smiti JAMILA

There is beauty in every experience

Must appreciate when it rains in Bed Stuy, and the mists of aromatic cat piss rise to mingle with the cries of stray felines, horns, sirens, babies and baby mommas.

Before it all fades into a previous chapter.

On: luxury and the denial of the soul

“To me, luxury is freedom.” —Massimiliano Giornetti [quoted in Elle Magazine, December 2010]

To me, luxury is denial.

Of one’s soul.

Of the fluidity of reality; the transience of the physical.

Of one’s social responsibility, not to society, but to humanity.

And that statement is a denial of one’s materialism.

To the excuses,

a. “It’s all we have.”

b. “It’s art.”

I beg to differ:

a. No, certainly it’s not all we have. Open up a book. Listen to a lecture. Talk to a stranger. Perhaps a homeless one. Sit quietly in a room with your eyes closed and see what rare wonders you’ve been ignoring. You don’t need costly objets surrounding you to do any of that. You don’t even really need any objets at all. That’s why we refer to the stuff inside of us. Mind is matter; it is all in your head.

b. Art is a word that is difficult to pin down. But like anything else on Earth: if it’s not helping or improving one’s existence, throw it away; and if it is only helping a small elite and shouldering the rest, revise it, so it can help as many as possible. Luxury only helps the few; non-luxurious material can help the many. So which should we choose?

The splicing of realms

On a boat there can be a cargo of wisdom. I’ve brought along some marvelous books. Samuel Adoquei’s “How Successful Artists Study” is an up-to-date, practical guide for the transition from art school to the professional world of art. In it he talks about the “Five worlds of artists”:

1.    The inner, personal world.
2.    The real and practical world.
3.    The outside, commercial world.
4.    The future, aspiring world
5.    The fantasy world of dreams.

Adoquei suggests budding artists need to get their worlds separated from one another. Mixing fantasy with practicality is a leaky proposition.

—Robert Genn

How I wonder: is this the source of humanity’s crisis? Could the universal consolidation of - in Adoquei’s language - our “worlds,” be the key to overcoming the challenges, sufferings, misfortunes and cruelties that plague our existence. What if we enable our higher selves to consistently function in all situations, for all purposes; let go of the facades, remove our masks. What if we crushed the stoicism only sought to protect us from our own projected fears.

I’m what many call an idealist.

But it is a gross underestimation of the human spirit to presume that progress is impossible just because only some seem capable of attaining, and not all. So also is it a mistake to label the hypothetical as impossible simply because it contradicts the status quo. All progress contradicts the status quo. That is how progress functions.

At one point in time, there was no Earth. And then there was Earth.

At one point in time, there were no organisms. And then there were organisms.

At one point in time, there were no humans. And then there were humans.

It is difficult for our brains to imagine evolution over long periods of time. Earth did not form in 1 singular moment; organisms did not spring into existence in a second, nor did humans suddenly emerge from the mist of mammals. And so, too, do ideas develop over time.

At one point in history, there was no controlled fire (let alone electricity, aircrafts underwater tunnels). There wasn’t even the notion. A cynic at the time may have called the fire-worshipers idealists.

There is nothing idealistic about the belief that anything imagined is possible. It’s a logical conclusion: if it can be thought, it can be conspired. And if it hasn’t been thought, who says it won’t?

We cannot begin to imagine the future.

But we can try.

Ode to words

I literally just shivered with excitement, the sort that shakes one’s soul and spreads a giant smile upon a face. How I love these words. How each chance alignment of intuition and experience perfects my knowledge. How all words past, present and future will tell my story, should anyone want to read. This sentient existence. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Reading is also about taking notes

And so rereading is also about rereading the notes.

Sometime they are completely insightful. Or questionable. Witty. Silly.

Sometimes they are downright ridiculous.

Take Byatt’s On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays, pg 2:

I shouldn’t like to be read. Who are you writing for? Why was Michelangelo such an asshole?

