Flash Gordon Left Me The Keys

The Bush administration has accused Syria of being a "rogue state" and harboring Iraqi leaders who fled during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Syria denies U.S. charges that it allowed Saddam loyalists entry into its country. Here is a brief look at Syria.
October 1978

Syria and Iraq sign a Joint National Memorandum of Action signaling an end to chilly relations, with an eye toward military and eventual political unity.
June 1979

Syrian President Hafez Assad and Iraqi President Ahmad Hassan Bakr agree to establish one leadership that would govern both countries.

December 1979

A meeting between Assad and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein shows a fundamental disagreement between the two leaders and marks the beginning of the collapse of relations.
1980-88

Syria criticizes Iraq for its war with Iran and supports Iran in the war, further deteriorating ties between the neighboring countries.
1990

Relations between Iraq and Syria reach a critical stage when Damascus joins the international coalition that liberates Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation.
1997

Syria and Iraq reach a breakthrough in relations after agreeing to reopen their border and re-establish political and economic ties.
2000

Assad dies and is succeed by his son, Bashar Assad, who takes a more open approach to the West than his father did.
2001

Syria condemns the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and helps Washington in its fight against terrorism. Syria and Iraq sign a free-trade agreement.
2002

Syria, a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, supports Resolution 1441 reinstating weapons inspectors in Iraq and threatening "serious consequences" if Baghdad fails to comply.
2003

Syria refuses to support any U.N. resolution authorizing war against Iraq.

A nice bottle of Slovenian Cabernet Sauvignon for today...

Hoarfrost: A Slovenian Solstice

Do you know what hoarfrost is?
In the Slovene mountains near Semiè, the fog is thicker than you’ll see anywhere. Steam from the hot springs evaporates then collects and freezes on each bough, each limb, each individual pine needle in spectacular, thick fractal patterns. This frost is both light and thick, as if several inches of sticky snow have just fallen. Entire cedars bend to the ground under the weight of this frost and the force of the wind.

It is December, solstice, full moon. This is the first day of winter and the last full moon of the millennium. Last night my partner Peter and I drove into Slovenia from Italy. At last I had found my way to Slovenia, the land of my ancestors, the people on which I can place the blame for my unique looks and my embarrassing last name. I’ve learned to place other blame on my Slovene heritage. I blame Slovenes for our family’s peculiar traits: the spacey-dreaminess, the attention deficit disorder, the sloppiness. For how could anyone from a place called Slovenia be anything but slovenly? I couldn’t wait to see this country in the daylight, and to study the natives. Would they have the characteristic sunken dark eyes, the big mouth, the slumping posture? Would they mill about, reading and walking at the same time? Would they be able to tell right from left? Would they lose track of time and space, lost in the depths of their own thoughts?

Maybe the first clues would come from the highway. Our little rental car took us through the wet hills which quickly turned to snowy mountains. The Slovene highway was clear and well maintained without much traffic. This place was clean, not sloppy. This was not how I had imagined Slovenia. What a pleasant surprise it was to find this post cold war eastern European nation working so well. Then we entered the fog zone. I would have been afraid to walk in such a murky haze, let alone drive, and Peter, not to be outdone by the locals, sped bravely on, blindly passing slower moving trucks. Somehow (and I honestly don’t know how, having I shielded my eyes from most of the night’s driving), we made it to our destination: a Slovene spa and water park called Terme Catez, (where, by the way, one can get an unterwassermassage for only 342 DM).

So now, this morning, under a fresh blanket of hoarfrost and slowly dissipating fog, we set out to visit Semi, the mythological land where my Kambitsch ancestors once lived. The view from the roads leading to Semiè are so beautiful that it’s hard to believe that anyone would ever leave. Mountains slope widely, terraced and covered in snow. Modest roadside shrines adorned with aging plastic flowers to the Blessed Virgin Mary crop out of the snow next to road signs. Children walk to school with their backpacks. Old ladies in babushka scarves carry bundles of wood from shed to house. New houses blend with old, built with flat clay tile-like bricks close to barns with corn cobs tied together by their husks and draped in clusters exposed to the open air.
As we approach Semi the villages grow smaller, the roads become narrower, more twisted and more snow covered until we get to the town we are looking for.

