and then our exile

unless there is paradise, eros is a trick - sh.AHM

an empty house, three essays to write. the plantation complex review i have been avoiding for weeks - parts of the book itself were surprisingly interesting, but what i am to do with it is another matter altogether. a flight this afternoon, babaji a guest lecturer at BAU university for a month. "Muslims and the West" - he posits the relationship in four lenses (western self-image/making of the western world; muslim self-image/making of the muslim world; muslims in a western mirror; the west in a muslim mirror).

i can't remember exact details, but i think j once told of a conversation he had with someone who didn't know shortly after getting engaged :
- assalamu'alaykum!
- wa 'alaykumussalam. you got engaged, didn't you.
- ...
i used to think it was very strange that he was able to sense this, that he was able to guess out of the blue.

yesterday afternoon the last thing i saw as i walked towards the stairs was the waving arms of fmaseehu and zachthecat, each urging me to skip the bus and take the LRT with them. it was a surreal sight, because they each were standing still on a descending escalator, but were turned around and gesticulating and calling up to the platform as they disappeared from strange sight.

a long post about shaykh anas, jazahuLlahu ahsana'l-jaza'.

we assign roles, accord images, to people we know - the danger is confining the human being/individual underneath to the limits of these images. this is why strangers are safe.