Improvisation on a theme

I posted this to Facebook, but I have a number of friends who don't do Facebook, so this is here for them. It is improvisation and I have a tendency for these things to pop out of my head. It is unpracticed and spontaneous, and therefore imperfect, but there was something about it that I liked. I'm glad I recorded it because it would be gone forever.

Dibbah Trip

Here are some of the stills that you will see in the video that I made of the trip I took with my villa mate, Doug. We went up to Musandam once again but this time on the East coast just North of Dibbah. The border crossing was free, the border guards just looked at our passports and opened our trunk for a couple of seconds and we were on our way. I loved the colors of the fruits at the Friday Market just outside of Masafi. Color was noticeably absent for most of the trip since it was very hazy weather, so I appreciated the displays of fruit.
We saw a lot of forts and watchtowers on this trip. I was impressed by what looked like mud brick hovels in the town nearby where we camped. One thinks of Arab houses as always having flat roofs, but as you can see from the mountain houses and the hovels that this is not always the case. They were pitched and palm branches were used on them a lot like the thatched roofs one sees in England, or in my case on the historical Dutch houses in Holland, Michigan.
I have always loved Dhows. I enjoyed looking at the derelict dhows up close to see the construction. One thing we noticed on one of the dhows was the toilet that sits on the back. I gather modesty is not a virtue among sailors. In fact when we got to Sharjah, I was about to take a video of one of the wooden cargo ships on the docks there, but I happened to notice a fellow smiling sheepishly from one of those very seats. I decided it would be in bad taste to film him.





The donkeys roamed the beach as they liked, just like the cows and the goats we saw up in Ras Al Kaimah. This was taken just after sunset.





























Coral walls in Sharjah

Al Dhafra Festival

Hamarat Al Gailah

A cautionary tale from the UAE
written down in translation
by Sergeant Ahmed Ali Al Hammadi
Edited by Me

A long time a go, before they discovered oil in our country, there was a naughty child by the name of Saleh, He used to ignore everything his parents told him to do, would break everything his hands could reach, and he made too much noise all the time (except of course for when he was sleeping).

One day he went to play outside his home. His mother stopped him and told him not to go out at this time of the day because of Hamarat Al Gailah who would be out there. She usually walks about in the afternoon looking for any child who is outside alone.

Saleh asked his mother, “who is Hamarat Al Gailah?”

She answered, “ She’s a woman wearing an abayah, but she covers her face all the time because she has a very ugly and scary face.”

Saleh then asked, “If she covers her face, how do you know who she is?”

His mother said, “look down at her feet; she has donkey feet.”

But Saleh, as usual, ignored his mother and went outside to play. While he was playing he heard footsteps--but they didn’t sound like normal footsteps. When he turned around he saw a woman in a long dark abayah coming in his direction. He looked down and saw that she had donkey feet!

That day, Saleh never returned to his home. His parents searched and searched for him everywhere. Some of the neighbors said they heard him running and screaming loudly and it seemed like someone was chasing him, but they all thought, maybe it was his father.

And so, children, if you ever go outside in the afternoon, be careful, Hamarat Al Gailah may be out there looking for more children.

Photos from Musandam

Being in something of a creative slump, but wanting to update my blog, I've decided to post my pictures from my over-night trip to Musandam, Oman. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The weather was wonderful--well perfect really. We camped out on a little beach next to a hotel called the Golden Tulip and went on a dhow ride the next morning. It is one of the most relaxing things I've ever done. The dhow took us into the fjords of the northern most point from a little port town called Khasab. We were not all that far from Iran, really, and saw a number of small crafts full of goods being imported in a hurry from that country. Anyway here are some of the pictures. I may link to the Youtube video of my trip as well.

A Hawk of Seven Memories

I've not been in a terribly creative season lately. Even this story is not new. I wrote it back in 1991 for a creative writing class at IUPUI. I aced all my stories in both creative writing classes and aced my poems in my poetry class. I'd have taken more, but I had a lot of course work to do. Looking back, I realize that my stories from that era were meant for theatrical presentation. This particular story is all first person narrative and has, obviously, a strong voice. I had a thought in my mind as I wrote it and that is that we were born to be complete and whole human beings but some great magic deprived us of that humanity and our life's task is to strive to find it once more. Some people never seem think about what it means to be a human being. It is an odd question to them. There was a time when getting an education meant that we had to study that very question. We studied "the humanities" and that included art, poetry, literature, culture. We studied it because we knew it was important to become human beings and to participate in our human dialogue--a conversation that has been going on for thousands and thousands of years, ever since the first hunter or prophet stood up and used the power of speech to tell a story.

But now people are interested in vocational studies, and business, and so the humanities are dying on college campuses. Now we no longer educate. The Latin root implies a sense of being lead forth and that means out of ignorance and into enlightenment. But this is long lost. Now people just want the promise of big bucks and a degree is a ticket to that. It is one more step backward. It is now a purely animal instinct driving higher vocational training (formerly called "college"). College has been industrialized. People who want to "get ahead" in life in that survival-of-the-fittest-world our western capitalism has created for us now pay for their own job training, and they are paying higher than ever tuition to do it. It is a world of hawks training hawks. (mind you I am speaking of metaphorical hawks. Real hawks are splendid things to behold, but they feed on prey all the same.) It is my hope that some of us remember who and what we are. That we might regain our lost humanity.

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