winter solstice 2014

winter is medicine.

the earth rests on her greatest lean today, back further than the cool cats at parties like fat joes and busta rhymes and the illusive realm of idols most of us inadvertently worship, praise, debate at parties on who is better, get starry eyed and groupie about.

i keep it pushing, barely noticing bon iver, kendrick lamar, hozier, drake, wocka, nikki, taylor swift, meek, j lo, rick ross, shakira, and the curly haired, and braided and dred locked and blonde groupies with thin waists and big hips surrounding them. i push past, pausing inches from the culture of spectacle, to see the caged tree on lafayette and bleeker, touching its roots, closing my eyes and hearing the words of the tree...la illaha illalla...

winter soul, sis, is upon us.

brother i see u bowing in the forest, head down at dawn in jamat with pines, so quietly, deer walk past you in salam, noting your ancient mathematical movement, as taught to u by your father and he taught by his all the way back to the guru muhammad...who continued the teachings of the invisible yogis of yore, messages lost on those of us who chose idols of stone and paint to bow down to. that lineage still continues...the lineage of idol worshippers, replacing deities on temples with jimi hendrix and bob marley and bob dylan, and van morrison, and black and white and latino and asian and indian. but mostly black and white. obsession.

winter solstice, the conclusion of months of declining days, of growing so dark that night has conquered day, draws us to meditate on dark, on the night.

the night is sacred, i am reminded, when i am in the forest, preparing bedding and a tent at 7pm, before dark settles in and i am left to close my eyes, listen to, and tell stories, after staring at the quilt of a starry starry night from beside a stream in idaho. all praise is due.

hidden words appear after midnight, in dimensions that leave me outside the shackle of this body, and phones and keyboards and screens.

night is a time to lose self. when i am lost enough, i find that there is nothing more important than being next to my ammu n abbu n bhaiays n nanu n nana n dadu n dada, n all of us in cave-like mud house of my abbu's childhood, listening to stories of a time before my encapsulation into this body. this body is often a mystery to me.

this new moon, i look to get deeper in path of being medicine man by way of bowing lower, of learning surahs, and saying these spells so quiet that the Qur'an can be seen across the cell membranes that make up the tissue of my cardiac muscles.

this winter solstice reminds me that life is a contiuum, that the 5 bowings a day, the same 5 bowings, are proof in constancy, that the sun goes up and down daily, that without this bowing, my great great grandparents ad infinitum would be buried as a thought...

i cannot speak to religion, or make you feel better about why i bow the way i do, but i do it. and this doing has become so clear, that no words of master philosophers, whose words like the warned of poets/musicinas,twist reality to constantly be in question, stir the roots of spirit that leave me so deeply rooted i emerge in jupiter. their words get lost before they reach me. they are words that pause like refrigerator magnets-words. i breathe into hoo, and rooooooohhhh comes out.

this new moon i grow deeper in responsibility, in growing deeper in being so present that the money war has no grip on me, that the irs leaves the roofs they snipe from, next to the privately hired para-military of credit-card companies that call me and remind me of debt that i never had till they found a hole. they always find a hole and fine and fine and penal codes emerge like the words on degrees. peace vulture-peoples who are white and black and latino and asian and indian and arab. i hear your appeals of creating a black wallstreet and a brown empire state, and pray for your soul, and let you keep your blackness and browness and indian and jamaican and polish and nigerian and mexican flag to yourself. no sympathy for your devil walk, no matter how mtv the swagger. prayers for the new-age, multi-cultural crackers - i see you.

walk two worlds, my cuzin once told me. this one, the world of maya, and the real one, the forests. this new moon i am walking both with presence, with clarity, with techniques that serve both. this new moon i am getting bills handled, debt dissolved, and managing money for building ummah. i am doing this as i grow deeper in asana, in bowing, in food and dikr and work. this new moon, i am clear that everything is ALLAH, and that which is off frequency requires technique to flow through.

this new moon i grow deeper in the letting gos and embracings of intentions of previous moons - deeper in the disicpline, in the few, in loving closer, deeper, through deeper work and presence...

99 names: Al-Muhaymin: The Guardian

all praise is due to the Guardian, from whom this body emanates, is brought into life by the hoo of ALLAH-hoo… the breath of ALLAH…secret science…

the Guardian protects the secret science, reveals to those who bow so low…dissolution…

…the science is powerful…overwhelming to many…scary and repulsive when they learn there are arabic words attached to it…and yet packaged by others who seek to stew pot spirituality into their new age soup to recreate, to be a founder, to be somehow more than ancient mathematics…

…the Guardian has passed down this knowledge to live by, to get through this ephemeral flight through the life and times of guru’s whose biographies are in the hearts of those who know…

