You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'reading' tag.
He who came in a red frock in years past,
He came this year in a brown garb.
The Turk about whom you heard that time,
Appeared as Arab this year.
The friend is one, only the dress changes.
He exchanged the garb and returned to me again!
The wine is one, only the bottles are different.
How beautifully does this wine intoxicate us!
~ Rumi
Rumi’s writings are beautiful. They are deep and resonant… they speak to my soul. I thought I’d share this one with you, as it (abstractly) fits with my rust/metallics postcard piece.
My creative process has slowed immeasurably… call it a lack in artistic stamina. I have materials for postcard production set out and ready to go, but after making less than a handful, I tire of the task and need to do something else. I’ve been feeding my mind and soul… reading… articles online and in magazines and books… fiction and non. It calms the churning going on in my mind… feeding it new material silences the chatter.
I have the weirdest thoughts sometimes. When I was young (and I suppose when exactly that was is all subjective, depending upon whose paradigm you are peering through… it’s all very ambiguous) I used to worry about losing my eyesight, and wondered how I would cope if such a tragedy were to occur. Occasionally… ambiguously… fleetingly… the same worry resurfaces (perhaps when I try to read small type and can’t anymore even with my “progressive” lenses-ha!). For reasons unknown to me, my grandfather (my mother’s father) lost his eyesight in old age, and my mother would tell of how the girls would take turns reading to him. Being as addicted to books as I am (and I suppose there are worst addictions to be afflicted with) it would be positively demoralizing not to be able to read… or have sight. Being a visual artist as well as a writer (let’s not forget the avid reader part), I ponder the ramifications of not having visual faculties, and whether I’d somehow develop new ones or strengthen the ones that are already there to compensate. (Uh-oh… off on a tangent… ) In the last Matrix movie, Neo loses is eyesight, but somehow manages to “see” with his eyes covered, in fact without the use of his eyes. He is able to sense his surroundings broken down into electrical impulses… well, essentially, all that we “see” is really the brain’s translation of electrical impulses sent via the eyes to the brain. Would there be a way to translate those impulses without the use of the eyes as a road connecting the two? Is there really anything out there at all? Is what we are sensorily experiencing just a really big (but really good) mind fuck? Well… who knows… Some days I wish that was all it was… just a bunch of us little electronic blips on the radar screen of life, randomly repelling and attracting… other times I wish there was infintestimally more to it. And would someone please explain how I can sometimes feel inexplicably lonely in a room full of people while at other times, when I’m walking alone on the beach or sitting by a mountain stream, I feel more connected to everything and everyone than ever? That’s what it’s all about for me, really… meaningful connections… with people, mostly, but I’ll settle for pets and locations, too. I picked up a book today (tell me you’re not surprised)… well, actually, it’s a magazine of sorts, called BOMB. One of the literary pieces included in this #100 issue is Incantations: Songs, Spells and Images by Mayan Women. A contributor by the name of Xpetra Ernandes writes, in her Witchcraft for Attracting a Man: “I want him to come with flowers in his heart. With all his heart, I want him to talk to my body. I want his blood to ache for me when he sees me on the way to the market [...] I want to join myself to him. I want this man to be my other half.” Wow… I’m certain that many women feel this way… this strange compulsion for the ultimate communion with a man… not any man but THE man. The man who gets her, sees her (all of her, just the way she is) and STILL feels drawn into this bizarre melding that transcends … all. Through experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that women are the only ones afflicted by such fanciful thoughts, and men, well… they’re just happy getting their rocks off and going off to forage for food (or something like that)… not that they’re shallow or anything, but the reptile brain genes just haven’t receded enough. *sigh*
