frog hollow road

Qawalli kiss Flamenco (Faiz Ali Faiz)

2010-03-17T15:42:00.001+02:00

How to Train a Moroccan man and live to tell about it

2010-03-16T05:53:00.001+02:00

Istanbul Pride

2009-07-13T07:09:00.003+03:00

crowds
queens, emo teens, cops
come out for pride :-)

outrageous raucus
we're confrontational
diplomatic civil authority

prancing chanting pride
marching shouting pride
Istiklal [means 'Freedom'] Avenue

pride day queer folk, lesbians
gay for pay, faeries, just folk
me taking pictures

no backyard

2009-07-13T06:57:00.004+03:00

two cartons of baby chicks
no back yard:
they'll live on the roof he says

he plays kickball
on the street
sparrows starlings enjoy the summer

summer in the city
long arms and legs
T-shirt and beachcombers

Tuna Sokak ~ Danube Street

2009-07-09T15:59:00.001+03:00

full moon over Danube Street
my cute neighbor
wears his beachcombers

full moon over Danube Street
moonglow
from all the satellite dishes

full moon over Danube Street
the soft murmur
of air conditioners

full moon over Danube Street
moonwatching neighbors
gossip

full moon over Danube Street
moonwatching
reading my rosary

full moon over Danube Street
some bright stars and planets
and street lights

full moon over Danube Street
a taxi
picks up a neighbor all dressed up

full moon over Danube Street
the cat's complaints
don't sound so romantic

full moon over Danube Street
teens in T-shirts
don't seem to be going home

full moon over Danube Street
moonlight
street lights

midsummer night's full moon
the call to morning prayer
comes so early

i

The Silence of Two: spinning webs.

2009-04-26T20:24:00.000+03:00

The Silence of Two: spinning webs.

i hope my friends will read this!

Fw: the body of Christ

2008-12-27T13:17:00.000+02:00

dear family, brothers sister friends: this is my personal letter to warren

celebration of the sanctity of life, of the sacredness of the human family, is a universal, actually hardwired in our beings, not exclusive property of nobody...

let us all, atheist, humanist, and as the Quran says, any human anywhere, celebrate this divine ever new light of life love and being.

isa

--- On Sat, 12/27/08, isa wrote:

From: isa
Subject: the body of Christ
To: info@saddleback.net
Date: Saturday, December 27, 2008, 5:06 PM

dear Saddleback.net and Mr. Warren and associates:

You cannot read the plea and the prayers of Paul and not know: The body of Christ is not one community to the exclusion of the rest. Kenosis you know is not puffing up, but bending down. Kenosis is the antonym of dominion. Kenosis according to the Fathers of the "Church" is the proof of Jesus' ministry to the divine family, that Jesus put aside dominion and became a baby, the most powerless poorest most helpless possible.

Making politics with God's mercy, denying it, demeans belittles denigrates God's majesty.

We are NOT Christophobes. You do not have the right, the authority, the mission of taking on Christ's mantle: you can't make the claim which Jesus refused to claim by his own authority in obedience to the Father: called kenosis by the fathers of the church... Sorry, there is no such self appointed papal infallibility, neither in Rome, nor Alexandria, nor in Saddleback. When you claim for you yourself the authority of the Church, the body of Christ, you usurp God's mercy, and proclaim what Jesus in His lifetime refused to allow.

No. The Christophobes are the ones who damn some of or any of those who turn to the Lord and wait on the Lord. Christophobes are the ones who damn anyone of any belief or "lifestyle" who serve in peace, who serve in mercy, who serve the cursed, the outcast, the centurion's slave, the fallen, the lost sheep, the goyim, the Samaritan, women with bloody discharge, the unclean. Serve the unclean, and you will be washed clean by their tears. That is Jesus's contract, cleansed of sectarianism.

God's Son is us, all of us, as Jesus reminded his locuters.

No. I don't hate you, but your bull shit until you clean it up makes the whole church smell. Arrogance always stinks of its father whom Jesus after 40 days of fasting ordered back under its rock, and simony is a mortal sin, unforgivable. Yes you win. Our Jesus didn't. Our Jesus refused to compete. Those who claim Jesus's mantle don't seek glory in the devil's house, but seek it among the outcast, downtrodden and despised: that is the mantle. Any other is wolves in sheep's clothing.

The choice is yours, you know. People can't be fixed. God makes us, doesn't hate us, and asks us to serve him by showing his mercy, that mercy which knows no boundary. Choose. As God warns in Deuteronomy, you don't need no engraved invitation, this Word is written in your human heart. It's there to light the darkness. Those that reject that light burn in it anyway. Let yourself burn. That is God's mercy.

Let that love shine, and no darkness can dim it.

from one fagot in god's barbecue to another, let us celebrate the sanctity of all newborn children and all their mothers and all their fathers, all god's special gifts, without whom god's universe is incomplete. Let us celebrate the sacredness of all families.

merry and happy and holy feast of the incarnation of god's divine mercy in the human heart, the new light in the new year.

isa fakir

"If not now, when?"
"if I am not for me, who is. if I am just for me, what am I"
isa kocher http://www.tiwiguide.com/

let us celebrate the sanctity of life

2008-12-26T03:05:00.000+02:00

let us celebrate the sanctity of life

peace, joy, blessings, love, and prayers

relight the beacon, renew the hope, reawaken the faith, restore the promise, return to the light, be born again: we are the chosen people, the Heavenly Kingdom, the New Jerusalem, the sacred community of the ordained, beings of light, friends and family, the New Republic. Let us shine. Let our new light wash away the darkness.

we all, each and every one of us,
are that special unique sacred gift,
without which creation can not be complete

bright ice cold
winter morning
market day, isa’s birthday

new fire old coals
in the old stove
new year

December 25, 2008, Winter Solstice Journal

This year I celebrated Thanksgiving with a prayers service after Friday prayer, with a memorial service for my parents and supplicatory prayers for the new American government.

The traditional Turkish idiom for rain is "god’s mercy ." Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated. The two great holidays in the Islamic year are the Ramazan Holiday and the Feastday of Haj. For Thanksgiving Day, after the memorial prayers, there was a meal together, at a small local zawiya, corner meeting for Sufis, which was catered by the young dervishes living there studying.

all morning in the kitchen
cooking chicken and mutton
keeps us warm

cold noontime sun
stretches out the shadows
call for Friday prayers

suras chanted for my mother
old men in overcoats
join the meal, and students

According to certain traditional signs and teachings, some people are saints and wait for us in heaven. Dreams where someone sees Mohammed[saws] for example are guaranteed to be inspired. Believers who die in faith past the age of 90 are blessed. My mother Rosi was 97. She assured us she returned to her Walti who was waiting for her in heaven.

last prayers
in the cold night air
streets empty

cold night air
stoves smell of coal
lights behind curtains

two days without water
unwashed pots and dishes
left over bones for soup.

tomorrow
first of the month of Hajj
got to shop for a new stove

bright orange pumpkin
hot soup with spices?
or pumpkin soufflé gateau

thunderstorms threaten
winter
waiting for my son's call
thunderstorms threaten
winter
i hate talking to my bank
thunderstorms threaten
winter
no city water all day today
thunderstorms threaten
winter
tomorrow's not thanksgiving in turkey
thunderstorms threaten
winter
god's electrifying mercy

.
sun’s shortest day
*Rumi’s night of light
all day all night rain

*shebi aruz
Konya deep in snow
dervishes deep in remembrance

hazretti pir mevlana jelaluddin rumi’s wedding night,
winter solstice,
night weds the light

*isa's birthday dawns
cold, freezing wet
neighbors get to work

isa's birthday
Thursday's market day
shoppers all bundled up

*"isa" is probably the most common spelling outside Western Europe of Yeshua/Joshua/Jesus. in arabic 3ain.yau.sin.yau. it gets transliterated in latin letters to i.s.a and it means something like word avatar, "god saves/defends/keeps safe", a kind of prayer, or war cry. Noel is not a holiday most places.
*hazretti mevlana jelaluddin mohammed rumi *”shebi aruz”: means “wedding night”, mevlana’s wedding night, the night he returned to heaven

bright ice cold
winter morning
market day, isa’s birthday

silent night
god's mercy
blankets the city in white

silent night
the city sleeps
under a white blanket

silent night
little Franklin stove
keeps out the cold

in silence
falling snow
reflects the street lights

isa's birthday dawns
cold, freezing wet neighbors get to work

winter
morning
cold
relighting the stove
with last night's coals.

new fire old coals
in the old stove
new year

Fw: [Gay-Democrat] Fw: [DeBruceNY] celebrate the sanctity of life

2008-12-25T11:10:00.000+02:00

"If not now, when?"
"if I am not for me, who is. if I am just for me, what am I"
isa kocher http://www.tiwiguide.com/

--- On Thu, 12/25/08, isa wrote:

From: isa
Subject: [Gay-Democrat] Fw: [DeBruceNY] celebrate the sanctity of life
To: "gaydemocratyahoo" , "demsobamaworldwide" <0bamaWorldwide@groups.barackobama.com>, "demseurope" , "DEMSOUT4O" , "demsvetsdiscuss"
Date: Thursday, December 25, 2008, 3:22 PM

peace blessings and prayers

let us celebrate the light, the sanctity of life, the sacredness of ther whole human family.

love and hugz

isa

"If not now, when?"
"if I am not for me, who is. if I am just for me, what am I"
isa kocher http://www.tiwiguid e.com/

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the right to life. Fw: [OutforObama] opinion, fact, law,: celebrate the sanctity of ALL life

2008-12-20T08:26:00.000+02:00

From: isa@786isa.net
Subject: [OutforObama] opinion, fact, law
To: distribution list
Date: Saturday, December 20, 2008, 12:30 PM

dear friends and family:

"we are the change we have been waiting for"
isa "hussein2" kocher

--- On Sat, 12/20/08, isa@786isa.net wrote:

From: isa@786isa.net
Subject: [OutforObama] opinion, fact, law,
To: gay@ob3.colo, lesbian@ob3.colo, bi@ob3.colo, &@ob3.colo, trans@ob3.colo, for@ob3.colo, Obama@ob3.colo
Date: Saturday, December 20, 2008, 12:30 PM

1. opinion
2. fact
3. opinion about fact

everyone has a right to their opinion. nobody has a right to their own facts.

you can have an opinion about the facts, but if the facts are not what you think they are, than your opinion stops being a right and just becomes wrong. Plain and Simple. Facts are provable.

1. the moon is beautiful. Madonna makes me puke. OK.
2. a.the moon is a satellite of earth: OK. 2.the sun is a satellite of earth. NOT.
3. Galileo said 2a true and 2b false and the church tried him for disbelief. He was declared a heretic.

1. My brother in law tells me "you are too disgusting. get out." I was physically told to get out of my own house because my brother in law pukes from seeing gay people kiss in the living room. "you're sick. get the **** out." In DeBruce New York, on the corner of DeBruce and Goff Roads, at the former DeBruce Club Inn, where I grew up. Where I butchered chickens for the restaurant. Picked out the lost golf balls from the three streams and the water traps. Played in the summer hotel baseball league. Bell hopped. Busboyed. Ran the Saturday night movie. At age 35, I took the manager of a major NYC hotel kitchen home for the weekend on Friday, and my sister and her husband happened to get there Saturday.

"Get the **** out: you make me puke."

That is a brother in law in the living room of my own house, a house I own together with my siblings. BTW, that brother-in-law has moral challenges enough to mind his own business.

2. marriage in the USA is a civil contract and under the constitution immune from religious concerns. Fact. marriage universally is a basic human right.

2,500 years ago[not 5,000, but less than 3,000.] In Athenian law only rich men could marry. Workers, women, children, foreigners, gay males, slaves and poor people had no right to marry... by law. Boys from rich families had to provide sex service to rich men in return for basic education and legal standing in the adult community BUT sexual penetration of a freeman boy was a capital offense. Sex was one way and intracrurial.

From the time of Hammurabi through to the end of the Roman Republic when Mohammed II conquered Constantinople rich men had a legal right to sexually penetrate whomever they wanted, male female child or dog as long as it was not a rich boy, or owned by another rich man. If I as a rich male raped a dog or my neighbor's milkmaid or scrub, probably the dog cost me more.

