the rainy middle east desert

The process of learning to write has many parellels with figuring out life in general. My dullness quietly embarrasses me as much in my daily business as in my attempts at narratives or poems. My befudlement at spelling embarrases embarrasses me. I would have just said shames if it wasn't so monosyllabic.

The truth, if you would like me to tell, is that all sorts of interesting stories are dripping all around us off the rain wet leaves. If we will only open our mouths and look up they would dround us. In Iraq too.

It's damn cold here. If you can believe Dante. And the sky has been raining the ground into horrible muddiness. It's not the hot middle east desert, spelled with only one "s", I remember because you never want more of it, now, it's the cold middle east desert that none of us ever knew about because we were all too afraid to talk about something so dull as a day not sweltering hot with machine gun fire and hazy sweaty war.

The concrete and tile floors inside our crumbling concrete barracks where we stay in plywood partitioned rooms, the floors are dirty with boot tracks. We bought small rugs at the PX (troop store) when it was still summer out, and they are now caked with dirt. We shake them out every couple days. Actually, it's been atleast two weeks. It's funny to think how clean we keep our living areas--our houses and living rooms and even the areas around the kitty litter boxs, back in the U.S.

What we can keep clean here, the sheets and blankets of our beds, the dark blue cotton sheet I have spread over my sheet of plywood desk, we revel in these clean things.

I have started sleeping naked. Just after a shower, it's wonderful.