Alan Olee Book Report

Wow.  It’s been awhile; I’ve been on the road; I’ve been consumed with duties; life.  Life is like that. Don’t we all know.  I have been planning an architectural blog and it is coming.  But in the madness, the confusion of just too much, I return to Rumi.  Rumi rocks.   He speaks to us through the centuries, but somehow particularly to Americans, his vision is especially pointed.  We Americans with our monogamy (isn’t cheating a form of serial polygamy; and with a 50% divorce rate who’s to say?) , our illusion of “having it all figured out”, our systems, our sadness and our violence.  Rumi.  There is more to life than we might allow.  So.  Here is a Rumi poem I especially like considering the tone I have set.  WARNING:  It is at least to be rated X but not triple X for adult themes and sexuality.  It is one of my favorites.

BREAD MAKING

There was a feast. The king
was heartily in his cups.

He saw a learned scholar walking by.
“Bring him in and give him
some of this fine wine.”

Servants rushed out and brought the man
to the king’s table, but he was not
receptive. “I had rather drink poison!
I have never tasted wine and never will!
Take it away from me!”

He kept on with these loud refusals,
disturbing the atmosphere of the feast.

This is how it sometimes is
at God’s table.

Someone who has heard of about ecstatic love,
but never tasted it, disrupts the banquet.

If there were a secret passage
from ear to his throat, everything
in him would change. Initiation would occur.

As it is, he’s all fire and no light,
all husk and no kernel

The king gave orders: “Cupbearer,
do what you must!”

This is how your invisible guide acts,
the chess champion across from you
that always wins. He cuffed
the scholar’s head and said,

“Taste!”

And, “Again!”

The cup was drained
and the intellectual started singing
and telling ridiculous jokes.

He joined the garden, snapping his fingers
and swaying. Soon of course,
he had to pee.

He went out, and there, near the latrine,
was a beautiful woman, one of the king’s harem.

His mouth hung open. He wanted her!
Right then, he wanted her!
And she was not unwilling.

They fell to the ground,
You’ve seen a baker rolling dough.
He kneads it gently at first,
then more roughly.

He pounds it on the board.
It softly groans under his palms.
Now he spreads it out
and rolls it flat.

Then he bunches it,
and rolls it all the way out again,
thin. Now he adds water,
and mixes it well.

Now salt,
and a little more salt.

Now he shapes it delicately
to its final shape
and slips it in into the oven,
which is already hot.

You remember bread-making!
This is how you desire
tangles with a desired one.

And it’s not just a metaphor
for a man and a woman making love.

Warriors in battle do this to.
A great mutual embrace is always happening
between the eternal and what dies,
between essence and accident.

The sport has different rules
in every case, but it’s basically
the same, and remember:

the way you make love is the way
God will be with you.

So these two were lost in their sexual trance.
They did not care anymore about feasting
or wine. Their eyes were closed like
perfectly matching calligraphy lines.

The king went looking for the scholar,
and when he saw them coupled, commented,

“Well it is said, ‘A good king
must serve his subjects from his own table!”

There is a joy, a winelike freedom
that dissolves the mind and restores
the spirit, and there is manly fortitude
like the king’s, a reasonableness
that accepts the bewilderd lostness.

But meditate now on steadfastness
and clarity, and let those be the wings
that lift and soar through the celestial spheres.