Christmas stories. I started writing them long before Johnny Depp appeared on the screen in Pirates of the Caribbean as I said last year. If anything serves as an inspiration for the Peter the Pirate stories it is not the present love of pirates from my favorite movies, but from the Playmobile Pirates that belonged to my son Peter when he was a little boy and the time when we played with them together in the basement of an old house behind Van Weiren Hardware on the North Side of Lake Macatawa in Holland, Michigan. We had a great time doing that and these fantasy stories, as we played them, developed into night-time stories and later into the ballads/stories in verse that they became.

Thanksgiving 2009 Pictures by Chris Jolliffe

Thanksgiving was not exactly the evening gather around the table event this year that it was the last year. I invited everyone I could think of in the villas to come and was afraid I would have way too many people. That and it is the beginning of Eid here and everyone is going to have to rush off to the airports and vacation to all parts of the world. I was busy all day and didn't have time to put on a nicer shirt and slacks like I prefer for thanksgiving but having done it rather last minute and during the day like this it seemed more appropriate anyway. I'm really not able to exactly recreate the American family Thanksgiving completely anyway. Sand, fair weather and sunshine, palm trees instead of dead trees and a chill in the air, smoke coming from chimneys. I was pretty much the only American there and so I'm the only one who really knows what it is to celebrate Thanksgiving. I had to tell several people about Pilgrims, Indians and the hard first year that they faced at Plymouth. There was one other American who came to Thanksgiving and she had to come late after everyone left to get some food and leave.



I did manage Turkey, but I searched everywhere for pumpkin pulp. But it seems to be almost completely unknown here. To top it off most of the hundreds of boys who stock the shelves in the supermarkets here speak very poor English:

"Do you have pumpkin pulp?"


Blank look. Okay, I think, pulp might be a stretch.


"You know Libby's canned pumpkin?" Libby's is known to them and they ought to know canned. Still I get a blank look."

I simply repeat. "Pumpkin. Pumpkin pulp. In a can."

"Pumpkin? Yes, yes, pumpkin" he smiles and says as if finally recalling the word. I follow him and get hopeful until he leads me down to the snack isle and starts to point at something. I finally get close to see what it is.

"No, no, not pumpkin seeds, pumpkin pulp, in a can."

He looks puzzled and a little frustrated, perhaps even disappointed. A lot of the Indian workers here have taken on a role of subservience that has always bothered me. They address you as "sir" not like American workers do, but in a way that is obligatory to rich noblemen. I swear you could ask one on a street to shine your shoes for you and they would be likely to do it for you. I didn't grow up with a cast system. I grew up with the idea that all men are created equal. He takes me to someone in the store who is slightly better at English and he, in turn, leads me to the canned pie filling which is neither near the canned fruit, nor the canned vegetables. There is canned blueberry filling, canned peach filling, canned apple filling, canned everything except pumpkin pulp.

I thanked him politely and settled on pecan pie.

The pecans were expensive A cupful or so was about twenty-Dirhams and they weren't easy to find either.

Then there is the problem of my two temperature oven. The two temperatures are off and hotter-than-hell. I have to light the oven because the pilot doesn't work and then I have to visually turn it down to the lowest possible point before it goes out and leave it there. Still it burned the outside of my pecan pie and left the inside like fluid. I wrapped it up again and managed to get the insides to cook to an acceptable solid.



The stuffing worked out and was pretty good. I had a turkey and two butterball turkey breast packets. The packets were great, but the turkey meat was chewier than I would have liked. Still it was all pretty good. People brought wine, chocolates, deserts, salads, and Maureen, bless her heart, brought a sweet potato dish which was perfect for Thanksgiving.

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapters 12 & 13

I'm running behind on my usual installments of the Ghost in the Cloud series. Chapter 12 goes back to the original character Randall who created the Ghost in the Cloud when he attempted to up load the consciousness of his friend and partner Dr. Jack Rickerts. The Ghost, Jack, has begun to have inexplicable emotions which he knows full well is not possible given that he has no biological brain or adrenal gland, no limbic system, and no body chemistry at all. How can an entity that has no body feel anything? I have in mind Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein monster whose monster nature was not born out of an attempt to play God by Victor Frankenstein as many misunderstand it, but out of his abandonment of his creature. The Frankenstein story is really a tragic father and son story. Jack the ghost, finds himself wanting something from Randall and is full of feelings he doesn’t understand and cannot account for but possessing an insatiable curiosity, he is compelled to understand them. Chapter 13 continues Angelina's quest to find her father. At the moment she is seeking help from an ancient Druid with Jerry Garcia glasses and a love of Rock 'n Roll.

The Gracile Knight

It is said that three knights obtained the Holy Grail, Sir Galahad, Sir Percival, and Sir Bors, all being perfect in virtue (Sir Lancelot having almost achieved it but failed because he could never let go of his desire for Guinevere the King’s wife). But then there is also the tale of the Gracile Knight who, as he quested for the Holy Grail, became lost forever in an enchanted forest of no return. When asked of his fate, people would say, “It pleaseth God,” meaning that they did not know what became of him and that his loss had been the will of God. So no one ever knew what became of the Gracile Knight until I dreamed of him. And this was my dream:

The Gracile Knight was sitting in his armor with sweat dripping from his curls. He had cuts and bruises on his cheek and brows from his many adventures. He was not alone as he sat before the fire in that modest hall. The lady of that castle sat near him and listened patiently to his tale of failure as he spoke of his adventures and misfortunes. She was passing fair, but he did not notice this, being absorbed in his woes. She listened for the longest time. At last he finished by asking the air, what was the meaning of it all, as if he no longer wished to live, having failed to either find the Holy Grail or his way home.
She looked him a long time and finally said, “Wait and I will return in but a moment’s time.”

When she returned she had a purple violet in her hands. He saw it, but such was his foul frame of mind that he only thought it a shame that she had plucked it because now it would die all the sooner.

“What is the meaning of this flower?” She asked.

“It pleaseth God, my lady.” He shrugged because he didn’t know and was in a dejected state of mind.

“Aye, in truth it pleaseth God. And so do I; and so do you. It grows, it blossoms, it is beautiful, and then it is gone. And so shall I, and so shall you.

She said no more for the Holy Grail had found him.

Tall Ships in the Bathtub

There are tall ships in the bathtub
And pirates on the soap
There are yellow rubber duckies
Attacking without stop.

The pirates dive down quickly
Beneath the bubble foam
The Duckies cannot find them
In the thickness of the loam

And to the ships the pirates,
Their advantage they resume,
And on those yellow duckies
They fire their canons—boom!

Those monstrous rubber duckies
Are forced to make retreat
And waddle on the porcelain tub
Though they haven’t any feet.

