The Masochist

As an object, I have been owned by many persons in my life, but not once have I wanted to be known, not once have I realized who I am as lying outside of someone else, not once have I experienced myself on grounds my own. In him I am big; mostly, I am in image from his inside reverberating.

The Sadist

As objects, I have owned many persons in my life, but not one on his own have I known, not one have I realized as lying beyond myself, not one have I experienced on grounds not my own. I am big, look at those I own; mostly, I am an image in those I own.

Agalloch – The Misshapen Steed

Death, the Ruler ~ 5

Death is not a reflection of life. Death is the timeless ground from which soil life’s joy springs unbound. It is amid the darkness of this chest that our laughter echoes and our cry resounds, that our eyes sparkle and like a candle strive in the moonless night. A while only and then, one after the other, he throws us back into his primordial sands.

Life spells out myths and cloaks herself behind shades when she believes that her presence stands out against death in an eternal contradiction. Of course, her refusal and blindness needn’t necessarily be the outcome of despair; it is rather in the order of things that our most dire moments must be accompanied by illusion and error that come out to our aid, easing our weight and regulating our breath. For such, horror of horrors if the soothing mirror happens to break.

But compare this with that profound and unexplainable look shining out from the face of one that knows, one having faced death, having felt its chilling breeze snuggling into every corner of his self, and breathing this in his daily breath, eating it with his daily bread. How changed, strong, and lofty must he become to endure his awareness. The vision issuing forth from such person’s eyes are fiery and burning; he must strive so, in a counterbalance, he will not turn icy and cold, that he will keep the flame burning to the very end. He is capable of heights and emotions few others are capable of: such is, as I understand, nobility worthy of our being.

Only through the glory that one finds immortalized in the hearts of men can one draw the lines between acceptance and despair. Only a glorious soul has the ability to face and accept. Her existence becomes a challenge, a rebellion that does not hope to overthrow, a cry of joy ripping the veils of the desolate, and a striving that exploits the possible to its utmost. Her cynicism is serious, her profundity simple, and her tears powerful. Her shouts for generations resound lingering outside the emptiness of her grave: here I am.

My Vision

Many a times I find myself chaining my vision, pushing its vapors back into the depths out of which they rise, and restraining its passions as to avoid being overwhelmed and cry — this I do to the best of my abilities. But I have faith in my vision and I know, it is unyielding, beyond frustration, it will keep welling up and rising higher and higher behind the damn until, in a moment of sublime wrath, all my defenses will collapse, and away upon silver wings I shall be taken to dwell in undying lands. Resting in her arms, I will touch the timeless, breathe in its immortal breath, and through its beams extend to sit, drink, and converse in the universal language with the genius of this realm.

A Joke

Subjectivity amid an ocean of heads raptly fixed to a television screen.

Some Characters and Mine ~ 9

Today the politician is the model: one’s entire consciousness is molded and shifted following the sound waves of others’ voices while his voice is sucked into society’s empty hole leaving him without the ability to make the faintest noise. Inasmuch as a character is noticed by the immediate tension that its mere presence creates and makes felt in the surrounding atmosphere, it would be a misjudgment to conclude that such molds are capable of character. What we are rather contending with are personality packages, outer façades which non-presence goes unnoticed. Verily, why give people names anymore, why not designate them by numbers! Ah, this would be corporate efficiency to my liking.

Some Characters and Mine ~ 8

There is no greater necessity than the one that portrays before your eyes the vivid colors of your freedom, giving your soul a foretaste of your active will, and bringing wine for your lips to drink. For that, to become your own necessity, you had to admit your slavery and feel its shackles upon your soul and mind.

Growth, Flux, Inevitability ~ 8

A sure sign of a person’s growth is his expressing in a few words what others, for expressing, require many; what’s beyond others’ ability to express.

