Karima Vargas Bushnell's Blog, page 7
June 2, 2019
Halycon Sage Gets a Shock
When Preisczech stuck his head into Halycon Sage’s little writer’s lair, he was grinning all over his face, which was not like him. He held out a ragged collection of pages, smudged and dirty, as if from long travel. But the paper was violet, and it reeked of some ungodly perfume. There was a Cover (elaborately drawn), a Title Page, a Dedication Page, and an Afterward.
Sage took the thing in his hand. Of course, as founder of the Post-Modernist Minimalist Neo-Symbolist Pseudo-Realist School of Literature, he was not surprised to have imitators. One writer does not make a school, after all, and the branching of the authors into different genres was not surprising either. It was the nature and quality of these writings that appalled him. Sage cut to the chase, finding the new minimalist novel buried among the pretentious and superfluous pages.
_____
From the Heaving Bodice Romance Division of the Post-Modernist Minimalist Neo-Symbolist Pseudo-Realist School of Literature
Velveeta
by Deandra Hollendaise
Her hair was orange as flame, and no one could tell her what to do. Her rich uncle was as tight as her corset. The dark stranger across the way was interested only in his horses. Velveeta sighed. “When will I find the man who can make me melt?”
The End
Halycon Sage bu
ried his face in his hands.
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May 23, 2019
Dear Tabby: Advice for Inquirers of the Feline Persuasion – First Question
Dear Tabby,
I live in a three-cat household, and I’d like to speak of us objectively, not revealing which one is ME (OW). My question: Are cat beds a DRUG? If so, can they break up cat families, even though, in the moment, they are so soft and warm? So comfortable that . . . my friend, a small, adorable Gray Tabby who shall remain nameless can sleep in them all day even though I’m only two years old and should be up and playing?
The real problem is Bob . . . er, a large, elderly gentleman cat with lovely long fur and a sweet disposition. This Gentleman Cat has not been well, and the previously mentioned Tabby used to snuggle with him all the time, sometimes crammed together on the red-cloth-covered kitchen chair where we . . . they barely fit. Or on the bed. Or on the other bed. Is the gray cat neglecting him?? Will she live to regret this??? Tabby, please delete any names I may have let slip, because I want to preserve our privacy.
Puzzled
Dear Puzzled,
Put those cat beds AWAY! Then go and cuddle with your friend as much and as often as you can. He may not be here forever! Two further observations: First, I notice that you don’t mention the third cat. What part does he/she play in all this? Is she Orange? Is she from a Foreign Country? Is she really Beautiful and Interesting? Somehow, the scenario you describe sounds familiar. . . Remember, Only Cats Can Keep Cats Out of Cat Beds. Or something like that.
P.S. Oops. But no worries about privacy, Puzzled, few cats will see this as many are not on the internet, and only a few hundred thousand copies have been printed.
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May 11, 2019
Mother’s Day
Halycon Sage doesn’t know who his mother is for reasons you’ll find in the book.
But here’s my mother (side, not top). The writing on the back says, “Little Miss Goodie Two Shoes,” and you can see how adorable she was.
She grew up to be a piano player, photographer, painter of beautiful water colors, and author of two plays and a novel.
A sophisticated lady, she also had moments of great sweetness and a monster sense of humor.
Born on May 11, 1926, Mom was never crazy about Mothers’ Day because she said she had that weekend first!
If she were alive today she’d be 99 and would probably want you to read my forthcoming metafictional Sci-Fi novel, This book is not called SQUID!! Well, that’s what we’re calling it for now.
Real title: To be revealed this summer!
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May 8, 2019
More than Meets the Eye
“So tightly wrapped and profoundly structured that I’m sure I missed at least 14 significant clues as to the REAL meaning of the narrative!” – a Reader
In approaching the publication of the sequel SQUID!!, it has come to our attention that posting mostly funny stuff about these two books might lead to a wrong conclusion.
SQUID!! is Halycon Sage squared. Both books are written in layers, the humorous and the deadly serious, and they move through individual, social, ecological, and spiritual levels in no particular order. (There’s a related message for you in SQUID!! from The Cat Fatty Lumpkin, now residing in the Spirit World. We praise you for persisting in your perusal of this project.)
