THIS IS THE LAST TIME I QUOTE RUMI. EVER.

I hesitate to write this post. I’ve been contemplating it for weeks, and this is probably the worst time to write it because of my current state of mind and emotions. But, as it happens, a wise and wonderful woman convinced me over coffee in Old Town Alexandria yesterday morning to do it. She reminded me I wrote the book, Great Big Small Things, not for me, but for others and that those people--like her--came to this obscure blog to read and learn more. I pleaded that my current heartache would make the posting too personal and too dark, but she replied that I was allowed something personal. That it might have some bearing on the world around us, so I should be genuine and put it out there. Thank you, Elena. The spark in your eyes gave me the courage to write this and, as I promised, I write what is on my heart on this cold, rainy Wednesday morning.

I will never quote Rumi again.

I curse the day I stumbled upon Mevlana Rumi’s ruinous Diva-e Shams. I wish I’d never come across them or, at the very least, that I could go back in time and stop myself from ever reading his words, for I’ve lived them and they’ve shaped me into something I cannot seem to control. Something hard on the outside— strong of mind and body--yet brittle and roiling and dumb beneath. I blame Rumi, and I turn away from him now.

I should be like other men and worry about interest rates and stock prices and my 401K. My mind should be enthralled by NFL scores and stats and tires and hunting and such things. Instead, I read Rumi.

I stupidly think of starlight and how it travels millions of miles and years to reach my eyes. And I wonder if I seen it before. I think of the singularity--the place where soul meets the body. If pain transmutes or if we can shed it like a skin as we cross over. I wonder about the eyes of a bee and what they must see when they flutter around us. I consider the taste and smell of honey or a pear that drips its syrupy juice and see a thin, ruddy, beautiful face and hear a distinct, sweet voice. I waste my time caring about what holds us to each other and to the world around us. If on a sub-atomic level—like String Theory suggests—we are one because of the tiny vibrating waves that hold together each thing. Is this the music of our souls? Are these the notes of our great human symphony?

I wonder about the difference between our hearts and our souls. We humans put so much faith in our hearts. We even have a symbol for it that we use to represent love. Yet, we have no understanding of our souls. You could never draw it, nor do we have days assigned to it. It is overlooked and rarely considered, and yet, it is more important than the heart. Love resides not in the weak heart, but in the everlasting soul.

The heart is but an organ—an ill-designed mechanical pump, so delicate and complex. It is limited in size and scope and bound to the place it rides in our chests. It cannot overfill, for if it does it bursts and our life ends. The soul, on the other hand, is limitless. It expands to our greatest joy. It is where God lives and speaks to us. The Shekhinah.

Like an endless accordion file it opens again and again on itself to hold our passions and thoughts and prayers and loves and power. It can hold every moment of a whispered breath and all the pain and suffering in the world. Holocaust, genocide, rape, hunger, loneliness, despair, hopelessness, anger, terror, pain and suffering all fit within it. It’s the soul Rumi made me understand. The soul I’ve sought to know and for which I search in myself and others. And he’s damned me with it.

This kind of thinking leads to the opening of your mind and soul and that is where trouble and pain come in.

Rumi poems are like thick, amber honey held out to parched lips. They are sweet and strong and fill you like you’ve never eaten before. They cover your tongue and run down your throat like a trail of fire opening a way to the hidden soul. To those who eat of it willingly it provides not just sustenance, but becomes like manna. It opens the soul and white-hot light comes from within and changes you in an instant. You begin to believe in blue skies, and soft flower petals and that the most powerful thing in our human world is the sound of a baby laughing. You see hope in everything and a brother and sister in everyone. You wake and go out into the front yard and open your wings to rise into the sky where you float on invisible bubbles of warm air.

You believe, therefore you see.

He is sly, and dangerous, for he uses mundane things like wine and the wine bearer, the pearl and the ocean, the sun and the moon, the night and day, the caravan, and pilgrimage to make us believe he is writing about the world in which we all live. But that is a lie. He is writing about the world within us. The soul we hide. His words burrow into us and crawl into the folds of our brains and lodge there. Suddenly we are thinking of love and lips and kisses and eyelashes and smiles and the feel of warm fingers on cold skin. He traps us with his words until we can do nothing but see what he sees. Who can resist wine? Who can turn away from the moon?

But Rumi, in his ecstasy, denies the tangible world in which we live. When you seek the soul, you must turn inward and go so deep there is no sound or light or heat. It is a peaceful place. Yet, does the turmoil of the world around us disappear? No, it is still there with all the rules and laws that govern it and us.

When you climb a tree and go out on a limb to better see the beautiful indigo bird, you must remember the translucent truth of gravity. If you fall from the limb, you will continue to fall downward until you come into contact with the earth. If you fall from the limb you end up where you started. On the ground below the tree. You cannot be the same person again even though you were just in that place a moment before. There is pain from the landing. Perhaps a dislocated shoulder or broken bone that twinge each time you see a tree. And you are now weary of climbing any tree. They are suddenly too tall. Too thin of limb. Too difficult. Climbing trees is a silly way to spend your time.

I have kept my eyes on the soul and ignored the truth and laws of my natural world. I’ve fallen and— bruised and bloodied and broken—risen again to keep searching. Because I read Rumi. Because I quote Rumi. Because I think in his damned way and whirl like his dervishes when my soul opens to joy and love and kindness and kisses so deep and warm they make you into a single being traveling across space in toward the source of the starlight. I have been damned by his words, and cursed by my own soul.

Honey that once tasted so sweet—like there could never be anything sweeter come from God’s own hand—is bitter gall to me now. I spit it out of my mouth like yellow bile and watch it wriggle on the ground as it rots the dirt and kills the grass. So, this is the last time quote Rumi. These are the last of his words that spit out to rid myself of them and him. You have been dead for 800 years and remain dead. Take this back from me and ruin some other with it. For I refute it and will never quote you again.

"The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you,
not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along."

Never again.