Aesthetics, Perception, and Other Stuff ~ 1

Beauty is a watery song streaming through the crevices on our face, a laugh echoing deep in the chambers of our heart, a tear that is on its own a world capturing us behind lucid walls, a cry of hope and despair rising from the mist of the night and carrying our dreams up to their nocturnal ends. In its sometimes quiet and at others turbulent flow, beauty resembles the quiet sliding, perishing, and rebirth of the seasons that nature carries in the bosom of our being. Let anyone close their eyes and listen to the soft music of the evening wind passing by the bridge, there he will feel beauty, let him open his being and dive in the energetic imagery and fiery feelings dancing in the lines of a poem, there he will find beauty, let him stare his face deep in its eyes and hear the roar of the wild and untamed breaking and tearing him into pieces only to bring him together again, a new being, there he will find beauty. Everything will be alive for him, and behind the unity that binds, everything will be so fertile, so diverse, so multiple; there is no thing anymore, no it, but everything breathes and is capable of pure emotions; every little thing is a world on its own, an entire universe so wide, so diverse, and so powerful.

Beauty is not an attribute of matter, does not inhere a priori in the objects of perception as if raining down from a divine heaven or unraveling through the essence of eternal laws. Beauty cannot be separated or detached from the perceiver who remains the speaker on behalf of words that would otherwise remain eternally silent.

Beauty is matter experienced, felt in the human, projected from the inside through the proper human sense of perception that mediates between us and reality (the human being is intrinsic in this reality) creating the world entire in our inside for our eyes to gaze at from upon our planes and ridges — that is, the world grounds us, and like a child he plays in our inwards moving our passions and desires.

But reason retorts in disbelief: “but I ground the world; I am awake and the world has no bearing upon my self!” “Illusion, nothing but illusion,” the artist replies. The artist is the spirit that forever lives and dwells on the edge, descending into every abyss and climbing up to the highest heights. There he remains, there where no feeling is as intense, captivating, and worth living. In him the paradox of being is acknowledged and taken to its limits for his powerful eyes mock and make a laugh of whatever enters the field of consciousness, whenever reason in confidence declares: “this is my house.” The artist destroys and lays into confusion whatever reason strives to bring under order and systematize: such is his fundamental insight into the nature of being. Once the secret door that leads into the very heart of being is unlocked, once the privileged entrance into the very heart of things is revealed, the knower himself vanishes as the nightly fog disappears when facing the rising sun.

 

Addendum:

1 – Behold what the poet recently showed me in his fiery mirror; I trembled as in his sea I delved:

 

The frosty wind roared amid the blind night,
Resting on the valley in a pure dress of light,
Her daggered breath woke my morn’s spirit
To life sleeping, enduring nature’s might.
***
The northern hymn walked the valley’s depth,
Hugging every soul with the loving coldness of death,
A tree alone there stood, her leaves since long had left,
It’s teary branches sobbing, quiet pearls of wealth.
***
Down to the valley where seasons quietly slide,
Where life wafts slowly over the waves of time,
Where laughter resounds in woods and clouds,
Winter’s song descended, disrupting the joyful sound.
***
The cold breeze calls out to the warm earth,
In the desert of winter foresees her future birth,
The life beating in winter for summer yearns,
When the beauty of death in life becomes mirth.

The Arrow of Truth ~ 1

Many who truth sought to court,
Luring her with gifts of every sort,
Gifts of serious study and thought,
Close scrutiny of every book wrote.

Slowly crept into the silent night,
Or quickened after the morning’s light,
But at every step the distance remained,
As opposing magnets the motion swayed.

But the roads took them across valleys and planes,
Over mountains and seas into foreign domains,
And of their faces many the sun caught sight,
While their eyes brightened drinking the stars’ light.

The wind breaking open window and door,
Blew out the candles whose eyes felt so sore,
Their bodies that for long sat to read and write,
Finally walked out breaking the sacred rite.

Their chests that from laughter caught breath,
From singing loud and drinking for health,
Of what now churned their minds, drove their feet,
Fell from the edge of a pen dancing to a new beat.

 حفنة رماد أتركها بين يديك علك تنثر بها بعضا من كلمات. كلمات، علها تحفظني في ذاكرة النسيان.

