Watching a
sunrise over
an empty
train station
dislodging
its too soon
passengers
at the corridor,
as clouds
shape dinosaurs,
reptillian rays
of yellow-white
through cotton-pink
into haze-blue
aura of dawn.

Step back
half an hour
the tracks
squeel, as a
record turned
back by the needle,
howling through,
as a whistle,
not long before
horns, traffic,
dragging feet,
tired muscle,
limping joints,
fast hands
cringing at
the dust,
dirt, grime,
of an ill-
maintained
public service,
gears in limbo
shift -
to a halt.

Attar’s Seven Valleys of Love, as translated by C.S. Nott

The Valley of the Quest

“When you enter the first valley, the Valley of the Quest, a hundred difficulties will assail you; you will undergo a hundred trials. There, the Parrot of heaven is no more than a fly. You will have to spend several years there, you will have to make great efforts, and to change your state. You will have to give up all that has seemed precious to you and regard as nothing all that you possess. When you are sure that you possess nothing, you still will have to detach yourself from all that exists. Your heart will then be saved from perdition and you will see the pure light of Divine Majesty and your real wishes will be multiplied to infinity. One who enters here will be filled with such longing that he will give himself up completely to the quest symbolized by this valley. He will ask of his cup-bearer a draught of wine, and he has drunk it nothing will matter except the pursuit of his true aim. Then he will no longer fear the dragons, the guardians of the door, which seek to devour him. When the door is opened and he enters, then dogma, belief and unbelief–all
cease to exist.”

The Valley of Love

“The next valley is the Valley of Love. To enter it one must be a flaming fire–what shall I say? A man must himself be fire. The face of the lover must be enflamed, burning and impetuous as fire. True love knows no after-thoughts; with love, good and evil cease to exist. “But as for you, the heedless and careless, this discourse will not touch you, your teeth will not even nibble at it. A loyal person stakes ready money, stakes his head even, to be united to his friend. Others content themselves with what they will do for you tomorrow. If he who sets out on this way will not engage himself wholly and completely he will never be free from the sadness and melancholy which weigh him down. Until the falcon reaches his aim he is agitated and distressed. If a fish is thrown onto the beach by the waves it struggles to get back into the water.
“In this valley, love is represented by fire, and reason by smoke. When love comes reason disappears. Reason cannot live with the folly of love; love gas nothing to do with human reason. If you possessed inner sight, the atoms of the visible world would be manifested to you. But if you look at things with the eye of ordinary reason you will never understand how necessary it is to love. Only a man who has been tested and is free can feel this. He who undertakes this journey should have a thousand hearts so that he can sacrifice one at every moment.”

The Valley of Understanding

“After the valley of which I have spoken, there comes another–the Valley Understanding, which has neither beginning nor end. No way is equal to this way, and the distance to be traveled to cross it is beyond reckoning. “Understanding, for each traveler, is enduring; but knowledge is temporary. The soul, like the body, is in a state of progress or decline; and the Spiritual Way reveals itself only in the degree to which the traveler has overcome his faults and weaknesses, his sleep and his inertia, and each will approach nearer to his aim according to his effort. Even if a gnat were to fly with all its might could it equal the speed of the wind? There are different ways of crossing this Valley, and all birds do not fly alike. Understanding can be arrived at variously–some have found the Mihrab, others the idol. When the sun of understanding brightens this road each receives light according to his merit and he finds the degree assigned to him in the understanding of truth. When the mystery of the essence of beings reveals itself clearly to him the furnace of this world becomes a garden of flowers. He who is striving will be able to see the almond in its hard shell. He will no longer be pre-occupied with himself, but will look up at the face of his friend. In each atom he will see the whole; he will ponder over thousands of bright secrets.
“But, how many have lost their way in this search for one who has found the mysteries! It is necessary to have a deep and lasting wish to become as we ought to be in order to cross this difficult valley. Once you have tasted the secrets you will have a real wish to understand them. But, whatever you may attain, never forget the words of the Koran, “Is there anything more?”
“As for you who are asleep (and I cannot commend you for this), why not put on mourning? You, who have not seen the beauty of your friend, get up and search! How long will you stay as you are, like a donkey without a halter!”

