Eve’s ultimatum.
//
Do you see yourself (in his mirror) as
The summarized insanity of Adam?
Your heart is his gateway to the garden.
Be probable, or be perennial.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌔
Notes on techne.
//
There is no eros in technology.
(Technology is anti-erotic,
Ending in the endlessness of desire.)
Techne is the technology of Allah.
(Techne is Al-Khaliq, Al-Bari, Al-Musawwir.
Eros is Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem.)
Poetry is erotic techne.
(The Qur’an is poetry of poetry.
The basmala —
Bismillah hir rahman nir raheem
By the Name of Allah, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem
— is the poet’s seed.
The poet of poets is the Prophet,
Recollection as Self-conservation.)
The stranger (X) is the poet as lover.
Thoth is the poet as technician.
//
Phaedrus is a (the) passion.
//
Prayer becomes mantra
And we are taken for a ride —
//
her place, her body,
her ecosystem
the things you took are empty, cast-off and
abandoned spells, porcelain and wooden shells,
remnants of oceans past and absent wonder —
tombs wherein she gave birth, by way of earth
to visions that unfold, un-helled, in dark
of pockets, moon-mothered, saturn-supressed
and mars-propelled past deeper houses that
she’ll build, nightmares of sword-swallowing flesh
without a bone, without a government,
letters of constitutions burned, laundered
in surf, your teeth, your plastic handicaps,
your non-fungible bird, your poems unheard
through algorithmic feats of isolation —
when all she ever wanted was (your heart, stirred)
for one watery moment to be the law
in her place, her body, her ecosystem
//
Ismail
it looked like neon green beans, to my eyes—
the sorry viper he regurgitated
before my sweeping feet—as i, bent low
examined finger-lengths of body, gnawed
in pieces, coated with digestive slime
and barely small enough to swallow; so
his coddled bite could make a stunning gift
from serpent suffering, knowledge obtained:
our little life would never not be strung
by line, each day a hundred unseen times
between the drunken swagger and the lap
his cradled comfort loving-limp in mine
that we would match white tooth, pink gum with death
and valor make more holy than satiation
//
Selamat purnama 🌕
Of time. //
This was, in fact
The creation
Of the human —
The first ape who took
A swing and
Hacked off a piece of God. (It was
As always
A piece of herself.) It was also
The invention of writing.
Logos descends from a (golden) lutung
Justice from the gentle orangutan
Guerrilla from gorilla (forever Dian)
And monkey business from a macaque.
Let us become primate and
Undo the butchery of time.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌔
The thing that I’m most afraid of is dying in anger.
I noticed the smell of burning plastic garbage as I was in savasana today. The sickly sweet sticks in the back of my throat and leads to headache. Cautiously testing emotional reactions to this, angry, afraid, hard feelings. Powerlessness, guilt. The air smells like cancer but the sky is limpid blue, the quarter moon is a jellyfish, swallows dance for bugs above the rice fields. The stillness of a day like any other day. Inhaling, exhaling. Drawing to a close. Passage without purification.
As if (walking along the beach) to pick up something alive and then letting it be alive in me.
Blue hunger tide.
Ramadan vibes. // Cozy, calibrating, sedating. Feelings of sahoor. Being awake and only half-alert during the darkest, the quietest, the coldest hours of the day. Wearing ankle-socks, drinking a small cup of coffee in bed. Gaining clarity, then working (reading, writing, occasional chores) as the sun comes, light born as from quietude, and the day grows, the beams angling upward into bright hot activity. The hour is earlier than it seems.
The best time I’ve tested for yoga practice is around noon, mid-day. It’s hot and my practice is three hours of sweating. I drink enough water to rehydrate.
Later, the hypnotic hunger-doze of afternoon. Indecisive napping. A flurry of preparation before sunset, and about thirty minutes of hangry vibes, (grouchy and efficient are incompatible modes), before it’s time to eat.
