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IDYLLOPUS : BIGSOFA : Guest Writers : Spurious other : Gertruda Rosenstein's Rumi 2


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Rhumifications

Rhumi 1, The end of Rhumi

Rhumi 2, The color of my love's hair

Photo from the web. This the tomb of the 13th century Persian scholar and mystic named Jelaluddin Rumi. He is the bestselling poet in America today.

While looking on the web for a Rumi-related picture, I came across the Rafael Film Center, which had a rumi-related pic on a page giving dates of film screenings, and by way of this I came across the movie "The Saragossa Manuscript" which they give as having been Jerry Garcia's favorite film (click on the pic above to go to to the Internet Movie Database page on "The Saragossa Manuscript"). Their blurb on "The Saragossa Manuscript" reads:

Legendary as Jerry Garcia's favorite movie, this hallucinatory 1964 epic from Poland had never been available in U.S. in a full-length version. Based on an 1805 novel and set in the Napoleonic era, director Wojciech Has's cinematic hall of mirrors traces the ribald exploits of a Belgian officer (Zbigniew Cybulski, the "Polish James Dean") in a surreal Spanish landscape seething with bandits, ghosts and beautiful sirens, in a succession of alternate realities and stories-within-stories. Multi-layered textures, ranging from "Arabian Nights" fantasy to the macabre are complemented by Krzystof Penderecki's eclectic music. This new restoration, presented by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, is dedicated to Jerry Garcia, who commissioned Pacific Film Archive in a search for a complete print. Other notable fans have included Terry Gilliam and the surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel. In Polish w/ English subtitles. (Poland, 1964) 175 min.

Image from the web. The wedding scene from "Maison Ikkoku," a romantic comedy series created by Rumiko Takahashi. "Maison Ikkoku" is a touching love story which revolves around the lives of the hapless student Yusaku Godai, the beautiful manager of his apartment Kyoko Otonashi, and the crazy tenants of Ikkoku-kan.


The end of Rhumi

From "The Rhumi songs of the lesser known Gertruda Solomon Rosenstein" translated (with some paraphrasing, editing and elucidation) by idyllopus


Love, love, love. L-O-V-E. The letters of love. What need have we of stories of love when we have the letters of love. A-M-O-R-E. Love is, tells us, in its own word, that it is, "More." Love is more. If it is MORE, it is something MORE than. More than what. But of course we know, deep in our tissues (the flesh I mean, mother mud of our birth) that the mysteries of love are more than we can conceive, which suggests that worldly births are less a matter of love than a desire to know love, to know that "More" which we are less than, and scarcely equal to. At least as one, divided, ununited, we are by definition less than the "More" which we each seek and never find. To desire is to be less than, and has no concourse with "More." To desire is to be partial, lacking, and certainly can have no relationship with the complete configuration, the sum formula of what would be for us the "WHOLE" of us, in which is the "HOLE" which is the description of our inadequacy in regards to our inability to wholly comprehend marvelous love. Yet as I say "HOLE" and reach back with my tongue for the silent "W" which is ever unspoken, ever unpronounced, yet present, does this not also describe to us how the entity which is love (and certainly, yes, it is a living being) hints how wholly it is present if sublingual, if subcontext, and wishes for us--no, does not wish for as love is whole unto itself there is no room for desire in it, no room for wishing, no room for completion. It is not a house which is being built and is unfinished without us and so those who are already there in love, not finding us also there yet, are missing perhaps the bathroom or kitchen that would complete their lovely home and eagerly stand at the door awaiting our belated arrival. For that matter, if love is whole then all is in it, which means we are as well, does it not. So here we are IN LOVE (for love is whole and therefore contains the all of which we are a part) and yet we are so blind we do not see it. Yes, that is the crux of the matter. All of us are "in love," involved as ONE "in love" and yet we are blind and go seeking everywhere for what already holds us and therefore does not want us since it has us. Which is the true occult and secret meaning of, "Now that she or he has it, they no longer want it." When one has, and is aware one has, one no longer has need and forgets all lack or notion of want. There is no need to want any longer as there is no need. If you have ever felt the whole of love it is inconceivable that one could relapse into the illusory HOLE which separates us from the sublingual WHOLE.

