CHAPTER THREE  -  Rumi. 

WEEK FIVE. conversation by clair and melissa

"At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours".

.

Rumi

 ~ ~ ~

mmm....interesting this, 'dont accept consolations' (where colsolation means : the comfort you feel when consoled in times of disappointment....) mmm...

what does this mean...? ...dont let him or her go?  allow only one thing to touch your lips and that is the lips of your lover while staving yourself in the meantime...?...feels just a little bit unhealthy....

and  now i am feeling a little angre, this idea that we have to keep accepting and accepting, self harming as we go...

when sometimes its not right and its not okay and we have to look out for ourselves from our highest watch-out tower ... when we know that the sea is too black and too dark and too wavey and too poluted and too unstable and too unaware. and we just have to say no... and then eat something nice ;)

clair

'At night your beloved wanders' - At first glance this seems like it can be interpreted pretty easily: most of us have had first had experience with (or at least know) someone who 'wanders' from the ties of a relationship. But perhaps we can look at this line in a slightly more abstract way: perhaps the beloved which this line speaks of isn't a flesh and blood partner, but a memory, or even a pure creation. Maybe we're hearing about a dream, in which a person long lost, or never in existence at all, is free to wander, to become real.

'Don't accept consolations' - If I went with my first instinct, this line involved not basking in self pity, and the pity of others, for an unfaithful partner. But if we look at it in the same way as the previous line, it becomes 'don't accept consolations for a partner whose life was lost, or who never was at all.'

'Close your mouth against food' - Which first seemed almost like something you'd find on one of those dreadful pro-ana sites: 'stop eating, become beautiful, and your man will stay!' - now became something else entirely. If one wants to exist solely in their own dreams, in a reality created by ones self, one does not need the comforts of food. And on a slightly more grim note - if one essentially wants to dream forever, one must sleep forever, and withholding food is certainly a method for that.

'Taste the lovers mouth in yours' - A reward of not eating, then, isn't the return of an unfaithful lover, who ultimately becomes all the nourishment you need. The reward is to enter the place in which your lost or created lover becomes real, and can truly be tasted for the first time.

I'm not sure if that interpretation makes these lines beautiful, or just terribly depressing!

Melissa

hi melissa, 

i like this idea, that the wandering lover is not flesh or blood but a part of ourselves, a memory ....

it reminds me of an amasing song by leonard cohen who at the end of the song repeats 'dont go home with who you came with....dont go home with who you came with'  and later it become evident that he is not talking about the girlfriend/boyfriend/mother/friend sitting in the sit next to you, but yourself!!  yep!

clair

I've never heard that song, but you're right, it's the same idea! To go further on my previous point, I'm sure all of us have had one of those dreams where we create a person who feels so real that when we wake up, it's almost painful that they're gone. When reading those Rumi lines (with no prior knowledge of the piece as a whole), I can't seem to shake the image of an incredibly lonely person, who only truly feels 'alive', when dreaming. I suppose it's not that hard to understand: when you're dreaming, you're totally in control. It may feel like a series of random events, but in reality everything that happens is happening because your unconscious/subconscious mind wants it too. For lucid dreamers (such as myself...at times!) this creates a world of possibilities...especially for those who feel like they have little control over their own reality.

mmm the idea of lucid dreaming - (dreaming that you have control in creating) sounds amasing!! in fact, it begs questions around the differience in daily living and lucid dreamimg?? ..i guess real life has the potential of being more sustaining?  my dreams have got me thinking recently...ive been waking and my dream has redirected my day, what a life!  dreaming! ...quite awfal sometimes too!!

i think that Rumi was probably not a very lonely person but his words capture a lot of human emotion and human condition...  i find it interesting that as different as we all are, we find the same sort of feelings good and bad...like nobody sais they enjoy being lonely (although they might enjoy being alone) ... mmm

Lucid dreaming is definitely something incredible. I always used to be able to control the events of my dreams a bit, but as I've gotten older, it's become easier. I totally agree with you about the difficulty separating this kind of dreaming from reality. What's preferable, especially to someone down on their luck in the real world? 

Dreams have a large influence on me too, and I often find them inspiring. As a writer, I get lots of ideas through dreams, and it's rewarding to know that these ideas always existed in my head, just waiting for me to find them! 

how clever that is...!  is it a technique you had to work on...can anyone begin to lucid dream...?

i always find it quite astonising what we actually cunguar up... the images, the complexities, the story line....sometimes, i am in a quiz and although everyone around me is getting all the answers right and i am getting them all wrong, guess who is actually getting them all right ...! (and composing the questions at lightning speed ;) hee hee.

i am having difficutly sleeping, so after about an hour of lying awake feeling somewhat stressed i opened my window more for fresh air to think in (nearly always helps) and switched on my computor...feeling much better now ;))

c