in quest for the historical muhammad: update

(Some Unscientific Notes)

The Prophet Jesus as a Starting Point

I find it an appropriate starting point to remark that according to my private research the 'historical Jesus' is a near "total myth" (see Acharya S, The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ, 2001). Gautama The Buddha is too – a remarkable disclosure I should think, being as I am so deeply intimated with Bauddha tradition. I mean obviously, "a priest." Yet I would hope that my present ad libitum extensions of assumptions – apropos the quasi- and/or erstwhile historical figures being "just as literary" (if I may put it that way), or as "textual" as the beastly crucified Jesus – I would therefore hope to be granted a little standing as per the primmediacy of my puzzling motives. I mean really, if I'm so jolly willing to deprive my self of my own safe haven by biting, as it were, the very hand that feeds me - then please understand that I'm NOT out for scalps. This has nothing to do with wanton spite, but a savage impulse that yarns for veracity. And so I actually "appreciate" the fundamental literary fabric-ation of the Jesus fugure. And if subsequent research confirms early inkling – and as I only now begin to explore the Koranic heritage – I would neither be surprised nor disappointed; for as I've tired to extract in my Grafting Plato's Shadow Play: A Spray Can Version of Metaleptic Mimēsis (2005), tragedy and myth are deeper than truth.

I generally move with the working assumption that the pat historicities of world religious figures are without exception extremely doubtful: Zarathustra, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, and etcetera. It is not that these figures have never existed; this is only to affirm - and reconfirm – that such 'existences' are sheer textuality. And in this regard I tend to concur with Stanford researcher Steven Farmer (2000) who views these figures as invariably "late constructs, reflecting scattered data in rapidly growing textual canons (collected syncretically to generate figures who eventually reached cosmic dimensions)." In other words, stitched together from the 'self-serving claims of warring schools and other equally dubious sources.' In response Farmer counsels that 'strong cross-cultural models may be built to show how such biographies accrete over time.' While in the meantime, stripped of nothing more than their miraculous features, scholars continue to grant these figures moral credence and historical plausibility based solely on the fact that their myths have been endlessly repeated ("Buddha" before the Pali Canon?, Indology Archives, 18 Sep 2000).

The Hermeneutics of the Date Palm Hadith

Based further and purely on 'the hermeneutics of instinct,' I remark that to whatsoever extent one Muhammad has historically existed as a 'real' (non-literary) human figure, I am made to imagine that he was born in Medina, not Mecca. And further still, that Muhammad may have likely been a 'kind of Jew.' Thus concerning that famous Hadith that entails his mistakenly instructing some date palm worker on the proper care of the palm – then only to later admit that he was wrong, one is apt to see the busy hands of redactors at work to textually avert attention away from the possibility that Muhammad did indeed know a thing or two about date production, being after all a child of Yathrib. Yathrib (Medina) is known to have been at this early period a thriving agricultural oasis, and the region's chief centre for date production. It was furthermore 'mainly dominated by roughly twenty primarily Arab Jewish (convert) clans, as distinguished from the majority of Hijaz* Jews who were (non-convert) immigrants from Palestine' (Reza Aslan, No god but God, 2005: 53).

*Hijaz (also Hijaz, Hedjaz): name for the mountainous region of the Arabian Pennisula along the northeast coast of the Red Sea where both Mecca and Medina are located. At the time of Mohammed's birth, numerous rival Arab tribes populated the Hijaz.

The "New" History

The Koran as we know it was only brought to its completed form centuries after the presumed death of Muhammad. What is more, the particular language of the "No text but Text" recitation is not the language of the seventh century Meccan Arabs, i.e. the early manifestations of the Medinan Super-Tribe. Many scholars – especially those equipped with "new" history interpretive tools (see Crone, Cook, Wansbrough, Hawting below) feel that the highly refined and 'twenty-percent incompressible' language of the Koran is more related to that of the Levant Arabs, those Arabic-speaking communities bordering on the eastern Mediterranean Sea from Turkey to Egypt, thus including Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Thus Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid has supported the notion that the Koran be read, not literally, but 'literarily.' "The Koran is a text, a literary text," he states, "and the only way to understand, explain, and analyse it is through a literary approach." Mohammed Arkoun (1982) concurs with this approach. "[I]t is time [for Islam] to assume, along with all of the great cultural traditions, the modern risks of scientific knowledge," he asserts, adding, "the problem of the divine authenticity of the Koran can serve to reactivate Islamic thought and engage it in the major debates of our age," cited in Toby Lester, What is the Koran? (1999).

Speaking for myself, these studies seem to open to a relevant line of discourse. My growing bibliographic list includes already Algerian-born Mohammed Arkoun. See also his paper, "Present-Day Islam Between its Tradition and Globalisation" (2000), and his book (synopsis) The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (2002). The Egyptian-born Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid. Another publication that I have only just heard about is Islam and Modernity: Muslim Intellectuals Respond, (Cooper, Nettler and Mahmoud, eds); see Ahmet T. Kuru, Review Article: Rethinking Islam in the Modern Conditions, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2001, pp. 174-177).

My bibliographic references also combine the so-called "New" History research. This includes Danish-born Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987), The Early Islamic World (notes, n.d.), also, P. Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977) pdf. See Crone's short bio-sketch in The Institute Letter (Institute for Advanced Study).

Another major scholar among this group is John Wansbrough, Qur'anic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation, Oxford (1977), The Sectarian Milieu (1978), et al. Wansbrough has controversially hypothesized that the Qur'an text as we know it today is not the traditionally alleged "closed corpus" text from the early date, but is rather one that took its shape slowly - over two or even three centuries. Wansbrough is furthermore deeply pessimistic about the capability of contemporary historians to portray the crux of Islam's origins, "which he considers to be completely obscured by an impenetrable fog of later polemic and redactional overlay" (Islamic Origins, University of Chicago, 1998-99). See also Sahas' (1999) review of Islamic Origins Reconsidered: John Wansbrough and the Study of Early Islam (Herbert Berg, editor), in Studies in Religion, A Canadian Journal Volume 28 Number 3 / 1999. Strange that I can't find a single work of Wansbrough's published online. My thanks thus go out to Prof. Alan Godlas for including in his own online annotated bibliography, The Qur'an and Qur'anic Interpretation / tafsir, wherein is found Estelle Whelan's fine essay, Forgotten Witness: Evidence For The Early Codification Of The Qur'an in the highly regarded Journal of the American Oriental Society (Vol. 118, 1998: 1-14). In her gracious study Whelan adheres to academic protocol and amply bears out Wansbrough's key contention that the Qur'an was codified centuries after the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. On the basis of textual and linguistic analysis Wansbrough concludes that no substantiating evidence exists for a "canonical" version of the Qur'anic text before the very end of the eighth century at the earliest (1977). For balanace, however, I note that in her essay Whelan puts forth additional evidence that would seem to refute some of Wansbrough's assertions that the Qur'an was codified centuries after the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad."

In his critical précis of Wansbrough's thesis, Reza Aslan (No god but God, 2005) writes:

[Wansbrough] has famously argued that Islam as we know it originated outside Arabia hundreds of years after the death of Muhammad (if such a person even existed). Wansbrough and his colleagues have done remarkable work in tracing the evolution of Islam as it developed in the Judeo-Christian sectarian milieu of the seventh-to-ninth-century Arabia and its environs. But Wansbrough's persistent exaggeration of the non-Arabic (mostly Hebrew) sources regarding early Islam, and his unnecessary disregard of the historical Muhammad, has too often made his arguments seem more like "a disguised polemic seeking to strip Islam and the Prophet of all but the minimum of originality" to quote R.B. Sarjeant (Aslan: 111).