This is Semi..

One little church. A tavern. A grocery. A few dozen houses. Snow. A young man on a cell phone. An old man with a package. We enter a tavern. It is smoky and warm and bright with sunlight, oompahpah music plays on the radio. Posters of proud Slovene accordian bands announce a concert for New Years. The customers and bar keep stare at us as if we were aliens. As American citizens in the boondocks of Slovenia, we really are aliens.

“Hi, I’m from America and I’m looking for my relatives. Do you know where I might find a Kambitsch?”

The folks in the tavern don’t speak English. And I don’t speak Slovene, or German, or Croatian, or any other of the half dozen languages these people speak. I only speak English.

The barkeep looks frightened, but I smile my big Slovene smile and he puts me on the phone.

A woman says hello.

“Hi, my name is Pat Kambitsch and I’m from America and I’m looking for my relatives. Do you know any Kambitsches?”

“Kambitsch, what is this Kambitsch? I don’t understand.”

“I am a Kambitsch, that is my name. I am looking for family.”

“There is an Anton Kambi. He has a laboratory. Come over across the street to the next tavern and ask for Milan. He can show you.”

We leave the tavern. I don’t see anything that looks like another bar. So we go to the grocery. It looks and smells like Amon’s, the grocery we used to have back home when we were kids. The woman behind the counter gives us that startled, “you must be an alien look” when I ask her if she might know where Milan is. She says something regretfully in Slovene. “I’m looking for Milan, he works in a bar.”

“Bar, Bar!” she smiles and points to the tavern we just came from. Some words are universal.
“We just came from there, is there another? . . . Bar? Bar?”

“Bar. Bar.” She points again at the tavern. We smile and say thank you and look for another bar.

We find the young man on the steps speaking into his cell phone. He laughs and says something about what sounded like the name “Kambitsch.” I figure this must be Milan. He’s waiting for us. I say “Kambitsch? Kambitsch?” He laughs and continues talking into his phone. I soon learn that just about every other word in the Slovene language sounds like the word Kambitsch. This must not be Milan, maybe he’s inside. I enter the building. This is the other bar, smaller, tighter, smokier than the other. The customers look wide eyed and disturbed by the aliens. I ask for Milan. I ask for Kambitsch.

They mumble in Slovene. No luck.

We give up. A few pictures of Semi would be good enough. The family back home would be impressed that we made it even this far. We don’t need to bother these poor folks any more. A few snapshots of the church and of the bar would do. We drive around, ready to head off toward the spa for some electro-hydro-therapy with a soak in the steam bath and a roll in a snow bank. Then Peter says, “Patty! Look! Look!”

And there, in front of the car, a little factory sits surrounded by snow, barbed wire fence, and electronic security. On the front of the building is a sign that says “Kambi”.

Art of Nails
I am a racist, and so I think of my manicurist as Pol Pot. I named him this because he is Southeast Asian and he cares little that suffer. Pol Pot never notices when I gasp as he tears at my cuticles. He shoots me looks of spite when I fail to balance a pinky just so for him or forget to keep my fingers in the acetone jar long enough. I jump and grimace as Pol Pot’s dental drill smoothes the crud from under the tips. Pol Pot uses no Novocain. I wince and squirm under the merciless digging of Pol Pot’s orange stick. Pol Pot never lets up. I don’t keep coming back to Pol Pot for his people skills. I come back because his work is impeccable.

Pol Pot, in a weak attempt to sound friendly, greets his clients,

“Hi. How are ya.” He is usually sitting with another customer. The couple, customer and manicurist deeply engage in the details of his craft. He, the concentrated technician, wearing face mask under bright task lighting, is serious about his craft. She, the self-interested observer, watches for the detail, amazed at his competence, awaiting an error. No one speaks. Pol Pot is a professional. But is what Pot does just a craft, or is it art? Pol Pot would call it Art The nail shop is called Nail Art. What is art then? For the answer, I look to the second photograph.

