the call

when you fall in love,
there is a desire to be in the company of the beloved.

to gaze at her beauty. to touch her soft skin. a sensual experience, where you share a time and a place together...

what if this is not possible,
what do you do if you cannot be in her physical company?

i guess that is where the phone comes in, a way to share a time but be in different places. you fullfill your desire of company through hearing her beautiful voice. you feel satisfied to at least be able to talk to your beloved...

and if that is not possible, then there are ways to at least be with her intellectually, experiencing a virtual companionship with the one you long to be with, using the old method of sending love letters, or new technologies that speed up the virtual process....

* how wonderful, that longing to be in the company of the beloved....... so what do i do if i'm not yet in love, what do i do to fall in love with the woman i've selected for marriage?

bismillah

i will start this blog with past writings regarding issues that are very important to me. or were important to me when i wrote what i wrote. issues regarding identity, faith, activism, love...
enjoy.

simplicity and experience

i like cermonial events,
but i don't like things that are exagerated or too extravegant. i like simplicity.

simplicity is related to elegance.

i have observed that everything elegant has an element of simplicity to it. we should have elegance in ceremonial events. and to have elegance they should be simple. by simple i don't mean austere, or minimalist.

for example: if i desire a cloth with patterns on it, i can have those patterns embroidered on with shimmering beads and different color threads, or i can have that pattern built into the weaving of the cloth, in the same color of the cloth. i think thats what i mean by simplicity.

i don't want to sacrifice beauty or elegance, but for some things to be beautiful and elegant they must sometimes be simple. but it does depend on the particular situation. there may be situations where its the application of a pattern with shimmering beads that makes it beautiful. i hope this makes sense.

now...
what makes the ceremony an event is the experience people have at the ceremony...

by experience, i mean i don't like things that are staged for show and/or overly planned out, especially if the planning involves recording the event for posterity, often involving a camera, picture or video. i don't think a camera should decide the pace and the places of the people at the event. its like staging an event to be recorded rather then recording whats going on. we should forget the picture perfect, forget what others will think, and just go with the moment, experience it to the fullest. let the cameras capture the reality of imperfections rather then the perfect images.

blind following

...sometimes its quite liberating to follow blindly.
it frees you from worrying about your actions. *It shouldn't free you from being held accountable for your actions! but, when you carry out an act that has precedent in local tradition, i'm sure you are quite worry free as you do it. blindly following is also related to the idea of imitation. we imitate in order to learn how to do something.

when confronted with a situation in which we don't know how to act, we can do one of two things:
-learn about the best course of action and take it;
-or imitate what others we are familiar with have done (tradition).

not all tradtion is bad. it can be the case that centuries of tradition have refined a practice into an excellent form. (for example, in architecture there are master craftsmen like masons and carpenters who learned through imitation).