jamal shabazz, a brooklyn photographer with mesmerizing photos and intricate stories behind each one, said, during a talk on his photography, that he began taking pictures as a way to connect with his community. it was a way of breaking the ice and having a forum for exchange. in the process he shaped beauty, and the beauty was more than the pictures he took, but the communication, community, collaborations he built.
i love the idea of living breathing art, as life itself is living breathing art, as al Mussawir has painted landscapes of beauty for us to walk on, through - ja na ta - walking in beauty - my cuzin man-red says - in navajo, the language of dineh peoples. yes, ja na ta...
walking in beauty involves being beautiful, more than the approved, disapproved beauty designated by the state apparatus in prostration to capital and markets and the constant need to profit, which means the constant need for the market to trend.
what's in trend is the over-sized ski hats among hipsters in portland. saw it in ny last year. who knows what the hipsters there are rocking now. their seems to be a syncopation around the carved and constructed identities of genres, like races. they are often parallell - genres/markets and race - to occupy/consume trends for the respective boxes peoples are trapped into, take great pride and perform through. applause kid. i see you. i overstand. otherwise you are out of the wolfpack.
it's alot to keep up. i gave up. born alone die aloning through pdx, walking in beauty when i dikr through the prayer beads brooklyn gave me. 99 times.
99 times, i go through reminders of how each moment is fleeting, and that within this constant change, ALLAH remains constant. i am reminded of this with every recall, every moment when i am tempted to speak, say something, to defend, to peacock. at that fork, when i pause to ask what's really behind my desire to speak/show, i recall Surrender, how this is a moment, and I AM of Essence - Eternal. i get moved away from this fact of Beauty, of al Mussawir, when i am amidst the audience of people who see me or don't.
at once i am an invisible man, brown and the color of bombs and newsclips on the world's most wanteds. at once i am disease, third world epidemic, immigrant, refugee, a problem. at once i am taking jobs, and feeding off the government, and lazy and too hard-working, and accented by irrelevance. i seemed to have missed the cruise ship that others - brown, black, yellow, red - have boarded, into acceptance, into natural flow in a babylon that i don't get. don't get aziz ansari.
i have ceased putting my hat down for change, for racial theatrics that fit the audiences who want to clap for a fitting in of their bill.
i get ancient.
my soul immediately is in dialogue.
so i get my amma and abba, and ancient indigenous ways, and recognize it across the board, whether i am in cipher with bangladeshi's from the time-zone tucked into village-life, sudanese from khartoum in coffee shops listening to adhan and reciting poetry to possibility, indians weaving jewels off the rez only to hope for return there, philosophers from projects a generation from south carolina, san juan, havana...
walking in beauty, in the path of al Mussawir, in the example set by Creator/Shaper of Beauty, would mean to be alive, to be a living breathing engagement with the world, towards aligning with Height.
taller than height and larger than weight, with my feet rooted like evergreens in the northwest, reaching pine needles in praise, in all praise is due...
shaping beauty would mean to make knowledge active, to engage with knowledge to build, reach, commune with prostraters and prostitutes, with hustlers and fruit-wallahs, cab-drivers and tailors...
my boy hen-roc says i should do a compendium video for the nutritional map i''ve been working on. if it brings me closer, Closer...Closer to the One...
the sheik rumi, says to lose, lose yourself, and bow down...to stop running to be someone...afterall, isn't this what your life is about? he asks...to be someone?...when you stop trying to be someone...you Appear into the congruence of One-ness...
the ayurveda professor, doctor, from pune, india, who i met recently, seems steeped in the culture of pride of being a doctor, a professor, someone. many of the ayurvedic doctors i met in programs geared towards americans, in india, seem to suffer from this guru-complex.
westerners seem to strive for this expert status. westerners are indian from india, bangladeshi from bangladesh, nigerian from nigeria, kenyan from kenya, brazilian from brazil, chinese from china, dominican from dominican republic, american from marcy projects and the upper east side and san francisco...
...no delusions homie...i overstand the truth that permeates through the surface realm of skins you and i are in...i overstand and see the carcinogen of megalomania that is excused and celebrated across the multi-cultural spectrum of devout babylonian-ism...
...i'll pass. flow through the asanas that were set forth by teachers without names, from the path of Nothingness...hope to connect, to shape beauty through the work of non-cerebral engagement with this divine mosque that our spirits respirate in without a breath.
...to create...to really shape beauty...walk in the path of the Greatest Artist of ALL, the Most Creative, who is known several billion times a day as the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful....
...to do this, lose yourself...really lose yourself...i will too...
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