The Christian Empire, east and west, Latin Church and Orthodox, gave same sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples. In the Latin medieval churches, heterosexual couples were forbidden to enjoy any sex of any kind. By law they had to be fully clothed, and then only occasionally, and in the Orthodox churches any sex between married people[also eating olive oil or butter, milk products eggs, fish or anything with blood in it] was forbidden for nine weeks before Easter, four weeks before Christmas, Four weeks before the Feast of the Assumption in August. Four weeks before the feast of the Apostles. see for example: http://www.abbamoses.com/fasting.html. Leaving altogether about two months a year to make hay. Legally, same sex couples were more restricted, but literally who was looking. They were equal as families before god and humanity. Fact.

Throughout most of the human race, over the last 5000 years same sex unions have been blessed and recognized and forbidden and condemned and ignored.

The Spanish Inquisition in the Americas burned about 100 Million gay people between 1500 and 1600 according to quite detailed archives in Spain. Throughout all the First Nations of Central South and North America same sex unions were considered ideal, and not just allowed but had a place of honor.

3. A lot of people hate gay people. A lot of people think hating gay people is OK.

In Germany a lot of people liked Jews and Gypsies and queers and Muslims, but they elected a government whose purposes were to cleanse the state of perversity, defective humans, mental disorders, and Jews and Muslims, and Gypsies and queers and the retarded, and the mentally ill, and orphaned children of the poor were systematically cleansed from the Third Reich. That was their concept of democracy.

In contrast, the Constitution of the USA forbids any ideological litmus test to human rights before the law. It is not anybody's business, before the law. Before science and history, those who want to take away my standing in a civil contract, and the rights of my family in family law are wrong, scientifically and historically and legally.

Telling the victim that they are whining is beneath contempt. It is lower than low. It is as immoral, as cruel, as sick as anybody who watched the Christians being eaten alive and not saying no. Whether it is a vet with PTSD, a woman sexually abused by her legal mate, a child sexually abused by their parents, or any gay person in the USA: blaming the victim is inhuman.

It takes people with zero moral IQ to tell us to stop complaining. And that we are sick to protest denial of basic human rights? Sick to deny we are rapists and child abusers? There are no words to convey the heartless mindless cruelty of any such person. That is abusive. As abusive as anybody who actually does commit rape and child abuse.

I have an unlimited right to demand my basic human being before society, and anyone who denies me the right to stand up and fight for my rights is wrong.

Believe what you want. Think what you want. BUT when you attack my family, don't dare tell me I can't protect them.

"we are the change we have been waiting for"
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/fakirfund
isa "hussein2" kocher

Fwd: [WHCworkshop] Re: vultures hovering

2008-12-04T04:21:00.000+02:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 9:45 PM
Subject: Re: [WHCworkshop] Re: vultures hovering
To: WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com

it rains
coal smoke blankets the darkened city
winter

never knew roses were stupid
my neighbor's rose garden
blooms. winter rains.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Isa Kocher" <786isa@gmail.com>
To: <WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: [WHCworkshop] Re: vultures hovering

> it just happened no effort
>
> the war just happened
>
> as rumsfeld says things just happen
>
> change happens
>
> Bush says he wasn't prepared, didn't become president to wage any war, so
> it all just happens
>
>
> ooops, sorry.
>
> The interview is being replayed on venues like Air America
>
>
>
> "
>

> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WHCworkshop. Select "Leave Group"
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

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--
"WE are the CHANGE we are waiting for"
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/dashboard/main/fakirfund
http://isafakir.multiply.com/

--
"WE are the CHANGE we are waiting for"
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/dashboard/main/fakirfund
http://isafakir.multiply.com/

Fw: Re: november wind

2008-11-22T22:47:00.000+02:00

cheery window chimes
november
cold windy wet

cheery window chimes
november
time for some spicy oatmeal

cheery window chimes
november
goldfish oblivious

autumn

2008-11-15T17:44:00.000+02:00

autumn dawn
white morning smoke
sits over the city

autumn chill
at the airport
seeing my son off

sunny autumn morning
supermarket ensigns
wave in unison

Fw from World Haiku: first week of Ramazan

2008-09-07T06:46:00.000+03:00

in the park

waiting for iftar

a teenager practices breakdancing

after the afternoon match

shirtless

kids mob the old photographer

last light of day

guilds the boys' tanned
bodies

school yard basketball

old men in the park
waiting for iftar
spiked headed teenagers eat peanuts

first friday in Ramazan
clear blue sky
crowded park, old men, families, kids

New Candidate Upset

2008-09-05T04:52:00.000+03:00

check out the number 1 candidate to date:

http://www.inews3.com/topstory.php?id=4973617c4b6f63686572

Fwd: iftar

2008-09-05T02:50:00.000+03:00

In Ramazan, usually just before you hear the call to prayer, you can hear the speaker system being turned on and you can hear the inbreath of the muezzin before you hear the Allah hu akhbar which announces the end of the fast for that day.

rushing home to iftar
jammed in traffic
the minibus driver blasts his horn

garcon's deliver
meals in plastic bags
guys sit with unlit cigarettes

sounds of sound systems
sucking in cigarette smoke
time to eat

the call to prayer
old men and boys
pass around plastic cups of water

iftar
streets empty
quiet

isa

Fwd: [WHCworkshop] Re: the real joys of a haiku elist

2008-09-05T02:11:00.000+03:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <gokurakuatworldkigo@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 2:53 AM
Subject: [WHCworkshop] Re: the real joys of a haiku elist
To: WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com

one of the real joys of a haiku elist where there are people from all over the world such as Hawaii and Delhi and Kabul and Johannesburg is the discovery of new worlds full of new beings with new and strange and exotic creatures we never tasted, smelled, heard, or shared a swim with, which is I think the whole point of a kigo list, which is one of the things haiku doers have in their hip pockets traditionally.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11063b.htm: I knew from a very young age that St Nicholas of Myra was one of the great saints of the Church before I ever knew he was Santa Claus (Santa Claus for me from infancy I think was like the Easter Bunny, funny and good fun but not any more 'real' than Sponge Bob, as much as I love and adore Sponge Bob). http://english.yinyangandtaichichuan.org/bodhidharma.html

Bodhidharma is one of the greatest saints in human history, but it was on the haiku workshop list that I discovered that daruma is a child's doll, a discovery which changed Bodhidharma, Santa Claus and St Nicholas of Myra for me forever and also made Sponge Bob all that much more endearing to me.
I have about 30 hours of Sponge Bob Square Pants and I once had a Sponge Bob Square Pants Festival in my house and I staid up and watched all of them while my guests slept here and there all over the house. It was one of my most favorite parties.
>

drums announce breakfast
watching Sponge Bob
instead of the shadow shows

In Turkey: During Ramazan, about two hours before the fast begins before Morning Prayer, drummers walk through all the side streets banging drums with a rhythm you only hear during the Fast. On the 15th of Ramazan, the drummers come through in the daytime, and everyone either throws them their stipend
wrapped in paper, or they ring the door bell and you give them something.
They come around again on the day of the Break Fast, the holiday at the end of Ramazan. The drummers naturally are poor, and come usually from families of poor people who live from scavenging. Wedding musicians also usually come from the same families.

The 'iftar' an Arabic word which literally means breakfast is at sunset. Part of the requirement of Ramazan is that you eat a second meal before morning, about two hours before sunrise. "Imsak" which literally means "shut your mouth" is the official time to start the fast, as well as time for Morning Prayer, which can take place anytime from first light up until sunrise. Morning Prayer at dawn is strictly forbidden.

Before the "suhr" the meal before you start your fast, there is a tradition of "Karagoz" "black eye" which are plays performed behind screens with shadow show figures, comic but not quite slap judy in style, with all the very traditional folk characters you would hear in traditional folk tales, and it is not just for children.

iftar
the Internet cafe empties out
breakfast in plastic trays

Restaurants prepare iftar meals which can be easily packaged for takeout to all the shops and shopkeepers, and store and office workers where they don't close early and go home. Restaurants all have iftar specials, set menus for the rush and people come in 5 minutes before the call to prayer, eat and run, or some break fast at the mosque with a cup of water and some dates, and then go and eat before going back to work. Most families though eat iftar at home and there are karagoz primarily on all the TV stations.

In Gulf Arab countries the TV programs are very different than in Turkey, comedy, but TV comedy, and the more absurd the better.
During Ramazan, sports and shopping are traditional, and every family has to go out together and see what is for sale.

no bleaks
here in istanbul's streets
a lotta little kids after iftar

Thanks for your thoughts, Isa !

We have a bit on Ramadan here in the World Kigo Database
http://worldkigo2005.blogspot.com/2006/06/ramadan.html

Would you care to add your comments there ?
GABI

__.

Fwd: [WHCworkshop] August Six -

2008-08-06T23:55:00.000+03:00

isa "HUSSEIN" kocher: 4 AUG, Barak Obama's birthday
http://isafakir.multiply.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715279807

--- On Thu, 8/7/08, Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com>
Subject: Fwd: [WHCworkshop] August Six -
To: "isa"
Date: Thursday, August 7, 2008, 3:54 AM

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 1:50 AM
Subject: Re: [WHCworkshop] August Six -
To: WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com

hiroshima, August 6th, more than 60 years ago : prayers for peace

__,_._,___

august 6th sunlight
scattered through the leaves
sitting on the stoop

august 6th sunlight
sitting on the stoop
neighbor shares some rice

august 6th sunlight
somebody I don't know
says hello passing by

august 6th sunlight
sitting on the stoop
deep discussion

august 6th sunlight
scattered across the stoop
cold glass of ice tea

august 6th
under the eaves
quarter moon

isa
istanbul

--
"We don't own it. We do not inherit it. We borrow the Earth from our children." First Nations wisdom
http://www.tiwiguide.com/ http://isafakir.multiply.com/

Fw: Re: Wondering...uncle isa advice to the broken hearted: free advice is worth all of that.

2008-08-06T23:51:00.000+03:00

my friend is breaking up with the love of his life: he says suddenly to me, he's only had sex with a half a dozen people in his life. he is congenitally monogamous. I was amazed.

isa "HUSSEIN" kocher: 4 AUG, Barak Obama's birthday
http://isafakir.multiply.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715279807

--- On Wed, 8/6/08, isa@786isa.net wrote:

From: isa@786isa.net
Subject: Re: Wondering...uncle isa advice to the broken hearted: free advice is worth all of that.
To: "J...o" <...@...mail.com>
Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2008, 10:54 PM

you are so sweet and innocent... :-)

I really had no idea

very few men (none maybe) are loyal to their partners

and gay men particularly have no models of nuptial loyalty in this world and all they see and all they know is sex is like shaking hands, totally a social ritual and a sport

genuine real love is rare in this world... because it takes so much effort

if you really do care about another person, basically the need to fuck around is somehow over ridden by the need to be paternal and maternal and protective and loyal

REAL LOVE is always loyal. That is what makes it real because it hurts.

REAL LOVE is perhaps the worst curse anyone can know because it hurts and never ever stops hurting until the end of your life and beyond. AND the real mystery is that the more your loved loves you back the more terrible love is. It is a life long sentence.

You cannot walk away from real love, and you cannot make them stay, and you cannot get jealous, and you cannot own them but it hurts.

Genuine love is so far more mysterious and strange and sacred and numinous and out of this world. It totally transcends age sex and everything.

Yet one remains oneself and one's whole critical rational logical practical self are intact and functioning inside this tornado like the eye of it. That eye sees everything you do, registers it, analyzes it and gives out its regular report card.

Mother Theresa and Mandela are lovers, which is why we love them.

Apparently you are a lover too.

So, I really don't know what to say. I never had 9 people at the same time :-(. But I had a few here and there from time to time ;-), in all kinds of circumstances, few if ever genuine acts of love. Many of them though real acts of love essentially even anonymous acts of love. Even giving head in the front seat to a drunken football player can be an act of love (and a good meal too). I have also experienced partnership as it is called, living in one abode making hanky panky among the socks and the spaghetti and the remote control. That is nice. REally. I love socks and underwear especially when it is hanging on the line and that fresh smell of laundry when you bring it in and clean sheets and a cake baking.

You cannot change anyone. You cannot demand anything of anyone. There are no guarantees. Either you love them as them, or if you cannot love them as them then you have to add up your losses, lick your wounds, learn your lessons, and carry the pain in your heart with you forever afterwards.

