140_Cool

a___

My constant cool is an aphorism of allegorical context, from villa to post, from poetry to prose, from design back to concept, I ameliorate a constant cool in everything I do.

But why the dark spells? Why the incursions? Of a creative shadow that wants to ask myself to test me again, and again?

So, they do it to look good, so, cooler to them!

But there is something categorically magical and beguiling in the championing of constant cool. I am ready, we are not. We rush, we push, we are asked questions? And we do not know the answers but wonder something up, to stay in the ride of constant cool. We are the ones, our generation to bust out over architectural defeat, cars that look plastic, yet, electric, the sensible has come to reckon with our dream of being fly for a black, red, yellow, or white gal or guy! #LOVE. There is a cool in discernment of leaving it all behind.

b___

Rumi, the famous Persian Poet, once wrote: IMRA’U ‘L-QAYS.

It is about a King of the Arabs, who leaves his family and friends behind, wondering from one landscape to another as a dervish, (remember whirling dervishes, a Muslim sect known for their poverty and austerity). Love dissolved him, and led him to Tabuk, making bricks.

“You abandon kingdoms, because you want more than kingdoms.”[i]

Imra’u talked theology and philosophy to the King of Tabuk. Imra’u was a handsome poet himself loved by women. He whispered something to the King of Tabuk and he became a wanderer too, alongside him.

“This is what love does and continues to do. It tastes like honey. . . “[ii]

They wandered around China barely speaking for the secret they knew! It can kill. All the world wants this weakness. Only God knows what they said. They used unsayable words, like birds do, and some imitated them. To live long and prosper.

c___

So, what is this cherished hilarity, this calm and beguiling danger, a cool, cooler than kings. A prank? Or gift? Both maybe? The kings have no language to explain that whisper that convinced the King of Tabuk to follow and wonder. But to be real on life’s smallness, and yet the great grandeur of the theft of themselves from their chains of power, to be normal again became a blessing.

They dance in the street, gold no longer adorned and a part of nature. They empathise with the masses, and reveal hidden love, for they have been absolutely loved in the first place.

d___

“So, can we?”

Dance until the cricket’s sound,

Whale until help comes,

Master cooking,

Make, make, make,

Study, study, study,

Arouse, and peruse,

Left down in a snooze,

Keep going, old man,

For of course, now we can!

Love AB x

[i] RUMI, Selected Poems, Translated by Coleman Banks, IMRA’U ‘L-QAYS, Penguin Classics, London, UK, 1995, p.90.

[ii] RUMI, Selected Poems, Translated by Coleman Banks, IMRA’U ‘L-QAYS, Penguin Classics, London, UK, 1995, p.91.