The Shifting of the Lens

                                                         The Shifting of the Lens

                        "Life teaches us much of which we are not aware. Our senses perceive 

                          things that do not impinge upon our awareness, but they lie dormant 

                               within us and affect our recognition of people and conditions."

       

                                                                  Louis L'amour

It is four pm on the sixth of February and I sit at an airport bar at JFK Airport on Long Island's southern tip drinking a twelve dollar, twenty ounce Goose Island IPA,pondering, as I ready to board an eleven hour flight to Riyadh, how long it may be before I again am able to indulge myself with a beer. Hell, it is New York, I buy a slice of pizza to form my quintessential last supper. 

I look around, listen to the variety of languages, of accents, see the sundry kinds that swirl around me, the skin colors from Nordic translucent to midnight, purple black. For how long, for how many years, have I tucked myself away from this world, the real world, to stay planted, an awkward thing of folded limbs and inward focused senses, forgetful, some remarkable feat of dissociation that helped me to not remember the giant, thick forest of humanity into which we are born. A healthy, wholistic Petrie dish of, can we say, culture? A birthright of us all, to mix and to merge into this rich stew of humans, of our kind, and, in the final and most enlightened analysis, simply of us. It has long been apparent to me that we as individuals are no more separate one from the other than a colony of bacteria, or of algae, a flock of birds, a school of fish. We make great efforts to emphasize our differences, because inside, deep inside, we are, like the other examples, a collective being, holons, units, cells.

Some too many recent years I lay curled up, fetal, moving, if at all, in Mesozoic, dawn of time slowness, curling and uncurling, moving not at all, engaging not, growing, manifesting, not. No, no, for such a time, a decade methinks, or the better part of, I have mostly hibernated, observed,, plugged into a narcotic state of mind and of body, both figurative and literal. All this time I have bided, as though it counted not, as though it did not matter. Now, fifty years old, overweight, dulled as a blade buried too long in the earth, I struggle to arise, struggle to command what I had at the last remembered to be true. That my body was capable of this, enabled. Yet now it is changed. The man that I was before  vain, lively, proud, veritably crawls now out of my somnambulant trench, moves forward more by will than by the glee that once cast me out from my front porch, the same front porch that I have struggled to leave lo these past seasons.

Here in the Big Apple, steeped again in the broth of us-ness, remembering who and where and what I have been, I prepare to rise, to once again do, not content now to simply be, and to aim for empowerment, aim for engagement with the universe around me, aim for peace in the knowledge of self fulfillment. Here I am swimming once more in this giant ocean of what is, and I am excited to feel the buzz, to feel the scintillation, the quivering energies of yes. 

So I step outside of Terminal One, the international terminal at JFK, underneath the signs for Airfrance, Korean Air, Saudia, Royal Air Maroc, Turkish Airlines, to have a last cigarette on US soil. I'm singing The Band's "The Night They Tore Old Dixie Down," and all the people were singing, it was, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, na, in the cold winter air, people hurrying to make their flights, stepped up, east coast style, and I am happy and I feel on the edge of something I am not yet able to understand, something both magical and yet still intimidating, and, looking into the biting wind, I smile.

Inside at Gate 3, ninety minutes prior to boarding, I witness men, at this point only two who consecutively share the same small rug, perhaps actually one of their jackets, prostrating themselves, pointed towards Mecca, or, Makkah, as the Arabs spell it, praying.  And just now what I presume to be the staff of the plane which I will be traveling upon, parade past me, a small brigade walking regally. In front are three men who appear to be the pilots, Arabic men in crisp, blue uniforms, followed by a veritable harem of perhaps twelve or more women, handsome women, in loose fitting, blue pants, white button shirts and jackets, round, blue caps covering the top of their heads, a flowing blue fabric whose top is tucked into the cap, carrying down sound the back and sides of their faces, their remarkably beautiful faces, each of their eyes replete with curling, heavy eye liner in a bit of a swoosh. The black eyed flight attendants, I presume. Inside of me, barely known to me, some ratio recalculates, some scale shifts over to a new tare, a new metric, a previously not known place.

