when you find the love, you find yourself

Will & Wonderment

( Golden Paths )




( A Rainbow Behind the Lips )



( Pharos )



( Nutter )



( Milk & Honey All the Way Down (a tafsir of Ayat al-Kursi) )



( You'd Never Guess )



( Perfectly Clear at the Time )




( Contrast )




( Re: usedtobe )


( Oh them kids )


( Contrafirmazione )


( Submission )



( Elevator repair )

Bismillah!
I went through my previous journal and snagged all the entries of interest. These have now been retconned into this journal.

The new, old entries (calendar years 2002-2005) include entries from my *first* LJ, when I did an exercise like this in 2005! Much shorter, and I may look at that journal again to see if there's more that 2007-me would like to salvage.

2002-me wrote more elaborately, synaesthetic weavings and meanderings of a life in turmoil.

2003, 04, 05-me wrote with lots of exclamation points, alhamdulillah, and pious exclamations! I got married! I was in healing school! I was way into the walking, and still shared my heart on the internet.

I miss some of that. These last two years in grad school, away from tariqah beloveds, have not been great for my deen and my walking. The love, the intensity, the earnestness has dried up. What will I do to regain it?

Writing is projected-self, refracted-self, and I don't want to idealize the first years of my marriage over now. Sh. & I have grown together, I'm smoother, more capable; things were always broken at the Land, I was always mad at somebody for cavalier treatment of Islam in favor of some illusion, and I was just as poor then!

Where is growth, and where is stasis, and where is memory, and where is truth?

Bismillah!

It's almost one, I'm up again, it's cold in them thar house. Got up, grabbed Brothers Karamozov off the shelf because I knew I could find it in the dark. I've actually read the first forty-odd pages of War and Peace but didn't want to rummage for it in the dark and wake up my beloved, who doesn't appreciate my insomnia and bad habits with clocks de alarum.

Got some water, decided not to start Brothers K again after all when I had already put my toe in (drum roll please) THE GREATEST NOVEL IN THE WORLD, but heck, what do I know about War and Peace except that rumble in my mind of its acclaim? Russia. Napoleon. Um? To the Internet, Robin! A few litcrit articles later I have some idea about what I'm getting into now, including many pages of personal historiography and thoughts on the nature of war and power. Fine, given the claim that in places one 'forgets the author and feels that life itself is the writer'.

Earlier this evening I phoned with my best friend from New York for a number of years. I've been in Cali for anno 2.25 and have talked with him exactly 3 times now, more often than I've spoken to anybody else. Have emailed tremendously with a couple of folks. Some of you reading this may know him as Anwar, others as British Alex.

Being friends with Anwar was like the rest of my life with the brightness and contrast turned up on some frequencies. We met by having our hands literally put together at a dhikr. The spiritual go-between was called Bhavani, a woman Saddhu from Brooklyn who hung out with the Jerrahi dervishes when she was in town. "You two can speak in beeps and squeaks to each other," she said, and I think we literally made computer noises at each other. We went on to read poetry, smoke dope, see movies and have the most ridiculous complex , reference-dropping, weird-analogy-fueled conversations about science, art, religion, magic, personality, healing... he was in a major relationship with a woman I came to enjoy almost as much as I did Anwar, and more, sometimes. We were three tall, thin, eagle-like creatures amazed at the adventures of mind and heart.

Now I'm moving again, insha'allah, and will I meet anyone again?

This is my only shot at life. Why dawdle?
What if i make the wrong choice?
Well it's not like that hasn't happened before. Seek help and choose again.
What if I get stuck in something and I hate it?
It won't be any worse than where I've already been: high anxiety, baaad trips, indigence, the morning after, obsession with darkness and illusionary powers.
But i'm afraid of everything it seems.
I'm not going to Allah and I'm staying with the idols. Read the card I made every day, keep my promise to Allah before my master and our greatest beloved the Prophet: give love, peace, mercy, justice; care about my self, my body, my heart, all my life.
But real life's not that easy; I'm just repeating formulas.
That's because I'm just repeating formulas, not taking the jump in each moment. I don't expect Ya`qub's ladder to look like a Star Trek wormhole! O Allah let me stay with the sunnah, my tariqa, without freezing the means into idols.
This is nonsense. Where has my fancy theosophy ever gotten me anyhow.
Allah gave my my bride when I was at my lowest, and she loves me absolutely and challenges me every day to walk in the way of the Prophets, alayhim as-salam, and I her. I have a shaykh I love and trust completely, like nothing I ever knew was possible. My Lord has given me healings that *have* been like Star Trek special effects with real differences on my world for weeks and months afterward until the next station. THE DOOR IS OPEN.
But but but
I'm going to die whether I like it or not! Why not like it?