G.R. Hawting is yet another scholar associated with Crone, Cook and Wansbrough. In his The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (2002), Hawting advances the project view that 'The Qur’an neither reflects an Arabian background nor was it produced in inner Arabia as the tradition claims.' According to him, "the polemic of the Koran against the mushrikun [polytheists, pagans, idolaters, and disbelievers] reflects disputes among [co-]monotheists rather than pagans, and that Muslim tradition does not display much substantial knowledge of Arab pagan religion. There is no compelling reason to situate either the polemic or the tradition within Arabia" (as cited in Walid A. Saleh, The Fog of History, a review of G.R. Hawting: The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History, in H-Mideast-Medieval, February, 2005). Here a reading of W. Montgomery Watt's The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (1973) tends to place these remarks in some perspective.

A Tabloid Tragedy

I find an unresolved tragedy in this. Here we have patently brilliant research data that tends to get used for mischievous ends. See for example the scary Free Thought Mecca. See also Daniel Pipes's (2005) review of The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (Ibn Warraq, ed., 2000). Pipes is a former advisor to the US State Department who has used the "new" history in justification of the "clash of civilizations" theory, according to which the west is forever doomed to come into conflict with the barbarian Muslim world, and the that Arabs themselves are doomed to destruction. The internet proliferates with such unfortunate displays, regrettable and quite destructive too; and all because neither the secular academic nor Islamic scholar ever come together to openly discuss these things, and so it's left to those whose agendas are "not scholarship, but anti-Islam polemic" (Fred M. Donner, 2001; book review of Ibn Warraq, 2000).

In fact, I sometimes find it hard to know how to interpret much of the online material. Take for example this New Statesman editorial with its wildly incendiary title, The great Koran con trick: Scholars claim that Islam's holy book is not quite what it seems (Martin Bright, Dec 10, 2001).

Additional links


John Wansbrough, A Tribute.
Patricia Crone, Book God's Rule book review, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam section beginning at page 231.

Wilferd Madelung, Succession to Muhammad (1997).
Fazlur Rahman, The Message of Fazlur Rahman.

Shakib Gunn: 12th June 1934 – 17th February 2009

Shakib Gunn passed away in Singapore during my recent sojourn in India. He was a noble friend. The objective of a Muslim's time on earth is to prepare for success in the Aakhirah, and Shikib understood his personal advent as merely, if essentially a means to this end — "the life hereafter." He scoffed at the popular notion of Enlightenment. Of course he had wished to gain in the virtues of wisdom, knowledge and compassion — no question. But the grandiose dimensions privileged and conferred on that modern day unicorn, particularly as pandered by the international publishing houses, was clearly, for Shakib, excessive and pointless. It simply wasn't necessary to be "enlightened." Life on earth was limited in scope as well as objective; neither thorns nor flowers should distract us from this goal. To Shakib's mind, the notion of Enlightenment amounted to an ill-starred if not completely devastating ideological dajjaal, or 'lying creature' lodged within the belly of contemporary spirituality.

I wish my good buddy a truly fulfilling journey.

See http://shakibgunn.blogspot.com/2009/03/shakib-gunn-passed-away-in-singapore.html

At wages undercutting Tamil villagers

I have based myself in Singapore for about five years. I just moved out from the Geylang area that is swarming with Mainland Chinese whores and construction works racing the clock to rise up more hotels for the moneyed ones. Singapore is rapidly developing a demographic profile equivocal to Abu Dabi where expatriates greatly outnumber the locals. In short, the Mainland Chinese Government's exportation of labour policy is driving out the traditional low-end South Asian coolie. I have shifted to the Little India quarter now. Just imagine a youthful, citified, monoglot Chinese guy wiping the tables at Komala Vilas while another one serves you idy and chai – at wages that undercut Tamil villagers. Mark this as a presence that is spreading right across the globe.

Actually, I spotted a factoid above. The Chinese guys are ONLY wiping tables, at least for the time being.

Ramaya greets Swami

Ramaya greets him, "Good morning sir. Masala tea now making. Five minutes making." Swami has just come down from his room after a poor nights sleep. He has neither done his yoga nor even bathed. He was up past midnight talking friends in the back of the restaurant before partially arranging the storeroom where he slept. Earlier in the evening a fan had been mounted to allow some circulation of air as the window can't be opened.

In the ground floor bar attached to the restaurant sits Swami at a table beside the standing window. Indirect sunlight passes through the curtain. He sips his tea. "Swami, can I bring you light bread from the 7-11 store?" Ramaya asks and gestures cross the alleyway. "No," says Swami," I will have something later." "Fine, Swami," Ramaya replies. Swami now opens his small spiral notebook and begins to jot down notions provided... A second cup of tea comes.

Ramaya, in his sixties now, has worked many years in island city state and holds a coveted PR status. Two of his sons work in Singapore too.

Swami sweats lightly from the heat of the tea and from the lack of oxygen in the closed up bar where air-con units aren't switched on till after 10.30 am in advance of early lunch guests.

Woodlands Vegetarian Restaurant

The old Tamil Christian waiter Mariam is as polite as ever at Madras New Woodlands Vegetarian Restaurant, 12 Upper Dickson Road. We have known each other for at least fourteen years. In recent times, however, I hardly go there once a year. Though many are the times I stroll along the front to encounter the ever-gracious Mariam standing there to greet me, palms pressed together. "Have you eaten Sir?" he typically asks. Then we warmly shake hands, exchange a few pleasantries and I'm on my way. Mornings around eight are the choicest times for entering the nicely air-conditioned eatery. And even though in principle I shun the local papers, I find recording thoughts in a spiral notebook a diversion that is no less pleasing than respectable while comfortably sitting at a clean white tabletop well before the predictable din. Of the twelve or so South Indian vegetarian restaurants peppered throughout the Little India quarter, Madras New Woodlands is significantly more costly than the average mess. The rule of thumb being that you get what you pay for.

I have recently taken up provisional residence in the Little India quarter of Singapore.

Le Kim Dung

I drempt that I met Ms. Le Kim Dung, the gifted pianist who studied at Cal Poly, Pomona in the 1970s.

Abinyana is dead

After bussing down from Kuala Terengannu this morning, I am resting in the city of Kuantan this evening having bathed at a lovely beach at sundown. Tomorrow I will likely continue south to Mersing, reunite with new friends and perhaps cross over to an offshore Island for a day or two before returning to Singapore.

...The instance again this cooling evening of simply switching on my notebook computer in another strange room in another strange neighbourhood and zamm I'm wireless connected. I find the intersection of these digital technologies culturally robust and even transforming, if not addictive. But what about the insidious properties of the waves that form the basis of these charming devices? How disturbing to our bodies do you think they are? I am particularly wary of the microwaves that activate and drive our mobile telephones. I mean, if they can pass through concrete walls...

The Malay word for hanger is hanger, someone told me, and Venerable Abhinyana is dead.

Richard Todd with dignified comportment

I am starting to compose a fictive portrayal of "Richard Todd with dignified comportment" mainly to offset his more likely depiction as Drunk old fart turned somebody's grandmother.

Erich Josef Löcherbach will be my next subject. I shall splatter his brains on the walls of some local cachaça joint with a mixed media palette of Roman distemper, acrylic puked chalk and Korean ink.

Is that an attitudinal change of faith or what?

Notes

1. Cachaça (Brazilian-Portuguese, pronounced "ka sha sa," [ka'ʃasɐ]), is the most popular distilled alcoholic beverage in Brazil. It is produced by distilling fermented sugarcane juice and has an alcohol strength between 38% and 48% by volume.

2. The present work and a series to follow are privately commissioned by Jasmine Hermitage, Centre for Research and the Ascetic Arts, Singapore.

learn2text. talKings 2XPeNSIVe !!

Bin working flatout since rtn frm India. its done. wil look@flights2night. cheapst JetStar S'por-SiemReap. but email PLEASE or learn2text. talKings 2XPeNSIVe !!

And listen, I am starting to get entirely too many overseas calls. Finally my writing is being taken seriously. But I'm on what they call a "top up" system, and I have to pay for incoming calls. So please have mercy. I live on a budget of 100 Euros a month. I like text messages, they're virtually free!

What is that faith?

Self-portrait, Jan 9, 2008, The Blue Pumpkin, Siem Reap, Cambodia.