Above Pol Pot’s manicure station hangs a picture of the hand of a virgin. These are the natural looking nails, pink nails, whose symmetrical ovals have been tipped in white. The index finger, lissome as a willow, reaches for a single strawberry. I imagine the fantasy woman to be young, maybe just a girl, unspoiled and unadorned, but reaching for simple sensuous pleasure of a newly ripened fruit. This is the hand meant for touching, for placing in your own and caressing. Holding such a hand would not be enough, of course. One would be drawn to kiss the French manicured fingertips with tiny nibbles and sniff their virginal fragrance.

But of course, these fingertips would not smell of anything human or living, or even of the nearby strawberries, but of the power of the petrochemical mix concocted by an Art of Nails technician. The girl of the strawberry just within her reach would be stronger than her looks. Her nails, had they been sharpened to points by a technician’s rotating sander, could tear into your flesh as easily as she might pinch the leafy stem from the fruit. But strawberry girl, for this time, at least, chooses sensual pleasures, though we all know she is strong enough to choose otherwise.

I believe that strawberry girl is an artist at heart.

There are things I don’t want to know about acrylic nails. I don’t want to know what my real nails look like under the acrylics I’ve worn nonstop for over two years. I’d rather not think about how microorganisms flourish in the safe environment under the nails. I don’t want to know how the fumes from the resins and the dust from the repeated filings enter the lungs of the workers. I don’t want to know how little the workers make, or about their carpal tunnel syndromes, or about their lost career opportunities due to their devotion of years to the fetishes of women. I don’t want to know how I am judged by others. She’s so down to earth, but did you see her fake nails? I don’t want to know how many starving children in Cambodia I could feed with the money I spend on my nails.

I have other things to think about. My life is hard and long-lasting enough, I at least want it to be lustrous while I’m here.

Two girlish hands with pudgy fingers clutch several hundred dollar bills. The nails have been polished orange red and are longer than the driver’s. Much longer. The nails are so long that the model would probably have to pick the bills up by sliding them off the side of the table instead of picking them up like regular people do. What the owners of these hands could do besides hold money, I can’t imagine. She could not do dishes, or wash windows. She could not change a baby’s diaper, she could not insert an earth friendly applicator-free tampon. Still, these handicapped hands must be able to do something, or else why would she be able to get so much money? I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t think that she could perform many sexual favors with nails like that. I’d be surprised if she could even unbutton her own blouse. Still, like the driver, the woman in this picture holding the money not only knows what she wants but she has what she wants. She, unlike the money she holds, is unobtainable. Her nails keep predators at a distance. But she gets what she wants, and she keeps it.
Once, the woman next to me at the Art of Nails complimented me on my choice of a deep crimson. She was getting an airbrushed French tip. “That’s what men like best,” she said. “They think red or French manicures are sexy. They don’t care about the rest”

I asked Pol Pot what he thought. He gave a smirk and didn’t reply. I told the woman sitting next to me the truth about men and nails. “Men don’t really care,” I said, keeping an eye on the cuticle drill. “Men only care about the other things on a woman’s body, but nails don’t really matter.”

Pol Pot still gave no response. Then I told the woman sitting next to me that men really prefer women who are like the one in that picture. I nodded toward the shot of the woman with the wad of hundreds. Pol Pot gave a smile, not a smirk but a genuine smile this time. I must have been right.

The last picture shows two lovely legs, crossed at the ankles, the feet lightly pointed in casual relaxation. The nails of the toes are pink and glossy and match the nails of the hands that reach for them. Under the feet, the legs, and the fingers, is a message. Written in curlicued cursive script are the words: “Your Feet. Your Life.” I am amazed by how profound these words might be. This is my life. My life is my life because of where my feet might take me. How much different the experience of my path has been because I have had a pedicure. There is nothing to hide. My life is wide open. I am naked to the world and my life is complete. I can run, experiencing all the pain and pleasure that only a naked foot can afford, my entire sole laid bare for the world to touch.

