Songs of Ascent for the Exile's Shabbat

Friday Evening, c. 1920 by Isidor Kaufmann

1. When YAHWEH turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream

א:  שִׁיר, הַמַּעֲלוֹת

בְּשׁוּב יְהוָה, אֶת-שִׁיבַת צִיּוֹן-- הָיִינוּ, כְּחֹלְמִים.

2. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing

ב:  אָז יִמָּלֵא שְׂחוֹק, פִּינוּ-- וּלְשׁוֹנֵנוּ רִנָּה

אָז, יֹאמְרוּ בַגּוֹיִם-- הִגְדִּיל יְהוָה, לַעֲשׂוֹת עִם-אֵלֶּה. 

"Tehillim Psalms 126" (Hebrew)

________

I remember that hill over Muqattam. The overbearing expanse of city, modernity’s rush cascading over the fold of an unclean mind, burning with hot anger in the deep mud of trivial remorse. “They had a plan?” I ask myself, eyeing the inglorious ruins of the once-worshipped architecture still clinging to the life of popular assembly. 

The race of motorcycles and small vans gargle the steaming froth of smog. All spat murderous into the disappearing rain forming high above the human realm. The deserted outskirts, nude with the pang of an outstretched kin, and I am lost, reaching for high ground in the sand-whipped light. Moonless, my fatigued mind craves for recognition in the atmosphere at hand. I am a lone walker on the side of the road. A bus skids past, slows to a halt and I enter into smiling Arab tongues.

The rage and personified haste, the stone labyrinths, the winding path is lifeless with the cold sweat of his following. A professional runner turns and writhes in the pain of want, instilling in me an incisive turning. The wandering hate fills me with unrivalled curiosity and shame. I know no warmth, but for the hunted muscular knife-rent swallowing of friendship cursed along the highway pathways, intermixed with the foul bitterness and acrid taste of inner city air. 

We fall into a hollow stone, and as two locked in the crude horror of warring greed for a brother’s flesh, the wicked stress of rivalry bleeds into our distraught, nascent sanity and heaves it straight over the edge of common reason, to blood and night.

And in the turn of the People’s Spring, a vision unites my fiery cry for wisdom in the heart of our common ancestral history; humanity astir in the colored, feathered breast. A flight into the Eastern European pasture of stars, grazing in the weathered light of a great-grandmother, still kissing the martyred asp of tradition; a Jewish sprite. The elder ways fire in my unskilled mind an art, performative in the midnight trust with an earlier truth. The performance is tonight.

Wading in the molasses mind of patience for the spiritual will of ideation from the ghosts of the numinous beyond, I struggle with answerless freedom in the sordid now. I ready the ingredients. The wasteful strolls and meandering highs screw our minds into wakeful reason, to, with meticulous care, craft an act of such daring import as to quicken the mind and speak the heart. I make a paste, of turmeric base, with white, weakened broth. I will be a death camp victim, with lightless skin and gaunt hue.

Wasting away in the turmoil of ambient talk, I prepare my body, though with fault besieging me with lost and needed objects fading and reappearing sporadically, as to the rhythm of my anxious pulse as I meditate on the gas chamber. I’ve devised the shower faucets to emit a turmeric spray, the walls an exact replica of the infamous Aushwitz, Lodz, and countless others.

As I watch the clock spell a cruel lateness, as speeding on into the infinite daze of eternal death, I’m unable to hasten and prepare myself before my half-hour performance slot is up. About five minutes before my time’s ended, the door inside the dressing room bursts open to the step of Brazilian carnival dancers and Latin fiesta cooks with big rumps and loud mouths, shouting in a haze of upended happiness, a gorge of playful sight ignites my depth of ancestral reminiscence. The act is over before it’s begun.

________

Late

"To dream that you are late for something represents your fear of change and your anxiety about seizing an opportunity. You may feel unready or unworthy in your current circumstances. You may also be conflicted over decisions about your future." (iDream)

________

the dimly lit cougar
a swan and her minions

playing over the blonde heat
some unknown bass record

feet stung blind,
tough grotesque splurge over the glued racket

...

into a silent dysfunctional glare

breathing alone
holed-in

- excerpt from "sick in a sick society: the holed-in"

Making a Home with an Identity of Conflict

JUAN GONZALEZ: And his attachment is obviously to the Middle East. He spent so much time there. You, yourself, were born in Beirut. The conversations between you about the importance of what he was doing at this particular time and in this incredible upsurge of the Arab Spring and these popular revolts all around the Middle East, the conversations he must have had with you about the importance of his work?