A kiss to the one I love. Stay tuned.

red plastic bags

cloudy laptop toting sunday,
sinuous leeching on the filmy
recede of a bandwidth of stares
at the narrowed credence of
red plastic bags full of coffee
and camphor, shifting texts
midst the current's tide

twigging defaoite

Etude Toward Twigging Defaoite's Procedure

and life slips by like a field mouse
not shaking the grass. (Pound, Lustra)

1.
Smiles from the Netherlands, rhymes and toys.
Smiles from the cropped away heads of photos.
Smiles as tickets beneath her bouncy

What you see you can't forget.
Countenanced gently; smooth as the world,
Silken boobs on a Sunday morning

Over blackened waters of the Central Highlands
Trucked in daily across the causeway.
Locally roasted: the corn and marg tradition....

2.
His handicap 'the turtle that he swung with,' he says
And who also brought us tiny cans of no-booze beer
That warm afternoon inciting quibble over Ezra Pound

And his fascist posturing: inactive yeasts from the dead
Wall of China and the recently unbound mummy swathes
Rent and piled in an unarranged corner,

Second-floor flat off a narrow street of stares.
In the Rams Hoofd straat to be quite precise.
look where anti-americanism has driven me


Reference: Tomas Defaoite, "My Best Dead Friend."

paint my letters

In time the wind will come and destroy my lemons.
Cy Twombly, Rome 1987














Clean slate, brand new page, we're coming across to you.
Babble on now, feed that morning winding through the crowd.
Coolies sit in style at the dockside waiting for the boat.
Where to sail to?

Upload, lay it low now; trim those queries well.
Wind-up dolls en route to hajj where the weather suits the clothes on.
Lemons squeezed behind the veil will always make it better.
How they know.

Palm sweet; palm mats woven, spread to read the lines.
See the old ones, slim as sticks and young ones still the same.
Time is the only lasting myth that's chatting up the girl,
and she don't smile.

Shaved ice; red juice poured and taint that tummy keel.
Belts out; snare-shot salty blue band of the sea...
Time is an unintended thought that's shrouded in a sail;
and it don't blow.

These unexamined, unconvincing, sympathetic tales:
Ships will come and wreck my house paint, plaster, wood and nails.
But lemons squeezed on forward deck will one day paint my letters.
Then you'll know.

a shard of netting

That net as cast
to whatever may be

an uncomplicated exegete,
a shard of netting

presumed and abraded
codicil summonsing

filtrate dregs awash
in the wavelets

lapping stranded:
comprehensive pull.

what I need

I need a brand new 12-inch notebook computer. I need actions not words.

yayori fujio

I recently dreamt of Yayori Fujio.

grafting plato's shadow play

I am pleased to announce that my essay "Grafting Plato’s Shadow Play: a spray can version of metaleptic mimesis" has been published in Ashé Journal, Vol 5, Issue 1, 3-33, Winter/Spring 2006. Print editions of all Ashé issues are available from Lulu Press: Lulu.com.

the king never smiles?

I have just finished reading William Stevenson's very well written The Revolutionary King: The True-life Sequel to "The King and I" (1999). Written in the tones of an authorized biography, Stevenson, it seems, had un­pre­cedented access to the Thai Royal Court and became a true confidant to the Siamese Monarch, His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Not only is the book a very good read, it is also highly informative. The author skilfully orientates his reader by presenting essential historical facts. In particular, he traces events from between the world wars to the premature death of King Ananda Mahidol, Rama VIII, on the 9th of June, 1946. The mysterious death of the present king's brother thus hangs as an ominous curtain of intrique. It opens with timidity but eventually ushers the revival, indeed the 'revolution' of the Chakri Dynasty through the fearless rulership of the American-born Bhumibol, crowned King Rama IX on the 5th of May, 1950.

My first impressions were somewhat negative. Writing unequivocally of the houour of becoming a near 'personal confident' to His Majesty the King, I felt that Stevenson had gone too far in trying to paint an epical mural depicting his subject as basically a French-educated and jazz-playing prince who against his own wishes returns to a difficult and daunting 'foreign' culture where he finds himself ensconced on a golden throne but then is gradually transformed into a maudlin saint complete with Buddhist halo of innocence.

Reading further I came to share in Stevenson's deep seated love for the King and the book started getting better and better. But half-way through I again got the sense of a hyperbolic portrait of the Siamese king who the author too casually referred to as "Lek," but which is also the king's real name....

The book gets intense by chapter 15 when the arch-Fascist Field-Marshal Pibul Songkram orders three of the king's personal attendants to be machine-gunned down in a prison execution. Meanwhile, Lek and the barely legal Queen Sirikit are frolicking away in nuptial-mode in "Far-From-Worries" Royal beach villa, Hua Hin....

The author of The Revolutionary King quite pains himself to underscore one defining aspect of this monarch: that circumstances eventually forced the reluctant king to enter into politics or other wise see the Royal Institution either die the death, or else just get stuffed with another prime puppet immediately upon his own assassin­ation. What is more, King Lek – as elder brother King Ananda ("king" but never crowned, except 'post-mortem' by Lek) – strongly comes across as a man of the people. But Stevenson elucidates Lek's better sense in contrast to elder brother's reckless disregard for the vastly archaic, indeed 'foreign' protocols that were much too swiftly imposed upon them. Lek succeeded by reading H.G. Quaritch Wales (1931) and learning to pierce the profound symbolic nature of Siamese Court Ritual. For if thoroughly comprehended and marshaled for the good, he knew it could wielded as a God-King's arsenal and help keep aright that delicate balance that constantly teetered between the two main political forces of the day. Namely, Pibul's American backed fascist anti-communism and Pridi Banomyong's perhaps too socialistic programme that only got him exiled, first to France and then to China.

Here we have perhaps the most salient theme of Stevenson's 'unauthorized' but monumental biography. At a crucial early point in Lek's erratic reign he chose resolutely to tough it out in Bangkok, to resist the urge to flee back to Switzerland and pledge instead to absorb himself in "the hidden universe of Old Siam." What is more, he decided to use its enigma and magic to prevent the Kingdom from becoming yet another Laos, Cambodia or Burma. Stevenson bears out another key point. After the magnificent reign of Chulalongkorn, King Rama V (d. 1910), the role and stature of the Siamese Court had depreciated drastically in almost every way until finally by the end of World War II and Thailand's de facto Occupation by the Japanese, the Thai Monarchy was in utter tatters and nearly dead.

Absorbed in this history, I truly feel gratitude that someone has at long last offered something tangible; for only since reading The Revolutionary King: The True-life Sequel to "The King and I" have I ever been moved to view these royals as anything more than cardboard nobodies – and, mind you, having lived a good number of years in Thailand where due, no doubt, to the severe and endemic aversion of its people towards voicing anything concerning their cherished royal family, I had brashly dismissed them as freaks in a fish bowl.

· · • · ·

Other new texts should provide crucial balance to Stevenson's admirable work. American journalist Paul M. Handley's soon to be released The King Never Smiles (A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej) promises to cast a disconcerting light on the office of the Monarch and to challenge the popular perception of His Majesty the King as always keeping aloof from politics. Handley spent (so the story goes) thirteen years in Thailand. Interestingly, his new biography, scheduled out on April 24 (Yale University Press), has been pre-emptively banned by the Thai Information and Communications Ministry. In fact, the book's own website was blocked in February. In a statement dated January 19, 2006, the Thai National Police Chief General Kowit Wattana said that the book contained material that "could affect national security and the good morality of the people."

I should like to have a read through Handley's book too.

jasmine teapots

I am seriously getting into proper Chinese tea. Although I still use it mainly as a delectable chaser to my already well-established custom of drinking local-roast coffee – particularly in the morning with toasted bread, Swedish butter and Aussie jam.

