New Pages

The eagle-eyed among the handful of readers of my blog will notice the addition of two more pages down the left hand side; My Poetry, & My Fiction (It's all me me me down that left hand side - maybe I'll remove all the "My" to make me sound less egoistic. Maybe). I went through all my posts of the past years in order to create anthologies of sorts, where all the poetry and fiction I have written may now be accessible on one page, sorted in reverse chronological order.

It was quite a trip down memory lane to read all that I've written over the past few years, some of which was enjoyable, and some of which was less so. It was tempting to leave out stuff that may have been too raw, as I first started to write poetry and fiction, or where my technique was nowhere near as refined it is now, or where perhaps my stories and poetry reveal more of myself than I would like to be revealed. Nevertheless, they're all here - all the poems and fictions I've ever written.

Reflections on looking back:

• Without sounding boastful, I am really, really happy (proud even?) of some of the stuff I've written in the past. Alhamdulillah, I have a way with words, and it shows, and I am grateful also to have something to show for it. It was in the idea of leaving an asterisk next to the poems and fictions that I particularly liked that made me realise exactly how many pieces I like. Of course, me being the writer, I fully admit that I may have a bias towards my own work.
• Leading on from the first point, you (referring to anyone here, nobody specific) will probably end up liking what I write (again, not trying to be boastful). I'm not sure how I feel about that - as a writer I might be pretty good, but I am all too aware of my flaws as a person.
• People come and go; there have been a lot of people in the past couple of years who have found my blog, visited regularly for a few months/years, left a comment or two along the way, and then disappeared (I've left comments as they are, and not deleted any, so a perusal of the comments left on my posts will illustrate my point). That's life I guess. I can only expect that in a few years time the current handful of regular visitors and comment-leavers on my blog will no longer or rarely visit, and a new crop will have taken their place. Either that or nobody will read my blog. I am ok with either scenario; life is life, and whilst I do like it when people read and comment on my blog, I fully accept that said people have plenty of better things to do than read the random musings of an internet stranger.
• I've written a _lot_ of poetry. A very large amount over the years. Alhamdulillah. I daren't yet call myself a poet, but I would never have believed that I could have written so much over the past coupe of years. Again, Alhamdulillah. 
• My output over the past couple of years has markedly dropped. That's fine by me;  I've been extremely busy over the past year. Maybe I'll write more fiction & poetry over the next few years, maybe I won't. The ideas and fragments are still there, but now it's all about finding the time to write. I definitely do want to write more. I've revived my blog (somewhat) over the past month and a bit, so I have been able to find a little extra time, and this portents well for the future, inshaAllah.
• I think that's it. This final bullet point is extraneous. I just wanted to have 6 bullet points.

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With warm duas. This is likely my last post for 2013, unless I come up with something I absolutely _have_ to write.

Arbaeen 1435

Today feels so empty.

I will attend the programme at my local masjid later on, and with my community here in England commemorate the 40th day after the great sacrifice of Karbala.

I guess that's all I can do from where I am right now.

This time last year I was in Karbala, and as the masaib (lamentative recital) of the day was taking place, I felt a heartbreaking grief unlike any I had ever felt before. Blessed was I to have been a visitor of my master, a lone guest among millions of others, with swathes of people as far as the eye can see who had come to pay their respects.

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I miss it. I miss him. I miss my Imam (as). As I paid my farewell visitation to him later that night, I promised I would make him proud of me, the same promise I made with wet eyes to his father a few days earlier on my final visitation to his shrine in Najaf.

A lovely promise to make, full of optimism and hope in that blessed environment, and a promise which I have repeatedly broken since, sometimes with shame, and sometimes without. It may be that this is why I wasn't called back this year. It's possible that there are other reasons, but in my heart I feel this to be the reason why.

InshaAllah I may be allowed the honour of visitation during the time of Arbaeen next year (I'm not picky though - I'll gladly accept an invite to visit at any other time as well). May those among my readers who also wish to visit be granted that visitation too, inshaAllah.

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The days of 'Aza (mourning) are drawing to a close, and this particular year's period has been one of stagnation, or maybe even regression, especially when I compare it to the periods of years gone by, where I managed to implement so many changes during the period, and hang on to them for a little while after the period ended.

And I have nobody but myself to blame.

I can take solace in what I posted for the beginning of the period, perhaps. That it will not be easy, that there are ups and downs, etc. but deep down I know that I can have done better. I should have done better.

It hurts to look back at the past period and see exactly how I could have done a little better. Even a little better.