Happy reading!
P.S. The interim title of the new book is This Book is Not Called SQUID!! The real title is known to Halycon Sage and a few of his friends, including me, his humble biographer, and will be revealed in due time. The working title is SQUID!!, and there’s a terrible temptation to spell it with multiple Ds, as: SQUIDDD!!!!!
Notes:
1. The Life and Times of Halycon Sage: The Last Book Ever Published, is the first of the Sage Chronicles, the second of which is SQUID!! This may be what’s now called a duology, or — who knows? — it may grow into a trilogy.
2. In case anyone thinks it’s shameless to exploit the memory of a Dead Cat for self-promotion, I must respond that (a) I don’t believe this cat is “dead”, as nobody is, really, and (b) I’m not entirely sure Fatty, a.k.a. F. Atty. Lumpkin, Esq., is not actually participating in this effort. Some of you knew him: He was indeed a genius.
Discerning critic Basel Vasselschnauzer hereby apologizes to you for the appalling use of ‘Capital Letters to Signal Importance’ — see how annoying that is — in this posting and in these works as a whole. — B.V.
Shut up, Basel. — Halycon Sage
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May 6, 2019
A Trip for You through Time and Space: How No-Name Stupid Got His Name
There’s no horse anywhere smarter or cooler than No-Name Stupid! In Part One of The Chronicles* (The Life and Times of Halycon Sage), we read:
“Halycon Sage’s loyal mount was a horse with no name, because he loved the song of the same title. The only problem was that there was no way to effectively call this horse. So, by a natural process of linguistic development, the horse came to be known as No-Name Stupid, to which he responded readily.”
But do you know the song? If you do or if you don’t, time-travel with us now to the 1970s, just you and the Nevada desert, the golden sun above you and your brown horse moving gently, everything peaceful as the wide blue sky.
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May 2, 2019
Am Chuffed to Realize I’ve Written Eighteen Novels!
Well, strictly speaking, one is a collection of poetry. But first things first: What in the name of pants is “chuffed”? As is explained in This Book Is Not Called SQUID!!! (forthcoming)*, my imaginary author Halycon Sage was, “mistakenly raised as an East Coast intellectual in the heart of the Nevada desert,” and so was I. This included a bunch of British novels. Halycon Sage and I have a lot in common, since much of my book about him is from life–although we’re currently engaged in a friendly dispute as to who invented whom and which one of us is imaginary. So, “chuffed” is a Britishism. It means happily puffed up in a nice way, not a stuck up way, pleased with oneself and the universe because life is fun and things are going well. Chuffed.
And why exactly am I chuffed, you ask? Or maybe you don’t, I don’t know. I can’t read your mind, can I?
I’m chuffed because at the ripe old age of 50-plus-never-mind, having at last identified myself as a fiction writer, it would be nice if I had something more to show for it than one short novel and another one on the way.
But, because Halycon Sage is the inventor and major proponent of the Post-Modernist Minimalist Neo-Symbolist Pseudo-Realist School of Literature — in which the books range roughly from one sentence to one page — I do have something more: seventeen novels and a book of poetry. Unless, of course, he really is writing them, in which case he also wrote my first and forthcoming books and I am his imaginary character. And if I’m imaginary, I have nothing to worry about anyway.
So, there you go. I hope you are chuffed too, and that your life is going well! (And if it isn’t, I hereby send you love, condolences, and encouragement.) If you’d like to read these eighteen short literary works, they can be found in The Life and Times of Halycon Sage: The Last Book Ever Published, in the forthcoming SQUID!!! (short form), and possibly on this blog, if you keep watching very, very closely. And maybe say pretty please.
*Working title. The real title will be revealed at the proper time.
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December 4, 2018
A Sip from the Fatiha
Al-Fatiha – The Opening Door, the Opening Chapter, the Door to All That Is, to All Mysteries and Subtleties (With apologies for the necessary but breathless italics, exclamation points, parentheses, and multiple question marks. The whole multiverse is breathless, waiting for the Word of understanding.)
