November 14th, 2012.

'The dark moon's non-existent seas'; the traces of blue shadow behind your radiant face, your sad eyes. The acrid smell of burning leaves, stinging the eyes, bringing forth a moment of awareness. November fires, unforgiving, lest we forget.

Foundation stone: that which separates the waters from civilisation, chaos from order. The seasonality, the regularity of the floods is a containment but has now broken free from time. Our law-lines, the boundaries we erect to assure ourselves of who we are. What would we do without our borders, our barbarians, the specific rituals of pacification, the pattern we throw over randomness like a nomadic kilm?

You must re-invent yourself, side-step the ongoing stream, change your clothes, look positive for once, for Christ's sake. You must lose yourself to find yourself. Get rid of that drowsy Oriental look on your face, she said. All those simple years spent near mountains, the generations of idleness, all that has mysteriously been passed down to you...

The days narrow, there is less light in the sky now. Earth grows slow, conserves its energy, keeps the dream of spring carefully tucked in its folds, like a child hides a toy, or like the way a priest keeps the sense of the goodness of the world close to his thoughts even in bad times. There are no more anchors in the world, said the poet. Things are going to slide. Time is out of joint and my bags aren't packed yet. No time to go back for three books. But you have kept a large brown dry leaf in a book and a chestnut in your coat pocket for safekeeping. Your picture books-Russian Icons and Kufic Calligraphy-have been lovingly stored, numbers have been committed to memory and your heart is at rest.

The mid-afternoon sun is weak, its pale peach light strangely linking one building to another, and for awhile it is as if each person's destiny is mysteriously related to the others under this light. Friends smoke and drink tea. We have fewer words now. There is a deep silence. Ash on our fingertips, the greyness spreading on our faces.How we got here nobody knows. No profound awareness, no deep insights for us who live day to day. Some look out blankly into the horizon. No answers there. Don't look at me, kid, I'm as clueless as you. We, the last remnants of the bourgeoisie, hold onto our possessions as if they were the world.

It is weird-and this may strike some of you as odd-but there is no talk of religion amongst us. If we do talk, it is of death or women or money and the lack of it. Like everyone else, I guess. Unless you're a woman, of course, in which case you don't talk about death. 

By now the light is fading from the windows, which grow darker by the minute. The crows near the mosque avoid the slanting light. We get up to go, nothing is resolved, nothing is made clearer. We imagine, perhaps not unwisely, that it was intrinsic values that were at the root of the matter.