we are addicted to jackass, and wildboyz, and vive la bam. steve-o is ponge's favorite because he is le plus con (the most fucked up/the stupidest). bam has been my fav since i first saw jackass with ryan earlier this summer. i am very sleepy, but i almost want to stay up because i dont work tomorrow (tho i have to get up anyway coz i have a phys therapy appt tomorrow) and coz i can eat and drink at night. food is awesome. i had a date, and a bagel, and coffee with cream, and mafe (imagine beef stew meets asian vegetable soup with a peanut sauce base over rice) and water and some freshly cooked pumpkin seeds. ramadan so far is easier here, like i thought. my throat was nowhere near as dry as it was there, nor am i as tired - despite having about 3 hours of sleep last night.
last night was like the superpreramadanfuck. i have a box spring and mattress on the floor and the whole fuckin thing rocked a bloody foot away from the wall, which neither of us noticed until we went to make the bed afterwards. we have discovered the pleasures of manufactured slippery. holy piss. afterward i had to ask him what we would have done if i had shit right on the sheets, since i had to hold back he was pounding so hard...i guess the saying "fuck the shit out of (pronoun here)" comes from someplace literal ... he laughed and was just like, well we would have cleaned the sheets then.
but anyway, back to ramadan. i remember being in kerr momar sarr, my throat so dry i couldnt swallow and i struggled to suck water from my fat barren tongue, trying not to cough. the middle portion of the day i slept on the floor of my "office," and spent the mornings and evenings tending my dissolving skin; the gaping puss-ing spreading wounds born of impetigo-infected mosquito bites. here, what do i do? i drive a little, sit around at work and do random chores for E. i come home and do whatever. and the fasting is over at like 5pm, earlier every day as the sun sets earlier and earlier and the season turns to winter. ponge wanted to wait until 6:45pm to break the fast, the normal time of sunset in dakar. i thought we were supposed to do it with sunset but he couldnt imagine breaking that early and a few hours dont really matter so i consented.
but then he spoke with his father today who told him that he should be going with the sun where he is, not where it theoretically would be were he in senegal. he was amazed, i told him it was a cadeau de l'hiver (a gift of the winter). well. i have applied for a job i really would like. it would be dealing with grant and loan applications for a company that seeks to promote good energy policy by giving and lending money to companies for energy-saving projects (like installing low-flow toilets or motion detectors on lighting systems). it would be really good experience for me to work with that sort of thing, and i totally agree with the cause. businesses should realize they can save money and do good to the environment at the same time when it comes to energy use and sources.
i really am starting to like the sort of office environment i work in, its too bad its so far away (i spend an hour in rush hour highway traffic each way every time) and the work isnt something i really care about. but..i mean, its a small family business competing with the big boys of the field. the people i work for are extremely nice and chill and we are politically aligned on some of my major issues. my boss' car says herstory. im starting to think i could just not wear my scarf thing and that they wouldnt really care about me having locks. appantly J wanders around doing her tasks without any shoes on half the time. tho, by now probably everyone there thinks im muslim since i wear the scarf thing senegalese (turban-esque) style around my head to hide the locks and look "professional" and they know im fasting coz it was someone's birthday today and i told them i didnt want any cheesecake and we started talking about my background a little. but my religious affiliation didn't come up and im not about to bust out - hey im not muslim - but people are like so carefully respectful of it that they dont ask any questions.
although in *some* ways i am muslim. there are certain things that are part of muslim belief to which i adhere - for example, one belief is that if you have a lot of resources you must share them with those that have not. allah did not give those to you to keep alone, it is your duty to pass them on. i dont know if any being is in charge of who gets what resources, but i definitly dont think that if you have had the good fortune (and even intelligence and business sense and etc is good fortune, there are any number of reasons you could have been born otherwise) to have access to many resources i think it is your responsibility to care for them and give to those that have not had such fortune.
also the practice of saying incha-allah, which means if it is god's will. you say this if you are talking about something in the future. for example, i will get this job, inchaallah. inchaallah we will have children when we are ready. i really like the acknowledgement of uncertainty in life and the humility of the lack of control over many (most?) of life's events.
there are things i disagree with as well, for example a lot of muslim people believe in definitions of sex and gender and relations that i do not.
also i cant be sure there is something which i should pray to, let alone its form. although i like the idea of submitting yourself to a greater than thou. really, you are nothing. you came from the universe, you are the universe, you are just a manifestation of molecules. this weekend we were performing at a peace rally on the capital to coincide with that at DC, and after the performance i sat there on the grass with ponge, listening to the speakers and watching the crowds. i saw the fine stone of the capital brown and crack as plants and mosses came to live within it, irregularly tumbling down. senators and business suits long gone, the glass of the windows reduced to sand powder of whence it came, the neatly arranged lawn a mass of shrubs and prairie grasses.
this earth came and it will go and this is a blip of it all, barely registered in the expanse of spacetime. 22. my body is 22 years old, my cerebral cortex 22 years of construction and decay. before i know it i will be a tottering old woman, barely able to keep my relatives straight (inchallah). after that..who knows. do i have a soul? is there a form of me that will go on beyond the physical? in a sense i have always been and will always be - matter can neither be created nor destroyed, yes? this is my religion, the sciences. yet i am not without spiritual religion, a gentle unformed unrefined cycling and shifting blend of all i ever think or hear to believe.