The old doctor-monk who founded this hermitage, and who passed away seventeen years ago, left a cache of Chinese teapots, some of them outstanding gems to be sure. In fact, just last week I discovered another bunch while rummaging through a musty old cupboard.... They come in all colours, shapes and sizes: from the absurdly diminutive dollhouse dimension to others quite capable of standing-in for the mannerly English afternoon tea. But it's the charming mid- to smallish sized pieces that I actually tend to hold most dear, and I keep a 'rotating' half-a-dozen units on-hand to suit my whims and needs. Always searching for that magical teapot. Speaking of which...

danish butter & ayaan hirsi ali

While recently in India I missed my regular sorts of food. So the first thing I did when I returned to Singapore was to purchase a block of Danish butter, which is actually something I had never done before – that is, purchase butter that was made in Denmark – mainly because it's the most expensive. Now I also know that it's the most delicious.

*

Here's one gutsy and well-reasoned piece by Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "The Right to Offend" http://www.nrc.nl/opinie/article215732.ece.

Interestingly it is elsewhere reasoned that, 'not only is it a human right to offend, but to also be offended' http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/younge.

return from india

I have just returned from a deeply rejuvenating 23-day trip to southwest India. In the state of Karnataka I found the seaside pilgrimage of Gokarna the most appealing place. I stayed 12 days in a solitary beach hut – fifteen minutes from the town walking north along Main Beach. The relative isolation and the constant sound of waves there made for a blessed private retreat.

kaosan road

1. JUST BEFORE I LEFT CALABRIA I prayed to the gods for Bala's safe journey. I took the train North and stayed with my mother for a couple of weeks in Rome. There I went through a period of infantile pining. But it wasn't Bala's lips that I found myself craving, neither his tongue, his well-shaped ass, nor the measured rhythms of his pelvic thrusts.

I was longing to be close to Kavi again. Was he controlling my emotions with his telepathic powers? I wondered. Because all at once I'd forgotten all about the way he had hurt me so badly down in Capo Vaticano, and I yearned to go along with him hand in hand exploring the atmospheric streets of Rome. But the only thing I had to hold were Pasolini's poems.

...walking to centre where it all clogs up
through preciously sparkling lurid alleyways.

More>>

he finally comes to settle

HE FINALLY COMES TO SETTLE in El Sham, a Coptic village on the bank of the Nile, a thirty-minute walk from the town of Luxor, whose important temples he regularly visits.
Early mornings are his prime times for hiking and large-format camera work. After the shopping he returns to his room to cook rice and vegetables on a kerosene stove. After lunch, he briefly naps and then sits at his desk with a hot cup of tea to write in his notebook. Time stands still.

More...

the plastic caryatid

BALA LOOKED UP from his battery powered notepad: he noticed the road had suddenly narrowed – headlamps making known indistinct forms through the vapoury midnight air.
More...>>

theorematic movement

STRANGE BEINGS INDEED, and Kavi for sure. His sudden disappearances and reappearances made us all scratch our heads and wonder if he really weren't the fabled Narada Muni in disguise. Narada Muni of Puranic Lore – that celestial vagabond par excellence – that Haley's Comet of wandering rishis streaking through the universe in private orbit in a smooth unbroken concatenation of re-corporealizations ad in finitum. And each intervention providing us all with creative devastations essential for growth.

The outpost of phantasy wrecked for good.
Dimming last vestige of patina dark illusion...

More>>

two arcing bridges

Luxor, Lesbos, Tiruchendur... Ploy grew thoughtful as she sipped her steamy double roast Arabica. "He is fixing on sand and sea again. It scares me a little. Somehow, I just don't see him making a comeback. Thailand was just a holiday for Kavi."

"Our roving archangel again?" Bala remarked. "Why worry?"

"I'm not!... Down deep I'm sure he's in control. As Matsuo Basho centuries before him, Kavi is committed to the sotto voce set-up where the wandering hero drops dead on the highway."

Bala didn't feel as assured as his lover; but then, what could he know – having never met Kavi – nor spoken to the man on the telephone. Photographs and film clips were all he had ever seen...

But enough of our embodiment of rare ambiguity. That ambient new age thinking music had once again imbued their cozy apartments, even long past their tantric lovemaking. Bala watched, astounded as she stood near the window, all but naked in the sheerest of cottons: the painful severity of puissance and beauty as revealed in the sorceress's sacral dimples. She clung to the window frame and lowered her gaze to the dawn-lit streets of the small Flemish city, her eyes coursing slowly the length of the moat to the two arcing bridges that crossed to the castle.

She turned to him. "So, how's the book?"

"Tch!" he inflected. "The beat of the story is still not settled. I'm confused, Ploy. Tell me. Where do you see it heading?"

She sat in the sofa below the window and folded her legs like a pliant lotus. Tops of bare trees were framed near her shoulder. She took brief pause and then spoke with authority.

"My words just before were insensitive. I mean, portraying my brother as a heroic figure who epitomizes keeling over on the road. That's Kavi's idea, not mine. In the actual plot he's not the hero, but the anti-hero. He's a pure antagonist if ever there was one, who causes himself and anyone that comes into contact with him all kinds of suffering. Kavi's greatest desire – his super objective – is to consume himself in private theatrics. But like every proper sub-plot, this Saint Kavi's Passion will sooner or later have to be resolved."

Ploy continued. "Our genuine hero can only be Bala; like it or not. His super-objective is to grow a little scrapbook by pasting curious seeds inside. This naturally poses a number of problems."

"What do you mean?"

"In the tradition of alchemy it is the duty of the apprentice to complete the work of the long gone sorcerer. This is why so many works of philosophy, science, religion, art and so on and so forth have passed through history anonymously, or else simply ascribed to the Master himself, or received by way of divine revelation from Buddha, Lord Śiva, Archangel Gabriel, et al. Not that I, but the Lord dids't speak it – that sort of thing. With the supposition of a personal ego having now become so thoroughly discredited, how could an illumined artist sign his name without feeling utterly dishonourable. And this is why Bala is an empty hero. His primary task is to keep the channel clear and receive the material that his Master transmits. Through visualization and identification he starts to embody the mind of the guru. This is the primary work at hand. There is no real objective. In fact, everyone herein is fictive in nature. Any resemblance to real human beings can only be ridiculous because no true substance is accorded to their actions."

"So what would the use of these dimension-dissolving operations be?"

"–Hey!" and she smiled. "You are actually listening!" She arched her back and stretched her arms. "You have turned your pockets inside out! Listen to me Bala. You simply have to trust that the master's in control, and accept him as the metempsychotic disembodiment of truth. Speaking more plainly: the essential aim of all of this rigmarole is how to live happily in this world. Yogis don't yearn for tickets to nirvana; they like it right here in the abstract moment, on the rich frontier between infinity and ontos...Bala, I would die for you."

They were lying in bed.

the dimming light

THE DIMMING LIGHT of a disappearing sun as the earth turns back to the shadows of night. Sitting on the bank of the Nile at Luxor, reflecting on the orb of the wester-looming moon...in the silent, star-sprinkled dome of infinity; from where we are kept: hostages in a world of color.

bala blinks slowly

Bala blinks slowly. He isn't very hungry. "But it is a valid point," he nonetheless resumes. "I mean for someone like me. You know, someone who's not too articulate. And who doesn't even like to talk that much."

"You mean a voyeur?" she said.

"My thematic intrigues have nothing to convey."

"Then what about all this recent acclaim for 'the ostinato quality of your tapestry?'" she continued, staring at the two-lane road ahead.

"It's banal," he said. "The critics miss the mark. They've got no sense for the innate remoteness, or the chanced-upon-nature of my rule-ensemble."

* * *

Indolently passing through the fey passacaglia of pure intensity and naiveté. Lilting in the silence for a bird of flight that could finally bridge this unto the real.

Thus they drove through the darkness of the country side. Ploy with a wistful pout gripped the wheel while Bala gazed upward to the star-lit sky; deeply immersed in ascetic confection, his ears on alert for the febrile chant of diaphanous angels off the quiet lip of night. Coming on strong as they neared the French border.

Dialogue dimmed at the roadside bistro: a candle-lit table with silver cutlery. They ate without speaking; then the waiter took the plates, and the theme changed to coffee cups. She imbued her words with endemic refinement, weighing the chances that it might be France.

