Funmi :
Rumi : "When I come to Love, I am ashamed of all that I have ever said about Love"
Once again, many thanks for Cafeafricana. The cyber-personality is maybe different, but If I lived in California or if I were the Caliph of California, I would have liked to be friends with you.
In my time in Nigeria, it was Ja Funmi .
The only Yoruba people I hung out with in Ahoada, in Rivers State, were some guys in the transport business from Ondo. Their boss was one Mr. Johnson. I once reported a matter to the Police and they seized one of his vehicles. The following morning he approached me with a one hundred naira bribe. I refused it , told him , "You are my Yoruba brother" and got the police to release his danfo. (What Valentine Ojo once accused me of " anecdotal irrelevancies" but that's not a major crime. From my point of view everything's connected ,
"We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness."
but not everyone is absolutely crazy, like Roland Barthes .
My anecdotal irrelevancies / dia-tribes, still in process, intends to surpass but not necessarily outclass the profound despondency of The Blind Owl (which is putting it lightly) or the Arabian version of "Season of Migration to the North" (Different strokes for different folks)
In 1987, this book took me to Sufism and to Dr. Nurbaksh to London eight times and to Cologne in Germany, once , all in approximately one year..
Still in dialogue. if I hadn't added in brackets (Rumi jives with Funmi) we – you me, Professor Oladosu A. Afis wouldn't be having this discussion. Mood I'm in I haven't been listening to Miles at your place but to Mezzo. Mood I'm in is further down below.
I guess it's cultural - blame it on cosmopolitanism (that too is an assumption). You've got to admit that it's still a man's world in which bees are still busy doing their duty, busy pollinating flowers. You ask someone who looks like she's wearing a workplace uniform at Samsung in Kista (our Silicon Valley) , do you work here ? (to attend to your errand) and her friend tells her (in perfect Arabic) that you're flirting with her. If instead of asking her, do you work here, I had said to her: "Love is the bridge between you and everything" maybe, that should have been enough to make her presume or assume that that was my opening line and that I had pollination in mind. And as to any indignation about " old enough to be my father", a lady who's been to the moon should also know that " Old violins make the sweetest music"...
Until I read the text ( Temporary Like Achilles) what I heard and myself sang, was, " I'm trying to read you poetry, but I'm helpless, like a rich man's child". Lo and behold his actual words were :
"I'm trying to read your portrait, but
I'm helpless, like a rich man's child".
It's still very much a man's world in which over there in America land of the free you occasionally see such indecencies
I don't know the Ruiz that you're referring to - the only Ruiz I know and have met, is Hilton Ruiz . I met him during the break at a jazz concert in which he played at Fasching - over here in Sweden. Horace Silver had been billed to play in the band, so I went over to greet him after the first wonderful set , told him all about his wonderful albums etc. and he told me, "Thanks for the compliments but I'm Hilton Ruiz!" - a last minute replacement. You can imagine the depths of my moment, but the earth refused to open.
My immediate background - what I read just after midday before writing all of the above: the extracts below address last Sabbath's Torah portion Shemot - pages 77-83 of Torah Studies – a parsha anthology - discourses by Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, adapted by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (former Chief Rabbi of Britain)
of which deal with last Sabbath's Torah portion
2. DESCENT FOR THE SAKE OF ASCENT
How are we to understand this?
The Rabbis said: When the world was created , everything was in a state of perfection. But after the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, when the serpent infected Eve with impurity, man and the world fell from perfection until the Giving of the Torah, for when Israel were at Mt. Sinai the " spirit of impurity" departed. But it returned with the sin of the Golden Calf, and it remains in the world until the Messianic Age when the promise will be fulfilled to remove( utterly destroy) impurity, and the world will be ultimately purified and cleansed.
8. ONENESS AND THE INDIVIDUAL
Man is a microcosm of the world. And this cosmic process finds its echo in every man at all times: When he works and performs his service until evening, and entrusts his soul to G-d at night;the next day is made new again and begins a new service.
The service of the day begins with prayer and Torah. Through them a man receives the strength to serve( the G-dly spirit is diffused through the whole of his being by prayer) and to overcome the inclination to evil( through Torah which instructs him in the right course of action). Then he is able to enact this service in the practical world( to the extent that, as Rambam says, " his wisdom is manifest in his eating and drinking"). His worldly existence( the chet and daled of echad ) is subordinated to his Divine wisdom (alef); a recognition of oneness permeates his physical actions.
On Tuesday, 24 January 2017 03:04:12 UTC+1, funmiara wrote:
"We have to be constantly on our guard. Last week, when I entered the Samsung store to enquire about one of the functions on my phone, the woman on my side of the counter, was dressed in what appeared to me to be a uniform – black and blue just as the others working there, so I asked her, "Do you work here ?" She said, "No. Why do you ask?" But before I could answer , another woman on the other side of the floor was telling her in (Arabic) that I was flirting with her and that's what she told me (she herself no spring chicken) - that I ought to be ashamed of myself, being old enough to be her father and flirting with her ! I was about to tell her that I'm not as old as Donald Trump but if I were I would have have probably grabbed her there and then or invited her for a cup of coffee, when the guy at the counter asked, " How can I help you?"- show quoted text -"Mr. Hamelberg,Perception. Assumption. One of the four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz is "Don't make assumptions."I read Mr. Oladosu's comment and I'd to scratch my afro. What was that all about? (side-eye)Anyway, Mr. Hamelberg, again, thank you.Hahaha. USAAfricaDialogueSeries!Ire o.Instagram: Aramada_ObirinCulture, Art History, Film/Cinema, Photography, World Literature, Criminal Justice, Sociology, Child Welfare, Lifestyle & Community.
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