welcome to the haikutimes
Having slept a little, I feel better. However,
my mind is still brimming with question marks and insecurity,
as I have yet to discuss my feelings with Susanna.
We are being tourists par excellence and have battled
with the exterior reality of Cairo without much rest.
I feel, emotionally, like I am stumbling through a vast underground cabin
with the smallest of matches.
In a way, the reality of Cairo externalizes this imagery.
The confusion of the streets ond the sombre buildings
that rise, covered with dirt out of the trembling ground,
seem to fit my unconscious reaction to meeting Susanna.
Sometimes it seems that there are correlations everyhwere
between the inner and the outer worlds.
The main square of modern Cairo is only a two minute walk from Susanna's apartment. Crossing this chaotic focal point is a test of nerves and awareness. There seems to be no order to the traffic at all except for the many policemen in bright white, yellow and black uniforms who feebly attempt to halt the rush of impatient and eternally honking drivers. Viewing the traffic from the inside of a taxi is quite another experience. Initally, I think I was shocked to observe the intermeshing of all the directions of traffic and people, feeling that every moment would bring another crisis close at hand, when a pedestrian would nonchalantly stroll through the moving obstacle course of the street or the taxi would swerve between two cars when there really was no space to swerve in. Now I am thinkng--how could the traffic move if such an obstacle course did not exist? I visited the Egyptian museum with Tom and Becky, Susanna's parents. The interior of the museum seems to be an analogy to the atmosphere of the city itself. Within vast spaces are concealed thousands of objects, old and dusty, each creating its own feeling of murky history.
Our next course of action was to journey out to the pyramids.
The ride there was incredible in its combination of skillful maneouvers,
narrow escapes and horrible air.
My first impression of the pyramids: They are massive structures,
especially when you realize
that no power machinery was involved in their construction.
Susanna and Tom joined me in an exploration of the inner tomb.
The passageway was narrow, hot and steep, and seemed to have as much pedestrian traffic as did the roads. It was not until we were back out of the tomb
that I realized we had been alone in the central cavern.
I wondered if the spirits of the Pharaoh who once occupied these sacred spaces
looked down in humor or distaste at our inquisitive western minds.
I thought about the Aborigines and Ayres rock;
how they themselves never go on the rock,
since it is far too sacred to be trod upon--
yet they control the tourist movements on the rock
and reap the profits from it.
Well. A few more things have happened and I am wondering just where to start. It has been trying for me to feel so twisted and confused while in such a place. The path is most unclear to me at present. Still in Cairo--we went out to the bazaar and saw a beautiful mausoleum which I had tried to go back to after traipsing through some of the shops. When I tried on my own to re-enter the temple, I was denied access and found the gatekeeper to be decidedly cross, in stark comparison with his mood of the morning, when he had shaken hands with us. After this I broke into tears. Eventually-- I composed myself and drew something else; just a section of the streetside. Soon, I had a small crowd of boys around me, looking on with great interest. They asked, in broken english,"What time is it?" and"What is your name?"
I was just reading a bit of Jung
He was talking about human relationships
and problems arising because people become objects of desire to each other--
and thus make each other unfree.
I should try to be completely objective and detached and simply see what happens.
Well. Tom, Becky and I walked into Ibin Tulun Mosque, whic was beautiful.
On the way, we passed many dirty living spaces squeezed into tiny corners of the street;
where countless shops crowded the roadside; where smells and sounds teemed.
After the plane flight to Aswan we took a hot bus ride
about four hours into the middle of nowhere--
hot expansive black glazed desert ridges shimmering in white dry heat.
Once, we stopped in a concrete shelter and ordered drinks
while the many turbanned Arabs smoked out of their water pipes.
Abu Simbel was massively hot.
Once we arrived at the thoroughly westernized and luxurious hotes,
we cowered for comfort in the shade of the air conditioner for several hours.
In a cartouche-shaped pool we swam, descending into cold murkyness.
I became anxious to see the tomb sculptures of Ramsees,
and hoofed over to see them in oppressive heat.
In the absence of all other humans I drew--
and a wonderful experience that was, especially in the presence
of awe-inspiring works of art.
On the edge of artificial lake Nasser
with distant, blackened and lonely hills submerged in the hazy depths.
This monument is an experience reaching to an earlier human awareness and time.
The mark of man--and woman--has dramatically altered the desert in that spot.
Impressive as these changes are, however, they represent little
in the passage of planetary time.
Likewise--all my seemingly confusing experiences with Susanna
are tiny joggles in the singular motion of the universe.
Yet on the surface, they are of tremendous impact.
So what is real or important?
To me, the meaning behind the baboons at the top of Abu Simbel is fascinating.
Jung links their sculptured forms to the primeval awareness of the relative distinctions,
and thus different realities to the people of time,
of night and day, darkness and light--yin and yang.