YOU know in your heart if someone loves you, and if they do, you love them despite everything they do do and all the doodoo the do. It's a mystery. If you somehow doubt your own love, or their love, then you try to negotiate it back into some sort of comfort zone.

Only you know what your conditions are and how far you want to go.

If fucking around makes you feel unloved, then you know.

In there inside that eye, inside all that tornado insanity, there is a cash register which counts up the costs. When the costs are greater than the income, that is called bankruptcy.

Chapter 11?

Chapter 7?

Chapter 13?

You have to let that brain do its job so the heart can hurt.

That is a kind of bliss too.

isa "HUSSEIN" kocher: 4 AUG, Barak Obama's birthday
http://isafakir.multiply.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715279807

---

Fw: Re: [WHCworkshop] hammock

2008-08-06T23:47:00.000+03:00

isa "HUSSEIN" kocher: 4 AUG, Barak Obama's birthday
http://isafakir.multiply.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715279807

--- On Thu, 8/7/08, Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [WHCworkshop] hammock
To: WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, August 7, 2008, 3:12 AM

my inner demon couldn't help but imagine me this

snoring in my hammock
the breeze
moves the newspapers around

:-)

isa

On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 1:33 AM, <...@...fm.hr> wrote:

snoring in the hammock --
breeze moves the newspapers
on the ground

c&c
T...

-

--
"We don't own it. We do not inherit it. We borrow the Earth from our children." First Nations wisdom
http://www.tiwiguide.com/ http://isafakir.multiply.com/

Fwd: [WHCworkshop] a tongue in cheek look at Texas weather

2008-08-06T23:46:00.000+03:00

isa "HUSSEIN" kocher: 4 AUG, Barak Obama's birthday
http://isafakir.multiply.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715279807

--- On Thu, 8/7/08, Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com> wrote:

F
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 2:36 AM
Subject: Re: [WHCworkshop] a tongue in cheek look at Texas weather
To: WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com

I was in San Antonio, Lackland, for basic training.

December and January 1962.

one morning, we went out for training, after breakfast, wearing cotton uniforms, shirts and pants, normal summer uniform. I think it was in the 80s. It definitely did not look like we were going to have a Dickensian Christmas.

towards noon, we saw a wall of black, literally a wall, come from the west, as high up as we could see.

the wall passed over us, and we were in a sand storm, zero visibility

by the time we got back to the barracks, the sand storm had cleared somewhat although the sky was black still, and it started to snow flurry and all the places where there had been any standing water or running water were all frozen.

we were issued winter jackets which were about as warm as the wicked witch's (i.e. my third wife's) left nipple.

That night I was so sore from sunburn from the morning, I had trouble sleeping, and my feet felt like I was standing in a bucket of ice.

one of my fonder memories of texas.

On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 7:55 PM, <b...@aol.com> wrote:

-

b.....x@aol.com
reply-to WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com

Reply

the cooler weather
of autumn
today's high, 98

**************Looking for a car that's sporty, fun and fits in your budget?
Read reviews on AOL Autos.
(http://autos.aol.com/cars-BMW-128-2008/expert-review?ncid=aolaut00050000000017 )

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic

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--
"We don't own it. We do not inherit it. We borrow the Earth from our children." First Nations wisdom
http://www.tiwiguide.com/ http://isafakir.multiply.com/

Fw: july

2008-07-16T05:53:00.000+03:00

I can't even THINK straight.
http://isafakir.multiply.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715279807

--- On Wed, 7/16/08, Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com>
Subject: july
To: "WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com"
Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2008, 8:30 AM

these are in no particular order, not a what you would call a set:

our old acacia
pruned
new shoots of green

at the top of our tree
Mr. Finch
chatters away the day

Mr. Finch
stops to scratch some itch
then flies off again

shirtless
he leans out his window
watching the street

shortly after sunrise
soft summer shower
god's mercy

watermelon
BBQed gossip
on the balcony

my black goldfish
infected
white fungus on their fins

happy bonzai
bought at the supermarket
dunno what kind of tree it is?

gone back home again
my neighbor's relatives
nobody to talk to in German

nightly gossip
tea and watermelon
on our front stoops

when it's breezy
all the wind chimes
sound happy

she hates windchimes
my neighbor
says they keep her awake

"We do not inherit the Earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children." Native American Proverb.

self hate does not help us...

2008-06-09T16:35:00.000+03:00

Re: Hillary is NOT the right choice for VEEP!

--- In DemsAbroad@yahoogroups.com, "Randy Caldwell"
wrote: Her campaign started the Muslim and Madrassah
>

It really hurts us when right wing fascist anti-American propaganda, whose sole purpose is to hurt and destroy the Democratic Party is
presented on the DemsAbroad listserv and is taken seriously. That hurts. It is hate speech.

It hurts me, as a disabled vet. It hurts our party. It hurts our nation. I object.

There is something seriously wrong when lies invented to hurt Democrat progressives appear on Democratic party pages for the purpose of hurting one of us. That hurts everyone.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/22/obama.madrassa/

CNN specifically identifies the origin of this attack on ALL democrats at the Washington Times, owned by Sun Myung Moon. Sun Myung Moon, a convicted criminal, fraud, and anti-democratic demaogogue, close friend of the Bushes. Close friend of GHW's and Neil Bush's, GW's youngest brother. Moon asserts that he is the messiah himself. His organization is 100% dictatorial. His alliance with the Bushes goes
back decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Myung_Moon

Moon's purpose is theocracy with him as the world's divinely appointed sole ruling power . There is something seriously wrong when Moon propaganda is used by us against us.

The Washington Times is notorious for its complete rejection of professional journalism and as a right wing propaganda rag:

Founding The Washington Times

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Myung_Moon... snip ... snip
... The Washington Times: In Washington, Moon found common ground with strongly anti-Communist leaders of the 1980s, including President Ronald Reagan. Using Unification Church funds in 1982, Moon, Bo Hi Pak, and other church leaders founded The Washington Times. During the next 20 years Moon spent a billion dollars on the paper, most of it in the Washington D.C. area, to establish and support what he called "the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world".[20] More recent estimates of Moon's ongoing subsidies of Unification Church owned media, which
now include United Press International and Insight Magazine, have exceeded three billion dollars in the US alone.[21]

" ... snip ... snip ... Critics assert that Moon has used Unification Church media assets as political propaganda tools, to act in support of Moon's political agenda, including Rev. Moon's stated goal of establishing the United Nations as a theocratic one-world government, with "True Parents" in the role of Secretary-General "in eternity". Many major newspapers have published extensively about the Moon Bush
connection, including the Guardian, which published a several page expose, when Helen Thomas, one of the 20th century's top reporters resigned when UPI was bought by Moon in protest... snip ... snip" ...

His Unification Church international center and Unification Church Belvedere Training Center of the Unification University is in my home where I grew up in Tarrytown, NY. My family sold it to Moon in the 70s. I never spoke to my father
again.

"... snip ... snip ... In the 70s [Moon] was saying that democracy was evil, Americans were lazy,... snip ... snip ..."

"... snip ... snip ... snip ...Sun Myung Moon's end time political front, the Universal Peace Federation had a summit from April 28 to May 2 in Washington DC. The participants took a tour of the Moon owned Washington Times and
chartered a plane to go visit George H. W. Bush's library. Once again, George 41 gave a keynote address in support of Moon's efforts... snip ... snip ...

"John Solomon, the new executive editor of the Washington Times who told C-span viewers recently that the paper does not push Moon's
agenda, made an appearance at one function apparently hosted by the paper. (see slide show link below)

"Brent Scowcroft and former congressman Earl Hillard also showed up to help Moon subdue the planet.

"The Universal Peace Federation (UPF) is the Unification Church as Moon intended it to be. "... snip ... snip ...

Choosing Senator Rodham Clinton. I.

2008-06-08T12:40:00.000+03:00

Re: the right choice

---

> While all justices are lawyers, very few lawyers become judges. The Supreme Court requires experienced judges with a history and experience on the bench and preferably experience in constitutional law. We've had enough of unqualified political appointees on the Supreme Court.>

The justices NOW on the Supreme Court today are the worst since the justices who decided Dred Scott based on narrow legal precedents. Maybe even worse than that. The worst court in US history and all experienced court justices. All senior justices before appointment to the Supreme Court. All pretty d**n bad.

All of the justices now on the court are *long*time*experienced* trial court judges, but some of the very best justices in supreme court history were not judges before becoming Supreme Court justices.

We absolutely do not need more Alitos Scalias Roberts or Thomases

Our Supreme Court needs someone like William Douglas(never even wrote a legal opinion even as supreme court justice), John Jay(legislator and diplomat,never served as a judge anywhere), Oliver Wendell Holmes(never served as a federal court judge), Felix Frankfurter (diplomat,never served as a judge anywhere:zionist), Earl Warren(politician, never served as a judge), Thurgood Marshal(civil rights activist), and John Marshall who was the most important Supreme Court justice we ever had and never served as a justice anywhere before being appointed as Chief Justice.

Our greatest and best supreme court justices all were purely political appointees without any previous Federal Court judicial experience.

It is the narrow nit picking procedure ridden and academic justices with solid federal court experience who've been the worst. They get their federal experience by being appointed under the national radar as right wing and racist judges and anti-democratic agendas are the only reason they became justices in the federal courts under Reagan and Bush I and Bush II.

We need someone who places justice above the narrow precedents built up by rich corporations using courts to destroy congressional intentions in laws and twist the constitution to say things like G W Bush has a civil right to be president, what the gang of 5 said in 2000, giving Bush a personal civil right that trumped the civil rights of a couple of hundred million Americans

We now have a court which says workers cannot sue corporations to get justice unless the corporations agree they are guilty before they are sued, and that corporation's civil rights trump living person's rights.

All experienced federal judges to a person:

John Roberts (Chief Justice)
January 27, 1955 (1955-01-27) (age 53) in Buffalo, New York 78-22. September 29, 2005 Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (2003–2005); Private practice (1993–2003); Professor, Georgetown University Law Center (1992–2005); Associate Counsel to the President (1982–1986); Principal Deputy Solicitor General (1989–1993); Private practice (1986–1989); Special Assistant to the Attorney General (1981–1982)

John Paul Stevens
April 20, 1920 (1920-04-20) (age 88) in Illinois 98-0 December 19, 1975 Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (1970–1975); Private practice (1948–1970); Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School (1950–1954); Lecturer, Northwestern University School of Law (1954–1958)

Antonin Scalia
March 11, 1936 (1936-03-11) (age 72) in New Jersey 98-0 September 26, 1986 Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1982–1986); Professor, University of Chicago Law School (1977–1982); Assistant Attorney General (1974–1977); Professor, University of Virginia School of Law (1967–1974)

Anthony Kennedy
July 23, 1936 (1936-07-23) (age 71) in California 97-0 February 18, 1988 Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1975–1988); Professor, McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific (1965–1988); Private practice (1963–1975)

David Souter
September 17, 1939 (1939-09-17) (age 68) in Massachusetts 90-9 October 9, 1990 Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (1990–1990); Associate Justice, New Hampshire Supreme Court(1983–1990); Associate Justice, New Hampshire Superior Court (1978–1983); Attorney General of New Hampshire (1976–1978); Deputy Attorney General of New Hampshire (1971–1976); Assistant Attorney General of New Hampshire (1968–1971); Private practice (1966–1968).

Clarence Thomas
June 23, 1948 (1948-06-23) (age 59) in Georgia 52-48 October 23, 1991 Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1990–1991); Chairman, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1982–1990); Legislative Assistant for Missouri Senator John Danforth (1979–1981); employed by Monsanto Inc. (1977– 1979); Assistant Attorney General of Missouri under State Attorney General John Danforth (1974–1977)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
March 15, 1933 (1933-03-15) (age 75) in New York Clinton 97-3 August 10, 1993 Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1980–1993); General Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union (1973–1980); Professor, Columbia Law School (1972–1980); Professor, Rutgers University School of Law (1963–1972)

Stephen Breyer
August 15, 1938 (1938-08-15) (age 69) in California Clinton 87-9 August 3, 1994 Chief Judge, Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (1990–1994); Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (1980–1990); Professor, Harvard Law School (1967–1980)

Samuel Alito
April 1, 1950 (1950-04-01) (age 58) in New Jersey G.W. Bush 58-42 January 31, 2006 Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (1990–2006); Professor, Seton Hall University School of Law (1999–2004); U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey (1987–1990); Deputy Assistant Attorney General (1985–1987); Assistant to the Solicitor General (1981–1985); Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey (1977–1981)
>

memory eternal for our fallen ones lest we forget

2008-05-26T17:06:00.001+03:00

memory eternal for our fallen ones lest we forget
Originally uploaded by isa fakir.

c isa kocher" has sent you an e-card! You can view the e-card by
following the directions in your e-mail program to display the HTML
image.