We need not ask, as Oliver Twist, in the Broadway musical "Oliver", we need not sing to our love, "Wher-er-er-er-errrrrrrrrrr...is love? Does it fall from skies above?" But we do. In errrrrrror, we do ask. Because we are blind. As long as we ask, "Where is love?" how can it answer us? When we are in need, how can completeness interface with us? If we think love shuns us, and treats us with contempt, it is because we are separate from love and thus looking at it as though through a glass darkly, a mirror, and in the mirror if we see "LOVE" beckoning to us even as it walks away, as though hating us, then we can be sure that the reason for this is that to Love we are Evol (yes, evil) since we have separated ourselves from him/her/it. Except that love does not see it that way as love is complete. It is us projecting our lack upon love which does not hear our pain and so can't answer. No, Love never heard the pathetic plain song of poor Oliver Twist. But we heard, because we were also outside of love. When you ask where is love, and one comes up and says, "Here am I", run away. It is not love. Love never heard you. Is love light? If love holds all then if there is any dark and null and void then is it not also in the light of love? The dark light of love? And if Lucifer is, by definition, "the bearer of light", containing light within itself, but bearing it as well, are we then to welcome that falling star to which Oliver sang, when we see it plummet to earth? Or, believing that that which bears light is thus apart from it and not the light itself but only the bearer of it and therefore apart from it, should we rush upon that fallen star and cast it out from amongst us? If we do, do we not fall victim to the illusion of all not being in love? That there is anything separate from the light which is love which is also the dark light? Isn't the Luciferian message that in this world of him seeking her or him or whatever, and her seeking him or her or whatever, we ourselves are at fault in honoring the bearer of light (for aren't we all bearers of the love light which holds us completely in itself) as opposed to the light from which the bearer of light has separated itself while even being that light itself? We dare to say we love that person, this piece of clothing, and dare to say we hate this person and that piece of clothing, which is to honor one part of that which bears the light when we all bear the light and are of and within it. HATE speaks to us and says that we ATE, that we have eaten, we have consumed, we have incorporated, even as we are incorporated in the WHOLE. Even HATE speaks to us the truth of the mysteries of our participation in the unanimous WHOLE, if only we would listen. Drink this wine which is my flesh, eat this bread which is my body. Eating, we are reminded that we ARE what we eat. And as all is in the whole, and the whole is in the all, thus we remind ourselves that we are partaking of the whole, it is in us, not apart from us, for ever and ever as long as we both shall live which is as long as love sticks around, and as it is whole there is no not ever to be known within it. If I were to speak of my love--which I can't, since I know not love if I have any particle of desire, which I confess sometimes I do, woe is me--then I would say of my love that my love is the wine and bread of my subsistence, the calories that thermally fuel the heat of the fermented spiritual incorporeal grape which, combining with corporeality, expresses the bliss of almost satiated desire and would be perfection if we could forget the desire it manifests by awakening us to the bliss that is the satiation of desire (which is part of the whole plan so we need not question whether or not this makes sense). The fermented grape is not desire when it rests apart from us (illusory apartness, yes) in the cask or flask, just as the spirit which is the heat of uniting which descends as the twittering, cooing dove is not wholly the dove until there is uniting, for by definition it is manifested only by uniting's heat and does not exist A PART. Wine is not drunkenness until it is ingested. Which is a mystery as well. The dove of the bliss of WHOLY spirit's intercourse with the corporeal is the mystery of the desire which is not before ingesting, and upon being ingested is manifested and thus fills us. Woe that it both answers desire and awakens it by supplying the answer for the unspoken question which was the equation for which there was no answer until the answer manifested as the equation's question was incomplete, and knew not what it lacked whereby it could find fulfillment. Had it known, it would have had fulfillment and need not have asked.

Yes, my love is like...a bee which is so one with its hive brethren that desire has no possibility of expression as there is no desiring when all is one, and therefore is my love a great puzzlement to me and strangely platonic and frustrating to the point of madness that it sublingually says to me "Here is wholeness" and yet is so unsatisfying as it is by nature without desire for me as it already has me (ah is bliss) but I don't know it and so cannot participate in that weird and wonderful orgy of love conquering all.

Yes, my love is like...a bee bearing the pollen-producing honey on its legs back to the hive where it builds honeycomb that surrounds me like a prison so that I can not reach my love who keeps flying back and forth, back and forth, from one flower to the next, faithless love of mine who belongs to all and not to me alone, damn it, not to me at all, though you infer you do and I'm supposed to believe you do because you say we are one, and say you just don't need me like "that" because we are all one, so why do you go visit that flower over there if we are all one and not come visit me except to display the pollen you've collected elsewhere? What is the basis for our relationship?

My love chastizes me. My love says, "We are one. You have our oneness already. I am one with you. We have no need of anything else as we are one. You don't need me, for I am you. I don't need you for you are me." My love chastens me, while whispering sweet nothings in my ear which are sublingual and ungraspable but for some faint buzz that wings up and down my spine.

Yes, my love is like a schoolteacher who slaps my hand with the golden rule.

Yes, my love is like...uhm...well...yes, exactly, my love is like. What need have we of stories of love when we have the letters of love, L-I-K-E.

My love is like
My love is like
My love is like
Really, my love is very much like

Yes, my love is like a broken record. And the world is his wheel. Except there is no me and there between the record and the turntable. They are one in the same. I own one record. One record is all that I need, as all records are one and all is one message.

If you enjoyed this selection from "The Last, Very Last of Rhumi," then you will love the "Last, Last, Very Last of Rhumi, Certainly," in which it is answered which record is owned. Place your orders now to reserve a copy.

Copyright © 1999 jk

Go to Rumi 2



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