Bismillahirahmanirahim. By means of the Name of God, who is all-encompassing Mercy and specific, targeted Compassion. (Yes, for you too! And yes, for that horrible situation/ horribly suffering person or animal about which your mind says, “There’s compassion in this???” For that too.)
Alhamdulillah — Everything is praising God at every instant, like a great shout of joy. The grasses waving in the fields are semaphoring praise for Him, and “the birds of the air with wings outspread,” as the Qur’an says. (It also says, of the living creatures, “They are communities like yourselves.” How different is that from the cold instrumentality that destroys the living earth?) And the mind says, “How are the screams of agony praise? How are the actions of evil politicians praised?” Yes, those, too – it’s just a lot harder to see. It will be revealed, and sometimes little bits of it are revealed, and you say, “Oh, that’s how it works! How subtle (Ya Latif!), how perfect in its intricate interweaving of layers and levels, that there is infinite compassion in every micro-instant.” And the Qur’an says, “Far is He above what you attribute to him!” and the Prophet (peace be upon him) says, “We have not known You as You deserve to be known!”
We’re like people surrounded by fog, and suddenly the fog clears, and you see forests and oceans and waving palm and willow trees and creatures and beings and shells whose inner sides contain paintings – lavender and orange and silver – that mirror the colors of the ocean sky and the colors reflected onto the wet, smooth beach. And then it closes up again, and we say, “What was that???”
That’s enough for now. To be continued.
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March 12, 2018
Internet Passwords and the Judgment Day
The name of this blog is “The Spaces in Between”, and that’s the name of everything I do, really. The Sufi stuff, the Intercultural Relations masters degree, even the Irish music, which draws strength from what seems like another lifetime — it’s all about border crossings and the foggy, negotiable spaces between different settled realities, which can morph into anything.
From a recent post on a different blog, regarding my imaginary author (who thinks that I am his imaginary author):
“Silly things happen to Halycon Sage, they just do. Maybe he attracts them somehow, or perhaps it’s something to do with the way his mind works, simultaneously perceiving at least two disparate halves of reality at any given moment.”
Yup. Here’s the latest one, and it really is silly.
As a Muslim, I’m quite familiar with the concept of the Yaum ad-Din, the Day of Awakening and Evaluation, more familiarly known as the Day of Judgement. This is the moment outside time and space where we perceive the real meaning of our actions, guided by the One Who understands our most secret thoughts and motivations, “Nearer to [us] than we are to ourselves”. By Whom, “No soul will be wronged by so much as the point of a date stone.”
That’s one half. The other half is that, as a post-modern person, I’m naturally familiar with the Internet, that great blessing and curse of our times.
So, you know that online moment where you try to access something you haven’t used in a while, but which is vitally needed for some project, some compelling personal interest, some burning career need?
At the first hint of trouble, you wait, breathless in a timeless time, for acceptance or rejection. If you’re accepted, the gates swing wide, revealing images, sounds, colors, words and worlds. As Jesus said, “Friend, come up higher.” Or — paraphrased and slightly altered — ‘Come in and sup with me.’ The little black-on-white circle turns in a quick, friendly way, seeming to say, “Of course we know you! Don’t be ridiculous! All of this is yours!”
Then there’s the opposite experience: “Authentication required”, “Access denied”, “You are not authorized” . . . You are a stranger, an impostor who is trying fool us, and we do not know you. Though you’ve been here a thousand times, though you paid for your access, you are an impostor and a cheat; we reject you and we do not know you. Get out, get thee down into the outer darkness. There is nothing for you here.
Unlike the Lord of the Worlds, the internet does not understand, and will harm you by the point of a date stone, the point of a walrus’s tusk, or the point of a spiral galaxy. It’s a darn good thing the internet is not God!
There you are. I told you it was silly.