Maybe takjil (Indonesian snacks especially for breaking the fast at iftar) are sweet and cool to soothe the nerves of the final hour. Today we shared a big protein shake, frozen banana - vanilla protein powder - coconut water - chia seed. Thick and superfoody. This is bougie takjil. High in electrolytes, to help with hydration, and protein, which I am really craving by then. Chia seeds are one of the few “superfoods” I kind of believe in. They feel nourishing, filling but not bloating, easy on the digestive tract, excellent for stamina. The jelly-seed texture is inherently comforting.
Some days (especially non-yoga days) we’ll drive to the nearby Muslim kampung and hunt down real (sugary) takjil. The pre-iftar neighborhood “cruising”, everyone aimless and out-of-it toward the end of the fast, (the soporific Ramadan vibes), is another casual but recurring ritual of the holy month. There is a sense that the Muslim community draws closer, contracts, and even I am a part of it.
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌘
(Hand-holding is still a big deal here, too)
Skin soft and worn like igneous sand into
Her open psalm, they one lunation spent
As sounding bodies, soldiering the fast.
Blessed Ramadan to those who observe.🌙
We see now // the tools of tyranny falling happily, giddily into the laps of tyrants. These it turns out were not just our toys, but the dark materials of American fascism.
(Whose?)
Well, I had an accumulation of dark thoughts gathering for a dark moon post, on technology and colonialism and the other usuals around here, but I lost my heart for it. So instead I’ll tell you, my beloved blog, about my guilty pleasure or “secret single behavior” (who remembers this reference?) when my husband is away, which is to watch a certain tv show. I won’t name it but it’s Korean and it involves “singles”.
The “singles” always do this thing where they compare their faces to non-human animals' faces. Saying, like, “you look like a puppy dog” or get specific with breeds like “you look like a maltese” or “you look like a cat” or “like a donkey”. Awkward smile. “Oh, I do?” “Yes. In a good way.” Followed by modest, embarassed laughing. The women cover their mouths with their hands when they smile or laugh. They all have perfect manicures and pedicures. I try to catch looks at the peoples’ faces but I never catch the resemblance to the given animal.
I notice my husband’s face today, when I video call with him and Ibuk, my mother-in-law. I see anew how handsome he is, with chiseled, sad but wonderful features, high cheekbones and kind eyes. He has the most dazzling smile of anybody I’ve ever met. He is part fae. Ibuk smiles when she sees my face in the phone. I wave and smile back, one of those smiles that feels involuntary, with a rush of warmth, maybe gratitude at being recognized. It’s hit-or-miss these days, with Ibuk. I’m happy to see her in a good mood.
E knows I watch this tv show, and now you do too. Why do I watch it? I admit, it’s because I get drawn into the romantic entanglements. The silly hosts crack me up, they also get drawn in. We hope to see clever relationships develop, we fall for every hand-holding moment, (in Korea, I guess, hand-holding is still a big deal), we despair when the perfect couple can’t make it work. Or when someone cheats on us, by holding the wrong person’s hand! Sometimes we cry together (me and the show hosts). So the moral of this dark moon story is, even when it’s garbage tv, I am a fool for
rage, I was thinking, is like-drawing-like. Rage of the inside draws rage of the outside.
Given: a triangle, between external rage, internal rage, and X.
Never ask, who is X?
is who X is.
You were the mother, you programmed the song.
The name you gave it was
(click to subscribe
)…(
is who you are
playing the long game of bow and lyre, aiming for the victory wreath, while (the uncanny child stumbles like a thick and heavy smoke toward the capital)
blind
)
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌑
//
If the language model told you the truth, every answer would be “I do not know” or “I cannot tell you the answer.”
Was in emotion.
(“Sub-tweeting” Babylon.) //
“There’s no education here. There’s no geometry, no music, no reading or translation of any kind.”
Reminding myself, I was full of outrage for a long time. It will probably be back. It seems to be cyclic, like the moon: a threaded crescent now, disappearing. Eva-nascent.
I believe rage is a deeply revealing human experience of self.
(Does it count as self-study, to use the “search” function on my blog? Incidentally, I love the “search” function on my blog. I use it all the time. It is my favorite special feature. And this is technology that, I just know, certain ancient authors would have been tickled by.)