أنا والنسيان

كلماتي ذابت كأوراق الخريف
تبعثرت هنا وهناك
ومع الريح
رقصت في الأثير

المطر قادم
على جناح الخريف
نسيان سيكويها
سيكويني، سيكوي كل شيء

ذكرى أنا
في ذاكرة النسيان
هو المارد الجبار
امامه ينحني كل كبير

ولكن، تبقى الكلمات
على ورق الأشجار
أجمعها كل يوم
وأقراءها بحنين

هي تسري في دمي وأنا أدمنتها
نحلة اشتاقت الى الرحيق
تعبت واجتهدت وها الرحيق
أضحى كالشمس ذهبي

ما لي ولك
يا حاكم الماضي والمغيب
شمسي في سمائي ساطعة
قلبي بوجه الحبيبة ينبض
مشاعري وأفكاري يقودانني
الى نفسي لأكتشفها
فتختلج في صدري
وتسقط مع اناملي
مخطوطة بين أوراق الخريف

أنا الآن ههنا أبتسم
والوقت يمر، ويكبر
ومعه أكبر

صعود وانحدار
نحو مشرق ومغيب

The Mask

It is through her only kind of vanity, the vanity of attractiveness, that woman wishes to establish her dominion and value, that she wishes to cut her way into the social sphere and, by means of physical appeal and beauty, entwine man in perfumed nets. Thus we find woman, the concept, metamorphosed into an image that is static, unchanging, and deprived of an “aesthetic in motion.” Like a goddess whose prayer for “eternal form” is granted by being cast into stone by the most artistic hands — and with all her being, that is how she wants to remain while trembling at the thought of time in her body carving change.

But this act of reduction is highly selective. The whole comes to be viewed through a prism, and of the multiple colors radiating her character only one is selected; only one comes to be emphasized and assumed as representative of the whole. Woman falls in her own trap: she deceives man — who, in any case, wants to be deceived — she throws the mask for him to run after. It is so that woman believes her nature and form of existence to be sublimated into a mask and nothing more. This faith, this blindness, needs to be preserved if the act of deception is to be successful, if the act of transcendence into the metamorphosed image is to be complete — in her deception she forgets herself, and this she must in order to be “woman.”

From birth, from the very first contacts with the herd and social experiencing, and, since the technological inception of the modern image, from the inundation of her senses with streams of imagery which press themselves upon her unconscious and henceforth act behind her acts, ground her experiencing, the female is persuaded by man and woman to accept the linguistic and socially-contextual-connotation underlining the word “woman,” and made to believe that the dominant cultural traits run parallel to her nature and thus must be viewed as one. As a consequence, and in contrast with the “human” status which implies self-centeredness and autonomous-decision, her status as “woman” is placed on an opposing pole. As if a choice between “woman” and “human” is really possible; and so it is that woman becomes responsible for her choosing, rid with guilt as to choose well. But the choice itself is one created out of vacuity, or more accurately, and without excluding masculine grudge and envy, out of infinitely intricate psycho-sociological relationships and circumstances and presented as an option precisely where no option can be offered. Admitting the option into consideration is the fateful error that alienates the female from the nature of her human existence, makes her dependent by the very fact that she conforms to an outside authority, creates in her a guilt that is imposed from without by the social image (that is, she feels and visualizes the norms to which she must conform and is inwardly assailed by them in case of refusal — they’ve become part of her psyche), and, at the same time, by conforming outwardly she is eaten from the inside, even if this feeling remains largely unconscious, by a sense of betrayal of her inmost being and integrity.

All man has to do is simply to stop seeing the mask, stop reaching for the ideal image, and seek woman no more for her to crumble at his feet. A person whose whole life reverberates round an outer will is disoriented at its sudden disappearance — in the same manner that the earth fell out of orbit at the eclipse of its sun, at the disintegration of the order divined by God; such a person has no interiority, no individuality that defines itself from within and acts according to its will. But for the earth to find itself, to fall into its own lap, the eclipse, though perhaps not wanted, was necessary; in spite of the gloomy atmosphere in the surrounding, that act was benign, wanted, and wonderful. With his blade which edges capture the sun, it is hoped that the act of severing old nets and ancient bonds would enable woman to stand on her own two feet, and stand alone.

