G-ville Backyard Spring Moments

Here are some photos du jour of G-ville chez moi: My washed clothes hanging out on the line, environmental activist style, clothes drying... I was even using the clothes line in the cold Ohio winter. It's not that I am not too cheap to use the electric clothes dryer - there is just something about the act of putting up clothes on the line and letting them wave like peaceful prayer flags. Plus on a sunny spring day like today out on a line they will
dry faster than in an electric and costly machine to run...
Maybe, I miss the sense of Mother or Grandmother that a clothes line invokes. In fact often times clothes out on the line dry faster than in the dryer anyway - hanging up the clothes is good for stretching the muscles without having to do Yoga. Once the clothes are dry I leave them out waving in the breeze because even my boxer shorts remind me of colorful Tibetan Prayer flags carrying prayers out along the breezes.

I planted a few small Spirea late last autumn that are starting to blossom - My folks had their backyard lined with Spirea, Lilac and Forsythia which they dug up from around the foundation remains of the old farm house that was torn down to build the housing development they moved to in the early nineteen-sixties... My folks, RiP, were recycling, unaware, long before the days of being environmentally or politically correct - they were just cheap! lol - Then again I am generally cheap or trying to practice being so as a virtue...

I still day dream and night dream of making road trips across North Africa from al Maghreb otherwise known as Morocco through Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, across the West of al Mesr (Egypt) and onto the Kingdom of Humanity - Saudia Arabia - before ending up in Dubai in the Emirates detouring to Muscat and back to Sana'a and Taizz and back to the UAE. From there I'd like to make an extension into Persia to pass through Esphahan and then trek across the mysteries of Afghanistan before finding my across the Kyber Pass to check out other places like Peshawar and Mystical Multan.

The thing is mostly I am at work or in my back yard just hanging out - but my heart was bewitched by Arabia - I fell in Love in Arabia with a place as if it were a mysterious and magical woman - My souls earthbound home is in Yemen - I learned that from staying there one summer...

I really don't know why I am in Ohio. How I got here, much less how I ended up back here. I don't know who is coming to take me elsewhere but I associate Ohio with some strange forgotten ancestral Native energy - a swampy morass of wetland and woodland and spirits mingling between the heavy humid sky and damp ground. Now entirely cleansed of Native people as if it were Palestine of today which is still being cleansed in progress due to our Western minded dis-regard. Here the wetlands and woodlands succumbed to farms - then factory farms - then subdivisions and strip malls and the rampant parkinglots to nowhere. Then came Wal-mart - Good Lord I get a headache just thinking about Wal-Mart. Those acres of retail tarmac were once pure Ohio woodlands and wetlands. And yet the wild life returns to where the cars are now parked - The drivers of those shiny metal boxes oblivious to what once was here...

Mostly the wildlife I see is roadkill which is why I identify with myself being Ohio wildlife roadkill. It's just a matter of time until my body is a discarded carcass strewn and forgotten alongside a busy Ohio road.

And yet I dream of North Africa, Morocco, Makkah and Madinah - Dubai - Tehran - Kabul - Quetta - Peshawar - Multan (the ultimate Sufi magickal mystery tour of a city!)... I want to make a road trip like none other - from one realm of Mosques and Minarets cultures and tribes and its modern city life - following the reminder of the broadcast Calls to Prayer from different areas. I really don't want to live anywhere where I can't hear the Minaret reminding me that this Earth bound life is not all there is, because this life is just in no way, especially right now, from Ohio, enough.

Ironically, I chose to live on a central Ohio street with a Minaret - the minaret was designed with architectural sympathy and a nod to the prevailing culture and architecture here from this region - Not a slender Egyptian or foreign minaret - but a sturdy thick barn silo style minaret attached to a Mosque built with architectural dignity and grace - not like an aluminum shed of the drive through church variety so common in this neighborhood. The Minaret I can see from house from down the street is a silent Minaret - And this is the land with freedom of speech and freedom of religion... The ice cream truck though daily broadcasts many times throughout the day hawking ice cream loudly to an impoverished neighborhood.

At least I've got satellite TV and can explore the dignity and grace of people and places who have not forgotten the real meaning of Allahu Akbar - God is Greater. Greater than any of this....