If you have any comments or questions, please visit
http://ecards.plaxo.com/ or contact us at ecards@plaxo.com. Thank
you!

Card text follows:
No Greater love than this, that they lay down their life for their friends [John15] Bataan Abraham Lincoln September 11 JFK Chief Sitting Bull Corregidor Harvey Milk Martin Luther King RFK St Mychal Judge Malcolm X St Peter the Aleut Chief John Ross Sts Martha Clarke Ida Ford Jean Donavan & Dorothy Kazel Pearl Harbor Joe Hill ...memory eternal... THANKS

Jihad for Love, a film by Parvez Sharma. a jihad of love.

2008-04-18T01:52:00.000+03:00

dear Sandi: I cannot begin to express the deep gratitude I feel personally for the gift of this film. It is so much more than a masterpiece so much more than a film so much more than a documentary so much more than an media event so much more than any words I have, a true jihad for true love.

The film itself, including all those whose efforts it is, is clearly a profoundly personal struggle for faith and truth and love. My poor words cannot do it justice.

Jihad for Love faces directly the fundamental spiritual question of our day and age. It answers the fundamental question of our day and age. IMHO (not so humble really) it is at least as deserving for the Nobel prize for peace as Gore's work on global warming.

Paul the Apostle in one of his letters explains what the Body of Christ is: the community of believers in the way of love are the Christ, Christ sacrificed and risen: the Body of Christ is the community of believers in love. The voice of G-D in the Haggaddah proclaims God's love for us and G-D's love alone as the sole saving fundamental principle of reality. In Buddhism the pillar on which faith stands is the community which serve each other and all creatures in love. In Jihad for Love Pervez Sharma Ustad shows that this jihad is love, love that actualizes, realizes, verifies that God's love for us, God's uniqueness is the love we have for each other and the sacrifice we make for each in love. La illaha ila LLAH says there is no other God except this love we share and this love we give to each.

At the heart of Islam are the two festivals of Ramazan and of Sacrifice. In both, the whole family of believers celebrate the sacrifices made for each other by the whole family of believers acting in the fullness of God's love for us, God's saving, giving forgiving love. In Jihad of Love you see that this love is a struggle, a sacrifice, and a celebration, a coming out like the coming out of Moses (aws) leading the people of God in the Haggaddah, Like Jonah coming out of the whale(aws). Like Eyyub (aws) coming out of misery. Into the Light. Like the coming out of Mohammed (saws) and his friends (ra) to set up a new community of lovers. The actual body of love, the saving serving giving forgiving body of God's love in this world. Jihad for Love is the jihad of LOVE: a coming out of the darkness into the light.
Originally posted at 2:02AM, 18 April 2008 EEST ( permalink | edit | close | delete topic )
isa fakir edited this topic 3 hours ago.

TORTURE Shame overwhelms me when I read about the USA's institutionalization of torture as US policy from the top.

2008-04-11T08:30:00.000+03:00

I find it extremely difficult right now this minute to contain my anger, and probably should not be writing. But this is so far beyond outrageous, so clearly in defiance of USA as democratic country under the rule of law, putting the USA, me, a USA Veteran, in the same category of criminal as any Hitler, Pinochet, or Milosevic, or SS guard.

I have watched movies in Turkey where we have become the international standard of evil, replacing Mengele and the SS and the Rape of Nanking or the Death March of Batan as archetypes of the worst that a human can descend to, with our Prince Vlad being our own Darth Cheney and our wicked witch being our own Dr. Condor Lisa. [what no part for Cardinal Rove?] And it is not fun to see the recognition in all the faces of all the theatre goers and know they see me as that.

As a US service connected 100% disabled veteran, the hopelessness and the shame I feel personally is simply overwhelming. God, I wish I had died. It is a shame that truly is existential.

And it only makes it all that worse that the Democratic Party seems congenitally unable to take these things any more seriously than a cartoon side show. "It's the economy, stupid" I thought it was all about being human. What happened to "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, " """...of the people by the people for the people,..."""... not the money market fund and the SUV.

The bankruptcy of America's economy is the direct consequence of these talks about torture: these gauleiters, the inner half dozen knew that if they could make torture acceptable to people, then anything else is small potatoes, and while we tortures, we also made it legal to lie to poor people about how much interest they were going to pay, and it became small potatoes to make it legal for "banks" Like Bear Sterns simply to lie about "securities" which had no value from the git go.

A recession is the least of our worries as we as a society will pay for the rest of this century. The Civil War did not end slavery, and we still pay to this day for what we did then. The 21st Century will be the American Century in ways we have not yet begun to imagine, but our greed as a nation has already created a China Olympics celebration or their complete contempt of the values we threw away.

Bush and Rice and Cheney all personally profit from their personal positions of personal power in oil, oil related, mining, diamond, coal, and other corporate entanglements, as do the Black Robe Gang of Five who appointed them and this Regency, and we walked away as they sold us out lock stock and barrel in a fire sale after September 11th, to the Chinese and the Dubai and to the Middle East holders of the dollar, who have knowingly financed this war, knowing they will win it.

The war was over in three weeks. What goes on now has long stopped being anything resembling any war in history. It is torture, and the intention was murder by torture, death of conscience and integrity and moral decency.

Even Ashcroft the KKK knight was ashamed.

Associated Press report: Cheney, Rice, Powell, Ashcroft all together in the White House decided in fine detail that everything except outright deliberate murder is OK by the CIA and the military

washttp://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iA8mY9rbbDdKUe1Y9KObwHhqr9YgD8VVCEG80— Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned...snip...The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. Attending the sessions were Cheney, then-Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice...snip...The former intelligence official described Cheney and the top national security officials as deeply immersed in developing the CIA's interrogation program during months of discussions over which methods should be used and when.

"dangerous for our children to even know": Rep. Monique Davis

2008-04-09T10:37:00.000+03:00

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2008/04/
Originally posted: April 3, 2008

Rep. Monique Davis to atheist Rob Sherman: `It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!'

The following exchange between atheist activist Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove and Ill. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) took place Wednesday afternoon in the General Assembly as Sherman testified before the House State Government Administration Committee.

I know from experience that many of you will side with Davis (update -- apparently I was wrong! ), but I ask you to consider what the outcry would have been if a lawmaker had launched a similar attack on the beliefs of a religious person.

Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

Like religion is about shutting people up? Pharaoh to Moses: "Shut up. We are god here." I think Pharaoh's claims turned out to be over reaching just a little bit.

Ms. Davis's outbursts are at once blasphemous and anti-American:

Firstly, the idea that any member of any legislature at any level of government in the USA should damn and vilify in any god's name any constituent while giving testimony to the assembly before the law is about as blasphemous a use of religion as any imaginable: see, for example, the Gospels' assessment of Sanhedrin members who misuse their spiritual and political authority.

Secondly her personal attack is un-American, and essentially intentionally treasonable. Under our law (constitutional, statutory and common), individual personal ideologies are before the law irrelevant: if human decency and fundamental human rights are deniable than according to our Declaration of Independence, the legal basis of lawful government is absent, and moot. Our legal system protects private belief and forbids the use of private belief as a legal tool against anyone before the law. Our American legal system all the way back to William Penn and even New Amsterdam has fundamentally disallowed this kind of abuse of religion as a fundamental cornerstone of the rule of law.

Ms. Davis and her speech deny both divine and human law and justice. Even if she escapes human justice, in the final judgment she will face the judgment of that same god she defames.

God preserve us from these enemies "who kill the prophets and then build monuments over the prophets' bones." "One nation under god" does not mean one party fascist rule. It means total tolerance of and acceptance of and celebration of difference and diversity and it means our great nation's profit from its multiplicity and overabundance of sacred heritage including atheisms, theisms, and its free market of ideologies. That is our nation's greatest common wealth.

Saturday January 12, this fakir will be in Solothurn

2008-01-13T23:05:00.000+02:00

Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:28:37 -0800 (PST)
From: "isa"

Subject: Re: Saturday January 12, this fakir will be in Solothurn in Switzerland godwilling
To: "jessica schülein" jessica.schuelein@web.de

solothurn is right next to Berne maybe I can come to Deutschland for a day?

love you

take care

isa fakir

jessica schülein wrote:

hi isa,

nice to hear from u, i hope ur fine!! well, i hope u and abdel, everythings ok?! now, hes without u in pamukkale, i hope hes gonna survive... where are u exactly in switzerland?? its a pitty, im so buisy cause of examenes...

kiss and greetings,
jessica

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: isa@786isa.net
> Gesendet: 11.01.08 19:45:34
> An: Jessica Schuelein
> Betreff: Saturday January 12, this fakir will be in Solothurn in Switzerland godwilling

Hi! all: Tomorrow morning, I have tickets to fly to Switzerland to return next Saturday.
>
>
> Come and visit or send me the names of people I can sponge on while I am there
>
>
> love and peace to all
>
>
> isa fakir on his way

"Joshua S. Sisco" wrote:

What time will you be there? And where are you staying...? I dont know anyone there, so I can't help you with that...but a visit could certainly be in order.

ice cold grey River Aare
boys in Long Island, Rhodes, Malta, Moscow
go swimming in thanksgiving

hot breakfast tea and milk
cheeses and fresh baked rolls
hungry gulls patrol the Aare

~

first day of Muharrem

new moon, new years
in Switzerland
Swiss croissants for breakfast

grey overcast sky
reflects off the grey Aare
grey stone walls surround the city

grey Sunday
the colorful Swiss ducks
sleep in the cold Aare

Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 03:33:14 -0800 (PST)
From: "isa"
Subject: Re: Saturday January 12, this fakir will be in Solothurn in Switzerland godwilling
To: "scottkahn"

scottkahn wrote:

> Isa, how…

i'll be here godwilling till 19 january than back to istanbul

it has been such hell in my life for the past two months i don't know where to start and i was hoping to god that a week in Switzerland would at least be pleasant but so far it is hell here too.

they gave me the wrong bags at the airport: I need a wheel chair when I travel internationally because of my spinal injuries and my asthma and they get me through customs without having to stand or walk kilometres: some airport you walk literally kilometres from plane to customs or form one plane to another, and I can't. As it was even with the wheel chair assistance I was over a half hour late for boarding and the man at the gate is yelling at me to hurry up while the security guard is fingering my balls at the security gate to make sure they aren't falsies(I am in the wheel chair and at that point literally CAN'T stand up without falling down faint).

So by the time I get to Zurich I am totally exhausted. The helper is a sweet huge enormous man from Nigeria and we exchange emails cuz he wants my help with his orphanage in Nigeria (no joke) but he mistakes my bag for the one right next to it: they look identical. Two identical black bags. Only the other one is three or four times heavier than mine. At the train platform the train to Solothurn arrives and I can't pick up my bag and then I open it and see it's not mine. This time however there's no helper. I push the bag trolley with my three bags and some strangers' bag which weighs twice all o my bags together. Up three flights to the street back to the terminal two, from terminal two to terminal one from terminal one to terminal two, but in the security zone, and then wait an hour fill in the forms and get my own bag is as I recall light as a feather. it is my computer stuff which weighs a ton. Any from terminal two back to customs again this time without a helper (thank GOD I had my Swiss ID card hanging around my neck or I would probably be hanging myself now.)

Back to the train station where I buy a week long free pass, 400 Swiss Franks SF, everywhere anywhere bus or train free for a week for 400 SF. Second Class. God Knows how much a free pass First Class costs. That was with my over 65 discount (in Arabic I am over 65, so I wasn't lying, really, and I wasn't speaking Swizerdutsch either, so they can't arrest me and try me for fraud. Just a small disagreement.