I'm making a new resolution to start from today to be that little bit better. Even as I typed that I laughed a little at myself and wondered if I was just writing empty words. Then I looked back at the earlier sentence and asked myself... "well, sure it hurts, but does it hurt enough??"

Will I become better? Or am I really just writing empty words?

I honestly don't know.

Time will tell.

Please keep me in your prayers.

5 Things I Need to Rediscover

5 things I have forgotten: the meanings of hunger, hard work, discipline, joy and silence. Even then, did I ever understand their meaning?
— I (@th_mnmlst) November 25, 2013

Hunger

When I mentioned hunger I meant it in the obvious sense; physical hunger. On the rare occasions that I skip breakfast, and also on the day of Ashura where some Shias observe the recommended act of abstasining from food or drink until 'Asr time, I noticed that I don't feel hungry at all. If I were to fast in these short days I would not feel very much hunger until the end...something has been lost. If it is hard for me to be hungry, it will be hard for me to empathise with those who have no food, and furthermore, if this carries on till next Shahr Ramadhan, then any fasting I do will lose their spiritual effect on me. A substantial corpus of Hadith mention both the benefits of fasting/hunger and the dangers of overeating. I need to rediscover physical hunger.

As I meditated upon the words I would choose in writing the above part, I became aware of a second kind of hunger, which it turns out, also applies to me. It's called hunger, but other words such as want and desire may also be used, in their positive senses, but hunger seems to me to be the best one. It's do to with me wanting to change my life for the better. How badly do I want to be successful in both this life and the next? How badly do I want to be the architect of my life, and shape it the way I would want it to be (God willing*)? Do I really hunger for such? I would venture to say that, if one was to study the way I've been living my life for the past few months/years, they would say that maybe I want such things, but I don't want it enough to truly put such effort in. Taking the above to its logical conclusion: without any real hunger - to improve and be in control of my life; to be successful in this world and the next; to do any work of meaning and value - these will only be pipe dreams.

Hard Work

I do not shy away from hard work. Ok, well maybe sometimes I do. I don't know how best to word this. I intellectually know that nothing of substance is ever achieved without a tremendous amount of hard work, but it seems to me that I've been incredibly wasteful and procrastinative** over the past couple of months. I could probably count on my fingers the number of days I've been genuinely happy with my day's output of work before I retired for the night. I think it's down to multiple reasons; not having focus by not having a clearly defined agenda for the day; looking at my work as an overwhelming body rather than something that can be broken off into discrete, manageable chunks that can be dealt with one at a time, and maybe other reasons I could probably come up with as justifications if I was really feeling sorry for myself. Regardless - I know it's possible for me to have a genuinely productive and hard-work-filled day, and this is my target for the next few weeks. Just achieve one day of solid hard work without any compromise. Then we can go from there.

Discipline

Discipline. More accurately, self-discipline. I've become way more impulsive recently. Or was I always impulsive, and now my flaws are revealed to me? Regardless, I am not happy with this specific element of my life in particular, especially on occasions when I decide to chill with friends into the late hours of the night, knowing full well that I really have too much to be getting on. And it happens way too often. I know, as with hard work, that discipline leads to success. That decisions are rarely easy, that sometimes you have to say no to the things you want in order to get greater benefit in the future. I know that I'm settling for less than what I should be. Yet I wilfully choose to ignore it. I guess deep down I don't fear the consequences enough, yet I know I should.

Joy

Sometimes I feel that I swapped a life of drudgery in Norfolk, for a different life of drudgery here. I don't feel that all the time, but it's a naggy*** feeling that surfaces enough times to sap my energy and make me want to retreat to the simpler pleasures. What happened to the unbridled curiosity that I used to have, that would at times force me to devour some pretty arcane books? Come to that - when was the last time I lost myself in a good book?**** When was the last time I looked at a glorious sunset, or found myself entranced by a sunrise over a beautiful body of water? The good thing here is that joy comes from gratefulness, and it shouldn't be hard to be grateful and give thanks for all the blessings that are in my life, if only I would stop being mopey and appreciate them.

Silence

Imam al-Sadiq (as): [paraphrasing]

Silence is the adornment of the wise, and a protection for the foolish.

