To Be Resolute

Do we still continue to make New Year resolutions?

Are they about habits such as eating, drinking, smoking? Or are they deeper ones, concerning the inner self...or traits of personality?

The turning of the year is still a symbolic time for me...it measures the passing of time; where I was to where I might be. It's also a time to be grateful - 'I'm still alive and healthy and thankful to life for it'

This New Year I shall be in Lisbon, Portugal. I leave to catch my airport bus at midnight tonight...I shall be away for a short while - hoping to return with new photos and experiences.

What will I be saying at midnight on New Year?

I no longer promise resolutions to myself. I aim to be resolute all the time.

I WISH A HAPPY AND BEAUTIFUL NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE. MAY 2006 BRING KINDNESS AND LOVE

Festive physical over-indulgence

So easy to let it all go...to block the antennae, to interfere with the transmission... what am I talking about?

The festive physical over-indulgence; where the body gets a battering, and the fine-tuning loses its sharpness:

Everything exists in harmony: it may not seem like it from the horror we see in global events; yet the world, and the cosmos, lives through an inherent harmony. All things interact and all things are part of the web. This is easy to forget...

...as the wine flows, food flows, talk and laughter flows...we almost forget that every action, every thought, becomes woven into the world around us...

This may originally have been a Christian holiday...yet there is no religion left in Xmas: it is a time for family, for being together... something I must remember as the wine flows, food flows, talk and laughter flows...

...and I need to remember to be alone in the crowd sometimes: to take time out for reflection...since the work of the cosmos continues, why shouldn't our inner work?

Blessings to All

Humility

I have not learnt humility. I am not sure if I ever will. I so often slip into the words of others. To be good at being human is so very hard, yet an almighty experience.

Before I spend a few days with family at this time, I wish to lean - yet again - upon the words of Rumi:



THE GUEST HOUSE


This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

New posts

Two new posts of poetry have been posted on my audio site Shems Abode.

Words, words everywhere...and not a drop to think...

Rare Islamic texts online

It has now been announced that Princeton University is to put its rare islamic texts collection online:

"In a marriage of new technology and old documents, a vast treasure trove of information about life in the early Islamic world is about to go online, enabling Muslims, scholars and the merely curious to peer into a window on the faith's rich history.

Numbering more than 10,000 texts, Princeton University's collection of handwritten Islamic documents, books and letters is the largest in North America. They date from the eighth and ninth centuries - soon after the faith was founded - to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s; most have gone unseen outside New Jersey for nearly a century."

Read more here

Words that remain

Enduring as words are..as moments are: I could not refrain from entering into the Blue Raincoat story... here is my version of it:


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For the whirlers

It has been declared, by UNESCO, that the Mevlevi Sema Ceremony is one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritages of Humanity: see here.

Good news for the whirlers...

Is Science Making Sex Obsolete?

In the Nov. 1, 2004, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Ralph Brinster at the University of Pennsylvania managed to grow mouse "spermatagonial stem cells" in a dish. Also known as SSCs, they are the type of stem cells that eventually become sperm.

Read the 'Science Makes Sex Obsolete' article:

personally, I prefer the human touch to spermatagonial cells in a dish... there's more emphasis on the build-up...the talk, the red wine, the cheeky glance, and the caress - beat that, cells in a dish!

Shield thyself

Now that there is more awareness about increases in electromagnetic radiation, more products are springing up that protect us. In a recent Wired article titled 'A Tinfoil Hat on Every Head' it writes:

"In September, two California men won a patent on a device that could be incorporated in a baseball cap to block radiation from a wireless antenna. Last year, a Taipei inventor patented an electromagnetic-waveproof bra cup."

Me..I'm thinking about inventing one for the testicles...