Now back on the road. She drives. He invents: the intended score of the current opus: ears peeled keenly to penetrate its secret. It is upon such obliquities that the handsome Europeans have attempted to graft their various embellishments that prey on innocent hard working people.

First they showered then crawled into bed and listened to the CD Hostages in a World of Color. They carefully measured their deep vascularity with vacillating points of pleasure and pain. He was ever more convinced of her. His tantric muse.

Reference

Utsuwa 2002. Hostages in a World of Color. Mini disk. Tokyo: Kakure Records.

ploy to geneva

Ploy to Geneva, again. 'What does she do there?' Bala never asks. She never explains: only sends him notes via fax or email. This morning's for example:

Ciao Amore,

Will you meet me in Paris? It should be a good laugh! We can drive back to Switzerland together. Please? I can send you the money: if you don't mind.

How are things in Belgium?

Missing you,
Ploy

PS. Some news just in on Kavi. He says he'll definitely be wintering in Egypt. He changed his mind on going to Cos when he heard the grim tale of Asclepius getting creamed for rising up the dead. He's in favour of the shores of Lake Mareotis – not very far from Alexandria, I guess. He'll be searching for the "remnant of the Therapeutae." Do you know them?

He offers the following epigram:

"The Illuminati are like kingly lions needing great expanses of terrain to prowl about in – meeting together after lengthy whiles like Himalayan sadhus when the heavenly alignments herald it."

tax-free zones of awe & inspiration

(for David & Sabrineh Fideler)

"I'M A LITTLE CONCERNED ABOUT KAVI," offered Bala. The espresso maker began to hiss. Then slightly raising his voice, he added: "He's sounding a little banged up if you ask me."

Ploy doused the blue flame. "Banged up?" she said. She was puzzled. "I thought only girls got banged up?...Why do you look at me like that? ... My English isn't perfect; so what? I don't know all those slangs ... Would you like to drink it in there, then?"

"Yes," he answered, and sat up in bed. "I mean, he sounds like he's losing his grip," Bala said. "Can you really imagine him seriously dwelling in the armour and clank of the Shemetic creation myth?"

"No," she replied. And then paused: "armour and clank?" She crossed the suite and handed him the tray. "Nor can I believe that he's taken up the camera. But..."

"—Do you think he's even gone to Egypt, then?"

"Does it really matter? – tch!"...She began to ponder... "He would surely be less fricative after wintering at Luxor. He would show the marks of a proto-mythic being – that archetypal swindler, Pale Fox, say, a perennially sterile and lonesome character who always keeps to the wilderness places and never mates."

"Did he never fall in love then?" Bala sipped his coffee.

"Good question!...He wrote many years ago of a certain 'nymph' whom he only referred to as Anaxibia. But she fled from him and took refuge in a Trappist zen abbey in Hokkaido. It is from this episode of disappointed love that I mark the imperative 'point of no return' in my brother's current incarnation. It was apparently through the dakkini's instigation that he came to recognize the fundamental ridiculousness of life-existence. It is from here that we trace his emmigration to the fringes of society."

"I know," said Bala. "We really do start to feel at home here, don't we, in these tax-free zones of awe and inspiration."

omsiddhique (2)

We imagine that a saint is fully at peace with himself as well as with the world he pervades. What is more, we believe that the saint is exceedingly likeable to everyone he comes into contact with. Amazingly the saint engenders no enmity and thereby draws no enemies upon himself... How plausible is this?

infinity's signature

1. THINGS HOTTED UP WHEN BALA AND PLOY decided to make their way to Europe. And Kavi had a lot to do with this too by managing to coax his sister out of Thailand, which had been her safe haven since 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia. Kavi was already in Boarding School in Italy when his mother and sister just narrowly escaped to live in exile in neighbouring Thailand. That's when the mother met the Bangkok Guru and began her studies at the famed conservatoire. But later she mysteriously disappeared, and Ploy was placed in the care of the guru's courtly family. Hence from a tender age the child was living with the world-renowned guru, and became his apprentice when she turned sixteen. But with the guru's passing on his 88th birthday, Ploy and Bala made their way to Europe where Kavi had launched his singular career as a dynamic group therapist, and where he also made a killing on the organic foods lecture circuit.

2. FROM HIS NEWLY PURCHASED HOME on the shores of Lake Como, Kavi penned a bubbly letter to encourage Ploy to make the plunge.

Hey Sis!

Just listen. As soon as you arrive here they will take you for an angel from a higher planet. Don't worry; I have already primed them... You can work as a private therapist in the beginning. I will find you clients and arrange some groups. Being in group therapy is the latest craze. The only thing you have to do is shine like a mirror. That's the basic trick. Sound easy?

But you have to understand that a superior mirror always reflects the facts of the matter – "like the midday sun with its shadowless light." So be warned: you will prove far brighter than they ever reckoned and the emotional apple cart is bound to be upturned. And when that happens they will go to great extremes to dim the unbearable harshness of reality.

You will then be confronted with the two greatest obstacles facing the yoga therapist in Europe. Namely: cheese and wine in a party mood. Next come the comfortless reflections over sausage; more corks get popped and then they cut the stinky cheese. It all boils down to a chauvinistic identity-fix.

How to make it through such anxious times

Here's the basic recipe. Strike the pose of a white-coat clinician and strive to be the laziest mirror in Europe. Tacitly affirm with each-and-every pre-paid hour, 'I belong no where... I belong to no one...'

But at a certain crucial moment in time you must all-of-a-sudden relax your stance and offer them something outrageous to believe in.

Become an exponent of the sexual yoga

i.) Take the hand of the nearest man or woman and urge them to join you in a tabletop striptease. Notice how they shriek with fear and embarrassment. Quickly let them off the hook...

When their nerves have settled down a bit – allowing for a few more corks to be popped – commence your second angle of assault...

ii.) Place a chair in the centre of the room and smilingly solicit a volunteer. Once accomplished, sit the person down and explain that in a moment you are going to snap your fingers and, when you do, the person there seated will be required to be serious. But when you snap your fingers a second time, the person there seated must stop being serious, and so forth. In short, they must alternate their moods between seriousness and unseriousness as you the therapist snap your fingers...

iii.) Now for a third outlandish party prank. Suddenly produce a large piece of cardboard together with a coloured felt-tip pen. Make the following public announcement: "I NEED A VOLUNTEER WHO CAN DRAW A FIGURE EIGHT WITH THIER ASS HOLE." Quickly let them off the hook, saying: "TCH, ALL RIGHT THEN – I WILL DO IT!" But insist that one of them hold the piece of cardboard about waist-height. Now, with a light but theatrical high-pitched gasp, you must slip the butt of the pen into your anus. Then carefully steadying the pen with your hand, and looking back over your shoulder with prudence, proceed to draw a large figure eight with the flowing circular motion of your hips.

–Snap!

3. ...BY MOST ACCOUNTS of his Spring Début, Kavi had set the therapeutic party scene alight with his highly resourceful interventions, methodically tempered by his trademark remoteness. "It is the sheer air-tightness of his clinical cool," wrote London-based New Age Directions magazine, "that breeds such astonishing customer confidence." This effectively led to a hectic summer calendar prefigured by promotional radio interviews, TV appearances, consultancy seminars, and an interactive website. To spur himself further he retained a wily publicist to meticulously map out a Continental tour billed, Summer Party Season with Doctor Kavi.

4. NOW IT WAS DURING THIS SOMEWHAT EARLIER PERIOD that Kavi collected an extensive portfolio of impromptu paintings that exploited the range of ad-libitum materials availed at each specific therapeutic party. Later, together with a Japanese art dealer, Kavi exhibited more than fifty of his mixed-media penitures in one of Tokyo's most distinguished galleries.

"My minimalist tendencies have won the critics' hearts," he notified Ploy the following winter. "They're selling like hot cakes! I'm pocketing thirty-three percent of the take!!... I have entitled my show Infinity's Signature."