NADA BAKRI: He felt very lucky that he was witnessing these uprising, that he was covering it, that he was part of this moment. He felt like, you know, this is a dream coming true for every journalist covering the Middle East. You know, after covering it for so many years—oppression and dictatorships and wars and conflicts and violence—it was finally—you know, finally, there was a—something is changing, and something positive and optimistic. He felt like it was going to take a while, but it was at least happening, you know, the change that people had for so long aspired for.

- Interview on Democracy Now!

_______

It all started in a filthy office garage, a shed built from cement, looking something like an old jailhouse before the invention of bars. A large, heavyset woman engulfs herself in a literal blood bath, drinking warm bodily fluids over her red-dyed dress in wolfish fashion. She’s on a diet, she says. Blood is her way out. With a few siblings and friends we fire off onto the desolate rural highway. Snow and ice feed the sky in a formidable crown of gleaming silver. The earth hibernates absolutely. As the road ices up and the snow piles impassably, I get out, finding two pistols in the trunk. They are caked in snow, perfectly, as to disguise handprints on the metal. We fire off a round as we burn the snow off the pavement on our way, speeding. On the road, blood is our subsistence. We drink of it fluidly and richly. Our decadence is spelled in animal murder. Back at our family house, my siblings gather across the yard. My feet are swollen, painful as hell as I meander ever so slightly across the rough grass and hard-packed, unleveled soil. I am almost to them, yet fading and neglectful, I traverse the domestic plain solo.

_______

Blood

"It is the life-giving, vital part of our physiology and it may symbolize our strengths and weaknesses and our physical and mental health. If you are currently experiencing a very difficult time in your life, you may have dreams with bloody and frightening images. Don't worry, you may be venting your fears! Some believe that when you see blood in your dream, the distressing situation in your life which is at the root of the dream has come to an end, and the worst is over."

_______

“Is it possible to question the natural progression of ages?

where cycles, are caused not by epidemics,

but through a revivification of our human path on this earth,

whereby some aspects of ourselves must be shed to give way

to other ways of being and living in relation to ourselves as a living host

to the experience that is this universe through the medium of earth?”

“No.

Such epidemics, as have outlasted humanity

have shifted our course

into a malformed search for objects,

a fantasy mirage of unending lust

that consumes and overtakes the only worthy pleasure

of being alive

for a scant mockery of human expression.

This is the age of the Aahtzmi.

Our enemy is…inside us.

The only way to overcome such an obstacle

and press on into a completely reversed progression of cyclic ages

is to enact compassion, through love.”

- excerpt from "Deadly Vision Part II"

To All The Freedom Poets Shouting In The Dark

“HAMAD DREAM OF 2030 IS NOT APPEARED YET IN BAHRAIN!...HAMAD YOU ARE A DICTATOR”  - from a protest sign at beginning of film

“I feel really alone. Whether it was a democratic country or an authoritarian country. All of them acted the same when it came to us. I discovered that my humanity is a subject of discussion. Should I be killed in the street or not be killed? Based on the interests of the United States or Saudi Arabia or other countries. It’s the killing of a dream.”

“When I’m sleeping, a lot of times I dream we are returning to the roundabout. To this day I dream it is there. I don’t feel it is broken.”

"This [facebook] page was a virtual lynch mob, focused on a 20 year old girl, named Ayat al Qurmezi. She had read a poem criticizing Khalifa and the King at Pearl Roundabout. The page asked thousands to participate in defaming her honor, and demanded her arrest and torture in prison. It wasn't long before they got their wish. Masked commandos broke down the door of her family home and took her to prison...After three months in prison, Ayat surfaced for this apology on state TV, which the family says was obtained by electric shock torture and forcing her to open her mouth while army and police officers spat in it." 

- from "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark" by May Ying Welsh of Al-Jazeera, the only journalists who stayed

Ayat al Qurmezi (read her BLOG)

"I have not yet finished forcing every candle of dreams (youth) on this motherland..." 