…peace to one of my guardians, my brother, One-Who-Knows-ALLAH…from your Quiet example orally traditioned in the path of the prophet, by the slight of hand that does in mute… so modest, so colorful… saturn…

…head on earth, in the sparse forest of astoria park, of indian country, before the east river and the gateway to the 10 prison buildings that make up rikers island, i bow to the Guardian and shed a tear of joy for my friends and family and you, and you who inspire me to go lower to get higher…

…all praise is due to the Guardian for you in this brief moment we co-habitate, where our spirits have been blessed to intersect before the candle is out into Always…

…the guardians of truth walk amongst us…hold truths so deep their presence will absorb you like iridescent eyes, more than bedroom talk and game, lead you to a time before time before time…i’ve met a few…know a couple…

…they walk in Quiet, in the strut of yogi’s whose status as yogis are permanently lost to those with titles…

…Real yogi’s move in quiet…sit next to you in the 6 train where you pace, rush to make the subway move faster, to make the yoga class taught by your favorite yogi who teaches yoga at the top studios, does energy work, lets you know how other yoga teachers ain’t ish…

“can’t wait to see my yogi!” you say aloud.

the yogi next to you ceased using the title a long time ago, keeps her head bowed, wears modesty behind the covers of hijab and the prayer beads that sit in her pocket that she counts 99 times, as the guy across from her wears his 100 colorful malas over his white shirt, below his indigenous tattoos, and gets into a conversation with the impressed-chick going to a class on crystal healing at the open center…

…peace to all the seekers…all of us who search for meaning through displacement like 9-year old plastic scavengers on heaps of 3^rd world dump in Bangladesh…

peace to all. peace to everyone doing what they have to to eat to make sense of the insensible. minimize the harm if you can. ask the Guardian for guidance. trust in the Guardian to protect and Guide.

if you are reading these words, and processing information, then you are as privileged as i am to have eyes to see with, a mind to analyze, synthesize. the Guardian has brought you this far, through all your trials, through moments of ready to die’s. you are here.

call the coroner, bring boquets for the dead, for the body you tatted with titles, status, race, class, nationhood, stories you believed, with material that became your signature.

bury the stage and the self-rationalized, decontextual tattoos and piercings and certificates and degrees and cool.

burn. stand at the funeral pyre, and watch this body ascend into transparence with the air, with the sky above you, until there is no distinction between you and You…

the author of these practices...

if there is anything positive that u see in me, about me, it is all due to the teachings of the guru/prophet muhammad who has taught me to worship to no man, including himself, who has taught me how to bow down, when, how, to align with the sun moon and planets, to fast, to keep my eyes, head and sense of self low, keep my face shielded from smoking mirrors, to rid myself of ego and the culture/s that embrace and worship cults of personalities, the ephemeral, who has taught me, instead, to prostrate to the One-ness, to move, eat, speak light, and to walk the path of Quiet.

all my discipline, respect, humility, universalism, laws, scientrific inquiry, stem from this tradition, that has been passed down from generation to generation to my family, who have imparted these values to me. so when i share with u, this is the context, the lineage, nothing i've come up with on my own...

if there is any negative in me, it is my ego, my straying from the path of the Great Surrender to the Source of Peace (islam), and instead giving in to the golden calf of senses...

...audzubillahe minash shaitauner rajeem, bismillah hirahmaniraheem 

medicine in drown: dani

dani and i were inseparable. i usually saw him downstairs, at the ballet store his shorty typed sales on, like she were writing a novel, from behind a register . talia had his five year old, who would grow up to keep her delicate head on the side, her thin hand oozing attitude on her narrow hip, and her brown blonde curls falling to the ground. her spunk was purely her moms. she got dani's emerald eyes and soft features. but her words were thin and sharp, like the kitchen knives that talia went through to cut yucca, when i'd be over with my shorty, just so i could get a break from her and hang with dani.

my shorty kept a circus tightrope around my throat, and when i refused to believe i was tied to anything, that the tether was just my imagination, and she was just poker-facing, she'd crack the bottle of absolut in her hand, the one she drank like coconut water, while listening to razia sultan and pakeezah and hindi songs from the amitab era, and slit her arms, working her way to her wrists.

talia didn't exactly do the same to dani, but i could tell their relationship was mixed martial war. they'd been together since the 5th grade and they were in their mid-twenties...which would be cool, except she had her arm crossed and carried a scroll of complaints that she listed off to anyone who came to look at leotards and ballerina skirts at the store, and dani would play houdini, disappearing for months at a time, into the marines, and then off into a cruise ship cleaning elevators, when he was awol. he'd tell me of his odyssey as soon as he returned for a a week, and giggle. i laughed too, hysterical, glad to be reunited with him..

we don't have any plastic plates, talia complained. meaning: go get some disposables cause i don't feel like washing, cleaning, and participating in other un-american activities.