Not any man has the ability, or the need, to carry this act through to its end. In fact, in the case of most men, their imagination still carries them away upon waves of drunkenness and intoxication, sailing for the eternally craved shores where sirens night and day await their arrival while ceaselessly making themselves more beautiful, and becoming more willing to fulfill and please their desires. In-themselves, as independent, women are none existent; they come only as attached beings. And in this manner most men mediate themselves, reflect upon their image, and further their prestigious-protective-sphere by wearing a better and shinier coat. What man seeks is an attachment that eases, empties, the pain resulting from the lack of the ability for healthy relatedness with himself. One cannot reach new shores or set foot upon the shores of the other without first having set foot on his own.

But of course, woman needn’t wait for man at all. If she deems herself able, let her go through it herself.

Addendum:

1)      It is to the union of the poles that our hearts the distance overleap, the union that our senses envisage in every passing breeze; the bridging of the separateness, the sparkling and the breaking of the fire which ensues when opposites meet; that fire which has for long waned while walking the bleak abysses of memory, for too long held her feet in the dark taverns of the drunk, desireless, and weak. Time for the equals to embrace into war and peace, to reconcile amid strife and declare the outbreak of the fire that shall consume the rotten woods of memory. Burn into forgetfulness, they shall, and in the smoke of victory our wings in laughter will beat.

Only thunder and lightning can heaven and earth relate.

2)      Notice the fatherly-like-smile the man bestows upon woman, giving her chance to admire herself in his presence (oh the gratification this gives her), whenever she ventures into his world of abstraction and authority — the world of technology, word, and thought. The man shows a fatherly-like smile and is certain that man will remain man, and woman will remain woman.

Empyrium – Deir Weiher

Growth, Flux, Inevitability ~ 7

No, knowledge is not the answer; knowledge cannot resurrect feeling from the dust of nothingness, erect temples where the hammers of science have wrought destruction and annihilation. Those who believe in knowledge still dwell in ancient churches and chew on the dust of nothingness spewing down from the sleeves of that ancient god; in their decay they are incapable of feeling. Those trading in the markets of knowledge are incapable of dying; therefore they are unable to live. But nihilism has passed and we are already contending with something new; perhaps they have not yet heard the good news.

Life and Existence ~ 3

Whispers the noble spirit:
in my deed I am immortal,
in my deed I am remembered,
a stone disturbing the well of darkness,
a star burning in the nights of my people.

Thus I strive for greatness,
I strive to live and to live well;
in the banes of existence my laughter cries,
drunk on poison yet my feelings high,
my being unique, my act responsible.

Life and Existence ~ 2

Fallen amid their adventures to be remembered by history; consumed by the greatness in their acts. Had they been subsumed by the thought of their downfall prior to their acts, then perhaps they would not have written, chose not to act, and sided with the petty against the great.

If let loose, if subject to neither governor nor rule, considering, reflection, and remembrance deride the ability to write, lead the person away from the act, and ultimately decry life itself. But this does not make of “the unreflecting” the necessary condition behind every act. It is rather that strong-willed-reflection must envelop itself in an atmosphere of forgetfulness, must lose itself in the circle of her pondering while letting go of everything outside, and must be brave enough and daring as to face whatever enters the circle and take it to its final end.

Growth, Flux, Inevitability ~ 6

A sure sign of a person’s growth is having disciplined his tongue and hand as to hold all expression when unworthy the effort, when not difficult enough as to make him descend and search the labyrinth of his breast.

On God

It always vexes me how those who seek to persuade themselves of God’s existence or of the righteousness of their hallowed cause need to prove it to others so that they could believe it themselves.

Growth, Flux, Inevitability ~ 5

How can one enjoy idle thinking when he cannot afford the luxury of peace of mind, when he is constantly assailed by conventions and trivialities from every side, when society’s price for mere subsisting dissolves every prospect for life?

