That's been the question of the month as we move into the final days of the season.  Seattle is normally cloudless and 75 degrees July-September 15.  Instead we were treated to days and days of rain and clouds.  That might not seem like a big deal to those of you in the sun belt, but for those of us in the PacNW, the thoughts of summers past and summers future motivate us in those dark months from October to April.

I've been staring out the office window and watching the sunset over Elliott Bay while the Gorillaz play "Mañana" softly on the laptop speakers. Absolutely gorgeous evening, one of the last we'll have for a while. For all my complaints, there's a sweetness to the landscape here year-round.  It satisfies me.  Mashallah.  Back to work.

 
by Kables

For those folks who follow my world closely (other than my wife, I'd say that comes out to zero), you know that I've been digging the new Ill Doctrine video blog from J-Smooth for a minute.  The guy has got the GenX/GenY demographic on lock, and I'm 99% with him on entertainment industry philosophy (I reserve the right to hold 1% of anything for my own identity's integrity). You may not think that the entertainment industry has anything to do with you.  Even if you never buy a CD, visit iTunes, have a membership to netflix, surf the web, attend concerts or ball games, watch TV, etc., much of the information that's presented as "news" today is entertainment updates. And I think we can all agree that this "news" continues to divide and distract us as a society. 

That's why illdoctrine's most recent post hit me in my soft spot: http://www.illdoctrine.com/2007/09/the_truth_about_kanye_west_and.html#comments [another whine inserted about the lack of ability to embed video in LiveSpaces.  Whaddaya think this is?? MSN Groups?] 

Takeaway? Buy no music this week.  No Kanye, no 50. No Hip Hop. As Dylan likes to say, "they're all just pawns in the game."  Instead, take another trip to the Zach Galifianakis/Bonnie Prince Billy remake of Kanye's song.  Filmed in Sparta, North Cackalack!

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.

On deck: Meadow - Richard Buckner

Sitting in the Shoreline Hotwire, surrounded by books and various electronic accoutrema. I purchased my first MP3 player last week - surprisingly something like 7 years behind the market.  I kept finding the market didn't offer what I needed:

• something extremely portable,
• .wma compatible (I ripped a lot of my library in the Windows Media Player early on from a combination of naivete and attraction to some of the auto-playlist features the player included, and had no interest in starting over),
• playlist support,
• decent storage,
• microphone,
• durability and few moving parts (I tend to beat on my equipment because I use it anywhere and everywhere - 40gB of music is useless if I have to buy another player less than 2 years later.)

The latest version of the iRiver Clix finally met the bar, and our financial situation improved such that I didn't feel guilty taking the $200 plunge.  I have to say that it's transformed my way of engaging my immediate surroundings. Back in the day, I would lug around the CD walkman.  More recently it's been the laptop.  Pretty hard to feel immersed in your surroundings if your limbs aren't free to reach out and touch your surroundings.  So I've rarely been listening to music unless I'm sitting at my desk or in the car.

Our CEO sent us home early on Friday for the holiday weekend, telling everyone to log off by 3p.  The confusion around my new role and some of the processes meant I logged off sometime around 4:45.  No matter - I played the "Frogger" game that is the intersection in front of our office - 3 crosswalks later, I was literally floating up the block on the strength of my synced playlist.  Appropriately titled "Friday Afternoon, 2 Fiddy-five," singing along with Amerie and Sam Cooke - I was already a million miles away from work, a distance it would have previously taken 3-4 days to approach.

Then again, before and after our 4th Friday "sema," I wandered Ballard listening to Pinetop Burke, Jimmy Smith, Stevie Wonder, Bahamadia and Paul Rucker. Smoking cloves and scrubbing away the mildew of malaise that has surrounded me for a few months.  I've been surprised to be so unhappy given all the amazing changes that are happening around me.  It's mostly from this sense that with all of the new blessings floating down from god knows where, I must say goodbye to a few connections and gifts that need to be returned to the Source.  Can't say much yet about these, but suffice it to say it indeed feels heartbreaking. 

