you tread lightly on the surface of this autumn day

It's early October; the days are getting shorter, and the leaves are changing colour.  The colours here are a lot more muted than they are back east, but it's still pretty.  I had forgotten about fall, not having experienced it in so many years, and I'm rediscovering it.

The maple leaves are changing from green to yellow and brown.

Fallen leaves are collecting on the grass:

"October, crisp, misty, golden October, when the light is sweet and heavy." - Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

Halloween is definitely coming; pumpkin spice lattes are advertised outside the coffee shop in town, the drugstore is selling bags of Halloween candy, and there are pumpkins for sale on the roadside outside small farms.

They're between $8 and $15.  Too much for me.

The hardware store has fancy kale plants for sale.  You can actually eat decorative kale, but I don't think people usually do.

Purple-heart kale.

 The blue hydrangeas outside the church are turning purple with the colder weather:

Most of the landscape is still green, though:

Three cows in a neighbour's field.

Someone has grape vines growing on their fence, but the fruit and leaves only start above deer height.  I think it's kind of funny:

 The fir and cedar trees will stay green all year.  Aside from a few sweet gum or Japanese maple trees planted in parks, the only brightly coloured fall foliage you see around here is Himalayan blackberry leaves:

I'm told blackberry leaves make good tea, but I haven't tried it yet.

 The rosehips on the wild rose bushes that are everywhere along the sides of the roads and along fencelines have turned red too:

I took this photo on Eid al-Adha morning this year.  Shortly after, it started to rain hard.

Mist hangs over the fields in the early morning:

I took this photo around 6:30 am, and it was already dissipating.

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

Tomorrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know.

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away.

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

-  'October', Robert Frost (1915)

 I found my first woolly bear.  I must have seen them as a kid, but this one is the first one I can remember:

It's the caterpillar of the Isabella Tiger Moth; I think the caterpillar is a lot more interesting than the adult moth is.  Some fuzzy caterpillars are poisonous and will sting you if you touch them, but woolly bears are harmless.  They hatch in the fall, and Wikipedia tells me that they freeze solid in the winter.  In spring they thaw out and pupate. Once it emerges from its pupa as a moth, it has only days to find a mate. Because the summer is so short in the Arctic, up north they can live through as many as fourteen winters before they eat enough to pupate.

There's an old bit of folklore that says that the bands of brown and black on the woolly bear can be used to predict how severe the coming winter will be, but it doesn't look like anyone's been able to demonstrate that it's accurate:

According to folk wisdom, when the brown bands on fall woolly bears are narrow, it means a harsh winter is coming. The wider the brown band, the milder the winter will be. Some towns hold annual woolly worm festivals in the fall, complete with caterpillar races and an official declaration of the woolly worm's prediction for that winter.

Are the woolly worm's bands really an accurate way to predict the winter weather? Dr. C.H. Curran, former curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, tested the woolly worms' accuracy in the 1950's. His surveys found an 80% accuracy rate for the woolly worms' weather predictions.

Other researchers have not been able to replicate the success rate of Curran's caterpillars, though.

Today, entomologists agree that woolly worms are not accurate predictors of winter weather. Many variables may contribute to changes in the caterpillar's coloration, including larval stage, food availability, temperature or moisture during development, age, and even species. (about.com)

It's getting colder and rains a fair bit, so the cats spend a lot more time indoors, or laying in the sun on afternoons when it's not raining:

Sitting in the garden reading one chilly afternoon.  He was comfortable, but eventually my hands went numb and I had to go back inside.

Gracie laying on the garden path.

Jesse sleeps on my lap all day while I read, and then follows me around the fields meowing at me to pet him.  Which I do.

Right before I took this picture he was on the other side of a blackberry bramble yowling like a lost toddler because he couldn't find me, and I had to go get him.  Silly cat.  He's sitting in a catloaf next to me on the couch right now, huffing because I'm using the laptop and he can't sit on my lap.

The skies are brilliant blue and mostly clear, but I catch some interesting clouds occasionally.  It's overcast here, most of the year.

