Amusement from Insipid Places

When I was younger I would ask people the following question: If you could be immortal and all you had to do was chop off the head of the person you most love, would you do it?

Most people would look aghast look and scream: No!

I, however, would laugh at them and tell them that I would happily take off my beloved’s head in exchange for immortality. My reasoning would be that my beloved would love me so much that she’d want me to live forever and give myself to every generation after hers.

I stopped asking this question when I grew older. I realized that no one would love me that much.

I’m kidding. That’s not why.

I stopped asking this question because as each day I grew closer to death, I was less inclined to desire immortality.

This can only mean that while I fear death, I fear life more.

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When I say to the world that men and women are the same, I do not understand why everyone points to their private parts.

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Around the time that Muhammad was singing the praises of Allah, there was Muzahim al-Uqaili, singing lamentations to Allah. He wrote about love. Says the poet:

The earth outside
spun within
when they told me
she had married him.

Now I know it’s over,
but Allah,
why did you let her go?

To pity what is left of me?
and emphasize you still control?

Be merciful to her,
through him.

He must have been poor indeed
to need her more than I.

This poem reminds me of a book I once read about old Arab proverbs. One of the proverbs spoke about losing your beloved to another. The jilted lover would say something to the effect of: at the least, I hope I have lost you to someone better than me. Al-Uqaili expresses that idea in his last stanza.

Isn’t that such a generous form of jealousy? We should be jealous like that today.

Magnanimously.

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Some say that we create art in order to provide ourselves a “what if.” To explore what might have happened if we only had the courage to talk to that woman, make that particular decision, or touch that certain person.

On the other hand there are those who say that art is when we are able to assign a greater beauty to that which, though we admire, we would have found disappointing had we really interacted with. They say that a woman, no matter how beautiful, never seems to converse with the eloquence that we assign to her from a distance.

If these – cowardice and arrogance – are the only two bases of art, then I am saddened.

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Muslims are funny people. All of my life I have heard them complain about how they dislike it when ‘I am treated like the other.’ However, when you ask them why they are Muslim, they always point out that it’s ‘because Islam is different.’

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I would not be a particularly effective political leader, as I have a tendency to fall in love with my enemies. I do this because our love is forbidden and that only makes me desire it more. This quality of mine is especially troublesome when it comes to people who hurt me, because I inevitably end up encouraging them to hurt me more, since I consider being hurt by them an opportunity for me to give them more of my love.

People call this sadomasochism but those people are my enemies (whom I also love), because loving my enemies makes me happy, and if I am happy, then it cannot be sadomasochism, but pleasure.