last moments of ramhadhan 2020... countdown to rebirth...

...there is half an hour remaining, like the ball you await on december 31st... to celebrate the turn of a number, a year... a bittersweet moment of celebration and a deep confusion/melancholy at the not-knowing ... a moment of destitution at the inability to stop/control this movement of propulsion through space and time...

...hence the tens of thousands congregating at times square... hundreds in parties... paying hundreds to enter... to gain admittance to extended happy hours... to get drunk and high out of your minds... to may ease the pain, soften the confounding...

...we participate in this self destruction as a cultural norm of modernity... somehow a step above the barabarity of uncivlized populations that take pause, hold sacred ceremonies... pray... bow down... light herbs to honor ancestors and the Great Mystery...

...new years... whether gregorian or otherwise... is an opportunity to re-assess... to reflect... to Surrender to the not-knowing... to Knowing and accepting that there is something greater than you and that you are Great in the Surrender and Become...

...ramha is this... it is the retreat into the womb... and the last moments... 25 minutes now... are the moments before a baby is pulled out into this world... yanked from the Light of darkness... into the dark of fluorescence...

...so...

...what will you be?... who will you be...?...

...in these last moments of Rahma...

...who will come out of this period of Quietude... of growing inside... of reciting/reflecting on/exploring revelation?...

...who were you before this month?...

...the script can be rewritten... the character revised... the character who walks in material realms in delusion... destitute and seeking... this is the time to let go... to find liberation in the taking away... of the letting go...

...i have a bunch of clothes for you...

...this is the time to release... to make way... to clear the road... for the Be-coming... who is wanting to come out?... how will this new Being do it different...?...

...base it on the lessons of the past 30 days of fasting...

...for the past 30 days i was in Surrender to not eating and drinking... i never considered a taste of this or that... even when friends i held brief moments with during this period of quarantine ordered food... drank from their water canisters... smoked spliffs...

...for the past 30 days... i continued through my asana practice in the morning... continued to do my remote gig... continued to read write reflect...

...for the past 30 days i continued to cook... growing deeper in pestos and green juices... and buffalo cauliflower "wings"... in prayer in community with my dad... in making medicine for my parents... in Connecting with herbs in my daily walks with and without the homie...

...for the past 30 days i read portions of the Qur'an... wrote reflections of it in my journal... i learned from the wisdom within it that ALLAH Guides those who Seek Guidance... who walk the path of Guidance instead of being passive in their knowledge... that those who are armchair in their approach are hypocrites and cowards... whose belief is questionable... as, on the one hand they say they believe but their actions show their deep attachment to this world...

...ALLAH is Infinite...

...there is no end in sight... no scarcity... give everything... give it all... give it your all... what are you giving?... what you are good at... your talents... what babylon tells you to write a business plan for... tells you that you should save the best for last... to question everything... to love your skin and features and build walls between yourself and others through identity politics...

...what i am rebirthing... who i will Be...

...after learning in previous years that to fall in Love with ALLAH is to Connect through Surrender...

...and what do with this Love is to service Creation...

...and the question remaining is now that i know how to fall in Love with You through deep Connections with Your paradoxical multiplicity and Oneness...

...and to use this Love to serve... which will kindle and rekindle the Love and grow it...

...the question is... how do i do this?... how do i Love and share this Love?... and the answer is glaring...

...do it...

... be fearless in the doing... Be it...  claim it...  be unapologetic in the Truth of this...

...walk it... to walk it fearlessly through entering the discomfort... through focus... discipline and serving those who need you... those around you... to integrate what you Know to offer in this focused manner...

...what is it that i Am Becoming... who i arrived as through ancestry... medicine man... and who i arrive at from pain/hurt/sadness - community...

...what exactly this will look like is unimportant... what remains is to be this fully... by... as ALLAH reminds me... from spending from the bounty you have... you hold... without thrift... without holding back... without a moment of shading into doubt and the not doing...

...one minute now... see you on the other side of the womb... inshALLAH...

...ramadhan 2020... cherish the day...

...in the name of ALLAH... i write for You... what did you do today...?... why...?... what purpose did these serve?... imam ghazali poses these questions in his alchemy of happiness...

