T-walls and Hindu Kush Mountains

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean . . .

A mad woman.  Well, probably not crazy but forgetful?  A fear of flying perhaps, forgetting her Xanax.  She’s pacing up and down the aisles, in obvious discomfort, scowling, her elbows rubbing everyone’s shoulders.   

Kuwait 

On one of her rounds she bumped my arm as I was writing in a notebook, causing my pen to fly into the air.  Of all the places it could have landed it came to rest on the giant breasts of a German woman sitting next to me.  I was speechless, but she wasn’t, saying, “That better be a good novel you are writing!”

The pacing lady became visibly angry, so whispers began to circulate within the cabin that there may be a flight attendant takedown, most likely by Olga with large biceps. 

Inside a church built by the Georgian

Army of discarded stones and Hesco barriers

Afghanistan

During all this I noticed the pacing lady was wearing a purple velveteen neck pillow as if it were a necklace, an accessory, with the price tag was still attached, twirling and flashing in artificial light.  Then I noticed that a length of toilet paper was attached to the sole of her shoe, dragging all over the airplane.  A tail which no one had the heart to tell her about. 

Later, after we deplaned, I saw her running to the next terminal, late for her flight, her tail flying behind her. 

Georgian Church

Afghanistan

“I don’t hear your words: your voice reverberates against my body like another kind of caress . . .  I have no power over your voice.  It comes straight from you into me.  I could stuff my ears and it would find its way into my blood and make it rise.”

            -Anais Nin to Henry Miller, from Henry and June

Sitting in a crowded café, reading Anais Nin’s diary, the room filled with women wearing full burkas.  Of all the things to read in public in a double barrel Muslim country.  Lord help me!  If the authorities knew about this book, they’d have me arrested.  I wonder what Anais and Henry would think about this scene?  I imagine they’d love it. 

It’s 3am.  I’m wide awake in the middle of the desert at a camp.  What should be money blowing across the buff sand is actually trash and tumbleweeds; an example how the almighty dollar can ruin a desert with ugliness. 

And contrasts . . . Bedouins wandering across the desert on camels, green belching oil refineries in the distance.  Beautiful white Bedouin tents pitched under innumerable hives of power lines, each with a skinny camel out back, and rows of Mercedes and Cadillac SUVs parked outside. 

There are no temporary quarters here.  So, I’m camped out on a picnic table under an expansive sky with no clouds, no stars.  Just a low haze of something ominous and stinky.  Petrochemicals, sewage, blowing across the desert.  Thinking that I’d cut off a finger for a purple velveteen neck pillow right now.   

Kuwait

3/17/18