I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape
If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape
Flood, fire, and demon --- his adroit designs
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this sweet order, where, in pious rape,
I hold his essence and amorphous shape,
Till he with Order mingles and combines.
Past are the hours, the years of our duress,
His arrogance, our awful servitude:
I have him. He is nothing more nor less
Than something simple not yet understood;
I shall not even force him to confess;
Or answer. I will only make him good.
-[Edna St. Vincent Millay]
--
it is a task for the titans, to heat the furnace of intent and pour the molten metal into the preset mold, that to replace this permuted backbone of mine with the ramrod of resolution. and the task is on me, and la tukallifu'n-nafsu illa wus'aha, "no soul shall be burdened beyond what it can bear" (Q. 2:233), which is why there is no real room for excuse. the past week has been void of nearly any actual output, but i can feel this changing.
J is off. strange, how you can get to know someone only over the space of a few months. actually probably not that strange, but the sentence needed to be said.
was told i had a john lennon look by someone who was very interested in the lumberjacks and bears of canada. the summer crowd is arriving, the longtimers are leaving, and i'm stuck in the middle with a voided week of time. kitab ul-buyoo' now, and almost finished the hadith book. i had a silent wish for more time and suddenly my mornings and evenings have been handed to me and all i can do is gape.
[www.sallawat.com] has anasheed. it's run by some naqshbandi haqqanis. ignore the strange stories around shaikh nazim and visit the site, because some of the tracks on there are really very beautiful and wrap around your heart.
today i asked W how he got the 5.something GB of anasheed on his laptop, and he said "i...recorded them?". and then i remembered i'd promised people i would carry around a recorder everywhere i went, and i haven't done this yet. nor started my photospree--in denial, it is less serious.
cherries and peaches, and oh my God. because the peaches are very good but the cherries of this land--they are dark, dark as the night, and are nearly...intoxicating.
me: did you try the cherries i bought? they have such....depth.
z: you're weird man.
damascus.
as though seeing through a prism, past months here and how i will (assuming) look back, and connected with the times of day, and... but this will have to be much later.
