Wandering Thought # 347

Consumerism isn’t just a market model, it’s also a human model. We consume other people and relationships the same way we consume commodities for no other reason than boredom and the artificial need for something new.

In this way, our relating to others and, indeed, to ourselves, takes on a shallow dimension and never hits or strives for depth. We crave that which thrills and titillates us, but only momentarily, and do not know of the pleasures that patience, time and discipline can give.

We have modeled our relationship with the world, with others, and with ourselves after the consumerist ideal, and in the process have lost peace and deep relatedness. We are agitated, constantly driven to change people the way we buy new clothes.

We are consumers, but in the process it is we who are consumed; it is we who are no more than an empty shell, filled with nothing more than the sound of the waves, an echo and no substance, a shadow of an agitated flame.

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Wandering Thought # 246

Myth is not dead if we still feel in our hearts something of the magic of a year that ends and one that begins, of a cycle returning, beginning again, filled with the power of renewal. This eternal recurrence is the essence of the most ancient myths; that the world has been ordained by divinity to return again and again as an emulation of the divine, and this to eternity.

Wandering Thought # 245

Our character and social interactions, the way we deal with ourselves and with others, are built on the darker foundations of our addictions and how we come to terms with them, whether we are able to control our desires and emotions or are controlled by them.

Wandering Thought # 244

A thinker is one who rides his solitude on lofty wings that take him up over and beyond mountains and cities, giving him eyes to see things those who dwell in society never dream of seeing. For that reason, when he speaks no one understands him, and when he comes back to society he must use the mask to be intelligible. If is both a curse and a blessing to go through the world in such a way, unseen, hidden.

The hyper sensitive will feel guilty for things they did not even do, they are always ripe for submission.

We can never be rid of the mystical impulse because science can never exhaust the mystery of life.

Without love even beauty becomes tiring and ultimately a burden.

This solitude, I cultivated it all my life so that it could, one day, be large enough to contain your presence.

Solitude, my sole companion, the only candle lighting the corners of my heart.

Poetry is the translation of the heat between our bodies, the gravity that pulls even stars from their orbit.

‏لا شعر يوفيها حقها فلغزها أعمق من كل شعر.

صوفيُّ القلبِ والهوى.

Wandering Thought # 243

I am a mystic through and through. Poetry was never for me an artistic endeavour but a spiritual one. It was my way to go beyond myself, into myself, and touch something of the Eternal that manifests itself through us and through every form that comes into existence, as the movement of existence itself. I am a mystic, a poet of the heart, I am one who listens.

Wandering Thought # 242

A positive thinker is not one who believes in the positive outcome of every situation. Some situations are clearly hopeless, with the outcome bound to be negative.

A positive thinker is not dispirited by the negative event, but still affirms life and sees therein something to learn. He grasps that growth and understanding happen in difficult situations where one is challenged and even defeated.

A positive thinker understands that no defeat is final since life is deeper than all defeats and love is stronger even than death; and since life always finds a way, he puts the defeat to his advantage by learning from it and being reconciled to the nature of life.

A positive thinker does not believe that he will simply get what he wants by adopting a positive mindset, but understands that the important lessons happen when one’s desire is frustrated, and that failures offer the most important lessons and are the true shapers of character.

A positive thinker is one who believes in the transformative power of our attitude towards life. We are not the passive objects of outside events but we have the power to change them by changing ourselves. Our power lies in our response to what happens to us.

Wandering Thought # 241

‏الحبّ هو أن تجد شيئاً جميلاً في الذي تُحبهُ كلّ يوم.

Every lived life rises on the foundation of an unlived, imagined life that could’ve been but never did.

The idols are big in proportion to the smallness of the faith.

Science can purge God from the human imagination the day it can vanquish poetry.

It is our spiritual vacuum that we attempt to fill with pleasure, without succeeding.

Solitude is the virtue of the strong.

The moth does not give up until it is burned.

You can win every very battle but still lose the war.

There is no suffering that cannot be surmounted by death; there is no death that cannot be vanquished by love.

بعضُ الأشخاص بلسمٌ للروح.