I was reading a passage from Mahmoud Darwish today, and thought it was fitting.  This was his last work; he knew he wouldn't live much longer.  I think it's his best.

This is your autumn, opening, spreading the strong scent of exile and empty letters. So fill them with the yellow, coffee-brown, gold, and copper – nonsynonymous colors – of leaves that take their time in bidding farewell to the tree because the wind is absent today. You are so lonesome you do not think of loneliness. Because you have not bid farewell to anyone since yesterday, you do not care if your shadow “walks before you or behind you.” The air is light and the earth seems solid. And this is not one of the attributes of exile, as they said.

This is your autumn, emerging from a hot summer, from a season of global fatigue, from a seemingly endless war. An autumn that ripens the forgotten grapes on high mountains. An autumn that prepares for grand gatherings where the assembly of old gods reviews drafts of fates still being written, hammering out a truce between summer and winter. But autumn in the east is short. It passes like a quick wave from one traveler on horseback to another, as they pass each other, going in opposite directions. No one can rely on such an autumn, on dust storms, or on a temporary marriage.

As for autumn here – the autumn of a Paris returning from its long vacation – nature, tempted by rain, devotes itself to writing its lush poems with all of its skill and with the help of aging wine. A long, long autumn, like a Catholic marriage contract that does not betray its joy or misery to someone like you, a bystander. A patient autumn. An erotic embrace of light and shadow, male and female, of a sky that descends respectfully over trees disrobing with dignity, before the confusion of temptations between raining drops of light and luminous drops of water. An autumn showing off. An autumn becoming one with the beginnings of three seasons: summer’s nudity, winter’s intercourse, and spring’s youth.

And you, you tread lightly on the surface of this autumn day. You are invigorated, infatuated, and stunned: “How can anyone die on a day like this?” You do not know whether you live in autumn or whether it lives in you, even if you remember that you are in the autumn of life, where mind and heart master listening to time with a harmonious collusion of pleasure and wisdom. A noble rhythm raises the body to sense what is missing, so it is filled all the more with the beauty of cloudlessness and cloudiness. It prepares itself, like a weather station, to observe the appropriate weather conditions for a passing conversation: “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? So why don’t we meet for coffee?” The aroma of coffee has doors that lead to another journey: to friendship, love, or loss without pain. Coffee moves from the metaphorical to the tangible.

A secret rhythm leads this experience to an absolute sense of departure; to the encounter between an autumn strolling through squares with the crowd, people and doves, and your own private autumn, your inner autumn. You wonder, as someone else has: Are we what we do with time, or are we what time does with us? Finding a response does not interest you as much as slowing down time. You do not want this autumn to end, just as you do not want the poem to grow to fullness and end. You do not want to reach winter. Let autumn be your private eternity.

—	Mahmoud Darwish, ‘In the Presence of Absence,’ Chapter X, translated by Sinan Antoon (2011).

Fields

I was bored this evening, so I went out into the fields and took photos with my phone.  I spent so much time walking and playing in these fields and in the woods as a child and a teenager, but they are suddenly become small.  The hut that I built and used to live in is gone now; even that corner of the field where it was is gone, taken over by alder trees and blackberry brambles.  I found the rusted woodstove on its side in a patch of thistles, and a wooden bench nearly a foot thick, and some mint I planted still growing along the fence.  That's all that's left.

Those are reed seedheads in the foreground, and behind them silky white thistledown starting to blow away, and cedar trees in the background.  The fields are boggy most of the year, hence the reeds.  It's no good for keeping horses in, because the lush grass and the wet causes them to founder.  Foundering is really awful; it's laminitis, an inflammation of the tissue that attaches the hoof to the bone inside the horses foot.  It's pretty gruesome if it's not stopped and can kill the horse in severe cases; you can google it if you want the details. I ended up selling our pony to a horse rescue for a dollar quite a few years ago, because he was foundering, but there was nowhere to put him that wasn't grassy and I couldn't pay for a vet.

