Sylvia's Journal

Maybe it is axel’s imminent arrival that makes me wax poetic and wanting to write poetry after reading Bill Collins. And reading Collins came from finding out that the Obamas held a poetry reading event at their white house. This is how one thing leads to another.

Collins’ poem ‘Some day’ reminds me of a childhood pre-occupation that I discovered much later I shared with my younger brother, and who knows how many other earthlings. It is (or rather was as it has stopped haunting me), the feeling that I am just a small puppet in a large play and that some giant (we don’t have to get religious about this) is looking at us ant like creatures scurrying around our small universe that we think so big, doing stuff that doesn’t matter on a cosmic scale.

The childhood image was always accompanied by a weird physical sensation of distancing – a sudden telescoping of the world into the infinite distance and me getting to be the size of a pinpoint, the space around me of cosmic proportions. The most salient part of the experience was always this telescoping which I haven’t heard anyone else talk about, not even my brother; but the notion that we are actors in some larger play I know I share with many.

I haven’t written any poetry lately but I know something is formulating itself in some part of my being. I have this image of me sitting in my new lemon ice living room, on the Afghan tushaq with my laptop – trying not to look at the hideous furniture because it might take the poetry away, or, the opposite, looking for a spot of beauty behind the ugliness that will unleash a torrent of poetic thoughts. Maybe.

Axel wrote me from Dubai after an Indian meal and a lassie. He is already foregoing beer when he doesn’t have to. A beerless existence is actually not all that bad for 6 weeks, I can testify to that. In another 6 weeks we will be returning to the US already, incha’llah, as they say here. Deo (or puppetmaster) volente.

The H1N1 virus is here for real. We are told not to use the word swine, this according to the WHO. We are to refer to the virus as Influenza A (H1N1) or, in Dari, eech yak ahn yak.

A website alerting the Afghan population tells us that: (1) All kindergartens, schools, vocational training institutes, higher education institutions will be closed for 3 weeks as of 2 November 2009 (will students here be happy or disappointed I wonder); (2) All gatherings in wedding halls, public baths (Turkish Baths), and other public indoor areas are forbidden (this will make for some unhappy brides, grooms, families, and most of all those in the business of weddings); (3) Indoor Sport Matches are forbidden; and (4) Greetings with hand shaking, hugging and kissing should be avoided.

The latter is already quite restricted here when you are not a close friend or part of the family. We are all trying to be more like the Japanese, bowing to each other or nodding with a hand on our heart. There are many habits to be broken, a good reminder that change is hard if you have to do it yourself and much easier if you can just tell others.

We had an all staff meeting to discuss health, hygiene and flu shots. It was done in Dari, including the slides, giving me plenty of opportunity to practice my reading skills and enlarge my vocabulary. I was happy to hear that alcohol-based hand sanitizers are OK for Muslims to use. I have a small bottle strategically placed on my desk for all sneezers, no matter what their religious persuasion, including myself.

In the meantime I am anxiously following Axel as he makes his way over here. I am using Flight Aware to track the plane from Atlanta to Dubai but after Gander it stopped tracking so I only followed him for about five hours into the 13 hour flight, a piece of information that has not changed in many hours. This in itself is a little scary. I had forgotten what it feels like to have loved ones in planes, being the one that is usually in a plane myself.

I hope to see an email from him from Dubai to put my mind at ease. It’s nice to know he is near.