- in the name of Allah -


While I don't know what Tomorrow holds, I know Who holds Tomorrow: Allah, as He ever has. Every day, every moment, every step a reminder that everything is His, and for me there's just to seek Him always.

- in the name of Allah -

She's a tremor in my earth, tilting expectations from their perch, what's me is still me, but still reverberating with what could be made of me and her. She's a trip I've not yet taken, a fruit I've not yet tasted, how crazy is this road Allah placed for me, to long here for things from dreams? 

She's truly more than the sum of her all parts, but I don't think she knows, as the most important one is often missed, when by all the flesh it's clothed. If she could see herself, past the outer surface, past what others must have told her she's worth, then perhaps the journey for her being whole might start: with that most precious piece, her heart.

If she fears to grow, if she fears to find, things beyond her eyes, then she should know, in this life there's no pleasure ever, without its pain entwined.

If she wants to find her Garden, if she wants to breathe its ever-lasting peace, if she wants to know what bliss is truly like, with no conditions underneath, then her Rabb gives her this chance to take the hand, of this nomad who chases but his Garden's Peak.

- in the name of Allah -

For [nameless]

So I called Tomorrow today, she said "go for a run if you wanna change, let go of the tension, and catch me in your arms some day".

And so I decided to give chase and ran, no matter the cold, no matter the bumps along the way.

Alhamdulillah, for lessons so easily made.

~

Fear not the pool I am, you it would never drown, it just takes a little trust, to learn your way around. InshaAllah soon you'll float, then later swim, like fish in open seas, breathing life through water in. 

- in the name of Allah -


Ya Rabb, if I said I knew this was a test, might that be the end of it?..

..Somehow I knew it would not be so easy, not so fast. 

From a post on fb by an Ustadha Hassan:

Did you know that the word "museeba", loosely translated to mean "calamity", comes from the root Arabic word, صو ب, which denotes an arrow which has struck its final resting place, its designated target.
When we are struck by "calamities" our first instinct is to cry out "why me?". But the amazing fact is that this hardship, this museeba, was never intended for anyone else but you. You were not in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was not an accident that could have been avoided. It was a blow that was intended to land exactly where it landed, by the One who knows you intimately and knows exactly what you can and cannot handle.
Our calamities? They are custom-designed, "couture" trials tailor made for us by the One who knows our dimensions and our fit perfectly. And how could He not, when He fashioned us and graced us with every gift we enjoy?

So, so much this. While I have no need to cry out 'why me' (lol I know exactly why me, it couldn't be any other way), the present museeba being faced is so beautifully, precisely made for my nature that it boggles the mind. 

But for me, for some time now, I've accepted I am His. What's truly mind-blowing, in all respects, is that the road ahead of this museeba could go in a few different directions:

1- it goes completely sideways, what I think I see is not it at ALL, Allah turns it flip upside down worse than Fresh Prince-style, and then He sees if I follow through with my word and stated resolve in being His slave

2- it finds its way to agonizing completion, what I think I see ends up really being there, and Allah tests me to see if I am grateful for this unimaginably amazing-beyond-belief gift in this dunya

3- it gets stuck in some middle gear, a la Friends, and ends up stalling into oblivion, Allah tests me to see if I try again and continue to seek His aid while doing so

 The incomprehensible part here is that is the museeba could fly both ways, either working or not. Yes, obviously, going by logical deduction it's completely DUH, but that multiple outcomes exist..and one of them might be the second! It's sheer insanity!

smh, this affliction...Allah knows better, always. I thought it'd run its course with me in the past, yet it turns out not done yet. My evolving doesn't cease, it continues, the trials don't get smaller, just bigger. Nope, no coincidences, just exactly like it was supposed to be. Duas I make it to the finish line intact with my Rabb pleased with me, will always be appreciated.