Die before you die. Die every day, every minute, be born again, a new creation in the light and splendour of Allah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim al-Malik al-Quddus as-Salam.

I can do it. I wouldn't be here in this light with these beloveds and these teachings if You didn't want me to succeed!

Allaahumma `innaa alaa dhikrika wa shukrika wa Husni `ibaadatika wa laa taj`alnaa rabbanaa mina-l-ghaafiliin! Amin!
O Allah! help us upon Your remembrance and Your thanks and beautify Your worship and do not make us O our Lord! from among the heedless. Amin!

And the Imam Ja`far as-Saddiq said amin means WE ARE COMING TO YOU.

In my case Dungeons and Dragons lead to Mahometanism, not Demonology. Small Consolation to my Folks.
Bismillah!


Great roleplaying game campaigns I planned but never ran.

Going Home
20th Century. A retired, lost or amnesiac submarine commander is drawn into an investigation of what is believed to be an alien spacecraft. Herr Kapitän U-Boot has been having troubling visions of infinite space, telepathy, etc. which gradually coalesce into sometimes useable & sometimes dangerous powers. The spacecraft turns out to be a space-dwelling being trapped and paralyzed by the earth's gravity well. Cpt UBoot is metamorphosing into a creature akin to the lost 'spaceship' and will eventually join his people, who are engaged in a conflict with

I wanted to come up with other characters with hooks and let players choose which character they'd play, but never really came up with anyone except the Captain. I also planned out doing this as a comic book made collage-like and with images from old microfilmed magazines, but nothing came of that either.

A few years ago I realized the symbolism that made this scenario so compelling came from my repressed sexuality, feelings of alienation and the desire for a spiritual life I couldn't articulate through my atheism.

This was plotted out amidst a great deal of alien-, artifact- and magic-system design related to turning HP Lovecraft's ideas upside down, where the continent-sized beings from the 21^6 Dimension were beautiful and angelic, not malign. Wonder was my motivating emotion for this work and not horror.

Related to this project was

The Thing Hanging in the Void
The idea came from a Call of Cthulhu Dreamlands supplement featuring a critter by that name, a sort of mummy trying to break out of its Dreamworld prison. In my take, the Thing became a prisoner of an ancient conflict and the Void in question was the collective unconscious of Earthly humanity, kept separate at great cost from the Over-Mind of humans in the rest of the galaxy. PCs get drawn into the Thing's conscious-world machinations designed to let it break free, suck all of humanity dry of psychic energy and wreak terrible vengeance on the Superhumans.

The background came out of a great deal of thought about psychic phenomena, the interconnectedness of people, and troubling visions of consciousness as a non-material entity not restricted to computational behavior. From 18 to 21 I was a materialist-atheist, dig? Very concerned with the logical integrity of it. But I was fascinated with the idea of consciousness as a luminous fluid which could extend outside the body and do stuff; and fascinated with the imagery of the mind / self / individualized awareness as outcroppings of a broader unity, islands protruding from the tenuous ocean's surface. If there's an "ocean" there could be "sea monsters," right? Recall now nights spent in diners smoking Parliaments and drinking many cups of black coffee whilst sketching layers of consciousness in a diagram, et cetera. My first spiritual experiences happened around this time, much to my surprise.


We're Not In Space Kansas Anymore
Basically a RoboTech campaign: player characters are members of the space navy expeditionary force sent out at the end of the Macross series. PCs are sent on a mission to a particular uncharted planet which turns out to be home to powerful magical civilizations. Overriding theme: the ancient question of who will win in a fight between giant robots and dragons? Ammo and fuel run low; characters start to outfit their mecha with Wands of Wonder and the like.

