Al Haqiqah

I sent this e-mail to a very dear friend of mine, the Great James Collector. When I was done writing it, I realized it was exactly what I wanted to say here:

The land is hot as the waves rise from the flatland of the Nile. Fans whir and horns honk. We hide from the daylight like vampires at its mercy. But lines rise like waving mirages and soon the laughter and the hoots and beatstops rise and i realize that Egypt is not the Middle East. This is Africa and it is alive. The dready drear of dictatorships and tourism grudges, drawn battlelines of sectarianism and humorless hatred seem to crumble backwards and we have drums and shrieks. Colors and tones, carnival mosques and smiles like none before seen. Far from the madding crowd is a maddinger crowd with children and marches, street cats and ally rats - and the architecture twists upward with life and spirit. This is a whole new continent: a whole new lens into a rasping old tradition. Monotone welcomes have collapsed in the face of colorful rolled off conversations, new fruits, lights in sunnier places; variation. Zach is lost to the wind, the air if you will, and I am once more a solo nowhere man. My books in hand and sweatshoes on my swimming feet, I make m way alone and without a rope. Fingers crossed for word from Jerusalem, but in the meantime...this is Africa. A smeary line like Istanbul crossing continents. Away from the sand and the concrete to the lifestivities of slow-melodious bends of the surprisingly small Nile. No offense to the world's most famous river, but the Mississip and the Amazon are difficult to see across...
There's a moment. A stop catch...deep breath, where you understand or at least sympathize with infinite for a moment. 24 hours is a lifetime in a city. The what whence and the allabout burn like a wild forest fire and all you have is the careening and the obscene and the snapcatches of the what in the this. In twenty-four hours you can walk from one extreme to the other of even the largest city. To encapsulate it. To understand it. To watch the rainbow shades as they swim into each other like neighbors who have never met. Everything that exists in a given frame of mind can be circumscribed by my feet, only. So trim the fat from the edges and how gaping wide are the possibilities? The Tao is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities.
Or. Or you can just sit down upon an ancient stump and watch the turmoil of beings, yet contemplate their return. Desires with the heart. He or She who is content to simply be, to understand the lack of being of tunnelvision and realize that it's all pixels in a single image that is dynamic and alive, yet neither good nor bad. We welcome both saints and sinners and understand there is nothing to gain, nothing to leave you wanting. Only continuity. Release. Understanding.
Four long years. 45 countries. Graduation. Fresh and expensive, well beaten tracks, trains and money, eyes pop. Memories on paper and shifting like sanddunes. Sophomoric beats. Self-assured in a land free of strife or disease. Movement and strides, striving just be peopled among the foreign and desired, the old, the expensive, the idealized. The seen. Junior jump. Leaving surity, expense. Opening to the world as it is. Expectations floundering and times get harder and harder. Idealism melts like acid-reflexes. People are people are people need money and culture's a dream we can find in museums. Entrance fees. Cars and clothes, music, friends family, universalism - ideas and possibilities, flavors, and politics. Pick up a book. Dream the answers into existence for without your dreams, the truth, al-haqiqah, sits in the wow chair of dusty expectations. And after senior year comes flight. Ejection. Removal to a different plane. What do you want? What do you need? It's not available for a fee. There is no land you can journey to pick it up. No price to pay to ship it to you. Humility on the road - values - but no enlightenment. The cold, the hard, the concrete of lavish dreams. We sleep in the down crib of the Arabian Nights and wake up in the ruins of Petra, on the sidewalk...covered in ant bites.
Love the work you do. Forget it when you're done. "In family matters, be completely present." There's beauty in the water.
Time to flow back to the source "Returning to the source is serenity."

love, tcm

ps - the ironic smile and the genuine smile are both the end results of things that make us smile. Keep smiling...life walks on with or without us, but it's about the feeling, not the judgment.