Returning to Giza

There are few moments from my travels that live as vividly in my mind as camel riding around the Pyramids of Giza in the spring of 2005. To ride, wide-eyed, around this wonder of creation, to feel completely immersed in an ancient experience that is at once utterly exotic and intensely familiar. For we already know the Pyramids intimately, such is their penetration into the culture of history and modernity. We know their immense size, their definitive shape and structures, their dominance of the landscape, their mystery- yet it is indescribably shocking to witness them for these same factors. To see the Pyramids for the first time is to see a myth made real, to see a color that you have only ever heard described, and in this awe you are in sweet communion with myriad generations.

Last weekend I took my family to see these grand monuments of Pharaohnic Egypt. It was my parents' thirtieth wedding anniversary and my sister had joined us from Istanbul. We ventured to Giza and found camels and horses with which to cross over to the Giza plateau, and thus come across the Pyramids from some empty desert- to taste more fully this feeling of discovery that so many have reveled within. Watching these three people I care deeply about, who were a world away in the months I lived here, now ride wide-eyed around the Wonder, to see their minds ignite in realisation of their experience and this intimate and overwhelming connection to an ancient story- this was a truly joyous and fulfilling moment and one that will live indelibly in my mind forever.

What I Have Learned So Far- Mary Oliver

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of -- indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems Volume Two, (thanks Rudi)