| rumi reminds me… | May 21st, 2007 |
…to keep breaking your heart until it opens.
Here’s a couple of his ditties “illuminated” with ballpoint pen in my sketchbook. Posted in Misc, Sketchbook |
6 Responses to “rumi reminds me…”Leave a Reply |
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May 21st, 2007 at 9:45 am
Thank you for sharing those. You and Rumi are a wonderful combination. That was beautiful.
May 21st, 2007 at 6:12 pm
God, how beautiful. I especially love the last frame of Story Water…thank you for these.
June 4th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
These two stories are so beautiful, and I love how you’ve placed them together. It reminds me of the tantric concept of an empty pot being full of emptiness, or negative space. Also the theme of water reminds me of my favorite Hafiz poem, which I always try to remember when i get stuck in my life:
First,
the fish needs to say
“Somethin ain’t right about this damn camel ride,
and I am feeling
so
damn
thirsty.”
-Hafiz.
I also love this one (also Hafiz):
Even after all these years
the Sun never says to the earth
“You owe me.”
Look at what happens with a love like this
it lights up the whole sky.
-Hafiz.
Sending you blessings in your continued work. I know i feel inspired by your process to keep working in my own.
~bird.
June 20th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Wow. Your writing/drawing has always knocked my socks off, and so (despite recent attempts to domesticate him as yet another New Age-y spiritual commodity for Westerners) has Rumi . . . Put ‘em together, and that’s something else again. Marvelous.
I’m struck by how close Rumi’s language and ideas are to those of the Jewish mystics, who also frequently use water as a symbol of life, fire for the spirit, etc. — and “the breaking of the vessels” is the image with which the Kabbalists explained creation!
There is something odd, though, about the fit between Rumi’s stories and you, the storyteller retelling them. A lot of _Blankets_ seems to be about the attempt to get past the theology of dualism, with its sharp division of body from soul, at the expense of the former, to the profit of the latter. I’m among those who find that dualist legacy both oppressive and dangerous. So I always squirm a little when I read things like “The body itself is a screen . . .”
But maybe this is just me seizing on the one thing about which I have misgivings. So much of the rest of these stories is about repudiating the kind of asceticism that treats embodiment as an obstacle to spiritual life: “A feeling of fullness comes, but usually it takes some bread to bring it.” The counsel here is self-nurturance, not self-denial.
What do you think? What do you take from these stories, these images?
Pardon these ramblings. I’m just an excitable academic who loves your stuff. Good luck bringing _Habibi_ to the world . . . and don’t forget to take care of the storyteller.
June 9th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
wow these make me indescribably happy! Will you consider doing more in your spare time? Rumi or any poet or writer who inspires you… <3
June 19th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Goodness, I love Rumi. And your illustrations. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful…!