The Valley of Independence and Detachment

“The there comes the valley where there is neither the desire to possess nor the wish to discover. In this state of the soul a cold wind blows, so violent that in a moment it devastates an immense space; the seven oceans are no more than a pool, the seven planets a mere sparkle, the seven heavens a corpse, the seven hells broken ice. Then, an astonishing thing, beyond reason! An ant has the strength of a hundred elephants, and a hundred caravans perish while a rook is filling his crop.
“In order that Adam might receive the celestial light, hosts of green-clad angels were consumed by sorrow. So that Noah might become a carpenter of God and build the ark, thousands of creatures perished in the waters. Myriads of gnats fell on the army of Abrahah so that that king would be overthrown. Thousands of the first-born died so that Moses might see God. Thousands of people took to the Christian girdles so that Christ could possess the secret of God. Thousands of hearts and souls were pillaged so that Muhammad might ascend for one night to heaven. In this Valley nothing old or new has value; you can act or not act. If you saw a whole world burning until hearts were only shish kabab, it would be only a dream compared to reality. If myriads of souls were to fall into this boundless ocean it would be as a drop of dew. If heaven and earth were to burst into minute particles it would be no more than a leaf falling from a tree; and if everything were to be annihilated, from the fish to the moon, would there be found in the depths of a pit the leg of a lame ant? If there remain no trace of either of men or jinn, the secret of a drop of water from which all has been formed is still to be pondered over.”

The Valley of Unity

“You will next have to cross the Valley of unity. In this valley everything is broken in pieces and then unified. All who raise their heads here raise them from the same collar. Although you seem to see many beings, in reality there is only one–all make one which is complete in its unity. Again, that which you see as a unity is not different from that which appears in numbers. And as the Being of whom I speak is beyond unity and numbering, cease to think of eternity as before and after, and since these two eternities have vanished, cease to speak of them. When all that is visible is reduced to nothing, what is there left to contemplate?”

The Valley of Astonishment and Bewilderment

“After the Valley of Unity comes the Valley of Astonishment and Bewilderment, where one is a prey to sadness and dejection. There sighs are like swords, and each breath a bitter sight; there, is sorrow and lamentation, and a burning eagerness. It is at once day and night. There, is fire, yet a man is depressed and despondent. How, in his bewilderment, shall he continue his way? But he who has achieved unity forgets all and forgets himself. If he is asked: “Are you, or are you not? Have you or have you not the feeling of existence? Are you in the middle or on the border? Are you mortal or immortal?” he will reply with certainty: “I know nothing, I understand nothing, I am unaware of myself. I am in love, but with whom I do not know. My heart is at the same time both full and empty of love.”

The Valley of Deprivation and Death

“Last of all comes the Valley of Deprivation and Death, which is almost impossible to describe. The essence of the Valley is forgetfulness, dumbness and distraction; the thousand shadows which surround you disappear in a single ray of the celestial sun. When the ocean of immensity begins to heave, the pattern on its surface loses its form; and this pattern is no other than the world present and the world to come. Whoever declares that he does not exist acquires great merit. The drop that becomes part of this great ocean abides there for ever and in peace. In this calm sea, a man, at first, experiences only humiliation and overthrow; but when he emerges from this state he will understand it as creation, and many secrets will be revealed to him.
“Many beings have missed taking the first step and so have not been able to take the second–they can only be compared to minerals. When aloe wood and thorns are reduced to ashes they both look alike–but their quality is different. An impure object dropped into rose-water remains impure because of its innate qualities; but a pure object dropped into the ocean will lose its specific existence and will participate in the ocean and in its movement. In ceasing to exist separately it retains its beauty. It exists and non-exists. How can this be? The mind cannot conceive it.”

In Search of the Simorgh by Karima Sharabi

Karima explores the unseen walls and barriers that must be shed in order for human beings to awaken to their full potential.  She has created an illustration of the Sufi Poem by Farid Udiin Attar entitled Conference of the Birds, in which each bird represents a different facet of the human ego that prevents man from reaching freedom and enlightenment.  In the poem, thirty different birds – guided by the wisest of all of them, the hoopoe – undertake a journey in search of the mythical, Godlike bird, the Simorgh.  The journey is a difficult and treacherous one in which they have to pass through the seven sacred valleys. Because of their vanities, worldly desires, fears and the strong grip of the ego, most of them refuse to go on, unable to fulfill their quest.  By the end of the poem we learn that Si-Morgh is actually Persian for “thirty birds.” Those that do succeed in reaching their final destination are the ones who become aware of the truth that God, ultimate power and freedom is actually a reflection of the Self and is found within.

The Veil

translated by A. J. Arberry

We are the Magians of old,
Islam is not the faith we hold;
In irreligion is our fame,
And we have made our creed a shame.

Now to the tavern we repair
To gamble all our substance there,
Now in the monastery cell
We worship with the infidel.

When Satan chances us to see
He doffs his cap respectfully,
For we have lessons to impart
To Satan in the tempter’s art.

We were not in such nature made
Of any man to be afraid;
Head and foot in naked pride
Like sultans o’er the earth we ride.

But we, alas, aweary are
And the road is very far;
We know not by what way to come
Unto the place that is our home.

And therefore we are in despair
How to order our affair
Because, wherever we have sought,
Our minds were utterly distraught.