...sunday... mothers day...

...today i did some of the dailies - asana for a while... why?... because it grounds me in the day... in my body... in feeling meaningful with my time... in a craft that i've grown some depth in... in prep to share with others at some point... to feel good... to float... what Purpose?... to Connect with my breath and body... as Gifts to shepherd and cherish... i recognize that this body is weak... is mortal... that these ancient ways honor the Gift of it... that these ways derive from spiritual teachings and even if i am not always engaged in the spirituality...

...monday... on the brink of tuesday...

lunar... read your mind in a book store that stay opened against all odds placed on the poker table in the underground casino off union square that i walked to watch chino in his element before his marriage 10 years to the date... and after i promised nothing to no one other than lies i told my self like the french cruller donuts from the diner on the corner of 30th, a neighborhood staple until it shut down before corona... not from the forecast of a virus but from the disease of monied bachelorettes moving in to pay landlords and realtors with dollar-sign eyes that i cringed at when i was in the cafe writing myself into stories with rebel characters dismantling babylon when babylon came and sat next to me discussing the profitability of sunnyside and woodside markets... quarter million deals...

...i counted a quarter million breaths in surya namaskar...

...i read a 785,983 words of fiction this past year and am enthralled in characters that imbue pop up convo for no reason other than to babble a progression of histories that explore meaning that i find meaning in and re-examine my life at night when the pillow sinks my brain into an abyss of imagery so colorful and stark that i wake up chanting the happenings till i can get in my journal and write it all down...

...no love from this or that person... and its me... me at once Seeking and seeking... Seeking You... and yet stuck in me and you... drawn to the mirror that you do your makeup in and that i fit clothes to fit you staying stuck on the one side that makes us two dimensional when really what i want is to walk through with you, to the other side... because we have chemistry and our bodies just an excuse to fall off the cliff at the edge of the world together...

...you go first... no you... no... lets do it together... hands interlaced fingers and veins and elbows twine and legs vine and poison ivy covers our naked legs...

...broke fast with the juice of greens infused with an apple... so did Cing... he sent me a pic... told him i'd share my recipe and thought maybe he could make use of a video i send him and then thought many could make use of it... and i never wrote back to... and i am fatherless... spouseless... and without a proper placed location...

...some would say i am a memory that drifts in a memory on a highway along the coast...

...i meant to refine my intentions for this ramadhan and got sidetracked by these songs that were left on the table next to the dates i never ate... at least not to break fast with... and listened before i opened my eyes... and in the closing i saw the mycellial network in the fruits and liquids before me... how their sacrifice was less happenstance and more intelligence and thought of this in relation to those i have odd relations with in my neighborhood and love... and i can't claim my block... no one knows me here... they only here the whispers of my past lives over the decades of walking up and down these streets but it wasn't enough to capture any indie interest...

...neither this nor that nor that nor this... i blend in well with the 4 million of this city's alienated on the edge jaded and lost... i can't say youth or young or old or poets or beats or writers or immigrant or citizen or american...

...and in the nots i am knotted into you and you and you like a stubborn braid that dreds and shoots split ends into the cracks of my skull that move subtly like tectonic plates under the cast of eyes that are not humble... even though the guy who says this seems bitter and cynical and self-loathing...

...what i'm learning is that i can hear people through their voices... that i get glimpses of them...

...ok... alright... i've been listening to nusrat and kexp and interviews with stametes and mckenna... and its nice to be liberated from a racially arrogant movement that is steeped in oppression olympics and whose on first... and it was really always me... me creating these agreements where i replaced hegemony with hegemony... each time reinforcing my marginalization...

...Reaching for You... i look for places... but am told to Connect means to do the Work and let that land You... what is the Work?... yoga... nutrition... breath... writing... Connecting... with each other to Connect with You... this is what i have to offer... and doing this as part of neither my offering nor my business, but to build and live community... inshALLAH...