To the plane now, and to my seat. The lovely Saudi young man through whom I booked my flight, after a small but warm conversation about how good his English is and how he learned it, set me up with the best seat in the Guest section, what we in the possibly less imaginative West call Economy. The first row is perched behind no other seat or wall, adjacent to the flight attendant food and drink station, an area perhaps eight by eight feet with the left aisle of the aircraft running through the right side of the space to which I sit fully to the left, my legs stretching forward into an area that is in no way used. A Saudi who speaks great English and who lives in Dallas, is in the seat one away from me, no one comes to sit between us; even his feet are not in the aisle. He flies to Riyadh one week every month to oversee, consult, and coordinate software that he sells and manages to hospitals in the KSA, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I told him how it came to pass that I was allowed this great spot, "I was wondering how you got such a good seat."

It is hard to get past the fact that after a typical zoo experience on an American Airlines flight, full of overly packed, cattle herding atmosphere with plenty of barely concealed anger and anxiety, this feels so, gosh, at peace. It is huge, more space than US planes, a monitor for each passenger with, I shit you not, a remote control tethered into a small, latching compartment, and a plethora of films, Western classics like Jeremiah Johnson, my all time favorite, 2014 Hollywood hits, International films, TV shows, Arabic films, video games, internet, music, menu, flights information-wow. 

The flight attendants on my Seattle to NYC leg were sort of typically diluted down, older, fussiest, almost demanding in that entitled, we have the same rights as you so don't push me sort of aura, but not here. They are lovely, both as physical specifies representing the female ace, and everyone is in fact female, and as energy bodies, polite, helpful, smiling. I think that I shall perhaps, for a first time, not want to sleep this whole twelve hour flight to Riyadh away. I am excited to see what the meals will be and am considering re-watching Jeremiah Johnson as a sort of quintessential experience memory moment.

The flight attendants were largely, if not all, I believe, Filipinas. They all spoke English well, their native tongue, which my ignorance precludes me from identifying, and their ability to speak Arabic seemed to vary from one to the other. They did their jobs effectively but with none of the projected authority that I am used to from my own culture. They were extremely polite but not in any way subservient. The attendants in the first class and business class may have been Arabic, because some looked ethnically different, but given what little I understand about the nature of Islam, the fact that they were not bundled up like a mummy speaks to their not being so.

As we neared King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh, my entry point to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, KSA, I lifted the blind on the window on my left and saw what looked like the images of the planet Mars. Red sand, wind carved dunes, small streaks and smears of sparsely vegetated wadis, and nothing else as far as I could see. Shortly small circles of green began to dot the land below, telltale signs of irrigated farming. Then homesteads began to appear, nestled inside of variously sized, relatively large, irregular rectangles of piled up sand, like small defensive positions. It puzzled me at first to look at these small compounds because the walls all bore perpendicular scrapings coming away from them at very regular and closely spaced intervals, as though some bored diner had made a wall of mashed potatoes around a small piece of meat and had used their fork to make impressions around the wall, all pointing straight away from whichever wall they started from. As we descended further, as more and more areas sprouted up in the red beige landscape, it became clearer that the scrapings were the markings of earth moving machines, bulldozers perhaps, that must be used fairly often to keep the naturally loose sand piled up to a height difficult to judge, but at least five feet tall. It was then that I saw my first camels. They were moving about, maybe a dozen of them, tan, brown, and one close to white, their long, odd heads pushing back and forth on the end of their gawky, necks. The walks served, I then supposed, to form corrals.

I just passed through customs. Went well, a bit of surliness on the part of my agent, but I did my part to look non challenging and respectful, and after doing and redoing my fingerprint scans, and after a brief explanation about having a valid entry visa in an invalid passport presented along with my valid passport, I was waived into get my baggage. The young man, handsome with big, dark brown eyes and, like most every male in their twenties here, with a tightly clipped, manicured beard, had a bit of an imperious air as he looked at my papers and said every so often, "Up," or, alternately, "Again," or, "Down," instructing me in monosyllables to continue playing he biometric game. I don't really know if my fingers were not being read properly by the scanner or if he was just exercising power, but it was a bit of a Monty Python routine, "Up," "Down," "Again."