When shall it come to pass, ah when,
That suddenly, beyond our ken,
We shall succeed to rend this veil
That hath our whole affair conceal?

What veil so ever after this
Apparent to our vision is,
With the flame of knowledge true
We shall consume it through and through.

Where at the first in that far place
We come to the world of space,
Our soul by travail in the end
To that perfection shall ascend.

And so shall ‘Attar Shattered be
And, rapt in sudden ecstasy,
Soar to godly vision, even
Beyond the veils of earth and heaven.

It is 
that click, 
you hear, 
you see, 
dilate, 
pupil, 
to the light, 
you hear, when 
it goes out, the lesson, 
and the guru, 
what remains? 

Ashes, urns, 
or conjugal burns? 

Where do Catholic priests 
please themselves 
at night? 

Pray, tell me, 
where do our men run to 
when their women point 
a wedded finger 
back at them? 

Oh, jamaat! 

Faithful mediator 
for those who 
cannot see right 
and wrong from 
blinding light. 

Find solace 
instead 
in the silent 
mosque 
of mind. 

You won’t 
find me, 
I, illusory. 

You will cease 
to see me, 
I will cease 
to be. 

Free-willy-nilly,
gobble-dee-gook,
or hokey pokey?

Hocus, focus!

Polka face,
smallpox
took us out
like DDT.

Not DMT, DXM,
or the LSD-
cursed bread, french-
spoon-fed by the CIA,
or was it half-baked?

Not unlike any
psychotropical
countries’ cunt
of misery.

Why strive for
what is?
Why grasp
what is
out of reach,
out of sight?

Having never
never having
lost, our minds
heaving old baggage,
or dead brain cells
through strains
of genome,
chromosome,
and some other
etcetera.

Que?
Sera,
Sir, ah!
Sire, please,
Dear, dire
need propels
greed compels
knowledge is
no less ignored
than the penicillin-
pumped steroid-
chicken breast.

Kick the bucket!

Entrance:

Entrée, appetiser,
or full-on
out-of-body
experience?

To consume
the Self,
flesh and bone,

Am I naive
to think?
I would
be.

I would be
gullible enough
to gobble it up
enough to fill up
the stomachs of
invisible poor
indivisible poverty
breaks this bread
by two, three,
for… you?

Who are you
but another
I, naive,
gullible enough
to gobble me up,
laugh it off,
and wipe the
smear off
your face,
smirk and
say, “lipstick.”

Slap!

Oh, snap.

A la carte
is how you are
served, fate
on a silver
platter, feet
dancing to
the clatter,
pitter, patter.

Peter Parkers
don’t find the
time to be
existentialist.

And Mary Jane
whatsername’s
too caught up
in the womb
of Mother
Earth, or
a spider’s
web.

You commodified me,
in 2001: A Space Odyssey,
did you notice the tablet screen
iPad? I thought I saw a
tabula rasa?

Rakshasa!
Selling spirits
on the rocks,
gal arrakku,
narikala,
they will
call it.

Nagha,
coiled and
recoiled, they
will reconcile
you, not before
ridiculing you.

I commodified my Self
when I turned ink
from pen, to words
from mind, mind you,
not, no, thank you,
but I digress,
my moral compass
never points to it -
Self.

Words from time-
immemorial, symbols
of continuous lines,
hand-drawn in the
sand, kolam, swastik,
flower of life.

Conch, conjure
soul eruption,
through feet
to head,
let not blood
be shed.

Drawing inspiration from the Advaita philosophy, Sufi mysticism, and Jungian archetypes, “He Breathes” attempts to bring together what is otherwise in contradistinction: in India,  Ardhanārīśvara (अर्धनारीश्वर) has been venerated as an androgynous form of Shiva and Shakti, idolized as hermaphrodite figures. Post-colonization, modern Indian society has excluded the many transgender populations, pushing them into the periphery, having to resort to extortion and commercial sex work in order to survive.

UNDP has a report on transgenders in the Asia-Pacific region, their rights and vulnerability to HIV: http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/hivaids/Lost%20in%20translation.pdf

This is a work in progress, to be appreciated as such.

En De Jah Nus is a project open to universal contribution.

*********

The technology was simple, I was told, yet executed with the most meticulous detail. On entering the room, one would not have the faintest notion of what was going on. Yet within those four walls a magician’s hand was at play.

Howl had no name for his device, or even its application. Howl was only interested in the use of his technology, and this is where I came in.

Within those four walls, time stood still or at least in another time and place.

The room was not real, at least not in the way we are used to perceiving reality. Yet there was a trick to this magic and no signs of the machinery at work.

A perpetual state of ‘is’ness, was what I had begun to call it. Howl quite fancied the term. Within those four walls we were able to live a seemingly endless moment, or at least be enchanted.

You see, the contents of the room felt very much real or at least reactionary: if you knocked on wood, you would hear a sound.