I had a pretty detailed world that I'd been building before I thought of dumping giant robots into the mix, with all-new, non-Euro-folklore races. There were Weavers, sort of the diaspora Jews or Armenians of this world, who never show their faces or any of their bodies past coming of age. They made textiles of amazing beauty and preternatural qualities. I can't remember any other details now except that one of the races had eyes like polished stones, no irises or pupils, and that there were layers of older civilizations going back hundreds of thousands of years.


Eye in the Sky
This was a game world I developed and ran a few games in but can't recall if there was a themed campaign in my mind. I loved world building as anyone who's actually read this far has picked up; this world is of the "My Science Project" variety, a construct by aliens filled with humans and other sentient beings living on landmasses in a vast sea on a huge disk. Quite a bit of time went into making the cultures, languages, maps & whatnot. I wrote to Steve Jackson Games with a proposal to make it a GURPS world and got a letter back from Steve himself complimenting me on my writing and imagination but that my world seemed a little too bucolic, not enough conflict bursting from the paragraphs. He encouraged me to stay in contact with other ideas, which I never did.

There's the call to prayer... back to reality!

Bismillah

Art and Arabic are trucking along in my sometimes hermetically sealed life. Lakehouse, Land & SSC office; salah, recitations, remembrances and healing sessions; movies, Target and groceries in Napa, St Helena and Santa Rosa; long drives between every place listening to NPR, Healing School tapes and Shaykh Sa`ad Gaânamî's astounding Qur'an recitation; livejournal and a bit of relaxing with Carthaginian history or some Frenchman's essay on the doctrine of sainthood in Sidi Ibn al-Arabi, may Allah be pleased with him.

Not a lot else really happens; we live miles even from a gas station and we really never see people outside the community.

Today I'm working on a more elaborate border in gouache than I'e tried before, or I was working before I took a break an hour and a half ago to go on LiveJournal, something I don't normally do on weekends but I think it's a little scary actually to do something in the direction of what I want to do all my life. It's taken 4 years to get serious about Arabic, and I pray every day I'm not just being enthusiastic about it right now.

Art was with me since forever, since drawing endless dinosaurs, monsters, spaceships, giant robots and planets from age 2 to 17. I lost the rhythm of drawing for my own pleasure around when I was taking art classes in high school and getting all these assignments of color studies and anatomy and perspective and whatnot. Somehow it became serious and I knew I was good at it but it was now work and not as much fun; none of the artists I liked, like Gustav Klimt, Albrecht Durer, and Goya, had painted giant robots fighting with tentacled monsters, and maybe I was embarassed at what I really liked. At some point in high school I wanted to be serious, dark, mysterious and sexy, I wanted mad wisdom and psychodelia, soul-manifestation, not drugs specifically although that came later.

But it was mental projection, it was a defense of my self against the darkness and danger of the world, the forces of emotion, desire, power, all these things I felt swept up in with no rudder, and so I sort of spun out and never really found myself again till after college.

I doodled intricately, then made sort of diagrams of cosmological reflection and clairvoyance, and filled several notebooks with drawings of beautiful bums and elderly, sad people and tired people, people on trains showing everything inside within the sort of squashed container of a New York City demeanor, and then started with calligraphy.

Calligraphy's really the only thing I like to make now, though I have an idea landscapes would be very rewarding. But it's hard, it's hard to sit and make something, it's easier to sit here & write a few paltry words, not really touching much of the meat of my past few years' attempts at art and the connetion with what was happening for me inside... now is now and now is different than any then, ever ;)

bismillah

Bismillah! I'm in Bella Vista, Arkansas for a family reunion of my mom's maternal family, the Nelsons/Fobergs/Pearsons, Swedish immigrants. Leaving San Francisco Airport, I narrowly missed seeing my beloved return from herb school --wrong wing, very sad. Flew to Houston and thence, via what I seem to have permanantly entered into my vocabulary as a "pea-shooter plane" by virtue of describing it as such in at least three conversations with relatives, a 50-seat or so jet with a ceiling I could have knocked my head on.

If you ever want to play a different golf course every day of the week, Bella Vista is the town for you. Uncle Chuck (Charles Foberg), my Mom's only surviving uncle, is 88 & not doing great physically. He is tickled to see all of us.

