Lonesome traveller...: March 2011

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People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even... (Angela Chase in My So Called Life)

Eccentrico, sfuggente, vago. Il piacere di meravigliare e di non essere mai uguale, sempre altrove.

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What is in your head abandon it, what is in your hand leave it, what happens to you face it.

Ce qui est dans ta tête abandonne-le, ce que tu as dans ta main laisse-le, ce qui t'arrive affronte-le.

Quello che hai in testa abbandonalo, quello che hai in mano lascialo, quello che ti accade affrontalo.

Abu Sa'id ibn Abi Al-Khair, in Mohammed ibn Al-Munawwar, Asrar Al-Tawhid

Accostumed as we are to our Western ideas of the importance of life, it is difficult to adjust our thoughts to a different scale of values. And yet to the Oriental mind, it is simple enough. Death is bound to come - it is as inevitable as birth; whether it comes early or late it is entirely at the will of Allah. And that belief, that acquiescence, does away with what has become the curse of our present-day world - anxiety. There may not be freedom from want, but there is certainly freedom from fear. And idleness is a blessed and natural state - work is the unnatural necessity. Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan