I think reading the Qur'an should probably be as essential as reading the Bible... B
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We were joking B, sort of. I can only read the Qu'ran slightly drunk, and I can only deeply enjoy the Rubaiyat slightly more drunk. I pour a martinis or two or three, put on some Afghan music, Al Din, and open either one. I agree both the Bible and the Qu'ran are essential reading---but so is the Rubaiyat, because it is a critique of all religions of the book.
``Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse---and Thou..'' The alternate, secular universe of beauty always stands in waiting to be discovered.
Of course I can only read the Qu'ran in English, but my translation has the Arabic on the right column, with its classic script. It's visually beautiful, and I imagine the sound of the words, not their meaning. It's one of those kinds of sounds you have to develop the ear for---and then it's beauty begins to blossom. That's the deepest cultural trip about Islam. It exists in sound and feeling. All its moral precipes are a balancing act between the passions.
To indulge this shameless orientalism, I like to get tipsy before hand so I can swoon. It is extra-ordinarily erotic, like belly dancing. The line or rather my cultural-presupposed line between the sacred and the profane is blurred by the passion I sense from these forays into Islam. It really is an art trip. But it is also really a little crazy. I practiced the call to prayer over and over and over to get the deep throated `Hja' sound and the high nasal sigh. Like any other art trip you can wear it out fast, so I come back to it in small doses, in order to reach into the past and the sensibilities that have created these worlds.
I went searching for some background on Al-Din (a mixed CD that Joanna did). It is evidently a common part of a name and the closest I could come to a likely suspect was Fakhr al-Din-Razi. He shares the name with the Persian poet, Jalal al-Din Rumi. So it is highly confusing to sort these people out. Among some of the more interesting sites I visited were from Spain, Seville in 2004 where there was a world folk music festival that included North Africa, the Middle East and the Stans for obvious reasons.
Anyway, I have convinced myself, I can not enter this world with my reason intact, hence the alcohol. It is only available through the passions. This is a little surprising since Christianity holds absolutely no passion for me at all---unless I translate it into art, say Georges de la Tour, Magdalena before the mirror with her candle and skull contemplating her existence as mortal against a universal night.
I have found most Christians to be completely void of the kind of passion I have come to associate with Islam. That maybe a mistake. But I think not. Even in the most remote and common encounters in local stores with people from Islamic countries, I have found them to be almost instantaneously accessible, provided I am sincere, somewhat intense, with all due politeness, and friendly of course. This is completely against my Anglo nature, but I enjoy it. Why not?
Fuck. The US has to get out of Iraq, period. We have absolutely no idea what kind of world we are fucking with.
Yet other worlds. I was in an elevator on the tenth floor of a downtown SF housing authority project for seniors and disabled on O'Farrell in the Tenderloin today. Two elderly Chinese ladies got on the elevator, very severe, very clean, very formal, chattering in Mandarin (I think)---it didn't sound like my Cantonese landlord. I asked the younger one about the address, since the building was part of a twin tower arrangement. She smiled and said in a horse voice (excusing herself for her cold) this was 477, which was the address I wanted. We had a short conversation about I can't remember what. Very pleasant way to kill time in the elevator. She translated everything to her older companion who nodded or shook her head, respectively. The older woman reminded me of the universal scorn of all grandmothers.
CG
I retrace my day doing deliveries in SF and there was something magic about it, like I was Marco Polo as an instant noodle soup, all unfolding in one tiny pan of the planet, where everyone from everywhere suddenly appeared in the boiling water.