Sunrise 19 Feb 2008
“Not with a bang, but a whimper. . . ”
That tiny tiny bright speck you see is the sun fighting to shine through the clouds. It was only there for one brief moment – then gone! Maybe we will have rain today?
The gasp of brightness brought to mind T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men (by clicking on the blue hypertext, you can go to a great website where it explains all the references in the poem.) Although it was written in 1925 – almost a century ago – it has a very modern feel to it. Your challenge for today – read the poem. Those with more time or interest – go to the website and read the references.:
The Hollow Men
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer –
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Dubai Rape Case Update (Two)
In another tiny little article, but high up on page 3 of the Kuwait Times is:
UAE Court Upholds Verdict in Rape Case
Dubai: An appeals court in the United Arab Emirates yesterday upheld 15 year jail terms handed down against two Emiratis convicted of raping a French-Swiss teenager, and AFP journalist said. The judge in Dubai took just a few seconds to announce his ruling after proceedings opened. The defense wanted the sentences pronounced on December 12 to be quashed, and a lawyer for the two men told AFP after Sunday’s ruling that a further appeal would be lodged with the supreme court. Prosecutors had demanded the maximum punishment, which could have meant the death penalty. A third defendant is being tried in a juvenile court. One of the men who raped the European teenager was HIV-positive, but has since been found to be clear of the sexually transmittable disease. The boy’s mother, Veronique Robert, launched a media campaign to publicize the case and gather support for her demand that the UAE recognize homosexual rape in its legal system and set up institutions to treat AIDs sufferers. She protested against the original verdict, saying that “15 years is nothing for someone who knew he had AIDs.”
Comment: Did you read this sentence?:
One of the men who raped the European teenager was HIV-positive, but has since been found to be clear of the sexually transmittable disease.
Can you tell me who has been found to be clear of the disease? One of the men? The teenager?
Comment 2: Bravo, UAE judges!
Corrupt Officials Beware
I don’t usually type out the whole article from the Kuwait Times, but because this one is so small, and buried way down on the page, I am making an exception and typing in the whole thing:
Responding to recent stories published by Al-Rai concerning alleged violations and corruption cases committed by ministers and MPs, HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Nassar Al-Mohammed noted that HH the Amir had instructed them to enforce the law to everybody. “And you can start with enforcing it on me,” the prime minister added.
Sheikh Nassar pointed out that the law would be enforced on everybody, be them (sic) (they) senior or minor officials. He added that he had instructed all concerned law-enforcement authorities to treat everyone equally with no exceptions at all.
Comment: WOOOO HOOOOOOOOO, HH Prime Minister Sheikh Nassar Al-Mohammed and BIG WOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOO to HH the Emir! If I knew how to make red letters, this would be a big RED letter day! WOOOOO HOOOOO law enforcement!
Not So Fast!
The other day, I was taking breakfast to a friend. For me, I love Gulf breakfasts, I love fried Haloumi, I love felafel, I love hummous and even beans. I love hot fragrant flat bread, fresh out of the oven.
But I knew my friend needed some protein, so I went to a nearby MickyD’s.
It was not fast food. It was very very very very slow food. And even worse – when I got to my friends house, and gave her the BIG value breakfast, she opened the box and – it was pancakes. They were not just slow, they also gave me the WRONG order!
I have to tell you, I was astonished to see so many people there. People like me, women, families, sitting and visiting and eating at McDonalds as they would at a much nicer place, Pain Quotidien or Paul’s or some coffee place. And the McDonalds actually looked nicer than the run-of-the-mill McDonalds, it was clean and even had some relatively nice furniture. But it was NOT fast food!
Struggling Sunrise 17 Feb 08
This morning, the sun had a real fight going just to break through the thick haze on the horizon. WeatherUnderground: Kuwait calls it a “light haze.” The temperature, at 0700 is one degree Fahrenheit LESS than Seattle at 8:00 at night. It feels COLD again!
43 °F / 6 °C
Light Haze
Slight Haze
The weather forecast for Kuwait today is “slight haze.” You’ve seen what normal sunrises look like. This is “slight haze.”
For Mom
I wanted you to see how the Amaryllis are doing. I planted them back in January, and they are just now showing signs of life. The red one that is blooming has another bloom you can see which will also flower. The white Amaryllis is just now sending out a shoot. I kept them outside, out of the direct light, and they are doing great!
Just Bad English
I am adding a new catagory today called Just Bad English.
No, I am not going to troll your blogs looking for grammar mistakes or misspellings or unusual use of English. I have noticed that I am blogging in English, and that many of the Kuwaiti bloggers are blogging in their second language – that is tough enough without the Language Police lurking in the background, and that’s not my point, nor my interest.
If, however, you are writing for a newspaper, you are held to a higher standard, even if English is not your native tongue.
So tell me, in this article from the Arab Times Kuwait Crime News, how many people were arrested? What were they arrested for?
Meanwhile, a team of securitymen has launched a surprise inspection campaign in Ahmadi resulting in the arrest of two Kuwaitis wanted by law for various criminal charges and 105 jobless expatriates. The arrested individuals were referred to the concerned authorities.
I have another complaint. In the Kuwait Times, we often read of the police “suspecting” a car and pulling it over, or
“suspecting” some individuals and chasing them.
We don’t use “suspecting” that way.
There is suspicious behavior. People are suspected OF something – you can’t just look at a car and “suspect” it, you have to suspect it OF something – erratic driving? What made the police suspicious?
examples of good usage:
Police suspected him of being under the influence of drugs, and pulled him over.
He looked nervous, and police suspected him of being an illegal resident, so they asked to see his papers.
Police received a tip that a brothel was operating in Farwaniya, and based on that suspicion, raided the apartment, breaking down two iron doors in the process which gave the occupants enough time to escape through a hidden hatch in the back of the apartment.
A sharp eyes policeman spotted the car, which appeared to be one stolen a few nights previously. Suspicious that the driver was not the legal owner, they stopped him and interrogated him, and demanded to see his registration and residency papers.
(I made up all the above. Any resemblance to a case you may know is purely coincidental.)
I have also noticed that almost every suspect gives up his drug accomplices, pimp, fellow thieves, smugglers and drug stash after interrogation. I suspect Kuwait police have some extensive experience in encouraging these confessions. Most of these confessions seem to result in other valid arrests. Sometimes, I can believe, these confessions are made by people who are very very afraid. On the other hand, sometimes a confession elicited by fear of a lot of pain might be totally false.
How do you know the difference? What if someone experiences a lot of pain and confesses to a crime they did NOT commit? This means that an innocent man suffers and the one who committed the crime skates. This happens in every country in the world. (That is just a rant, not a language criticism, just a general question in my mind; how do we protect the innocent?)
15 Feb2008 Sunrise
I bet you were sound asleep!
This is what it looked like:
The high expected for today is 68°F/20°C – Beautiful! Wish I could send some of this sunshine to the Pacific Northwest!
Parking Hall of Shame
Just four spots away was a legitimate spot, but no! This guy has to leave his rear end half out into the driving lane so that he could be right by the door. I am guessing he only parked there because all the handicapped spots were already taken (by able bodied people.)
The other day I heard a woman say that it is OK to park in a handicapped spot if no one else has taken it because it means that no handicapped person needs it.
What ignorance!
What happens when someone with a leg injury comes looking for that spot? Someone with asthma? Someone old, with joint problems? People who park in a handicapped spot have NO HEART!
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