- line from the poem by Ayat al Qurmezi which led to her imprisonment, translated by Mohamed Al-mahroos

_________

I had come out of a bedroom, pajamas and all, to greet a few friends. Sitting patiently and in reserved calm is my wife and a local actor in town, sitting outside in the main room of my abode. I begin talking about recent books I’ve read. I start talking about a book on the subject of black history in the American South pointed at the presence of the actor, who I only recently became acquainted with. I continue to divulge in The Inconvenient History of Brazil, which I learned received the greatest influx of African slaves than anywhere else. She is sweet and doesn’t mind me carrying on. In another room, my brother and a friend are worriedly arguing about how to get to Los Angeles, specifically to have more drinks. Ignoring them, I saunter out of the house and find my way to a nearby bus stop. 

Small trickles of rain bear down on the fogged windows of the bus as we cross through a muddy swamp area. The bus driver is exceptionally personable and a great comfort, in total control. In mid-conversation, I ask to be dropped off at a local convenience store. The cold, wet ground feels like a vent of sticky moisture from the saturated soil. Immediately outside the door, three homeless Aboriginal people kneel prostrating outside the store entrance, while one of them, a middle aged lady takes to a free gift of exceedingly processed fast food. I enter, greeting the store owners. As I look out the window, I see a group of girls in beachwear catapulting themselves off a nearby roof for the humorous purposes of landing on a trampoline. I walk out to get a closer look. The first lands extremely short, the second a bit further and right on her spine. She gets up aching, only to watch a third catapult far beyond the trampoline’s distance. Her impact is felt with crushing intensity as she writhes in a split-second. Witnessing, one can immediately tell her thigh must be broken. I then enter the store again, and with uncontrollable laughter, we are outraged by the stark contrast between the different kinds of help needed around the store. 

_________

History

"To dream that you are reading history, indicates a long and pleasant recreation."  

Rain

"A powerful symbol of renewal and spiritual cleansing...Interpretation is contingent on your current circumstances as well as the kind of rain that is falling...Depending on the dreamer it could suggest a period of renewal and fertility (reproduction or creativity)." 

Help

"If you dream that you help someone, or someone asked you for help, it means that you will succeed without needing help from anyone."

(iDream)

_________

can you tell me why you want to lose your minds?

“is the mind not a functional device?

a stronghold of impurity, though weak as a right?

a vile desire entrenched in the quickening of race and drabness? 

or old as a tire-stretched din?"

shrieking at dawn with favored kids,

roped to the sound in time 

only for a moment

“to flesh out the wicked rot 

a spawn of loss and un-coped wires

fuming ghastly as the corpse 

that smoked wild smoke

and leapt to a magic unseen and disbelieved

except by the weeded out freak-smiling lawmakers at dawn”

the hopeless mold sweetens through an unearthly jail

round toxic commotion encircles in ash and loneliness

wakefulness opens to the sole breath of god

and waiting awhile for the noose tightened,

alas around the saviors brightened tooth shown under a restful laugh...

- excerpt from "Why you want to lose your minds."

Dreams from the Arab World: Deadly Play and the Chaos of Freedom

Kalila and Dimna, jackal tale scene: the crow king and his counselors by Arab painters around 1210

for those who lost their lives...

Dream of Youngest Female Nobel Prize Winner Tawakkul Abdel-Salam Karman

From her acceptance speech:

"We were able to efficiently and effectively maintain a peaceful revolution in spite of the fact that this great nation has more than 70 million firearms of various types. Here lies the philosophy of the revolution, which persuaded millions of people to leave their weapons at home and join the peaceful march against the state’s machine of murder and violence just with flowers and bare breasts, and filled with dreams, love and peace."

____________

Semi-circle monkey bars, rusty, old, they rise to a very high altitude at center.

I’m videotaping an expert at crossing the most dangerous part of this abandoned playground. I cross multiple times, as I go on and on, it becomes foggy and humid. At the center, there is an opening, where my mind goes blank because I feel it’s impossible to cross, but I cross

At the last crossing, when I reach the bottom, it feels as if I am in an abandoned, mechanical children’s playground in Egypt, and I remember an Egyptian girl who seems like my girlfriend…yet she is missing. I flash to a scene that looks like her parents, and local police. They are speaking in Arabic, searching for her. I flashback to being directly on top of the semi-circle monkey bars, my friend who I am videotaping reminds me that he’s gotten rid of my poetry books because they give evidence of the missing girl…I flash in my mind these poetry books, immaculately printed with full color photos of the girl and professionally written poetry…I go to a field, and a mass of people are reciting this poetry, it seems I am at a funeral.

