It is my intent to 'complete' the business of this blog -- this 'Quest
& Lust' -- and move n. I shared as much with friends.
Yet, a closing statement to share on the blog hadn't occurred
naturally to me yet.
Today, I have summoned my energy to deal with some old, yet unfinished
business. This blog *started* with that business. That is, the fall of
2004 - when my heart broke and scattered as dust.
Only one who had ever to undertake the task of reconstructing a heart
anew after such devastation can understand me. Perhaps.
What have I not seen meanwhile?
Light, dark. Friendship, estrangement, triumph, glory, bleakness,
wonder, compulsion, glory, debasement. I have experienced
enlightenment and dark, bleak moments that stretched upon days. So,
too, I have seen much sickness and ailment. How I have got through
these days and nights, only Allah knows.
Above all, I have seen that the human spirit, even when crushed to
crystal powder and mixed with common earth can retain its quality,
shine through, and, remarkably, gather itself again.
I have witnessed the miracle of creation through a prolonged state of
hanging on the verge of death.
I have lived.
For days now, I have experienced a paradoxical state: immense power of
spirit, extreme debilitation of body. My mind has never been sharper;
my heart, never been so powerfully connected. And yet, I have hardly
been so helplessly frail even as I enjoy a good state of health.
Today, after about a month of a bizarre sleeping pattern whereby I
work all night and sleep all day, I have found energy with me. I awoke
before noon. Then I turned to a task that as demanded my attention for
years. Something that is tied like an anchor to my being.
I turned to sorting out my papers.
Thousands of papers, accumulated over the years. A few disruptive
events meant that those papers -- those thousands of papers -- have
all mixed up.
Junk, and once-useful things expired over time mixed with my precious
creations: my writing and art. All things I wrote -- all prayers,
dreams, wishes; all stories of various ventures; all observations of
Nature & Man; all manuscripts and stage plays; all poems written by a
teenage me... *sigh!* all letters unposted; all chronicles of the
days; all things I learned and taught -- all them, all them beautiful
things lie there mixed with piles of brochures; notes from
conferences; memos from offices I long departed from; wedding invites
and birthday cards; course catalogs from universities I never applied
to...
When did I get into the business of accumulating? Of dreaming and
hoping for many multiple contradictory things?
~
Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed on behalf of everyone I ever met.
Yes, that now seems to be the case. Oh so clearly!
I looked into their eyes, and I knew where their soul longed to be...
and I made a note of those dreams. I saw those dreams so well and so
clear, they often settled in my vision of things to be -- and I never
really realized so.
I have dreamed and I have dreamed of ten thousand things. All
originating from that single soul and its longing that is common to
all people of the Earth.
"I have dreamed for you all!"I shout into the vastness of the Universe...
The Christmas of 2008, I was having a word with a wise, gentle woman.
I was in pain, confusion. "Why do I do this, Sofie? Why do I see the
world this way? Why do I see in people what they don't see in
themselves! Why does it hurt me when they do not follow their path!?
Am I being obstructive, intrusive?"
"You see them," she assured in calm, "with God's eyes. You see them as
they are."
Ah! Yes. Seeing them as they are, not how they delude themselves to
become! See them with the eyes of The Creator. A creator. See them as
they are!
... And this is what a writer does: she listens, she sees. A writer is
the consciousness of a world that is still waking up. A writer is no
being of her own -- she is borrowed from ten billion souls, and
returns to them. She is the string running through the world. She
passes through all the beads and pearls, hidden in their core, and yet
not them.
I think my real work, too -- my creative projects and outcomes, my
pages -- have hidden themselves among all that paper.
To sort the Pages from the paper aches me, but it is (I see as I write
these words) the necessary ache that precedes all creation. It is an
ache that all writers endure, thrive in.
It is an ache I feel. It is an ache worth "having".
.ra
--
Saturday, September 12, 2009
The Writer's Room
Karachi, Pakistan
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