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This is a piece from the poem "A message from strange lands" by Ghada Al Samman in her "Letters of Nostalgia to Jasmine" (رسائل الحنين إلى الياسمين ) links:1, 2, 3 and my translation. As always, Ghada is too feminine for me but her imagery is simply brilliant.
لأنك تشبه الضباب، تخترقني،
وأمتلئ بك من حيث لا أدري..
لأنك تشبه الصاعقة،
أجهل متى تنشب فيَّ نارك أو ضوءك..
لأنك تشبه الأفق،
يستحيل احتضانك أو امتلاكك أو تسويرك..
لأنك تشبه الريح تخافك أجراسي..
لأنك تشبه الماء الجامح تهابك سدودي..
لأنك تشبه حمى الجنون تطلق هذياني..
ولأني أشبهك أخشاك، أحبك وأكرهك في آن،
وأحدّق في زلزال أمزجتك كمن يُحدّق في مرآة،
وأهمس لك داخل لحظة واحدة: أهلاً.. ووداعاً،
يا من يُسقيني عطشي، فـأرتوي
Because you are like fog you penetrate me
and I am filled with from I don’t know where ..
Because you are like the storm
I don’t know when your fire or light will get to me ..
Because you are like the horizon
it is impossible to hug, own, or fence you ..
Because you are like the wind my bells fear you ..
Because you are like the untamed water my dams dread you ..
Because you are like the fevers of madness you unleash my hallucinations ..
And because I am like you I fear you, I love and hate you at once,
I stare at the earthquakes of your whims like she who stares in a mirror
I whisper to you, hello and goodbye, at once,
You, who lets me drink my own thirst till I am fulfilled.
I wrote this piece with discovery/Aletheia in mind but in retrospect it reads like something on quantum physics. Leibniz is entangled inside my thoughts again. This is so messed up but here it is anyway.
Near yet far, clear yet blurry, one yet many.
Too many to count and too many to uncount.
How much light has gone by without an eye to see it? How much light will go by without an eye to see it?
I can almost touch you but then it is not you anymore. I can almost see you but then my eyes are not my eyes anymore.
I change you and you change me.
A glimpse is all I can know.
But what are all these glimpses and where do they come from?
A glimpse is all I can’t know.
A steady gaze is what I want. To be immersed in light. To be baptized in it. To be blinded by it.
To really see.
Then change wouldn’t be pure anymore because what’s pure doesn’t really change.
Then what’s near would be not far, what’s clear not blurry, and the one not many.
And time (and space) would be the pure illusion it seems.
A practical scientific find:
How to naturally reset your sleep cycle overnight
As I have been thinking much about evolution lately and about how its mechanisms guides some of our behavior as persons and as whole societies, I found the above result interesting.
I wonder if this has to do with Muslims fasting in Ramadan tending to stay up all night after they break their fast at sunset. Of course, they do so to have their “so7or” late at night, but do they become too awake and party late into the night because of the food clock taking over the regular daylight clock or is this simply a middle Eastern cultural phenomena? Some statistics would help.
For the past week, I have been reading and thinking about how to take the best photographs. Composition is what makes a photograph. So since a few friends are interested in this: I am sharing some nice online resources here.
A page that would make a great start is on Macteens: Simple introduction and the rule of thirds.
If you are a video person, Videojug is a must visit. Although I have seen better advice in other “rules of composition” pages, the whole array of photography-related topics presented there is satisfying.
Amateur Snapper is another very helpful resource, especially its rules page. I found its tips on taking portrait and architectural photography to be very concise and illuminating.
The exposure basics at Picture Correct is a quick and to the point introduction. I haven’t explored the site much but you might find more nice things there.
Finally, there is also the Digital Photography School: whose 10 elements of composition show you a different take on things (here and here). Its portrait tips are just as unique while its 100 things I learned about Photography is fun to read.
The dPS has a weekly assignment forum which is a great idea for beginning photographers and it’s a great place to look at a variety of photos on the same subject taken by different people.