Poker with God

The Wild Frog

Thomas shouted to his dad
“That’s the best dang frog I’ve ever had
Over there on the lily pad!
My old frog, he got away.
Poor old frog he couldn’t stay
Now he’s gone and I can’t play.
He is where the cattails sing ;
Where tadpoles swim and horseflies sting;
Where he is free and he is king!”

Little Orphant Annie

This is the classic poem by James Wibcomb Riley. I had quite a few responses on facebook when I posted it there. Many of the comments had to do with memories of mothers reciting the poem. One could argue that it belongs to the literature of the superego as a moral tale that parents like to tell their children to get them to be obedient, but I think Riley meant them more for fun than anything and for the love of a good scary story. “and we has the mostest fun a listenin’ to the witch tales that Annie tells about…” he also addresses the poem to “all the lovely bad ones” meaning the more ornery children almost preferring them to “the good ones—yes the good ones too….” As a kid, listening to my mother recite it to me, I got a good chill from it. It was the same kind of chill that get when I went to the “B” scary movies at the old theatre in Mooresville, Indiana where I grew up. I loved a good chill and that good chill that I am talking about from my childhood is a very different thing from the blood and gore of movies today that seem to be obsessed with all the psychological aspects and realism in the gore. But still, I think that there is nothing like those good old ghost stories. These stories suggested to me that there was more in this universe than the eye could see. It was scary—yes, but there was a kind of mystery, awe and wonder in it too.

The Name of the Moon

I have decided that I am going to name the Moon.
I don’t know if it has ever dawned on anyone that our moon has no real name. It may have had names in other cultures, in other languages, at other times, but in English it doesn’t really seem to have one. Or if it does, it certainly isn’t used.
I mean can you imagine a car company that put out an object simply called "the Car." I mean if I had three hands I’d say that it was audacious on the one hand, unimaginative on the other one, and just plain dumb on the third. Other planets have great names like Euorpa, Ganymede, and Callisto of Jupiter. We just call ours “the Moon.” How dull is that?
I mentioned this to my coworkers the other day in a moment of epiphany—when I realized that I could be the first person to name the Moon. So I joked that I would, of course, name it after myself. I could call it "Ken. " But my coworkers pointed out that Ogle would be a much better name for the moon. The more I thought about it, the more I decided they were right. I mean the moon is O shaped in the the first place, and Ogle starts with a long O sound making the mouth go round like the moon is round, and the name kind of connotes watching and all--as if the moon were a kind of eyeball looking down on us all.
I’ve read some articles in the Ogle/ogles family journal—a publication that keeps track of Ogles about the origin of the name which some think was once Ogill and that was a derivative of Ogg Hill where they speculated the first of our clan lived. Around 1066 there is apparently a record of a license given to a certain Humphry de Ogle to run a mannor in Northumbria. I figure the ‘de’ was a kowtow to the Normans and that Humphry figured it was better to join them that get beat by them. It is an old and honorable name associated with English aristocracy and nobility until the mighty have fallen in my day.
So it wouldn’t be a bad name for the Moon. On the other hand--o gosh, I just realized--we often use the word “Mooned.” If we changed the moon's name to Ogle, what would that do to the good name of our family? Suddenly people wouldn’t be mooned they’d be--- Nope. I’ve just decided to call the moon Ken. I’d much rather be “Kenned.”

Sun and Moon

Bright and shiny is the Sun
And he has only just begun
To shed his light on everyone.



Dark and lovely is the Moon
She will sing her haunting tune
That fades to silence all too soon.

Dragon Boat Racing

Chris, a really great man from the UK, has organized a number of events since I have been here. I am grateful for his willingness to do so because he has helped to bring about several of the more memorable events since I have been here. I had never been a member of a dragon boat crew before, but it sounded like a lot of fun. It didn’t involve a lot of prep, just two days of practice (in 110 degree heat) and then the race. This event took place on the body of water between the Island that is Abu Dhabi City and the mainland. It was held at the Shangri-la Hotel beach and was directly across from Sheik Zayed Mosque, the third largest mosque in the Middle East. (You can see it several times in the background of the photos in the videos.) We didn’t exactly take first place, but we made respectable runs and consistently improved our time.
The day of the race was pure fun and we ended the evening with a bar-b-q dinner on a second beach in the remarkably beautiful hotel complex. There was great food, drink, and dancing—a happy time. The evening was one of the first pleasant evenings we had had after long humid summer and it felt good just to get out and enjoy life.

Photos by Chris Jolliffe

Illustration in Red

Molly Malone

Just listen and enjoy the music!

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 11: The Door

Okay. So. After ten chapters and some time off from publishing my posts on the Ghost in the Cloud series I figure it is time for an update and a bit of plot summary. The Ghost is Jack, a being who exists in cyberspace or what is called the cloud since he is not located on a single server or databank anywhere and has spread his existence all over the world. He was created when the original Jack, who is referred to as the-now-dead-Jack, was trying to preserve his consciousness by uploading his memories into a computer. Randall was an associate and very close friend of the-now-dead-Jack who helped him to upload his memories in to a file called Dr. Jonathon Rickerts. Rickerts (the now dead Jack) was terminally ill and insisted that Randall finish the uploading process. This process ended with Rickerts’ death. Randall was accused with the murder of his friend and was found guilty.

It’s crazy, I know. It’s meant to be a sci-fi/fantasy/graphic novel without the pictures.

Randall believed he had failed. That though the memories of his friend had uploaded, his consciousness had been lost. What Randall could not accept, however, was that a new consciousness had been born from the ashes of his friend’s. A new Jack emerged, based on the personality and the memories from Rickerts. This new being was an extremely curious creature and quickly expanded his consciousness in cyber space. But the things that Jack was the most curious about were the memories of strange creatures that Rickerts had. Creatures that Rickerts really saw, but they seem to be blocked to his conscious mind. The Ghost Jack saw no such creatures, but he determined that those creatures really did exist beyond the usual array of photons. Randall, in his dialogues, could not accept either this new cyber being or the existence of strange creatures, ghosts, angels, and deamons— whatever they were— as real. He believed instead that this new Jack was some kind of very brilliant computer hacker who had been aware of his work and had been making use of these memories to play a game with him. In his anger, remorse and failure, he attempted to delete the file on Jonathon Rickerts.

Later, after the trial, Jack the cyber being, manipulated the records regarding Randall and had him released by forcing Randall to agree to come and work for him. He led Randall to believe that he was running a stealth program under Homeland Security and that if memories could be uploaded to a data base, such a work would be of great use to Homeland Security because then no secret could be kept in the brain of a terrorist or spy. The information gleaned would be accurate and there would be no need of torture. Randall had very strong moral misgivings about doing this, but lured by the promise of nearly unlimited funding on the one hand, and facing life in prison on the other, he agreed to the terms and was released.

