and then our exile

Mneh. Not discombobulated so much as just plain malcontent. Various reasons.
~

Driving home through frosty wheatfields.
Family visits like that immediately previous are...phenomena unto themselves. You need only a select number of phrases you loop indefinately--variations on "what's new?", for the most part. But MH is back from Egypt, and so 'twas much good to talk with her. and W and H and Oma, too. The province is a place of memory.

Small-town Saskatchewan: a mise-en-scene i find good (things like "you've heard of New York, but this is Biggar" still make me smile). In the early 1980s my parents wanted to settle down in such; they even looked at a house in Ruddell, a tiny place we drove through today (Ammi pointed out the house): without even a grain elevator, it is a community of potters--the only service offered. Babaji wanted a small house wherefrom he could write Urdu novels; mother-mine would teach. i wonder how the world would be shaped if i'd grown up in Ruddell.

i have eaten a lot of fudge over the past few days. a *lot*. It follows me wherever I go: even at the bottom of the noodles we got through Wang-Ho a box is discovered. I feel I myself turn into fudge. Fudge is good.
But i am haunted by more than fudge. Going through Cousine Angela's album of ventures over past year, what spot i but photos from a three-day canoe trip down Milk River! Recalling, of course, tales of Someone floating down in an inner-tube. And the streets: "Bid'ah Boulevard", which made me think of F (for whatever reason ;). Then, walking into the musalla on Jum'uah, i see my dear H, tropical-Ghanan-linguist! We met up later as well to do TJ stuff. And Usama too (ie, he of Adopt-a-Town fame)(minus the baseball cap)(hah.).

Reading through the "Christmas" letters compiled by Tante Esther (i wonder how many of those who read them will realize that my "pray that we all grow in Truth" has a not-so-subtle edge?), i realize a...variety of stances: from the single-minded "come to Jesus and be saved!" to "i couldn't sell that kind of stuff" to "religion is like running shoes" to home-grown Islamic fundamentalism--myriad positions. Concentration gradient running towards the younger generations. Also I read that some to whom i'm related went to the Parkland Conference.

New link: Jo Wilding. I had something important to say but have missed it, and so after stating that my toenails are getting worse, i'm out. What makes Alberta so extremely gelid??

Remember those of Bam in your adu'aa. and me, of course.

-->edit: one more thing: if anyone has a copy of Salat an-Nabi by Shaikh al-Albani that i can borrow, they should tell me.