Jalaloddin Rumi

Now, my first review is going to be of something that many of you are unlikely to care about, but it’s really impressed me. There hasn’t been a lot in my World Lit class that’s just stuck out to me, but right now, we’re studying Islamic literature, and we’ve been looking at the poetry of Jalaloddin Rumi. And he’s pretty amazing. He writes these poems, and they’re all pretty short (some only a few lines), and all tend to deal with the Sufi ideals, like separating yourself from the material world and being unified in nature and whatnot. Very sort of transcendental stuff. And the language is very simple, you know? Not extremely flowery, and easy to read. They’re pretty much first draft poems too, because he just recited them, and others wrote them down, and he rarely changed any lines once he read them. These amazing, beautiful poems were first tries. Brilliant.
And what’s really remarkable is that, although the literature is Islamic, it can be applied to our God, and to other religions. Several times, he refers to God as “Friend,” and sometimes God refers to the human as “Friend,” which I really like—viewing God as our best, most important friend. It has themes of God being our support, and how we have to give up our lives to God in order to really live, and letting God use you for His will. It’s pretty powerful stuff. I have every intention of reading more of it than is in my Lit book.

Here are a few of his poems that I particularly liked:


Friend, our closeness is this:
Anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.

How is it with this love,
I see your world and not you?




Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.




Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.





A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot
where it’s being boiled.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

The cook knocks it down with the ladle.

“Don’t you try to jump out.
You think I’m torturing you,
I’m giving you flavor,
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.

Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this.”

Grace first. Sexual pleasure,
then a boiling new life begins,
and the Friend has something good to eat.



I don’t know if you’ll like these as much as I do, but I think you should read them a couple of times and mull them over for awhile. If you’re interested in more of his poetry, I just found a lot of it at http://www.armory.com/~thrace/sufi/poems.html

And I Know This Is the Book I Write

I had to sign up for a blog/Google account in order to do this project for my Mass Comm class. I don't really need to use it, since I already have a LiveJournal, 2 Xangas, a personal journal, a MySpace, and an old, defunct Blogspot, but I couldn't very well just pass it up. I'm a blogger by nature. I love to blog.
So what could I possibly do with this one? Not another journal-type thing: if I have something worth sharing to write, then in goes in the LJ, and if I don't want to share it, that's what I have my personal journal for. So what in the world will be done with this one?
Well, I'll tell you.

If you know me at all, then you probably know that stories are a very integral part of my life. I see everyone as a character. Sometimes, I'll formulate sentences to describe them in my head, like I'm mentally writing the Story of My Life. I share stories about everyone I know with everyone else I know because I want them to know the same characters I do.
I see every event in my life as a plot point.
Every time I see a new film or read a new book, if it impresses me even a little bit, then I absorb its characters and their stories so that they become a part of my own. So I'm not just Grace McClellan. I'm Grace McClellan, and I'm a bit of Jo March and Elizabeth Bennet and Jack Sparrow and Peter Pan and Bridget Jones and Pam Beesly and Ferris Bueller and Sabrina Fairchild and Jiminy Glick and Edward Bloom and Lorelai Gilmore and Hermione Granger...does that make any sense? Every time I meet new characters and learn their stories, it helps to make me just a little more complete. That sounds fruity, doesn't it? I can live with that.
It's the same thing with music, really. Because most songs have a story, and if they don't, then you can usually create one, because hearing is one of the senses that is best at evoking memories. So even if you don't have a story for a song when you first hear it, you may hear it ten years later, and one will pop into your head because of what was happening in your life when you first heard it. There's a story in everything, I'm telling you.

So, what I'm saying, and what this has all been leading up to is that I am going to use this Blog as a film/literature/television/music recommendation site. I want you all to be inspired to read and see the things I do, to have these experiences, and know these characters. I wouldn't write these things out for me--I've experienced them; it would be pointless. I just really hope that one of you will read a recommendation and say, "Hey, that sounds kind of amazing, maybe I'll have a go at it." And if one person reads one book or sees one movie and really falls in love with it, then that would just make my life. And I would be proud of myself, and proud of the person, and all would be well with the world.
So that's what this is. My mediocre attempt at making the world a better place by imposing my views on film and literature upon others. : )
I'll probably start posting tomorrow or the next day, so keep a weather eye.

(P.S. Just so we all know, I did, in fact, steal this reviewing idea from one Mr. Christopher Fox, and his Fox Books Xanga site. Sorry, pal.)

And, in case you were wondering, the title of this blog comes from the closing lines of "Stranger Than Fiction," a fantastic film about which I will probably write at some point.
"As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true."