In My Dreams I'm Dying All the Time
My trip back to the US was really long this time: 30 hours and three nightmares about plane crashes, two delayed flights, and one cancelled flight.
Aside from the planeload of bodybuilders on my last flight, I think the most disconcerting thing about my trip was that three times I dreamt the plane I was on was crashing. The first time we crashed on a highway in Saudi Arabia, the next time it was a slow crash through beautiful alleyways in Morocco. The third time we crash landed in San Francisco. This time a friend of mine was seated next to me and when I turned to him, concerned about how I would make it to my final destination, he simply shrugged and said 'San Francisco's perfect for me', then got up and left.
Yeah, I don't know either. The end of those 30 hours felt really good.
Theme Song
A few years ago, I had a discussion with a co-worker about what our theme songs were. His was 'The End' by the Doors. I forget what mine was, but for a few weeks now I've thought that this could be mine: http://www.eeniemeenie.com/media.php?play=70
It's by a Los Angeles band called Irving. I'm fond of most of their songs. They've got some great songs about things like being in love with a friend's girlfriend and all kinds of melancholy love.
Dust
I got back from my vacation to find a layer of dust, sand, and grit all over my apartment. I feel it on the floor and see it on the tables. This place is just a little part of the desert indoors; I have to mop and dust.
I wasn't entirely unprepared for this film of dust; when I came back from Indonesia my apartment was rather dusty, even after just a week. What I wasn't prepared for is how much sand there is swirling around outside. This evening when I left home around 6.30 the sky was dusky and hazy, swollen with dust. It clung in the air and made the sky and dirty blue.
I've lived in polluted and pollinated Atlanta, the choked air of London, and Damascene air thick with the fumes of oil burned for heat, and I'd never seen air like this. The sand particles glistened when I took a picture and came out as specks of light on my display. I may not like Doha, but living here certainly is an experience.
In Italo Calvino's Seasons in the City, he writes about a man who cannot get rid of the dust that seeps into his life and his apartment. I always remembered that story during pollen season in Atlanta, when my car would be covered with a veneer of yellow pollen, and when a mixture of pollen and dust would seep into my apartment. Doha also reminds me of the man in Seasons in the City. Calvino managed to write about something so ugly and irritating really beautifully. Sometimes I think that, with all the experiences I've had in my life, my life should inspire me to write more.
In Other News...
I got back to Doha tonight to find that, while I was on vacation, someone hit my parked car. My parked car! In my building's garage! I've now got a dent the size of a salad plate adorning my front left bumper.
And no, no one left me a note.
East/West
I've just spent six days in London so I could attend my friend and colleague's wedding. It was nice to be back in London but a bit bittersweet as well. Attending my friend's wedding was lovely, but I think I would have also liked to spend a bit more time in the US. I think I was also feeling somehow reluctant to go back to Doha, not for any particular reason. Perhaps it was because I'm starting to feel that living outside the US for three years now is starting to alienate me a little from the things that I know and the things I grew up with and love.
My last night in London my friend Nic and I met up with my friend Natalie to go to her friend's 30th birthday party at his flat. His fabulous flat, I should say, because it is right next to Tower Bridge and, in addition to having an amazing view of the bridge, it has an amazing wrap-around balcony from which to view it.
A few hours and many drinks into the party, a belly dancer turned up and someone started blasting Tarkan from the stereo. I jumped up and danced, and the belly dancer, the music, and the dancing made me remember that this music and the way it makes me want to dance are just some of the reasons I like the Middle East. For all my complaints about Doha, I love many things about the Middle East and sometimes just needed to be reminded of them, especially when I'm in London and thinking that it might just be nice to stay there.
I'm not sure any of the things I love about the Middle East add up to a good reason to live in the region forever in the same way that I'm not sure that my love for the wealth of choices in the US or my strange, passionate love for the City of London means I want to live there, either. I don't know how I choose a home, though.
Although I had thought that I didn't want to move back to the US, I think something in me has changed. I'm not sure if I want to move back to the US but I'm not sure where I want to be. Maybe that's a feeling more disconcerting that living in a place you don't want to live: living without knowing where you want to live. I feel like a large part of me is in the West and a small, but significant, part of me is in the East. I'm not quite sure how to reconcile the two parts or make both of them happy or if that's even possible.
