Reassuringly Pavlovian

I was partly packing up, and partly watching the “Arrested Development” Season 1 I had just picked up. Then I heard some noises coming from outside my window. They were loud noises and my mouth started salivating. Well I wasn’t so much salivating, but I did immediately pause the DVD, take a second, and then go for the camera. I’m kinda disgusted by that. The going for the camera part, but it’s not the first time, and probably wont be the last time. And as terrible or even disgusting as it may be that I want to take pictures when I hear explosions going off, I’m kinda happy that the response is somewhat Pavlovian. If only for the reason that it means that I’m not completely acclimatized to living here, or even rather that I am correctly acclimatized, in that I notice explosions.

Usually when I’m sitting at my desk, in front of my computer with the music playing, and I hear what later turns out to be a door slamming or an engine backfiring my middle finger finds its way instantly to the mute button. The circumstances were slightly different tonight, but the ends were pretty much the same.


This time though, it was fireworks going off. Yeah, I know, I had the same “wtf” response when I got out on the patio, camera in hand, and saw what was going on. Tomorrow is Independence Day. And well, there has been a weeklong continuing “wtf” response to the holiday too. Since not much of the local staff can explain what/whom the “independence” was from (the day of celebrating the defeat of the Soviets is in spring), and assuming that it’s done in correlation with India’s and Pakistan’s Independence Day celebration, i.e. from the Brits) and I can’t seem to find much info on such, or rather get a satisfying explanation, I hoping someone else here can provide info on that. After all, even the Durand Line is still in place.

Anyway, I got to see some fireworks. And as far as that particular “wtf” response, even though I’m all for celebrating one’s independence from occupiers (please, no irony/hypocrisy comments here...I’m well aware), are fireworks, exploding off TV Hill, the smartest thing to do in Kabul? A parade, showing big guns and waving kids—that I would have thought as much more appropriate these days. The time of the display going off would have been an ideal time to drop some RPGs or set off some IEDs. I think some tracers even went off from the side of town opposite where the fireworks were launched from, at least they looked like tracers.

My reservations notwithstanding, I got to see some nice fireworks. And once again, right around the time I’m leaving Kabul, explosions are going off. In celebration this time, thankfully. And hopefully tomorrow, any explosions will be for the same reason.

Last, but not least: Happy Afghan Independence day.

Fighting Time

Its been a while since I’ve last posted, and since I’ve been home. Both are being remedied. At least one, thankfully (and I'm posting pictures, but I don't think they really count). The posting and the trip home, to me, both seem intrinsically tied. The first few weeks after my arrival here, though I could watch it fade, there was the immediate excitement and newness. Then for the intervening time, there has still been the uniqueness. As familiar as I am with much of this culture, it's not what I had been living in for the whole of my life. That uniqueness, or perhaps better stated as "distinctness" (as every place has its own mix of the universal and unique) at nearly 10 months, isn’t quite there anymore, and so less things get noticed and thought about.

And work has become nearly all-consuming over the past few weeks especially, besides just the new roles I’ve taken on in the past few months. Without trying to say too much, as things are politically sensitive these days, there was an article in the WaPo that discussed much of what we’re involved in and working on. There are a lot of concerns, and thus stress, and so I feel somewhat guilty about leaving at this juncture. But I need it, and soon enough I’ll be overdue on the trip home.

In the mean time, to help curtail the “I’m gettin’ the hell out” sentiment, I’m trying to be appreciative of the things that are quite nice here. After all, I’ll be coming back to them after a few weeks. So on the list, and excuse my superficiality, are daily laundry (though that got annoying so I’ve switched to two or three times a week, but the dude still comes to my door every day asking for my laundry) picked up from and delivered to my room—folded and ironed to boot. See, look below. That, I need to appreciate.


And speaking of my room, I nearly never have to leave it, the exceptions being meetings and food. If I could only get them to bring my plate to my room too... So this all facilitates my laziness way more than is healthy. Spending 20 hours in a room has its pros and cons. The laziness and only having to move a few feet to do most of what I need to do in a day being the main pro. The laziness and having to spend 20 hours in a room being the main con. It is a zero commute, but I wake up and see my desk. Then at the end of the day, I go to bed, and see my desk. You too can see my desk below. Yeah I know, freshman year dorm. But I’m approaching 30 now, and don’t play computer games all day. Yet, there is no commute. At all.


While I’m home, even visiting friends, I imagine I’ll be fighting DC area traffic. Right now all I have to fight is black hole like gravity of my bed...actually, I may be worse off now on that regard.