(This is the only one that gets it's own hadith)

I have changed from someone who rarely used to talk, to someone who now talks too much. I recall a time when I was known "The Quiet One". It may have been completely by accident - I stumbled across the benefits of being silent through being very, very shy in my teens, rather than deliberately deciding that I wanted to be a quiet person. Now that I have grown up (somewhat) and also that I feel more confident, and can hold my own (and sometimes more) in conversation, I don't feel shy as much as I used to. And with that my silence has gone. Or that's my line of reasoning anyway. But if that's true, I was never really silent. And if _that's_ true, then maybe I need to discover _and_ rediscover silence.

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This post inspired by a random "deep tweet", camouflaged alongside all the extraneous fluff that appears on my timeline. May possibly be a new direction, where I tweet my thoughts concisely, and expand on them in long-form blogposts later.

* As much as I would want to be in control of my life, I obviously understand that God is always in control, and so the control I seek here is (obviously) not independence from God's control, but that with His permission I am able to pursue and shape the life that I desire. It's all down to intention, I guess.

** Yes, it's not a real word, but using general rules of English grammar and syntax, I have constructed it. So there.

*** Constructed word #2, for those keeping count

**** And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini, July 2013. But that's not the point.

Muharram 1435

Well, hello.

It's been a year since I posted, and life has had it's ups and downs and challenges. C'est la vie.

The reason that I refrained from posting was only one; I wanted to write a post describing my visit to Iraq during Arbaeen, and I don't know why I decided that until I had done that, I would not write anything else. So even when ideas came to me - for poetry, for fictions, or even essay-length musings on whatever topics I felt like writing about, I gently put them to one side and told myself I would only write them after this post was done.

That such a post doesn't exist yet means I failed to do just that, though I still work on it here and there. Part of the delay is in the inadequacy of my words, and in knowing that I have to write at least 7-8 thousand words to describe everything. However, I can't not write about Muharram, so this one post has to be written.

I am both better than I was this time last year, and, paradoxically, worse as well. I hope my handful of readers are doing well.

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Muharram is upon us again, and last year I gratefully seized upon the opportunity to commemorate it as part of two communities. This year, I have to choose just one, as both centres are running their programmes at roughly the same time. This dismays me, but Alhamdulillah for even the opportunity to be part of just one.

One of the crucial things we must remember (and I tell this to myself first) when commemorating the supreme sacrifice of Imam al-Husayn (as) is to be cognisant of his station, of his rights upon us. Imam al-Husayn (as) was martyred, yes. Imam al-Husayn (as) was martyred in the most horrible way that any human being will be, again yes. And we should shed tears over this, because in these tears lie our salvation.

But add to this also.

Imam al-Husayn (as) was martyred despite his station. And what is his station? One of the 5 of Ahlul Kisa, one of the 5 of the event of Mubahila, one of the Leaders of the Youths of Paradise, the Divinely appointed link between heaven and earth of his time....he was no ordinary man.

It is our duty to obey the Imam of our time, yet Imam al-Husayn (as) was killed by the people who should have been following him.

These establish  fact that the tragedy of Karbala was no ordinary tragedy, and that it's effects are seen today, both in the commemoration of millions, and in the fear of the enemies of Islam who try and stop the Azadari of Imam al-Husayn (as) attest to this.

So, go forth and commemorate Imam al-Husayn's (as) tragedy. Do whatever you can to spread awareness of this event, however little it may be.

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Last year, I mentioned a metaphor from Lubb al Lubab (Kernel of the Kernel). One of the few items of progress I've made in this year is in actually finishing this book (only a couple of days ago, actually), and having finished it, I definitely recommend it.

Mentioning the (paraphrased) metaphor again:

Imagine a muddy/dirty glass of water. If it is in a calm place, not disturbed at all, eventually the dirt and stuff will begin to settle down. One may even be able to see through it. The very top layers of the water may even be regarded as clean. But if a little disturbance were to happen, then all the dirt will rise from the bottom, and the water will again show itself to be dirty. For the water to be completely pure, the gunk and junk needs to be extracted or filtered out.

This is us. I accept it. The path to perfection is not linear with a slow, gentle gradient. It is ups and downs, challenges and strife, and in these mixtures of tests and blessings is our true nature revealed to us. If we accept this without any excuses/justifications, then we know where we are, and how to make progress from there.

Consider though, the example of Imam al-Husayn (as). Whatever tests he was placed under, he did not yield, remaining upright and firm, and always seeking the pleasure of Allah. This, if you will, is the end goal, and though we may fall short of it, this is what we should seek to mould our characters into.

Ya Hussain (as)

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My apologies if this is a bit disjointed and rambly. inshaAllah the next posts will make up for them, if ever I get round to writing them.