...the highway cuts through forests, through what was, time...immemorial...palestine, damascus...the promise...ALLAH You are the Promise...all praise is due...hands wide open, head bowed in lamb, knees rooted in mud...
...soiled by city fumes i left for lakes and gorges in ithaca, ny, forgetting that outside this city of walkers were roads, routes, highways full of wagons, trucks, outbacks hugging the road for fear of a curve that could leave your head through sun roof, spilling out like cracked eggs, cooking on the pavement...
...july has been near death...not in the prophetic prescription...not "die before you die"...
roadkill, the road has promised a potential fate of fatal several times this month...these past few weeks...a reminder, a sign, if only i would think, if only...
presence, being present, being in this, being here, the destination, taking it in deeper than a puff, more than the bud scraping through alveoli into an exchange with carbon for helium, for a head to float like a red balloon in the seventies, paris, in queens, ny, riding fantasies of assimilation into modern, into erasure of bangla, saris, bhindi's, soft-speak, holdi and marich...
...erased myself into the idol ALLAH admonished through ikra, gnosis, the Knowledge of Self from ancient mathematics, the language of Quiet, of the humility that is present in the clothes, dance, speak, spices of ammu and abbu and foofathabhons and bhais...
...up until me, the language of my family has been a continuum, thousands and thousands of years old, in a dialogue with the generation before...
...the difference with the modern world, with what is the west (all over the world), is the new buildings that go up everywhere, new houses, tiny or not, ergonomic or oil-choking...it is in a state of constant deomlition, razing the past, and reconstructing the new...the motto is echoed in marketing, in advertisements for clothes - out with the old, in with the new...echoes are heard in prorgessive circles, among activists...
..the difference is that reverence for tradition is lost, dialogue becomes didacticism, elders become old folk...
...the opportunity is to continue discourse...keep your tongue wet with ALLAH...your heart beat in percussion to the rhythm of ALLAH...inshALLAH
...soiled by city fumes i left for lakes and gorges in ithaca, ny, forgetting that outside this city of walkers were roads, routes, highways full of wagons, trucks, outbacks hugging the road for fear of a curve that could leave your head through sun roof, spilling out like cracked eggs, cooking on the pavement...
...july has been near death...not in the prophetic prescription...not "die before you die"...
roadkill, the road has promised a potential fate of fatal several times this month...these past few weeks...a reminder, a sign, if only i would think, if only...
presence, being present, being in this, being here, the destination, taking it in deeper than a puff, more than the bud scraping through alveoli into an exchange with carbon for helium, for a head to float like a red balloon in the seventies, paris, in queens, ny, riding fantasies of assimilation into modern, into erasure of bangla, saris, bhindi's, soft-speak, holdi and marich...
...erased myself into the idol ALLAH admonished through ikra, gnosis, the Knowledge of Self from ancient mathematics, the language of Quiet, of the humility that is present in the clothes, dance, speak, spices of ammu and abbu and foofathabhons and bhais...
...up until me, the language of my family has been a continuum, thousands and thousands of years old, in a dialogue with the generation before...
...the difference with the modern world, with what is the west (all over the world), is the new buildings that go up everywhere, new houses, tiny or not, ergonomic or oil-choking...it is in a state of constant deomlition, razing the past, and reconstructing the new...the motto is echoed in marketing, in advertisements for clothes - out with the old, in with the new...echoes are heard in prorgessive circles, among activists...
..the difference is that reverence for tradition is lost, dialogue becomes didacticism, elders become old folk...
...the opportunity is to continue discourse...keep your tongue wet with ALLAH...your heart beat in percussion to the rhythm of ALLAH...inshALLAH
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