Some how I don't know how, I get my bags on the rain but God knows where second class is: I trip over some Greek lady's foot which actually she tripped me, and pass out. I awake in a chair. I don't know where I am. Bags are in the corridor. I check and my camera (2,000 USD$ canon) is not stolen. One small miracle. The conductor comes and asks for my ticket and I tell him in English German French and Turkish that I am sick and don't know nothing where I am or anything. He says that that is MY problem. he comes back and starts cursing me. I ask for a ticket and he proceeds to abuse me for 10 or 15 minutes and all i want from his is a ticket. he keeps saying that being sick and losing my ticket is not HIS problem, and I keep asking him to sell me ticket. 70 SF for a first class ticket to Solothurn which he throws at me. And when I take my change he threatens to throw me off the train... I say Willkommen in der Schweiz, Bienvenue.

At Solothurn, I go to complain and the "head" lady subjects me to a half an hour of anti~American hate speech. My only savior in the whole mess was a semi-ugly semi-cute blond Spanish Swiss immigrant from Barcelona with braces on his teeth whose English is better than God's and who also speaks perfect Basler Deutsch (Switzerdutsch from Basel). He and the lady gauleiter from Hell are shouting away in Switzerdutsch while another agent is yelling at me to shut up.

In Switzerland the only crime more serious than defrauding a bank is making a formal complaint about anybody for any reason if they work for the government so making a formal complaint about a conductor is a capital offense except there is no capital punishment in Switzerland except the Swiss National Railway gauleiters in front of me would happily make me an exception on the spot. She closes the whole ticket off ice and invites customers to her off ice one by one. Why, because I disobeyed her direct order to "shut up."

the place to stay in Pamukkale:
http://www.hoteldortmevsim.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715279807

Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 04:47:22 -0800 (PST)
From: "isa"
Subject: ave, hi! SLMZ: Isa is in Switzerland now until 19 January. Right now in Hotel an der Aare
To: "5742AMyFamily" 5742A@send2myfamily.com

SLMZ, merhaba, Gruezzi miteinander, Hi! wazzup, Ni hao!, Aloha, huwa, jambo, mambo sadiki, ave, hello, ey mano: lieber dear sayin sadik sheriif family friends and others:

I am now just finishing BREAKfast at the Hotelan der AARE overlooking the AARE while typing on my wonderful laptop on its wondurful new plastic stand so I don't need to squicnh my knees or squirm my nck or anything.

Breakfast: croissants, breakfast tea, some great swiss cheese I never aye before whose name I can't read, creamy, full cream much much softer than a raclette and resembling a Gruyere... Chocolate Yogurt, honey, something small and creamy with berries in it, and swiss milch fresh and tea and more tea and more tea with honey in it, in my brand new Swiss coffee mug I bought at the train station.

Warning warning warning: never ever be old sick and disabled and poor on an SS (state run) swiss train: it is a capital offense, 1 to be old, 2 to be sick, and 3. to be disabled, anywhere apparently in Switzerland and the non-judicial punishment is ant-American racist hate drivel. Apparently the current national Swiss Railway is run by a branch of the nationalist party and dual citizenship is similar to dual citizenship in Turkey, an affront to national honor. Being poor is a crime apparently of treason.

I feel so at home here after two decades in Turkey. Now I know why the Turks hate the Swiss, they are better Turks than any Turk can ever hope to be.

Anyway, anyone want to contact moi, mich, ben, ana, je, ya, moy, ME?

Here's where I am. The Hotel an der AARE, in Solothurn.

I left my phone in my room, so I'll send that along too, later on: happy Hijra New Years, the month of Muharrem. Upcoming soon is the Hijra equivalent of Yom Kippur, Yom al ashra, tenth of Muharrem, "Ashure," the day when Shia beat themselves into submission all night long and Sunnis eat a special pudding such as Moses and the Jews ate in Sinai after crossing the Red Sea to celebrate the drowning of the Pharaoh and his minions, [only to see them reincarnated as Swiss train conductors].

This pudding, called Ashure, is made of wheat kernels, raisins, at least three or four varieties of nuts(pistachio, walnut, hazelnut, almond), garbanzo beans, sesame seeds, sunflower kernels, and sometimes apricots also, or other berries such as red or white or both huckleberries, (oats and rye are also candidates) altogether exactly TEN ingredients = ten = 10 = 'ashra' 'the tenth'; tenth of Muharrem,

The world was born on the 10th of Muharem. Adam and Eve(aws) were expelled on the 10th of Muharrem and after 40 years found each other again on the Plain of Arafat on the Tenth of Muharrem, and Ismail (aws) son of Abraham (aws) was born on the 10th of Muharrem, and Noah's flood was on the Tenth of Muharem and the first Yom Kippur was on the Tenth of Muharrem and Hz Hussein (ra) was assassinated on the 10th of Muharrem in Kerbala, which is the holiest site after Mecca and Medina and Jerusalem for all the world's Shiites.

(Istanbul some say is number 4 for Sunnis, after Jerusalem, for the same reason that Orthodox Christians celebrate the Assumption on August 15th. By Mother Mary's (aws)'s intervention, the army of Fatih Mohammed II conquered the apostate last emperor of Rome and restored Orthodox Christianity and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, as predicted by the Prophet Mohamed (saws).) (Muslim theology says Mary was assumed bodily into heaven at her paranirvana[I haven't a clue what it is in Arabic but the idea is the same. She is the only one who doesn't have to come back to be judged at the end of time.])

So this is already too long.

love and peace to the people and the Prescott Bush Fan Club Association, the CIA, the George Bush Company INC, Condor Lisa Lice cartel, Darth Cheney and conquering horde conglomerate, Chemical Rumsfeld Associates, Silent Majority Minority, Republican Gauleiters Union, bin Laden Guantanamo Hotel and Construction and Management Agency and the Down with Geneva Damn Human Rights for All Torture Professional Group all can go to hell.

Tante isa in Solothurn Ost.

the place to stay in Pamukkale:
http://www.hoteldortmevsim.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715279807

froghollowroad

2007-11-25T21:24:00.001+02:00

Get jaxtr | Login

PTSD veteran's wives "the personal is political"

2007-10-16T05:25:00.000+03:00

"the personal is political"

All politics is personal. I have been troubled deeply recently by homophobic attacks from unexpected directions. So, what has that to do with politics. Turkey is about to destroy the only democracy in the Middle East for reasons purely of racist hate. What does that have to do with homophobia directed towards me personally. Blackwell murders women and children and old people indiscriminately, and the USA has the highest rate of maternal deaths in the developed world.

Hate is demonic.

Anti-semitism, sectarian malice, sexism, heterosexism, dogmatic theocratic dominionism, genocide, “the War on Terrorism”, “the War on Drugs” are all tools used by Halliburton and subprime loan sharks to defraud us all of our community equity, our ownership of our lives.

The USA Declaration of Independence is the legal and ethical foundation in world history of community equity as the fundamental source spring of social order.

Humans as human are born with the right to become human in a society where all decision making includes all contributers to society, and the state, a late invention and an abstraction with no existential reality, is nothing more than a tool of community equity, period. When the state or those who compose the state and control the operation of the state deny humanity and human decency and human rights to all or to part of the society, the state itself loses its moral, ethical, and legal standing before the court of human relations and human decency.

Feminism, gay rights and queer theory are significant in the history of human affairs because without women's rights, gay rights and children's rights, there cannot be community equity. The denial of gay rights, children's rights, women's rights is the denial of society itself.

Native First Nation Americans somewhere have asserted, “we did not inherit the Earth. we borrow it from our children.” Children, women and gay people are the most vulnerable members of society and the most necessary. When a society attacks the poor and the child and women and gay people it attacks its very self. Racism and sectarian hate thrive only where children are raised without responsibility and rights, seeing their mothers exploited, and seeing that some of the fathers and sisters and brothers and neighbors are and some are not “valid” humans. Slavery is the emasculation and clitorectomy and the degendering of persons.

Genocide is the murder of families, lovers, mothers, artists, scientists and truth. We have no written records from 10,000 years of human thought and suffering and knowledge and learning from the Americas because of the genocide committed by Spain in the name of catholic church values. God, they say, hates. Today, so-called”family values” and right to life is genocide, slavery, and exploitation of the poor, the defenseless, and the unforgiven every bit as ruthless and merciless as Spain in the Americas or Britain in Tasmania or Afrikaaners in South Africa.

Quran, the Gospels, Torah, the Sutras, the Great Peace of the Iroquois Confederation, the Gospel of Handsome Lake, the witness of the Dalai Lama, the teachings of Mother Theresa of Calcutta and the Rev. Dr.Martin Luther King, jr. all agree that god's mercy is infinite and unboundable and absolute. Mercy, giving, forgiving, caring, loving. These are human family values and the basis of any living breathing person's right to life.

There is no right of the yet unborn to live which trumps the right of the living.

There is no dogma, no ideology, no theology, no philosophy, no politics, no government grant, no free capital market which can exist anywhere where there is no community equity. Faggot rights are human rights and children's rights and workers rights. No one has the right to stand between any person and GOD, and no one anywhere in any capacity has the right to tell God who to love nor to tell anyone else who to love.

Neither Turkey, nor Cheney and Bush, nor bin Laden, nor Burma, nor any ayatollah or junta or money market fund manager, neither mufti nor Pope, nor curia, nor zoning board, neither kemalism, catholicism, zionism, white man's burden, dominionism, communism, orthodoxy, right to life, family values, sovereignty, sharia, sunnah, dogma, ex-cathedra encyclical, appointment by the Supreme Court to the presidency, no bible, no MicroSoft update, no natural law, rabbinical counsel, or school board can in any way diminish the absolute right of every human child to grow up cherished, valued, cared for, validated and free to love, give, forgive and know god's mercy, and to learn and grow to the limit of their ability and effort.

Every human right denied to another is the denial of one's own essential existential right to be the human one was born to be. Denying humanity to others eraces away our own humanity, and only the mercy of the ones we exploit and use and abuse can ever again restore to us our souls and our selves.

Along with James Baldwin, we must not ever forget that our duty as gay people is to remember that the very survival of humanity depends on our own individual personal sacred sacrificial choice, either to forgive, and know forever we are human, or to hate.

TIME MAGAZINE. In 1978, 100,000 women marched on Washington demanding equal rights. Over the next few years they signed petitions, held walkathons, and staged hunger strikes. But only 35 of the needed 38 states ratified the Equal Rights Amendment by the 1982 deadline. Today, a renewed effort is underway to add the amendment (now called the Women's Equality Amendment) to the Constitution, headed by Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Carolyn Maloney.

Though its supporters have reintroduced the bill every year since 1982, they believe that with the power shift toward the Democrats, the time is right to add language guaranteeing that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." ...

... Susan Faludi, author of 1991's "Backlash": ...a consumer-driven culture has shifted the discussion from talk of liberation to talk of self-improvement, where purchasing replaces protests. "The idea of women as public actors, not just private players, has been replaced by ersatz feminism where you're free to buy whatever push-up bra you want," she says...

... Older feminists worry that ERA-era feminism's declaration that "the personal is political" has been lost on the latest generation, who don't realize that their personal struggles should be addressed collectively. "If you don't have the idea that you can make a claim on society, then you're on your own. And that's what happened," says Katha Pollitt, feminist author, ... ....http://www.newsweek.com/id/43419

Washington Post.

A Wife's Battle

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/13/AR2007101301426.html

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101507WB.shtml

"Can't you tell them I'm a veteran?" asks her husband, Troy, who served as an Army scout in Baghdad and came back with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Troy, they don't care," Michelle says, her patience stretched.there are clothes to wash, meals to cook, kids to get ready for school and a husband who is placidly medicated or randomly explosive. Besides PTSD, Michelle suspects that Troy may have a brain injury, which could explain how a 38-year-old man who used to hunt and fish can lose himself in a three-day "Scooby-Doo" marathon on the Cartoon Network.

"He can't deal with everyday stresses of living," Michelle says. "He can't make decisions. He is a worrywart. Fearful. It's like they took Troy and put him in a different person."

As thousands of war-wounded lug their discharge papers and pill bottles home, more than a quarter are returning with PTSD and brain trauma. Compensation for these invisible injuries is more difficult and the social isolation more profound, especially in rural communities where pastures outnumber mental health providers. Troy's one-year war has become his wife's endless one.

