THE INEVITABLE
It's like practicing for death. No food or drink
during daylight hours no matter
what, in the
heat of summer or
cold of winter,
and no way out of it but through
sickness, pregnancy, menstruation, madness or travel.
So that
it's something that comes
inevitably each year, like it or not, whether or not
you've got a knack for it, and
some do, and love to fast, and
thrive on
it, but
I do not, yet
each year it makes its visit, and year after
year it builds up to be a
sweet thing,
which makes it like death, the way it's
always on the
horizon, and an
absolute obligation, which must be
why Muslims often die well. They've had a
lifetime of Ramadans tenderizing them
for The Inevitable. And The
Inevitable surely comes.
1 Ramadan 1406
May 9, 1986
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GASTRONOMICAL RIGMAROLE
Fresh crisp cantaloupe spooned from its skin,
tamari-soaked almonds and mahjoul dates,
hot Ceylon tea with honey mixed in,
golden delicious apples on plates,
mango, stringy, sweet fit for potentates,
tropical specialty served on our table,
strawberries, nestled each with their mates
red as sunsets, delicious as fable –
tastes more pungent than words are able
to say without calling up alien likenesses,
each one basically untranslatable
into anything but their own sweet essences.
Hagan Däz coffee ice cream in a bowl –
I could go on and on with this
gastronomical rigmarole!
10 Ramadan (evening)
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VOCALIZATION
During the dawn prayer, reciting
Qur'an out loud, I saw
how suited the mouth and voice are
to sound the sacred syllables,
wetness of throat and tongue, tongue
hitting teeth,
curling and rolling of
tongue, shape of cheeks, touch of
lips – and then how the
resonance from the heart, like the
core of an up-thrusting geyser, and
the darker recesses of the body-chambers,
how they shape the sounds that are made, and how then
around the sounds the body is shaped like a
reverberant protoplasm, tending to
refinement when
the
words
are refined. How
perfectly suited to sound the Qur'an the total human
organ is, the perfect
alive membrane,
and how,
at lesser degree, sweetly enjoyable it is for the
physical mouth to say beautiful poetry, and how
resounding it is to speak true, well-shot words,
how true speech is salutary to the
whole body, and at
lesser and lesser levels common speech, then
degrading speech, then
foul talk and nonsense, how
destructive to the
body they are, until the
grossness of the physical is at its
thickest and most
piglike at the
lowest level of talk, and how the
face and eyes and posture of the speaker
reflect what he or she
says.
16 Ramadan (morning)
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