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.