I’ll be busy, and likely not posting for a while (and I don’t know why I’m putting that point up as it’s been several weeks since the last post) as I get things ready and in place for my absence of a few weeks. Then I’ll be home, and probably not posting much. Not caring about time. Not noticing that the time since something has been too long, or the time till something is too short. Not caring about time, for a time of three weeks, will be nice.

Will be seeing many of you (OK...most of you, besides the random Sudan and Ireland readers) soon.

Barely a Metric for Pressure

The good news is that I’m happy to report that I’ve managed to make the Davidoff Magnum cigarettes I got in Dubai last for almost 10 days. Ignore the fact that I’m still smoking way too much these days, and that I had to intersperse one of the most pristine cigarettes manufactured with crap Swedish Marlboros, likely manufactured in Korea. Davidoff Magnums are heavenly. I dare say, even better than Camel Wides. So I swing, sometimes within the hour from some of the best tobacco one can smoke to some of the worst.

And that is the general mood too. Around February, spring was knocking on the door, we got our first extension and a few big projects were rolling around and I was transitioning into my current role. Then it was July...all of the sudden it seems. The current role has the ups and downs I was warned, and prepared for. I can normally handle such well, with my stoic and annoying abstraction of everything. But now I’m seeing it reflected in my mood day to day.

My usual barometer for my mood is the music I’m listening to. Back in February, I got the Stone Jack Jones album "Bluefolk,” but as good as it was, its bluesy, Armageddon drenched, Appalachian flavored country wasn’t what the jet streams were calling for. Now they are. But my stoicism is still there.

Today at the dinner table while talking about what the lot of the world is talking about, and how it may affect us here, we had trouble recalling the last time there was an incident in Kabul. (For Kabul, it’s been nearly two weeks, though the South, by some measures is getting better (less total killing/fighting reported), and others, getting worse (Taliban took over two small towns).) I’m not sure if that is stoicism, on the part of all four of us sitting at the table, or just simple desensitization, on the part of all four of us sitting at the table. Either way, we quickly started talking about how the chicken that night was particularly good.

So back to the barometer, as the other end of it is that the summer crop of songs is coming out. It looks like it will be a good season. So when I get tired of the foreboding (with odd tinges of hope though...go check out ‘Vivid’) Stone Jack Jones, I’m all about Lily Allen and her new single “Smile.” Via p-fork, I found out about it a few weeks ago. And they put up a full album review, which paints a good picture. Sadly, iTunes only has the above-mentioned single's EP.

So I’m down to only one more pack of Magnums, and I’m probably wearing out 'Smile' and 'Vivid'. Maybe whats going on proximately and distantly will settle down too. Though there seems to be no causation between my smoking habits, the music I listen too and/or life outside Kabul, there may be a correlation.

I’ll have to keep an eye on those barometers.

Back to, But Not Into, The Swing of Things

Got back to Kabul today. But feel completely out of the loop. The quick trip to Dubai was good, cause I really didn't do anything noteworthy at all: went to restaurants, smoked shisha, read, watched movies, sat by the pool, etc... Though, I think it just made the dislocation worse. Kept up with work there, but in coming back I feel completely out of the loop. And it was basically 48 hours that I wasn't here for.

But I did get to decompress, and sleep, and laize about. So the energy level should be back up for a bit, and will hopefully last me through to the end of August.

Work is largely the same. Though my affection for it had, or has changed. In the least my attitude towards it has changed. I'm giving it the 'it's not you, it's me' line these days. Maybe me and work can get back to the way we were before now that I've had this little break.

(Car) Bombs Bursting In Air

Happy 4th everyone.

I thought I was gonna miss out on the fireworks. It's been a running tradition for nearly 10 years for a group of us high school friends to have a BBQ/Picnic, and then go watch the fireworks from the Mall. I obviously am missing that this year. Hello to all of you, wish I was there.

But fear not, I got to at least hear some explosions. Seems like the Taliban felt like commemorating the 4th as well. Though their explosives don't have that neat multi-color star effect. Maybe we'll at least get the ISAF to launch some tracers tonight or something.

A Wisdom of Sorts or of Sorting

It could just as likely be tinnitus too. Because this next band has, as one of my former housemates used to say, "that annoying indie tinny sound." Upon saying such, and after yelling at me to turn the shit off, he would usually follow on with an explitive and command them to: 1) get decent recording equipment, or 2) learn to tune their insturments properly, or 3) stop letting tone-deaf singers join the band--and on the especially prideful occasion, I'd get him to say all three.

So this is for you Brown Bear: The Cold War Kids.

