Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Sufism, on Love

Sufi Muslims - the mystic, esoteric sect of Islam from which the whirling dervishes come from -believe that the search for and your relationship with God can be explained as unrequited love. In fact, the love you have for God must be unrequited. You must give it completely and selflessly, expecting nothing in return, for that is true love. Unrequited love - the longing of the soul that completely overcomes all other emotions and sensations - is the height of religious devotion. Or so the Sufi saints say.


Maybe I'm selfish, but I'd rather not feel that for the rest of my life. It sounds lousy.



And that second to last sentence was a pretty great alliteration.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Weighing and Wanting

I have an overactive guilt complex even when I have done nothing wrong. I am sitting in a lovely chair next to a toasty fire in my indie-chic living room. It comes close to an emotional equilibrium.

How can you feel both anxiousness and contentment at the same time? I didn't think they came as a box set. But both have been my companions lately, and they don't cancel each other out. They seem to make the other feeling so much more vivid in comparison. The bitter and the sweet, I guess.

But anxiousness also seems to make me more active. I always tend to get in shape when I'm in a fix. And I get in fixes like clockwork. Because of this, my run this evening felt great.

All of which reminds me of Crispian St. Peters's simple and earnest tune, c. 1966:

Well I woke up this morning
You were on my mind
I said you were on my mind

Oh, I got troubles, oh, oh
I got worries, oh, oh
I got wounds to bind

So I went to the corner
Just to ease my pain
I said just to ease my pain

Oh, I got troubles, oh, oh
I got worries, oh, oh
I came home again

But I woke up this morning
You were on my mind
You were on my mind

Oh, I got troubles, oh, oh
I got worries, oh, oh
I got wounds to bind

But I've got a feeling
Yeah, down in my shoes
I said way down in my shoes

Well, I gotta ramble, oh, oh
I gotta move on, oh, oh
I gotta walk away my blues

When I woke up this morning
You were on my mind
I said you were on my mind

Well, I got troubles, oh, oh
I got worries, oh, oh
I got wounds to bind, yeah

Sunday, January 17, 2010

A pretended and very real adventure

I think I scared my friend Stephen when he called earlier this week and asked me if I wanted to go snowshoeing to his cabin on Saturday with some other people. I was maybe just a little too excited and enthusiastic. But I had never been snowshoeing before, and one resolution I made for this winter was to learn how to do it. It sounded very romantic and intrepid.

And it lived up to my expectations. Almost. But you can't blame the shoes or Stephen or the cabin or the snow for my very slight disappointment. It's just that when I think of snowshoeing I imagine a group of intrepid Arctic explorers and scientists braving trackless wilderness and hostile temperatures and boldly going where (and boldly seeing what) no man has ever dared to before. Some part of me knows that my flights of adventurous fancy can't hold up in reality, but I still can't help but imagine.

But after getting me into the fix of unrealistic wishes, my imagination always comes to the rescue and helps me pretend that all of my Corps-of-Discovery dreams really are coming true. I didn't imagine the moose we saw, though. So, yes, while we walked for only ten minutes before we got to his cabin, and yes, while the only exploring we did was mostly on a trail and it was cut short because we were cold and tired and hungry, I could still pretend that I had been roughing it for 2 weeks and was putting my survival at risk in the name of adventure and academic discovery. Which explains the ridiculous grin I had on my face the entire day and the huge fur hat I insisted on wearing.

Yep, I grin with giddy surmise any time there is a chance that my life is at risk and I am on a Columbus-crazy exploratory journey.

Overall, the day was wonderfully fun between my imagination and very-real sledding through an obstacle course of trees. We played and played and played and now I am sore and physically exhausted. It was especially wonderful considering that last year I was under doctor's orders to not exert myself even to throw a snowball due to my recovering from surgery. This time, I exerted myself like a bandit. So there.

But this does raise important questions: how much of life do I enjoy because I am not bound to the here-and-now-life? I say I'm an optimist, but am I just delusional and dreamy? Should I try and be more realistic and grounded and be content with what life actually is, or should I not restrain myself and enjoy life as it could be, as I imagine the potential of it to be?