And then, for a moment, I think, what if I had been in some horrific foot severing accident or had advanced diabetes and no longer had my feet? Would my feet still be my life? Of course not. But the metaphor would still work. It’s where my feet take me, and my experience of where I go that gives me my life. And my hands? My fingernails? Yes, they are my life too.

I have yet to run into any of the glamorous women of the photos in the Art of Nails, or anyone like them. The regular patrons at the Art of Nails are the type of women one would expect: cashiers and bank tellers, waitresses and receptionists. You’ve heard their nails click away on keyboards. You’ve wondered how they can possibly perform their tasks with those appendages jutting out of their hands. But they do. And they do their work, as I have learned to do, with efficiency and confidence.

My nails click on the keyboard. The sound is at once feminine and competent, and I am efficient and accurate. Tick-a-tick-a-tick. I am effective and confident. The beauty of my nails does not compete with the efficiency of my hands. My nails enhance my effectiveness. I hold a place among the sisterhood of artificially enhanced fingertips. Women like us express ourselves with a click and a clack as we drum our fingers on countertops.
I meet Tiana, a former student of mine, at the grocery store. I ask her what she’s been up to, she tells me not much. Then she says “So I see, you’re still having your nails done. They look nice.” I looked at her blue “glamour length” nails with the flecks of glitter. Tiana has a complicated graphic design airbrushed on her nails. Her pinky spirals like the praying nails a Hindu holy man. “So you’re wearing them longer now.” She says. “Me too, once you get them long, you never go back.”

This isn’t always true. My sister, envying the enhanced beauty of my fingertips, once tried wearing acrylics. I even took her to Pol Pot’s Art of Nails for a manicure. Though she enjoyed them for a time, Maribeth couldn’t handle the fact that she couldn’t button the little tiny button’s on her sweater set. Besides that, having a more severe oral fixation than I, was unable to keep from chewing on her nails, tearing deep gashes into the sides and chipping away jagged edges. Not everyone is up to the sacrifices necessary for the Art of Nails.

Tasks made difficult by acrylic nails:

Rock climbing

Playing stringed instruments

Effectively scratching mosquito bites

Opening flip top cans

Starting a roll of masking tape

Threading needles

Manual typewriting

Picking scabs, boogers, etc

Nail biting

Tasks enhanced by acrylic nails:

Application of caulk around bathroom tiles and ceramic fixtures

Folding sharp creases in paper

Pointing at directions on a map

Pinching off the heads spent day lilies

Pulling the fancy edges of a pie crust

Making a part in your hair

Holding a burning match (or roach) painlessly

Dramatic gesturing

My husband says that a good mistress should have artificial nails. Because they are too thick to have a sharp edge, acrylics can scratch your back and leave no mark. I have to agree with him but only in part. The women in the Art of Nails portraits would scratch, but I’m not sure that they’d be so kind as to do no damage.



My nails are as perfect as those of the hands that display cubic zirconium on the shopping channel. The tips of my fingers and the tips of my toes have become my most flawless features in which I hold great pride.

Hands and feet are the most important physical features of a woman’s beauty, more important than face, or hair, or skin, or cup size. The hands and the feet are the woman’s agents of choice, the active participants. Fingers and toes are the doers, not the done to. And I have chosen to make mine perfect, not for men who never notice that degree of detail, or for other women who have their own body issues to deal with. I make them perfect for the one who uses hands, the instruments of my doing, the tools of my personal expression. And it is my feet, my life, toes tipped in iridescent crimson, that will take me where ever it is that I choose to go.

NAKED PEOPLE

Naked people are born naked. They are meant to lead naked lives. Naked to the world, even on the coldest of winter evenings, they are meant to be naked always. Destined to remain naked, naked people love their nakedness and they honor nakedness as sacred and holy.

Nakedness should be honored, even by the naked people themselves. Though most naked people, truly naked people, are so shy about their clothes that one might assume they were shy about their nakedness, too.

But they’re not.

Naked people like share their nakedness.