I've been sitting on them for a while. At first I dug them a lot. Then they seemed like good recyclers of many of the current crop of indie-stars (especially the NYC New Wave/Garage Rock/Blues-Soul crews). But now I'm settled to liking them a lot again. Once again, a provisio on the singing voice. So you got there sound.

If I were you, I'd start here, with "Hospital Beds", and then move on to here, with "The Soloist in the Living Room." Their website has two other downloads. Otherwise, they seem inaccessable from remote locations.

**But I found some more Cold War Kids songs. Here they are. A thank you to So Much Silence for posting the songs from a KEXP set.

Addressing Complaints

And there have surely been a few. OK like three. Since there are four readers. But at least 2 have been that I don't post enough pictures. This is because I haven't taken a picture here since our last excursion out of the city. I never was a picture person.

But today, Slate's Magnum Photo feature is running a series of photos of Stokeley Carmicheal (aka Kwame Toure). Today is his birthday. They're great photos.

My favorites being the opening photo, the seventh photo, and this photo tops the list.

Enjoy.

“As long as it’s talking with you, talk of the weather will do.”

The afternoons have been filled with what’s best described as a flat warm wind. Oddly, I don’t find it refreshing, as I do for most breezes. I still find a certain type of placidity brought by the wind, though the breeze isn’t calming by any means, and I don’t want to say that it brings a sense of apathy.

So every afternoon an odd dislocation sets in, and when not so removed, maybe one day I’ll find better words to describe it. But as for now, as a subsequent line in the BTS song “The Weather” advises, “Nobody's hoping for better days/ No one knows what to do./ You're okay in your secret place,/ No one bothering you,” I’ll leave it alone.

Work, as stated many times before, chugs along. It’s providing the continuity and pace that is necessary to allow me to cocoon myself to what’s going on down south. Occasionally, something that floats across the wires (or gets emailed to me from the security staff) affects my work. Largely, I can float along, in my office/bedroom enjoying the afternoon’s dislocation.

Also, as I’ve stated many times before, we’ve continued to wind down the project. So we’ve consolidated houses and offices. I’m taking over the wrap-up of another project as one of our expats heads home. That may involve some scurrying across town, so I may not be able to cocoon myself so much in my secret place. I’m definitely going to be bothered by more people too.

To buffer that (and I’m getting a little “escape envy” as coworkers [even the Chief is taking some, well deserved, time off] are coming or going), I’m trying to get out of town for a few days in a week or two. Go to Dubai just to leave here for a while. Not much of an exchange as it will be intolerably hot there with hot winds. But it will be not here, and that should be good for a few days.

So, in the end, I’m going to say it’s the weather that I blame for me not posting links to some articles and news on Afghanistan. Also, there seems to be a lot more news that is readily available to everyone. There were two recent articles on slate.com by Fred Kaplan. He dicusses the opium conundrum and NATO's Afghan strategy. There was also this good article by Ahmed Rashid, a book review that has a great “introduction” before getting to the review. Cut the man some slack on the self-serving aspect of writing an article that is 3/4s background and exposition, and 1/4 review, because it’s really good background and exposition.

Parts of Rashid’s article, which is largely on current issues and the climate here reminded me of a recent find, Peter Lamborn Wilson’s “travelogue”/article. Wilson, otherwise known as Hakim Bey for those familiar with Bey and all that entails, visited Afghanistan many times in the 60s and 70s and returned in 2003. This piece covers all that. Something struck when contrasting what was evoked in the above Rashid article with this Wilson quote:

The fact that the Taliban succeeded in taking over Afghanistan has always seemed to me a certain sign that the Afghanistan I knew was completely smashed to hell by the Russians and civil war. I never heard any Afghan, however pious, praise "fundamentalism" or mullah-inspired bigotry. No one had ever heard of this perversion of Islam, which then existed only in Saudi Arabia. Afghan Islam was very orthopractic, but also very pro-sufi; essentially, it was old-fashioned mainstream Islam. The idea of banning kite-flying would probably have caused hoots of incredulous laughter. It must have taken 20 years of vicious neo-imperialist ideological cultural murder and oppression to make Talibanism look like the least of all available evils.

In the last post, I noted that the discontinuity of this place was a tired cliché, especially as this place is and these people are constantly on the move. There may be even too much continuity and history here. In following my own advice, I'll search for something else. So maybe through “dislocation”—physically, temporally, cognitively, every which “-ly,” can this place be better understood. In the least, dislocation is helping me understand my current state here.

Late Again And Blaming Kabubble

It really is that odd 30 extra minutes added in this timezone. That's the reason, a discontinuity...that maybe explains too much, or rather is such a ripe metaphor, it's cliche. Anyway...

