eating the wind

The wind riffles through the pages of the future, out on the balcony. Finds nothing much there & passes on down the street towards the railway station. It's too late to catch a train, they've all gone west. Or east, as may be. Across the tracks & on down Sloane towards - what? The river. Listening to Tinariwen, the Radio Tisdas Sessions. We (will) all live in the desert (someday) (soon). The Simoon. Last night was a good night driving because the Devout were off work, feasting. The Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. No Arabs on the road, no Pakistanis, no Banglas or Turks. Money to be made, anywhere & everywhere. As usual, I was too tired, I came home early. Bought mats, feather pillows, today. The Umma is increasing, alone among World Religions, numbers of those who follow Islam will increase in the next few years, reaching towards two billion. An ethical sense of community that we have abandoned, I always think, handing back my keys, getting the receipt for my gas, such politesse among those young Muslim men who attend seemingly all of the all night gas stations. Mixed with an obscure pity for that I am, lost, eating the wind. It's what they say in Indonesia when asked, what are you doing? Going nowhere, doing nothing, eating the wind. Looking for the Umma, perhaps. Or not. Just looking ... ghosts tall as the wind / up the undertakers street / to the crossroads / where the gauleiter calls ein zwei drei ...