Like this.
“Who me? Work? I’m too busy being naked.”
But even when a naked person’s bare naked breasts aren’t all perfect and perky like those you see here, a truly naked person doesn’t mind. And a truly naked person doesn’t mind if your naked breasts aren’t perky either.

A truly naked person would never measure her nakedness against yours. A naked person is simply naked. No reason. No motives. No judgement. Naked people don’t critique your nakedness, or your spelling.

Naked people are fun to be with.

One moment a naked person can be talking to you all shy and self-conscious about work and dead authors, politics and religion.

Then, the very next moment, there you are. You’re with this naked person. Then, they’re not talking about work any more.
Finding Naked People
Naked people are not always easy to find. This is especially true since naked people are usually wearing clothes. They have to in order to survive.

In public, anyway.


Naked people have a beauty and purity rare and raw that shines through the drabbest and dreariest of clothing.

And you might meet a person with no clothes on at all and he still might not be naked.

People like that are hiding behind their nakedness. They’re not naked at all.

It can be terribly confusing with so any unclothed people parading around as if they were naked when they are not, and so many naked people walking around with clothes on.

Just remember this. Everyone has the potential for nakedness. In fact, everyone, no matter what they’re wearing or not wearing, has a nakedness as unstoppable as babies, once revealed.

Often, people are just waiting for you to get naked first.
Getting Naked
The best way, the only way, to nurture nakedness in others is to be naked yourself.

In a world of nakedness, this can be hard to do. Especially if you’re used to wearing clothes all the time.

If you’re always comparing your own nakedness to other people’s nakedness, then you’ll never really be naked no matter how many layers you take off.

You’ll never be able to enjoy the nakedness of others because you’ll be too busy thinking un-naked thoughts like, “ I look better than they do.” Or, “I wish I could look as good naked as he does.” Or, “If I looked like that I could be naked.” Or, “That person has no business being naked.” Or “That’s not the way naked people are supposed to look, they’re supposed to look like the ones in my bookmarks or in magazines and maybe someday when I get skinny enough or work out enough or go to the surgeon enough or when someone invents a time machine that will take me far back enough in my youth, then I can be good enough to be naked around all these other naked people.”

No, you’ll never be naked if you measure your nakedness against the nakedness of other people.

To become naked, you simply have to be naked. And you can’t wait for other people to take your clothes off for you.

Even if you could piece together a perfect body, you could still find fault. There would always be lots of other bodies out there that are smoother, perkier, prettier, lovelier than your own. But you’ll never find a nakedness more worthy of love than your own.

If you’re always busy finding fault with other people’s nakedness just so that you can feel better about your own, then you’ll never feel the joy of sharing in other people’s nakedness.
Just think. We are surrounded by beautiful nakedness all the time. It’s up to us to enjoy it.

Ever meet a baby?

Babies are naked no matter what. Naked and open, babies are ready for anything.

Babies have been naked all along, naked in the womb, surrounded by their mother’s naked insides, they are born with no regard for clothes, not their own or anybody else’s.

Babies love being naked and they love it when everybody else is naked too.

Babies could care less what their own nakedness looks like. We call them beautiful even when they are bald and cone headed, even though they have rolls of fat and cellulite, even when they have little penises and dimpled butts and double chins and are loud and stinky and selfish, even when they do nothing but make work for everybody else, demand attention, drain bank accounts, and leak foul substances. We say they are precious little miracles even when they have no degrees, can’t do laundry, and haven’t been published. Still, we say they are beautiful and lovable.

How can this be?

Maybe it is their nakedness that makes it so.

Babies, in their nakedness, could care less what you look like naked. They enjoy your nakedness no matter what. Even if you don’t appreciate your own nakedness, they do.

They love the touch of your naked hands and will cling to your naked belly and crave the warmth of naked skin surrounding naked skin.

When they suck on your breasts, they don’t care what your breasts look like or if they’re big enough or firm enough or symmetrical enough or match up to some picture they saw or fantasize about some other baby’s mother’s breasts. All they care about is if those breasts are naked, exposed and accessible.