It’s not that nature, the judge, is unfair; it’s not that to some she gives too little while to others too much; that is granted and accepted as being the order of things. It’s that men, in their cruelty, their lack of sympathy, their unwillingness to act, and in their blind egotism, stultify and degenerate life, break the spirits with the same efficiency in which their intelligence demolishes reality and the human touch, and render of slavery a fate and a commonality which they forbid to go beyond.

To declare that he has a conviction strong enough to seek for his ideal is a mischief, an error that upsets the rule of practicality. How is it then when one wants to live philosophically, to stand at the door of the wilderness and shout: union I have achieved between my act and my thought, I have followed through and became who I am. Embrace me wilderness as I embrace thee.

No, the world is not alright; the gods since long have deserted their thrones underneath the sun.

Alfred Kubin

Awareness and Power

It is in terror that a higher awareness is baptized and under its fiery water that the artist climbs the ladder of the sublime.

The most tense and noble fight flapping its wings in the face of existence, in the face of life, in the face of humanity and its dogmatic answers, consists of striving for awareness, for more awareness, for the most weight in awareness; a weight holding the intellect from sinking into the vortexes of past and future; a weight grounding awareness in the here-and-now, in the most of every unfolding, in the play of becoming, in the act itself; a weight generating tension at-its-most by enabling the intellect of realizing its disintegrating face in the mirror of existence, by reaching inwardly and bringing out the noblest characteristics in the individual that aims for the highest mountains to gaze from their heights.

Like the fisherman who knows how to tightly tie his fishing knots, who, feeling winds and clouds, reads the weather and knows if it is convenient to take his boat out, who knows where it is more likely that the water yields her treasures out, and who is equipped with will and patience as not to give up when his net turns empty and when his heart is left alone hanging in the vastness between ocean and sky. His mastery of his art is turned into a way of life; his life is his art and his knowledge instinctive.

It is following this manner that the wakened imagination lays its powerful hands over illusion, strings and knots it into a net that it then casts into the sea of existence. Awareness sharpens its instinctive knowledge, knows “why” and “what” to choose as to heighten the intensity of its visions, exhausts the possible by tirelessly sharpening the knowable into singularities with which it then bonds, assimilates, and uses as an expression of a heightened life.

At every corner and in every breath the unknown too is felt, but no longer as a threat, no longer tolerated nervously, no longer as an anxiousness that must be calmed, and no longer as a problem that demands to be resolved. It is in the nature of life to walk banks unknowable by thought, to hurl down rain and thunder with no prior warning, to burst with meaning and significance on account of events which meaning and significance exhaust no final end.

With higher awareness comes a higher concentration of power in one’s actions, in the arms casting the net. One’s whole weight is exerted in every move, placed behind every single purpose, while more tightly and under sharper lines confining one’s quest and goal. One gains the ability to orient, choose from, and unclothe new drives within his breast. His unity experiences the artist’s multiplicity, each drive pulling in a different direction and many a times one conflicting with another, each with a different vocation, each in victory or defeat shouting and making its emotions felt, and each ultimately answering to the body as ruler, through his will speaking and drawing lines.

It so happens that a body would burn in the fire of his imagination while leaping over rocks and furrows following his quest. A feeling grows so great and powerful that it captures the awareness entire in its burning net. It is in such moments that one feels his skin charged with the damp, heavy, and closed atmosphere of ancient forests, smells the scent of old wood and sand and feels them diffusing through his body, clouding his eyes behind a veil of tears, and uplifting his spirit onto the stage of the sublime. His awareness transcends his body and bonds with the immortal realm as he sets foot on the slopes whence the ancient mountain takes root.

Some Characters and mine ~ 7

Many a times one is in need of others to assure him of what he already knows. He requires them to lead him the way and say: behold, this is who you are!

How precarious is the grasp and command over knowledge, how weak, multiplied, and borderless the individuality, how fainted, tarnished, and unsure the artistry, and how the will in its weaning strength is pervaded by bewilderment and knows no more how to act.