The baboons on the temple greet the first light, just as Jung noticed native Africans
behaving similarly in the morning:
spitting on their palms and baring them to the morning light.
I think there are links between the externalized forms
of Egyptian gods and our own personalized realities,
however they may be muddled by modern life--
or are they? Religions become fascinating to me
when they remind me of my connection to all of humanity.
The last evening we spent staring at the sculptures was quiet
because our only other companions were some friendly but scrawny dogs
and a Nubian with an afro who wanted to marry Susanna.
As the great red disc of the sun slid into the sandy horizon
we ascended the structure via the sloping backside,
noting the still oppressive heat and the stranded boats
sadly looking at the receeding waters of lake Nasser.
We checked into our fully westernized, energy and capital-intensive
air-conditioned Sheraton Hotel after arriving in Luxor.
Of course I enjoy air conditioning, clean sheets and a clean bathroom.
Why am I the one who goes to this place rather than a mud brick shack?
I found the fact that Tom, Becky and Susanna
made use of the hotel evaluation card rather amusing.
To me, I find the disparity between luxury and poverty to be so great
that to call the hotel service anything but first class is silly.
It just so happens that the Sheraton is an elegant place,
but I can imagine being in much grottier circumstances which,
even then, would be a huge improvement over the conditions
in which some people have to live.
My observations of the Karnak temple were tempered by a mood of depression. My relations with Susanna have reached new levels of confusion. She and her parents were intent on visiting every corner of the ruins, and reading up on what it all was. I was more preoccupied by the strange energy between us. Also, I am interested in the details of the temples, but in an objective, not a particular sense. It makes the greatest difference to absorb what is before me by drawing-- otherwise it is all words--which tend to go through me like the pear juice I drank in Singapore. What is important, I feel, is finding the link between the ancient Egyptian people and us today. The temples interest me in so far as they reflect the state of human consciousness at that point in time. Perhaps I am contradicting myself here, because to understand the consciousness you have to understand the iconography. Its just that I get the feeling that when we brush over so many things and say, "here's a war scene", or "look at these waterfoul", we are not really looking.
Another emotional day. Today we went to the Valley of the Kings and saw a lot of tombs. I was affected by Susanna more than I was affected by the ruins, though. Although the tombs were fascinating and beautiful, I had my mind more on her. In doing so I noticed that she and I are only communicating on a superficial level-- as we have for the past two days--and it's starting to bother me. I seem to be in that situation of "I'm fascinated with this person but she has no idea or doesn't care what I'm feeling & has no similar feelings towards me."
Yesterday we drove into the Sinai Peninsula to visit St. Catherine's Monastery a sweltering bus ride spiked with plenty of emotional tension, since Susanna and I had an intense discussion about the politics of relationships about marriage in general, and about us in particular. I felt like leaving immediately. But how could I? In this landscape there is no vegetation anywhere except or the occasional tree which sprouts only where there is an underground spring. The monastery is the oldest fully Byzantine structure still in use today. It began sometime in 600 A.D., dedicated to the martyred St. Catherine. An amazing feature of this monastery is that the monks have been praying there every day for six hours, over a period of one thousand, four hundred twenty-three years. The bush in the back courtyard was the bush that Moses saw burning, so our guide said, its roots going back three thousand years. In order to explain this, the guide reasoned that since this was, without a doubt, the monastery--and the mountain was, without a doubt, Mt. Sinai--this had to be the bush. The man seemed to be caught up in a fantastic world of beliefs. In that sense he is similar to me, who believed that Susanna would behave as I imagined.
Here I am--on a boat bound for Athens where I will spend one day, Then I fly to London. Then I fly home. The last few days have been really difficult and I think it's great that I'm just going home. Perhaps the major problem I am facing is that I have been too giving and too ready to give of myself, without recognizing the truth of the situation. I know that I am doing something right now, getting back to my family and familiar landscapes. I had a dream: I was with an unknown companion and saw a huge, green flying saucer circle above a city and then come down, landing on it's edge. It fell towards us with a crash. To my horror I realized that we had to take a ride in the flying saucer. When we entered, we found it to be full of musty, old equipment. The pilots did not notice us. We were ushered into the front seats, where, to my amazement-- I saw a little man six inches high. His teeth were yellow and decaying, and he wore a yellow robe. He was staring up at me. The first thing that came to my waking mind was Jung's belief that U.F.O's are symbolic representations of wholeness, of the united and balance self.
Ha!
Distance yourself from all that pain.
Is it possible to ever escape a desire
is desire good for anything?
I've been changing a lot recently.
How clearly do I see that one causes ones own pain.
Here it is, in front of me again.
What shall I do with it?
What shall I do with myself?
In this new reality I will not wait in pain.
I go
I encounter
I accept whatever passes, and I move on--but I do not wait in pain.
copyright 2004 Haikutimes.com
drawing/writing/photography
jonathan machen