And the pleasure a baby gives is exquisite.

But babies don’t care about giving you pleasure. They don’t touch you to make you feel good. They don’t offer their hungry little naked sucking lips to you to bring you ecstasy. They just do.

And when a baby first recognizes his own naked body in front of a mirror, he doesn’t judge or compare or wish for a different body or seek self improvement or make promises to go to the gym or wishes he looked more like the baby on the diaper commercial or decide he should concentrate on achievement or long for the body he had when he was younger of if other people would love him if they saw his nakedness or worry if when he grows up if he’ll have acne or lose his hair or grow any in the first place.

No, when a baby first recognizes his naked body in the mirror as his own,

he laughs.

Fighting Fair with Your Cat
A man in armor is his armor’s slave.
Have you ever been in a cat fight? If you have, you know that nothing seems more frustrating, more humiliating and more futile than arguing with a cat. You know better than to try to outsmart your cat, so you avoid such fight like feline leukemia. No matter how hard you try not to fight, sooner or later you will find yourself in bitter disagreement with the one you love the most.

Though you love him more than your humble human life itself, disagreeing with your cat is inevitable. Arguments are normal and to be expected during the course of a long term relationship with anyone, including a cat. But fighting fair with your cat is different from having arguments with other, more ordinary partners. Fighting with a cat, therefore, calls on a different set of skills. Though winning seems impossible, you can learn to argue with your cat so that you both will. Here’s how.

When fighting with your cat, you must remember that he is vastly superior to you in knowledge, insight, intellectual agility, and moral character. It is best to get off it, and admit his superiority as soon as possible during the course of the argument. You must give up any attachment you may have to the outcome of the argument. This is best accomplished by using a series of “I statements.” For example, learn to say, “I never thought of it that way before. You are so right.”
“I was wrong.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I am at fault.”

“I will never do it again.”

“I want you to be happy and fulfilled, so here is a nice fresh can of mixed grill.”

“I understand that you scratch the freshly finished hardwood doorframe to let me know that you want to go outside and play, so here, let me open the door for you.”

As a human being engaged in an intimate relationship with a feline being, you simply cannot “win” an argument in any ordinary sense of the word. The only way to successfully conclude an argument with your cat is to adopt an inhuman humility.

Therein lies the bittersweet paradox of fighting fair with a cat: in order to win, you must concede. Through your humble deference to the cat’s superiority, you gain insight from your cat’s vast storehouse of knowledge. Though your simple submission to his preeminent wisdom, your cat receives the respect he deserves. In this way, both you and your can win.

Soulful Intimacy with Your Cat
Love is merely a madness. And deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen.

William Shakespeare
A soulful and intimate relationship with your cat is both rare and precious in this modern world. It is also confusing.

From your perspective, your cat is a paradox. Sometimes your cat wants attachment; sometimes he craves freedom. Sometimes your cat wants solitude; sometimes your cat wants intimacy. Sometimes your cat wants in; sometimes he wants out. Amid all the mixed signals and inconsistencies is a deep and complex creature whom you love deeply because of his complex nature, not in spite of it.

It may seem that your cat thinks crazy thoughts, that he is just one big furry bag of contradictions. This is at once true and not true simultaneously. How can this be? It is so difficult for you humans to make sense of it all. Just know this: Your cat is wise in the ways of all things. Your cat knows everything. He does everything about everything, including your relationship. Yours is not the duty to figure out the meaning of it all, for the relationship is, as most all things of this universe, beyond human comprehension. It is your duty to listen to your cat, feed him often, a and to clean up after yourself as well as after him.
As all that is mystical and complex, your cat is deeply mysterious. A mystery is something that you, as a human, cannot understand or explain. Your cat is mysterious to you, in the simplest sense, because there are thing you just do not know. Your cat is also a mystery in the deeper, religious sense of the word: not just unknowable, but mystical, enigmatic, paradoxical, and beyond mortal simplification.

Simply put, your cat is just too much for you. Human words are not enough for how wonderful your cat is.