The Silent Sojourner

elsewhere, always

[bostonpoetryslam]

Poetry is not just relief; poetry is tension. Poetry is departure. Poetry is return. Poetry is memory.

Emily Jungmin Yoon, from the author’s note to A Cruelty Special to Our Species (via bostonpoetryslam)

[siiidq]

وَلِرَبِّكَ فَاصْبِرْ

But for your Lord be patient.

Qur’ān (74:7)

[thesilentsojourner]

Can anyone direct me to a pdf or epub copy of Laleh Bakhtiar’s The Sublime Qur’an? I have been hunting this for years to no avail

[thesilentsojourner]

i was so on track to finishing the quran this time with 3 juz down. sighs.

[thesilentsojourner]

it’s too early in ramadan to be this melancholic. like, damn, already?

[kid-khidr-deactivated20201030]

Astray (2016 movie directed by Musa Syeed)

[salemwitchtrials-deactivated202]

Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

[viperslang]

Try to rest now, says a voice. Another: Give yourself time. But rest is no act of will and gifts to the self come back unopened.

Adrienne Rich, Tactile Value (via viperslang)

[goldenballads]

Howrah Bridge (1958)

[thesilentsojourner]

luhur

bukan suatu ide, ukuran atau seni 

cuma suatu kediaman sebalik jasad 

yang tular menyapa tangan dan bayang 

mencintai kehalusan 

[yours-sincerelyy-deactivated202]

Our journey towards Allah is not a journey from ignorance to knowledge, it is a journey from forgetfulness to remembrance. It is not that Allah is absent and we have to go looking for him. Or the truth is far and we have to go find it, or that we are ignorant of the truth so we have to go looking and finding knowledge for it. No, it is that we are asleep, we need to wake up. That we have forgotten, we need to remember. And the truth is with us. When Allah sends messengers, when Allah sends Imams, when Allah reveals books, the truth is not in the book or with the prophet or Imam. What the prophet or the Quran does, is it simply awakens that which is inside you. That is why Allah states, “Only he will remember, he who is conscious and in awe of Allah”. If you look at verses, Allah says, “he will remember”. If the truth was in the Quran then it should have been able to guide anyone. But the Quran itself says, “Many are guided by the Quran, and many are misguided by the Quran”. How does the Quran misguide? The Quran misguides because when it is trying to remind, there are those who react differently to it.

When the sun shines on hay, it makes it dry and hard. When the sun shines on butter, it makes it soft. When rain falls on a rose, it gives out a fragrance, when the rain falls on sewage, it gives out a stench. The problem is not with the raindrops or the sunshine. The problem is with the vehicle and the substance that is receiving the light or the rain. That is what determines whether it gives out a fragrance or a stench, or if it becomes hard or soft. So there are hearts to which when guidance rains upon them, they become hard, and there are hearts to which when guidance rains upon them, they become soft. And therefore, the truth is with you. The Quran is simply trying to remind you and awaken you to that which you know.

— Khalil Jaffer

[gnossienne]

i) anne carson, “why i wrote two plays about phaidra” (2008) ii) portrait de la jeune fille en feu (sciamma, 2019)

[dappledwithshadow]

Edvard Munch

[derakhtesokoot]

on the “heart”, qalb.

William Chittick, Ibn Arabi: Heir to the Prophets

[thesilentsojourner]

Curating my Ramadan Reading List early, and it looks like a whole lot more of Ibn ‘Arabi again this year. Planning to read Futuhat al-Makkiyya but don’t know if I’m up for it, my brain has gone bonkers and I’m not spiritually prepared for a quarantined Ramadan. 

Other works lined up so far: 

Rkia Elaroui Cornell’s Rabi’a From Narrative to Myth 

Aisha Geissinger’s Gender and Muslim Construction of Exegetical Authority

al-Nuwayri’s The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition

Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines

I am gathering my pdf files at the moment. I usually select the most important chapters that outlines the thesis of each book, as it’s impossible to finish them all within the span of 30 days. 

Looking for more well-translated classical texts on exegesis, my favourite subject to read in Ramadan after Qur’an recitations. 

[aftaabmahtab]

Kind hands- Iran (2017-2019)

[noosphe-re]

While the universe destructs it also constructs. New things emerge out of nothingness. But we can’t really determine by cursory observation whether something is in the evolving or devolving mode. If we didn’t know differently we might mistake the newborn baby boy—small, wrinkled, bent, a little grotesque looking—for the very old man on the brink of death. In representation of wabi-sabi, arbitrarily perhaps, the devolving dynamic generally tends to manifest itself in things a little darker, more obscure, and quiet. Things evolving tend to be a little lighter and brighter, a bit clearer, and slightly more eye-arresting. And nothingness itself—instead of being empty space, as in the West—is alive with possibility. In metaphysical terms, wabi-sabi suggests that the universe is in constant motion toward or away from potential.

Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (via inthenoosphere)