- in the name of Allah -

I asked for truth and knowledge and wisdom, being quite unprepared for the answer. what I found were the shackles of humanity's existence, the depths of everything permeated by injustice, inequity, corruption. we chose not when we would be born, how we will die, whether fortune or famine finds us. we chose neither parents nor childhood. every system that exists here, does so for our subjugation and enslavement, wearing whatever guise of good or ill it fancies. our history is littered with example: once mortal beings achieve power they seek only to ensure they keep it, that wealth becomes theirs, that those of lower status serve them to run their engine of industry. our laws and governments find most of their architects and puppeteers from amongst those who run the engines. institutions and purposes such as philosophy and sciences and arts all now kneel to the forces of economics, if it exists to further those ambitions then it is allowed to remain, else it is discarded in favor of something termed pragmatic or practical. economics, better described as the engine itself, only serves to keep itself going, that those who have wealth may accumulate more and more. if it did not serve this function the greed of men would do away with it until another more suitable system was found to fill the role. brilliant though it is, it appears only as a black hole to the ones who see the chains and aligned with ideals. the gravity from such a thing is so immense, so consuming, it tears apart most anything that ventures close, so long as that object has been torn from its illusion. for the ones who carry still their imaginary dreams and goals, the well never appears so dry or bleak.

on the one hand you find the deceivers consumed in hedonism, promising any lie that could possibly be imagined if only to become one of their company. a vast number of these lies are so blatant, so preposterous, they become known as lies soon as their utterance passes the lips. but for most people, it becomes easier to live with lies as they can be fashioned as comfortably and safely and seemingly benignly as possible. why focus on the ridiculously difficult truths when a million different distractions exist coupled with the ever-prominent consumption of intoxicants, allowing quick and easy dissociation from those truths? for their only virtue, I would count it being that these deceivers are so apparent. whatever means tried to disguise the truth it remains the truth if one removes all notion of fear or intrinsic bias. that is to say, if one has nothing to gain or nothing to lose from observing the most basic, unencumbered nature of this truth, it should be possible to keep seeing it, regardless of what coverings may drape it.

on the other hand is found the inexorable pill of faith, loaded with caveats about unknowable things such as the future and the penultimate wisdom that invariably surrounds all events. it promises equity in a future time, that all wishes will be granted, that all bridges sought earnestly will be built, in return for passing through a mortal existence fraught with peril and no control. what is missing here is certainty. one can walk the best of paths and find no salvation at their journey's end. many, many promises are made in return for willing submission to the creator's will, but there is no guarantee anywhere that any of those promises will ever reach fruition. the one and only salve offered by all of faith is hope, something you find in abundance when dreams can be dreamt but something scarcer than life in a graveyard when dreams have died. what can one who has seen both ends of this spectrum conclude? to have found a thousand promises empty, then what? how can one who hoped with all of hope and lost it all find again those dreams to be nurtured by faith? is the deja vu simply inescapable?

at the very very least, when dealing with deceivers I can accept and understand I am being fed lies, so there is no real issue with whatever consequence arrives. but the travesty of placing hope in faith and finding it barren, to be left wondering what was real or destined or imagined, being left utterly uncertain beyond imagining, what the hell can I find after this? is what faith shows the truth or a lie or whatever it wants to show me so that I follow a long-scripted road? it pulls so, so many strings, from the moment of our conception and creation, humanity was created in weakness and fault and desirous of self-destructive things. the very nature of our existence is corrupt, we corrupt the land, our hearts, the skies, every single thing we touch or even imagine becomes tainted- because that is how we were made. then we are told to climb an Everest's Everest of mountains to attempt to overcome our nature and find purity and light and truth. but the books do not mention the ever-present rockslides and avalanches and pouring mud and lava that will torrent down its slopes. so, not only was humanity created weak and singly incapable, but then the summits we are to climb are rigged to their utmost trying to destroy any who would dare the climb. the ironies here are suffocating, the call to rise while being given a broken and handicapped chess board to start with, entirely slanted with every fiber of the mountain rebelling with every step higher. the rock face quakes with the truth of reality, yet the only thing faith offers is that pill...trying to silence and subdue the pain, but it was the pain that reality and the climb itself created!

as if that aspect of reality was not enough, there is yet more. I would hate to have been born a female. imagine the hundreds upon hundreds of years of marginalization, of historic discrimination immediately attached at birth, long before a single choice of your own was made, to have been pigeonholed by so many civilizations and cultures as baby factories and home-makers, but especially being categorized as mere objects created for the amusement and endearment of men. what could possibly make that any worse? that the female nature appears created so it favors indulging the attention, that it was made to encompass adornment in all facets, almost expressly for sake of trying the hearts of men. when I try to conceive the disillusion a woman must feel over this, what she must face from the very beginning of her creation and being, I cannot fathom it. if I felt caged and helpless to direct my fate in the way of my choosing, then what must a woman feel, she who was caged at birth, who was raised to fit a particular purpose without any prior understanding or choice almost like an animal at a farm waiting for slaughter, before she could develop even an inkling of rational thought? how might she react to the ridiculous roles and burdens and stereotypes society thrusts upon her without any wrong or instigation on her part?

I have no answers to these questions, no answers to any of them. once I had a singular dream that I chose to let go, perhaps because I felt there was no path for me to make at the time where I could bring it into reality. since that era, I have slowly slowly found less and less in life to ground me, less and less I want to call home, less and less I can become attached to and find meaning in. when I was younger, the idealistic part of me decided that ego and ambition were too easily the tools of destruction, so I discarded them. thus, I've never really felt the need to ever prove myself to anyone, to have a serious, inborn competitive ambition to be more than others. I have always and only been me, from the days of ignorance into light into darkness, just me. you might call this depressing. there's no way to argue with that: reality is truly depressing if you open all the shutters and windows and doors. still, there is something I value- my parents and family, the ones who have always stood by me, always (eventually) accepted me regardless of what I was worth or what heights I reached or in what depths ensnared. their love for me has always been unconditional. it is probably the only reason I have not fully caved. the only reason at all.

as for the blog, I've noticed when things are going good and upbeat and positive and uplifting is when people tend to respond to posts more often. alas, this blog has not been that for years. I suppose if I cannot serve as a beacon to light, the least I can do is not be a signal to others into darkness either.