Be Still My Beating Heart

My father is the quiet philosophical type.  Once, while I was road tripping with him through an especially picturesque part of America, he turned to me, as we were ginning down the highway, and said, “The really interesting thing about traveling is that it gives a person the opportunity to realize that the place he’s from is not all that special or pretty.”

I recalled his comment during a recent trip I took with Azza to Rome, Italy.  As my father had aptly noted all those years ago, The Eternal City is the sort of place that could make any traveler see his hometown in a new light.  Every city I’ve ever lived in pales in comparison to Italia’s capital.

When one family member asked me to sum up my feelings about the city at the conclusion of our trip, I replied, “Walking around Rome is like taking a stroll on a movie set, one built for the most romantic film of all time.”  The experience of visiting the metropolis is somewhat unreal.  How could a real place, where real people live and work and do all the mundane things that real people have to do, be so outrageously beautiful?

The pictures I’ve included here don’t do the city justice, but that’s not a surprise because travel pictures can never capture what the photographer was thinking and feeling about his subject at the moment the image was forever captured. 

   

Two Thousand Words

Back in May I blogged about my impending marriage to Azza Omar, an Egyptian I met while living in Maadi, a leafy suburb of Cairo.  Well, given everything that’s happened in recent weeks, I can see that an update is in order. 

The nuptials took place, as advertised, back on the evening of the last day of May, and then the two of us set off on an extended trip that has been part honeymoon and part opportunity to introduce Azza to her new American in-laws. 

Our first stop was in Rome, Italy, where we ate enough pizza and pasta and bruschetta to add considerably to our beltline circumferences.  In an attempt to minimize our weight gains, we spent the daytime hours wandering the cobblestoned streets and alleys of The Eternal City.  We soaked up the sights like two thirsty sponges.  (By the way, I’ve got photos and videos of the place that I’ll eventually post.)

After that, we flew, with the Delta Airlines bunch, to America, making stops in New York City along the way.  We eventually ended up in Austin, Texas, where my dad and stepmother live.  Actually, they reside in a bedroom community called Georgetown, which is just up I-35 from the Lone Star State’s capital city.

From there, we set off to the hinterlands, otherwise known as West Texas.  Actually, what I really want to share with you is a couple of photos I took of my maternal grandmother (aka “Memaw”) who will (inshallah) celebrate her ninety-sixth birthday next month.  Memaw—yes, I know it sounds terribly down home to refer to her that way—resides in a little town that you’d be hard pressed to even find on a map.  If you don’t believe me, pick one up and try to locate Christoval, Texas.  (Hint:  it’s not far from San Angelo.)

When Azza and Memaw met and hugged one another, it was like the meeting of two civilizations that had hitherto never encountered one another.  Azza is Muslim and from the Middle East, and Memaw is an American WASP who couldn’t tell you what Islam is if her life depended on it.  Anyway, despite those glaring differences, the two hugged and bonded like there was no tomorrow.  It warmed my heart to see it happen too.

The other photo, I suppose, is pretty self-explanatory. 

Occupy Occupy

Speaking of serendipity, I was getting ready to write about this episode of The World Tomorrow when I happened to run across an interesting sentence in Flight, a novel by Sherman Alexie.  It’s spoken by Justice, an evil boy genius who befriends Zits, the book’s juvenile delinquent, first-person narrator.  Justice says, when speaking to his new best buddy, “Remember, revolution is not about spontaneous combustion.  The true revolutionary must set himself aflame.”

What Justice said reminded me of Julian Assange’s conversation with these Occupy activists.  Of course, I couldn’t help noticing how often they kept referring to “the Arab Spring.”  Living in one of the countries where this “flowering” is taking place, I felt like I wanted to comment on Justice’s quote, the London conversation, and Egypt’s current situation.

What happened last year in Egypt felt like spontaneous combustion, especially since it all transpired so quickly.  When the flames finally died down, the ashes of an old political arrangement could be seen in many different places.

Today’s Egypt is definitely aflame.  In fact, I would say that the country is inflamed.  It’s swollen and fevered.  Now, instead of ashes, we have, once again, a white-hot heat.

Last year, when Mubarak stepped down, I felt energized and enthusiastic.  I wanted to contribute to the making of a new Egypt.  This year, I find that I’m very tired.  The strain of the current uncertainty of things is exhausting.  When I talk with others about Egyptian politics today, I’m reluctant to give my opinion.  I don’t know who is right and who is wrong and which way the country should go.  In short, I feel befuddled and paralyzed.

It occurs to me that revolutions are very romantic in their early stages.  Later on, there is a great potential for tragedy.

Three times this past spring semester, the bus I was on in morning, the one taking me to work at the university, came to a stop on the highway.  That’s because the road, up ahead, was being blocked by a mob of angry, young men, some of whom were throwing stones and generally causing mayhem.  The second time this happened I was sitting next to a visiting professor from Chicago.  I turned to her and said, “It sometimes feels like Egypt is becoming unhinged.”

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

“Nearly four years.”

“Well, I’ve been here only one, but I generally get that sense too.”

In the days that followed, I have repeatedly asked myself these questions.  Were these youths doing a good thing (or not) in expressing themselves this way?  What, specifically, were their grievances?  What are people to do when they feel powerless and frustrated?  What is their best course of action?

I wish I knew the answer to these questions.

 

Serendipity

I’ve got this colleague who should have taken a different path in life and become a stand-up comic.  A couple of days or so ago, this individual was sitting with me in my office.  We were chatting away when he suddenly started doing women’s voices.  Hilarity immediately ensued.  In fact, in no time at all he had me giggling like a schoolgirl.

Things went on this way for several minutes until one of his female characterizations made me think of this website called Open Culture.  I think I thought of it because I know that he’s also really into old movies—classic horror flicks, documentaries, weird foreign silents, stuff like that.  Anyway, I’m quite certain that we’d been talking about his love of the cinema just prior to him getting started with his impersonations.  As soon as I thought of the site, I interrupted him, right in the middle of his pompous Margaret Thatcher, and said, “Hey, you ought to check out Open Culture, man, if you want to see a big library of old films.”

This prompted us to go quiet and get on my computer.  I brought up Open Culture, showed him its extensive archive of videos, and then noticed, on its blog link, an embedded clip and accompanying write up on Charles Bukowski, one of my most profound literary influences, going all the way back to my anarcho-cowboy-Rastafarian days in grad school.

A few minutes later he packed up his women and left my office.  At that point I went back and watched the Bukowski clip.  This prompted me to visit YouTube and bring up all the stuff they had on the tough guy writer.  I discovered that way back in the late-80s Barbet Schroeder did a series of short, numbered interviews with the inimitable poet.

Friends, for your enjoyment and edification, I’ve included number 12 here.    

A Green Imagination

I’ve been channeling the spirit world in recent weeks.  Well, not actually the whole spirit world, but I do sometimes get possessed by someone named Ethel Weismuller, a woman who died in 1992, of natural causes. 

I’ve come to know a lot about this long-deceased Floridian.  For one, she really loved to play shuffleboard.  (Don’t ask me how I know that.)  And two, she absolutely adored potted plants.  As a matter of fact, many thought she had the greenest of green thumbs.

Once again, this morning, for about an hour, Ethel inhabited my body.  During this odd period, I found myself primping uncontrollably in the mirror and wanting to drink Metamucil—luckily I don’t actually own any of the stuff.  I also took up my camera and snapped the photos I’ve included.

While taking these pictures, I had the most powerful desire to weed, fertilize, and prune.  Luckily, I was able to control these urges by aggressively reasserting my masculinity and thus scotching these nurturing impulses.