Somewhere in the streets of Hiroshima, Japan 2016.
Sometimes I feel that the world
Is burning
And yet how can an ocean without horizon
Be set aflame?
Everything around me charges forward
At mach-3 speeds
and bullet-train momentums
But I
Am still.
Sights and sounds
Voices and vitriol
Have faded into nothingness
And melded into Unity
Perhaps, Love is only found
In the Silence within
In the Eye of the storm
In the blindness that gives Sight
In the death that gives Life
Yet still, I come and go
Just as I please
No more than
An insolent guest
I plead, in the quietness of the night
Let me stay
Let me die
So that I may come Alive
once more
in You.
***
Japan: the land of neon storefronts, video game machine tunes, and impeccable manners. It’s astounding how her cities are in some parts overwhelming to the five senses, and in other parts just plain devoid of anything other than simplicity. It’s such a unique juxtaposition.
This particular picture was taken while I wandered through the streets of Hiroshima at night after a slightly disappointing Okonomiyaki dinner. I thought this street looked like a scene straight out of an animé movie. But despite the startling visuals of the bright red canopies and the cluttered store signs lining this street, it was surprisingly quiet in real life. Modernity with a touch of calmness.
Somehow, that same sense of “calmness within chaos” with which the streets of Japan were infused, found itself in expression through the words that flowed from the tip of my pen months later as I wrote the poem above, sitting in a corner of a friend’s living room at a local Sufi gathering near my place in Singapore. We’d just finished a dhikr (remembrance/meditation) session and were waiting for dinner to be served. The room was lively with chatter, conversation, and the childrens’ squeals as they ran around playing, but the air itself was permeated with such an elusive stillness and tranquility. I was bursting with happiness.
That’s the ultimate kind of travelling, and the ultimate spirituality, isn’t it? To witness and live that same calmness whether you’re walking down the quiet side streets of a bustling city in a foreign land whose language you don’t speak a word of, or sitting by yourself in a tiny corner of the same four walls of the apartment you’ve seen day in and day out all your life. That’s the stuff that dervish dreams are made of. But the hardest things to attain are often the ones that seem deceptively straightforward to achieve.
One day, perhaps, we can live that reality as One. Till then, there’s much work to be done. お元気で! Ogenki de!
