The previous mid-morning Sunday I managed to find a relaxing version of church in my car on my way to sell people Tulsa memorabilia. NPR was in the midst of a five part special exploring the tension between faith and science, which was followed by a segment on Sufiism, the 'mystical' aspect of the Islamic faith. The voice of Coleman Barks, the most prevalent translator to the Western Word of Rumi's poetry, began to stream through my speakers, and I was captivated. His voice was layered and deep, his words thoughtful yet effortless, and wise. His laugh was childlike, amidst all the weightiness that existed throughout the rest of his speak, and he brought Rumi alive to me in a way that I hadn't been able to do with just myself and a book.
It was my task, this past Spring, to choose a poem from his writings to be read at the wedding of a dear friend. I pilfered through pages of multiple collections; The time spent on my own accord in the midst of Rumi's work was insignificant and unmemorable. The same words, read to me, explored and explained verbally with interest added from the writer's story? I haven't been able to get that version of Rumi out of my head.
Searching is a theme throughout his writing, kind of like life. I understand that searching isn't a novelty, or out of the ordinary, but it feels as if I'm being slapped in the face by it more often than not. I was on my way to one of a few jobs I am piddling at nowadays, leaving my parents house on my way to a City I've left more than once to work in a place where I am the new girl and the old girl in a season that feels akin to the few months right after a person graduates from college and everyone they come in contact with asks them what they're going to do next. I didn't have an answer then and I don't have one now, and so when Coleman began to read about the fish, flapping about and looking endlessly for the water even though the fish was in the midst of the water, and the water was inside the fish, my ears heard nothing but his words. The sound of my tires on and the clump of the uneven highway and the cars merging near me and the shake of the make-do plastic holding my stereo sort of in place went silent, and I began to get what there is to get about Rumi.
Last night I enveloped myself in the company of others, and enjoyed myself enough to the point that driving home wouldn't have been wise, so I slept in the guest room of the dear friend who married in the Spring with the ceremony where Rumi was read. I slept on the memory foam mattress topped with a down comforter in the guest room where the walls are painted orange, and I felt at home because of the orange walls, and because that's the way friends that are true inevitably make me feel. I left her house before eight, locked the door behind me, and retrieved my bicycle out of her truck.
The rising sun greeted me and kept me company on my way into down town. All aspects of my morning...My jankety old bicycle struggling up hills, my cold exposed dry winter hands gripping the handle bars, the excessively beautiful sun rise enveloping me like the water around the fish, and inside of the fish...Every damn bit of my morning made me feel anything but displaced, and for the duration of my ride, searching ceased.
