Mapping

[Mapraputa Is]

Alan: Map, why are you wasting your time?
I know why! Some more soul searching and…
When I think about myself how I was 5 years ago, I see that certain things were "closed" to me -- I could read about them, but it would not help. I did not understand what it was about, but what worse, I did not realize that I did not understand - I assumed I did. This question has been tormenting me ever since -- if we lack certain experience, is this absolutely impossible to explain what, say, other people feel? Even if somebody will work hard trying?
I think Joe's stubborn refusal to understand made me to adopt him as "little Map" I am talking to him like to myself 5 years ago. Now thinking about it, it was a terrible choice. There is a desperate difference between us: I always wanted to understand how things work, and Joe wants to tell things how they should work. It's like "descriptive" and "prescriptive" grammaticians, or "liberals" and "conservatives" in politics. This makes my mission almost impossible.
If not…! If not those rare moments when Joe has insights and when he breaks barriers with his usual ferocity.
[ January 31, 2004: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[Mapraputa Is]

Joe: Every person in Iraq knew we were coming, and it was pretty obvious where.
Few days before the second American lead war on Iraq, we call my uncle in Baghdad. We try to be cheerful but everything we say sounds like we are saying good-bye. My uncle asks my dad if we are doing well. He had heard over the news that in North America people of Arab decent are being harassed. “I am worried about you”, he tells my dad. Uncle is in Baghdad, days before the war, and he in worried about us living in Vancouver. My dad asks uncle why he doesn’t move out of Baghdad before the war as the fighting is bound to be intense in Baghdad the most. “My son is in the army and he is stationed in Baghdad, how can I run to safety and leave him? If Baghdad is nuked I want all of us to die together”, is his response. We hang up the phone and look at each other, “Do you think we will hear his voice again?”…
Collateral Damage

[Mapraputa Is]

Joe: Understand you how? What are you trying to explain? That you don't like the word "greatest" when applied to America?
Joe, I would not like the word "greatest" applied to any country. Understand me... We will be back to this conversation! For now, before I leave you for a week this is for you, Joe:
Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other"
doesn't make any sense.
- Rumi

[Joe Pluta]

Joe: Understand you how? What are you trying to explain? That you don't like the word "greatest" when applied to America?
Map: Joe, I would not like the word "greatest" applied to any country.
All you had to do was say that in the first place .
Joe

[Alan Labout]

Map: Joe, I would not like the word "greatest" applied to any country.
Joe: All you had to do was say that in the first place .
[/QB]
It's like two people haggling at the market: one demands 20, the other offers 10...when all either of them wants is 15.
Alan