But wait, there’s more…

Jack’s insatiable curiosity about the creatures that lived beyond the usual array of photons led him to conduct some research on his own. He believed that the reason humans didn’t see these creatures was that humans had long ago closed their eyes and beliefs to them. Humans select only the information that fits into their schema, the rest is dismissed as unimportant or meaningless. They only see what they expect to see. But Jack reasoned that a child might stand a chance of having that schema expanded since their belief systems are not yet frozen and the brain has not yet post lateralized. So he began a dialogue with Angelina in a computer game program called, “The Doll House.” In the Doll House Program, the child selects and scripts the dolls that can move about the house and come to her tea parties. But one day a boy doll showed up, called Jack who didn’t follow her scripts. She found him really interesting and befriended him since he continually expanded and improved her doll house in ways that made it all seem so very real. She was surprised by Jack, on her birthday, when a package from ‘Uncle Jack’ came to the door. Inside was a pill that contained thousands of micro-machines called ‘nanocells’. She took the pill and over time she gained new capabilities that included: increased memories, strength, healing and many more. But the greatest benefit for Jack was that these nanocells could broadcast the things that her mind could see including those strange creatures beyond the usual array of photons. Jack had control over these nanocells and programmed them as he saw fit. But as Angelina grew, she began to find ways to keep Jack out.

But wait, there is still more…

Angelina’s Father had lost his mind and possibly his memory. Her parents hadn’t always gotten along all that well to begin with, but as his mind became faultier the more her father, “Rabbit” found it difficult to stay and one day he just simply vanished. As Angelina got older, her desire to find him had become intense and she was pretty sure her new powers could protect her should she go after him on her own. By this time Jack had shown her the creatures that were beyond the usual array of photons and she was now becoming capable of seeing them, even without the use of the nanocells. So she has gone on a journey to find her father and with some help from some odd creatures, she has made her way to Wales, to a little town called Four Mile Bridge where she is, at the moment, looking for a door that will lead her to a druid/bard that may help her on the next step of her journey.

Hassan Illustrations

These are the original scans of the Hasson illustraions that I am working on for for EFL use. The difference between EFL and ESL is that if you are teaching English in an English Speaking country you are teaching ESL. If you are in a foreign country where they do not speek English then you are teaching EFL. Since we are teaching in the UAE, we are working with Emirati and so we are using pictures of Arabs. These scans are then colored and used to illlustrate texts for learning English.

I should add that the Hassan character and concept is the brainchld of Mimi, one of my co-workers.

The long gown that the men wear is called a candora or kandora (spellings vary and that is because they are just an attempt at phonetically reproducing the word in English) They wear a scarf called a getra or a saphra. The Emirati men tell me that when it is wrapped around the head this is a casual way to wear it. They sometimes wear the getra loose and it is held to the head by a black cord crown called an agale (ah gollee). The black gowns that the women wear are called abayahs and the head scarf is called a hajib. Some women, usually from an older generation, wear a gold mask on their face called the burgha which you can see in the picture of the middle woman of the three standing toghether. In other countries, the burgha is a long head scarf, but here it is the mask, usually golden in color, covering the nose, cheeks and the eyebrows. There is a television program broadcast out of Dubai called Freej or the old women that is a wonderful computer animated series that I wish I could get with English subtitles, but if you saw it you would notice that the old women are wearing these masks.

Anyway. These are some of the illustrations that I thought I would share with my friends and family who like to keep track of me and what I'm up to.

Contrasting worlds

Having returned now from my month leave back to America, I went on my first outing in the UAE again to see some more of the Emirates. I kept contrasting the two landscapes of my life. Having lived nearly two years here, the landscape here has become a part of me. The exterior landscapes and the interior landscapes of our souls are not disconnected. One becomes a part of the other, I think. I am always sensitive to landscapes as I walk and I often wonder that others are not. I feel the land, I sense its spirit—it has been this way for as long as I can remember. I went with my son to the American West some years back, and I recall how strongly this feeling was when it came from Pike’s Peak. I recall putting my hand against that great rock tower and closing my eyes and I knew there was something there inexplicable and real. It kind of weirded out my son that I did this, but I couldn’t help it. This grand landscape had such a strong pull on my interior landscape that a normally subconscious effect on my soul, that usually affects my mood for the better, became a call to me to the point that I am inclined to ascribe a quality of being to the great rock. Whether this is just a fancy of my imagination or not, I at least believe for certain that landscapes have profound influences on the development of the minds of men, the culture they live in and the ways people think.

I went with two friends of mine, Doug, who is renting the car, and Mike. Both of them are villa mates and work for the same University that I do. Doug found a place to go Scuba Diving near the Emirate of Fujairah near a city called Khor Fakkan, by Shark Island. The sharks here are benign creatures and people love the excitement of swimming near real sharks.

While Doug was diving, Mike and I took the car just to explore for a few hours. We drove north of Fujairah for a couple of hours and had a discreet snack in the car as we looked out over the Gulf of Oman. I say discreet because it was Ramadan and eating and drinking in public during the day is not only insensitive to the culture, it is also illegal.

Around five o’clock we picked up Doug and we followed directions given to us over the phone by an Arab acquaintance called Ahmed, whose English speaking skills are excellent, but even at that it is confusing to follow directions in a curvy mountain country where you have never been before. It was turning dark and we went through some very beautiful mountain country that was considerably further out in the sticks than I have ever been before in the UAE. It was too dark to get pictures of this landscape, but it was quite beautiful.

Ahmed and a host of other Arab friends in three cars met us at a gas station to escort us to Hamad Siredi’s house where they had already begun the Iftar feast, breaking their fast. They greeted us with smiles and presented us with the hospitality for which the Arabs are famous. Again, it stood out as a contrast to the family meal I had shared with my parents, sisters, neice and nephews, and all the grand children just a few weeks ago. And so I have been reflecting on these contrasts and when I made this short video, I did it a little differently, pulling out pictures and clips from the previous video and using them to contrast my life here, with my life over there.

Res Gestae

Res Gestae is Latin for “things accomplished.” It is a term that is used to commemorate all the good deeds that Caesar Augustus accomplished while he lived and reigned in Rome. I used it here to talk about what I did while I was on leave in August. I had not expected Michigan to be so very beautiful; so very green. It was not a typical August since the weather was cool with a perfect mix of rain and sunshine. After nearly two years in the desert, I now noticed what a green place the American Midwest is. It is such a fruitful, fertile land. It was like being in a dream, really—a very good dream. As I wandered with my children among the dunes and woods of the Midwest, I couldn’t help but think of a few of my favorite lines from Wordsworth’s Tintern Abby. I have always believed that the ‘presence’ mentioned here is not only the living spirit of nature but also metaphorically his own sister who is with him exploring the landscape not far from Tintern Abby:

A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,*
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

This Old Glider

I haven't published very much in August because I have been on leave and busy visiting many people who have missed me and whom I have missed. But I thought that I would put this Father and Son Project here for those friends and family of mine who aren't on Facebook.