Another 'new to me artist', that apparently blew the charts up in Europe and in G.B. late last summer, Mattafix. So I was in the US then. Whatever...minor point.

I just saw the video of "Big City Life" on the South African sat channel we get. And the thing is, there is so much wrong: the video was at times quite trite (the homeless man vignette, though the pregnant woman thing and the accountant/skateborder i just don't get), the lyrics are painfully simplistic (i.e. not unlike The Streets or Audio Bully, but there is nothing really personal nor just "fuck all" as they say, about the lyrics. This particular song is just generic and universal.), the carribiean/dancehall emcee is a bit forced, the male singing is downright bad with its atonal falsetto, and it totally cops the feel (I think the cymbals and bass line in the beginning) of Primitive Radio Gods "Phone Booth" song (had to google that, as I was chatting w/ a friend and neither of us could remember that info, but I remembered vague and odd snippets). And it's so mid-90s trip-hop, with a few 2-step beats thrown in.

But I love the song.

I can't stop listening to it. I've even grown to like the signing voice, terrible as it is.

I love this song.

Dowload/Listen to some of their stuff here.

Not Quite Quiet or Quite Not Quiet?

The reason I still think it’s fairly quiet here, I’ll chalk it up to the distance and mountain passes between Kabul and Kandahar. Despite my few recent post titles proclaiming the quiet, and the music I've been listening to, the editors at Salon.com seems to think there is an "unquiet" here, or at least in the east. They even put it on Wednesday's front page. As for the news accounts, even the daily ones I receive from our security folks, I should be counting them in the same log, but I’ll still insist upon my claims of quiet. Here is the fairly pessimistic, but well written, article in Salon.com. Though to me, with my biases fully acknowledged, the tone seemed a bit sensationalist. Don’t ask me to justify that, else I’ll have to think about it more. And if you haven’t noticed, either by the dearth of posts, or the nature of the posts recently, I haven’t been thinking much about the situation here. Futher, if the sensationalism gets more public care/awareness of the situation here, I'll thank the press.

A lot has been going on, work wise, and the continuing extension and scale-back makes for a weird work environment. Luckily, of late my job has largely been operational. There are daily tasks to be done, things to be monitored, keep things running and such. So, though tedious at times, it keeps me moving. But in general, project wise, we’re in a glide pattern. And as we step into another three months, it’s somewhat frustrating. It’s especially frustrating because it seems like the whole of the donor/aid world is entering that pattern. Though I may be just imposing my sentiments, it nonetheless seems that the riots and the preceding and continuing escalation of military action and violence has a lot of groups and people in a "wait and see" attitude.

The problem--that is probably the last thing that is needed here. What is sorely needed is not only a redoubling of military/security measures, especially from the ANA (not just foreign troops), but also a redoubling of actual efforts and plans from aid groups (as the article linked above notes). Of course, the Afghan compact, and plans are all fine and dandy, with actual shovels to the ground being much better. Yet, the reality, as it seems to me, is that it will be a while before more can be done, physically. So it’ll at least be some good paperwork that needs to be done in the mean time.

Tangentially, yesterday, after getting our daily headline/news update via email, I was about to immediately post it. The humor of it struck me, and then it just got kinda disappointing. The irony of the first two headlines being concurrently true now gone, and the reality sinking in, my (essentially trivializing) motivation to share the headlines slipped away, thankfully. Now, I’ll still post the headlines, as I think they better capture the current moment here:

Afghan President Denies Forming Militias
June 11, 2006 -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai today denied media reports that he is forming militia forces in southern Afghanistan to fight the...

Afghan president: Tribal fighters will help battle Taliban
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday his government will give weapons to local tribesmen so they can help fight the biggest increase in Taliban violence in...

Karzai says between rock and hard place on reforms
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday his government was trying to follow a moderate path in the face of competing pressures from the international community and his nation...

So as many are commenting now, and a few started sounding the warnings signals before, the situation is slipping further into factionalism. Motivations are becoming individual again, and though they may have been so all the while, actions towards such are now more transparent.

So mine is a sense of apathetic frustration towards the politics and such going on here. Thus the lack of news, well, rather sharing of news and posting and such. I still keep up with the news. I’m just not excited by or vested in much of what I read, news wise. I still have a job to get done, and will try to and hopefully give my best effort on that. I still see more than enough to inspire hope—the markets are still busy, construction still goes on, many folks aren’t at the point of running scared yet, and there is a recently launched CF/ISAF offensive in the south. So, maybe it’s that I just don’t care to hope much right now. We’ll leave hope for when the fighting slows down again.