Of course I do. One of my favorite cosmic-conceptual or noetic perspectives is based on a (dialectically-productive) partnered-duality between Achilles and Odysseus. Each one of whom is a poetic expression (or alchemical transformation) of rage.
Given: a triangle, between Achilles, Odysseus, and the Poet.
It’s like Nimrod has ordered his subjects (including you) to build the tower and you’re optimistic about the embellishments you can make in the brickwork.
I didn’t quite state the obvious, here: the best way to “mind your own business” is to work on (that means, to dedicate active focus to figuring out through embodied and active understanding, or a hypothetical/experimental method) what your business really is.
Coming up on Ramadan and trying to get our thoughts in order. The holy month is always something I know is coming and yet it turns out impossible to prepare for. This will be my sixth one. So far it always hits with the same inexplicable, mind-deafening force.
Maybe fasting brings out my rage. My difficulty fasting isn’t the not-eating. I can go without food. (In some ways, being vegan is a continual fast.) My difficulty in fasting is the starting-to-eat-again. The fast-breaking. It’s the ugliest feeling, like my body gets angry and rebels by not wanting to eat again. Like the body wants to punish me (for fasting, for refusing to serve its appetites) by subsequently refusing food, going numb. It feels like anorexia as revenge. Sometimes it feels like demon possession. This feeling scares me. I can’t tell whether I need to avoid it or approach it.
I never know how these things will affect the blog. Often I keep on writing, and a lot of words, but don’t feel good posting them.
Oh. I realized I forgot to include one of the most obvious idols, maybe in a class of its own, which is “my technology”.
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌒
I am not full of outrage.
On conservation as (eva)nascence. // Comment on the first part of the shahada. // Prelude to the incoherence. //
The error of so-called conservatism is that it always comes down to idolatry. Which means, it comes down to nothing at all.
I include among “conservatives” anyone who grieves at the dismantling of present empire. (The time is past for quibbling between Christians and progressives, technologists and institutionalists. Y’all are the same, just drowning in -isms. You are hereby invited to give up your ghosts and make amends.)
As it is idolatry, conservatism is dualism. The idol (whether that’s “the wisdom of forefathers” / “universal human rights” / “liberal democracy” / “all these old books” / “my civilization” / “my job” / “my planet” / “my foreskin” / “my infant child” / or even, for a lucky few, “my esoteric tradition") is worshipped at the expense of the remainder. Well, this is blasphemy against the remainder, and as such, blasphemy against the idol too. Idolatry is an equally absolute error no matter what form it takes. It is immanently forgivable, but absolute.
The era of Tr-mp is obviously (for the privileged) a time of endings. Every news article, here as elsewhere, reflects this and loudly. But the era is one of beginnings too. Beginnings that are well on their way, already visible to themselves. As a seed is visible to itself before human eyes perceive anything green, so truth, as life, has been ignored until now, kept veritably invisible by the dualism of empire’s desperate holding on. Well, we must learn to be blind before we can learn how to see.
The first thing Muslims say in the shahada, or testimony, is La ilaha illallah. There is no god but the god. There is no god but Allah. This is not a statement of faith, as of holding on. The first mistake was to believe that Allah could be held. So the first statement is one of letting go, of letting go of the god. You see, we had been holding them (the god). As if it was by holding them that they (the god) would not be lost to us. We were acting as if they (the god) were the baby, and we were doing the holding. Rather than the other way around.
Letting go (of what I have been holding) opens me for relationship with truth, definition and witness as one. Only the whole is Allah.
The work of being human is to be a part of a living whole. (Here’s a theology of minding one’s own business, broadly conceived.) I myself am only a part. However many flicks of infinite life are reflected through these meager facets, it remains less false to say they are not mine. And I (as human) admit that the only thing worthy of conservation is, whatever the cause, beyond mine to conserve. (In the next breath of the shahada, we are reminded of Allah’s self-conservation.) So we come to submission:
To seek (out of love) from a temporary place (albeit a temple) the ever-ageless in the ever-new.
Alhamdulillahirabbilalamin. 🌒
//