I am reading Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, poetry by Hafiz-e Shirazi. He is challenging me to become more comfortable with ambiguity. I will share his poem and some of my thoughts on his poem (sometimes with the help of experts when the concepts are too hard for me), followed by a poem and some art inspired by his poem.
Hafiz’s Poem 1:
Between these two doors This caravan
Some thoughts:
The imagery of doors implies entrances and exits, passageways, or boundaries. Two doors suggest pillars of demarcation in time, place, awareness or perhaps binary contrasts. Opposite ends of conceptual delineations like birth and death or past and future seem like reasonable possibilities.
But those don’t seem to be what Hafiz is concerned with. He is pointing out the between. What is happening in the interim, the dash? Of course, the interesting part is the journey. We get so hyper-focused on reaching the destination that we become uncomfortable with the time spent in the now learning to be patient.
I picture a caravan of camels carrying the worldly goods of travelers long distances, the people eager for trade, companionship, good food, fresh water, music, romance, and laughter. It is life in motion. The doors are really of no consequence right now. They are the least of our concern when we have all this living to do.
My Poem 1:
Unmoored, afloat, uncertain if hope is a delusion or a virtue stillness sits where ambition once cracked her knuckles
the in-between is where? beginning was once easy to define though ending is unknown the certainty of it was assumed
now nothing reveals itself as absolute except this protest march that might possibly transform into a celebratory parade
Hafiz. Hafiz’s Little Book of Life. Translated by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2023.
TRIGGER WARNING: This poem contains references to childhood trauma, gun violence, animal death and desecration, and disturbing imagery involving cruelty to animals. It reflects lived experience and may be distressing for some readers. Please read with care.
My son Trey, short for Trajectory, lives in a parallel universe. With my whiteness stirred in, he is a lighter-skinned miniature version of his father, right down to the little glasses that he’s needed since he started reading at the age of two. He stands in the driveway waiting for the school bus, swishing his skirts back and forth, and my heart aches because I know the teasing he will endure. He is a queen for the Living History Museum whose merits he and his father talked excitedly about while I made the costume, torn between pride that my son’s favorite person is a woman and the compulsion to pressure him to pick a man. This morning as I sip my tea in my present universe, tears spring unbidden at this memory. Here, my history-loving husband and I chose not to have Trey or any other children. Oh, how I miss my sweet boy.
TRIGGER WARNING: This poem contains graphic metaphoric language and imagery related to physical harm, violence, and bodily injury, presented in a stylized and symbolic manner. While not literal, the content may be disturbing for some readers, particularly those sensitive to themes of abuse or violence in relationships. Reader discretion is advised.
Start with the pinky, snap the tip Then work your way up the hand to the wrist To break the arm, you’ll need a tight grip.
When love takes hold and makes the heart skip You might hesitate, but I must insist Start with the pinky, snap the tip
The signal an upward curve of the lip Ignore all attempts if one tries to resist To break the arm, you’ll need a tight grip.
Dresses are easy, they merely unzip Buttons are harder; they require a twist Start with the pinky, snap the tip
If all else fails, just give it a rip No need to worry, no one will be missed To break the arm, you’ll need a tight grip.
The best way to tackle a relationship is to find the one who’s never been kissed Start with the pinky, snap the tip To break the arm, you’ll need a tight grip.
You ever wonder how we keep from flying off this giant muffin when it’s going over 60,000 miles an hour? Like, a spaceship made of dirt and water, it’s outer skin nothing more than a layer of air holding all us guts in while screaming through space at 60,000 miles an hour. And any second another chunk of rock could slam into our bowling ball hot air balloon and we could shoot off like fireworks spraying out of a soda bottle at 60,000 miles an hour. Unless we’re more like a frisbee ‘cause we’re flat earthers and this giant paper plate planet is flinging and boomeranging around the sun at 60,000 miles an hour. Maybe the whole way to survive in this solar system is to keep moving as fast as you can, ‘cause if we stop, we die, and nobody wants to die, well, some people want to die, but not like that in a crash going 60,000 miles an hour. And think about it, these doctors are trying to slow us down with all these meds, making us walk around like zombies eating our own brains, drooling in our sleep, and slurring our speech ‘cause that’s supposedly better somehow, even though they should be smart enough to know that we have to keep the wheel spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning at least 60,000 miles an hour, or we’ll screech to a halt and scream forever like that Munch painting where the squiggledy guy is slapping both hands on his face like the Home Alone kid all because Krakatoa blew and burned and bled.
Image created by Rebekah Marshall’s prompt using AI on Gencraft.
WARNING – SPOILERS
A Court of Frost & Starlight, the 4th book in the ACOTAR series is a lovely, little, short novel wrapping up the last remaining threads of Feyre’s transformation. It focuses on her trying on her new role as High Lady and true partner to her love and delves into the parts of her that have been neglected because of war and survival. A key aspect is her art and desire to create, share her creativity, and understand creation as vital to her fulfillment.
