Category Archives: Blog

O let me bathe my soul in colours;
let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow…

— Khalil Gibran

While I was getting stuck with needles today at my acupuncture appointment in Beirut, my Lebanese acupuncturist said that she’s been giving herself acupuncture this week–to ease her stress from all the bombs. From today’s sherbert sunset on the sea, you’d never know that there were rockets falling, mock bombings, or border wars near these shores. Helpless to stem the turbulent tide of tit for tat, some are seeking serenity on the side of the sea, and among the cedar trees. I’ve even heard it said that between the mortar shells and the sea shells lie millions of moments like grains of sand, where all fear disappears, and gone are the sun and the sea and the sky and the me…

I am forever walking upon these shores,
Betwixt the sand and the foam,
The high tide will erase my foot-prints,
And the wind will blow away the foam.
But the sea and the shore will remain
Forever.

— Khalil Gibran

At martial arts practice last night in Beirut, I was reminded of a move I often used to use when playing capoeira and cartwheeling around the world–the move which I’m demonstrating in the photo above…

After having been forced to wait for several hours on the Russian-Estonian border while the two countries were engaged in a diplomatic row, I felt compelled to celebrate with a cartwheel or two on the grounds of Narva Castle when we finally crossed over. While a forearm cartwheel might look difficult, in reality it’s not that hard–the challenge lies in transcending the mind’s resistance to the body moving towards the ground with the elbows first instead of hands. Once that mental obstacle is overcome, a forearm cartwheel really is no different than a regular one…and it’s just as much fun…

When I was leaving my martial arts class tonight in Beirut (having worked up an appetite), I felt pulled in the direction of this Mobile Potato Bar. After today’s bombing, I thought, what better comfort food could there be than fresh-baked spuds? Later, when I returned home, I learned that rockets from Syria were falling on northern Lebanon. More and more, it feels like Lebanon is quickly becoming the center of the Middle East’s sectarian wars…

I just came back from my daily stroll in Beirut to more breaking news about today’s bombing, and how it might relate to the war in Syria…

This morning, with tensions already running high in Lebanon over the opening of the Hariri assassination trial, a car/suicide bomb exploded in the Beqaa, killing at least five people and injuring many more. In response to the last few bomb attacks, security measures have been tightened all over Beirut, including in my neighborhood–with no one able to predict when or where the next bomb may go off…

The scribe takes precedence of the priest,
stands second only to the Pharaoh.

— H.D.

In the video above, H.D., a modernist poet and patient of Freud’s, reads from “Helen in Egypt”–one of her many poems inspired by archaeology. Symbols in the poem include an Amun temple, the goddess Isis, and hieroglyphic writing too…

How they grip us through think and thick,
These barnacle dead! This lady here’s no kin
Of mine, yet kin she is: she’ll suck
Blood and whistle my narrow clean
To prove it…

— Sylvia Plath, the American Isis

I spend a lot of time in cemeteries. I feel most at home with the dead. This December, while excavating a Nubian temple in Sudan, I came across a number of bones, a number of bodies. As a writer, I can’t help but respond to these bodily relics with writing. Staring death directly in the face is one of the best meditation exercises that I know of. Archaeology has long provided inspiration for writers and thinkers–from Freud to poets like Shelley and H.D.–to meditate on the meaning, imagery, and resonance of the past…

While we were uncovering the body above from the sands of the Sahara, I thought of a Sylvia Plath poem, entitled “All the Dead Dears,” which she wrote after viewing a body in the Archaeological Museum in Cambridge–its ankle slightly gnawed off by a mouse and a shrew…

And to sanctuary: usurping the armchair
Between tick
And tack of the clock, until we go,
Each skulled-and-crossboned Gulliver
Riddled with ghosts, to lie
Deadlocked with them, taking roots as cradles rock.

Digging up the dead dears in the desert, while being whipped by the wind for our dirty deed, I remembered a second poem Plath wrote, which she reads below, about the cemetery in Heptonstall–where she would be buried herself one year later…

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor…

— Rumi

Over the past year, I’ve been studying up on Sufism in Oman–a topic which generally receives little attention. To read a review of the Royal Opera House’s two day Sufi program this week in Oman, please click here…

While exploring Rumi’s roots in Afghanistan–or at least the memory of them–I encountered this group of men on horseback, blocking the road. After we explained to them that we were lost, they pointed the way to the district where many Afghans believe Rumi’s family once lived (even if Tajiks maintain that he was from Vakhsh)…

Let sadness and your fears of death
sit in the corner and sulk.

The sky itself reels with love.
There is one being inside
all of us, one peace.

Poet, let every word tremble its wind bell.
Saddle the horse with great anticipation…

— Rumi

To read today’s NYTimes article on wit and satire in Iranian politics, please click here…

In Java, a special gamelan ceremony, historically connected to Sufism, is held each year for Mawlid un-Nabi. The video of the “sekaten” procession above gives you a taste of the meditative flavor of Javanese gamelan music, which traditionally accompanies the elaborate sekaten festivities in Yogyakarta. The sekaten ceremony is explained below in this selection from an article in the Jakarta Globe…

Gamelan sets have been handed down through generations. Many were believed to have special powers and certain sets are to this day only played on auspicious occasions, such as during the Sekaten ceremony to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad in the palace of the sultan of Yogyakarta.

The sets used in the Sekaten ceremony are venerated not only in the way they are handled, but also in their given names: the Foremost and Venerable Honey Thunder and the Foremost and Venerable Harmonious Dragon. These sets are said to have the power to compel people to pledge the syahadatain [shahada], the bearing of witness that each Muslim must take — that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.

The Javanese of the first Islamic sultanate in Demak pronounced the Arabic word “syahadatain” as “sekaten.” The Sekaten ceremony to this day is still the main celebration held annually by the sultan, believed to be blessed by the wali, or [Sufi] saints, who spread the word of Islam in Java. The gamelan instruments played during the celebration have become a symbol of a valuable legacy for building and maintaining community values and resilience…

Today, many Muslims around the world are celebrating Mawlid un-Nabi. Yesterday, on the eve of this special day, while I was playing with a two-year old Syrian refugee with cancer at St. Jude in Beirut, her mom shared with me fond memories of watching Sufis in Syria celebrate this popular holiday with ecstatic whirling and large, public dhikrs back home. But since the war in Syria began, she explained, all public celebrations in her city have ceased…

As we began teaching her daughter how to count in Arabic, by dropping marbles one by one into a plastic cup, I thought of all the other numbers being tallied here in Lebanon. The number of Syrian refugees. The number of books burned. The number of rebels wounded. The number of bystanders killed…

While counting marbles, I began to wonder: when will peace return to Syria, and set those Sufis whirling again? When will my little friend recover from cancer, and return home to count dervishes in Damascus–instead of marbles in Beirut? When, I wondered, will open hearts join together to make a more peaceful future for today’s children–to last long after we’ve all whirled on…

Inside each of us, there’s a continual autumn.
Our leaves fall and are blown out over the water…

— Rumi