NOW IS THE TIME

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at you heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to deeply compute the impossibility

That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

by Hafiz

so you wanna be a writer?

“So you wanna be a writer?”
“Well, yes”
“You do know that writing is a business.”
“I understand that if I write what is wanted, I’ll get paid for it, which makes it a business”
“No. I said. Do you know the business of writing?”
“You mean, do I know the genre I’m writing in, my target market; the magazines that will take my work; the agents that I can pitch too?
“No, I mean the failure rate, the departments set up just to reject the overflow of words piled up in the corners of every publisher’s office.
“They actually have rejection departments?”
“No, I made that part up. They actually have a big sign in their lobby which says, we only published celebrities or people who know celebrities. It’s written in Braille, so only blind people ask for it and get to read it.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, not about the Braille thing, but certainly about the inscription which is branded into the hearts of the editors and agents of the publishing conglomerates.”
“You really don’t like the publishing industry.”
“That’s not correct. I love the publishing industry. I just wonder sometimes if it loves me.”
“I guess you’ve had a lot of rejections?”
“Rejections are the confetti of the publishing industry, my friend. You collect them like badges of honor. Do you know that Bukowski got rejected for twenty years. But he still continued to write every day, and send in his short stories every week? Finally, when he didn’t want to be discovered he became famous.”
“So, what are you saying, I should give up wanting to be famous? And then what?”
“Yeah, give up wanting to be famous, my friend, and just write, dammit!”

The Palm Wine Drinkard

Roaming around a village in Ghana, I encountered a palm-wine drinkard. A little wiry guy, who, dress in a T-shirt and shorts, looked permanently stoned. He approached me as soon as I came into his eye sight, for his left eye had a fixed gaze. Motioning me towards him, he droned on, in pigin' English, about needing just a few cedis for some palm wine. I gave him the few notes I had in my pocket and he was off like a deer into the forest, disappearing immediately behind the lush emerald camouflage. Just when I thought I'd see the last of him, and my money, he came bounding out from behind some leaves with a jug of palm wine in his hand.

We sat drinking the milky nectar, which tasted faintly like ginger beer. The Palm-Wine Drinkard lamented to me about the hardships of life in Ghana, caused by corrupt politicians and the police who kept all the jobs for themselves. He used to be a saw man, working the tall timbers, but had fallen badly and broken his leg. He never got it properly set resulting in deformity. Unable to find work, he became a palm wine drinkard. I sat with him for hours talking and shading under a mango tree, sipping palm wine and dreaming of staying in this luxuriant world. Unfortunately, my host, Mr.Jumba returned, and dragged me away from this ‘bad man’ and into the gathering darkness of his house.

That night it rained heavy, as only a tropical rain can. The cracks of thunder lifted pots and pans off the table. The patches of black sky exploded with light as streaks of electricity filled the heavens. When the rain came its pounding force blanketed everything. The tin roof clattered tremulously. The large drooping leaves plodded a bassoon sound, and the creek that ran through the compound overflowed and leaped up onto the porch.

The morning mist was thick and impenetrable. The force of the downpour had flattened plants and crops. Trees struggled to hold onto fractured branches. The pungent smell of rotting crops mingled with the freshness of washed yards stimulating my nose and senses.

As the sun began to spray its rays over the tree-tops, the damp chilly air quickly warmed up and the mist lifted. I looked around the valley that the village rested in, and was seized with a desire to stay on and work there. My palm wine drinkard was at my side offering me a jug of palm wine, and the world felt good. But just then, Mr. Jumba arrived on the scene.

“You must not drink palm wine so early in the morning”, he remonstrated. “Palm wine is for the gods and fools, and you are neither!”

So, with a break in the weather, I bid Mr.Jumba and the palm-wine drinkard farewell, carrying in my heart the sweet nectar of gods and fools, as I headed down the road to Accra.

THE ART OF UNHAPPINESS

Wars are fought. The innocent suffer. The fear of ignorance is unbounded.

All the machinations of human advancement grind down the human being into unhappiness and despair. The culprits for perpetuating this human tragedy can be clearly identified. But the unhappiness that is self inflected is another animal all together.

The unhappiness of the sinner; the unhappiness of the narcissist; the unhappiness of the megalomaniac are all choices we make for ourselves in the art of unhappiness.

Man will give up anything but his suffering! sings the poet.

The sinner believes, through religious faith or ignorance that his every act is contrary to God’s law. Every thought is spied on and judged by the all-seeing-power of the ‘creative one’. Every useless emotion that flits through the sinner’s consciousness is a comment from, or a symbol of, the sinner’s guilt at being separated from the parent/creator.

The narcissist reverses the sinner’s affliction and centers all their love and interest totally on the self. Nothing outside of them is of any real interest. Self-absorption gradually eats away at even the love they have for themselves, wrapping themselves in profound unhappiness to punish the world for not loving them enough.

The megalomaniac is in love with power. Unlike the narcissist, the megalomaniac dispenses with charm, and desires only the constant reinforcement of the power he seeks. However, the greater the power achieved the greater the desire for more and the constant unhappiness with the inability to be satisfied by the power he has.

To be continued...