The highest rate of maternity deaths in all developed countries is the USA, and even developing countries have fewer deaths of mothers giving birth.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101507HA.shtml http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39642

The U.S. ranks 41st in a new analysis of maternal mortality rates in 171 countries released by a group of U.N. public health experts on Friday. The survey shows that even a developing country like South Korea is ahead of the United States.

"Women are unnecessarily dying from pregnancy and childbirth complications because the U.S. is moving in a wrong direction," said Beneva Schulte of Women Deliver, a Washington-based group campaigning for women's reproductive rights and access to public health care.

Based on 2005 estimates, the U.N. analysis suggests that one in 4,800 women in the United States carry a lifetime risk of death from pregnancy. By contrast, among the 10 top-ranked industrialised countries, fewer than one in 16,400 are facing a similar situation....Responding to inquiries by IPS, a U.S. public health official identified "racial disparity" as the most significant factor underlying the high U.S. maternal mortality rate. "Black women are four times more vulnerable than whites," Eve Lackritz, chief of the Maternal and Infant Health branch of the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), told IPS.

bottom of the well

2007-09-11T02:26:00.000+03:00

On 9/10/07, Daily Issa <dailyissa@gmail.com >[http://cat.xula.edu/issa/ ]wrote:

since it's cool down there
take a little nap...
bottom of the well
-Issa, 1816

in sohar, in oman, virtually everybody has a back yard or front yard well

cleaning them is a major effort. usually when it is about 50+ degrees C outside.

In this kind of work, the men only wear a thin cotton wazir, about 2x1 meters of pure cotton cloth, with very narrow(1cm) bright red, green, blue and orange dyed or embroidered striping on the long edges and each side and decorative knots on the short side where the cloth is cut.

if the muck is really awful, they tuck it up like in an indian village.

most wells are deep and quite cold at the bottom.

waterworks of any kind, irrigation, underground water tunnels are a communal responsibility and have been built by local communities in oman for at least 10,000 years using locally organized and directed voluntary communal societies. the local community voted for a head man who did all the engineering, and logistics, collected the money, paid for things, and appointed teams and hours and work plans. If you decided not to join the society though, you didn't get any of the community water...

in my back yard, four men, the owner about 70 years old and three of his sons worked three days and had to stop collecting the dates in my garden. i think they collected about 300 or 400 grams of dates or more, after the electric pump in my well was repaired, and the pipes all cleaned out, and the muck and trash were hauled out of the well. i made ice tea. from bottled water since the well was all muck.

they found several goat heads and other goat bones, bits of plastic containers, and some toys, and some beer bottles and lot of cigarette butts, and some unidentifiable bones, (or at least they weren't going to identify any endangered species to me, as the penalties are really severe. the most severe anywhere. i believe.) pots, pans, and miscellaneous unidentifiable shards of stuff.

the father wouldn't allow any of his kids to shimmy up the tallest date trees because he didn't trust them not to fall down.

things in the night

2007-09-10T17:54:00.001+03:00

things in the night
exploding in the fire
the old shed next door

fireman frustrated
old man in the dark
fumbling for his shoes

third quarter moon
neighbors all watch
firemen fight the fire

the bulldozer clears away
the burnt timbers
the old shed's outline remains

2007-08-30T18:14:00.000+03:00

the

hyacinth

garden~

I sneak a kiss~

between Jimmy's lips

kumquat

2007-08-30T18:02:00.001+03:00

kumquats with Russian tea

then slowly

I undress Ellen

cup of tea

2007-08-30T15:30:00.000+03:00

WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com
	to	WHC Workshop Forum
	date	Aug 30, 2007 10:35 AM
	subject	[WHCworkshop] Re: Guilin and ZEN
	signed-by	yahoogroups.com
	mailed-by	returns.groups.yahoo.com

> I am
trying
to
in-
corpor-
ate
zen
into
some
of
my haiku. Perhaps I am unclear > on what zen really is but I know I am trying to achieve it in my personal life. > In this haiku the person has achieved zen by the " finding space in an empty cup." ....................... Here is a bit on Zen and Haiku http://haikuandhappiness.blogspot.com/2007/01/zen-and-haiku.html Oh dear, you choose a difficult subject.

Re: [WHCworkshop] Re: Guilin and tea

Isa Kocher <786isa@gmail.com>	Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 3:28 PM
To: WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com
after a week of sitting at Greystone in Riverdale in the Bronx, we stopped and had some tea together before going our various ways. I am a tea addict but for some reason I didn't have my tea cup. A friend of mine gave me hers, and as I drank the tea, the cup which was quite old and whose old cracked glaze showed the traces of many years of tea drinking, became for me the most beautiful tea cup I had ever seen. I see it now. A commercial tea cup with tiny blue generic flowers, and thin stems with leaves like tea leaves, a solid old used tea cup. I loved that tea cup so much and still do. I really haven't a clue why that cup. I never loved one thing so much. [exclusive of the set of solingen steel kitchen knives I bought with my first pay check as a grad student in 1970, which cost a couple of hundred dollars then and still are at work in my kitchen] I used that cup for years after wards until it found itself another home. Nothing lasts. Everything has its place and time and purpose. Pope John XXIII was asked by an architect who became his friend in the last year of his life, "Aren't you concerned that you are dying before your work here is done?" The pope died before Vatican II was finished and he had spent his last year being a go between between the radical right curia and the wild eyed liberals of academic Catholicism (one of whom then is now the current chair). Pope John answered his friend, "Any day is a good to be born. Any day is a good day to die." after sitting the pure taste of tea cracked old teacup

red rip figs and other summer delicacies

2007-08-27T14:13:00.000+03:00

To: "WHCworkshop@yahoogroups.com"

ripe red figs
my new young guest
never tasted fresh figs

[fresh ripe figs in the market mean summer is over]

scent of fresh figs
from the kitchen
canning for the winter

watermelon's
ripe round sound
thud

cool green tea
cold red tomatoes
gazspacho

honey dew melon
almost too sweet
for breakfast

new moon in the sky
Shaban
soon it's Ramazan

kigo info: very briefly and superficially: the three holy months are Rajab, Shaban and Ramazan, and Ramazan is the month of fasting, the month of the revelation of Quran, the complete fulfilment of all of God's promises to Adam. In these three months all thoughts of conflict are strictly forbidden. Rajab commemorates the beginning of Mohammed's life on earth(Ragaib) as well as his ascension to heaven(Miraj) and the special gift to him of the five times a day special prayers people can make, and the 15th of Shaban commemorates all of God's mercies and gifts and benefactions. The holiest night of the year, the Night of Power is hidden somewhere during Ramazan. Usually it is honored on the 27th of Ramazan. Today happens to be the 6th of Shaban.

The end of August is when ripe fresh figs appear in the markets. The first to appear are the deep dark purple almost black figs. Later the light yellow figs appear. Tomatoes in August are the best during the year. Melons (kavun) in Turkey in august are indescribable. Yellow on the outside and pale lovely green inside. Watermelons (karpus) are heavy and ripe, but not so big as US of A august watermelons, but a whole lot sweeter.

I believe according to my tea guides that green tea was served traditionally in August in Japan, but that is what the tea merchant said in his summer brochure. My mother made fresh mint tea from her own mint growing in the kitchen all year round so in my family, cold mint tea was all year... and iced tea was the summer time drink, red tea cold with mint sprigs in it. That was my family, and my mom. Where she got it from I don't know. All I know is she would under certain phases of the moon pick herbs in the woods. She never clued us in on it though, but we never had a cold more than one or two days at the most.

isa in istanbul

--
"We do not inherit the Earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children." Native American Proverb.
the one place to stay in Pamukkale: Four Seasons ~ Hotel ~ Dort Mevsim. www.hoteldortmevsim.com http://www.tiwiguide.com/ http://www.myspace.com/pamukkaleandhierapolis

IMG_4135.JPG

2007-08-23T17:04:00.001+03:00

IMG_4135.JPG
Originally uploaded by isa fakir.

Hmoudi, younger brother of Haitham in Sohar. I never noticed him before, but at the wedding ceremony, he was so talented and clever, and funny, and charming, and sexy without a whiff of anything but innocence, innocence of a pure heart, not an innocence of inexperience but an innocence of kindheartedness. Clever and amusing but never at another's expense. There are some men in the world whose existence makes the world livable. Some women and some men, but such men are rare and precious. Some are heroes like Mandela or Anwar Sadat, or Gandhi. Some are just folks. I don't know what will be written and read out as Mohammed's kismet, but I am grateful for his being written in mine. My world is richer and better and more peaceful and more beautiful and more divine and that is what art and life is about...

midsummer

2007-07-30T15:05:00.000+03:00

~some recent verses~

somewhat pregnant moon
through the trees
my water pipe of Turkish tobacco

between buildings
slightly pregnant
midsummer's moon

just above the broken battlements
midsummer's full moon
rising

outside old city walls
acres of green and trees
Merkez Efendi Cemetery

apartment blocks
no more open spaces
trolley ride through Zeytinburnu

~

Sponge Bob and my night out.

2007-07-30T14:34:00.001+03:00

IMG_4536z
Originally uploaded by isa fakir.

Mehmet and I went shopping at Toyz R Us and I bought myself a Sponge Bob Square pants and Mehmet pretended he didn't know me. In this picture we are crossing the street from carousel to the nargilehane where i spent two hours getting really high on Turkish tobacco, straight tobacco without tutti frutti or candied mango. Straight Turkish tobacco. One waterpipe and I felt no pain till the next day... When you dance with the devil you pay the piper.

Dylan Patton

2007-07-29T09:50:00.001+03:00

Dylan Patton
Originally uploaded by BoyMagnetisMe.

this is so deceptively simple and straight forward seeming. but like a fugue rich in subtexts and perfectly composed and exquisitely photographed. sensitively selected. evocative of so many themes of current pop culture iconography.and of course the model is beautiful in his androgynous masculinity. it reminds me so much of classical Latin poetry on the same subject. it is archetypal almost.

Sultan's Armed Forces 1973 / 74

2007-07-18T09:03:00.001+03:00

Sultan's Armed Forces 1973 / 74
Originally uploaded by Brian Harrington Spier.

this is the Oman I fell in love with when I moved there in 1997

these are just the kind of omani boyz who stole my heart when i moved to oman ten years ago, god bless them

Oil Wrestlers, Edirne, Turkey 2007

2007-07-07T22:34:00.001+03:00

Oil Wrestlers, Edirne, Turkey 2007
Originally uploaded by istanbulmike.

yagli gures, oil wrestling is an ancient sport in anatolia.

the wrestlers scrub their bodies with traditional middle eastern anatolian olive oil and wrestle and it is erotic and dirty and muscular and intense and even salacious sometimes. they wear leather knee britches and make blessings/obeisances to the earth before they start just like monks do in an orthodox monastery at liturgy: exactly the same action, but without exactly the same Orthodox Christian +Sign+ of the +Cross+ [that got lost].

no doubt they would deny it, and deny it with all the force they had.

olive oil is the anointing of the gods going back before the Judeo-Christian scriptural traditions ending in the greek "christos" and becoming the "gazi" of the Ottomans. olive oil is healing, sanctifying, empowering, enabling, nourishing, cleansing, ennobling: in this sanctified sacred noble field of wrestlers, one is left standing and champion. it is gritty and dirty and almost obscene sometimes and blessed and divine and masculine and sensuous. like the sacred olive, divine, a gift from god, a staple of life, a preservative, a cosmetic, and a medicine unparalleled.

boys anoint each other and test their metal year after year until as men they return to this same pre~masculine, anti-feminine world of boyhood, and declare their divine eternal immunity from womankind, and from the constraints of civility and social responsibility, and their sublime independence all over again.

the world of men, like Mt. Athos, or the Aboriginal celebrations of Creation, or the Great Plains Sun Dance, or men's football.

may june morning evening, from "off~the~wall"