The Hammam

Marrakesh is a mysterious city. It’s also a fairly dirty city, and some of the innominate doorways in the medina lead to an oasis for the very purpose of cleansing. It was into one of those covert doorways I entered one evening.

Here I undressed amongst many Moroccan women and girls. I could feel their eyes curiously noting the blanched creature in their midst; my tan lines exposed a contrastingly white figure in the darkened bath. My friend had paid the woman at the door and informed her in Arabic (as I stood speechless) of what I needed. Another woman came to my assistance and supplied me with a bucket of warm water. I spoke the little French I knew but pretty much settled for body language. There on the hammam floor I sprawled on my matt, naked and vulnerable, and let her scrub my body.

Like a cat.

Around me women bathed and cast occasional glances at the white cat in the corner as she lifted limbs for her assistant to attend with the sponge. Her skin was creamy, like goat’s milk, though her eyes were dark and somewhat familiar. Her whiteness centered around her breasts and rear, highlighting her rosy areoles. Obedient and indulgent, she spoke little, instead moving gently into various positions of lax to the company of her stroking companion.

I speak not in first person because I never felt so full of my own identity before.

After twenty or so minutes she rose, padded out of the steamy wash room and settled back into her sandals and chemise. There she sat, as more women arrived, derobed, or reapplied their garments as they shared the gossip of their world, so foreign to this white feline. She resolved they must be probing the topic of her existence in their coveted hammam; she sat perched, calm, conclusive with this knowledge.

It was an exchange of vulnerabilities: the sharing of her blanched coat was her key into the only place in Marrakesh devoted to the female body.

Capacity

A greater mind means a greater capacity for love.

A greater capacity for everything.

To shut off the mind from the world or from parts of it, without first trying to understand them, is to limit one’s potential for not just knowledge, but the ability to share that knowledge with others.

The Arch

So ominous & overwhelming.

The arch.

It may mark triumph to erect your imperial grace, Arch. On that first day, when God let there be light and truth and beauty and all that jazz, he said – (you know) – “I triumph o’re this darkness, this watery, feminine void.” So said an architect beholding an urban void, reminiscing into the sprawling network of Renaissance grace. He erected the stone and curved the arch, a towering mass under which flow seas of absent-minded wanderers. Mortals, clinging to their power complex, shying at the awe of a large structure. The arch overpowers.

Oh really? – Dark, inviting chamber, bending towards each tethered auspice? – Really, God felt bored one day and sculpted the image in His head, a Paradise twice as idle. And in doing so, He arrogantly fashioned Himself into molded clay. Was He not aware of His blasphemy? And thus He bore Man, His higher self, a higher self always begging Lord, get me high, get me higher when all he has to do is walk beneath the arch, through the darkness, where forth he sprung.

See, one can never triumph o’re the towering arch; the eyes will only as much as gaze into its fleeting stature. Let God sit on His arch, a solemn existence of omniscient perch. There is power in entering the daunting chasm and feeling one’s way through and out again; a little darkness and a little light, if only to illuminate truth and beauty. And when the night begins to feel like suicide, and the sun rises over the hills for the next countless dawn, the soul, numbed in the pain of stillness, may desire to send back from whence it came, to exit into the mystery from which it birthed. Then the torn and weathered life, having wandered the earth, crossed empty rooms and noiseless bridges to still find no mirth, wishes only to close its eyes and send into stardust sleep.

After triumphing o’re the erection of life, momentum leads under the arch’s shaded oblivion, one final time, through the ease of slipping into the dark world of creation.

most of you don’t care, judging by the ‘likes’ i get on everything I post, but I just started following knomadic. check him out.

What are “likes,” anyway

Comments, pats, cheers, whoops

Sometimes the greatest compliment to me after making a statement is witnessing the silence that falls across the dinner table, like a storm spreading darkness over a landscape. When we hear the rustling of leaves and sense the sky’s shadow, it disquiets. It reminds us to be humble.

It silences.

It can also arouse fear, and I have no doubt I spark a bit of that too, but it is a healthy emotion. If fear can cause anxiety, and anxiety thought, and thought growth, then I am content.