Reference

Nito, Swami Anand (private context, Leela, Koh Phangan 1991). See his Naked and Empty-Handed: Transcendence and Beyond in Group Workshops, Trafford, 2005.

Veeresh, Swami Anand 1997. Also, a morning meditation, in The Poetic Concepts. Compiled by Bavala van den Bos, et al. Humaniversity Foundation.

greetings from londonistan

As for the mood in London these days, "I am fucking terrified!" ... Right. Pretty wicked time to be visiting then, innit. Because the fact of the matter is EVERYONE IS SHIT SCARED. Ya won't find me sitting in mosques around here!...

But my mates put up this corker of humour site. Warning: vulgar language. Check it out... http://www.iamfuckingterrified.com/.

paris notebook

NOW A CERTAIN PRIMORDIAL mystery man has a major role in the saga at hand. We speak of Ploy's congenital twin brother here who normally goes by the name of Kavi (variant of Kabeer). He is also an important contributor to the text. Numerous letters, faxes and emails were passed on to Bala through the agencies of Ploy and her enigmatic, if not certainly beautiful mother. Now much of this material will be added to the mix because here, quite frankly, anything goes.

We cite the example of a very old diary that Kavi started keeping a few days after his arrival to Paris [Filed: Kavi, Paris Notebook, n.d. reserve 1. Private archives]. When? He mentions October but the year is uncertain. "I have no intention," he begins (PN: 1), "of writing a word of any consequence. This is merely a means to ease my mind." He goes on to mention his arrival to Paris by flight from Bangkok after nine straight years living solely in the Orient – primarily Afghanistan, India and the Kingdom of Thailand. Most of these years he based himself in India with seasonal migrations North and South. "Srinagar by summer and Goa by winter" (2). But when visa expiration dates forced him out of India, he flew to "Kabul or Bangkok," depending (2). As for the time spent in southern Thailand, he sardonically describes it as, "parking ourselves in the Mickey Mouse tourists haunts of Samui and Phangan islands" (3). But he travelled elsewhere too, it ought be noted.

Still, the Paris Notebook proved very short lived; for with the first faint inklings of winter's dark chill, Kavi emerges in the warmth of southern India (4). He is back in the former Portuguese colony of Goa again "replete with all sorts of Catholic vestiges." Yet, after this "tepid three-month reprieve" we see him returning yet again to Europe, "flying into Brussels this time, intending to meet a friend." (5) And there the diary blandly ends.

"Feel free to exploit my abandoned sampler," he later notified Ploy by letter; "that it add some trajectory, cohesion and edge to your indistinct project. You may quote or misquote me anyway you like; I couldn't care less. When I think of something else I'll send it down the tube."

the hill

1. THE LOVELY ENGLISH COTTAGE was waiting for me; situated near to the great wooded heath in an area replete with wonderful summer graveyards.

* * *

Mornings are chilly, compared to Crete, yet sunbeams stream through the small kitchen window. I make a simple breakfast of toast and tea then vaguely plan a hiking route in the general direction of the hill.

Day after day I am powerfully drawn to the cryptic vicinity of the lofty hill. And while each day passes rather uneventfully, each is enveloped in a great internal silence.

The villagers are kind and often smile on me; but somehow always leave me alone. This is probably because I look so untidy. Though daily bathed, I can hardly bother to shave myself, and my travel-worn clothes are also quite telling.

2. I BEGIN TO FREQUENT the various old graveyards on the western slope of the hill. Yet because I never hold conversation with the villagers, nor possess a map or any kind of guidebook, I have not come to verify the name of the hill. It may be called Mount Vernon. Why? Because I often hike along a path of that name and which leads to the vantage at the top of the hill.

It is thrilling to get myself lost up there while exploring the trails that link the stately old neighbourhoods. I pass through areas thick in wood where everything is covered with leafy creepers. I stroll down apparently private roads and the countless winding paths leading off of them. Everywhere is daubed with late summer blossoms.

Other days I cross to the trendy square at the bottom of the eastern slope of the hill with its fashionable bookstores, chic cafés, fancy restaurants and galleries. But I much prefer to spend my time on the western slope, especially in the burial grounds around the old churches. I find these graveyards unexcelled places for deep contemplation and ecstatic trance. They are quiet, ancient and impeccably kept. Many things come to me while sitting amongst the tilting tombstones, the hedgerows and trees.

As evening approaches I begin the lengthy journey back to the cottage. I slowly climb through layers of mist to where gem-like dewdrops sparkle all the time. Snug inside my humble cottage I replenish myself with steamy herbal soups and crusts of coarse whole bread. As the hour grows late and quietude descends, I sit cross-legged near the glowing embers and focus on the murmur of the stream through the garden. Normally nothing much happens at night.

3. WITH SO MUCH PACING and pondering through the burial grounds, the lucid perception begins to emerge that there is hardly any difference between the dimension of the living and that of the dead. A withdrawn and ignored yet transcendental ambience bubbles like a spring from the heart of every graveyard. And it now starts to spread beyond the stately iron gates and cast an eclipsing veil of somnolence across the entire surrounding village.

But not a veil for me. No. Rather one is lifted. And in its stead is a diamond lens through which I perceive that these neighbourhoods and high streets are after all the makings of a grand expansive necropolis, the full extent of which I shudder to imagine. Yet concerning these decorative living corpses steering little cars and observing red lights, they are veritable mannequins, animated ghosts, profound amnesiacs lost in the shadow play of a consciousness entombed in a brain in a body.

4. I WONDER SHOULD I TELL ABOUT THE GENIES...

Another mystical day around the hill. I returned to the cottage about half-past four. I was absolutely famished and decided to prepare a little grub, but I needed to make an excursion to the shop in order to get some dhal and mango pickle.

...of the psychic beings that have normally been drawn to me, practically all are of the feminine gender. I find them to be of two basic sorts, or let us say age groups. First is the perfect and perpetually efflorescent "virgin-wife" type. Second is what I call the "cherub-child" type.

THIS IS WHAT I learned from my celestial friends. They are ethereal beings of vision and light. Their bodies are subtle. Their beauty is awesome. Their needs are virtually nil. They require no food, no water, no air, no shelter, no clothing, no money, no nothing. Their single need is for someone to love; and giving love is tantamount to getting it. Why? Because the love they give is pure devotion. But they never take love too seriously either. In this way, jealously never weighs in, nor fear of rejection, nor abandonment. Their basic existence is effortless love. The word "inadequacy" is not in their language, neither "insufficiency" or "disappointment." As long as they are fixed on a focal point of love they exist as springs of pure perseverance. If not, they simply never existed. Thus they appear and disappear. They are apsaras of sorts, guides to additional realms.

But wait... I had better hold my tongue, at least for the moment. I am getting carried away.

a simple braid

1. Prakriti

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a small and insignificant hamlet located in one of the northern hilly regions of the tutelary kingdom where a beautiful young woman lived who was pitiably deaf and mute and also insignificant.

Now for no apparent reason this woman had no house of her own. She belonged to no family, possessed nothing and therefore slept on pavements, etc.

More>>

cutting loose

1. They had phoned to confirm

They had phoned to confirm that the cottage was available.

" – Brilliant ! "

I can have it to myself till the end of November. I dream of the homey comforts that it promises and the weeks I can spend in personal retreat. I will also be able to catch up on some writing, having recently gathered a lot of sketchy data, which I normally scribble whilst sitting under trees or else laying in the poolside sun on my bum – having just pulled out that ultra thin notebook I always keep stashed in an easygoing satchel. I habitually write in the rush of inspiration.

But my ticket has a stop in Athens.

2. Singapore–Athens–Crete

Having booked a flight with a stop in Athens,

...once I arrived I immediately made my way to the island of Crete and the southern coastal village of Pitsidia...

*

I gain immense pleasure hiking through the lonely hills, tracing the indistinct twists of the goat paths passing through olive groves and waterless ravines. I'm always on the search for accommodating sites where I can saturate myself with ecstatic bliss. The days pass slowly and my thoughts hardly move beyond the fused perception of olive branch and birdie chirp. In fact, I really don't know if I'm dead or alive. I also don't worry – don't care too much. My principal work is to keep to myself...