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November 30, 2017
“La Ilaha illah-Llah” – You Can Take it Two Ways
This central statement of Islam, the primary tenet which forms half the shahada, can be taken in two ways which are opposite and can lead to diametrically opposed behaviors. I’m writing here to defend one interpretation and cast doubt upon the other. Literally, the phrase means, “No gods but God,” though even that is tricky. It accords with the meaning, but there are no capital letters in Arabic. Also, you don’t use “is” as we do in English — to say, “The car is old,” you simply say, “The car old” — the “is” is implied. The phrase might best be rendered as, “(There are) no gods but God.” That’s the easy part.
If you’re old enough, you might remember a dog food commercial that sang, “My dog’s bigger than your dog!” and one way some people seem to take the sacred phrase is similar: “My god’s bigger than your god!” This attitude on behalf of any religion leads to arrogance, combativeness and possibly colonialism, and it’s a major cause of widespread contempt for religion. It gives rise to ridiculous images of Jesus, Allah, Buddha and Kali fighting it out, battling like comic book heros. The preferred god is only one of the set of gods – the biggest, toughest, smartest, most beautiful or scariest one, but like the others in kind if not in scale. “Tell me about this God you don’t believe in,” said Hazrat Inayat Khan. “I probably don’t believe in him either.”
The Qur’an affirms that God is utterly unique, yet to talk about God at all, we must make comparisons. Thus God is exquisite like the most beautiful lover, kind like the sweetest mother, wise like the most insightful teacher, and yet like none of them. “Allah warns you about the inconceivability of his Essence” (Qur. 3:28). So we’re told to concentrate on Divine Names, the Qualities, the Attributes.
C.S. Lewis wrote well in Perelandra that nothing is like God, yet everything exists only by being like God. That’s much closer to Islamic mysticism. “Nothing at all resembles Allah, yet Allah alone is the One Who is Seeing and Hearing” (Qur. 42:11). “Wherever you turn is the Face of God” (Qur. 2:115). Omnipresence means there is nowhere God is not, no moment of time, no glory and no atrocity. Allah is “closer than the vein of your neck,” our moment-by-moment companion in every thought and feeling, the consciousness and core of every bird and blade of grass.
This is the radical Divine Unity, Tauheed. Huuuuu . . .
Translations taken from “Three Days of Prayer” in Shaykh Nur al-Jerrahi’s Atom from the Sun of Knowledge.
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November 29, 2017
Love Remains: Response to Sufi Mosque Massacre in Egypt
Over three hundred Sufis dead in Egypt, killed while praying in their mosque or trying to escape.
I thought a while about how to respond, besides the same old, “This is not Islam, this is not what Islam teaches.” Suddenly I wrote — and it stayed in the large Facebook letters because there were so few words — “YOU CAN’T DESTROY THE LOVERS BY KILLING THEM.”
A dialogue ensued between myself and some inner critic. Me: “They’re Sufis like us!”
Critic: “Well, not like you exactly. You’re westerners, and not practicing Muslims.” Me: “Some of us are. And perhaps the heart is the same. That’s what matters.” Critic: “Easy for you to say. You haven’t had your relatives killed or your arm blown off. And what an outrageous statement to make! What proof do you have?” I realized then that I needed to respond without apology.
Yes, I have proof, and so do millions of others spanning all times and places. The proof is not apparent to everyone, but then neither are the truths of physics. It seems like complete nonsense to me that the desk I write on is made of tiny, whirling particles, but I acknowledge it because physicists have a special knowledge I don’t have.
In the same way, some have knowledge of God, Pattern, Meaning, higher and alternate worlds. That sudden and complete knowing is a gift of pure grace, sometimes given after long, hard work, sometimes after no work at all. It’s utterly convincing, hyper-real, and it opens a path that can be followed, leading deeper. And while it usually doesn’t transfer between individuals, sometimes the testimony of a real teacher is enough. Without these experiences, all belief would end with the first experience of real suffering, and it doesn’t.
So, I’ll say it again. YOU CAN’T DESTROY THE LOVERS BY KILLING THEM. May these horrors even unintentionally spread understanding of the Sufi Lovers. May attempts to destroy them be as when someone hacks down a field of dandelions. May one hundred new ones spring up for every one that falls.
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