A Bit Much

7 Ramadhan, 1441

So much to eat, to drink. So much to read. So much to watch. So much to listen to. So much to be thankful for.

Embodiment

6 Ramadhan, 1441

One thing I don't enjoy about online teaching, possibly the only thing I don't enjoy, is having to sit down to teach, sometimes for quite a length of time if lessons run into each other. Over the weekend, when I wasn't teaching, I experienced one of those searing moments of back pain when I was simply doing a bit of work at the table, and I'm sure it was connected with the discomfort I'd been feeling during lessons. Fortunately whatever was going on in my back wasn't completely debilitating. I was able to continue with my prayers without having to make adjustments - always a useful pointer to the degree of damage done. But a few days of aching in my lower back followed. And there remains a faint echo of the pain even today, although it feels as if recovery is almost complete.

Now the thing is, that at the same time as suffering from an aching back I was also dealing with the sort of vague headaches the first few days of fasting tends to generate in me and also trying to cope with the accompanying tiredness. I wasn't a happy soldier, to say the least - but I could also put it all into perspective, confident that this all would pass and I wasn't exactly 'suffering' to any real degree (despite my use of the term above.)

I was, in fact, repeating a lesson I've learned many times but still need to revise. The body has a mind of its own. (Distressingly comically clumsy statement - but let it stand.) Whatever thoughts I was thinking were coloured, to put it mildly, by physical discomfort. My world view was filtered through a narrow spectrum of consuming achiness. I sought to rise above all this, and managed to do so for sometimes minutes at a time, but soon enough the body took over and did my thinking for me.

One of fasting's most powerful lessons. You are your body, for better or worse. And when it's worse you must struggle to hold on to whatever remains of the better.

Ups And Downs

5 Ramadhan, 1441

Down: The early afternoon and a bit of a break between lessons, and I mean a 'bit'. Back aching - I really don't like delivering lessons seated. Quite a bit of stuff to deal with, incoming, and I don't mean a 'bit'. My body tells me it's time for a break and a drink, and seconds later my brain tells me that can't be done - the drink, I mean. Frustration - not so much over not being able to drink - that's okay - but over those few seconds of foolish, irritatingly misplaced desire.

Up: Noi's patented lentil soup, with bread - coming to the end of bowl of. I comment that it's almost perfect, but there's something lacking. A cold night in Istanbul, on which to eat it. Hah! But a warm evening in this Far Place is a very close second - and even though I haven't been outside all day, somehow I feel in possession of the world. Amazing what a bowl of soup can do for the soul, eh?

Sort Of Special

4 Ramadhan, 2020

An odd set of circumstances meant that a sort of special day didn't have quite the pizzazz that has come to be associated with it in recent years. And here's the paradox: the sort of subdued nature of the day made it sort of more happily Special.

Pulling Through, Sort Of

3 Ramadhan, 1441

Continuing to struggle with what should come easy. The month of fasting always provides a window through which one is allowed glimpses of the self that can be less than reassuring - and sometimes extremely penetrating glances that prove disconcerting in the extreme.

I suppose that accounts for the strange sense of triumph that is felt when it's over - for simply having pulled through. And also accounts for why that sense of triumph is rightfully heavily compromised. The real accomplishment lies in seeing oneself with greater clarity, thus developing greater humility - or, at least, aspiring to do so.

Twice Again

2 Ramadhan, 1441

For some reason I tend to find the second day of fasting a tad more demanding than the first, and thus it proved today. That wasn't helped by the fact that there was nothing to demand alertness from me during the morning which I managed to haplessly fritter away. Sometimes you need a purpose to take your mind off your immediate needs - which turn out to be not exactly needs in the most real sense after all.

As a corrective to my lethargy, I tried to spend some time thinking of those who are fasting in far less comfortable circumstances than my own. So many of those. Forgot yesterday to wish Selamat Berpuasa! to all observing the fast, so I'll do so now, not least to remind myself that, appearances notwithstanding, the fast is ultimately about community, as is the faith.

Once Again

1 Ramadhan, 1441

In previous years beginning the month of fasting signalled a fruitfully dislocating break with routine. Disturbance. Re-orientation.

Today felt like returning to somewhere familiar and sure. Located. Here.

Right Now

Am having a jolly good time at the moment teaching a selection of the poems of Carol Ann Duffy, so it felt oddly serendipitous to chance upon her WRITE where we are NOW project. Typically excellent idea from everyone's favourite Poet Laureate.

(I've dipped into a fair number of the verses on offer and there are some belters in there, by the way, not least those from the pen of Ms Duffy.)

Way Out

I mentioned a couple of days ago how being able to watch musicians perform pieces somehow added to the experience of listening to those pieces for me. This morning, in a lull between classes, I found further confirmation of that idea when I chanced upon a video of a performance of Steve Reich's Music for Eighteen Musicians. It's a brilliant piece, of course, but this version transported me to another place when I really should have stayed where I was. One way of escaping the lockdown, I suppose.

The Fog Of History

Have just reached the beginning of the sixth episode of Ken Burns's compelling documentary series on The Vietnam War. The build-up to the Tet Offensive makes for fascinating viewing, especially for this viewer whose contemporary awareness of what was happening in Vietnam back in 1968 was beginning to coalesce. I would have been eleven years old at the time and knew precious little but did realise that the Yanks faced a huge set-back and were in one heck of a mess.

It was in the summer of that year that I first felt any genuinely strong emotion related to what might loosely be termed political events with the assassinations of Doctor King and Bobby Kennedy. I distinctly recall being in the back-yard of our house at Gresham Street and reading a blow-by-blow account of the Kennedy shooting that made me very sad on account of the pointlessness of it all. (Though perhaps I should qualify this by acknowledging I'd felt sad when JFK was murdered back in 1963. It's just that there was a clarity about my mature thought aged eleven that hadn't been there in the earlier version of myself.)

Something I learnt only today - many of the North Vietnamese genuinely believed the Tet offensive would bring an end to the war with those in the South rising against the government in Saigon. How wrong they were, though exactly why I've yet to discover. I'd assumed they regarded the Offensive as being a sort of morale-booster as opposed to a game-winner. Yet further proof, if it were needed, of how little we can know for sure, except in the light of hindsight.