Wandering Thought # 240

The self is not an isolated atom; it is only a self in relation to others and to the world; it is not a state, an identity, but a locus of interdependent experiences where the external commingles with the internal, a process in which both are modified. It is modern madness to confuse self with personhood. For it spells our isolation from other people as well as the world, cutting us off from life and its flow. The psyche is not merely individual, but the individual is an expression of it, which makes the psyche communal, .incorporating even nature and the inanimate. Therefore our modern psychological diseases are not problems occurring only within us, but we are the site in which what is ill in society and our way of life expresses itself.

To the modern madness we must oppose: myth and poetry.

Wandering Thought # 139

You will feel happy to work less only if you feel that your work is imposed on you, that it is a bane. But in a world where work is a source of joy, where it is beneficial for yourself and the community, it is nonsensical to work less or more, for work, then, is an expression of your being, and is at one with life, it is a passion. As it now stands, we suffer work as an affliction, and as something that separates us from life and from true community. We are ridden with feelings of guilt if we do not perform and submit to the norms, and to perform we feel that we need to sacrifice ourselves, burning ourselves on the altar of the work-god.

Wandering Thought # 138

The more parts of yourself you can bring into your relationship the more you will be able to feel that you can be open, love and commit, and the less you will feel that the excluded parts of yourself need to be searched for somewhere outside.

Wandering Thought # 137

If the commandment that the Oracle of Delphi once gave to Socrates was to “Know thyself,” then, it seems to me, the commandment the Modern Oracle is giving us is to “Forget thyself.” Any philosophical or religious inquiry being nonsensical in a capitalist/technological age, what remains is the pragmatic use of the moment, whatever life is alloted to us, without it having any meaning beyond itself. But the self cannot simply be forgotten, for it resides on a gruesome rift of anxiety, and this is solved – the awareness of the self is snuffed out – by its constant dilution in pleasure and busyness. One must always be busy, never have a moment to sit with oneself. Solitude, in the modern age, becomes the ultimate anathema, the unforgivable sin, for it is a sign that one still considers his self, still has a self to cultivate and know. And yet, though in constant company, though constantly on the go, in the deepest sense, we have never been more alone, more secluded, and more without the ability to articulate our deep isolation, which we must constantly deny.

We birds of solitude are now few and far apart scattered across the wilderness, and our songs do not reach other’s ears. We converse with past and future ages, and shield ourselves from the constant noise surrounding us. We pity humankind, for its soul has never been more lost, rootless and perturbed. There is no meaning in their eyes, only a constant dizziness hidden with a smile, a photograph filter.

Wandering Thought # 136

It was enough to drink poetry just once for its wine to seal my fate. Like seeing a light so strong that it burns itself in the consciousness of the soul. It is a truth one cannot unsee, but it’s not exactly a truth — what, then? It is a spaciousness in the heart; an understanding of the interconnectedness of everything in life, its full circle; it is the dwelling in the eternal, the absolute, and the viewing of linear time for what it is, an illusion; it is the revival of the old myths of perpetual creation – life, existence, and consciousness as being created every single moment, with every single breath, and the feeling of the sacred and the divine as inhabiting and channeled in this moment and breath; it is life with passion and intensity to the utmost, yet it is a simple life, a life of duration of simple yet deep feelings, a life lived close to the essence of things; it is a life that gives voice to things no one sees or cares about; it is a life that dares to shed off itself all the falsity and illusions of modern society, a life that dares to live by itself, a world contained and overflowing in its own solitude. Our fate chooses us and we earn it when we have the courage to choose it in return. So I choose, again and again, this life of poetry.

Wandering Thought # 135

A poem is built on the premise of not getting its subject — being overwhelmed by it — which, in the end, it leaves shrouded in a deeper veil of mystery than it first found it — it handles it as something sacred, it sanctifies it. Yet this process, seen in the right light, is revelatory, is the conduit of the proper living, and shows a deep intimation of life that reason, insisting on its tyranny, can never understand.

Wandering Thought # 134

We are happier when the radio plays our favorite song, without us having to play it ourselves. There is always a special flavor for the gratuitous and unsought when it enters our life, whether it’s a song, a thought, a bird, a poem, or a love.