See Mi Yah - Rhythm & Sound

That experience of death, whether of a friend, a pet, or a moment in time feels like a reexperience of that first interaction, albeit a mirror image, a warping of the virginity into silhouette.  Even in any door closing, there's a dubby echo of that last click of the latch.  It's similar to the Koranic relationship (as I understand it) between the interlocking qualities of al-Mumit (the ender, the cutter of the chord) and al-Muhyi (the restorer). Or grounding expended energy in the Pagan tradition, so that it can be recycled into new growth.

This is one of the keystone seasons in the Northwest. Late February/Early March.  There's no true spring here in the sense of the sun arising from its winter slumber.  The snooze button is hit in the Pac NW until about the 2nd week of July, which is the workday equivalent of 10:30 - after which, the sun looks at the clock, curses, then throws back the covers and runs in circles around the sky looking for his pants and keys.  No, February/March is the period of dreams - dreams of a true spring, realities of planting to be done in the cold rain.  The plum is a metaphorical signpost and candle in the darkness of this season; like Clarence the angel on the bridge in What a Wonderful Life. The hump tree so to speak.  We're going to see sun again, feel its warmth on our skin.  Not today, but look at these magenta blooms!  A friend mentioned recently that in Japan, plums bloom when there's still snow on the ground. Positively Kurosawan.

The plums are so delicate and pretty, they're often mistaken for cherry trees.  That is, until the cherries bloom. This usually happens just as the plum blooms are starting to fade from the asphalt. I remember mistaking the two for the first 4 or 5 years here - but once the blooms come out, it's obvious.  The plum flower is delicate and distinct, like the brush of a sumi-e artist.  You can stare at one flower and marvel at the tree full of their individual blooms. The trees at a distance look like neon cornmeal. In Ballard last Sunday, I witness plum blossoms blown by the wind, acting as a gritty pink makeshift ground border for a muddy construction site.  Last week, I walked down from my bus stop in Shoreline just down from the Crest theatre, pulling my jacket collar up around my neck to block the wind and let my eyes drift across the shock of pink just above my head, the red-tinged branches acting as a shadowy contrast.

Cherries on the other hand, are an extra tab of acid.  If plums are the master painters, cherries are crayon prodigies. The blooms expand behind, around each other to become completely incomprehensible as clouds are to the pollen gatherer. The individual branches become balloon sticks, cotton candy swabs. The blooms force me into stillness, into a cognitive dissonance of depth perception - between the clouds below and the clouds above.  I remember standing under a cherry tree on a midnight walk through Ballard years ago.  L shook the branches, thinking the petals would float down onto my head.  Instead, it poured leftover rain from the clingy petals.  That's spring in Seattle.

"Take it to the Limit" - The Eagles
"Tell It Like it Is" - Nevilles? Honky-tonk cover
"Lie to Me" - Stevie Ray Vaughn.
"You Can't Hurry Love" - Phil Collins

I thought I'd post today on the concept of conscious behavior.  I think it'll point to another post I'm about ready for - presence and internal vs. external environment.

I'm at a bar (Ballard Alehouse) this evening, an unfamiliar one down in Bal/mont. I looked in the Hale's brewpub, and it was too antiseptic for even my tastes. It feels like a relief to get away a good ways away from the house.  So much is in flux and in a state of poor chi, it's taking periodic segments of psychic distance to feel like doing much of anything.  Hence the Maritime Imperial IPA next to my left hand.  You can tell this is Seattle because there's free wifi in the bar.  I was planning on walking down to Ladro after a few beers, but why bother unless it's for a cigarette break? For the record, anyone who doesn't see me at least on a weekly basis, I've not picked the habit back up except to the degree of one every few of days.  Lots of antagonism and fear about smoking these days.  I kind of like it for that reason, it provokes such an easy reaction from just about anyone I know. It's also instant access to breath awareness. My only rule is that I only smoke cloves. More than one a day and my throat feels ragged. I also tend to pull into my mouth and let it sit before inhaling all the way - less charring, at least in my rationalization.