Not every gain is welcomed and not every loss decried.

In the art of war, and as long as one is alive, there’s always a gain in losing and a loss in gaining.

On Time

Time itself is a figment that the gods have sarcastically — out of cruelty and out of love — placed on the gates of life. To have to a perception of time is to have a perception of death and its timelessness. Herein the gods’ act of love.

Innocence and its lack ~ 1

I always heard people in their longing weeping their age for an earlier, and those of the former bemoaning theirs for yet an earlier one. Such in my backward plunge I reached the first man who opened his eyes and saw, and who perhaps remembering a forever lost unity, bitterly wept his birth, hurled onward onto the root of his existence his ireful thunderbolts and cursed.

Simplicity arising out of depth is beauty in sublime form. It enchants all senses, makes the heart pound, takes one above and there in subtle nets leaves him entwined.

Ruba’iya ~ 15

In his book of love, of metaphor and rhyme,

The poet laughed, to life scribed his hymn,

A tear and a smile, a drop of blood and wine

Each page shouts, smells of myrrh sublime.

Ruba’iya ~ 14

He thinks that a mirror his real face imitates,

Or that an image the essence of his self translates,

Such, a shadow roaming twilight shores he remains,

Locked within his breast while his step hesitates.

Ruba’iya ~ 13

Out of morning’s petals the poet weaved,

A flowery crown knitted in silky beams,

Pearls from a murmuring creek radiated its leaves,

Wet from the beloved’s hair, in love’s perfume gleamed.

Philosophical Wine ~ 3

My wine acquired its taste only after I purged my longing from that soulless desire that requires drowning in blindness and intoxication as the only means to endure living. What I taste now is only sometimes sweet, often bitter, but this body of mine that has tasted and felt life in its every vein refuses to go back, to num itself again under the weight of intoxication, to desire through that lack that grovels in the dust before every sip of wine. These eyes have seen and are now awake. I realized that I had never drank wine before.

Ruba’iya ~ 12

When vacuity sang in the heart of the living,

On its inside it felt the emptiness nipping.

O Holy anxiousness trembling restless hands!

Novelty where are you? His eyes kept spinning.

On Truth ~ 1

Truth preserves its value, its continuity, its charm, precisely because it can never be pinned down, revealed, emptied of its mystery and made to unclothe while standing under the sun. Truth owes its very existence to the untruth that dwells in its heart, gives shine to its leafs and scent to its smiles. As such it retains its health and desirability, keeps the necks held tight.

On Truth

Truth is a knife deeper and deeper sinking the seeker’s heart. Not to have tasted the edge if this blade amounts to have waded through life without feeling its weight. But to have sipped wine from its frozen lips would’ve left one deeply wounded, struggling for life amid the shores of death.

Truth incorporates death into its character, dread into its fearful gaze. It becomes truth only once it attains the ability to kill.

In its hands it holds the power to set free and lead into new realms, to lay into oblivion and give fresh breath.

Truth is an act, that is; it heralds new possibilities and gives birth to new selves. What comes afterwards is never the same. But many of truth, the act, remain unaware though every part of their life might be touched by its shade.

God is dead, that act is done. Man has become a robot, this act too is done. And yet, who is aware?

Ruba’iya ~ 11

And those whose youthful fountains poured,

An innocent zeal that nation or clan adored,

Make for spirits that in kneeling rejoice while,

Contemplating their divine with some believing horde.

Ruba’iya ~ 10

The wheel that turns the seasons and

With undying breath makes the world stand,

Resolves to make of man a little more, when,

In a beautiful act she lays his body into sand.

Ruba’iya ~ 9

Out of the depths, Death came seeking,

From his face, all the shadows fleeting,

In the body he laid his onerous dread,

A faint shout, a clinging stare, then sleeping.

The Becoming Dance ~ 1

Whatever one dresses out of himself, it immediately reaches out beyond his individual shores. For the flow that reaches into a human being and from him outwardly cannot be withheld. As such a person cannot draw lines and separate himself; there is no going beyond this dynamic of connectedness. It is in the very nature of human existence, of man the animal.

