#urlalltflyter

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In my view, if you want to understand salat it is of central importance that you understand that the whole universe is always praying.

Do you not realize [Prophet] that everything in the heavens & earth submits to God: the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, & the animals?

Surat al-Hajj ayat 18, (transl. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem)

Islam, submission to God, is the natural state of the creation. Humans & jinn are unique in being the only part of creation endowed with free will & capable of disobedience: we are not always engaged in prayer & remembrance, but the rest of the world is. This means that not only are we alienated from God, we are also alienated from the rest of creation, from the ceaseless prayer which reverberates through the universe.

Salat is the manner in which we attune ourselves to the melody of the worshiping world & momentarily return to our natural state of submission. I think salat in its movement has a rhythmical quality involving the whole body. It is our gate into the universal dance and song of worship.

In salah, we are first & foremost praising & pleasing God. But the manner in which we do that is by uniting ourselves to the whole creation. I believe this is why prayer times change with the seasons; I believe this is why the most intimate & sacred position, sujud, is the one which makes us closest to the earth; & I believe this is why the tradition of the Prophet (s) urges us to prostrate on clay or another natural material. Salat is an acknowledgement of the supremacy of God, & in being that it is also an acknowledgement of the unity of all creation, an acknowledgement that we too are clay (15:26), dust (22:5), & water (24:45).

Sujud is making yourself low so that you may come to reflect the Most High. Through salah, we mend our alienation from the world, & in rejoining the rest of the worshiping world we are connected to God & transformed by Him. It is a means by which we can be made whole.

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How do people live, honestly? I used to be able to, maybe it's just that we were two so I didn't need to work full-time. Everybody is working too much at jobs that stress them out and drain the life out of them and studying isn't much better is my impression. Every career is evil. Meanwhile everything gets worse and rich people are burning up the whole world and selling weapons to aid a genocide. How the fuck do we keep living like this? Is it me who is insane?

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They hate me for my ugly swag and abstract effeminate sex appeal. but i do remain funny with it

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I get why sex is the subject of so much poetry. It's an important part of many people's lives, obviously, and humanity wouldn't exist without it. But I also think it's just symbolically versatile. Stating the obvious once again, it's so very intimately tied to both love and violence, and as you know love and violence are themselves intimately tied to (or is?) everything. So it's sort of innately poetic, ripe for exploring the human condition in the mode of analogy.

But it's also extremely challenging to write good sexual poetry. For the same reasons, but also for others.

It's intimate, yes. By necessity, it exposes the author to the reader, and that nakedness is scary I think even to the most seasoned poet. When you read a poem of that kind you are sharing a sort of time-delayed erotic event with the author, that's quite tricky to navigate.

It's also trite, of course. Incredibly so. A lot of it is made hollow by the alienating, commodifying pressures of capitalist society, or else made rotten by the cancer of oppression which springs forth from that aforementioned well. Would you pick sexless sex or sexed inhumanity? How about plague or cholera?

I was going to say something else here towards the climax of the post but I'm afraid I misplaced my mood somewhere. Sorry to call quits on our hike before reaching the peak, but I've got caverns tucked away in the mountainside up ahead that I can't bring myself to show you yet. Maybe you could write an ending for yourself in the bathroom. No? Sorry. Would you like to watch a movie or something?

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Do you think that Ishaq cried out on the day of the sacrifice: Oh Isma'il, let me take your place! Oh God, let me take his place!

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You know I am like the reverse of picky when it comes to coffee I'll drink practically anything. But this one I got most recently was really phenomenally bad. Quite acidic with a grainy texture, unsalvageably so I fear. Thankfully it was only a small packet so it is gone now

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im in university studying to become an anti-intellectual

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If I don't get a job soon I'm going to die but also if I do get a job soon I'm going to die lol -_-

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Why am I literally doomed by the narrative IRL. Fucking. Let me out asshole

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I am Nora (she). This is my personal blog. I'm a trans woman from a Muslim background.

Mostly I reblog pretty pictures or write about loss, grief, guilt, god, violence, and treason. I am a very cheery person as you can tell. On rare occasions, I say something that is actually worthwhile and not just depressive egoic self-indulgence. I believe in love and in humanity, despite everything.

Appreciate science fiction in general and star trek+Le Guin's works in particular quite a bit, sometimes I chat about that.

I tag visual art or photographs as #img and my own posts as #urlalltflyter.

Have fun deciphering my innumerable neuroses ☮️

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I need to lose 20 kg, find a job, keep working without burning out, gain courage, exercise more, start studying again, keep studying without burning out, move to another city, stop being depressed, make a billion phone calls, go to therapy, clean my house, stop believing in god, become obscenely wealthy, flee the country and move abroad, start believing in god, write, heal, cook dinner, eat dinner, stop being terrified of sleep and everything having to do with it, find solace, get a driver's license, shower, take revenge, deal with my grief, check in with friends I haven't heard from in a bit, learn half a dozen languages, read a hundred books, mend my clothes, learn to paint, figure out how to love after love died, buy groceries, forgive everyone who ever hurt me, learn to play an instrument, start hormone replacement therapy, go back in time, shave my legs, be put back together, apologise to everyone I ever wronged, send a thousand emails, heal the world, beg god to give me back all that he took from me, find a bra that fits, find peace, punish myself, travel, eat authentic chinese food, try alcohol for the first time, be hurt some more, sleep for a thousand years, regain my motivation to fight for the world communist revolution, start journaling, research the emergence of neolithic agriculture in new guinea, start keeping plants again, burn the riksdag down, rely less on caffeine, fix my broken showerhead-holder, start drawing again, gaze into the infinite and universal ocean of being, and wash my clothes.