Another view of the same field.  Those are alder trees on the left.  There's a creek in there.  It used to be big, my mom and her sibling used to swim in it.  By the time I was a child, it was smaller, but there were still fish in it and you could still fall in and get totally soaked.  Now it's only a trickle, hardly even a stream.  So many tributaries have been covered over or diverted by the new subdivisions that there isn't much water in it anymore, and no fish or tadpoles.

Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) going to seed.

Canada thistle is an invasive weed commonly found along roadsides and in cultivated fields; it spreads laterally by root to form huge patches, and by seed.  Its common name in the US and Canada is misleading, because it's native to Europe and northern Asia.  It's widely considered an injurious weed even where it's native, but the seeds are an important source of food to European Goldfinch, Linnet, and other finches; the leaves are food for over 20 species of butterfly and moth caterpillars, including the Painted Lady; and lots of insects visit the flowers.

Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense)

These alders by the creek are the biggest alders I've ever seen.  The fields were probably cleared by logging at some point in the late nineteenth century, but there are young alder trees springing up in the middle and they'll going to go back to forest given time.  But the farm will be sold and subdivided before that can happen, so nobody is bothering to pull them.

Grass seedheads behind the barn.

The wild roses are still going, surprisingly.  I knew wild roses flowered in June, but if I ever knew that they continued all summer (I must have, I spent so much time in the fields), then I forgot.

The blackberries are still doing their thing.

Common ragwort, native to Britain.  The English poet John Clare wrote a poem in praise of it in 1831:

Ragwort thou humble flower with tattered leaves
I love to see thee come and litter gold...
Thy waste of shining blossoms richly shields
The sun tanned sward in splendid hues that burn
So bright and glaring that the very light
Of the rich sunshine doth to paleness turn
And seems but very shadows in thy sight.

 The alkaloids in ragwort make it somewhat toxic to livestock, although they don't usually eat it when fresh because it's bitter.  It is usually removed from fields that are mown for hay, because livestock will eat dried ragwort in hay and in large quantities it causes cirrhosis of the liver, although confirmed cases of poisoning are rare.

In ancient Greece and Rome a supposed aphrodisiac was made from the plant; it was called satyrion.  Ragwort leaves can be used to obtain good green dye, and the flowers to make brown, orange, or yellow dye.

John Clare, the poet who wrote that verse, lead an interesting and very sad life.  He was born the son of illiterate farm labourers in Northamptonshire in 1793 and had very little schooling, but he is known for his poems about the country.  He suffered from depression and psychosis and spent nearly thirty years in an asylum.  He was mostly forgotten until being re-published in the 20th century.

 He became an agricultural labourer while still a child; however, he attended school in Glinton church until he was 12. In his early adult years, Clare became a pot boy in the Blue Bell public house and fell in love with Mary Joyce; but her father, a prosperous farmer, forbade her to meet him. Subsequently he was a gardener at Burghley House. He enlisted in the militia, tried camp life with Romani, and worked in Pickworth as a lime burner in 1817. In the following year he was obliged to accept parish relief.  Malnutrition stemming from childhood may be the main culprit behind his 5-foot stature and may have contributed to his poor physical health in later life. [...]

Clare was constantly torn between the two worlds of literary London and his often illiterate neighbours; between the need to write poetry and the need for money to feed and clothe his children. His health began to suffer, and he had bouts of severe depression, which became worse after his sixth child was born in 1830 and as his poetry sold less well. In 1832, his friends and his London patrons clubbed together to move the family to a larger cottage with a smallholding in the village of Northborough, not far from Helpston. However, he felt only more alienated.

