i like jeffrey foucault, and fred eaglesmith, and kris delmhorst, and corb lund, and gordon lightfoot, and the smell of baked bread, and working under the sun, and white curtains with red geraniums in kitchen windows, and plaid shirts. and i like fencing, and feeding animals, and even cleaning chickenhouse; i like the wind in my hair on a tractor, and borscht, and chopping wood, and the feeling of tired limbs after a day outside. and prairie, and grainfields, and sky, and sky, and sky. i like these things, and they make me happy. there was change in this, this summer. it’s intensified, shifted direction.
chinook dies down as the dark descends
pine has burned, the ash has cleansed
the message smolders, is lost, but finally sent
all confession has an undertone, of course. trying to figure two things: how, first, to express these without inordinate pride. it is privilege to be able to work with my hands, to regard it as a desirable option among others. and, secondly, how to note these things without celebrating their virtues as reified activities abstracted from the various other sites of power and politics. i recognize many of the problems with the western aesthetic. and, over and again, it is precisely these tropes whose colonial edges are refused recognition in settler society. but still i often think everyone should be content with a garden they tend.
–
read this. “hair.”
i’ve added a bunch of links to the side panel. check out, in particular, the magnes zionist and the muslimah media watch.
iraqis in syria face food shortages. i hear damascus has changed tremendously since i was there.
robert fisk has retired. i’ve read/watched a lot of sad things this week, but this one i think wins out.
inna li’llah wa inna ilayhi raji’un: imam w.d.m.
if i wasn’t muslim? ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum!
and to really depress you: the future of the haram.
Salam and thanks for the link love!
I really enjoy the way you write.
Eid mobarak!
re the haram – really? really? i dunno, that looks fake. it’s saudi, not dubai, after all.
one thing to note right now is that the haram is completely surrounded by tall buildings and hotels. So something like this is already there.
this in fact makes it better since it opens up and extends the haram area. this is a good thing. the commercialization and big skyscraper hotels are already there. again, from the looks of it, this seems like an improvement.
agreed — the immediate vicinity of the mosque is already crowded with Hiltons and the like, but that falls away pretty quickly to independent, tiny (and iffy) motels and the shawarma places and the souks and the impromptu streetside vendors of everything under the sun — all of which would be cleared away to make space for the behemoth
and then there’s the desert land that would be covered over in concrete — all of that natural space which would be eradicated
it’s not an improvement, just another step in the direction the kingdom chose decades ago
fatemah – thank you! i really like mmw.
fathima & adnan – what they should do instead, maybe, is build an electric train circuit to decently-priced hotels further away and get rid of the big fancy hotels and replace them with…date-palm orchards and different plazas representing the diversity of the ummah with edumacatory institutes teaching the different styles of tajweed, the different intellectual and legal traditions- even cultural crafts, arts. the monies got from the nominal/optional fees on the electric-train would go toward paying the brown/immigrant slave workers something actually worth working for.
thinking about saudi-occupied-arabia gives me a headache.
yes that thought did cross my mind.
(on another note, i was certain this post would bring out comments by sarah and/or laura about how the same logic used to valorize the pastoral is here being pressed into an analogous argument with horrible, disastrous results. but: no comments from either of them! i must be losing my touch.)
but basit. don’t you think the same logic used to valorize the pastoral is here being pressed into an analogous argument with horrible, disastrous results?
I think you don’t give us enough credit. I have nothing against you liking things. I don’t even have all that much against you liking them because you can romanticize them. I do have a problem with you romanticizing things and not recognizing that you’re doing so and then using that romanticized image to make sweeping judgments re the state of the world/the academy/people/cities etc. etc.
If you like farming and you can build a life in which you farm, go for it! I fully support that. I don’t support valorizing it without understanding it, and I don’t like it when you elevate that life above others simply because of the romantic ideals that attach thereto. you don’t do that here. in fact, you seem to be struggling with how not to do that and whether or not you can like those things outside of their romantic undertones. and so I say: blog on, my friend, blog on.
Perhaps Basit is just a Bouvard waiting for a Pécuchet.
Nope, I liked too. In fact I found it really interesting and want to talk about it more. Unfortunately the semester has eaten me and I won’t be able to talk to anyone, ever again. But maybe we could talk about it in January, if you are auditing 217.
laura – “i think you don’t give us enough credit” – they don’t call it the credit crunch for nothing.
lara – that sounds like a maxim. (which, as you know, is never new but always consoling.) will keep waiting.
sarah – i don’t know what i’m doing in january. but i’ll be at some 217 classes, if i can find a science class that doesn’t conflict. see you then.