Oceanography
Do some kinds of shellfish
live past the outgrowing of their shells?
Is there the possibility for them
Of easing out slowly
from the constraining tightness?
Such a beautiful shell
spiral bound, glistening with stars.
Is there a shellfish
that releases its hold
and slides free
into the weightless wonder
of the moving tides,
Homeless in the immensity?
What wonder
To feel this easing in the human experience.
The unhooking from the moorings
The smooth glide out into the total vulnerability
with the willingness to be another’s dinner
no more protection is needed
There is nothing to do
But find the current
And go.
- Alice Gardner
Note: Alice Gardner is the author of Life Beyond Belief: Everyday Living as Spiritual Practice. You can read more of her poems, here.
[HT: Darvish]
9 comments
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April 28, 2008 at 9:34 am
maximus mercury
hmm – nice concept, but I wish she’d played w. the metaphor a bit more, or not switched to the human experience so explicitly. Her championing “the willingness to be another’s dinner” is quite jolting.
Also: hello! Hope you’ve been well.
April 28, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Baraka
Salaam stranger, nice to see you again!
I can see what you mean, though if I reflect on my willingness to possibly become the Universe’s dinner while searching for that current, I can also see how deeply I cling to my hard shell.
I’m doing well, backed up with loads to do after two back-to-back bouts with the flu, thus the collection of links rather than thoughts.
How are you?
Warmly,
Baraka
April 29, 2008 at 4:50 am
maximus mercury
walaikum assalam. sorry to hear about the flu, but glad you’re doing better!
I am well too, alhamdulillah. Just got back from my PK trip, which was a whirlwind of activity, emotion and impressions. Trying not to let it all slip away from me now as I slide back into my american life. don’t want to lose certain visions…
April 30, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Baraka
I’d love to hear about your trip – I’ve been feeling nostalgic these past few days, longing for Pakistan. My sister arrives soon from Islamabad, insha-Allah, with her three kids and I am in a state of delicious anticipation!
April 30, 2008 at 7:30 pm
maximus mercury
Dear Baraka –
thanks for the interest in my trip back! Here are some of my observations.
Pakistan is changing extremely quickly. Islamabad has changed in parts beyond recognition in 3 short years. In main, the traffic is unbelievable… I experience traffic jams on the airport route at all times of day (except midnight), which is unprecedented. There are underpasses being made – the sensation of driving into one and losing sight of the last tree top as I became enveloped in concrete was so alien for me in Islamabad that I had a physical sensation of suffocation for a second. Spas, restaurants, galleries and shops are multiplying like rabbits in residential buildings in F-7 and F-8 (illegal activity, I might add) and the telecom industry is booming and employing old school friends.
Then there are the troop deployments on Constitution Ave in front of the presidency: you can’t drive straight down that road right up to the presidency anymore. There are morchas made on the steps where the 23 March parade used to take place.
But what struck me the most was how beautiful and green the city still is, despite the new roads that have wiped out a large chunk of the green belt. How absolutely breathtaking the margalla hills are. Daman-e-Koh has been transformed into a beautiful cultured spot with mulitple restaurants, performers, a peacock aviary and free-roaming cranes and geese. Driving up there, I saw it almost with new eyes. It was April, so everything is a brilliant green, and the vegetation on the hills looked remarkably like that in Hawaii. Where I was staying in F-6, there were koyals kooking from early morning into the evening.
Finally, the rich are getting richer and the poor sit in the heat and watch them emerge deaf to their requests with bags of pastries from United Bakery.
Karachi is another story. The number of decrepit buildings (khandar really is the word) beyong the rich neighbourhoods is astounding. My mother’s maid comes daily from a place called “machar colony”. There is a lot of suffering and a lot of anger and short-temperedness. And I will never attempt to go to the beach again on a saturday afternoon.
Lyari (I think that’s the right name of the area) was beyond belief. If you stop long enough to focus on the face of a single young man, slightly disabled, trying to cross a two-lane road where trucks, rickshaws, cars and taxis jostle into five lanes abreast, you wonder what exactly his day is like and why he gets up everyday. Then the TCF Cowasjee Campus, a lovely new building, emerges between the dilapidated rotting grey structures lining the roads and you are shocked. PPP flags and arrows everywhere. Heat-fazed buffaloes lying by the side of the road on what could be garbage, barely fanning the flies off themselves. Behind them rows of mangled houses.
I was terrified a lot. And horrified to see how ‘popla’ living in the US is making me. And terrified to see how much people simply take in their strides.
Sorry this is a jumble of mainly sad thoughts. More later, perhaps tomorrow, if you’re interested. Please ask questions if you like. I might do better with that.
have a great evening!
May 1, 2008 at 4:11 am
maximus mercury
Good/gossipy things that occurred to me before I went to bed:
The Islamabad Club is building new buildings – a new indoor pool and spa facility is complete, and a gym and a new lounge. The old pool is all dug up and currently under repair. THe tennis courts have been added to: there’s a court on top of the roof of a new building on the far side of the auditorium. It’s all quite nice. A lot of old houses in the F-6, F-7, and F-8 areas are being torn down and rebuilt. Lots more snazziness! Khaadi is a feast for lovers of colour and cotton! Mee Lee is more decrepit than it was before: that salon has invested nothing back in its customers or its premises for years. Every tool they have is old and nasty, but prices are higher! The inner circle of Jinnah market has been paved and built up into a nicer open air seating area and a huge video billboard dominates attention as one enters the market. Saeed book bank and Kim Mun are still fantastic. Covered market is no more!! It was heartbreaking to drive down that street and see only a large field of broken bricks and concrete blocks. No one knows what they’re building there next. The old British Council building and the one next to it both look like construction sites too.
Video billboards are also the norm in Karachi now… they are more numerous and dangerous there, being placed along major carriageways and playing a loop of enticing ads.
Thoughtful TV dramas are no more, having been replaced by rather awful indianized soap operas, complete with the same odd accents and cheap costumes, bad direction and story lines.
And food!! I loved the food but couldn’t eat anywhere as much as I wanted to in Karachi b/c I became unwell there. I need to go back for more. The vegetables and BBQ and drinks and desserts. Unbelievable. It was heavenly.
Football is fast becoming a national craze. There are new football fields, where men play all day and at night with large stadium lights blazing. My little nephew claims his favourite game is footie. The national cricket team’s waywardness has finally come to roost.
Finally, the arts scene is as vibrant as ever in Karachi and picking up in Islamabad too. A friend told me that the national art gallery recently inaugurated in Ibd has sculptures that made her blush when she went with her mother. It was a major to-do on my list, but there wasn’t enough time. Another thing that’s picking up is “truck art” , which is, as the name indicates, the type of earthy art one sees on Pakistani trucks. Strangely proportioned falcons adorn kolapuri chappals with red plastic uppers at posh stores like Khaddi. Art galleries are selling cabinets and lids with truck art on them.
Ok, hope this is at least mildly entertaining reading.
May 1, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Baraka
Love your updates!
Sounds like things have continued on the track I last saw in November 2006. Your updates made me feel nostalgic, happy, and sad by turns.
What part of F-6 were you in? My house is on St 4! Best sector in the city
May 2, 2008 at 4:23 am
maximus mercury
hmm.. must respond by email, for privacy reasons.
May 2, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Baraka
Thanks – great chatting with you