But I can't even get myself to brush my hair at the moment.

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🤨

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Gah this day started pretty well but I ended up somehow getting caught up in Dwelling again in spite of myself. Rookie mistake to think about things I will endeavour not to do so again

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I've been thinking about the pandemic today.

I think this was maybe November or December 2020. I was working two jobs at the time: in the preschools and in an elderly home. Every surface needed to be sanitized, all the time. I reeked of alcohol, all the time. The skin on my hands was dry and cracking, all the time.

The preschools had a zero tolerance policy for symptoms in the kids and enforcing it was a sisyphean task.

This particular time I was alone for most of the day at the preschool-unit. Two of my co-workers had symptoms and there simply weren't enough of us stand-ins to fill their spots, so I was in charge of about ten kids by myself. Wash, sanitize. Once again, one of them was clearly ill: the little fellow was coughing miserably. I had to call his dad and ask him to pick him up. Did you know that phones are one of the most unsanitary surfaces you will come into contact with on any given day? Wash, sanitize.

He arrived angry, arguing. He couldn't afford this, he had a job to take care of. I wasn't patient enough. I couldn't extend my sympathy to him, I had ten kids to take care of. I said something passive aggressive. He yelled at me, really startled me, his kid, and a couple of the other children. Then he started crying and apologized. He comforted his kid, I comforted mine, and we sat there for a while on a bench in the cloakroom. I apologized, he left. I washed my hands again.

After my day at the preschool was over I had just about enough time to buy and eat dinner. Wash, sanitize. I stood in the queue, mask on of course, two metres apart. It was hot inside, I was still covered in my winter outerwear, sweating. The cashier scanned my dinner. Don't know if I remember exactly what it was, probably a sallad of some kind. As I walked out of the store, my phone rang. Trying to pick it up from my bag I stopped abruptly. Somebody walked into me, apologized, and walked past. I thought: what if I just disabled her for life? What if I just murdered her mom? I let my grandmother's call ring out and go to voicemail. Sanitize, wash my hands, sanitize. Then I ate my sallad.

I came to the elderly home for the night shift. Wash, sanitize, new mask, screen, gloves, wash, sanitize. I can't remember who died but I remember my colleague telling me. What if I forgot a wash at some point? What if I killed them? Please, please oh God, wash my hands. There was a terror in that house, all the residents were scared to catch it. They were lonely, too, even if most were impressively stoic about it. Told me all about how they hadn't seen their children or grandchildren since March, how the only human touch they had received for nearly a year was that of plastic gloves, how they couldn't even remember all the friends they had lost in that time. They were right to be afraid. According to a nurse who had been working there for a year, about a third of the residents had died since she started. I finished my shift, a thousand hand washes later.

I was on the bus, scrolling on the news app on my phone. The prime minister had said something strange again, can't recall what. Publicly, he had abandoned herd immunity, but practically this was still government policy at the time. A controlled spread. I put my headphones on to listen to the pundits and expert commentators. Lockdowns were a foreign exoticism, you see. An authoritarian state overreach, one of them explained; a counterproductive overreaction, another added. The only sensible thing, of course, was to sacrifice at the altar of capital as many vulnerable people as it took to appease that greedy god. That's nothing but common sense, all agreed, anything else would be alarmism or hysteria. I tucked my phone away. Sanitize, press stop, sanitize, hop off, sanitize.

I came home and went straight for the shower. I didn't dare look down, I was afraid that something red might be circling the drain. My husband woke an hour later and found me sitting naked on the edge of the tub. I couldn't tell him about work. I just asked him to please, oh God please wash me.

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I attend my sentencing, await the verdict of the judge. Trembling, I prostrate in anticipation of my beheading. The sword doesn't cleave me. As it turns out, the executioner doesn't bless the guilty with martyrdom. My sentence is exile.

I've knocked on that locked door, I've banged and shouted, I've begged and wailed. Ripping my beads apart I wrap myself in layers, drape myself in white and lay down on the mat. There I play dead. Perfectly still. Maybe I can fool the doorman, I think, but it's no use. So I sit up and I rub the shame from my face.

When I rise, I tell the tyrant who still lounges in his opulent palace, knowing that he hears me even from his distant throne, "I will not beg your wretched forgiveness any longer, I will not seek a moment of solace in your arms." I pause to gather my thoughts. One final thing needs saying. "It may be that I am a traitor. But you turned your back on me first." I do as he did and walk from his court, sparing him not even a glance over my shoulder.

As I cross the bridge, a familiar man waits for me on the other side. He doesn't hold out a hand for me, he doesn't embrace me, nor does he share any words of wisdom or comfort. But he does join me, treading silently by my side through the forest.