Mom read us a note he'd written about a vision of an angel he had last year. He got up in the middle of the night and a radiant being in white with long hair was standing in the bathroom door. She raised a hand and pointed at him before disappearing.

For some reason before coming here I'd thought there would mostly be second cousins and great uncles and suchnot relatives I don't particularly know; quite the opposite, the relatives I know best, Mom's brothers and their families, are the largest contingent here, along with a couple of my assorted not-so-well-knowns. One of them is first cousin once removed Travis, 24, photographer, vegan and pop-culture wacky kid. I learned today that at a previous family gathering with Uncle Chuck, when I was 8 and he was 4, I saved his life! He fell into a pool, couldn't swim, and I pulled him out. No memory of this for me, but his mom told us he took one look today at the pool behind the hall we met in and asked, "Is that the pool?" Pictures stick around unless you let Allah ta'ala remove them from your heart. I've never been close to death; not in that precipitous way when the eternal closeness of death penetrates the veil of the now, here it is, your lord is waiting and what is happening? What will you present to the angels of inquiry? Subhanallah. Die before you die.

Tomorrow my sister's singing at a Lutheran church service starting at 8am. I can't wait to hear her! She's finishing graduate school at Indiana University for opera and seems to be moving strongly into Christian music ministry; she produces music services one evening each week in addition to her vocal participation. After lunch today we had nothing planned to do & Uncle Chuck asked Margi to sing for us. She said, "I'm not a doll with a pull-string!!" After sharing a childhood with her, I can tell you that an operatic temper is not always an enculturated trait but in some cases develops naturally.

bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim!

I looked at a bunch of Islam-related lj-communities today & was pretty disappointed. I realize now I was looking for contact with similar people outside our Shadhdhuliyya convert ghettoid. But the problem with being in an elitist group is you tend to not get a lot of satisfaction reading opinions from people whose hearts wouldn't lead them to seek out a group like your own. It seems funny to think of our ta'ifa as elitist but it is in a strict sense; to make any sense out of it you need to have a container and range of tasting that's pretty rare. So to look over a community & see scowling finger-shaking posts about the most common dreadful errors in prayer, on the one hand, or to see broadly-painted pictures of the unity of Buddhism-Sufism-Sikhism-Kabbalah-Vedanta-Christian Mysticism (we wouldn't want to imply Christianity is on the same terms as other religions, would we, nor would we know that it's called Hesychasm?)-mahjicke-voodoo-funk shway-I'm getting carried away & irritated & lost the track of that sentence.

Problem is, most people on LJ are as young, foolish & opinionated as I am! I use LJ a lot now because living here I don't know anyone outside our group & it's physically difficult to meet other people. I love the beloveds; there's not anyone I know that I don't love and like & respect, however crazy they might be; the hearts are so full of His holy light. I just... want some diversity.

Diversity. Everyone here is white and from a middle class background, except for a couple of East Asians. Almost everyone has a previous incarnation as a new ager or health nut. I miss going into a masjid & praying with brothers from the Bronx, Senegal, Pakistan, Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, and Florida. I miss old men who don't speak any English & pray so reverently. I don't miss afternoon teachings in highly amplified Arabic with the reverb turned up to give you that big-stone-mosque feel or whatever it is they think is cool about lots of echo on the PA, or teachings from shaykhs who want to see the Israelis and Indians driven into the ocean. I don't miss convert brothers my age reciting every slogan they've ever heard with no chance to make it into a conversation, but I do miss Mustafa Ramadan, an older homeless peddlar from Panama with hands strong as hammers: I ran into him here & there around the city & for five or ten or twenty bucks of sadaqa, or nothing, getting beautiful teachings and a beautiful smile. Meeting him always made me wonder why I was in such a hurry to meet a dunya friend to see a movie, or to get to Borders to browse, & I usually felt like a jerk when I didn't stay long --I was always the one to leave; he was happy to talk to me as long as I wanted to stay. I miss Imam Feisal and his insightful if fairly mental sermons that assume non-tariqa specific knowledge.

This is coming out some because things are sooooo quiet at the Lake House. It's nice & I'm glad to have quiet space for just Shamsi & me, but I'm feeling even more isolated, I realize just now.

It won't last forever, alhamdulillah! And we have it, alhamdulillah! We have each other, and we have the Love in our hearts, and He will keep turning us between His fingers.