Technically, outside the room I would be in the present, and on entering I could be in any moment I chose.

A perpetual state of ‘is’ness; where any moment could be frozen, yet experienced as a whole, fluid reality.

We had only begun discussing how we would go about making use of the machine when it happened.

His body lay there, in suspended animation. Died of natural causes, the report read. Only Howl knew the operations of the machine, which left me with an illusory room stuck in the same place. And what use was that, really?

That was until I met her.

To this day I am unsure of just how real she was. She appeared while I was in the room, taking me by surprise.

She said her name was Maya. She spoke of her maker; she asked if I knew of him. She called him Ahti.

I was fascinated by her reverence for what sounded like Howl, yet puzzled by the name she had given him. Maya had never met Howl, yet Ahti’s name was imprinted in her mind.

She did not speak of the room or the machine. As far as I knew, she had no idea none of this was real. Maya would follow me around, pretend to be interested in what I was doing, hanging on me like a shadow.

Then she began to sing.

Words foreign to my ears fell off her lips, hummed to a tune she would repeat over and over again. I never asked her what the words meant.

The notes registered in the back of my mind, and as I returned home I would hear her voice and those words. Those words would soon reveal their worth to me.

I spent days inside the room, trying to decipher the workings of the machine. Maya watched, unsure of what to make of my strange behaviour.

Pointing to the windows, Maya asked why the sky always looked the same.

The answer descended on me like a hammer to a nail. I had never thought to look outside; convinced the machinations took place within the confines of those four walls.

There it was, staring me right in the face, casting this illusion that created the room. It was ingenious, I thought, to hide it right in plain sight.

On opening the windows the machinery was revealed to me, though I had the faintest clue of how it worked. Still, this was a start.

Maya watched as I examined the intricacies of the machine. There seemed to be some source of power that kept it running, yet it was not plugged into any electrical source.

Batteries? No, they could not possibly sustain an output of that much light.

A strange aura emanated from the centre of the machine, a blue-ish glow that felt both warm and cold. Circular in shape, there seemed to be some sort of material generating power.

Maya walked towards the shape.

Her fingers traced the contours as a strange electric charge disseminated through her body – every strand of hair lifted.

Her eyes shone blue-silver as she turned to look at me. I felt a chill run down my spine as she began to speak in tongues.

Words foreign to my ears began to reverberate across the room: a cacophony of syllables I could not begin to fathom. As moments passed they began to overlap as though her voice multiplied.

My ears began to ache.

********

I only remember waking up inside this place. The walls were not what I remember, neither was the floor nor the ceiling. Somehow the room had transformed itself. Dust covered the floor, cobwebs lined the ceiling, and the pungent stench of decomposition filled the room.

“Home”, said Maya.

Then I began to recall. The speaking of tongues, those words she sung; they were one and the same. It was Maya who brought me here; I had yet to understand why. In this new room I could no longer place the machine; there was no window  and I had no sense of direction.

“Maya, what are we doing here?” I asked.
“Home”, was the only response she would give me.
“Where is this place? Are we still inside the room?”
“Home”, said Maya.

She then began to walk towards the door. I followed.

The door would lead us back to reality, outside the effects of the machine.

Maya opened the door, letting in a light so intense it threatened to blind me.

*******

I stepped outside; this was not the reality I remembered. Once again, the floor was covered in dust, the ceilings lined with cobwebs, and the lingering stench followed us.

Maya walked on.

Walking through what seemed like a broad corridor, I began to notice the inscriptions on the walls.

Again, words foreign to me, yet there seemed to be some purpose behind them.

Like some strange hieroglyphics, the walls began to speak. Perhaps Maya knew what they meant.

“Where are you taking me?”
Maya turned to face me, “where are you taking yourself?”
What did she mean?

She offered no explanation as she turned and continued walking. I did not bother to ask, my mind now seeking knowledge of the writings on the wall.

Though I could not understand the language, there was something about the shapes that communicated to a primal sense.

Like staring at a flame, there is no meaning to it, only warmth and colour. It was much the same with the inscriptions, but just what was it trying to tell me?

Laughter – somewhere in this corridor a gecko chose to mock the moth that had been blinded by the flame.

Like the turning of a page, as Maya and I walked through the threshold we found ourselves immersed in an entirely otherness; an “is”ness in itself yet not what we had acclimatized to.

I felt something snap along my spine, as though clasping at it – a parasite. Where had Howl taken me? Why me? These are the first thoughts that are shot down by blank barrels. Now, where do I want to take myself?

Maya had turned to face me once again – an expression on her face. Is that all we ever communicate?

Beyond the otherwise meaningless words we weave and seam meaning into, intermingling conflicting symbols, juxtaposing Jungian archetypes – you don’t see cats chase their tails. You see language. You see gestures. You seek communion.

