Living the Dream

“Baba loved the idea of America….There are only three men in this world…American, the brash savior, Britain, and Israel…religion has nothing to do with it.” (p132)

Baba is still just a little bit different than his countrymen.  He is the lone Republican in their building, sees Israel as too busy getting fat off oil, but he gets ill, Amir believes, from the smog of this new land.  (P132-133)  In 1993, when Amir is 20 years old, Baba causes a ruckus in a favorite store because he is asked for ID.  “What kind of country is this?  No one trusts anybody!” (p135)  The reality is that Baba did not have cash and wanted to write a check.

The American dream was not the American dream….how frightening it is to the reader to see the similarities forming in the United States, and Afghanistan of the past.  “I wanted to tell them that, in Kabul, we snapped a tree branch and used it as a credit card….and notches were carved to show amount of indebtedness….  Baba was adjusting.”  (P135-136) Amir does what Amir does to escape reality.  He escapes into memories.  Amir rehashes and Baba mourns his.  Baba was happier in Peshawar, just inside Pakistan’s borders but he has sacrificed his happiness for Amir’s:  “I didn’t bring us here for me…” (p137) Baba takes a job a gas station assistant and his pride has him hand back food stamps he is offered.  (p138)

In 1983, Amir graduates from High School, and Baba, now over fifty years old, shows pride in Amir’s graduation.  “…this was his day more than mine… I am moftakhir, Amir…proud…” (p139)” Baba buys him a vehicle for his graduation and Baba says, “I wish Hassan had been with us today.”  Amir feels the grip of jealousy, the old fear and the guilt.” (p141)

Amir goes to college and refuses to NOT wound his father by going in for Creative writing.  “I didn’t want to sacrifice for Baba anymore.  The last time I had done that, I damned myself.” (p142)  Ah…like most kids, he has no idea…. None…and still, it shows that Hassan’s memory and the incident, is not far from Amir at all times.  Amir escapes reality by going for drives in his vehicle. But even when he sees the Pacific for the first time, he almost cries because he remembers seeing movies with Hassan that had the ocean in them.  (p143)  no matter where he goes in the world, there are always the memories that sit close to him “…there is always a city of hare-lipped ghosts.” (p144)

The narration has been, this far, from a voice in the past.  His senses are affected from those past memories and there is an emotional instability that we, the readers, must walk through with him.   Thus, breath is held many times as we turn the pages…we have to know, we have to know…is there recompense, is there forgiveness, and is there a way to be good again?

Tags: Good Reading by Shewolf
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I.

a fog moving over an ocean spit,

like a woman laying a blanket

over a sleeping child,

a napping lover,

the face of her dead mother

holy movement

that kind of silence

II.

sun rising, over curled eyelash

of a half-awake horizon,

like a silk blanket

sliding over your skin

as you rise;  like sigh in slip

from bed so as not to stir

morning’s dust resting

on the sill

that kind of silence

III.

snowflake dance stopped

by questing tongue;

a kiss stolen suddenly

in the end of drawn breath

ready to swipe as sword,

muted by tip and lip

that kind of silence

IV.

power of a strobing star,

set as cross above a pinion pine

when moon has drawn her curtain

for her absolutions;

a woman’s sink into scented water,

and feels his skin

that kind of silence.

© Carol Desjarlais

Tags: That Kind Of Real by Shewolf
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Tags: Artist Trading Cards by Shewolf
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O’ Africa (The Lion Roars) - Cannonsfire and Tomisb, Collaboration

You know brother calls to brother and blood is answered by blood.
When the moon grows white and fills the sky so all the shadows are pale,
you can feel the forever that pours into the land. How it captures
the rhythmn of the universe.The animals call out the song of a world
come home on the black seas of the night that is vibrant and strong
ready to contest the bright beats of a roaring sun. The lion roars.

The jackels run. In the tent by the fire you curl closer to my heat.
The savannah beats with the pulse of my heart and stellar winds
come across your skin singing the songs of stars. The lion roars.

You feel your blood pulse with a new aliveness. You feel
the strength of the lion beat like a drum in your skin. The fire
is you. The sound of a river races across my heart. I know you
are full of the raw birth of the heart of man that springs
out of the soil called Africa.

You are a goddess in a long boat carried on the back of crocodiles
as you ride the Nile. You are
the nomad mother carrying her child gathering the vegetation
needed to keep her family alive. You are
the bare feet creating a dance on the good earth singing songs
for a full harvest. You are
the woman in my arms curled close for the night. The lion roars.

