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All work, and no time off, makes Sol an uninspired blogger.

*tap, tap, tap*

Seven days of shooting without a day off, and six more to go. An inbox full of unanswered emails and a conscience brimming with guilt over an uneventful and outdated blog. I finally find a few minutes to type…and all I can do is stare at the screen and *tap, tap, tap* my pencil on the desk.

*tap, tap, tap*

Anyone out there believe in love?

I may have little to say today, but let me introduce you to an inspiring piece by Kahlil Gibran that shot an arrow straight through my heart…

“…He felt an ardent, powerful love encompass his heart and take control of his breathing, the love that divulges the secrets of the soul to the soul and by its poetics distinguishes true intellect from the realm of measurement and quantity. We hear that love speaking when the tongue of life falls silent, and see it as towering pillars of light when gloom envelops all things. That love, that god, descended at that hour upon the soul of Ali and awakened in him emotions both bitter and sweet, just as the sun causes flowers to blossom next to thorns.

What is this love, and from where has it come? What does it want of Ali, distracted from the world by his sheep and his flute? Is it a seed cast by his bedouin virtues amoung the broken pieces of his heart without the knowledge of his senses? Or is it a ray of light that the mist had concealed, which has now become manifest, illuminating the recesses of his soul? Is it a dream striving in the tranquillity of the night to toy with his feelings, or is it a reality existing from all eternity, which will remain until the end of time?

Ali closed his tear-filled eyes and stretched out his hands like a supplicant seeking compassion. His spirit quaked within him incessantly, unleashing staccato sighs composed partly of abject suffering and partly ardent longing. In a voice indistinguishable from a sigh, save in the faint resonance of the words, he said: ‘Who are you who are close to my heart, remote from my gaze, who separates me from myself and binds my present to a distant and forgotten past? Are you a vision, a houri come from the world of eternity to demonstrate to me the vanity of life and the frailty of human beings? Or the spirit of the queen of genies ascending from crevasses in the earth to dispossess me of my reason and make a fool of me amoung the youths of my tribe? Who are you, what is this captivation that grips my heart, which kills and then revives? What are these sensations that fill my bosom with light and fire? Who am I, and what is this new essence that I now call “I,” though it be strange to me? Has the elixir of life been mixed with particles of ether, transforming me into an angel who sees and hears recondite mysteries? Or is this the wine of delusion on which I have become drunk, that has blinded me to the reality of intelligible things?

He grew silent for a moment, then his feelings grew and his spirit rose, and he said: ‘You are the one whom the soul makes evident and to whom it draws near, who the night disguises and sends far away. Beautiful spirit, who hovers in the heavens of my reveries, you have awakened within me feelings that lay dormant like flower bulbs buried beneath layers of snow. You passed by like a breeze bearing the scent of fields, and you brushed against my senses, which trembled like the twigs of a tree. Permit me to see you, if you are clothed in matter. Or pass by in my sleep, once it closes my eyes, that I might see you in a vision, if you are liberated from mortal clay. Let me feel your touch and listen to your voice. Rend this curtain that cloaks me in my entirety. Destroy this structure that veils my divinity, and grant me wings that I might soar beyond you to the mead of the heavenly host, if you be of its denizens. Or caress my eyes with enchantment and I will follow you to the hiding place of the genies, if you are on of their brides. Place your invisible hand upon my heart and possess me, if I am worthy of being your devotee.’

Ali whispered into the ears of the darkness his words, which followed the lilting melody echoing deep in his breast. Between his eyes and his surroundings, phantoms of the night proliferated like vapors given off by his hot tears, and on the walls of the temples appeared magical forms in all the colors of the rainbow. In this manner an hour passed, as he rejoiced in his tears, delighting in his anguish, listening to the beating of his heart, gazing at what lay behind existing things as though the outlines of this life were slowly fading before his eyes, replaced by a dream wondrous in its charms, terrifying in its apprehensions. Like a prophet contemplating the stars in the heavens in expectation of being struck by a revelation, he awaited the arrival of each minute, his quick sighs interrupting his gentle breathing. His soul would leave him and swim about him, then return, as though it were searching among those ruins for a lost loved one.”

— “The Ash of Centuries and the Immortal Flame”, Kahlil Gibran