2007-06-11T19:26:00.000+03:00

On 6/5/07, Greve wrote:I guess many expect tooooo much of the AHA moment

aha! to me means exactly the moment you know before you roll the ball that this one will be a strike, exactly the moment when you know that you are the master of every double chicane in the race and you can't miss a change of gears, that moment when the herbs and the omelet and the cheese marry, when the sugar in the onions caramelize and the onions become like exquisite fine crystal in the olive oil, when the rose in bloom in your window box is all roses which ever bloomed anywhere, when your son walks in and opens the fridge and takes out the milk and you know he isn't a boy anymore, when you sit at the wheel of an Aston Martin for the first time and know the sound of just touching your own foot to its pedal, the first taste the first time in your life of a Stilton and it just happens to be a perfect Stilton, your boyfriend leaping over the parked car when you show up unexpected, the taste of the first sip of fresh made tea after a long day of fasting in the heat, the sound of a nightingale anywhere anytime, frogs in june under a full moon in a clear sky, fields of fireflies, any tornado anywhere any time if you are close enough to taste it, a perfect surfboard on a perfect wave and you are the only one there to see it, your best friend telling you to go f*** yourself the way he does when you know he is embarrassed by how much he loves you, just any cup of tea any time any where if you really want that cup of tea at that moment, the passing away of your mother, waking up in the hospital after the accident, just about any poem by basho or issa, a Palestinian teenager helping his crippled teenage twin go pee, an Israeli teenager in uniform on a train sitting across from you with sad blue eyes, The Acropolis, the Kaaba in Mecca, Lourdes, a bell in a zen temple in the woods during maple syrup time, the last cup of tea in a sesshin, the little kid at the end of the aisle when she smiles when you wave at her and her surprise, a boy reaching his hand up to take mine and holding it firmly, some odd aha! moments that popped into mind

rain in May
thunderstorms and lightning
reading some Basho

rain in may
heather and roses in blossom
and even the christmas cactus

past midnight
reading Basho
rain drops drumming the windows

two young chinese guys
visiting
remember being 21 and jim

outside
the kids playing football
i see where my ball went

bright green aphids
and I spray
and spray

past midnight
reading basho
rain drops drum the windows

On 5/21/07, Bill wrote: Isa, in "past midnight," would you consider moving lines 2 & 3? past midnight, ...raindrops drum[ming] the windows, ...reading Basho.

Yes, but the scene is: past midnight reading basho and then: rain drops drum the windows. it's like the rain drops are a gift from Basho...it works better without the "ing" (?)

mother's day, 2007

my mother's laundry
hanging the wash
on Mothers' Day

Mother's Day
so May today
I plant some roses

by Mother's Day
my mother's azaleas
were all in bloom

Pamukkale, Michael and John, at the Four Seasons ...

Pamukkale
cotton white cliffs
towering white clouds

Pamukkale is the site of one of the most famous early Anatolian cultures and a religious center, where wool was dyed in highly alkaline spring water which creates cotton white cliffs full of small pools where people still go for water cures

downpour
lightening and thunder
dinner by candlelight

climbed up the cliffs
too exhausted
to take the waters

in Pamukkale, the waters run from the springs inside the ancient baths, out over the white alkaline cliffs and gather in pools... it is only during the summer season that people bathe in the outdoor pools and preserved antique spa: the same water in the spa used to be be used by the weavers too to cure special woolen cloth with colors only possible here through the chemical reactions with the waters... especially valuable colors only produced here were reserved for royalty in Greek and Roman times..

ruined temple walls
between the stones
bright red poppies

*busloads of tourists
pay their respects
to the fallen temples

~~~*busloads of tourists : summertime~~~

paragliders glide
on the thermal vents
above the cliffs

isa in pamukkale

On 6/4/07, ...someone (a fan?) wrote: I loved all this information. "ruined temple walls" is my favorite.

The city is amazingly well preserved for such an ancient place, all the masonry being stone with no apparent cement and no Roman structures or sense of anything Rome anywhere I could see...The Turkish government has also taken down all the tourist trap constructions on the site itself and you are not allowed to wear shoes in the areas where the water runs down the white cliffs, and they have built paths for the tourists to wander safely in and out of the natural alkaline pools. I was really amazed at how much I was NOT in pain, and after walking in 40 degree heat all through noon to 4-5pm, I was still able to walk the next day (yesterday).

That night it finally rained and the electricity went out.

shattering thunder claps
dinner on the patio
by candlelight

cloudless blue morning
boys swimming
breakfast by the pool

my guests going to Greece
watching the bus
turn into the rose bushes

my apple uploading pictures
time to shut down
for the train

train station
old and empty
station master hollers when the train comes

Michael and John stayed at my place for two weeks and went to Ankara, Cappadocia and Antalya before I could catch up with them so I hosted them in Pamukkale. Selcuk and Ephesus would have been to far for me. So, this morning they went off the Ephesus to visit the shrine of Mary (aws) and then ferry to find their friends on an island somewhere in the Aegean. I am too exhausted to go back up to the old city above the cliffs and keep myself busy until the driver comes to take me to the train. Slept the entire way, except for breakfast where I spend almost two hours speaking with interesting strangers and trying to pick up the conversation with the waiter where he had left it off the night before. Mehmet, everybody called him, said how much he wanted to meet and get to know me better. But I guess he slept on it and daylight gives him a better alternative. Tell him where he could find his pictures on the Internet, which brings him a smile to his face, and requests from my fellow travellers too for the URL.

Isa fakir in pamukkale with michael and john [can]

Istanbul

early morning breezes
chicken
cooking in the kitchen

afternoon

suddenly after working for a while I notice I am all alone, and everyone has gone, mid afternoon. Go to the hardware store to look at some pipes to make some open storage systems NYC loft style in my crowded bedroom/office/nest/chilehane/hide-away. i take my cameras and shoot neighborhood color and characters

my son's best friend
stops to help me
bored he says

at the hardware store we buy three white polypropylene pipes and all the fixings

kids in sleeveless shirts
smiling, old folks frowning
shooting neighborhood shops

and an exhaust fan for my room

at home we repair the floor broken by the plumber and my son retrieves the pail he threw away afterwards and washes out the cement

alone again

aroma floats on setting sunlight
arabic style chicken and rice
french herbs and spices

isa in istanbul

morning

guests get home about a quarter after three a.m., after a night on the town, celebrating Ebru's passing her final jury to become a licensed architect, and we talk till dawn, and dance in the front room, and listen to "o sisters let's go down, down to the river to pray" and "death, won't you spare me over til another year" and I say goodnight, sleep tight, as they continue quietly telling jokes and listening to music...

through the kitchen window first light

the morning call to prayer
the birds all in conference
dawn

and the guests and my partner all finally fall asleep

isa in istanbul

Practice is often a fine example. So, you may find it usful to consult this site: http://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/ahhv4.html , john

Dear Isa, When I started writing "my Haibun" I wrote a large amount and then added a haiku or two. But Ray from Contemporary Haibun Online told me to cut it down and
make it in present tense. Also there is a lot of room for exploration in haibun, so I would say experiment and find what works for you. thank you yvonne

Dear Isa, I'm happy to see this Isa. Celebrating until dawn wonderful. thank you.
yvonne

I only know basically Basho. What I have done in the past is more like a ("Bashoesque") travel journal like a weekend trip to Jordan from Palestine, including lots of checkpoints, two weeks in New York including several days at our home in the Catskills,
not travelogue but a journey which resulted in an illumination or three even, distilled in one or three verse and a few paragraphs of images, distributed to friends family and blogged and filed away for future reexamination, love and peace , isa

Dear Isa, It seems to me this works for you, so then why not follow that:) thank you yvonne

Callum: I greatly value some of your insights, I feel there are some real diamonds in your emails, but I also feel they can get lost amongst the rock. Cheers, Callum.

Isa: we all make mistakes sometimes, and obviously this is one. i already apologized for this one. you won't have to worry about it any more. i took care of it. isa.

This is wonderful Isa. And I love your taste in music, too! :-) carole

Your last ku definitely made my hungry for exotic food ... and the rest of your haibun is so graphic, it's almost as if I"m watching it in a film. ella

isa- this is lovely. Best wishes to you. tish

sunday sunrise

my son staggers in

falls asleep

isa, How about: first sunlight, ...my son staggers in, ...falls alseep ~vaughn

thanks for me that's too distant and unfelt , isa

is Sunday an important part of this verse? You could add church bells, or the sound of bells. While the bells play, ...my son staggers in, ...and falls asleep. There certainly are lots of ways to go with this:) thank you yvonne

thanks! not possible in Istanbul, and irrelevant: church bells are so far removed from the meaning it would take the whole existential point away, and make my son a footnote to a church.and the whole theology thing entirely outside the family nexus... son ~ sun is the fulcrum son+sun, the rest is commentary, isa

exhaust fan installed

alone again

i miss john and michael

if not now?...god tells the prophet (saws) “you thought it was your hand that threw the sand when the enemy ran...” if i am for myself... god tells job(aws) that is the way it is, and job(aws) says” i only ever heard about you before, but now i see...”

2007-05-29T17:02:00.000+03:00

green mulberries
splatter street and sidewalk
still ripening

deniz waves from his window
played hooky
for two months

sunday football
deniz allowed out
for an hour

mulberries
no birds
still ripening

deniz says shhh
not allowed
snuck out

street football
mulberries
still ripening

being gay in Turkey ~ public forums this summer

2007-05-03T17:30:00.000+03:00

http://www.planetout.com/news/article.html?2007/05/02/1

In the 1980s and 1990s, Turkish police routinely raided gay bars, detained transvestites, and banned gay conferences and festivals.

Next month, in a sign of how the state has loosened up, gay activists will hold forums on several university campuses to discuss their rights ~~~

Gay men and lesbians in Turkey say they lack legal protections and face social stigma in a Muslim nation with a secular tradition of government that has implemented broad reforms in its bid to join the European Union ~~~For the most part, they face less pressure than in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim ~~~

However, Turkey's gay men and lesbians are jostling for more rights in a crowded field.

~~~

"There are so many problems in Turkey," Ali Erol, a member of the gay rights group Kaos GL, said ~~~ "It looks as though gay rights are put down below in the list of things to be taken care of."

In March, the chief editor of the group's magazine, also named Kaos GL, was acquitted of charges that he had illegally published pornography in a July 2006 issue after a judge noted that copies were seized before they were put on sale. ~~~

The issue that got the magazine in trouble showed two images of men in explicit sexual poses, beside an article that editors described as an analysis of issues relating to pornography. ~~~

In recent years, Turkey reworked its penal code to bring it into line with European standards. The new version does not specifically ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, although the issue was discussed at the draft stage.

Justice Ministry officials had said that laws barring discrimination on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, religion and political views were enough to protect its citizens.

~~~

He noted that even some Turks who describe themselves as liberals say, "'We don't want to protect these people.'"~~~

Some gays, notably poet Murathan Mungan and the late singer Zeki Muren, achieved celebrity status and openly acknowledged their sexual orientation. ~~~

Yet, for many, being gay is an exercise in deception. One gay man who spoke on condition of anonymity said he was distraught years ago because high school classmates kept calling him "ibne," a derogatory word for gay in Turkish.

The man, now a university student, said he avoids physical contact with his boyfriend ~~~

Unable to find regular jobs, many transvestites and transsexuals work as prostitutes, an often dangerous profession that has led to the murders of some at the hands of clients.

Some deadly hate crimes were never publicized because police did not reveal the sexual orientation of the victims, according to gay activists. In some cases, they said, gays who were harassed or physically harmed because of their orientation did not report the incident or go to court because they wanted to avoid scrutiny.

~~~

''We want to share and learn the experiences of all gays and lesbians who struggle against homophobia in the Middle East, Balkans, Europe and the other parts of the world,'' the group said in a statement. It has invited international speakers, including journalists and European lawmakers who will discuss gay issues in their own countries.

The Kaos GL magazine paid tribute to Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian journalist who was allegedly slain by extremist nationalists in January, by printing a somber image of him on the back cover of a recent issue.

"Those people who murdered Hrant Dink do not like us either," Erol said. ~~~

Blue

2007-05-02T23:07:00.001+03:00

Blue
Originally uploaded by Mohammed Nairooz.

the composition is perfect. blue is a color anti-thetical to ertocism, but this is almost ertic in its seductiveness, despite the eyes being hidden. It is a kind of meta-erotic, there bing nothing overtly even hinting at erotic, just a portrait of a teen.

jonathan and david

2007-05-01T03:33:00.000+03:00

September 11^th, 2001 was a day which left me all alone completely and absolutely and eternally in this world in a way nothing else in my life ever had before or since. I happened to be staying in a hotel in Muscat, in Oman after living there five years working at Sultan Qaboos University. I was about to begin at a new private university and was waiting for the new work visa. Another teacher at SQU called and told me to turn on CNN, and they were showing the first rerun in the first minutes, (not yet 9:00 o'clock yet in NY) of a plane hitting the WTC. For the next two weeks, I watched either CNN or BBC night and day, and only slept a minute at a time at most. When the Towers collapsed, I called my “best friend” who proceeded to lecture me on how we “Americans” will have to learn our lessons now...