For a moment I held Maya in my arms – in my mind. Why do we clasp so viciously what has never been apart from us? The whole is complete within and without the whole that exists within and without itself.

******

What appeared before me I could describe in only so many words – jungley vines and canopy stretching across my peripheral vision. The air was thick with dust. The dust settled on dirt, brown muddy earth. I had no sense of time save for a wristwatch that lied on its face.

Maya led me along the littered pathway, her footsteps predicting mine. An invisible line was drawn between us. To my naked eye she was the Pied Piper to my vermin existence; crawling through the seemingly infinite paths – only one leading to the proverbial cheese.

I have had a glimpse of this.
Maya stopped moving.
Her footsteps predicted mine.

Have you ever felt the page turn as a draught sneaks over, revealing an isolated instance – jamais vu? Déjà vu, for a moment I was convinced that all of what would follow that moment I would be ready for.

Maya tugged at my arm.

“Do you know?” she asked.
“Do I know what?” I countered.
“Why your Sun gives way to the Moon at night?”
“Gravitational forces – caught in orbit.”
“Those words mean nothing.”
“Gravity? What goes up comes down. Like karma – what goes around comes around.”
“Karma,” Maya smiled, acknowledging the word, its meaning, significance and application.

Maya tugged at my arm.

“Where do you come from?”
“Outside”
“We are outside.”
“Outside of here.”

Maya let her head fall toward her shoulder, her hair spilling over her face – an arborescent silhouette wavering with the wind.

“Home,” she said and planted her foot firmly into the littered soil.

Her hair no longer covered her eyes, now piercing through mine. Maya found a passage, following my instinctual movements, characteristic nuances and affected mannerisms, to unravel the nature of my behaviour.

In this way we would often happen to eclipse each other, yet Maya always led.

“This is not my home,” the thought vocalized itself.
“Do you remember home?” Maya asked.
“I remember an address, a phone number, a bookshelf and a bedside table. I remember breakfast on a Sunday morning. I remember mowing the lawn,” I replied, kicking the litter of dirt and leaves off my feet.

“What is a Sunday?”

The thought took a while to draw its conclusive definition -  the concise, assimilated meaning. It lingered, like an earworm tickling the contours, squirming through my equillibrium.

“Sunday is the day you go to the beach instead of going to work. Sunday is time spent with family. To some it means going to Church, and to others it is their one day of rest,” I put it simply.

“Why cloud your mind with words?”
“I need them to communicate.”
“They say nothing. Tell me, what does a Sunday feel like?” Maya’s tone grew adolescent.
“What does any day feel like? Forget Sunday. Why are we here?” my patience snapped.
“Why are we ever here? We choose to be.”
“I did not choose to come here. You know this. Where have you brought me?”
“Look around. Does anything look familiar?”

The air smelt the same – pungent – and the ground remained littered. It was only around Maya that I felt any familiarity.

Through Maya I would connect the dots, I explained to myself.

“Maya, what do you see?”

*****

What appeared before me I could describe in only so many words – palmyrah on barren, dry land, hard sun: a light that threatened to blind me.

“Like you, I see what I am looking for,” Maya spoke.
“I’m looking for a way out.”
“How will you know when you are on your way?”

I knew how to answer what I thought was a question arising from Maya’s curiosity, yet I kept quiet. The curious Maya would reveal more to me than one who had heard all my answers.

This place seemed to be an inbetween, in transit, an “is”ness that is not quite, still, quiet, vacuous, an incomplete left for the imagination. Yet I could not impose the longing for home within the pulsating vessel; the way to will it to be unknown to me.

“Do you know where to find Ahti?”
“I have known.”
“Will you take me?”
“I have taken you.”
“Then where is Howl?”

I knew Howl was dead, his corpse rotting away, giving in to the ebb and decomposition of time. Ahti was alive. I had no basis for this belief, yet I believed in it convinced that Maya would take me to her maker. Still, Maya insisted she had already done so.

“What is Howl?” asked Maya’s naivette.
I could not bother answer.

Maya’s inability to comprehend simple functions of language meant she was not a perfect being; her face reflected symmetry, yet in conversation she was always the receptive, never rising over my voice, never reciprocating in full, always leaving the end open to any means of diverting sense or deriving meaning.

Then she began to sing.

“Ahti, naam. Ahti, naam. Ahti, naam”

Each syllable raised a hair, as with every repetition the words familiar. Maya sought her maker in reverence, not in form; she found meaning in the sound, not the function. To her Ahti was as much a state of mind as Howl was to me an acquantaince.

While the latter entered and exited my life a bag of blood, bones and flesh, the former always resided within the seat of Maya’s mind. I began to understand what had been, seen, heard and breathed within the confines of those four walls.

