I have 15 minutes, far less than I should take on this, but I can't let the grief of this moment be channeled into lesser happenstances of the day.  I just received word of the death of a friend - Arif Biçer.  I was less intimate than one might term "friend,"  but it's the limitation of the English language that there's nothing to term the mix of respect for a teacher with the informality of a friend gained in short but powerful shared experiences.  Arif was our spirtual circle's Neyzen (the leader of the musicians) and Hafiz (reciter of the Koran), a Turk with little English vocabulary and a eye twinkle that could crack anyone's smile wide open.  I remember his very boisterous Pişti (a Turkish card game) playing.  But more than anything, I remember feeling that I was in the presence of a real superhero when I heard him recite the Koran - he seemed to physically manipulate his vocal cords into something of a sound-equivalent laser beam - focusing the Word into something that could pierce the head and shatter the heart without warning.

I don't have permission to post the only recordings I have of him as Hafiz, but there are great recordings of his Ney playing already out there.

[UPDATE: Photo removed - I neglected to read the copyright restrictions at user's Flickr site.]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nezihuzel/423509425/

Today's wazifa is Wajid - which means the Finder or the Resourceful one. One translation of this quality is that of extrasensory perception.  As I worked it this morning on the bus and on the walk into work, I was struck by the grief I felt all around me, not at his loss, but at reexperiencing all of those moments with him again.  Like an intense nostalgia that felt palpable and utterly alien in the space I find myself in in the present moment. Astafighrullah.

I also find the concept of celebrity coming up as I think about superhuman-ness.  Quick: do a short list of celebrities that come up when you ponder "celebrity" - how many of these folks should be celebrated? Arif had no famous-ness (or in-famous-ness as the term as come to mean), but he was largely someone (at least in our American community, I'm sure the local musicians would argue this point) who existed outside of the world we could penetrate with mere conversation.  As neyzen he was occupying a station rather than the body of a person.  Celebrity and superhero are symbols to the common man rather than people, and that's the way I'd like to remember him.  Powerful and undying. May God protect his secret (not sure how to translate this - maybe think of any person's soul as a secret shared between him/herself and God).  May we celebrate what he represents.

Update: Wanted to pass this along - I found it googling "Arif."

http://www.kalan.com/scripts/Dergi/Dergi.asp?t=3&yid=10032
      The very close similarity between the ney and an ârif is expressed constantly. From the ney, cries of love come forth. And from the ârif, words of love and wisdom come forth. The cry of the ney increases the love of the listener. The words of the ârif, showing divine wisdom, also increase the love of the listener. They free the heart from the suffering borne of existence. One feels, from the voice of the ney, a story, an adventure of love. From the words of the ârif, one hears of the high states of the true âşıks, and of the celestial secrets of the divine world.