If you have the time, it might be a wonderful idea to start a photoblog, check out Cool Photoblogs for inspiration.
My resolution is: shoot more and plan the shooting; compose more and crop less and shoot more portraits which capture the essence of the subject like this one:
Happy shooting :)
Audrey Kawasaki is an artist originally from LA. I stumbled upon her work looking for “gaze” on google images but her artwork has amazed me. Her blog is definitely a bookmark I will revisit often. This kind of art makes doing science seem so so boring. Here is her popular “She Who Dares”:
And here are my picks from here February 08 exhibit which she posted all online.
“Karamari”
“If Only You Were Here”
“After It’s Done”
“Tear me”
“Not the Only One”
You could also call it “Knowledge and explanation through reason, faith, or feeling (the mind, the soul, or the heart) in space and time” but my editor wouldn’t like that too much.
Somewhere in the common space connecting philosophy, religion, science, and art lies an earnest search for a sensible worldview. There is a gaze.
On the most basic levels, there are two questions: What can we and do we know? How do we and can we explain what we know? This is MY post-structuralist summary of world thought:
Egypto-Judeo: You can’t explain everything outside yourself but you can know (through faith) what you cant explain.
Chinese: You don’t need an explanation for anything.
Indian: When you reach Nirvana, you will know again all you knew before. But you can’t explain any of it to anyone else.
Greco-Latin: Before and while in the process of explaining, explain the process of explaining.
Explaining = Showing = Teaching.
MY path forks in two here: Eastern and Western:
Eastern.
Jesus: If you know love (God), He explains everything to you and makes everything perfect. Love is the ultimate knowledge and explanation. Pure beauty, pure theory.
(Some) Muslims: Knowledge is only from God. Explanation from us.
(Some) Sufis: All the knowledge and explanation you seek are in you. Look with your heart’s mind. Look with your soul, and not at it, and you will see the beautiful. I am the beautiful, therefore I am God.
http://www.phantasmaphile.com/2007/07/kako-ueda.html
Western.
Vatican Theology: Let’s try to know and explain everything through God and God through everything.
Renaissance Art and Science: I am only sure I know myself (I know I exist) so let me see what else I can know?
David Hume: Knowledge is an illusion. Explanation, an illusion of an illusion.
Keirkegaard: “The individual is the category through which, in a religious aspect, this age, all history, the human race as a whole, must pass.” I should try to explain myself first. Since only God knows me, only He can explain me.
Nietzsche: There will be a man who can explain himself, the ubermunch. Man is an abyss.
Modernist: I know myself but can I explain myself? Let me be confused for a bit.
Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy:
The tools of explaining need to be examined. What we can’t explain, we must pass over in silence. (Original: “what we can’t speak of, we must pass over in silence.”)
“The world is all that is the case” : What is your collection of facts? What is your world?
Absurdist: Explain this!
Heiddeger: Even the simplest concept, Being, is an enigma.
We don’t know our tools of explaining well. Let’s deconstruct them; the pieces of language tell us more about history than philosophy. Only then the Truth (Aletheia) may unfold.
http://www.salvatierraimports.com/images/productimages/prints/Gaze.jpg
Post-Structuralist.
Foucault: Our languages tools hint at a changing underlying meta-system of thought. They carry within them the discourse between ideas which is the closest thing to the truth (one may hope for).
pomo: I know what my tools of explantation may tell me and I will try to find out what they have concealed. Many stories (expose) many systems of thought (hence) many explanations (hinting at) many knowledge (equals) many truths. This reminds me of the tower of Babel (Babylon).
Derrida: The language tools were not made for explaining. Their purpose was only socio-political/poetical: to construct a grand narrative. Do I want to deconstruct a grand narrative?
New age: Whoever you are, know with your heart and explain to me.
I know some of these might seem narrow-minded but that’s the price of compactness. Perhaps I will expand on this soon. If you feel there are essential links missing in this grand narrative of mine, let me know. I am often ready to see new perspectives.
Some people like Jean-Luc Godard say we live in a commercial age where the gaze have collapsed. Should we ask then: What is the next step in this path? What is your next step? What is mine?