I'd written out this post to my diary a few weeks ago, but a few additional thoughts came up after completing Jacob Needleman's "Lost Christianity," so I'll probably have some additional thoughts after the story itself.

"Around the World" - RHCP
"Lucky Star" - Madonna
"Scar Tissue" - RHCP

 I wanted to write a little about an exchange SH and I had a little over fours years ago. SH is the local center leader and who'd I consider my main point of contact to the Mevlevi tradition, despite access to the Turkish Postneshin. Probably the common language we share. It was almost Shebi Arus & L and I had almost completed our first year of learning the Turn. If memory serves, I was doing my stint in the cube cave at eShop.  October-December is always high season in the American Mevlevi community.  Much like the rest of the Western religions, the high holidays all hit around Winter Solstice.  It starts early with the Mevlevis though, and I'd fathom the reason lies in our hippie interfaith roots and the many events from various traditions that draw us out into Thanksgiving, Christmas and the highly public nature of our own Pir's Urs (funeral celebration), i.e. Shebi Arus.  In retrospect, it's always a logistical marathon with no sacred space that the local circle owns outright.  This means pouring energy into creating that space each and every time we do our work in public.  Having grown up in a church, I know now that we Christians took that for granted.

I was experiencing this for the 1st time and more than a little shocked by all of it.  I would have been 28 at the time (just before my first Saturn return), my fifth anniversary of arriving in Seattle. My first real community, in the adult world anyway.  Prior communities never knew me long enough to have a hold on me. What can I say? I fell in deeply with the Mevlevis. Typical past response to community stress or cognitive dissonance was to retreat, either long enough for the storm to pass (Christmas holiday or vacation with the family), or permanently (as with several college circles). Those retreats were always a great period to process, to write, to sit in the unfamilar coffeehouses with strangers all around and time enough to ponder my identity. The permanent self-exiles however always felt like a failure to relate and an extension of our somewhat nomadic upbringing.

We were at the "Praise and Thanksgiving" celebration that is sponsored every year by the Interfaith community in Seattle, when I decided to share with SH this urge to retreat and process in writing before I forgot the experience of the last few weeks.  To skip out on class for a week or two to remember who I was in all of this activity and reaffirm my commitment to what I had chosen.

"Got Me Wrong" - Alice in Chains
"Front Line" - Stevie Ray Vaughn
"Swingtown" - Steve Miller Band

To this he replied, "Can you wait?"  A shocking response, as the Mevlevis and SH in particular had been so non-judgemental of behavior over the past year (lots of hippie wanderers permeate the Sufi community).  Still, he hadn't judged my desire, just sliced away my pull toward an immediate response to the tension and asked for confirmation that it was a NEED.  This is a powerful practice that I' m still learning from to this day - who'd have thought that, given my already glacial response to stimuli, I would need to be reminded of desire's relationship to time?

Over time, I've connected this story to SH's consistent focus on "holding the question." "Holding the question" is to refrain from asking a question until the true question arises. Either the belatedly asked question draws out a truly powerful conversation that anyone large or small can participate in, or its asking provokes a very clear answer as soon as it's verbalized. I've also seen this applied after a powerful spiritual experience.  SH has often congregated the group outside the sacred space just after a zikr or prayer circle to ask us to hold the energy we're experiencing as one would hold an egg on a spoon.  Don't assume the best response is to share it with others around us. I don't want to say too much about this, as I don't want to project my own learnings onto SH's intention here.

"Billy Jean" - Michael Jackson

Can anyone tell I've had too much to drink?  Should have held that question - it's a 10$ minimum on the credit card here and I'm only halfway through my 2nd pint. :)