We must learn.

It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. 

- Letters to a young poet 

Rilke

“Break off my arms, and I will hold you
with my heart as if it were a hand;
strangle my heart, and my brain will still throb;
and should you set fire to my brain,
I still can carry you with my blood.”
                                                             - Rainer Maria Rilke

I realised

When my trust hung from the thin thread of justice
And the hearts of my lamps were smashed into tiny pieces all over town
And the childlike eyes of my love were blindfolded with the black kerchief of law
When blood was gushing forth from the anxious temples of my desire
When my life was nothing other than the ticking of the clock
I realised that I must love
That I must madly love.

This is an excerpt from the poem “Window” (1967) by Forough Farrokhzad, translated by Farzaneh Milani from the Persian.

New year, new requests.

A friend of mine posted this request on facebook and I felt impelled to share it:


Retirement request for the following words in 2012:
1. Epic 
Including its alliance with either of the following:
-Fail
-Win
(Or either of them, used on their own, as a noun.)
2. Legend and/or Legendary
Used to describe a person, or something, which is, let's face it, totally run of the mill.
3. Swag and/or Swagger
Say it and you don't have it
4. Boss
i.e. "like a boss"
This has now been rendered obsolete, as everyone has been branded to be "like a boss". Therefore, no one is.
5. Hipster
6. Random
7. Owned
In reference to someone getting put down or proven wrong.
8. Hater
I think we all know the contexts.

ps. Sydney NYE was quite fantastic..

The Underwater Adventures of Layli

Ancient Persian love story of Layli and Majnun

20 000 leagues under the sea I go,

To where I don’t know.

I soar in the sky, and,

Swim in the sea.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

You may not know me, 

but I am the one you seek.

There is no end to this story.

You have just met me.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

You ask, how I got to the sea?

I was always there,

You came to me.

You ask, where was I?

You could never see.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

You fly so high,

You think too deep,

I was always there, 

under the sea.

Waiting for you to meet me.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

Majnun,

lost you were,

flying so high,

You forget me,

and instead searched for thee.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

People say, to love, 

you must find your own self,

and then love.

I say to love,

is to loose your own self, 

and always love. 

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

Wendt a lover of mine once asked me,

“Why is it that on finding what we most love

we destroy it by trying to own it forever.”

I laughed, with no reply.

I gazed, and gazed, and gazed,

into the heart of my lover.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

They wanted me,

but could never touch me.

They wanted me,

but felt they needed to control me.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

I gazed, and gazed, and 

showed them, it was all with me.

That the power of control was,

in the hands of the one being loved.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

The first step towards the love reality,

Was not denial but acceptance.

Acceptance of your reality.

It is this love reality that Wendt said,

makes us “horrendously brave.”

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

Brave to see our own self,

to be who we are,

to know what we are,

and live how we are.

To be horrendously brave in love,

is the mark that love leaves.

When in love, you are in,

a state of intense 

passion, purpose and confusion.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

You think you know but you don’t know.

Not until you are freed from the claws of the eagle of love,

Do you fall into the sea of reunion with me.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

You see,

I have come to the sea,

for you to see.

I am here for thee,

to be in such a state of ecstasy.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

I am higher, than thee,

I am stronger, than thee,

I am the one and only Beloved.

I am Layli Goddess of the sea.

You have come to me.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

You have come to me,

thinking there is a start to this,

and an end to this.

This is love, my lover,

there is no beginning and no end.

You swim, I soar, rather,

I swim, you soar lost in the heaven.

I swim free in the sea of serenity.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

You come to me seeking this peace and eternity.

It doesn’t come easy, 

To be my lover, lost under the sea with me.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

The Va of Life and the Om of Death.

The space between you and me,

Is like life and death, 

between inhale and exhale.

We come and go,

For love is the space between, 

the lover and the beloved.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

Know that in this sea, your love

will forever be quenched with me. 

But also know that together,

in the depths of this sea,

there is no end to our fraternity.

You and me we will not change,

But we will grow together,

in Esgh,

that white love,

just like that white light,

which will reflect our whole being,

You and me, together forever we will be.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

A rainbow fish for everyone to see.

Love is the place to be, only available in this sea.

It is in this underwater adventure with me,

That you come to be free.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

Poems you entangle me,

Poems you set me free.

Poems the paradox of my eternity.

Oh Layli, set me free, you are my Beloved One.

There was no wall between sky and sea,

It was one reality, just different to every eye that would see.

A love affair with the sun, had to end.

A selfish way of life had to end.

I needed Layli, to see, where it is I should be.

To plummet deep into the sea, 

was the only way for such a reality to be. 

Esgh is all I need from thee.

Oh this loneliness is killing me.

I must plummet deep into the sea.

So that I may dwell forever with thee.

Layli, you are my Beloved One.

Majnun, do not be afraid,

to fall deep into me.

It is where you will find your own reality.

You will be shaped according to how you wish to be.

All that love does, is it brings clarity.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

Clarity by giving of yourself,

and not keeping it.

Clarity by persistence.

Clarity by effort.

You will find clarity in the mystery of loving me.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

The bird of your insistent self, must be destroyed,

if you are to transform into the fish of passionate loving.

You must, you must, dive into the sea.

and forget the super sky that sucked you dry.

Know that love cannot exist in air, but only fully in water.

Think of love as such. It is a depth of being, 

where one cannot breath, nor see.

but can relay only on the one being Loved, me.

If you give yourself to me,

I will let you see and breath in the sea of eternity.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

As one captain upon the sea of my reality,

stated to me, I was everything.

I was a desert where no one was ever alone, 

but felt the stirring of life on all sides.

He said to all his men, the surface of the sea,

was still apart of the sky.

But 20 000 leagues under it, was where,

reign of self would stop, and the submission of self began.

“Live in the bosom of the water!

There is only independence!

There I recognise no masters!

There I am free!”

This is what he said to me.

Come to me, and live in this reality.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

Oh come to me, Majnun of my reality.

I am Layli Goddess of the Sea.

I am the Beloved of all eternity.

Never forget there is no end, there is no beginning,

There is just being with me.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

For once, when you become a lover to me,

You will become dry in the sea,

able to live forever with me, in this immensity.

I am Layli, the Beloved One.

- Pharan Akhtarkhavari