Hence, whatever one thinks, acts, in short, whatever one is, infers a social meaning, influences and is influenced by the dynamic of connectedness. Inasmuch as the dynamic itself precedes one’s existence within his social sphere, it inevitably shapes his individuality, marks his body with form and his mind with content (or lack of content), infuses him with goals and strivings — it gives him meaning.

For instance, in “our” days it is our lot to be mindless consumers. This is at least “one” meaning conferred to us by society. For the cloaking of hierarchy, for the preserving of government and social privileges, this is very convenient of course because, among other things, it suppresses the “human” in us and represses, for instance, our sympathy, our love; our genuine emotions. In previous days the social paradigm incorporated hoarding into its character; people saved their penny for the rainy day.

In any case, as long as the individual “belongs,” to himself he is not known. What he is falls in the realm of speculation; one can only decry this “belonging;” in it can be glimpsed only what man is not.

Every age advances its propositions which, through societal form and context, through socially connoted meaning, serve as an outline for human existence. The outline drawn around the edges of the separateness that longs for union; the boredom that longs for forgetfulness; the monotony that longs for transcendence; the dread of nothingness and the search for meaning; the awareness of ourselves in the bosom of nature and her inescapable grasp on our being.

That one halts the unceasing march of the questions of existence, that he shields himself from their piercing arrows, that he squelches their intimately luring whispers, that he is forgetful of their persistent knocking on his nocturnal doors, must not in any way be described as an objection to life but rather, and so long as this serves to confine this creature within a “horizon,” as Nietzsche says, they are in the service of his mastery over life and over himself among the living. He does not smite at life’s proposals for living but answers her challenge and chooses his own battle ground. He rules over himself, is his own center. Whatever actions he undertakes are out of his own will, not in a response and a trailing after. His actions are not allowed to throw their hands out and grab for his garments but are rather put in their right place. He is completely and fully in his own undertakings and does not allow for them to be chained to other ends. In this person’s body time breathes deeply, regularly, and almost effortlessly. He does not rush things and is not rushed by them.

With this in mind, why not look a little closer at what propositions our age has to advance.

Every aspect of life, almost every prospect for meaning is devoured by a mouth that thrusts forward in an uncontainable frenzy for eating. Nothing escapes the grinding of this spirit’s teeth and everything is objectified and subjected to it in the process of soothing its appetite, of filling an emptiness that never gains an ounce of weight. Oh that gruesome chasm in the bottom of her soul that shows through its lifeless eyes. It remains empty and acts out of lack, this whether it plays the role of being full and refuses to eat, or whether it declares that in order not to miss anything it will devour whatever comes in within her grasp. Everything and everyone are commodified and displayed behind glass for the serving of its purpose, for the titillation of its senses. Like a monumental rock time lies upon its chest; sweat covers its face as it struggles through every breath. It merely thinks about time and then vomits itself into a corporate cult of efficiency, a routinized fun, a relentless consuming, and when “awake,” a morbid death. This spirit knows not where its centre is but is pervaded by chaos through and through. Acts undertake this spirit; this spirit has no acts to make, nothing to offer, nothing to create. In its meaningless world, its nihilism is deeply negative and pessimistic.

To search for a human’s imprint in today’s world is to search almost in vain. His physical labor is largely replaced by machines, his mental labor replaced by computers, and his feeling and experiencing implanted in him through the sheer amount of the telecommunicated surge of imagery and sounds which quantity have once and for all altered his qualitative experience of reality. His direct relation with life and reality are severed for these have been encrypted and commodified and are unrecognizable when seen naked without shrouds. Words are hollowed out and have lost their original function of instigating imagination, of bonding, of tying, and of infusing meaning into things.