The WTC was something very personal for me. It was something so beautiful for me, one of the most beautiful works of architecture ever. I spent a lot of time over the years seriously studying it from all over the city. In the 80s I used to deliver to the WTC every morning at 8:45 AM, the exact time of the first strike. I was living in a Zen Community and in charge of deliveries for their bakery, and our best customer at that time was a restaurant at the WTC. I had spent many hours looking at the WTC as a structure, and its relationship to itself and its social surroundings. Its twin~ness, its exaltedness, its whiteness, its brightness, the way it reflected light, the way it stood for coming home no matter from which direction you entered the city. While at the Zen Community, I also met my sheikh and I became Muslim in the shadows of the WTC, and so did my brother and my mother. She told me after my father died, that he had become Muslim secretly before he died. It was in its shadow where my brother married his wife who is from Tehran, and it is where one of my sisters lives, and it was in its shadow where I had the closest and most intimate relationships with a community of friends that any person could have. It was where I began my first study of Sema, the meditation practice of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi, called whirling, but really a prayer of the heart, and the practice of kenosis: the Shakers say: when true simplicity is gained, to bend and to turn we will not be ashamed. The collapse of the WTC and the death of so many people as an act of hate shattered all my structures, shattered all I knew, all I believed, all I loved. I didn't know for months how many of my friends died that day.

Its collapse and all people who died at that instant was for me the collapse of all I knew not just as ideas in the head but as living itself. Duality, twin~ness is such an archetypical representation of the unity of the soul with its universe. The twin collapse was for me the collapse of my whole inner and my outer world. All around me, my Arab friends no longer trusted my being non-Arab, and my non-Muslim friends no longer trusted my being Muslim. What had been a network of love became a network of suspicion and hate. The faith whose name itself means peace became the very symbol of all I hated. Healthy wholesome fruit trees do not grow poisonous fruit.

Within myself, I could find no way to condemn anyone despite how I hated them because I realized at once that that hate which brought down the WTC and piloted those planes was the same hate that consumed me. I hated them. I hated the ones whose hate drove them to hate. I hated the ones whose hate taught them to hate. I hated the hate in me. I hated all the hate around me and that had swirled around me all those years that led up to September 11^th. We all knew it was going to happen some day one day and none of us had the courage to say no. I knew I would never find the way to humanness again, and I knew nobody on the planet would ever find that way to humanness again until I purged myself of all that hate and all the excuses for hate. If Islam, PEACE, is not the way to peace, if being at peace is not the way to peace. Then how is peace to be.

This was not a sectarian problem. Peace is not a sectarian question. All spiritual teachers practice the same peace. Peace is at the center of all practice. Prayer of the Heart and the way of kenosis, the way of bowing in peace to love, the way of the Bodhisattva, dharma, the holy circle of the sufis, of the first nations, of the Hassids, of the !Kung healing ceremonies, the interdependent co-arising of the Mogen David, the Star of David, and of the Tao in the Tao Te Ching are the same.

The vow to free all creatures and the practice and its application to life at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and on your dates, and at work and when the guy behind you honks his horn before the light turns green even!!! How to do that. It is not a problem to be solved. There is no answer to that question except to do it.

For me it was no longer enough to believe, to affirm, to say it is so. I couldn't believe. I no longer had faith. Believing had become a fig leaf. For me it had to become reality. It is so painful to feel abandoned by those whom you have loved but even more is to realize that you yourself have never really taken your own part of the bargain as seriously as you expected everyone else to.

There is no theology, no philosophy, no doctrine, no ideology which cannot be transformed into tyranny, that you can't use to lie, to hide behind, to blame. The answer is personal, existential, face to face, in your face, not in rationalization, ratiocination, justification, excuse, reason, pretexts, subtexts, proof texts, text analysis, but just in choosing. Belief, trust, faith are choices. Truth is not a sum of the parts. Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi says it does not matter how many times you have failed. Whatever you have done, he says, you are welcome. Chrysostom says, it does not matter, Pascha, Easter is for everyone, all of God's creatures, and no one can say they are not raised again with Christ. Paul says that yes, there are men who have sunk so low they wear their sins on their bodies, but it doesn't matter. By faith God cleans us. God says in the Haggaddah for Passover, I save you myself, by myself with no help from nobody and for no reason to except that I choose to because I am God.

Johnny Cash sings a hymn which is so pure and so simple. The man, an alcoholic and a failure, asks if I give my soul to Jesus will my clothes be clean again, will I have new shoes to wear, will my son love me again.

You cannot let the words and the ideas and the explanations get between you and love, between you and loyalty to the ones you love.

You cannot stand alone. You cannot live by taking but by giving and that means you must have someone outside yourself, a friend, the friend, to give to. The Song of Songs is a love song. It doesn't matter who loves whom, even Our Lady of the Flowers, the lowest of the guiltiest of the low, according to Genet is the friend. The Twin Towers will forever mean to me that necessary relationship. Those Twin Towers cannot be destroyed. Friendship is a form of family that is more profound than any marriage by any rite. Marriage is family to family. Friendship is soul to soul. Friendship transcends any religion, any philosophy, any legal partnership, any agreement or social norm. It is deeper than our own biology.

The last thing Mohammed (saws) says to us as the prophet is that the era of the tribe, the social unit, the cultural social category is over. We are one whole community, all of humanity without distinction. He does not make this a matter of doctrine but declares it fact, a matter of practice, our choice.

When Shems met Rumi, Rumi at last realized what all the scriptures and all the hadith and all the jurisprudence and all the meditations and all the mystics and mysticism he knew could not tell him. Love is stronger than the grave, stronger than all laws, stronger than all considerations, stronger than all chains and jails and armies and all hates. We are free to love. Love is not a commandment. It erases all commandments. We are only free to love. Love is the only freedom.

Love is not a feeling. Love is not a whole lot of fun. It doesn't make you look any prettier. It doesn't make you any smarter. It doesn't make you any nicer as a person. It is a hard choice. Love is the hardest of all choices. It is a choice you make yourself without help from anyone anywhere, not God nor Buddha Nature nor you mother, or the teacher in first grade you remember who loved you so much. It is a choice you make without any guarantee. Without any hope. Without any proof. Without any reason.

When Fr. Mychal ran into the WTC in certain knowledge of his death, it was not because he was inwardly happy and fearless. That is not the reason. He ran in because his friends needed him. I don't know if I would have done it, could have done it.

Books are not manuals. However the Records of the Saints by Fahruddin Attar and the Duties of Brotherhood by Imam al-Ghazali are two records, koans, against which I from time to time measure my own commitments. These are two books which Shems and Rumi knew. Even when Rumi was still just a young boy, Ibn Arabi had already recognized and authorized Rumi's enlightenment and spiritual maturity. Before Shems came on the scene he was already a spiritual teacher and only secondarily a scholar. But Shems changed him.

In short order, hatred removed Shems from the scene, but for Rumi, there was never again any going back. According to Ghazali, friendship is at its perfection when all you have and all you know is given over to the friend.

The ceremony of sema, the “whirling” of the dervishes is a sport of young people. Few are able to continue the physical discipline beyond their 30s, like top football players. I began to study sema when I was already over 40. It is a sport that cannot be done by anyone on their own. It took one friend of mine no more than a minute, maybe less to give me the key to it. He touched my hip and shoulder and at once it was clear, the physics of it, the physiology of it and like zazen, once you have done it physically even once, it changes your life. Dogen Zenji says that sitting once, you are Buddha. It is true. Just simply so. There is no explanation of Sema. And there is no gate but friendship.

It is many years now since September 11^th, and my friend who simply touched my hip and shoulder so many years before that showed me that center from which one simply chooses, and all the movement after that follows. Like a potter centering the clay, or a zen teacher straightening your back or a yoga teacher moving your thumbs into the correct mudra, or Julia Child dropping the chicken on TV, it is only that face to face which breaks through all the crap. And if you give your soul to Jesus your clothes are cleaned and you get new shoes. Each and every time.

I know I have a long way to go before I am healed of September 11^th, before the hate is cleansed, but I know my friend is there. I always have the friend to give my all to. The choice is all I have. He touched me all those years ago, and at that moment I was able to choose, and all I have to do is choose again and again and again and again, no matter how long it takes. It is never too late and never too soon. You just choose to do it. That is the only choice you have. The touch is real. Not a promise, not an idea not a dogma or a doctrine or a contract or a hope or a dream. It is not an expectation. It is an aspiration, a choice.

snake oil

2007-02-09T04:22:00.000+02:00

everything hurts so much that you search for a cure everywhere and try everything.

so many things, and none cause any other thing than grief and pain and failures

i joined an email group, a zen roshi's personal teaching elist. the roshi was a life long counselor/therapist for trauma disabled veterans, of which i too am both a disabled vet and a life long counselor

i hoped against hope that the loss of faith from september 11th might at least find a sympathetic and if not sympathetic at least not accusatory condemning ear there, and found there too nothing but a fire fed by snake oil, the exact same snake oil that took down the WTC and all the world I loved and believed in and all my faith.

so what is it about september 11th that makes it so unique in my history?

the 18 boys and men sent to their deaths as massacres and assassins by their teachers changed the course of history

they believed and they believed that their conviction gave them the right to deny fundamental human decency and fundamental human rights to others.

but it is not belief and it is not faith which is guilty here but their teachers

faith, without it we die

i have complete faith in so many thing I never even think about it it for a nanosecond: when I open a bottle of milk from the supermarket, i pour and drink it down ice cold before I even taste it and before I can consciously mark the taste i have already swallowed it down completely leaving the container empty and useless, and these boys did the same with their lives and the lives of thousand and ultimately millions of people. i cannot imagine the horror they face now knowing what they have wrought. like discovering the milk was milk of another kind.

so we all go around ripping open our cartons of snake oil and swallowing it all down like the good doctor says knowing it will cure the pain we cannot bare and we discover pain we could never have imagined, and the snake oil medicine only serves to give us enough strength to survive the pain without annihilation, keeping the peace of annihilation just out of the reach of the extended tips of extended fingers of extended arms, willing to do anything to escape that pain and only pain is our answer, from pain to pain

faith is not to blame

faith is a necessary tool a sine qua non to existence at any level in any form, and we can choose to believe in anything

we get in a car knowing it has breaks and on a train knowing it will stop at our station and crack open an egg knowing it is not already a chick and put our money into banks knowing the FDIC insures it to 100,000 dollars an unimaginable sum beyong any hope of ever seeing...

who has not ever once been fooled and found the faith we had a lie? before anyone even thinks to ask we know before anyone answers that is was and always will be a lie but there is no other way to live

water is water and apples have worms for protein and girls have babies and there is no other way to go through a day: try it a life of total skepticism.

more later enough for now. tomorrow is another day isn't it?

early A.M. still typing.

2007-01-07T11:48:00.000+02:00

uploading photos
fallen leaves
stuck on the wet sidewalk

~

cold ankles
frozen feet
eyes stuck to the monitor

~

washing machine stops
its silence
goes on and on

~

emails blind copied
to old friends
bounced back

isafakir says hello, slm, love and peace.

2007-01-06T14:04:00.000+02:00

we can do it

issa haibun master, namesake and model.

the sema ceremony: peace and love from above on earth

sema ceremony as a performance for tourists

views

and

reviews

of

isa fakir

and

his world

yalcin and abdel, in Taksim, my two

dearest, loyalist, bestest friends

picture awarded first place and the award presented by the ambassador of the USA to the Sultanate of Oman

the kocher family and isa

swiss family kocher

the swiss kocher family shield, a cooker.

the blue angel

isa's portrait was taken at the blaue engel cafe on spruce street after he finished his military service and started ahain to school at the university of pennsylvania, getting honors in anhtropology and starting out as a visual anthropologist

die Blaue Engel