it's 9:34 am, on September 14, 2001 - rumi's poetry.

~

At school again; thinking about a lot of things. Doqz said a lot of things that made me think, today, things about a global war on terrorism. A prolonged war on terrorism. It made me think about these pictures of Kabul.

See, once upon a time, I saw Kabul. As I said in response to his latest entry, I have seen what it looked like: an archaelogical dig. A cultural graveyard. A ghost town. Kabul itself was nothing more than the shelled remains of walls, the crumbling low walls of an archaeological dig. If someone had told me, "that city was excavated last year; it's ancient", it would have been easier to believe than "it's the capital of this country".

There were no people in the photographs.

There were no roofs.

I just, I don't like the image. Because I am an archaeologist, and I don't like the death of civilizations. I don't want to be able to go to Afghanistan in a year, two years, and dig around in the buildings that look over a thousand years old, finding skeletons and broken pots as the only evidence that people once lived there.

On a semi-different note, I heard that Pakistan is intending to offer full support in this matter. It amused me, some, and sickened me in others, in the duplicity that global politics play. Did you know that there were Taliban training camps within Pakistan itself; in the hills above the town I lived in?

Something else I wanted to say: I feel mildly guilty for being able to move on so quickly from this. I was reading Rumi on the train --something I'm going to come back to-- and I was perfectly fine. The day it happened, I was like, 'wow, someone did something.' I, like Andraste, wasn't very surprised.

Perhaps I envy those people who were so secure in their belief that the North American policies were the right ones to follow that they did not expect repercussions. Maybe I wish that I, too, could be someone that felt secure enough that this wasn't over my shoulder. Maybe I should wonder why I *did* expect and they didn't. I keep going back to living overseas; I don't know if that's it.

Maybe I should have envied once. I don't anymore.

~*~

As claire said once, poetry is much better than whining. This is what I leave you with. By Rumi:

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

~*~

Guess what?

Rumi was Muslim.

Flow down.

~

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moving truck dilemma - October 28, 2015
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bruise - June 29, 2015

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