These four walls? Suddenly the vastness of my surroundings struck me. How sure was I that I was awake? Is there any real measure of lucidity?

A pin-prick silence unsettled me. In dreams the implausible took centre-stage, yet here I found my self at the centre with no bearings, no leitmotif or symbols to weave meaning into this play of absurdities.

Maya had begun walking, her voice distant, faint, monotonous: naam … naam.

I followed, reciting along with her, hoping by some miracle to reach this Ahti state of mind. Perhaps then clarity would dawn upon this residual muck of memories, with no reference or measure of time – stagnant, losing what little significance I had imagined: naam  …  naam.

****

“Look!” Maya pointed to the horizon.

A blue orb seemed to be setting, its colour more apparent with its descent, what was below obscured. A mammoth shadow traced its shape behind the arboroscent blue lines playing along its contours, seeping back to its source, curiously circling the peak as the shapes disintergrated into themselves.

“Is that the Sun?”
“Sunday?” she mused, “No. It is the night.”

As the word left Maya’s lips the darkness pronounced itself, a hum growing louder from the ground as though the blue orb was rolling beneath. Feet against the cooling ground, a shiver spiralled along my nervous system: spine, nape, neck. I felt the blue lines caress the contours of mind – the aboriginal expressions of cranial stress.

“When will the Sun rise from the East?” I turned towards Maya.

She let her hair fall along with her face over the curious slant of her neck; for a moment I felt blue lines run through her veins.

I realized then I had not slept. It was not that I felt no need to; the promise of waking up to the familiar no longer comforted me – there was only Maya and night.

“Sleep,” said Maya.

***

What appeared before me I could describe in only so many words: a polynauts map of the universe. Lights. Each individual light permeating its stain against retina, inverted dimensions revert back to pre-reptilian-nervous-breakdown. I felt a snap along my spine.

“Awake?”  asked Maya.

I rose from the littered earth, a dearth of suspicion sedimented in sudden retrodisposition, and looked for what was presumably the source of light: the blue orb I had envisioned setting into stone.

Maya never appeared unclothed. She watched as I stretched limbs that hardly felt weary, and yawned air that tasted of dust. Coughing, retching, I began to stumble over the littered earth seeking equilibrium.

Had I any reason to believe this was still oxygen? That these littered leaves speak for photosynthesis? The premise was lost to me.

I had seen I in a spectral decay spiralling inward, outward, thru and through plural dimensions – time, space – escaping the continual: a sleight of hand.

Maya tugged at my arm.

“Do you see what you were looking for?”

Nowhere in the sky could I find the blue orb, save for the blue of sky – it couldn’t be. The sun shone bright; Maya cast in a silhouette – a yin of light, yang of shadow.

Her eyes never bore into mine, neither did they ever tire of my futile attempts to shake some sense out of her. It may surprise you, that in what seems such short a time I would feel so hopeless.

The sense of time, or lack thereof, the immediate effect: that moment you rise on an unknown morning of a non-existant day – you had no reason to believe 24 hours had passed.

Dissociated, with only these words foreign to my ears as refuge, I found myself dissolved into the arborescent. Blue of sky coursed through my veins. As with Maya, I could see it in my own flesh.

What was green had turned cold, yet the intensity of the sun cast an illusory heatwave. The ability to discern the room from the machinery had escaped me.

“Maya. Help me.”
“I have helped you.”

**

What appeared before me I can describe in only words foreign to my ears: bathed in the arborescent, a drop in the causal ocean, wavering radiant light – these and the paraplegic syllables that stumbled off her tongue. Maya held me captive in this synthetic womb.

Eyes closed, the blue of sky began to narrate its birth as the green of I gave way to dissolution. Picture-puzzle-pattern-door – where had I heard that before? What appeared was not just before me, but ebbed and flowed in continuum.

With no limbs and no neural reverence for vital organs, invisible hands played with dimension. Light felt playful. Depth as though a hole were torn in the fabric of this veil. Yet the light most stole my attention. Blue of sky condensed, drops tempting the gaping mouth of the void, rising perspired by a light that threathened to blind me.

*

“Awake?”

Maya stood with her back turned toward me. As I rose I noticed she was observing something, her feet restless.

“Is this your Sun?”

Maya turned aside; blue of sky stained retina. The blue orb. The source of light. She had led me into the core of the machine. I peered down into the crevice the shape had called home.

Had Howl any influence on how the machine manifested itself within the room? How could I tell if this was the machine at all? Howl had never described this place. Howl had told me so little. Yet I assumed he knew the intricacies of the machine.

The answer descended on me like a hammer to a nail. This room sealed Howl’s existence just as I had found myself here. Blue of sky seeped through skin, infused keratin, hairs raised – I felt a snap along my spine.

“Ahti?” I asked.

