That’s what the fax said that woke us up at two in the morning Tuesday night. The suddenness and sternness of the summons made me feel like Frank Sinatra being shown the Queen of Hearts in the Manchurian Candidate. Get thee to Malaysia! I had known this was coming; university would only grant so many […]
Category Archives: Journal
Testosterone: Chemical Fountainhead of the Nafs
The always entertaining This American Life had a great radio show last Friday. I only caught the first segment, unfortunately, but it was fantastic. They interviewed a man whose body did not produce testosterone for 4 months. The result? Total Loss of Desire. Not just sex. All of it. For everything. More amazing: everything he […]
Garage Sale – Lightening the Load of Dunya
This weekend I managed to rid my house of 10 years of dunya accumulation. I left home in 1993 on a bicycle with a frame backpack. Less than 10 years later, I had filled a three bedroom house to the brim. Lord have mercy! Two days of garage saling and I have rid myself of […]
Remembering the Samudra Cottage… Here,
Remembering the Samudra Cottage… Here, barefoot and clad only in sarong, one could enjoy herbal teas from the garden, cooked delicacies made of fresh stone-ground rice flour or organic whole grain rice cooked in earthen pots over a wood fire with delicate curries made from our garden’s own produce. No one who came once to […]
The Big Move
The Big Move Time is moving quickly. The exact date is constantly morphing, but March is a late as it could be, and it could be as early as December. Suddenly, dozens of tasks are popping up. Everything from the hugely obvious (finishing that thesis) to the easily overlooked (laminate those birth certificates) are now […]
I’m not a reader of
I’m not a reader of poetry. But this poem was presented to me at my wedding by my grade-school teacher, Rob Huchingson, now dearly departed. I have treasured it ever since. If all you’ve ever smelled is cologne or that thin alcohol-laced stuff they sell to ladies at Marshall Fields, you can hardly appreciate the […]