and then our exile

words were deserters, shot in the back while they ran, leaving only the remembering (LCallista)

At an invisible desk in a dark room: only the flickering glow of the laptop screen, while the Gryphon Trio streams from CBC somewhere to the left of my back. But a day and a half left in Wuddistan before complete alteration of everything tangible. The inexorable passage of time: dragging, drifting, cauterizing. Lifting. Not that the change itself is at fault--even were i to remain here, continue on, walking the drawn corridors of the U of A, i could still say this...but caveats remain.

Due to the patience and care of a little sister, i /am/ officially packed (one bag + backpack), but all day i’ve been feeling the need to insulate the unknown--fold sprawling limbs inward, retrieve vacant tendrils of memory-shoots, reach varied forms of closure. Remiss even to open my journal, because of the overwhelming need to sort things out on paper, to outline and delineate, a task i am loathe to approach--it would imply a crossroads, the end of this Via Dolorosa and the presentiment of choice--i turn instead to history, to lose ownself in the past, facile and blind--
...last year at this time, Usman learn’d to shake hands; we entertain’d visitors of Amerikkka; i finally got around to my driver’s license; in two days, we left for SUNIA. Two years ago, Talib Adam and i wandered the cobblestone of Granada, the red earth and olive orchards of al-Andalus, while three years ago I was in Saskatoon.
For now, despite the lasting natterings pointed at above, there is a certain sense of winding down--"compressing the spiral", as it were. Friday was saluting many at the masjid, before farewelling a bunch of other beoble at Sabri’s. Watching them buy clothes--trying on everything in the store of cutting edge fashion, while i looked on from a distance, bemused.

Muntaka: on the way here we were talking, about how seeing Basit in Edmonton is like having a Mormon in the middle of technologia. But come on, come in, you can see how these things are done.
Me: ahem.
Muntaka: on second thought, maybe you’d better not come in--it is indeed a somewhat...
Me: traumatizing?
Muntaka: hah yes, that’s it, traumatizing experience. So no, you stick to your Amish ways...we’ll be right back.

Taka: (later, in middle of store) So you see, the extensive joys available from their... er... (looks around) ...kufr? Hah.

Anyhow. Good foods at Sabri’s, picturetaking, and farewelling various, a present of Mister Shah, and bussing back to Sherwood Park, where was Mussolinisaluting Lara, exchanging the last of millstones; exhaustion then, emotional and physical, but bringing Babaji home, which was goode.
I think, all I have left is to see PaulR and phone Sh*rafe, JamesG, and then i am free to go. The irony.

They say it’ll be 41 degrees in Damascus next week, which makes my regular call for du’a gain another dimension. It stuck around 8*C here today. Mist, social change, and a "coruscating" walk through the rain.

i am a hooded man.