North by northwest

For there’s a limit to gazing.
And the gazed-at world
Wants to blossom in love.
---Rilke.

Facing the right direction, and not being in the right place, is what counts. An elemental soul and an angelic soul: the human being is the cross where they meet. By virtue of the former nature is his 'brother'; by virtue of the latter consciousness or awareness breaks out of its dream-like state.
---from Ostaad Elahi

PENDANT LES GUERRES de l'empire,
Goethe, au bruit du canon brutal,
Fit le Divan occidental,
Fraîche oasis où l'art respire.
Pour Nisami quittant Shakespeare,
Il se parfuma de çantal,
Et sur un mètre oriental
Nota le chant qu’Hudhud soupire.

Comme Goethe sur son divan
A Weimar s’isolait des choses
Et d’Hafiz effeuillait les roses,
Sans prendre garde à l’ouragan
Qui fouettait mes vitres fermées,
Moi, j'ai fait Émaux et Camées.–

Théophile Gautier (1811–1872)

DURING THE WARS of empire,
Goethe, to the cruel sound of canons,
Made The West-Eastern Divan,
A cool oasis where art respires.
For Nizami he left Shakespeare,
Scented himself in santal,
And at the feet of an oriental,
Took down the song that Hudhud sighed.

Like Goethe on his divan
In Weimar secluded himself
And plucked the roses of Hafiz,
Without thought of the hurricane
Lashing at my shutters,
I, I made Émaux et Camées.

[translation © yusuf zanella, 2006]

Borrowed from 'Traveller'

The East within the East, the place that is east of the East. When one reaches the edge of the world what happens? One falls off! When the heart reaches a certain point, then? It falls.

The Dalai Lama: there is a fundamental goodness, gentleness running through the universe. This thought is like a shiny ribbon bookmark between so many words....it allows one to close the book..and to open it again. The ultimate aim of intelligence is to have a good heart.


We live amidst a storm, but tonight, perhaps only tonight, all is peace inside.The East's mind has fallen asleep, stilled itself, and the west no longer has a heart. Too ancient and too modern by far, b! Then how to live? Not East-West, for even though I know that path my temperament, as Ghalib says, precludes me from following it. At a slight angle to the universe, then. Lean over the devastated landscape. Keep your balance. Find your orientation. North by northwest.

We live in tumultuous times..but when wasn't time just so!? Even in a casual stroll the world floats by, so many distraught faces, churning out anxieties, catch the somber mood. Everything is touched by a sense of impermanence. We are surrounded by mortal things or is it our gaze?

Why begrudge the times we live in? There was something in our soul that matched them, a kind of necessity that meant we should live here and now, not there and then. No matter how hard we deny it, we look in the glass and admit: so, this is me, this is finally me....

And yet, something stirs in our being unbeknown to us, like the flaring of the evening sun when the day is done: the hunch that we were destined for something else, another life; the hope that this straw catch fire, that the face in the mirror is not ours, that we have not found our name...Our body trembles before this silence and the mind delights once again, we are drawn to other times and other places, north of the future. The circle breaks. Like a raft precariously afloat on a vast sea, miles from land, our hopes may dwindle but familiar voices reach us, refuges are remembered, time regained. We learn to see again, to look in the right way. We must make a world of it, start again, gather ourselves once more. For this we came, always fading, always soaring....