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 10: Truth and Falsehood

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 9: Faces in the Night

Saeed, the Driver

This is a picture of Saeed our driver who takes us out to the base where we work. I’ve been driven by a number of drivers in the nearly two years since I’ve been here and I regard them as my cultural tutors. I love to sit in the front of the van and get to know them and find out what I can about their lives and their culture. If you are a follower of my blogs (like I have masses who read what I write here) you may recall a posting about Samir who lost his job driving for Al Gazhal and I how much I hated to lose him.

Before Saeed was hired, his brother Salem (which is pronounced almost exactly like solemn) was our driver. I liked Salem too except for the fact that he kept falling asleep while driving. The speed limit on the road to the Sweihan base is 120 kilometers an hour. It is a rather boring drive, I’ll grant you that, but he would regularly drift off to sleep and the van would start to swerve until a happy motorist would announce it to him with a blast of the horn and a few friendly gestures.

Salem had a string of complaints to HR about it over the nearly two years he had been driving. But, for whatever reason, HR didn’t do much about it. You know how it is with these teachers, they just complain about everything. They seemed to think that Salem was such a nice guy or something. And he was. But he was going to get us all killed eventually. He denied that he was falling asleep, “O, it was a gust of wind, or a teacher asked me for something and I was distracted.” He started wearing shades and turning his rear view mirror to the side so the teachers couldn’t see his eyes. But while I was sitting next to him one day I felt the van swerve and I looked over at him and there he was with his eyes completely closed, totally asleep. “Hey, Dude! I think you better wake up there” I said calmly. He startled out of his sleep and corrected his driving. Soon after that Maureen, our lead teacher at the base, collected all the complaints she could find on him and went to HR about it. Salem was given a warning and a few strategies for staying awake. These strategies obviouly didn’t work since he fell asleep with Maureen sitting right there in the passenger seat next to him this last time. After that we were told that Salem would be fired. The problem was, no other driver had a pass to the base so we had to stick with him for a few more weeks until his brother was given clearance. But, in case you were worried for Salem, as I was. He wasn’t fired after all. HR decided to give him another assignment driving on shorter routes. I assume that means he is driving people who are not such complainers.

Anyway, Saeed, Salem’s brother, doesn’t fall asleep. His English skills are very good and he seems interested in talking to people. He told me early on that he really wanted to practice his English so he liked talking with me and has asked me to correct him when he doesn’t say something right. He is from India, but his family is not of Indian descent. He is Yemeni Arab. His grandfather left Yemen in the early part of the twentieth century because at that time, Saeed says the economy was especially bad. Saeed says that his grandfather went to work as a secretary of the treasury for a king in the area where his family still lives today, though there hasn’t been a king there since sometime in the 1940’s.

His grandfather had to leave his land behind in Yeman when he left for India. Saeed says that his father went back to reclaim that land many years later, but when he got there he found that the government had given it away. Saeed explained, “The government people ask him, why you not take care of your property? Why you leave it all these years?”

I told him that people who abandon their houses in the US can lose them too if someone else takes care of the property and puts a lean on the house and is willing to pay the back taxes. But for Saeed’s family, I suspect that the loss of property for his father represented a loss of a dream of returning to Yemen and to a possible income and life there. If the land had still been there for them, Saeed might have been raised in Yemen and his life would have been very different.

Saeed has a fiancée back in India. It is an arranged marriage that their fathers formed for them when he was little. I had a lot of questions for him about that. “So do you love her?” He tried to explain to me that this is just how it is done. This was expected of him. That is how it has always been done. I explained to him that in Western countries we marry who we want and we marry for love. He knew that of course and I had said it, I guess, just to point out the contrast, or just to see what he would think. I asked him, when he married her, would she come here to the UAE to live with him. He said that she would not be coming to the UAE, that he would see her when he went on leave every year.

“So, she will have children I guess, and you will be in the UAE--and she will work?”
Saeed said no, she wouldn’t, that it was considered a great shame for her to have to work. A husband is expected to provide for her.

I tried to sum this all up: “So you will marry her, not because you love her, but because your fathers arranged it, and you will only get to see her once a year, and you will send money home to support her?” (I don’t know what Saeed actually makes, but I doubt that it is even two hundred dollars a month).

Saeed smiled while driving, “Yes. What is it like for you?”

Well at the moment, my life isn’t so different from Saeed’s, when it comes to sending money home and not getting to see my family, I just make more money and have a few more options. “Well,” I said, “we choose our own husbands and wives and we do it for love. Our women are expected to work now, but forty or fifty years ago, it was a little more like your culture in that we expected the husband to provide for his wife and family. But the world has changed in America quite a bit since then. Husbands couldn’t afford to be a sole provider anymore and their wives had to work. Some women wanted to work because it gave them freedom, but some expected to be supported and were very angry about having to work. Many men did feel shame for a while, but now it is normal. It was not an easy adjustment, but we did change. It is no longer shameful that a wife works. It is expected now.
Saeed nodded, thinking. I said to him, “the whole world is changing, Saeed. Cultures change, economics change, people change.” Saeed just kept thinking.

Not long after this, we passed two workers. I couldn’t tell if they were Indian or Pakistani. They were picking up trash along the road on the base. It was about 110 degrees out and I knew that they had been, and would be, out there for hours and hours. “Now there’s a job.” I said.

“What you mean?” asked Saeed.

“Picking up trash on a hot day like this for hours and hours.” Then I added, “What do you suppose they make a month?”

Saeed said they most likely made somewhere between 100 and 150 US dollars a month. Such things make me upset. I know that the UAE has fixed a 48 hour work week, which is supposed to be for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. But I also know that workers are often forced to work much longer hours and employers often have legal ways to get around those laws.

At ADU, the cleaners, the Emirati DCS students told me, make about 100 US dollars a month. I have seen the same workers there in the morning and in the evening until around 9:00 at night. Mohammed, our shuttle driver to town drives every day. He is on a yearly leave right now, but it disturbs me to think that he has to work every day and never a day off. The security guards that used to be at the University (before the new security company won the bid for the new contract) worked very long hours and I don’t know if they ever had a day off. One of the cruelest things I have ever witnessed was seeing one of the guards, let me call him Noor, would sit in an armless chair in the empty hallway between the men’s side and the women’s side of the building to make sure that there was no gender mixing. He was there from morning to night, sitting. He was not allowed to read a book. He wasn’t allowed to do anything except sit for 14 hours a day, every day, in that empty hallway, in the florescent light and watch a few teachers passing by from one side to the other. I remember once the painters at ADU spent a week painting that hall. The fumes were very noxious. I was a painter once and I have to tell you that I have seldom worked with such strong fumes. Poor Noor had to sit in that hall with the doors closed and with no ventilation the whole time.
I don’t understand how managers can be so thoughtless, so inhumane, or so sadistic. It is often justified by the fact that the workers are making a great deal more money than what they could get back in Pakistan or India. Well, it is like George W. Bush used to say, they are willing to work those jobs that Americans won’t do and are grateful.