The children, not of my belly cry in whimpering. Cubs are dragged
unwillingly from my sight. I am filled by you O Africa; your wet lips
kiss my cheek, the thrum of gentle rain against my heart. I want to share
it with your hands, plunge them deep inside me. All the splendor of gazelle
upon the beating earth. They flee as lion roars.

I am the bend of your will; curvature of your spine. A song sung in chant,
calling me back. Grasp me in your womb and the palm of your hand. Sail me
against the Limpopo’s muddied shores. Make love to me in the richness of
the beauty but tend to me within your poverty and I will still see you smile.
I will still hear you call. The lion roars.

http://allpoetry.com/poem/4338405

http://allpoetry.com/Cannonsfire

http://allpoetry.com/tomisb

Be sure to visit them and be feed by beautiful poetry.

Tags: A Pack of Poets, Tomisb by Shewolf
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I was asked a question by one of my readers, “….a question is forming in my mind…how would you define shame…why the Russian and afghan do not agree on the same point? ”

I have had to think on this.  The differences are complex, really.

It is interesting how Hosseini plays on the words “guilt”, “shame”, “regret”.  He uses the different words for different characters and situations.  To him, there is a difference.  Amir feels guilt.  Soyara feels regret… and for war he uses shame.  He differentiates between them.  To me, prior to this, they had the same connotations.

There seems to be that Amir’s kind of guilt can be redeemed, made restitution for.  Guilt seems to be something that haunts you, sorrows you, and plagues you until it is made right.  So, I am thinking that guilt is, in this instance, when you error without understanding the complexities of what you have done and with enlightenment, can be forgiven. It tends to hold more of a spiritual, soulful, context. Restitution comes through the enlightenment and atonement.

Soyara’s regret is that she made a choice between what was right and what was not, and one can live with the repercussions, with sorrow being the reason for change and repentance, not to do it again, as the restoration.

Shame, then, seems to be that which we carry with less an eye on spiritual atonement needed.  It seems to be something that we carry after we do what we felt is necessary at the time it was done.  It holds more of a social context rather than spiritual.  Many things that happen in war; the inhumanity inflicted on our enemies, seems acceptable, necessary, and yes, one can regret it but it there is this sense of automatic forgiveness for doing what must be done in war…in fact, medals of honor are given for these inhumanities depending on which side you are on and who is giving the honors. One man’s right is the other’s blight.  The Right feel right, the Wronged feel wronged but there seems not to be a spiritual and soulful attachment to the right or wrong of it.  Thus, in war, we can regret that we had to do what had to be done for country, etc., and war supersedes the command not to kill another.  Seems there is justification in reasons for the thing that brings shame.

For instance, it is a shame that I left the children’s father to become a single parent and struggle on my own to raise the kids.  There are reasons I left, there is guilt on the part of both parties, but one is given to think, the wrong was the other.  I have regretted what caused the relationship to end, but I turned the shame into something good.  I became strong and wanted to prove to the world that there was no shame in leaving, and have gone about modeling that some times leaving a relationship is better for everyone.  There would have been guilt had I stayed.  One of us would have done something that could not be forgiven.  Our different points of view on why I left show very much how we define what is right and what is good.  He feels justified, I feel justified.  Seems we both think the other is the guilty party…that one is more guilty than the other.  There were regrets in having to raise the children without a father’s support and how difficult it made the children’s lives…but I had to live and a mother, in my situation, would not have, if one stayed.  I could not have lived had I stayed and I could not live without my children.   I no longer feel guilty for leaving.  I feel no shame for leaving.  I do regret that it had to happen.  Everyone, on the different sides of the family, and even amongst the children have different connotations of what was right and what was not right.  We all carry different senses of guilt, regret and shame because of all of it.  In the end, since there is no bypassing the spiritual acceptance, enlightenment has not come to all about it, and therefore there will be regrets but it was necessary.  It was its own kind of war zone, believe me.  There were many little tragedies and travesties, different levels of things that were not good on all parts.  God will have to sort it.

Personal, religious, cultural, connotations of Sin needs to be considered, I think, and our definitions will differ, albeit only slightly some times.    I am sure I will get a better sense of the differences within this book, but for now, this is what I am thinking.

Tags: Journal Blog by Shewolf
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