“Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe.”
Ken Kesey
Thursday
Thick fog this morning. Not the milky fog, this is the sick brown fog.
When I first arrived I thought the fog was filled with dust. It pollution. The air here is some of the worst in the world. What should you expect, the only thing that grows here is oil.
If you look out the window it feels like rain. Tears running down the window.
I wish it were rain. It is just contaminated fog.
Sharjah does its best to keep the pollution at peak levels. There is rarely a week that goes by without an industrial fire. The smoke mushroomed over the horizon. A glorious sunset. Apocalyptic.
After a week of calorie deficit, I undo all the good work and eat enough for three people.
Al Jawareh knows all my weak points.
“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.”
Charles Dickens
Friday
“Do you hate people?”
“I don’t hate them…I just feel better when they’re not around.”
Charles Bukowski
Gym.
Recent changes at work. There are now some middle leadership positions available.
I have sent in my application and feel nothing but resentment and disappointment in myself.
A responsibility I don’t care to have, in a job that is grinding me away.
I am the rat on the wheel. Everything I pretend I will not be.
But it will look good on the CV.
“When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves.”
Chuck Palahniuk
With the application sent I decide to read.
Books. Escape.
I finish John Barleycorn by Jack London. This will be my last read of London—time to move on.
A memoir of his alcoholism. An insightful and often relatable narrative, ruined in the end by London’s belief that the solution to alcoholism is not in self-determination, but prohibition.
“Oh!–and I speak out of later knowledge–Heaven forefend me from the most of the average run of male humans who are not good fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head who don’t smoke, drink, or swear, or do much of anything else that is brase, and resentful, and stinging, because in their feeble fibres there has never been the stir and prod of life to well over its boundaries and be devilish and daring.”
Jack London
He drank himself to death, and although it was opium to ease the suffering that he eventually overdosed on, it seems cowardly that the great explorer, the brave adventurer, would believe that prohibition was the only answer to his own weakness.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is next on my list.
The constant references to Melville and Twain in London’s biography have changed my mind.
I won’t work through entire lists. Moby Dick to start and three or four Twain’s books before I head into Fitzgerald.
I am trudging on with Why Plato Wrote. I am finding these philosophy texts difficult work. After a few pages, I need to stop reading and digest the meaning. I enjoy the process, but it is slow going.
This is the last book on Plato and I am almost finished. I can’t imagine Aristotle being any easier.
We watch a movie.
Don’t Look Up is a brilliant comedy. A well written parody of the ridiculousness that is America.
Two astronomers discover a comet heading for Earth. Big enough to cause a catastrophic event, Meryl Streep playing a Trump-style President decides the political climate is not right to announce the Earth’s pending doom in 60 days and decides to sweep it under the carpet.
When pornographic images of her surface, she patriotically declares America will defend the world to divert attention from the scandal.
It is funny, but the sad reality is that all of these absurd scenarios, the science denial, the media bias and the partisan slogan of ‘Don’t Look Up’ actually happen, and not just in the US.
When an Elon Musk styled character discovers the comet is composed of rare minerals worth trillions, it is difficult to laugh at the absurdity that follows because you know deep down it is exactly how things would play out in reality.
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
Plato
Saturday
Gym.
Another lazy day reading.
I have finished Why Plato Wrote. As I read, I realised the book delivered a much more interesting theme. It was more fascinating to understand why Socrates didn’t write than why Plato did.
Socrates believed that the written word delivered knowledge, but not understanding. Oration, debate and the dissemble of the dialectic are not available in the written word. It was Socrates’ belief that knowledge is worthless without understanding, and without discussion and debate, understanding was impossible.
“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”
Socrates
It is time to move on to Aristotle. I have two options; his complete works, which come in two hefty volumes. Alternatively, I cherry pick his most appreciated work and buy three or four smaller books.
If I were in a place long term, I would not hesitate to buy the two volumes of complete works. I am conscious that my library is growing and when we prepare to move next year these books will be carted around to our next stop.
I will go with the individual texts. First up, Nicomachean Ethics.
I go for a haircut and a shave.
We watch a movie, Guilty. Not bad, not great.
It is time for bed.
“what bargains we have made
we have
kept
and as the dogs of the hours
close in
nothing
can be taken
from us
but
our lives.”
Charles Bukowski
Sunday
“When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.”
William Wordsworth
I am skeptical how a person can get 8-9 hours of sleep every night and wake up every morning fatigued.
It might be the 4.20 am start. These early starts are only four days a week. Over the weekend I am waking at 5.30 am.
If I allow for a moment that I am over training, I am picking at a scab that terrifies me. I have trained six days a week for as long as I can remember. I refuse to accept that age is an influence.
“Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. (…) Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains.”
Seneca
The routine of making lunches reminds me that I have another week of work ahead.
I try not to think about work. I go each week, do my best, come home and dream of faraway places. These places never include work, they are not in the desert and the temperature is mild.
I dream of not being here.
In two weeks we head back to Europe for a few days. Off the treadmill.
If we do not land our dream jobs when our contract finishes here in the UAE, we will take a year off and travel the world like vagrants.
Never again will I take a job in a place I never want to go for the advancement of career or the making of money.
“Poverty is a funny phenomenon. It is always defined financially and always relative to what other people earn. It is possible to be extremely happy despite having little money and being officially categorised as poverty-stricken.”
Mark Boyle
I spend the day reading.
Work tomorrow.