His last work, the Rural Muse (1835), was noticed favourably by Christopher North and other reviewers, but this was not enough to support his wife and seven children. Clare's mental health began to worsen. As his alcohol consumption steadily increased along with his dissatisfaction with his own identity, Clare's behaviour became more erratic. A notable instance of this behaviour was demonstrated in his interruption of a performance of The Merchant of Venice, in which Clare verbally assaulted Shylock. He was becoming a burden to [his wife] Patty and his family, and in July 1837, on the recommendation of his publishing friend, John Taylor, Clare went of his own volition (accompanied by a friend of Taylor's) to Dr Matthew Allen's private asylum High Beach near Loughton, in Epping Forest. Taylor had assured Clare that he would receive the best medical care.
Clare was reported as being "full of many strange delusions". He believed himself to be a prize fighter and that he had two wives, Patty and Mary. He started to claim he was Lord Byron. Allen wrote about Clare to The Times in 1840:

    It is most singular that ever since he came… the moment he gets pen or pencil in hand he begins to write most poetical effusions. Yet he has never been able to obtain in conversation, nor even in writing prose, the appearance of sanity for two minutes or two lines together, and yet there is no indication of insanity in any of his poetry.

During his first few asylum years in High Beach, Essex (1837–41), Clare re-wrote famous poems and sonnets by Lord Byron. His own version of Child Harold became a lament for past lost love, and Don Juan, A Poem became an acerbic, misogynistic, sexualised rant redolent of an ageing Regency dandy. Clare also took credit for Shakespeare's plays, claiming to be the Renaissance genius himself. "I'm John Clare now," the poet claimed to a newspaper editor, "I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly."

In 1841, Clare absconded from the asylum in Essex, to walk some 90 miles (140 km) home, believing that he was to meet his first love Mary Joyce; Clare was convinced that he was married to her and Martha as well, with children by both women. He did not believe her family when they told him she had died accidentally three years earlier in a house fire. He remained free, mostly at home in Northborough, for the five months following, but eventually Patty called the doctors in. Between Christmas and New Year in 1841, Clare was committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum (now St Andrew's Hospital). Upon Clare's arrival at the asylum, the accompanying doctor, Fenwick Skrimshire, who had treated Clare since 1820, completed the admission papers. To the enquiry "Was the insanity preceded by any severe or long-continued mental emotion or exertion?", Dr Skrimshire entered: "After years of poetical prosing."  He remained here for the rest of his life under the humane regime of Dr Thomas Octavius Prichard, who encouraged and helped him to write. Here he wrote possibly his most famous poem, I Am.

He died on 20 May 1864, in his 71st year. His remains were returned to Helpston for burial in St Botolph’s churchyard. Today, children at the John Clare School, Helpston's primary, parade through the village and place their "midsummer cushions" around Clare's gravestone (which bears the inscriptions "To the Memory of John Clare The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" and "A Poet is Born not Made") on his birthday, in honour of their most famous resident.

In his time, Clare was commonly known as "the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet". His formal education was brief, his other employment and class-origins were lowly. Clare resisted the use of the increasingly standardised English grammar and orthography in his poetry and prose, alluding to political reasoning in comparing "grammar" (in a wider sense of orthography) to tyrannical government and slavery, personifying it in jocular fashion as a "bitch".  He wrote in his Northamptonshire dialect, introducing local words to the literary canon such as "pooty" (snail), "lady-cow" (ladybird), "crizzle" (to crisp) and "throstle" (song thrush).

In his early life he struggled to find a place for his poetry in the changing literary fashions of the day. He also felt that he did not belong with other peasants. Clare once wrote:

    "I live here among the ignorant like a lost man in fact like one whom the rest seemes careless of having anything to do with—they hardly dare talk in my company for fear I should mention them in my writings and I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbours who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose."

It is common to see an absence of punctuation in many of Clare's original writings, although many publishers felt the need to remedy this practice in the majority of his work. Clare argued with his editors about how it should be presented to the public.

Clare grew up during a period of massive changes in both town and countryside as the Industrial Revolution swept Europe. Many former agricultural workers, including children, moved away from the countryside to over-crowded cities, following factory work. The Agricultural Revolution saw pastures ploughed up, trees and hedges uprooted, the fens drained and the common land enclosed.