Maya’s face lit up as the blue veins ran rivers meandering down her neck, pulsating as though circulating light. Yet as I stood the silhouette she had come to adorn slipped only for a moment, revealing a grimace – almost wicked.

“Naam, naam” she sung, each syllable in contradistinction as though split between her lips.

“Ahti is here?” I hoped desperately, unwilling to give up my conviction – unable to accept a fate I had already witnessed.

“Ahti, naam. Ahti, naam” words foreign to my ears followed as tributaries emerged across her face, blue of sky mingling with the shades of skin: lips, contours, luminescent.

Luminous, luminescence or luminosity? The only words that help describe are those uttered by minds provoked by experiences outside of my self.

I felt borrowed. I felt trapped.

“Maya, did Ahti ever speak of home?”

Her gaze turned inward, evading my eyes in plain sight. Maya drifted into a haze whenever I mentioned Ahti again. There was no use of referring to Howl. There was little use of Maya anymore.

How was I so sure Maya had any idea of what was beyond this place? She had never seen the light of a day under Sol. She held in reverance what Howl considered a toy to play with the mind, exploring the fringes of the unconcious.

“Where I am from – where Ahti is from – the blue of sky is not because of the source of its light, it is only one of many frequencies that adorn the sky, seeping into the plumage of cloud, and below lies the sea, where reflecting waters hold the heavens above with nothing but the wind holding them apart” I began to ramble, the slow crumbling of hope making fantasy of yet an ordinary world no more intriguing than this space, save for the fact that I was alone, none of my kind to busy my mind from the painful acknowledgement of imminent death.

“There was once water here. All of what appears before you was once alive. Ahti gave life,” Maya consoled me.

“Then where has it gone?”, to his grave, I imagined.

“Naam, naam. That is why we sing”

Maya held out her hand, now glowing blue-silver, conducive, blue of sky shot through my arms, clasping, an invisible hand twisted spine as a Rubik’s cube: picture-puzzle-pattern-door to the seat of mind. Words familiar: naam, naam

We began to sing.

© Imaad Majeed (2012)

Artist Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs’s systems adviser Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter’s book, The Living Brain.

Dreamachine, as per Wikipedia: a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli.

In its original form, a dreamachine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 or 45 revolutions per minute. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency of between 8 and 13 pulses per second. This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves, electrical oscillations normally present in the human brain while relaxing.

A dreamachine is “viewed” with the eyes closed: the pulsating light stimulates the optical nerve and alters the brain’s electrical oscillations. The user experiences increasingly bright, complex patterns of color behind their closed eyelids. The patterns become shapes and symbols, swirling around, until the user feels surrounded by colors. It is claimed that using a dreamachine allows one to enter a hypnagogic state. This experience may sometimes be quite intense, but to escape from it, one needs only to open one’s eyes.

I have watched them
string memories
where fingers
traced only
the circumference.

Still one so translucent,
its colour unnamed -
I will call it
Moonstone.

Naam, naam.

If I am not my body,
I have no use for your medicines,
I have no reverence for healers,
No desperate need to cling to what has no hold of me.

Footsteps,
seldom measured
strain the ground,
lacerating the Earth’s
clay-faced expression.

Blushing red,
swell mountains
as we stand on their peak -
a side taken each.

Catharsism;
a card too many
brings the whole house down.

As above, so below,
the hot blood of Mother Earth
spills over into the cup.

The vessel is not meant to be full.
Toes touching the brim,
scalding – longing burns the heart.

This blood is not to be drunk.
Its course runs through no mortal vessel
before consuming it, transcending, transforming.

***

A form of the formless flow
in flux; always returning
or leaving -
never one,
an eclipse of the yin
holds a hand
over the gaping mouth
that foolishly tries
to tilt the cup.

To have not drunk,
and have not been drunk,
yet to be drunk -
that is the true state of the drunkard.

With what little value we hold
the grey area of our caged memories -
like ash adorning the luminous streams,
a sentiment lost along with the execution
of attachment.

Drink
and this vessel
will be consigned
to flames.

***

Emotions,
like water,
transcend state.

As air:
cooled,
condenses,
running
down the vessel,
or warmed,
perspires,
rising
to the light.

What shape then do emotions take
in the realm of the One Energy?

The soft, cotton feel of contentment -
a pillow of feathers, resting.
The coarse grit of aggression,
pent up –  a firm grip against the sword.

Do these states take any known shape
outside the dimensions of time and space?

For how long
does one long for
when time no longer
measures worth?

How soon
is too soon
when an end
is synonymous
with both beginning
and what is?

***

She said, “words”
and we lost touch
with meaning.

Remember, I do,
when we held hands
with delirium -
fingers, enter, mingle,
arcs arch,
nape, neck,
twist, spine.

