{"id":8,"date":"2022-03-21T16:26:41","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T16:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/meditationsonthedivine\/?page_id=8"},"modified":"2022-05-03T17:22:15","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T17:22:15","slug":"tear-at-the-edges","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/meditationsonthedivine\/tear-at-the-edges\/","title":{"rendered":"tear at the edges"},"content":{"rendered":"

tear at the edges.<\/p>\n

submit to the flow.<\/p>\n

unzip and let it all subsume you.<\/p>\n

to more than this existence, supreme to the form.<\/p>\n

falling upwards, a bending of the soul.<\/p>\n

feel the lift, erase the border.<\/p>\n

pull back the splendid curtains.<\/p>\n

the raw, the soul-molding, our origin and destination.<\/p>\n

violence in the power, a jagged wave.<\/p>\n

implode the corpus, explode into being.<\/p>\n

the snap of a string, capillaries shatter.<\/p>\n

crumble before the weight.<\/p>\n

clutch the beautiful, the majestic.<\/p>\n

blurred, body not yours.<\/p>\n

strain, see, witness, emulate, ninety-nine, infinite, one.<\/p>\n

open to the clarity, the complexity, the urgent, the divine.<\/p>\n

thrown back, head contorting body, heart exploding, fizzing with infinity, the sight of<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and the bed, warm, awaits your return.<\/p>\n

the body, when split, seeks repair.<\/p>\n

\n

on\u00a0tear at the edges:<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While composing this poem, I searched for music that I felt would best befit writing about the divine. I immediately was called to the soundtrack to <\/span>Dune<\/span><\/i> (2021<\/span><\/a>), but couldn\u2019t quite name why.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I wrote, it became clear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The soundtrack to <\/span>Dune <\/span><\/i>is out-of-this-world, ethereal, and moving: full of sounds that you cannot identify. This appealed to me, but wasn\u2019t the main reason for my selection; I soon realized that the reason I landed on the <\/span>Dune<\/span><\/i> soundtrack was because it is terrifying.<\/span><\/p>\n

My poem plays with our conceptions of what it would be like to have a personal interaction with Allah or the divine \u2014 through the <\/span>mi\u2019raj<\/span><\/i>, Muhammad\u2019s journey to heaven to meet Allah. Additionally, within the poem there are allusions to the Asma ul-husna<\/em> and the day of Alast<\/em>, but that is not the main focus.<\/span><\/p>\n

Opening with descriptions about being a part of something larger than yourself, <\/span>tear at the edges<\/span><\/i> plays with notions of islam and submission of the self. The first allusion to the <\/span>mi\u2019raj <\/span><\/i>comes in lines 5 and 6, with \u201cfalling upwards\u201d and \u201cfeel the lift\u201d relating to Muhammad\u2019s ascension to heaven, in the <\/span>mi\u2019raj<\/span><\/i> upon a golden ladder \u2014 as described in <\/span>Jan Knappert\u2019s <\/span>Myths and Legends of the Swahili<\/span><\/i>, \u201cbefore I knew what was happening we were flying through the clouds.\u201d (Knappert 76).<\/span><\/p>\n

The allusion to the <\/span>mi\u2019raj <\/span><\/i>is continued, my \u201cpull back the splendid curtains\u201d referring to the \u201c70,000 curtains separating the divine presence from the rest of creation,\u201d which \u201cwere made from every conceivable substance or element\u201d (Knappert 82). Once the curtains are pulled back, there is a description of what it would be like to encounter the divine. Here is where <\/span>Dune\u2019<\/span><\/i>s terror makes sense.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While we may want to imagine an encounter with the divine to be a wholesome and peaceful experience, in the <\/span>mi\u2019raj<\/span><\/i> it is depicted as overwhelming. After all, if divinity is grand and all-encompassing, then experiencing it would be equally all-encompassing, transcending the human form and language.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is this raw, transcendent interaction with power that I attempt to describe in the latter half of the poem, culminating in the apex of the encounter: the blank space. This is my way of dealing with the aesthetic problem of representing the divine: don\u2019t. The blank space must be scrolled through, calling upon the witness of the poem to scroll, and contemplate the white space, and what they would construe as the divine, while doing so.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The poem ends with a reference to the <\/span>mi\u2019raj<\/span><\/i>, to a bed that is \u201cstill warm: no time had passed on earth\u201d (Knappert 83), an abrupt, yet powerful testament to the transience of the journey.<\/span><\/p>\n

All in all, <\/span>tear at the edges <\/span><\/i>reckons with \u2018meeting\u2019 Allah through a variation on the <\/span>mi\u2019raj<\/span><\/i>, with the hopes of further interrogating the question of what it truly means to experience the divine.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

note: reflection is from Week 4 Section readings<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

tear at the edges. submit to the flow. unzip and let it all subsume you. to more than this existence, supreme to the form. falling upwards, a bending of the soul. feel the lift, erase the border. pull back the splendid curtains. the raw, the soul-molding, our origin and destination. violence in the power, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10760,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/meditationsonthedivine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/meditationsonthedivine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/meditationsonthedivine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/meditationsonthedivine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10760"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/meditationsonthedivine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/meditationsonthedivine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/meditationsonthedivine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/meditationsonthedivine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}