On the Orient

This is one from a series of short epigrams entitled: "Coffee House" inspired by Al Raqis.

On the Orient

She explained it to me; “To understand the Orient, you have to understand Opiates. The trade by which government funds itself and controls the population. It is not spoken of publicly although it is ubiquitous, signs of it are everywhere. Addiction is about control. Who is in control of Self, of Will, this is through martial arts forms, dance, conquest, relationships, all facets of life. There is symbolism everywhere which relates to it. Chasing the Dragon. Life is stress, and so any place where relaxation is necessary, to step back from the world, in a safe house, or in a dragons den where businessmen discuss their matters and relax, together, pleased to be working for mutual benefit and not competing at war, a charlet house where women crafted in skills equal to the allure of soporific smoke may be experienced without the complexity of a marriage relationship, which for many men is preferable. There is no legitimacy in this just as there is no legitimacy in the police enforcing their rules upon people whose ways are as equals and whose culture goes further into antiquity than any police or government. Heritage encompasses all of this just as Aspirations to achieve great things fly high above it.”

I looked into her turtle face; blue-black eyes peering out from folded parchment skin. Her voice was at once dry, cracked and grating yet poetic, the rhythm a lullaby, the grain in that hoarse husk was pure, liquid blue. Her eyes were the same darkness. I knew then, I was talking with no ordinary mortal woman, but one who had lived through many lifetimes of extreme experience and who had yet retained or acquired a harmony, a lightness of being, a wizened one whose youth was more evident than her age despite her bodies antiquity. What secrets she held! 

Flower Fade

This is one from a series of short epigrams entitled: "Coffee House" inspired by Al Raqis.

Flower Fade

I would like to thank the Desertborn for teaching me an immutable teaching. From the first time Ivana introduced (my alt) to the Al Raqis sim and sat me in observation of a parliamentary meeting, to the storytelling session in seeq. The patient Pacing here is a huge part of the transcription, this teaching, it is wordless hence immutable. Sighs.

Today this platform helped me through to deal with somebody important to me irl, the simplicity of sharing a coffee and giving a person all of the energy and space they need to relax. The giving to someone the space to relax and to communicate. It is in the silence, the sharing, the bonding. This is part of the Tau. Minute energy connections and communications between people that occur only when we are not talking, when we are in those dreamy between spaces, coming into alertness. Levels in the drifting winds, altitudes of comfort, the places we connect and share worlds by our energetic configurations. After lifetimes of stress where such encounters are a battle for the levels, such moments are precious.

As for the person; Some flowers are so fragile, their colour changes when you look at them. In a world where the sun fades everything to the colour of dust, the lesson is to nurture. Frank Herbert wrote the line (paraphrased); "their preconception is not with water; it is with moisture, and that is an entirely more delicate thing."

As I sat in the room with her and her motion - psymotion stirred the winds, I saw the streams, my wings through the back of me as i faced her, tan and sand colour ribbons connecting threads back into Al Raqis to those planes and connections where the moment by magnetism attaches, the roots of focus and memory. It might be cyber but the stories are as real in psy-space, dream-space, as are material based events. I poured coffee, she spoke. 

I battled with inner demons pushing me to sit beside her, take her hand and softly kiss her lips, staying focused instead on respecting her; falling into her eyes which see past me and the room, she described energies around me with profound accuracy even without a tarot guide. To look into the eyes of a true soul is rare in this life and I had to look away for fear of her seeing my need. It is to her I should be saying these words, and yet to do so would burden her with weights. So they are shared as story, what is of great import to one is a light relief to another. 

Such is coffee house.

Coffee House

A series of short epigrams entitled: 

"Coffee House" 

inspired by Al Raqis

Coffee House is not reality. Coffee House is allegory and analogy. It is second hand, it is antique yet modern, it is received teaching, gossip, tales from the lives of other people. It contains everything in the human world from the mundane to the mystical, and yet it is passing trade, flippant and ever consumable, it is the banter paid for in barter and easy to close the book on to move along with your day. The sound of the chimes on the door in the wind are both a meditation and a clock, marking times passage between scenes. The continuity amidst uniqueness. It is a quick fix, a surface glance of a much deeper lens. This is, for the passing traveler, the scent of authenticity. But it is not the real thing. This is a tourists insight into a culture. Coffee House is a wallpaper version of the secret lives of those born to the desert tau.

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Flower Fade

On the Orient

Flickers of Hope

Flickers of Hope

This is one from a series of short epigrams entitled: "Coffee House" inspired by Al Raqis.