Sunday, January 29

Egypt and Iran: Two Lingering, Unforgettable Dreams

Two Dreams remain tightly etched in my memory, their content is also woven together within the intricate fabric of our now stirring collective mind, struggling to feel the common breath burn on the backs of our billions enslaved by poverty, war, greed, corruption, hypocrisy, malignancy, and on and on.

1)

I am within the house of my formative years, the beginning of schooling. It is a small house, cornered in an older, character neighborhood embedded in a seaside forest. The basement beckons me inside, yet I forget the actual content of the basement, except for the stairway down. Underneath, there is a flooding, a cesspool of oceanic imagination, swelling and swiftly carrying me into its drift. I see light from outside filling spaces marked by life and activity, those areas not reaching the natural light are dusty, dank and unused corners, filled with heaps of abandoned material. I find myself, as if swimming towards the light, to escape the basement of this house, and this memory.

Emerged, I swim across the surface of a great lake. The water broths and foams beside me, a plethora of life makes itself known beneath my feet treading the water. Then, a great lash as if from the lake floor catapults into the air a fantastic protrusion of flesh from a mythical beast, a loch ness of sorts reveals itself, yet does not harm me. I suddenly begin to see another side to the lake. All of a sudden I am carried in, as if involuntarily by a sweeping undertow.

I reach the other shore finally, though disfigured with fatigue and the nausea of being spun throughout whirlpools of fear and fascination within a lake of dreams. I am at the foot of a great cliff mountain springing up along the back of a cold-looking fortress. Next, I am unconscious, being taken to another basement. In this basement, I feel as if I am in Iran, the waters before me and the landscape prior to my incarceration reminds me of a very recommended film, called the "Lover's Wind" about the ancient civilization of Iran and natural landscapes of Persia. The film's incredible story about how it came to light should be read in complement.

I am imprisoned with other Iranian people, we are to be tortured. The basement windows along the edge of the roof resemble those of my childhood home, only now there are bars and the places of darkness are filled with mirrored rooms stretching as if infinitely, occupied with other prisoners, all of whom wear eyes of tortured pain.

I imagine the blithe reception to this childhood home, returning to its driveway, the neighborhood feel, the flowers and summer air, the large stones to sit on and the humming insects over the plain grass.

2)

My wife and I are in a room that resembles an actor's dressing hall for a theatre. We maintain an air of prestige, as actors or members of a theatre will. The mirrors are lit on their frames with gaudy light bulbs and the rest of the room feels turn of the century French, similar to the era in which Cairo, Egypt's downtown core was built from the ground to honor the architectural culture of its French colonialists.

We step out, led by an eager individual, who masked, invites us to walk with him on the street. As soon as we step out, we are in the midst of Cairo's Abbasia neighborhood, essentially the core of downtown, including Tahrir square and Muhamad Mahmoud Street, the current center of the crisis.

I know this street, this was where I saw a concert by El Tanbura. The mud of this unpaved road is not smooth, it has large bumps and divots, making even walking in it a curious adventure at times. The local youth walk down its narrow lane barefoot, smiling and wondering with mysterious humor. The foreign presence is immediately detected and is a center of fascination which equals my fixation with the imperfect dirt road ahead.

We move out into the street, I find myself edging into a crowd of demonstrators. We are suddenly in the thick of a mob of protesting Egyptians in Cairo's ongoing clashes with police. I feel gripped with fear at having my wife with me. I am separated from my beloved by the zing of a tear gas propeller wafting smoke and the sonic punch of a rubber bullet passes by me following. In the middle of demonstrators and police, I stand crouched low to the ground, reaching out to my wife. Rubber bullets and tear gas continue to rain throughout the quaking ground zero of protest in Egypt.

Skimming past abandoned riot police shields, I grab my wife's hand and we run into a dimly lit government building. I feel I have walked into Trostky's room in Mexico City, there is murder in the air eternal, a chipped skull and stray bullets encase the ambiance with a suffocating, dead air. We wander the halls and rooms only to find remnants of assassinated officials, burned intellectuals, tortured youth maimed beyond recognition. It is a breeding ground of hate. There is no escape.