Convocation

At the end of our district convocation at the Dahrhan campus we made our way through the gate, returning our visitor pass lanyards to the guards through a little drawer at the bottom of a window where they then returned the identification left when we'd arrived. Just outside was a long narrow walkway covered by a canopy to shield us from the sun as we waited for the van to collect us for transport back to our villa.

It was a busy area of women and children waiting for rides, some clumsily donning their abayas and others, like us, climbing into white Toyota passenger vans where we buckled our seat belts, the sweat evaporated from our bodies and gave our lives to the drivers, men who did battle everyday on the roads of Dammam and Al Khobar where it seems no traffic rules are followed and vehicles honked their horns, jostled for position, slowed down, sped up, avoided collision and encountered close calls, all as a matter of course.

Just as we pulled away, my friend motioned for me to look down into the small white car alongside us where a woman sat in the passenger seat, her head and body entirely covered in black except for the small eye opening in her niqab. She was the senior member of a department at the high school, always beautifully covered in layers of colorful fabric and her head perfectly wrapped, covering her hair, ears and neck framing her face alone. She spoke confidently and with purpose and it was clear that her colleagues respected her judgement. I exchanged a glance with her, looking for what I'd heard as she turned from us and her husband pulled away from the side of our van and we turned and made our way back to the compound.

Swimming at Night

Last night I swam outside in the pool while the full Arabian moon hung overhead and the call to prayer sounded in the distance. A few BAE guys were gathered around the outdoor restaurant gesturing with their arms and reacting to one another with facial expressions I couldn't read. The air was thick and heavy and pushed me back to Waukenabo and a Minnesota night when I had the same view as this Middle Eastern one. Clay and Ann hung on the side of the pool and chatted with Amy, slowly getting to know one another. Carolyn swam alone on the other end of the pool taking in all of the changes that brought her to this place. Chris had left earlier, frustrated, he walked home after returning from an excursion to purchase a guitar from a local vendor where neither the quality nor the price were satisfactory, but what could he do? He wanted to make music and so far this was all there was. Until we have our iqamas and feel our feet beneath us, the uncertainty will remain.

Traveller

A small tuft of bog has broken loose and drifted into the center of the lake. It looks lost and alone as it moves further from its source. This is the natural order of things it seems, a conspicuous separation, an imperceptible severing of the fibers and humus and peat, the loose strands hanging bare and exposed in the deep water, the dry grasses bent in the stiff wind , new grass bright green and thick hugs the surface of the hummock as it drifts with a wind toward a new margin somewhere across the lake.

Satellite

A tangerine moon stares through the spruce trees as stars reveal themselves in the night sky, multiplying, first one or two then too many to count. And the coolness of the air... What person isn't overcome by this vastness, this space? There's no quantifying or qualifying what I see from my front porch. Then, a starlight like the others, moving steadily, interminably across the sky, so closely blending in, but for the linear projection, the controlled velocity, predictable in its human intention. It glides beneath--a soft tear in the fabric of the firmament.

Gone

Whatever it was is lost now to the low lying place behind the tamaracks. An object, a child, a feeling, that idol you worshipped and allowed to define you is buried in the peat preserved for another to find, identify and apportion themselves to.
It's like that, isn't it? So long as you know it's there and understand that it can't be rediscovered by you. You've buried it, but exhumation is no longer possible.
Reanimation is unnatural. The result is a dead wish, moldering on the edge of our desire, tender and soft and malignant.
You must make new and leave the anthropology to those more qualified. Return your shovel to the shed and just remember.

What is this?

What is this that we walk to desolate places and sit? Quiet, isolated places where the sea gulls scream or the wind whispers in the pines. Is it a taking stock somehow of our inner selves to see if it is well with our soul? Or do we wander around a store of fine gifts, examining, turning over in our minds of what we could have if we were willing to pay the price? Too often we gently replace each object on the shelf and move on.
But what if we didn't?
These questions by now are tired and shopworn, yet essential to be asked because it is the asking that may permit us to pay the price.

Mow Carefully

I have a good friend who once told me if I found an eagle feather not to pick it up or touch it because in his Native American spiritual beliefs it has sacred qualities. I understood that it would be disrespectful to alter it, sort of like desecrating a church, I suppose. So later, as I mowed the trail near the giant, old red pine in our yard,  I looked up at the eagle’s nest which has been there for as long as I can remember and again admired its massive size and position atop the last thick limbs of the tree before it begins to taper off.  This time, however, there was a feather on the ground in the path ahead of me. Heeding my friend’s request, I stopped the mower, got off, and gently pushed the feather into the tall grass at the edge of the trail and continued on with my mowing.

Later I looked up the significance of the eagle feather and read that it symbolized great strength, courage, leadership and prestige and that the bald and golden eagles are considered sacred birds. They only have two eggs and this is a reminder of both the dichotymous and binary relationships in our world.

I turned off the computer and thought, it is a story, no different than those told to me during Sunday school and in church when I was younger. But that was not the point. This story, like all of them, is only meaningful because of what the hearer or reader brings to it. To the story of the eagle feather, I bring the love I have for my friend and so when I moved that feather from my path, I respectfully acknowledged his path and was glad.