I experience soaring meditations here. These grow from the craving to be totally alone and abide in the Elysian fields of immortality, to minimize my wants and actions to the point where I'm a soofi in the ancient Grecian sense. But I truly am alone here, bare and transparent; a persona non-entity merged with the arid rocky terrain.

From the tiny old Cretan village of Pitsidia I walk along the unpaved road to Kommos Beach. Just before the sand I find Minoan ruins partially reclaimed from the silent dunes... Then my feet feel the smoothness of the cold slate shoreline polished by the waves of the sapphire sea. I sun my body on the polished pebbles whilst hidden in a cleft of the sandstone overhang. A stiff salt breeze comes blowing from the west as I sit facing south toward the distant Lybian coastline; a diamond in the rough.

3. Angelic Beings

Is it trite to speak of "the magic of Greece"? Well, what can I say? The rocks and the trees here really do speak to those with ears to hear. The deities are also alive and well.

Throughout my years of solitary exile, angelic beings have aided and protected me. Some have become my constant companions, as is the case on the island of Crete where I have prudently honoured the local divinities.

How kindly and gay these innocent spirits who have shown me a shining glimpse of their world and the astounding fact that there are multiple worlds within worlds here. Only veils of translucency partition these domains. And yet by learning to attune ones frequency to theirs, these rarefied beings reveal themselves as welcoming, affectionate, and deeply concerned. But I fear that I speak too lightly of them. For there surely must exist innumerable races throughout the limitless strata of time.

Put quite simply, these devas or "angels" require no oxygen, food, or drink. As telepathic beings, they need not speak, as their mouths seems to hold aesthetic value only, as is witnessed by their gem-like teeth when they smile. And yet having thus said, they are no where to be seen.

4. A Faultless Realm

This afternoon as sunset approached I was sitting in yoga on a west-facing hillside only ten-minutes walk from the village of Pitsidia. Sitting there alone I was marvellously transported to a faultless realm of contemplative bliss. Away for some 'time' I re-emerged slowly... And when I opened my eyes I saw a young donkey a few yards away. He was standing there watching me with his funny long ears pointed upward alert. I couldn't help but smile and offer him "OM." He immediately nodded his cute long head and tamped his hoof two times on the ground. 'Aha!' I thought. 'That proves it!'

5. Atomic contemplations

As I purify myself through atomic contemplations obscurity draws near in the form of two well meaning but frivolous young Viennese girls and a throng of eager young men chasing after them. I am living in the same small house with these two. But I do not speak too much.

They are very pretty Scorpions who cannot cook. One of them chain-smokes ganja tipped cigarettes. Both of them asked if they can sleep with me...

Thus ruefulness elbows its way into my heart and I strongly feel like fleeing the island. It's a classic example of how easy it is to get knocked off your mark when the mystical juices start to flow.

6. Café Costas

I take morning refuge at Café Costas. The sceptic Van Holden often shares my table. He typically appears in a grumpy mood with his day-old Tribune and a crumpled pack of pungent French cigarettes.

I see him this morning. His approach is dour. He has just caught wind of the circulating gossip and can hardly believe his ears. He stops a few steps before the table.

"What is this I'm hearing!" he blurts outloud. The remark is followed by a cold blank stare. "Are you totally crazy?"

He takes his seat. "They both want to sleep with you! Have you no shame? Have you no sense of proportionality? What's wrong with you! You don't have to take them both on at once! What's the big fucking deal! Sleep with one tonight and then the other one tomorrow night. Good God Man. Are you daft or what!"

Over second cups of coffee his diatribe continues. "I have repeatedly advised you to put away your moralizing. Heed my warning: Persisting in this folly will only get you nailed. Just think about it: when will you ever have a chance like this again?"

"Listen," I reply in my own defence. "I can't stand being around people who smoke. Can't you understand?"

"Get off it!" he says. "Are you really so concerned about those two girls' health?"

"It's not their health" I say, "It's mine... and I don't like kissing ashtrays, either. Give me a break!"

Van Holden pulls another fag from the pack. "Can't you see that drugs are here to stay?" He strikes the match. "I mean who in the hell doesn't do some sort of dope?...

"Personally," he continues after a few long draws, "I actually find the airline ticket a 'highly' transportive form of drug. I mean think of it: for a paltry six-hundred-and-fifty Euros you get a gourmet TV dinner placed in your lap by a shapely stewardess with business class warmth. You sip a little brandy at 40,000 feet then snore yourself into mild oblivion. As you enter British airspace she nudges you awake...

"And in the meantime," he continues, resuming his glare, "anywhere else in this godforsaken world you'll find people putting the same amount in cocaine up their noses to attain an analogous transportation!" He pauses for a sip.

"But if you're really insistent on pissing off to London," Van Holden continues, "listen: there's a brilliant coffee bar YOU'VE GOT TO TRY. It's right next door to the tandoori joint in Hampstead village. It's run by an old Sicilian woman who gets these amazing office girls in there with her sweet infusions of double-roast Arabica, and wicked espresso for a measly quid." He pauses for another sip... "a hundred times better than this Turkish shit!"

7. Back to Athens

From the main Cretan port in Iraklion I board a ship sailing north for Piraeus (Athens). It's an overnight voyage. As soon as I arrive I reconfirm my onward flight to London Gatwick. From the travel bureau I walk down the quiet morning lane and find a room in the heart of the Palaka. I check my email, freshen up, and then take a long nap.

* * *

Evening approaches. I'm terribly hungry. I dine alone in the hotel cafeteria. It is still quite early so I decide to take a stroll around the immediate vicinity. The lanes are alive with street musicians and tourists flowing in and out of open-air restaurants. The scene is abuzz with inebriated gaiety. I suddenly catch sight of the Parthenon, perched high atop the citadel-like Acropolis, brightly illumined by the moon and floodlights. 'How beautiful!' I think. I'm totally stunned. I keep it to my right and hike around the entire hill.

...Thirty minutes later I find myself lolling about the impressive National Assembly House. I'm standing there in awe midst the huge Doric colonnade when just by chance the nation's leading politicians suddenly start streaming out of the majestic building – all of them accompanied by their ravishingly dressed wives. It's a very posh affair full of generous kisses, radiant smiles and theatrical gesticulations. I gaze and gaze for the longest while... when suddenly a policeman notices me standing there and politely motions that I move along.

"–No problem!" I assure him as I stroll down the steps and enter the adjacent gardens...

*

Actually I came away feeling quite honoured, having caught a close glimpse of the gorgeous life in which the privileged few are allowed to indulge; those marvellous people of the sophisticated ilk, leading plastic-intensive chargecard lives and running up bills all over the place. But then I cringed to imagine such hyper-tense juggling acts steeped in complication and unbearable pretence. But then again, 'maybe it’s a sign of "mastery"' I thought, 'I mean just to be able to keep on smiling like that.'

After carefully weighing all the pros and cons, I concluded they deserved all the money they squandered.

calls to prayer

Sufi, Rasa and Alexander Baumgarten vis-à-vis Explicitly 'Sumptuous' Aesthetics

The present item was roused in response to an apparently modest thought-intersection of Dr. Sunthar Visuvalingam and Mr. Ashok Chowgule.

Sunthar: "Similarly, I agree with earlier Orientalists that much of the content of Sufism is actually the wholesale Islamic appropriation of pre-existing spiritual traditions."

Ashok: "If that be the case, Sufism is not Islamic. Because Islam has always seriously attempted to destroy the spiritual traditions wherever it went."

· · • · ·

1. Stated in brief, my own undeveloped notion on the matter is that Sufic products are essentially the fusion, confusion and conflation of Silk Route trade, only adding further that the righteous pursuit of any spiritual tradition is the retail destruction of every spiritual tradition. It's like the war on terror: would Washington only conduct it honourably. And bringing the pistol to its hallowed temple...