It is a peak into homelife, an intimate Winter Solstice celebration, growth and blossoming of friendships, Mor’s self-realizations, and one of Feyre’s sisters suffering from emotional turmoil that gets totally out of hand. Interestingly, different voices begin to emerge. There are portions of the book from the perspectives of Rhysand, Cassian, Nesta, and Mor. The majority are in Feyre’s voice, but it is a nice change experiencing the inner thoughts of some of her loved ones.
This felt like a pause before a storm, a much-needed rest after the war and carnage of the 3rd book. I was disappointed that it was so short, as I wanted to learn more about all the members of the team & family. But book 4 is appropriately long, so I look forward to diving into that one immediately.
Maas, Sarah J. A Court of Frost and Starlight. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.
TRIGGER WARNING: This essay discusses patriarchal oppression, gender-based violence and punishment, sexual shaming, social ostracism, and cultural trauma. These topics are examined in a literary and analytical context.
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston paints a picture of harsh expectations placed upon Chinese/Chinese American women. Though the narrator rejects some of the notions and attempts to forge her own path, she still feels duty-bound to uphold some of the traditions. Each section of the book focuses on a different woman and explores the expectations placed upon her specific to the time and place where that portion of the story is set.
For instance, No Name Woman lives in a village in China early in the 20th Century. She is expected to remain “pure” (no sex) until her husband’s return from war. Her sexual desires are not a consideration and her ensuing pregnancy is punished by shaming the family and destroying their crops, livestock, and stored foods. The family then disowns her and never speaks her name again, ensuring she would “suffer forever, even after death” (16). There is no mention of the man who must have impregnated her on the part of the villagers or her family. She must bear the full weight of the “crime” of having sex and becoming pregnant.
Fa-Mulan in the “White Tigers” section of the book becomes the greatest hero in the land saving her family, her village, and her country from evil rulers. She is a warrior, savior, and leader who has trained for 14 years to become the best hero possible. Yet, once her mission ends, she is expected to return to the “appropriate” role of wife, daughter-in-law, mother. There is no option for leadership in her world. This character is thought to have lived sometime around the year 500 in China. Women were not supposed to use their brains or their brawn, except in service to men. Any woman who attempted to pass as male enter the military or school would be executed, “no matter how bravely they fought or how high they scored on the examinations” (19).
The “Shaman” section about Brave Orchid shows the variety of domestic expectations placed on Chinese women. Brave Orchid lives the first half of her life in China and the second half in America spanning the 20th Century. She works as a medical practitioner in China and then in the family laundry business in America. Besides working long hours, she picks tomatoes as a part-time job to make more money, does all the cooking and cleaning, and manages all aspects of the household. She is also expected to carry on the traditions of the culture by keeping the rituals, ceremonies, and talk story alive so that it will pass on to the next generation. She must also protect everyone’s souls by calling them back when they have forgotten their way home. Brave Orchid’s eyes fill with tears as she tells her adult daughter, “I work so hard” (103). Chinese women are unrealistically expected to do more than their fair share of the work.
The section “At the Western Palace” highlights the way Chinese women in the past had little power in marital situations. Their partners were chosen for them and husbands might take multiple wives. The women were expected to tolerate and support these traditions without question. When Moon Orchid comes to America in the 1950’s, she is confronted by a different reality in which women have more rights and her husband rejects their marriage. She is expected to accept his continued financial support without living as his wife. Chinese American women seem to still have parents attempting to meddle with selecting their potential suitors according to the narrator.
In the final section “A Song For a Barbarian Reed Pipe” the narrator implies that a “good” Chinese American girl in America in the 1950’s should be able to speak fluent English and Chinese. She should attend Chinese school and American school. It is an interesting note that “good manners…is the same word as traditions” in Chinese (171). To please the Chinese, she should be obedient and demure, soft-spoken, and graceful, domestically competent – able to cook, clean, serve, and heal, and pleasant in interactions while not making eye contact, use opposites to confuse evil spirits, keep all Chinese traditions, send money to family members in China, lie to Americans so no one can trap her or deport her or trick her somehow, and remember that men are valued more highly than women. To please the Americans, she should be assertive and firm of voice, intelligent, sexy, able to defend herself, and independent making strong eye contact, speaking from a place of science and logic rather than any mention of evil spirits, creating a comfortable lifestyle that is America-focused, be a patriot, and believe that women and men are equal. A Chinese American woman is expected to do all of this and figure out how to be healthy, happy, and prosperous without driving herself crazy over the paradoxes such disparate expectations create.
Works Cited
Kingston, Maxine. The Woman Warrior – Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. Vintage Books, New York, 1975.
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