and then our exile

...subhanaka, inna kunna minaz-Zalimeen...

Listening to a heart-striking du'a by Abu Bakr ash-Shatri: half an hour long. What is there to say? That the "brighter climes" remained transient: that i am now surrounded by barraging thoughts which neither pause nor cease their oncoming in clarity? Bang-bang-bang: one after another, behind me a trail of unfinished patterns and half-formulated shapes, splotches of colour and bleeding boxes. From of the Day of Qiyamah, horror preempting sorrow, verses of Eliot ("i have smelt them, the death-bringers; now is too late / for action, too soon for contrition"), Maria Rilke, that i passed a perfect opportunity for da'wah inadequate, that tiny shifts in foundation can lead to such gargantuarn deviation (chaos theory onto absolutist scale?), the ethics of grasscutting, the ethics of society, the need for convention, the mutation of God, the internal battleground, the baring of a soul.

Du'a for me, because in the words of my dear brother Zacharia, "i feel like a bloody slacker". Du'a for Usman, that he grow up a better man than i have ever been. Du'a for Sister Sylvia, a new entrantee to this Muslim ummah. And, recalling Brother Farooq, "...and everyone else."

More tomorrow: wish to finish some things before 'isha, writing, and sleep.