This destruction of a centuries-old way of life distressed Clare deeply. His political and social views were predominantly conservative ("I am as far as my politics reaches 'King and Country'—no Innovations in Religion and Government say I."). He refused even to complain about the subordinate position to which English society relegated him, swearing that "with the old dish that was served to my forefathers I am content."
(Wikipedia)

John Clare, painted by William Hilton in 1820 (Wikipedia).

The house where Clare was born in Hepston, Peterborough.  The house was subdivided, with Clare's family renting a portion (Wikipedia).

Clare's poem "Autumn:"

The thistledown's flying, though the winds are all still,

On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,

The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;

Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,

The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.

The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,

And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,

And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;

Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;

Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

Beach photos and the supermoon

A few days ago the full moon of Ramadan rose over the darkened houses of my neighbourhood as I was walking to the beach.  It was a supermoon this year, at its closest point to the earth.  It hung in the sky like a great gold coin.

The Supermoon rises over houses in Olvera, in the southern Spanish province of Cadiz, July 12, 2014.
REUTERS/Jon Nazca

The supermoon over Oman.  This image has been circulating on Whatsapp.

More moon photos: NASA; Reuters

I have been bored lately.  I can't even really say I'm bored, as I have plenty to do.  I work, and translate, and write fiction, and read nearly a whole book a day.  But I'm restless and distracted and so I've taken to walking to the beach every day even though it's a tad hot in the afternoon and there are men in the street at night.  It beats sitting at home chewing on the furniture.  I feel restless at the beach too, but at least there are dead things to photograph (does anyone want to see?  I can post pictures), and after an hour of walking at least I'm tired and somewhat less restless.  And 4pm during Ramadan is the perfect time to go to the beach!  I usually have it all to myself.  The soccer players don't come out to jog until 6pm.

Portuguese Man of War

Seagulls at low tide.

Mosque behind a palm grove.

Running the pump to fill up the falaj.

A fishing boat.

Iraq in days past

I can't recommend the text at all, but this article has some great images of Iraq in the middle of the last century.

Baghdad, 1956

Basra, 1950

Mosul, 1963

A meat market in Mosul, 1959.

Kirkuk, 1956

 I do recommend this article by Roqayah Chamseddine:

Jean Bricmont’s powerful book Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War, written during the occupation of Iraq, is a timely historical critique of Western interventionism, one worth examining as the United States of America moves once more in the direction of military entanglement in Iraq. Bricmont, a Belgian theoretical physicist and professor at The Université catholique de Louvain, discusses the ideological factors which legitimize military action in response to humanitarian abuses and “in defense of democracy” (p. 7). — “This is the discourse and the representation that must be challenged in order to build a radical and self-confident opposition to current and future wars.” The humanitarian rationales offered under the banner of there being “a responsibility to protect” have only increased since the end of World War II, and methods to reinforce such motivations have grown progressively coercive.

Bricmont introduces a formula which will come to define “humanitarian imperialism:” when A exercises power over B, he does so for B's "own good" (p. 11). This is the creed of philanthropic power — which peddles and rationalizes war as a column maintaining international order — and which continues to define the very nature of international conflict post-World War II. Interventionism is no longer argued as being warranted in the name of Christianity, Bricmont argues, but what he calls ideological reinforcements: democracy and human rights. For example, despite former US President George W. Bush’s frequent use of religious imagery, the call to invade Iraq was not only drenched in chilling white saviourism but an overwhelming exceptionalism which contends that only military efforts led by the United States of America would bring about a just liberation and lasting stability for the people of Iraq. “[T]he dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace,” George W. Bush stated in 2003. “We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail.”

The call to invade Iraq was not only drenched in chilling white saviourism but an overwhelming exceptionalism which contends that only military efforts led by the United States of America would bring about a just liberation and lasting stability.