...this ramadhan in the table spread... before the family of imran and the inheritance of women and the rights of the heifer... i walk to the water and pluck weeds, pausing to sniff and watching my legs roll like a cycle and i never called her up after seeing her bike past... as ghazzali would ask what -why - purpose?... i guess the real why would be pretty... and the Purpose would be to connect with the pretty... even though i experienced less than this... and neither my soul nor my heart were nourished...

...in the name of ALLAH...

...the question is this: how do i share my Work? make a livelihood?... Connect with You... honor the dreams of family?... build family?... actualize Purpose?...

...if this was the month that revelation happened... and if ALLAH required us to partake in this... then this is a month of revelation for us... how?... how do i gain the signs for self-Actualization?...

...in the name of ALLAH... ramadhan 2020...

...ramadhan in a time of Always... corona queens or corona virus... living in this realm or another...

life neither begins in the womb nor concludes in the grave... the linear storyline of western white/black/brown/yellow folks... the multicultural slave-ship run by mutli-cultural whippers...

...i'm whipping 90 with my feet on the path to the east river here in the queens side of the brooklyn debate that i opted out of when i heard the voice of rappers and politicians coalesce to cultivate a new york provincialism like nationalism, a processed refinement like white bread and sugar... the taste good feel good is a moment on the tongue... thorns in the gut...

...i reach for dandelions and look at the fence of the community garden for macuna with the hijabi morrocan sister who strums in with a mission to connect with the plants as her husbands waits in the car... she points out the violets and the cohosh... we admire the rabbits ear and herbalists of the western frontier...

...this morning... during the podcast on herbs and magic... i re-realized that my story... many of our stories with herbs is neither an aside nor a compartment of herbalist... it is a gradation... ammu's herbalism is kitchen herbalism... it is ancient and ayurveda is steeped in it... possibly the other way around... dadabhy's herbalism is from the forest... my great grandfather's was from his spiritual works with those who needed him... his duas...

...my herbalism... like my grandfather... or what i imagine to be like my grandfather's is not a lone focus... it is part of a medicine system... like bowing one's head down during 5 sun moon and planet nexuses during the day... every day... to recall your dust in the wind... all we are is dust in the wind...

...and when i close my eyes... and reopen them in white hawk farm in ithaca... as the sun goes down... the stars are the canopy of the sky... and one of the original founders of the community tells me what he loves about looking at the sky is not feeling small and diminutive... but feel liberated by being part of something so much grander than our little day to day schemas...

...in the name of ALLAH...

...ramadhan 2020... last year... the year before... the year before... trotting through iftars... Connecting with others on the path... truly the greatest time of year to be in a path of Surrender and connecting with others on this path... our worlds overlapping... all praise is due...

...ramadhan... a couple years back... i asked You - how do i fall in Love with You... You told me... through Connecting... i asked... how do i Connect?... You showed me through the Creation...  through Your Creation... how?... by surrendering the ego... bowing your head... the monkey mind... raising the heart... ceasing thought and anxieties...

...the subsequent year - now that i know how to fall in Love?... what do i do with this?... You told me to serve... to be a servant to community... to Creation...

...and now... after neither taking the lesson from the Love nor the service... i ask this year... ALLAH... what do i do?... when there is financial concerns... life concerns about family... living situation... getting married... etc... what do i do to be one who is in Love and of Service to You...?... how do i Actualize this?...

...what i'm learning is that it is my duty to serve... that by not serving i am hoarding and blaspheming on the Gift... that in doing so i am heeding to the world of senses and not the Real world of the unseen... that i am saying with words that i believe... but not going into battle... when the battle comes i shirk from it...

...these learnings are coming from the Qur'an and the great teacher, imam ghazali...

...the intention... the question this ramadhan is how do i build on being in Love with You...?... You told me it was to Work from a place of inspiration and Create... how do i do this in a way that is full on.. .that isn't just thinking about it... that isn't just being in the sidelines?...

...i think i see... i see images of doing the Work the good deeds... taking away to get Closer... instead of adding on... taking away means sharing... giving away what i'v learned... to help... to support... to be a face a voice... a touch of care... deep Love and tenderness... i know i have this touch from the way i feel when i am working with someone... doing a treatment... feel their spirit and fall in Love...