Metamorphosism

The cursor blinks in the "title" box, and blinks.

Somedays one just has nothing to say, and isn't in the mood to write about cats, turtles tortoises or children.

This is when we quote Rumi:

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There never was any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance.
Always substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity.

Just yanking your chain, that was Whitman. You knew that, right? I just found that while looking for the Rumi poem I want to quote. An Irish friend once asked me why, exactly, Americans are so crazy about Whitman. No idea. I'm not crazy about him, although I do like some of his poems. But then I like some of a lot of poets' poems. Right now I'm into the writing of Malcom Davidson, I think is his name. He rocks. Emma's not bad, neither.

Anyway. Where the hell is this fucking Rumi poem? You know the one, the "meet you in the field beyond the knowledge of good and the knowledge of evil" one.

“Little by little through patience and repeated effort, the mind will become stilled in the Self.”

No, that's the (Copy, Paste) Bhagavad Gita.

I left my book at home, you see.

"One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked. A voice asked, 'Who is there?' He answered, 'It is I.' The voice said, 'There is no room for Me and Thee.' The door was shut.

After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and knocked.
A voice from within asked, 'Who is there?'
The man said, 'It is Thee.'
The door was opened for him."

That's not it, either, and when the voice asks, "who is there?" the reader wants to say, "orange" or something, you know? Admit it. And then the voice would say, "orange who?"

Eh. So many websites quote this poem - Unitarians, hippies, therapists, yoga guys, every stripe of mystic. We won't quote it after all. There I was thinking I was all unique, and here's a "homily" website where it's quote of the day.

Somewhere in time you're twenty and sitting on a dock
and the sun is rising over the harbor and shining on your face.
And you have this smile that sustains me even now.

That's not Rumi, but it's me. I just made it up. Normally I avoid that stuff, love-letters and poetry and so on, but I figure if Rumi makes it to a homily page, what have I got to lose?

Posted at May 18, 2004 07:32 AM