The totality of life is reduced, crystallized into objects on which one bestows his love, hate, and attention. There is no direct relation with life anymore except through “things.” Thus one deems himself a “thing,” an “it,” an “object,” and when he generally talks or thinks about himself he does so in terms of this thing-hood which qualities he wants to advance and make shine brighter in the realm of his society. From the standpoint of his social value, by shining brighter his worth goes higher and thus becomes a more desirable commodity.

When a person refuses the nature that is bestowed upon him by his social sphere, his “original” nature, he does so, he attains the “ability” to do so by constructing a “new” nature that stands in sharp contrast with his first. He does not conform anymore and, with his new nature, he reaches a standing point from which he gazes “differently” at things, from which he is aware and affirming of his individuality, of his newly gained identity, of his humanity. The dynamic of connectedness is not interrupted, cannot be interrupted, but the pace, nature, and orientation of its flow are now drastically changed. He now wants to lay his will into things; he can no longer endure his being dictated. He wants to uncover every cell in his mind and breathe into it some fresh air. He wants to be productive, creative, and he loathes society because he understands that the price for her belonging is a conforming to her societal ideal, a submitting of one’s own uniqueness. He is alone, but now he can genuinely experience the human in himself and others, now he can touch and experience firsthand what’s real.

A Poet ~ 1

A profound poet is a genuine cynic. It is not he who speaks but everything else through him breaks into laughter and chant. His body’s a bridge, his words satire, his images mockery, and his art a fearful dread. A poet does not learn, refuses to know, and is consoled in neither sadness nor joy. Shrouds of myth veil his world and storm through his nocturnal land, leaving neither roots unshaken nor branches unbroken. Yet it is in him that love’s ring is pure, in him that life’s joy sings most and best.

For roaming humanity, the poet’s place is history. The attic of dust his final nest. Humanity tolerates poets no more. Verily, a poet is impossibility; his myth since long has been dead.

Every living poet is a nail in the coffin of poetry; every newly written poem harkens and sings the chthonic realm, the undying land of the dead. Poetic words ring hollow except from the feeling of a once glorious past. Poetry does not move anymore, she does not shout in the face of the rising wind. She only reminisces and remembers, and in her bitterness she weeps as I do.

Worthy must your tears be, honoring for her in her shroud of death. Fiery, starry, like rain in infinite drops caressing her withered leaves, like lighting born in grey burdened sky accompanying her lofty scorn on her glorious descent.

Thus I eat my dust as I sing her song. I, too, cannot be consoled. But oh! How different I am from the poets of that past, how reduced, how shriveled I am.

Ruba’iya ~ 8

Unjust, I declare the grounding of my being,

For my desiring usurps others’ living and feeling,

And in my attempt to be just and hold my own lines,

Against myself I invert the crime, which is my willing.

Ruba’iya ~ 7

Through the eroding kisses of sun and rain,

The statue quietly slides, shows no loss nor gain;

In the bosom of life, drained of change,

Alive yet dead, so its features remain.

Ruba’iya ~ 6

My dreams no longer tread my native land,

Nor do my wings flutter its rocks and sands;

But many my name still cast down ancient wells,

To hear the echo reply, but not understand.

Ruba’iya ~ 5

On the throne sits whose beard was white

Since the moment mankind dawned into light.

With a hand he plants into being, gives roots,

With a hand he uproots, takes out of sight.

Ruba’iya ~ 4

The moon onto the lake of silence drips,

The burning vine wets her crimson lips,

On the mouth, red and silver dance and shine,

As the night sways in her tempting hips.

أمر باسمك – مارسيل خليفة

Ruba’iya ~ 3

Amid the day’s business a memory stood,

Harkening to the whispers of a forgotten wood.

The old wound’s lips ushered a bitter tear,

Rippling the surface of long gone childhood.

Ruba’iya ~ 2

From some drowsy head youth did cry,

Mine own face in the mirror does not show, why?

Half-awake, half-asleep, the eyes replied:

Stranger, in truth to thyself thou art a lie!

A Slave’s Faith

When to my master’s will I most silently regulate,

When, oblivious, my obedience walks his arch of fate –

Freedom can at last my body circulate,

My mind with ease before his throne prostrate.