we stole moments to pretend to pick up soda and plates and missing items for dinner.

on gerard ave, we hooked a left and walked towards yankee stadium, stopping below the 4 and D and talking revolution and poems and the change of weather, and the fresh coat he had, and the dope kicks i had. bronx businessmen walked with stories of time shuffling their feet. the 4 train snaked overhead and popped bottles on the tracks that it cut through, curt and conspicuous like a tank in the sand.

lets go downtown, dani said, falling into the underground D staicase, after a half hour passed and we still didn't pick up anything.

what about talia and moni?

they'll forgive us.

dani was right, i thought, admiring his stealthy decisions, as i watched him by two 40's - one for him one for me - to drown in before we got to 40 deuce.

and these two bags of doritos, dani said, holding up the 50 cent bags.

we were set for our journey to the city, and medicine was dani, cause i needed the drown, and escape, and splurge on the arcades we spent our dinner money on. it was cool though, worth it. we rambo'd up behind the screens, and shot enough cops and soldiers, to make us feel accomplished.

here's a star and stripe, dani said, ripping off a pretend badge from his broad shoulder and sticking it on my army jacket.

twentysomething was escaping, leaving this body for drown, for leaping into bottles and good times. even back then i was leaving my body...then it was to descend into the heaven of party-and-bullshit...

dani knew how to have a good time. or he used to. the last time he called me, he was in texas somewhere, told me, but, all i know about texas is the goblets they give you at bbq's.

dani told me that he was done having a good time in that way, said he didn't  know if he was going to make it. none of us did.

none of us made it. none of the fragmented pieces of crew i belonged to. most of them stood on the ledges of roof's and wrote their alter-egos names on the impossible walls between subway tracks and highrises and air and death, hoping to be re-united with a soul mate in the concrete, 20 stories below. dani was one of them.

i write dani's name everywhere i go, like he were a missing link to a puzzle i'm trying to solve. 

99 names: al Mumin - the Inspirer of Faith ii

inspired.

inspired by truth, those who tell the truth like peppermint...she was so honest it hurt to look at her... almost every other friend i had was always lying. i was...atleast i was...

was lying soon as i stepped into kindergarten. noticed the woman who dropped me off looked nothing like the women of the white and black and brown mothers who dropped their kids off. ammu wore a green sari full of the patterns of noakhali...canoes and ektaras decorating the borders of her blouse. 

i turned away...

first day of school, ever, i spoke like i knew english. soon enough forgot bengali, and apologized.

apologized for my moms nose-ring, and bindi, and bracelets and silk cloths that covered her in a modesty so deep - not even a speckle of leg - that it was anathema...

apologized till i was rewriting my story to fit in, to squeeze into the generationally hurt, and morally destitute, the prostraters of the golden calf in the form of madonna, michael jackson, george michael, run dmc, 

replaced the One-ness my grandfather, the hakeem, taught me to bow down to, for gold ropes and pumas and the chicks who loved them (which seemed like all chicks). 

ironically, for all the racial tensions that i walked into, between white and black (brown and red and yellow held little vocabulary/visibility/interest from the lens of the hegemony of white and black, then n still, now...), both of the unequal binaries - caucasia (white america and all the polish, irish, and sometimes turkish, and arab, etc immigrants who exchanged their cultures for skin to pretend something they were not) and black america (and all the caribbean and african and sometimes latino, arab, and sometimes east indians, who traded in their cultures and complexities, for blanket statements, and a pretending for a contorted-minority-power of being americans) seemed to bow down to the same god of stuff.

white and black america were prostrate to the god of small and big and shiny things that were bought and sold and shot for and mugged for, and made fun of for if it was past the line of trend.

white and black and brown and yellow america were in worship of the golden calf and i had to too, if i had any hope of getting in the doors of the party.

decades later this golden calf of the consumerism that moses condemned the israelites for, continued to be a source of inspiration in my brooklyn cool.

surrounded by fashionistas - artist men and women who spoke and wore revolution in the language of vogue and gq and details and left their footsteps like Hollywood boulevard - i became a pose again...click, click, click, click...

through the Inspirer of Faith as revealed through the trees, rivers, sun, air, through the legacy of the teachings of the guru muhammad, n the enlightened who've walked the earth with hands over face when the cameras of cool come out, i've learned to quiet a little bit, to take it down a notch. 

through my encounters with You in everyone i come across, in every morsel of food and every ray of light, in every drop of rain and in every movement of body...i am learning to worship, and alhamdullilah...

thank You, thank You, thank You, thank You for inspiring faith in what seemed impossible... thank You for the teachings of the guru muhammad, for the Guidance of structuring my life in the material-ephemeral to ascend to You, the  Always...thank You for inspiring me to be clearer on this path of the Great Surrender, to filter and weed, and keep it on a levitational...all praise is due...