He ended up stamping my passport and scribbling the better part of a page of hand written notes in my little blue book of such great importance. Then I smile for the camera and SNAP, a picture that will end up on my iqama, my residence visa. These people love pictures. I was nervous as I moved my bags towards the machines and the people who look through the baggage, scenes in my mind of Midnight Express, of having, in my rush, overlooked something in my bags that could get me jailed.

Even as I waited in line for customs a strange odor continued to make itself known. It was sour, a bit like the smell of unwashed bodies, but what I kept thinking of was the smell of camel dung. It was inescapable. As I later moved through the terminal, which would be my place of being for the next eleven hours until my fifty-five minute flight to Dammam, the other smell that stayed with me was that of toasted bread.

I was waived right through. I grabbed a luggage cart which, unlike the six dollars I paid by credit card in the states to use, is free here. The sun was setting and I could not help but be drawn to the outside, to receive my first taste of the weather and the air and the outside of KSA. In fact walking toward the exit door, pushing my cart, I had this sensation of almost desperation, like I had been too long underwater and I needed to make it to the surface. After such a long time, such a fight to get here, walking through that door, going from travel phase to actually stepping into this new world was like greeting a lover too long held away.

A brilliant air greeted me, about seventy or seventy three degrees, a mild, floaty breeze, no humidity to speak of, and the pink clouds of the late sun above the immaculate mosque across the street from the terminal, crescent moons adorning the tops of the main dome and the minaret. Here in KSA the patterns of art, buildings, lattices, inlay, paving stones, it is all geometry, intricate geometric patterns. The Islamic cultures, due to specific understandings passed down from the Prophet Mohammed, especially the particularly devout, do not use images of persons, in photos or, over the centuries, in their art. Portraits and paintings of Muslim rulers over the centuries don't really exist, not as our Western mind is used to seeing chronicled through our various cultures.Their artistic and architectural energies have gone instead into patterns, arches, colonnades, designs. Look closely at most any mosque and it is inlaid with Arabic script in all its swirly, calligraphic majesty, generally expressing words or teachings of the Perhaps one oft the five pillars of Islam, the five required beliefs and actions needed to become a Muslim, the first being, There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.

Four days prior to today I did not know that I would be coming to the Kingdom, my five month wait for an entry visa having not come to any fruition whatsoever. Suddenly my passport with the entry visa came, just two days after I had reported my passport as lost or stolen to the US government. After four months of waiting, and after the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission had reported that they never even received it, despite the USPS tracking information stating the contrary, and following all advice, I report it stolen and then, viola, it appears. An emergency trip to Seattle, two hundred more dollars and an appointment with the US government and an expedited, four day wait, I am finally ready to go. I sent a picture of it to KFUPM and their response is that if I can come in three days then they will recommend to the Rector that I should come! otherwise! not this year.

Through my senses, down inside, I know that this I the correct course to pursue, I know it is right. My step-more asked me recently, less than a week before I get this communique, if maybe it wasn't time to give up on this plan, time to ride a different horse. "No," I said, "this is the one. This is the job and the place that I want." I told here that perhaps up until that time I had not really wanted fully to go, not really. That it maybe I still had unfinished business to attend to during those many months waiting. That maybe the universe knew this and that not consciously I was not ready. I told her maybe I really need to let go now, to truly intend that this shift should occur, that I needed to surrender and allow. It was in fact only then that the design I had followed since April of last year bore fruit.

And I knew this all, knew it was right, now it was right and I was right with the world, in harmony as I drank in the air outside of the airport's terminal, as I marveled at the color of the sky and experienced a feeling that I had not known since I was a boy looking up at the broad expanse of the stars so far above, feeling and understanding my small place within its magnificence and the perfection of the sublime and unlimited universe, the entire Milky Way, and the limitless depth of the firmaments above.