The horrors inflicted upon the people of Iraq are still understated, and since 2003 the bloodshed has not stopped. When Obama delivered his speech in 2011 celebrating the US military withdrawal, there were bombings and shootings in Baghdad, in Mosul, in Kirkuk and in Tal Afer. While the Iraqi people were preparing burial shrouds Obama was reaffirming the previous administration’s claims that the US left for the Iraqi people a stable country, had forged a lasting peace and made the world more secure. Amongst the congratulatory frill and repugnant nationalism Obama did make one salient point — that the US legacy in Iraq will endure and that it shall be remembered. The legacy of this tragic and implacable war will live on in the wombs of Iraqi women who bear children with congenital birth defects as a result of depleted uranium; the riddled bodies of those now suffering from cancer due to the toxic munitions used by the US military and finally in the land of Iraq, which has been devoured and polluted by the chemical weapons the US unleashed during its occupation.

 - Iraq intervention, redux? The folly of 'humanitarian imperialism.'

Wadi Dayqah Dam

A lady started visiting me last week.  She came several times, often more than once a day, and brought a few relatives with her.  I was glad to see her, but a little apprehensive because in Jordan there would be a 98% chance she had someone whom she wanted me to marry.  This is not Jordan and people here are not as fired up about all ladies getting married asap, and most people know that it's illegal for Omanis to marry foreigners - although it's not quite that simple.  I'm sometimes selfishly relieved that law exists, although it causes other people a lot of trouble.

But it turns out, she's the imam's wife and wanted to be welcoming to a foreigner and no a3rees has come out of the woodwork yet, which is the best outcome I'd hoped for, alH.

She and her husband took me and their two kids on a day-trip to Wadi Dayqah last Friday.  It was a great trip overall.  We had long conversations, the kids slept part of the way, and there was only one vomiting incident. 

Wadi Dayqah Dam is reputed to be the biggest dam in the Middle East, and it is the biggest dam in Oman and an important part of Oman's water projects.  The research was begun on the dam, which traps winter flood water so that it can be used year-round, in 1978, but the dam was only opened to the public in 2012.

The storage lake covers an area of about 350 hectares and extends to about 6km from the main body of the dam.

The observation post. 

There's a walkway with rails for visitors to walk about halfway out along the dam, although it's somewhat messy due to construction right now.  There is a grassed area with gazebos for visitors to sit in in the shade by the reservoir, but we only walked across it and I didn't want to take pictures of other people.  You can find pictures of it if you Google the wadi name, there's lots available in English.

Water flows down the wall in flood season.

Men swimming in the basin at the bottom of the wadi.

Wadi Dayqah is one of the few that flow year-round, but it's massively reduced in summer.

Villages in the valley.

Wadi Dayqah currently provides agricultural water free of charge to villages in Qureiyat, and is part of a US$ 120 million water supply scheme that aims to provide potable water to Muscat and Qureiyat.  I haven't found any projected completion dates for that, but they wouldn't likely be very useful anyhow.

Photos from Jerash

I don't know what to write about, so let's have some photos. I must have several hundred just of Jerash, but these are some of my favourites.

I visited the excavated Roman ruins at Jerash several times last year, although we only actually got past the front gate once.

Here's Hadrian's Gate at the entrance to the site, built for the visit of the emperor Hadrian in 130 AD.





Some of the artifacts that have been discovered. The site has been occupied for around five thousand years; it was conquered by Rome in 63 BC, and mostly destroyed by earthquake in 749 AD. The monuments visible have all been dug up and reconstructed; there is scaffolding and a pile of stone blocks behind Hadrian's Gate, as it is still being assembled.

Most employees at historic sites don't mind having their pictures taken.

A man selling trinkets at the entrance to the South Theatre.

This 'gladiator' seemed to be having a good time striking fierce poses with his sword for the pretty foreign students.

The Hippodrome has mock Roman military demonstrations, chariot races, half-nude middle-aged Arab guys very earnestly trying to sword fight to the death, etc.


It's a big site. The air here is always more or less hazy, but you can (hopefully) see that the Cardo (north-oriented paved road bordered by pillars) winds its way all the way up the hill to the left. I was delighted the one time I was able to walk all the way through it, although I was the only one who did.

The little souvenir souq that the Turkish study groups often never leave. I just don't see the interest in it, but then I dislike shopping and knick-knacks in general. To each their own.