1st draft.
It needs a re-write but at 1.30 am I need a break. The story could have been shorter and more succinct, but; sometimes things run on for longer than anticipated, as is necessary for the tale to emerge; to do it justice. Things develop in their own time and that is the time it takes. As the guru says; "When the time is right".


Flickers of Hope

Immediately my friend interrupted; "I was eating fruit a few days ago, it was not a fruit I had ever come across before. I do not know the name of it, something foreign I could not pronounce.” This coming from an immigrant drew smiles on pale faces. "From the outside it was really ugly looking; inside the flesh was soft like a…” He looked around to see who might be listening. The assertiveness and timbre of his voice was raised sufficiently to have cut off our agnostic friend who had began complaining about the insanity of the religiously brainwashed. “…I had never before tasted that flavour. It is so difficult to describe. Unlike anything of the traditional western pallet.” He looked directly into the eyes of the disbeliever. "I did not ever know before that I had taste buds in those places.”

He held his hand in what I have come to recognise as a flame position, an emulation of indian temple roofs, his fingertips all pressed together above the palm of the hand. Using the gesture to emphasise his point, fingers exploded outward like a flower opening. He performed it naturally as though untrained. Later in secrecy I mimicked the action and felt how rigid my bones to be. “Beautiful!” he exclaimed, fully rolling the word so that it explored a syllable for every petal. We were distracted once again by the shop owner grunting out a number.

Most of the onlookers failed densely to recognise the story as a defence of cultural tradition. I would not made any sense of it either had we not previously been discussing the merits of an education into such esoteric matters and how its journey changed a persons outlook on the world. Specifically he had been pondering the adverse; the noble mind of the primitive savage in Rousseau’s theosophy and how western culture appeared barbaric to students of learning.

We exited the chip shop, its oily fried cloud hanging in the street, blending with petrol fumes, dampening the cigarette smoke scent of crisp autumn air. Sweaty newspaper parcels of hot spuds squished heat into our fingers and through our jackets as we clutched them to our chests. Our agnostic companion was quiet, either thoughtful having forgotten the rant he had been attempting to establish like a foothold in our minds or gloomy from being interrupted.

We live during a time where Britain is once again being invaded, not violently but by numbers. People born into the migrant moslem holy empire are all over the world, except for Russia whose government claims it has no space for them despite it being the largest unified nation on the planet. Many who live in the urban zones of England claiming to fear the death of Britain as a Christian nation without recognising that to most Brits it has not been one for well over a century, if ever. I laugh and remind everybody that only a thousand years ago the indigenous Celtic religion which with my pagan dreadlocks I feel a closer affinity with, was exterminated violently by the invading Christian conquistadors; all across Europe.

The British Isle is historically a multicultural melting pot; ask any white person living in England what their ethnic origin is in greater detail than ‘caucasian’ or modern national descriptor, they will probably not know themselves whether they are Angle, Saxon, Norman, Norse, and so forth. Eight hundred years ago when the Magna Carta was created, the first British statutory document, based upon the Common Law of our Ancestors who in their wisdom recognised the only method of peaceable cultural coexistence and/or integration is by comprehending one another’s reference points.

My Islamic friend had discovered a way to do this through humour, but; it is an educated humour which is above the heads of most television programmed white Brits. In his own community he is respected for his wisdom, flecks of grey hairs in his beard revealing a transition from being a student to a teacher, from his lifelong study into literature. A passion for knowledge itself is not enough; it is the application of knowledge which is essential, otherwise what is its point?

We finished our chips at the bus stop waiting in the cold for a bus that did not arrive and decided to walk in our three respective directions home. As we ate we discussed the problems of insular societies and the abuse that goes on behind closed doors; how using mis-translations of books written a thousand years ago for stone-age peoples should not be permitted to justify human rights abuses today. Abdul frowned, finding it difficult to speak in derogatory terms and with non-moslems about the problem of Sharia as it is practised the world over; that it is not lived as it was originally intended. 

We resolved that somewhere in the cultural melange is the answer to necessity of change. We all agreed that the difference between wisdom and religion is vast. It is so for everyone; the things which we take for granted as everyday cultural normality, often we do not recognize to be abusive. This is surely as valid in western culture as it is in Islam. Perhaps this is something we can all learn from each other.

In our excitement to catch the bus we had left the chip shop without collecting our change and as a result, even between us we had not enough money for the bus fare anyway. Abdul’s parting shot as we departed for a brisk walk home left us with food for thought: “We do not have Usury in Islam, slavery is forbidden by God.”