Being American, I grew up with a belief that all human beings are created equal, that anyone could become president, that no man is subservient to another. It is not so here. Indian and Pakistani workers are almost entirely powerless and have few rights. One of the teachers here tells a story about how she was in an accident where she was at fault. The only problem was that the person she hit was a Pakistani who was visibly frightened. When the police (all police are Emirati and are paid highly as civil servants) showed up she had to convince them that she was the one who was responsible for the accident. If she had not said so they would have hauled the Pakistani off to jail.

Don’t misunderstand me. I love the Emirati. They are a kind, gentle, hospitable and generous people. They are good people. But there is a strange disconnection that happens when it comes to “Labour.” When people see the pictures of the Burj Dubai, I think most people will be impressed by the money that built it, as well as be awed by looking at the tallest building in the world.. But when I look at it I see it as a monument to cheap labour. (Labour is the UK spelling.) In the nearby city of Musaffah are Labour Camps. This is where they house the Indian and Pakistani workers. Some of the buildings are in long rows like chicken coops. It is not a pretty place. I went there once to get a blood test for my residency visa. It is not too far from ADU. Being a westerner, I was sent to the front of the line and rushed through. It bothered and embarrassed me. My ticket number suggested that I had perhaps a hundred workers ahead of me.

The workers here are dirty, smelly, and always look unhappy, even though that may not be the case at all. Mostly they are curious when it comes to westerners. They dress in traditional workers clothing which look like tan or white shirts that come down to the knees and what look like matching pajama pants with sandals. Their heads are wrapped in scarves and they are often bearded. They look like they would be very handsome men if they were washed and dressed in clean ironed clothing and wore deodorant. Mostly it is that they have almost no money, and of what they do have, a good deal of it is sent home to care for wives and families that they never see, much like what Saeed will do, I suppose. It is this lack of money that, more or less, seals their unattractiveness. It does not matter that they may have a fine chin, or straight white teeth or big brown eyes, that they are tall and straight and a have a thick head of hair. They are invisible at best; they are nameless faces lost in those crowded labour camps or that you see in bus windows on the highway while they are being shipped off to work on villas or skyscrapers; building monuments to and for men of great wealth like the pharaohs of Egypt long ago.

It bothers me that so many people in this world live this way. Or to think that many more are even far worse off that these who are the lucky ones and have work and income. I cannot rescue them from this kind of a life. What I can do is to see them as people, as fellow human beings who are my equal, and treat them with dignity as I would wish to be treated.

The Science Lesson

I have observed that people often fall in to two groups, or let me call them hemispheres of being: the Science and Math hemisphere; and the English and Art hemisphere. There are a few rare and rugged individuals who have managed to balance both hemispheres of being in their lives, and they are truly blessed and able to produce the most wonderful blendings of those realms into satisfying incarnations and creations. But the vast majority of us fall into only one of these hemispheres of comfort. We may explore the other hemisphere just to find out about it, or because we need something in that other land: but when the electrical voltage we experience there becomes too painful, we retreat to the comfort of our hemisphere. For right or wrong, it is what we do.

My hemisphere is that of English and Art. I like English because of stories, poetry and metaphors; and I find it ties in neatly with Art as well which is at once self-expression and at the same time it is striving after the need to express the transcendent as well. I also prefer my hemisphere because there is room for error. My hemisphere is relaxed and gives room for breath. It is tolerant. There is often more than one right answer and sometimes even many right answers. My hemisphere actually celebrates when it finds a multitude of right answers. Herman Melville’s ambiguity in a book like Moby Dick is pure genius in its levels of possible meanings. Math and Science people tend to hate this. They prefer absolutes. They like one right answer and they like to be able to count on the fact that it is fixed, solid, and that it provides a sturdy foundation on which they can build reliably.

There are times, however, when there may be more than one right answer in the science and mathematical hemisphere. This is no problem for those of us of an Eastern or non-western mindset who are content in the awe of great mysteries and all that they might mean; but multiple correct answers can create the most painful migraines for a Scinence/Math person. Is light composed of photons or waves? The debate goes on and on.

When I was in grade school and in a science class studying the difference between rotations and orbits in the context of the solar system, I ran across a science quiz question that had two right answers. “How many rotations does the moon make as it orbits the earth?” Being lousy at science and a failure in school in general, I didn’t expect to pass this test. But I thought that I had this answer right for sure. “one” I answered.

When we got our quizzes back, I failed as usual, but when we went over the answers and we got to the question: “How many rotations does the moon make as it orbits the earth?” I was shocked to see that I got it wrong. I raised my hand in protest and actually had the audacity to tell the teacher that he was wrong. “No he said. It always faces the earth. It doesn’t turn.” “Yes, I returned, “it always faces the earth so it does turn or else we would see the backside of the moon.” I proceeded to draw a picture on the board to prove my point showing the moon at four points around the earth. Each time it was facing the earth, but relative to itself it was revolving as it went. “See, it makes one rotation per orbit.”

“Ah,” he said sounding wise, “I see what you are trying to say, but no it doesn’t rotate or revolve” he insisted. When I objected again, it was quickly becoming apparent that he was going to exert his authority as a teacher, and that I was becoming insubordinate and that I was supposed to be silent and compliant. I felt furious inside, but I returned to my seat. On the one hand, what did it matter? Even if I had got the answer right, I had so many answers wrong anyway it wouldn’t have made a whole lot of difference to my score. Failure was failure and I had had so many failures in school by then that I knew my place and exactly what I was, all too well, by then. He was an adult and a teacher; all the power was it his hands.

But it did matter. It mattered enough so that I have never forgotten the event even after all these years. O, I am not upset or bitter about it, but it is important, I think, to revisit it since I am a teacher now. It makes me aware that teachers have tremendous power to hurt as well as heal. Sometimes, I think teachers rely too much on a belief in the resilience of their students. “kids are tough” they think, “they bounce right back.” And it can appear so. And yet appearances are not always the reality. They do not always bounce right back although it is expedient for those of us who teach to believe so.

The correct answer to the question is that it depends on your point of view. Standing on earth, we never see the moon turn. It does not rotate. We never see the back of it. But from a god’s eye view it rotates once every orbit. There are two right answers. But he was a science person. Points of view didn’t matter to him. Points of view are subjective and unacceptable except in theorizing hypotheses to be proven. There was only one right and acceptable answer: his.

