Reflections on the Jester's dance.

It is only when you come to see that you have made a fool of yourself that you can shed your motley and hew a more seemly garment. If you keep humour, add wit, reflection and forethought you may gain a cloth of wisdom in which to wrap yourself.

When you feel the fool it can only be you who made the world this way. A world you were powerful enough to make without intention. Imagine the myriad of worlds you can make with effort!

There are times when the fools game may be of value: When loosing yourself to the fall at the start of building love, when running towards the sound of danger, when spirits are low and light is hidden in small places, needing a jester's eye to find it. Having played the fool unknowingly once, you can clothe yourself in foolishness when the need arises. When the need arises.

I speak from experience for I have played the fool in many forms. The certain fool, the loving fool, the rushing fool, the happy fool, the blushing fool, the fool contrite with cap in hand. 

The fool who reaches out with words and hopes for solace from words returned...

The fool's face has obscured my looking glass enough. I have stood behind the fool and sung a fool's song beyond its usefulness. 

It is time to play another part. To clothe myself in a new robe and build a new world. 

Until the need arises.

Look up,
Look up "towards", even though "looking down on" is easier.
Look up,
Look up because from down here we're all just trying.
Look up,
Look up because the sky can't not hug you dude, thats its job.
Look up,
Look up because its ok to be small,
...
And because we're the small monkeys who walked on other spheres, and because up there and in here can get closer if you just fold space. Like paper. Like that batman t-shirt you feel strong in.

Look up,
because it's easier to notice the effort when you look at where folk are going and not where they are, and because it'd be nice if folk noticed your effort more often than they noticed the failings underneath and behind you.

And because in that breathless expanse, in the space between planets and suns and hearts and minds and opinions and ideas and rightness and wrongness and theory and practice and the couch and the finish line... there's room to take a breath, to sigh and smile and not feel stuck anymore because there's just so.... Much..... Up.... To look at.

Would that I were this strong. (listen to Channel 1 suite, The Cinematic Orchestra)

This story has always been the most important source of strength for me in my life, its imagery and beauty, it's hope and it's ability to see the easier path is all I want in my love. Insh'Allah someday I will attain a drop of this understanding.  "There was once a lover who had sighed for long years in separation from his beloved, and wasted in the fire of remoteness. From the rule of love, his heart was empty of patience, and his body weary of his spirit; he reckoned life without her as a mockery, and time consumed him away. How many a day he found no rest in longing for her; how many a night the pain of her kept him from sleep; his body was worn to a sigh, his heart’s wound had turned him to a cry of sorrow. He had given a thousand lives for one taste of the cup of her presence, but it availed him not. The doctors knew no cure for him, and companions avoided his company; yea, physicians have no medicine for one sick of love, unless the favor of the beloved one deliver him.

At last, the tree of his longing yielded the fruit of despair, and the fire of his hope fell to ashes. Then one night he could live no more, and he went out of his house and made for the marketplace. On a sudden, a watchman followed after him. He broke into a run, with the watchman following; then other watchmen came together, and barred every passage to the weary one. And the wretched one cried from his heart, and ran here and there, and moaned to himself: “Surely this watchman is Izrá’íl, my angel of death, following so fast upon me; or he is a tyrant of men, seeking to harm me.” His feet carried him on, the one bleeding with the arrow of love, and his heart lamented. Then he came to a garden wall, and with untold pain he scaled it, for it proved very high; and forgetting his life, he threw himself down to the garden.

And there he beheld his beloved with a lamp in her hand, searching for a ring she had lost. When the heart-surrendered lover looked on his ravishing love, he drew a great breath and raised up his hands in prayer, crying: “O God! Give Thou glory to the watchman, and riches and long life. For the watchman was Gabriel, guiding this poor one; or he was Isráfíl, bringing life to this wretched one!”

Indeed, his words were true, for he had found many a secret justice in this seeming tyranny of the watchman, and seen how many a mercy lay hid behind the veil. Out of wrath, the guard had led him who was athirst in love’s desert to the sea of his loved one, and lit up the dark night of absence with the light of reunion. He had driven one who was afar, into the garden of nearness, had guided an ailing soul to the heart’s physician.

Now if the lover could have looked ahead, he would have blessed the watchman at the start, and prayed on his behalf, and he would have seen that tyranny as justice; but since the end was veiled to him, he moaned and made his plaint in the beginning. Yet those who journey in the garden land of knowledge, because they see the end in the beginning, see peace in war and friendliness in anger."