- in the name of Allah-


How nice and safe it would be if people like me could know and feel without letting down any walls, without having to find out if it really was the sky outside that fell on people all. But this organ in the chest, it beats on its own, not by my will or choice or whim, nothing me for to start or stop, except, a door to open in trying to reach another with whatever of me that's left. In submission to Allah, what I'm really learning, is each and every experience is a piece of the puzzle, that I have to fit, regardless what pain around the corner may be hiding. Whether it means to leap off cliffs towards a slightly-far-away bridge, or to keep away that which might take me farther away from Him, the unknowing is heavy beyond words but a knowledge I have to carry regardless. it's true, my eyes may as well be closed for all the good they to me might show, but for whatever it's worth they're open and seeking, affecting the hoping and needing and breathing, though at times it would suffice for each of these to be unneeded and to swim simply in echoes and beckons unfeeling. But to wallow in this self-imagined misery was not the point of aims matured so far into tomorrow eternally, this and these remain but further tests of my soul and all inside me that rests, to see if the better path I choose and if I hold on to Him despite whatever life makes me think it is I might lose...by Allah, the Rope I will hold, by His permission and the mercy thus far He's shown, forward it is I must go, that I may chase forever those Gates of Firdaus.

- in the name of Allah -


Alhamdulillah. 

An ode for [nameless], perhaps a sanctuary long awaited

strangers meeting at the common ground of strangeness, whether whole or in pieces, this is a moment I could have never seen coming. not only does a potential sunrise beckon again the blanketed heart that so long lived in night, but my Rabb teaches me once more how much I can learn if I admit there's nothing I know. this is true: knowledge, in whole, is only His alone. 

alhamdulillah for His opening of eyes and allowing me to accept what I don't know, my end is to Him as it ever will be; by His permission, perhaps not a solo flight after all. that would be an epic surpassed only by the sheer beauty of Firdaus itself, a gift inshaAllah I will always seek.

- in the name of Allah -

From Liveship Traders, book 3:

"...A man's loss of his mate may be the essential trigger that determines all events from henceforth. Do you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?"
He looked at the odd woman and shook his head. "That isn't how I see it, Amber. That isn't how I see it at all. It's just my life, and now that I have finally discovered what I must have to be happy, I'm willing to lay down my life for it. That's all." 

'Happy'? Couldn't quite say, its taste is too strange for me to really grasp. But if I can lay claim to something beyond happiness, then this notion expresses my perspective very well. What is beyond the mystery of happiness? For me, completion.

- in the name of Allah -

Still
(a corollary to "Sway")

In these times I can offer no melodies, or highs, or words conscripted for purpose of lullabies, just a persistent wish that I might rise, to claim from my Rabb your heart as gift, kept safe and free in my palms to reside. I've always loved the rain, that which gently pelts the face, as not just from it was all life made, but each drop reminds me of my own thought, a mirror of my mind in sky and rain. And how did that drizzle start, from where was it began, let me explain your part, that more may understand: you were the moisture in my clouds, who filled them past their brim, so in life I'd go on to seek but rain, from that moment ever since. Let me call to good, let me call to stillness, for now until tomorrow, that we may survive the ebbs and flows of time, and find the end of journeys paved in guidance.

- in the name of Allah -


sometimes destiny is not the river, and man not the fish, sometimes destiny is the effortless breeze, and we the bird that it lifts. long have I thought humanity fights this losing struggle against forces it cannot change. lately though, I've come to a place where fate is my ally, the very decree of my Rabb a thing I seek because within it is..everything for me. no real words I can write truly encapsulate what this means, it is simply incredible. from this, I wish people just remembered Allah, often, consciously and subconsciously, tuned their internal thought patterns to one of always turning back to Him. can it be understood what it means when fate is not a thing fought against or even thought negatively of, but instead a source of joy that certainty is coming ever closer? I have no guarantee of my end, of what awaits me, whether rahmah or punishment, yet what calls me most, what I most seek, keeps pulling me, preparing me, for a time beyond that Day. 

Alhamdulillah. I hope Allah allows myself, my ummah, my beacons, the honor of seeking Him and finding Him pleased with us, ameen. 