He should have given me credit for my answer all the same. It was a golden moment for a teacher to give a blessing: to rip away that horrible label: “you’re a failure” that is written in blood and scarred into a child’s forehead. He could have told me that I was bright, that I was smart, that I surprised him with such an articulate and cogent argument to prove my point, that I had potential to be a great scientist. I don’t know why he didn’t. Was it too much work to go back and give me credit and rework all his scores in his grade book? There were no computers back then and it was all kept by hand and it would have made rather a mess of things. But I am inclined to think that it was due to arrogance that he insisted that he was right, and that it was also due to his belief that there is only one right answer to every question.

So what did I learn from this science lesson? For a long time, I learned not to like science, I learned that teachers can be arrogant bastards, and I learned once again that I was a failure at everything I put my hand to. But it hasn’t been until later in my adult life that I have found that I am grateful for this mistake and many other mistakes like it that were made by my teachers. These mistakes have formed my pedagogy as a teacher. They are treasured exemplars of what I regard as the most grave and damaging errors a teacher can make. I have become a gentle teacher. I don’t just see an answer standing in front of me; I see a person looking for affirmation. So I am very careful with wrong answers, a wrong answer is not a wrong person. Teachers might think this is obvious, but it isn’t. When a person is cut down for too many wrong answers, they begin to think there is something wrong with them and not their answers. And so I am careful with wrong answers. If there is anything right at all about the wrong answer I point that out first, and then I make a gentle corrections for part that is wrong, and finally express my gratitude to someone who is willing to be brave, who is willing to try, and who is looking at me with big, hopeful eyes which I would be loathe to disappoint.

Teachers do have to tell students when they are wrong. They will harm them if they don’t, but how it is done makes all the difference. I never shame. I celebrate mistakes. I celebrate them with my students because mistakes are wonderful. Every mistake is a golden opportunity to learn the right way to do it. It may sound strange to say it, but I would advise teachers to never punish a mistake. Grades are bad. Grades are a system of punishment and reward, a reinforcement of a system that stems from a view of the world that believes in the survival of the fittest. It’s weird, but if you ask a teacher which is better: intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation, they all know that intrinsic motivation makes, by far, a better student, and yet teachers are completely addicted to a system of extrinsic motivators.

Teachers often justify it by saying, “but that’s the real world, that’s the world they will be living in and they should learn how to be tough and roll with the punches and get over it. It is, in fact, a survival of the fittest world.” Then many of them comment, “that’s what I had to do. I learned to survive, and adapt. they will too.”

Hmmmm. Well, there is a great deal that could be unpacked in these statements about broken people who unwittingly reinforce a broken world that not only stays broken, but one which will turn around and break more people in a never ending spiral; but I would simply rather point out that the way to prepare children for the rough and tumble world of dog eat dog, is to not maim them before they get there. Rather the teacher needs to build their confidence, inspire them, and make sure that they have the tools not just to survive it, but to change it.

Change the world? Yes, I am an idealist. It is my desire to see love triumph over hate, peace over violence, knowledge over ignorance, generosity over greed, benevolence over malevolence where ever it arises, and courage over cowardice. This is the real agenda in the classroom. O, I will teach English and I will work damn hard at it, but English is only the arena, the game board, the tangible space that is provided where the minds and hearts can meet. Minds and hearts are invisible things. We keep tangible, visible records in the classroom for the scientists who think numbers and reports tell them something. But, as the Little Prince is always reminding us, “It is with the heart that one can see rightly; that which is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The Grumeenatash

Happy Birthday Peter! This is about an hour and twenty minutes, so grab something to drink and sit a while and listen to a story just like I used to do all those years ago and not so many years a go.The music is not mine as it says in the video. I originally had only the sound effects/music that appear(s) in a couple of places in this final version which I have kept and didn't have time to change the credits, but I like the mellow guitar that you hear in most of the background to the narrative in the story. One of my students brought this music in. It is a short piece from Rah Habib Golby (person or song?) as far as I can tell. I took just a brief cut from the opening cords and looped them here so there are no vocals. I couldn't find the source on the net anywhere or I would have credited the brief cutting I used from it. I'm trying to get this up in a hurry to post for Peter's birthday and will edit it later.

A few days after solstice

As I walked, just past noon,
I felt the Hallowed Sun on my body;
Was surprised by a sudden chill in 100 degrees.
There was some pleasure in it
And I knew that I was in the garden
Of Summer’s sacred space

O, Lord of Heaven
The day I die—
Let it be the Solstice,
On the Day that lasts forever.

The Grumeenatash Trailer

This Old Villa

I have to move this weekend because the college will no longer be needing the villa. It was officially called Al Ameen but it was known more properly as the Egyptian Villa because long Before I arrived most of the people living here were from Egypt and so people referred to it as the Egyptian Villa and the name stuck.

I first arrived here in mid-November of 2007. St. Joseph and I arrived here together and no one was here to meet us so we picked our rooms and made ourselves at home in what seemed to be an empty house at the time. There were others living here, but we were the only teachers. So we picked up a few things from an unmarked store a couple of blocks down the road that was literally behind a hole in a fence that was run by Pakistani workers. Roosters and cats were running everywhere amid the squalor and relative poverty of the surrounding shacks. But they had fresh fruit, veggies, meat and milk and we bought what we needed for one of St. Joseph’s wonderful stews.

A few weeks later, more teachers arrived. Evans had actually returned from a visa trip, Keveen arrived from France, and Dan of Detroit came from China, and a few weeks later Kyle came from Texas. I have a number of good memories of all of them. Joking around while waiting for the bus stop, a glass of wine with Keveen on the roof, Joseph and his Oogali, stew, and sitting with him out on the back porch drinking coffee while he had his cigarette in the evening. Kyle perpetually in the kitchen. People living together can’t help but get irritated with each other but they also learn to let it pass and get along.

But the villa is closing now. I and two other men and a Filipino maid are living here at the end, but it has felt very empty for some time. I have enjoyed the solitude for a change, and even though I like a lot of the people at the compound where I am moving, I will miss the quiet of this place, and the memories.

It seems like certain eras end, and new ones begin. Moves in my life, have never simply been moves they always seem to mark new directions and changes within as well. I made a promise to a friend who thought my more recent videos were sad, so I said the next one would be more positive. I didn’t expect to be saying adieu to the villa which may not seem like a positive thing, but I think it is, even if it is a matter of leaving a place and the memories it contains behind. But I will keep in mind at least one thing this person has taught me, and that is to be positive in my mind—to think positive thoughts. So as I leave this place, I will do so with the awareness that there is a future of possibilities ahead. Thus I will be optimistic and will look forward to the good things that are to come.

