061109

a couple of weeks ago i was returning home after an anti-bush protest (gwb is on a speaking tour, and made it to edmonton – i have things to say about speechifying like that in general, and about activism in alberta, and about energy, but these will be another post sometime): i’d got to the [...]

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com-mutation

on the bus the other morning i sat next to two girls talking about their mormon friends. they “played a joke” on onesuch, telling him that the drink he had been enjoying and which he took to be punch had actually been spiked with alcohol. and he went “crazy”, spitting into the sink, trying to [...]

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hills of morning

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1. morning.
2. morning.
3. raspberries under snow.
4. our kittens keep dying or otherwise disappearing. here we have wuddistan’s newest residents. the orange one is salahuddin, the black one with long hair is johannes josephus.

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a christmas letter 2

the year’s family christmas letter. it’s also been months in which this world has witnessed the most violence to date, inflicted by me to others and by others to me, but i didn’t talk about that.
i might start posting again soon. alternately, i might not.
–
The sun sets and rises and sets. Our lives cycle through [...]

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isaidicanexplainshesaidiknow

yesterday returned to the sketching of harsh words onto the bare wall in front of me. until, an hour later, desperately shook off the drawing inertia and propelled myself outside into the chill autumn air, followed the asphalt along country roads through dark spruce forests interspersed with white birchbark trunks, walked and walked until i [...]

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mirabile dictu

(some weeks ago)
gow: so, how are you?
me: ramadan’s passing. every year i wait for it to come and then agonize over its passing. am in the agonization stage.
gow: because you feel you haven’t done enough?
me: yes.
gow: i don’t mean school-things, i meant other kinds of things.
me: yes, those things.
–

gow: so, how’s it going?
me: well, i [...]

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echolalia: ash wednesday

now, horrifically, the entendre undercut and slipping upward: here, (a production,) will be the site of its reading. from butler’s “violence, mourning, politics”:
there is losing, as we know, but there is also the transformative effect of loss, and this latter cannot be charted or planned. one can try to choose it, but it may be [...]

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oct7.07

(noor and usman looking at pictures of zacharia&saman’s trip)
usman: ist das jannah?
shelby: so, garnholz, i’ve turned into my worst nightmare.
me: how’s that?
shelby: i’ve started commuting in a truck, man.
me: well, it is the month of tawbah…
navid: so what’re you doing this weekend?
me: oh, not much. catching up, mostly.
navid: (ha) you know basit, ever since i’ve [...]

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(intermission)

usman: liebst du mich wenn ich laut bin?
noor: …ja.
usman: liebst du mich wenn ich weine?
noor: immer!
usman: liebt baba mich wenn ich laut bin?
noor: oh ja.
usman: hm. ist dass wie allah tala uns gemacht hat?
noor: zu lieben?
usman: mmhmm?
noor: uh. ja?
usman: ok.
…
usman: ich lieb’ mich auch wenn ich laut bin.
- july 17

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swimming

i keep thinking about the young man i saw perhaps bleeding to death in a traffic lane about a week ago. i drove past, because i was in a traffic flow, there were three dozen vehicles behind me. but he lay there, scarcely breathing, shock of blond hair and the muscles of a biker, and [...]

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