Dark Night of the Soul

Dark night of the soul

It’s just part of the process

Soon to be made whole

Dark night of the soul

Hide away when you transform

Change is part of hope

Dark night of the soul

Fix both your eyes on the goal

Understand your role

Dark night of the soul

From pure solitude comes strength

Within and without

Dark night of the Soul

Stand up and walk. Move Forward

To the unknown goal

Dark night of the soul

For every single test

Run towards your Lord

----------------------

So it's been a while since I wrote any poetry, but, composing this was probably not the best way to get back into it. The problem relates to the form vs. essence debate that rages on in this and other contexts since as long as the arts have existed.

"Dark Night of the Soul" is not a phrase of my creation; and it seems to me that the colloquial meaning of this is to refer to phases when human beings feel alone and despondent, usually in the face of some obstacle or test. Consequently they retreat inwards to their shell, work through what needs to be done, and then come back out stronger, ready to deal with what needs to be dealt with. We are human, we are weak, we need to sometimes get away from things before we can face them. Very few people have a limitless reserve of strength.

Where I limited myself was in decided that I would need a minimum of 6 Haiku to form the poem, and each time the first line would be the same, thereby restricting the amount of play I had with the other syllables. Less of a requirement was to have the third line rhyme, and to the effect that I wanted to follow this, I was further restricted. A positive thing for me was being able to tweet each Haiku as i formed it.

With the space that I had left, I had to then convey the following:

• It's a normal process
• It's required if you want to grow as a human being towards completion/perfection
• Change is sometimes good
• Change often happens alone in the dark of night.
• That it happens in solitude I think is a good thing
• It may be scary, but this is only if you forget your purpose in life.
• The need for regular progression, no matter how small.
• The need for humans to remember to turn towards their Lord.

I think I did OK, but I could have done better. Maybe I would have needed a few more Haiku to fully flesh it out. Who knows?

It is good to be writing poetry again.

The Future of this Blog

A long time ago, nearly approaching 8 years (has it really been that long!?), I started this blog.

I did not know what it was going to be about, and truth be told, if you look at the early posts*, you will see a little awkwardness, and a little uncertainty, as I found my voice slowly. At the time, all my online friends had blogs and it was a way of furthering our conversations without necessarily being present, and so an element of peer pressure was maybe instrumental in forming the decision to make the blog.

It grew on me soon, as I discovered that I loved writing poetry in 2009, and then fictions soon followed. Eventually I would write longform opinion pieces, and then I really grew into it. The best thing, for me, is that I am blessed in not needing to post-edit much. Everything comes to me near-enough fully-formed as I start writing. I am very grateful for this. I cannot imagine what it must be like for people who have to struggle line by line to create a medium-to-long sized piece.

Without realising it, I was aiming for a particular aesthetic with my blog; something akin to the magazine The New Yorker**. To explain; I want this blog to be a space for experimentation with and creative expression through fiction and poetry, definitely. I love these. But tying it all together would be the “normal” posts; reflections, musings, reviews, oddments, travel and other journals, etc. And these, well, they have to be delivered to my loyal handful of readers with wit, humour, exuberance, and the ability to captivate - which is what I mean by The New Yorker style. Ideally I imagine that said readership would see that I have a new post and make a cup of whatever warm beverage they like and sit down to read. The quality ideally would even be more than that; I want it to be such that it is something readers would be willing to pay for***.

It’s pretty obvious that I have not achieved in this regard. For starters, I have fallen well below my goal of once a week, and now even once a month seems like it may be too much to achieve. When I have managed to write, it has been writing for the sake of writing; I am not sure that I myself would be willing to pay to read what I have penned. The goal of writing, first once a week, then once a month, I think created an inward pressure to just write, and see what happens, and just publish, and so the goal became quantity, not quality.

There is are a few other factors at play. My life has become very busy recently, and I love it. I am hitting a sizeable number of my goals for the year so far (Alhamdulillah). As such, whilst the choice is not framed exactly as explicitly, if I have to choose between writing here, and getting on with the other things that I am doing, which I also enjoy (both solitary and group activities), then, more often than not, the other thing happens.

The other factor is social media. I had left Facebook in 2009, and I was glad to have done. I signed up for Twitter and Instagram in 2011, and, whilst correlation does not imply causation, at the time of writing I have 17,418 tweets (to be fair, probably well over half are retweets) and 1,313 posts on Instagram. Conversely, since 2012, I have written 54 posts in 4.5 years, averaging 12 a year exactly.

What I think has happened is that the low level fluff, and occasional thought which may have formed into a blog post if I let the idea germinate for a while, have all found expression on those other platforms. If that’s the case, then, well this is to be a good thing, because then only the high quality stuff makes it’s way here (in theory anyway). I rejoined Facebook in 2013 because my work required it, and when I left that job in 2015, I kept the Facebook. However, in contrast to the other two, it’s definitely not a time-sink for me because I don’t even consider it as important and rarely spend more than a few minutes a day on it.

So, what next?

I am going to continue to write, but the self-imposed goal to publish will go. Meaning that I will continue to try and find the time to write, but, this is divorced from needing to publish every month or every week or any other arbitrary deadline. Once I am happy to post something, I will, and in the meantime, if inspiration and environment combine to allow me to knock out a piece in 30-45 minutes, then I will do that too.

Let’s see how that goes.

Also…

At work, I have started to use dictation software. It’s really, clever. I speak, and the words form on the screen, and it learns to adapt itself to my voice and learn the modularities of my speech, so it gets more accurate over time. I can have a relaxed posture in front of the screen, and talk for 20-30 minutes, and have a letter ready without having to type much. Obviously it’s not 100% perfect, so I do end up having to use the keyboard to correct the text, but overall it’s actually quicker, more relaxing, and more efficient than my typing (and my typing on a good day is 50-60 wpm).

The Apple devices I use all have dictation built in, and use the same software company for voice-to-speech analysis. I am tempted to try and do the same for blog posts, but so far I have had mixed results. I started to dictate this post, but in the end, using a keyboard was less headache for me. Minor though; having teething pains with respect to dictation software is SUCH a #FirstWorldProblem that it makes me chuckle. I will be trying this again, and maybe soon I will be dictating my posts. Who knows?

As ever, I have at least 10+ topics listed that I want to write about, but, now that I have the position clear in my head, it may be a while before I write, and even longer before I post them.

Stay tuned, and we see where this goes.

With duas

I

Interact with me on Twitter @th_mnmlst and on Instagram @sublimated.

———————————

Yes, the key to a good joke is commitment.

———————————

* I have never un-posted anything. What is posted remains so, warts and all, but maybe this is somewhat counteracted by the fact that only a handful of people actually read/follow my blog.

** At the time, I was not aware of the existence of the New Yorker.

*** Of course, I will not charge to read. Heavens no!