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 8: Future Conditionals

When I was a child living at our little house in Mooresville, Indiana and our television was in black and white, I watched many things that I have not forgotten. The funeral procession of John Kennedy, the first landing on the moon with Neal Armstrong stepping out, intending to say, “One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind”, Bobby Kennedy’s assassination and about three seconds of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show before my parents' shock led them to switch the channel. Notice that I did not put these events into chronological order. I don’t remember things in chronological order. They all blur together in a strange collage of associations.

Among the things I saw in black and white sometime in the early sixties that changed my life, and my thinking, perhaps forever even if I was a child, was Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon. (I had the privilege of seeing the whole movie intact. Now entire chunks are missing from the movie and are lost forever.) I remember wanting to believe that such a place as Shangri-la really existed. I wanted to go there. I remember, in particular, the ending where the protagonist returns to replace the dying leader of this utopian land, and he reflects that the world is not yet ready for Shangri-la, but one day when human beings have had enough of war, poverty, and social problems, perhaps Shangri-la would emerge and offer the world another way. Needless to say Suri Sangala of the Ghost in the Cloud series is modeled after Shangri-la with a few differences. It is a place of healing, of dreams and possibilities and thus it is a place of future conditionals, what might be, what could be.

In my heart, I am a native of that land even if it is a dream—it is where I ultimately belong. I have been searching for that place since I was a boy, thought I found it in a church movement, might have found it at Padanoram in southern Indiana and am still looking for it. The old testiment records that Abraham went looking for a city whose builder and maker was God. I think that people of faith or spirituality are all looking for Shangri-la. We still believe in fairy tales, I guess and shout along with Mary Martin as Peter Pan, "I do believe in fairies" and we clap our hands. Cynics have given it up and say it is all fairy tales, child's play, that we should all leave it behind and live in the real world.

What is a fairy? The thing that spoils the milk, or causes the cheese to go all wrong, or stings us in the night because they are naughty little things. A notion that is an antiquated, but quaint way of looking at the world. Another lost mystery that people no longer believe in on the road to a world that believes in nothing--only dust and atoms and random events that have no meaning.

But it does have meaning. You know this don't you. If you want to, you can just place your hand flat on the ground and sense the life that is there, if you try, you can. You can feel the pulse of the earth itself, a beat of life. And you know it is alive and aware--conscious.

Happy Birthday Elizabeth

This is video is, obviously, for my daughter’s birthday. I posted it on Facebook where it could be seen by all her friends and family who check in there and know nothing of my blog. I decided to put it here too since it is my scrapbook where I keep it and can look back all I want. I have noticed that Facebook is a highly existential mechanism in the sense that it tends to keep things that are immediate and current and all other things are lost in the past as if they never existed. Things are posted, capriciously and quickly for an ADD world where attention spans are about three seconds and then people are on to the next thing. It is good for quick, pragmatic communications and a wonderful social device, but longer, reflective pieces just don’t belong there.

Anyway, my daughter wanted the lyrics to the song even though they are simple and were written to accommodate the fifties style song. I’m no great singer of course and audacity has its limits as a recording device goes. I don’t expect to go platinum anytime soon, is what I’m saying. I just do these things so that pictures aren’t quite so boring to look at, and to creatively express things that are on my heart and mind. Anyway, birthday girl, here are the lyrics:

Happy Birthday
To you…to you.
My little girl
Has turned twenty-tow

I can remember
when you were just four
And I wanted to keep you
That way evermore,

But you grew…you grew…O, you grew.

Now you’re a woman
All alone,
Facing the world
Out on your own.

Grown up and turning
Twenty-two
And I’m proud, so proud
So proud of you.

Make a wish
Upon the full moon
That your dear old father
Should see you soon

He thinks of you
Though he is far away
And he wishes you always
A Happy Birthday

Yes he wishes you always
A Happy Birthday

Apophatic

It is not in my mind
though I tried to think it
It is not in my heart
though I tried to pray it
It is not on my tongue
though I tried to say it
It is not in the Earth
though I tried to grow it
It is not in Hell
though I tried to damn it
It is not in Heaven
though I tried and tried

Written in June of 2005

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 7: Runaway

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 6: forgetting

Minah Bird

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 5: Seeing Angels

Here is the next installment of the Ghost in the Cloud. This is a story that is part philosophical dialogue, and part comic book science fiction. In spite of my constant criticism of the effects of rationalism/empiricism in the book, I really haven't abandoned science altogether as one form understanding the world we live in. But it no longer has such a loud voice and rings out among many sources of truth.

Blank Verse Sonnet #1

The desert does not want this ugly road
and so she sings the wind with low sad songs
to conjure snakes of sand to doom with dunes
that black scar of commerce on her skin.
She wages wars with ploughs and pay loaders,
the diligence of greed and lust for trade,
or restless sojourners who leave behind
the very thing they seek—unknown to them;
she wants this not! And she would have it gone!
For vast and lonely would this desert be—
a place for prophets and for scorpions;
for visions, dreams, and wonders—and for stars
to shine in this last remnant of the night
away from all our artificial light.

I'll be going home someday

I’m feeling a tad bit homesick this week. I’m going on a year and a half of working here. In that time I have seen deserts, and Arabs, mountains and oceans, observed a strange mix of ultramodern opulence intermixed with poverty and traditional life, I have watched Indian and Pakistani workers marching with their little aluminum lunch pails, to work long days on the villas or the hundreds of new sky-scrapers being built in this city that seems to be rising like magic along the coast of the Arabian Gulf as if by the hand clap of a great Djinni. I’ve driven in a thousand taxies, ridden on cramped busses crowded with sweaty workers who seem to be used to body odor that literally makes my eyes sting, I’ve biked the Cornish with friends, spent the night on the dunes, and eaten the brain of a goat with my bare hands. I have watched, I have listened, I have smelled, I have touched, I have tasted—all that comes to me in this place—receptive to what this land has to teach me. Sometimes, (I’m crazy—you know this about me) I talk to the plants, touch them, especially the palm trees, “Who and what are you? Are you indigenous or were you introduced to this land like me? Heaven bless you and make you fruitful, my friend.” I know the names of the birds and trees in the American Midwest, but it has been hard to learn the trees and birds here. The hood hood, I discovered early on, and the white-cheeked bolbow, the ibis, the rose-ringed parakeet and the ever present mynah bird. The trees I have had less luck with, the date palm, of course, fig trees, the sidar trees the eucalyptus (or gum tree as the Australians apparently call them) But there are many more that I don’t know yet.
All of this is an attempt to find a place, to know the land and the people, but I am still a stranger here. A visitor. I don’t know how long I will be here. Unemployment in Michigan is over eleven percent and at about eight percent over-all in the US. Not a good time to look for jobs where I live—or used to live. So, for the time being, I’m settled and working, and making friends that I have to keep at a certain distance because they will leave eventually. Joseph is back in Kenya, Keveen in France (when he’s not on adventures) Who knows where Samir my old driver is, Kyle went back to Texas, Melanie is in Istanbul with her sister Rene. Everyone I know is a visitor here, like me, here and gone. But isn’t that like life? The cycles of relationships are a bit shorter, but isn’t it like life? This constant stream of people who come into our lives and then depart, isn’t that like life? Life is a constant fluctuation between the joy of knowing and loving, but the grief and loss that goes with it eventually. Going home is a dream of heaven. I don’t want golden streets or riches untold in some sweet paradise, I just want to be with those I love and miss.