03:15pm 24/06/2002

bismillah
my heart is racing. my mind is reeling. so many thoughts & concerns. money. future. skills. talents. partner. community. prayer. commitment. see, i put money first in that list. money is only bothering me right now because i bought tickets to vancouver to meet a woman and that made me realize how broke i am. i put fliers up advertising my services for computerry --installations, maintenance, networking, etc.-- & haven't heard anything except from a classifieds paper recommending i advertise with them. i hope to put up more tonight here in yonkers but still --the bus i'm currently scheduled to leave on is next week. what can i do in 7 days?

i'm forgetting about the woman i'm going to meet. i'm scared that i'm so lonely, so needful of a partner that i'm jumping the gun. or maybe my need has only broken through layers of inhibiting bullshit in my mind to get me to do what i need to. talking to her, hearing her voice, seeing what she's shown me... this is not just desperate desire, nor will i denigrate the power of desire or its holiness.

the other day i remembered an evening early in college. i had thick, soft hair that hung down my back. at a little party with goth friends, there were a couple of girls my age or younger who brushed & played with my hair. it seemed very nice to me that these girls would interest themselves in me enough to play with my hair, but i was too naive to realize or exploit the possibilities of that attention. it took me a very long time to realize that people could be attracted to me, that i had beauty. remembering sitting around with a couple of gothy girls & their brushes, i see the desire immanent in the world, the longing for the eternal beloved, the sole friend, the manifestation of grace and joy and peace right there, wearing black lace and combat boots; but there's also separation there. universal desire is crushed by a forgetful world from "all creation is placed in my breast, and i give myself wholely to my creator in the form he places in front of me at this moment" to "this boy's really cute, maybe we can hook up! he better call me."

as i've been writing this i received an email from a woman i met twice & have kept in touch with occasionally. she was the girlfriend of a friend instrumental in my involvement with sufism; i was telling one of you about him the other day. we were immediately attracted then... an acquaintence told me not to get involved, that we were too similar & would burn each other up. i didn't listen to that, but i didn't pursue her, either; she lived in another city & was with my friend, right? she's kept writing, sometimes, just like lea has in the year or so since we came into contact, and every time i see her name in my inbox... i feel aroused, wondering, guilty, curious.

nobody i've met has ever made me immediately want to go across the continent & look & their eyes, listen to their breath as we sit on the grass & pray for the guidance, is this the person i am to be with now? is this the person i am to give myself to wholely, not just as a friend in this moment but in marriage, flesh, wealth and struggle?

there are a lot of loose ends in my life, astral connections between myself and others in all kinds of relations and means, but right now i'm writing about men, women and desire. day and i spoke this week. my saying "i'm going to vancouver to meet this woman" prompted her to reexamine her feelings & tell me she's still in love with me, and to wonder why neither of us ever felt strongly enough to get on a bus & go spend time to meet & try to really know. there's also a dervish sister in albuquerque; i asked praying readers of my journal to pray for us when we saw each other at the conference. she wants me to go out there; i could stay in the tekke & even have chaperonage when we talk :> we wrote a little after the conference, with a gap before her latest email in between which this thing with lean has unfolded, & i don't know what to say to her.

i feel like as much as i've been aware since i was 11 years old or so of the power of desire and in the last few years of the need for a committed, married, sexual partner, i've still been very self-centered & haven't looked out past the borders of my immediate situation. every one of these people is a vast reality, every one of these people is someone i've shared attraction to including but extending past personal and physical attraction into shared spiritual understanding & whatever. what can i do, say "sorry i let you see god in me, there's this other person i see god in now, but i'll call you if it doesn't work out"? how bent is that?

by the morning hours
by the night when it is still
your lord has not abandoned you
and does not hate you
what is after will be better
than what came before
to you the lord will be giving
you will be content
did he not find you orphaned and give you shelter
find you lost and guide you
find you in hunger and provide for you
as for the orphan
do not opress him
and one who asks
do not turn him away
and the grace of your lord
proclaim

did we not open your heart
and relieve you of the burden
that was breaking your back
did we not honor your name
after the hard time
there is the easing
after the hard time
there is the easing
when you finish, strive again
and in your lord aspire