An amazing quote from Virginia Woolf that I wanted to share with you - when I see water rippling with the wind, a sunset painting the sky, the neon shops signs and dancing lights of traffic streaming by at night, people singing on the beach ... it's all art baby, it's all art ...
" It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a delight to put the severed parts together [...] From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we - I mean all human beings - are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art [...] We are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself."
There's something about entrances and doorways -sometimes it feels like they're inviting you in, but you're cautious at the same time when you don't know what's behind them ... hidden treasures, or someone's junk? a buzzing household or an empty ruin? are they keeping people out or hiding them away? It all brings out the curious streak in me. Oman has hundreds of beautiful doors and gateways, is famous for them even, and there are so many different types - old and new, simple and ornate, huge and tiny, plain and extraordinary, and all seem to want to tell a story ....
Imagine this as the entrance to an Alladin's cave,
for those that have followed the quest
and found the golden key ...
Perhaps the crooked doors to the beach-side shack
of a rugged old fisherman and his daughter ...
Keeping the hoi polloi locked out ...
or the beautiful people locked in?
Door to the fish market in Nizwa
- or was it Narnia?
The tiny door to the traditional 'House of the Lock',
with it's huge wooden key -
if this door could talk,
what stories could it tell from through the ages?
Door to Oman's last indigo dyer -
we never did get to see inside ...
but I do hope he's there,cooking and pounding
to make beautiful cloth for the hidden ladies of Bahla
It's winter, the nights are chilly, the days are at their shortest ... time to go camping! There have to be some advantages to living in the hottest part of the world, and one is that it never gets too cold to sleep under the stars somewhere far from the madding crowds. And that's exactly what we did for Christmas, just a cushion and a sleeping bag and the stars at night, and waking up with the warm sun on our faces ... lovely ...
As you may know, my Mum and step-dad were here, and as he is (among many other things) a geologist, I organised a two day geology tour to take in the sights of Oman. It turns out that Oman is fairly unique in geology terms, as it's one of the few places on earth where you can see rocks formed on the ocean bed (ophiolites) and the earth's mantle. Yes, the bit under the earth's crust - apparently, the earth is like a peach, with the skin being the crust, the flesh being the mantle, and the stone being the earth's core. The skin / crust can be up to 35km deep, so you can imagine that being somewhere where the crust is under your feet is pretty exciting for geology types.
Anyway, as my long-suffering mother seems to spend a lot of time sitting around while her other half looks at rock faces, I thought it would be good to have someone else to take him to the best spots and talk rocks with him - and it was actually really interesting for me and my mum too, and took us to some great out-of-the-way spots. Oman rocks really do rock!
So, here are a few highlights of our trip;
The Geotimes Pillow Lava Formation - this is lava that has flowed out of a crack in the earth and then solidified under the sea. Of course, the lava flows we saw would have happened many thousands of years ago, but it's still happening today in the oceans around Hawaii and other places where there are undersea volcanoes;
Above the pillow lava, there are layers of sedimentary rocks - muds and other materials that have settled on the bottom of the ocean on the floor and eventually been turned into rock. All sorts of different minerals create a range of colours, and the stripes are always interesting to look at.
Below the pillow lava though, there are other kinds of rocks made by the magma chamber that the lava has come out of - there are dykes that flow upwards, and the magma in the chamber also cools when it reaches the outer edges of the chamber, creating a different kind of layering called layered gabbros -we walked up the beautiful cool stream of Wadi Haylayn to see these examples;
And than below that, the mantle - and here is one of the places where you can see it really clearly, in Wadi Abyad at the bottom of the Hajar mountains in Oman. You can see the darker rock under the mantle - we think this was Dunnite - and the lighter gabbros above it. And as you can see, we even got a quick swim at the end of our dusty rock-hunting! It's not all dry desert here, you know ...
I am four days away now from being on holiday (hoorah!), but locally they're not even off for Xmas day. However, we are still managing to get into the Xmas spirit of eating, drinking and being merry - having survived the office Xmas lunch (turkey and stuffing?! really?!), we sidled off today for champagne brunch at one of those lovely five star hotels in town. Wow ... as you can see, a balanced meal, with all of the major food groups represented (red, brown, yellow etc, and surely there's at least two of my five a day?)
Muscat may be a capital city, but it's got a lovely village feel to it. It really is teeny tiny compared to other great capitals of the world, and it's practically stone age compared to the neighbours in Dubai, where I had the dubious pleasure of making a short visit this weekend ...
From sleepy little Muscat ...
... to the Big Smoke of Dubai
Actually, there was nothing really pleasurable about it - in fact, downtown Dubai is my idea of hell on Earth. Flashy consumerism, great hulking piles of glass and steel, and most of all no soul to speak of, no history or culture of its own has had time to develop, just reflections of some far away vision of wealth and success.
OK, so the Burj Al Khalifa is pretty amazing - 164 floors, half a mile high and weirdly organic in the way it points its crooked finger skywards. I was suitable impressed, it was too big to even get into a single photo ...
But then turn around and it's Dubai Mall, the faux mud walls of Souk Al Bahar, too much Louis Vuitton and not enough Middle East for my liking. And the people - hordes clutching their designer shopping bags and munching on fast food as they waddle or totter on inappropriate footwear from air-conditioned mall to air-conditioned car to air-conditioned home ... although the setting sun did manage to give it all a slight air of romance, it was just too artificial for me, too clean and shiny and stuck in shades of silver and charcoal.
I'm sure I'll go back at some point - a girl needs to dance every once in a while, and there are apparently the world's fastest flumes - but it'll be a calculated dash in and out with friends. A quick taste of the high life in the fast lane, and then hightailing it home to little old Muscat ...