A poem sung by Fairouz a long time ago:
ذاكر يا ترى طورنا الأخضر حيث كانت تفئ الطيور
يومها حبنا كان في حينا قصة الورد لحن الزهور
ذاكر يا ترى شعري الأشقر والشريطة والشال الحرير
حين خبئت في سمعي المرهف همة الريح كفيض العبير
و بعد ترى من حكايا
وأثقل روض السمر
تحدث عنه الصبايا
يجئ إليه القمر
ذاكر يا ترى وعدك المقمر بالرجوع و قطف الورود
أم تراه مضى حبنا و أنقضى موسما مفردا لا يعود
and my translation:
Do you remember, I wonder, our green mountain to where the birds returned?
That day our love was, to everyone, the story of flowers and melody of roses.
Do you remember, I wonder, my blond hair, my ribbon, and my silk shawl,
When you hid in my ears the whisper of the wind like a flood of aroma?
And still, I find those who copied me and burdened the night-talk gardens,
The girls talk of them, and the moon comes to them.
Do you remember, I wonder, your moon-lit promise of return and of picking roses?
Or do you think our love has gone and ended, one lone season not to return?
Sorry for the unavoidable translation of Samar into night-talk, but it is what it is.
I don’t know who the author is but would like to. Anyone?
Thanks to Mary for giving me the song, now I can’t get it out of my head. (She talks about the song’s circumstances here).
And finally a7eb ashkor Google Translate wel magma3 al la3′awe we ma3hom al mo3gam al wageez for letting me stay up an extra 30 minutes past 5 am.
News of Bush’s post-presidential career in a hardware store is all that is needed to make anyone feel better about their career choices.
He sets the bar high. Probably no one will be able to keep up with this guy.
Let’s go on a trip together.
To the silent universe
doing what it does without asking
without questions
without purpose
with blackholes to take in all the absurdities,
with physics to describe but never explain what is happening on a basic level,
with art to throw the importance of the basic level out of the window.
Let’s go with one goal in mind,
to see.
The universe never asks.
It never tells us why too.
It is simply there, all bare, almost all
like the desert.
It goes on and on
we only take snapshots of it
you with a camera
me with data
or a word or two.
We see what we want to see.
But is what we see real?
You are a living piece of art.
Art is choice,
to pick what you like
but what you like
is not necessarily real.
Art is madness.
“The instant of decision is madness,”
so says Kierkegaard.
Our reality is always partial reality.
So we choose to include other bits by doing art.
Why do I write?
So that my writing may lead
to seas of dream
to oceans of imagination
to the unreal
to another nearly real
to the untouched
and untouchable.
For there to be a desert, there must be an artist.
Its silence powers her imagination.
The desert says “this is me,”
I have nothing to say about myself.
Hear the silence and the wind
and listen.
To me.
There is nothing but me.
For now,
For here,
I am me.
After reading two pieces about love by Mary and Koty, which should be linked soon, I was reminded of a basic characteristic of love and it was so shocking to me, and more shocking to remember how I used to view it earlier in my life, and this is:
Love can’t be bought.
It also can’t be sold. Even if you try to sell your love, you can’t.
Therefore, it can’t be negotiated. There is no economy and there is no measure of love. Like St. Augustine used to say: “the only measure of love is to love without measure.”
It is also not a gift. A gift of love is pity. Charity is not love in my dictionary which is not the case for some Catholics.
It is almost forced on the lover. It is the neon light photons that a fly can’t help but be attracted to to meet its end in their source.
Does this mean love has an element of blindness to it? Must it have an element of blindness?
It is the connection between the lovers. And the blindness is perhaps the imperfection of communication? Or perhaps the effect of the lovers being always inside their love, and never observing it from the outside?
Can anyone observe their love from the outside? I think not.
Love is an enclosure. It’s also a liberation.
Love is an exile. Love is freedom.
A liberation from what? From which prison? And freedom to where? I would love to hear what everyone who reads this thinks love liberates or frees them from and where it leads them.