If our society could have a nickname it would probably be this, “society of the spectacle.” We are nothing if we don’t appear, if we don’t show, and the more we appear and show the more we are. The self is constructed in the act of being projected for others to see, otherwise, alone, it is non-existent. We are addicts to the image, and cannot fathom the value of something without the aim of it ultimately being shown, reflected to others. This is the true tyranny of our age, unrecognized and practiced by all. Nothing is more alien to us than the spirit and the intuition of the sacred.

In time disappointments become blessings, as they disillusion us and bring us to the truth of the matter and of ourselves. They are the occasions through which we know ourselves deeply, through which we change and become who we are more intimately. They are the flavor of life.

The whole world can chain you, deceive you and frustrate you, but it cannot break you if you maintain your inner freedom. It can bring you to your knees, but it cannot prevent your triumph, as you choose to live with openness and joy in your heart, sucking to the full the marrow of each moment, turning its vinegar into honey and wine.

In our modern world the most widespread pandemic is a silent one, anxiety.

Life is no closer to the infant than it is to the old man.

May God grant me the joy of birds as they sing at and at dusk.

Wandering Thought # 133

There is no outer salvation for a man trapped in the web of his own thoughts.

Dreams are also events in one’s life, and at times more important events than the ones that actually happen, for they hint at a deep shift in one’s inner life.

They do not know the depth and fullness of love those who have no intuition of the sacred.

Out of tune with the spirit of the age, I read books and write poetry.

Not wealth or social status, what separates one man from another, what elevates one man above the other, is his spiritual depth and knowledge.

If you don’t know what you want, you will waste every opportunity you get.

One of the ironies of life is that we can well spend most of it until we figure out what we actually want, and once we do life has already been mostly spent.

A poet’s longing is not for everybody; if he compares it with that of others, he will only feel acutely lonely.

A man will not stay with a woman for sex, no matter how good it is.

Everywhere I Look

Everywhere I look
I see people living
with borrowed faces,
their lives borrowed
and their souls,
speaking borrowed words
and craving feelings
that are not their own.
Everywhere I look
I see pettiness
and people dying
for an hour’s fame;
everywhere I look
I see addicts
and people enslaved
to their little phones.
I look around and I see
that the zombie apocalypse
so much prophesied
has already happened,
it is nothing more
than the regular individual
filled to saturation
with a content
that is not his own.

Wandering Thought # 132

You may forget your past, but it will always remember you.

It is on the power of our future that we construct our past.

Poetry is my response to an inhuman world.

Write less; say more. Ultimately, just listen to the silence.

In this life nothing was promised to us but death, the rest is what we make of it.

Solitude is the aura of great things.

Certain books, like certain people, can only be met at the right time.

A new book is a new journey.

Distance gives things their proper value, and gives us the needed perspective.

Discipline over freedom.

When all beauty is gone and faded, can you look into your lover’s eyes with fire in your heart?

Wandering Thought # 131

In the age of feminism it almost instills in us a sense of guilt to say that a woman is feminine and beautiful.

Wandering Thought # 130

We go to psychiatrists as people used to go to priests, believing they have access to the truth, and with it the power to heal and absolve.

The main weakness of psychiatry is that it believes that the sickness lies in the individual and not in society, thereby taking the well adjusted as its norm for health. But inasmuch as society is sick, the well adjusted is pathologic. What then is psychiatry? A hidden police; a seemingly objective force working on behalf of the given order of power.

When psychiatry locates the problem solely in the individual and proceeds to treat him accordingly then it acts as an agent of repression on behalf of the powers dominating society and culture.

Psychiatry as a marketing tool; the tool that helps people to adjust themselves with the least amount of friction to their roles in the economic machine, while blinding their eyes to their own uniqueness and individuality; psychiatry as one arm of the powers at be.

Wandering Thought # 129

With many it happens as with a dead star, all the lost loves and the unnoticed griefs crowd within their hearts until the weight becomes unbearable. Looking in the mirror, they wonder how it came to this, and no longer recognize themselves. To go on, they have to lock themselves away, turn away from who they are. Time passes, life moves on, from this abyss they no longer know how to pull themselves out from. The real struggle is not to lose what’s best in us.