Obliati Osimati

I can’t tell if I’m a tenor or a tin ear, but I’d never let that stop me from trying to sing the song that is in the heart to sing. Obliati Osimati is what C. S. Lewis might have referred to as “damnably bad Latin.” But you all know what it means. If not, listen and think a while. I’ve taught enough ESL now to know that 90% of any language is in the paralanguage. Please excuse the imitatio Philipenisis Glassenisis but I love Philip Glass who is one of a few modern/post-modern composers that I do like. In-spite of the mood-altering sadness you might pick up, I would prefer you think of it as a lullaby, but a lullaby that makes you think, perhaps, about what you do, have done with your life.

Willow's Dance

I'm taking a break from the Ghost in the Cloud series to do something really different. This is from a poem I published earlier on my blog called, "Willow's Dance." I thought it would make a really nice animated feature, so I tried my hand at animation. I can't say that I am great at it, and the Window's Paint Program does have its limitations for creating animation, but I managed to get a few good moments of animation for a beginner. You will have to go back a month or two to find the poem if you want the words.

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 4: Trials

In this chapter of my audio series, The Ghost in the Cloud, we revisit Randall, the character from chapter one, who tried to upload the mind and consciousness of his friend and mentor Jack Rickerts into cyberspace in a misguided attempt to live forever. The process of this failed attempt resulted not only in the creation of a new being existing in “the cloud”, but also in the death of Rickerts.

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 3: Polyexistence

This is the third chapter of my audio science fiction story about a cyberspace being called Jack, who is trying to understand that part of reality which only humans can see, but which they have blocked from their conscious minds by their empirical belief system. With the help of a child by the name of Angelina, Jack attempts to study that strange world through her eyes by the aid of nanocells that he has implanted in her to broadcast to him those things which she (unknown to herself) is able to see. The nanocells, however have begun to restructure and enhance Angelina's neural network making her a savant to the dismay of her mother who is striving for normality after the disappearance of her husband, Rabbit.

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapter 2: The Doll's House

Wake

When you wake you disturb
the placid waters that
want sleep—that will return
to rest once you have passed
trouble them all the same
and wake while you have life

The Ghost in the Cloud

Science fiction is kind of a new genre for me, but one that seemed suited to express some ideas that I was trying to think through. I was watching the series called “Transhumans” and found it to be a very thoughtful and provocative series on science and the many possible options it may present to us for changing us human beings from what we are, improving us so to speak, and making us better, stronger and healthier. Among the many ideas discussed is in this series is the possibility of “uploading” one’s consciousness into cyberspace where one could presumably live forever with increased consciousness and memory. I found the idea ridiculous on one hand, and very disturbing on the other. This story was taken from trying to think through one possible result.

Red Pen

“Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
John Donne

O, Red Pen,

much maligned, mark in blood, the battle ground of
academic paper that would be
black and virgin white.

Expose the naked hypocrisy of my mediocrity;
and break, like Hymen, my dull, dun draft with
the marks of your passion:

bloody me, cut and write on me,
wound me to the edge of Death and
through Perfection, make me free.

Elizabeth and the Cinnamon Buns

Just as I used to tell my son Peter the Pirate stories. I also used to tell my daughter Elizabeth Cottage Stories. This is a story I told her many times although it changed and changed with every telling until it emerged in its final form. I have forgotten many of the stories but they all began the same way, “Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a cottage on the edge of a meadow…” and so forth with a very long string of prepositional phrases that she didn’t seem to mind too much. The vocabulary was a reach for a girl of four, five, six, seven and for however long I would tell them, but then she has an excellent vocabulary to this day and I cannot help but attribute that to a love of words and a love of stories for all the years of telling them to her.



The stories are told with a slow steady pace as if there were all the time in the world to tell it. After all, what is the use of a story if the real reason is not just to be close, to spend a good deal of time together, and to enjoy the comfort of loving and being loved?

Sultan's Farm in Al Wathba, UAE

Recently a good man by the name of Sultan Al Q’basi invited me to go out to his camel farm in the desert in an area of the UAE called Al Wathba. I accepted his invitation and he picked me up in his pick-up truck. His little boy, Ali, was with him and I always enjoy children. What I discovered when we got to his farm was that I was spending time with true Bedouins, modern Bedouins, but real Bedouins. I used to look at the pictures in the National Geographic from years ago. My father had a collection going back to the thirties and the forties. I looked long and hard at those pictures and a strange desire to go to such a place and see such people was in me. I never thought I would actually go and find them.

The Bedouin left those pages long ago and now, in the UAE, they are wealthy and live in fine big Villas in the city, but the men I was with still keep something going of the old culture. They told me they go out to the farm almost every night like this, as we sat around the fire drinking gawa (Arabic coffee made with cardamom), dates, and fresh fruits while waiting for the servants to bring the chicken bryony. It had been a wonderful afternoon of finding out about camels and training falcons. When the Pakistani and Indian attendants brought the bryony on a large silver communal plate, the Arabs taught me how to eat with my fingers by mixing the yogurt in with the rice and chicken and wadding it up into a ball to eat by hand. They offered me a spoon, but I wanted to do it the way they did it. I felt rich. I felt that I was involved in a true experience of their culture that no tourist could ever really get. It was a wonderful sample of Arab hospitality. I loved the falcons, the camels, the kettles and teapots, the food, the night sky and the full moon, The sand and the desert expanding out seemingly forever. Every night? I thought, out here, every night with good friends and plenty of gawa, good manners, and sweet arid desert air. Now that is the good life.

There are so many prejudices Americans have about the Arabs, but my whole experience with them here in the UAE is that these are some of the most peace loving, kind, and generous people I have ever met.

Willow's Dance

Willow danced before the moon
With her arms outstretched and waiting
The moon he saw her dancing there
And took her for the taking.

And said “I’ll dance with you a while,
Until the dawn starts breaking,
And spend the night with you fair maid,
Until the sun starts waking.”

“O may the sun then never wake!
That sun then I’ll be hating.”
“Nay, say not so” replied the moon,
“It is his life I’m taking.

But come and dance with me at night,
Engage in merry making.
And love the night and love the stars,
And take life for the taking."