I hide
behind veils
of distance -
dislocated by time,
misplaced by fate.

She says “words”
fall off my face
wet, warm,
flowing words,
into syllables dissolve -
mono – I, alone.

Remember, I hope,
when our feet danced
to the same conundrum -
mine swam into the sea,
yours forever in a waking trance.

***

Hold.

What does it mean to hold,
to hold on to?

Does it imply possession?
No.

To hold
is to clasp
with palms
grateful
and not teeth
grating.

To hold on to
as if to nurture
as the pot
serves the plant -
neither owns the other
nor are they ungrateful.

Yet plants grow
while their vessels strain -
the function outweighs the form,
and I – dislocated by time,
misplaced by fate -
find resolve
in dissolution.

So finally it feels like I’ve done something with my life. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t start out by building up expectation. Still, I am quite happy with what I’ve accomplished working with Suma, Buddhi, Chikka and Mahesh at Wagon Wheel Studios. Over a period of two months we managed to create this, and I am offering it to you here: http://imaadmajeed.bandcamp.com

The songs were written over the course of the past four years, with Bug Eyes written while I was at ANC, My Love and The Lion written while I was in Hikkaduwa, and Window Cleaner written sometime this year. The artwork was done by Anjalie Peiris who is currently mad at me for not having done any final touches on it before posting it up. Oh, boo hoo.

The rest of the credits:

Buddhi De Mal: Harmonica
Nuwan “Chikka” Tharanga: Bass guitar
Mahesh Aponsu: Djembe
Cricket: Cricket
Sumedha Nuwan: Recording engineer

Recorded at Wagon Park Studios

Verse, Chorus, Verse by Imaad Majeed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Unnudaya nenjil naan
Kaaval thedukiren.
Unnoda ninaevil naan
Ukkanthu irruppen.

En nenjil
Un thudippu;
En kaathil
Athan thaalam.

Malai ohsaiyil
Paadal olikkum.
Thondrum vaanavilil
Athan raaham thodarum.

Kulihalil thengum
Neeril vaarthaihal serum.
Un paathangal pattathum
Athan arthangal kalaiyum.

Dominos trailing tangents; you’ve caused more than affects you throughout your life – and you always will.

We’re not told to think like that because we would then be indifferent and do anything we wanted to – caution to the wind.

The truth is that change is everywhere, yet our perception of change and our approach towards it is stochastic.

The issue with this is in the insignificance or lack of pure intention. Only by being aware of the boundless consequences can intent be pure.

On realizing, visualizing and accepting the domino trailing tangents we can begin to make real change. This also implies a shift in perception.

So we’re back to square one. How does one change how one perceives? Meditation? Mind altering substances? Dissociation? All of which, when explored, lead to oblivion.

In which case, what use is any real change?

We can trust in the fact that, whatever choice we make, we cannot make a mistake. It is the same energy that makes the choice that has to face the consequences – good or bad. Yet can we ever then claim responsibility if all actions are reactions and thereby interconnected? The moment you claim responsibility you are claiming you are seperate from everyone else and that very interconnectivity that some call God” – Ragi.

A two year old child has yet to make the distinction of ‘I’. Through his eyes he is part of the interconnectivity of all things – the one energy that flows through all that is. He is fascinated by all that he discovers as extensions of himself.

By age four the conditioning begins from the moment you are taught to say ‘I’ and identify with your ego. Then you lose that magic. You begin to feel bored. You need to distract yourself with meaningless entertainment and chase unnecessary goals – imaginary cheese – to add some artificial significance to your life. This is also the age that long term memories begin to form. This is how social conditioning works.

However, if you self-realize, awaken and turn the inward eye, you seek that state of mind of a two year old child again. What if you never lost it? What if you were never sent to school or kindergarten?

What if instead your parents spent the same amount of money on employing a guru to teach you how to keep the magic while the rest of the world suffers from greed, shame, hatred, guilt and blame.

Ragi, my nondualist friend, said “we create discord by seperating ourselves, however superficially, from oneness.” He also asked, “has a wave ever been seperate from the ocean?” Think about that for a while, meditate on it, imagine that you are the wave. Then who is the ocean?

The sponsory thought, as Ragi calls it, is ‘I’ from which every thought stems. “By implication there is a ‘me’ as soon as you mention an ‘other’. When you ask any question instead ask yourself ‘who wants to know?’ All our questions arise from us forgetting that we are puppets on strings,” he said.

Consciousness as the nondual becomes the Universe as a reflection of itself, and we must alter our perception so that everything around us becomes a mirror pointing back at the answer that is hidden within – tucked away safely from the hazards of this material world that sells souls for wages, and allows for interest rates and inflation. There are bigger evils out there that all stem from this one dangerous distinction of ‘I’.

I am not ‘I’; I am nothing.