Meri's Musings

I wasn't going to torture you with this really awful pun (courtesy of my fellow spiritual traveler Vera, an artist and seeker from New York) but when I looked at my photos of Manhattan, I knew I had to inflict it upon you. Did you hear the one about the Buddhist monk who walked up to the hot dog vendor and said, (groan) Make me one with everything.

"Neon Minarets" copyright 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian Neon minarets dance in the dark, spinning tight little Sufi spirals, leaving a vapor trail of energy to mark their path of devotion. "Sufi Spirals" copyright 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian.

Before the Egypt portion of my journey, before a madcap 32 hours in Manhattan, there was a photo workshop. Jan Phillips gave each of us, the seven of us, a word as an assignment. Take a photo, she said, that conveys the meaning of the word. Or not, as you choose. My word was oneness. Make me one with everything.

In our little dahabeya, we cruised from Aswan to Luxor, mooring alongshore in relative isolation, far from the bigger river boats. We spent a total of eight nights aboard the Afandina so the daylight hours (when we weren't at ancient sites or participating in writing sessions) afforded us a chance to sit and chat and watch Egypt go by. The area alongside the river is verdant. But, as you can see, the desert is never far away.

How do I explain Egypt to you? It's both the expected and the unexpected. I didn't expect, for example, that traffic in Cairo would make Manhattan cabbies look like models of civility. I didn't anticipate that every place I looked I'd find a visual feast. I didn't know that I'd take a whole series of photos of beautiful weathered doors in Esna and Luxor. I expected to find photo ops in abundance and I wasn't disappointed. I didn't expect that when Egyptians asked if we were English or Canadian and found that we were Americans, they'd burst into grins and flash a thumbs up and say "Obama! Good man." But they did. What a trip! I'll be showing you more glimpses of Egypt in days to come. I hope you won't get bored.

Exhausted. In need of sleep. Flying home tomorrow. Talk to you soon. Have I got photos for you! (But not quite yet).

Out of a shattered open heart springs a fountain of fiery sacred passion that will never run dry. - Rumi "Shattered" - copyright 2007 Meri Arnett-Kremian. I have learned not to worry about love but to honor its coming with all my heart. - Alice Walker I'm aiming to be juicy with creative energy, to express that fiery sacred passion, to keep my shattered open heart open. Why worry about finding love? Love for another man who makes my heart sing will come or not, as it chooses. Right now I'm in love with infinite possibilities and manifesting magic. p.s. I leave today for the photography workshop with Jan Phillips in the Adirondacks and then head to Egypt for my writing workshop & Egyptian mysteries tour. I've prepared a few posts to run during my absence because I don't know whether I'll be able to post regularly while I'm gone. Please forgive me if I'm not as chatty as I usually am. I know I'll have a lot of material on my return. Blessing...