 

- in the name of Allah -

somewhere there inside of you is a part of me that beats the same as I do, so maybe every echo I imagine is truly a ripple of wind felt by the heart but for all else unfathomed. it's true, "life always gets in the way", but I hope Allah lets me be the one always 'getting through', so no matter if there's anything there to say, these meager letters hold on forever to truth. merely a painter with myriad of colors and strokes, bridging the past and tomorrow in the present with hope, that He might grant my vision beyond completion in Firdaus.

~~~~~

I often wish it were possible to take what I see and think and feel, literally out my head and chest, so that I might be able to show someone else what it means. Since I began this road stepping into tomorrow, I cannot fathom a life bound fully here, completely in dunya, without having an inborn flame calling to something greater. Interestingly it is no longer dissonance with life itself that bothers me whatsoever (though tedium and a drag it definitely is), rather the dissonance is with people, when I cannot make them feel what I do, when I cannot explain all the factors behind what it means for me to be what I am. I swear it's like I've lost the ability to verbally communicate. My tongue is just so inept and incomplete and slow, communication gets bogged down so often, it's like telepathy is the only option left -_-... yes, reality is still here. Unfortunately, it isn't just the laws of physics and gravity holding people down, but rather the sum of the chains on their hearts and souls that they content themselves with thinking that what their senses tell them is enough, that what they see is all they will ever know- this is the greatest delusion of fantasy ever perpetrated by humanity, to have forgotten that this life is just one part of existence, that when it ends is not when we end, but rather when the sum of all we've been, begins. Alas for the day when the postmodern becomes the the ancient and perhaps every trace of morality and restraint is lost, how low will people have sunk while thinking themselves the epitome of evolution? If we were alive then, no doubt the irony would choke to death. Alhamdulillah though, my existence will not be an age or epoch, just some decades or less, then I'm called back to my Creator and shown the truth of my deeds. InshaAllah it's an easy reckoning, and for my people too, ameen.

- in the name of Allah -


Not quite fully there yet, but alhamdulillah nearing back to myself. Life continues its sine-wave-osity, simply need to hold on. 

Meanwhile, this came to mind recently, a simple lingual equation:

"wind in her sails"   (from Liveship Traders)

+ 

"words are just wind"   (from ASoIaF)

=

all I've ever written is but wind for your sails, that your voyage through this life be only one of ease, so long as I've lived and breathed, to pen with ink from what which bleeds, a tale to trace from those early days, until we found our Gardens with rivers underneath.
 

- in the name of Allah -


when I look at life all I see is compunction for me to leave or refrain, for all it offers to me is so fleeting and so stained, how can any come to love such an existence of pain and misery, suffused through the carpeted textures of the surface, where most live and find easy release in escape disguised as remedies for fools? are there any other eyes for me to see out of in this present where the beauty is not lies, to find a place of rest that by worry or agony is not compromised? could I but rip them from their sockets, perhaps take a stab or two (or three) at the chambers of the heart, enough of me might leak away so I need not contain this pain. I am fool wrapped in so many layers of ignorance of what this place offers, yet what is it all if not made to make us confused? where are my rainclouds of patience to hail down sabr on my self? the heart is gone, the soul turned away, just the body with its senses remains. for one such as I to be unable to find or create a light, is as if darkness itself was all there is to find, blindly I stumble and soundless I scream, for none are near to where ever it is I might be. to be sure, my Rabb is never far, but I have no fuel with which to make a call, no flame burns for this moment where I am but ember without heat or purpose. living seems but the way for a slow death, alas for entropy encasing all of me and the parts still in the body left.

- in the name of Allah -

From "Liveship Traders", Book 2:

     "You earn your future, Malta Vestrit." The bead-maker cocked her head at
her. "What does tomorrow owe you?"
     "Tomorrow owes me?" Malta repeated in confusion.
     "Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that." Amber looked out to sea again. "And no less. Sometimes folk wish tomorrow did not pay them off so completely."