2. I should like to reelaborate – if not again forbidden – what I touched on recently in Grafting Plato's Shadow Play: A Spray Can Version of Metaleptic Mimêsis (2005). Now as applies to ars rhetorica (the 'art of persuasion'), mimêsis ("inventiveness") connotes at minimal a range of senses from the uncomplicated aping of verbal idiosyncrasies, to the studied emulation of linguistic patterns and the assimilation of discursive models and techniques (Corbett 1971: 243-50).

However in a general Platonic/Neo-Platonic sense, mimêsis contrastingly adopts a metaphysical frame. This draws on three to five – depending how you parse them – points: (i) an apparent noumenal-phenomenal dichotomy between (a) the contingent world of sense perception and (b) a centreless, far-flung sphere of perfection; (ii) the human faculty of apperceiving this ultimate, unchanging reality or being [(b) above]; and (iii) the added capacity for 'sharing' these apperceived sublimities with fellow inhabitants of the mundane world (Kennedy: 117). In fact, Plato's idea of a realm of being that is crystalline in character and infinitely centreless would later contribute to the Central Asian/Silk Route Sufic formulation of the Persian arabesque, i.e. a disaggrative frond-like link and line to the very fore structures of that far-flung sphere.

3. Now, tracking rasa's essential myth is the natural task of its auto-plot discernment console. Listen and I'll tell you. Here the protagonist/questioner/inquisitor begins self-seeding her personal conclusion through responding to a regiitstry of obvious questions; though knowing the inquisitors will never be content and that she's fated to a barren, unrelenting search that only comes to closure with the hushing of authorial voice. Here we have the concept of self-liquidity: preconscious freedom without direction – though not to be mistaken for a psychic dimension, neither a wily deduction of thought. Why? Wholly unconfined and devoid of direction, this is just the reason why it's not a happening, neither a result. It is the unreasoned aftermath of personal liquidation and vaporisation without a trace, and whose function as a cryptic dramaturgical figure is concealed in its own inner private sub-philosophy. This naturally includes a rule-ensemble that we trust metaleptically yields all essentials averred through the Vedic conception of mandala ('object-field'/'force-field'/'seed receptacle'/'unpierced thermal spring'). And in this way the play/act/object of the tragedy prompts the whole bazaar, indeed calls the entire permeated public space to prayer, to diaphanous regions of aesthetic sensibility where, bathed in the thus-pierced-springs of exfoliation, one resigns to the hand of a force far beyond, one dances to a score that is normally not perceived by the standard apparatus of cartilage, flesh and minuscule bone. Here the prospects of returns gets thoroughly impeached, as does the very notion of taking leave. All that remains is the naked utensil reduced to its unadorned simplicity and beauty – a living mythos retrieved from the sun (let's say).

4. Now let me turn briefly to the very early question that arose in the essentially shānta-rasasised nātya-shāstric Vajraccehedika-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra of Nargajuna (4th c.), alluding if I may to the still wet fresco of my recent Diamond Splitter Discourse (2005). And as the Aletheial One's dialogist purports him to say:

Those who walk the path of the deeply centreless far-flung sphere called "intellect" should try to evolve an aesthetic sensibility (shānta-rasa). 'How?' I will explicate. By learning to abstract the half-dozen
senses of sound, smell, sight, taste tactility and time from each their contingent 'object-fields' of sense, there ensues the dawning of pratyāhāra, "the emancipation of the senses themselves from the domination external sense objects," and every other fantasized mission of sense. Next, one downgrades the prods of logic in favour of the finely calibrated senses as the newly far-flung aesthetic sensibility emerges from the decomposing pods of worthless cognition, i.e. as an enigmatic instrument of absorption, infiltration, and extension beyond to the very fore structures of that deeply centreless far-flung sphere called also prajñā and/or bodhi.

5. Yet in the European context (Grafting Plato's Shadow Play, §04. Inventive Continuation), it was Aristotle's response to his teacher's aporia on the rise of literacy in sixth century Athens, and 'the need to rethink its functions and consequences' (Harris 2000), that established the orthodox Western assumptions on the momentous nature and role of mimêmata, or "mimetic goods," in the arenas of art and rhetoric. And this reign would last for two millennia until Alexander Baumgarten (1773) finally dared to critique and stare down that mode of logic that had come to sustain the near archetypical view of mimêsis – a perspective that hinged on two critical points: (i) the cheapening of sense and (ii) the dichotomous partitioning of beauty and art from genuine things.

Yet between these two our mammoth culture-heroic duo, the notion of mimêsis as "imitative theory" accorded little scope to "authorial inventiveness" (Burke: 6). And one really wonders 'why' when for tens-of-thousands of years already the human species had exercised its near neurological need to traffic and trade in dramatic narrative text – this folk re-threading of the mundane yarns of peoples lives into compact frames (Mckee 2000) eliciting heroes, villains and fools – and bicycle riders and their bloodied victims – all shuttled and pressed to the rhythmic beat of the passions loomed in pursuits and their reprisals. And indeed it took two lengthy millennia before this view got thoroughly critiqued, and its hypothesized dichotomy between mimeticistic artefacts and genuine things rejected out of hand as wholly insufficient to the needs of getting real. It was thus that the likes of Alexander Baumgarten and others of early German aesthetic tradition choreographed their radical departure and established "aesthetics" as a separate discipline whose focus was the sensitive investigation of "mimetic goods," as typifies the modern academic sense of Fine Arts (Sörbom 2002: 20). Yet Baumgarten's denotation of aesthetics is still something far beyond a mere philosophical scrutiny of the meaning beauty and art. It is 'a theory,' writes Hammermeister (2002), 'that substantiates the epistemological relevance of sensual perception based on a gnoseological faculty, and which in turn produces a distinct type of knowledge.' Yet furthermore 'unwilling to regard sense data as merely the stimuli for higher and more advanced cognitive processes, he founded a science of sensual cognition independent from cognition itself' (Sörbom: 4, 8). And in doing so, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten strikingly stands as the first critical thinker in the conventional history of Western philosophy to present a vigorous and sustained defence of the up-till-then dispossessed vision of the poet-yogin. Through depreciation of the goads of logic in favour of the refined calibration of the senses rinsed of reason's vague ambitions, these daring exponents of a tantalizing science disclosed, dismayed and rejected out of hand the pooled presumptions and historical affixations of Europe's two principal cultural progenitors, between whom had furnished more than all put together the essential setting, pace and décor of Western philosophical rumination in particular regard to a sumptuous aesthetics.

References

Baumgarten, Alexandaer Gottlieb 1954 (1773). Reflections on Poetry (Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus), trans. introduction and notes by Karl Aschenbrenner and William B. Holther, University of California Press.

Bullen, Matthew 2004. Review, Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association http://rmmla.wsu.edu/ereview/57.1/reviews/bullen.asp last updated October 28, 2004.

Burke, Sean 1995. Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Corbett, Edward P.J. 1971. The Theory and Practice of Imitation in Classical Rhetoric, in College Composition and Communication 22.

Hammermeister, Kai 2002. The German Aesthetic Tradition, Cambridge University Press.

Harris, Roy 2000. Rethinking Writing, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kennedy, George A. 1980. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

Mckee, Francis 2000. A Pack of Lies, Glasgow: Tramway http://www.francismckee.com/pack.htm.

Sörbom, Göran 2002. The Classical Concept of Mimesis in A Companion to Art Theory. Eds. Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2002, pp. 19-28 www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/smithwilde1.pdf.

Sritantra 2005. Diamond Splitter Discourse (a sampled conveyance of exposed intimation) http://diamond-splitter-discourse.blogspot.com/.

Sritantra 2005. Grafting Plato's Shadow Play: A Spray Can Version of Metaleptic Mimêsis http://a-grafting-of-shadow.blogspot.com/.

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In response to two posts: A. Chowgule, Re: "Muslim allegories on the taste of Love: becoming God's image" (for feedback) 3.7.05 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/3233, and S. Visuvalingam, Religious art as propaganda: trans-sectarian aesthetics of rasa" (for feedback) 28.6.05 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/3224.