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 Hafiz... Jogging! Meaning is the salt of conscience: Did 9/11 kill it? Tucson, Arizona October 23, 2002 The Iranian An old poetic Persian proverb says: Har cheh begandad namakash mizanand. Vaay beh roozy keh begandad namak! My suggested trans-literation: Salt is added to whatever is going spoiled. [to preserve against more spoilage] Woe onto the day when salt itself is spoiled! This salt brings me to meaning, and I know that I am not the first person to be worried about the fate of meaning in our "1984" kind of world. I dedicate this essay to George Orwell, the man who wrote one of the most meaningful novels of all time, 1984. Although he did not know Persian, I am sure that Orwell knew that meaning, especially genuine meaning, is the "salt" of conscience, because he predicted the rise of "Newspeech" in 1984, the kind of speech that allows Mr. Donald Rumsfeld to be called the Secretary of "Defense" (instead of War), or Ariel Sharon, a war criminal, to be called a "man of peace!" Why am I so concerned about meaning? Well, I am a psychologist, and hopefully an ethical one. So, I have simply no choice, but being concerned about meaning. You see, psychologists' primary concern is human experience and behavior. What gives primordial shape to human experience, which "leads" to behavior? Meaning, of course. It is that simple. Meaning is as primary to consciousness as air is to breathing, or as light is to the perception of color. Whether we are, or are not, aware of the primordial operativeness of meaning, when we become conscious of any reality, languaged or not, our "instinctual" next-step is to seek its meaning, to verify its authenticity, in other words, to see if it is in fact real. Put another way, meaning is our primary means of relating to and being grounded in conscious reality, and because we need to know what is real in order to survive, we need to be able to rely on the authenticity of meaning. This is why in every religion, spiritual tradition, or ethical system, it is a "bad" thing, or a sin, to lie. To lie is to undermine the foundation of trust. When someone like Ariel Sharon is called a "man of peace," then the meaning of peace itself, for example, becomes suspect. But, here I am not talking about the meaning OF anything. I am talking about meaning itself, the meaning of meaning, if you will. I am sure you know the proverbial story of the shepherd boy who would falsely cry wolf, in order to tease the villagers, so that he could have fun. The moral of that story is that abuse of trust will eventually harm the abuser. In other words, repeated abuse of a concrete "thing" will eventually hurt that same "thing" also in abstraction, in meaning. One may say, loosely, that meaning is the abstract representation of reality in consciousness. For example, if you say to a child that hot things will burn her/his hands, and when s/he finds, in reality, that indeed such is the case, he will realize the association between a concrete hot stove to his/her hands being burned, again concretely. In addition, the child will do two other kinds of association: 1- S/He will eventually associate, in "concrete-related" abstraction, the notion or meaning of being burned with other hot objects. 2- S/He will associate, also eventually, the "primordial" abstraction of the meanings of hot and burn, with the notion of meaning, as meaning. Of course, this kind of association will happen "unconsciously." So, the child will "learn," not only what hot and burn "mean," but also what the nature of meaning is. Now, if you tell the child that the stove is hot, but that s/he will not be burned if s/he touches it, you will eventually negatively interfere with, not only his/her ability to form informed judgments about his/her concrete reality, but also with her/his ability to make healthy abstract associations. If a child is repeatedly exposed to such basic abuse, s/he will eventually lose his/her primordial ability to relate to meaning itself, and will go mad. In summary, one may say that repeated abuse of words, such as peace, will eventually lead, not only to its meaning being undermined, but also to our collective eventual inability to trust language as our shared medium of communication, the ultimate role of which is to help us recognize, whether we appreciate it or not, our primordial interconnectedness, in the fragile bosom of our mother, the tiny miracle called Earth, and also in the infinitely gentle "ocean" (as Rumi would put it) of our awesome cosmos, in US. In my own helpless way, I (as a poet--mediocre one--I know) have been meditating the fate of meaning in our "civilized" era. In the following 4 poems, I am in fact shouting out my deep desperate worry about what is happening to meaning, what is happening to us as living beings, and what is happening to our mother, the Earth. I hope you like these "dark" poems, which are reflections of my fears, but also of my perhaps naive hopes. ------------------------------------------------ To the frustrated and fragile yet indomitable and imaginative soiled soulful wings, of all disgusting cockroaches Images From Within By Moji Agha September 18, 2002 Tucson, Arizona A simple question from the birth-ful insight that: "Art is the reflection of images from within." *** Images from within emerge from the womb of images from within, which reflect the essence of images from within, which are washed onto the surprised shores of the mysterious ocean of images from within, which erupt thankfully and inevitably from the self-birthing submerged and troubled and deeply troubling volcanoes of images from within, which are connected to the unending images from within which are humble rings of the everlasting chain of transitory images from within, which connect reality to the true nature of images from within, which connect separation to the truth of images from within, which connect, dutifully, image to image birth to birth love to love soul to soul breath to breath moment to moment form to form essence to essence bubble to bubble mirror to mirror mirror to mirror bubble to bubble form to form moment to moment breath to breath soul to soul love to love birth to birth image to image and, within to within without to without without to within within to without mirror to mirror mirror to mirror within to without without to within without to without within to within and....therefore annihilation to permanence. My stupid question is: Given the magnificence, the multiplicity, and the undoubtedly crowded nature, of this humbling mother of all bubbles; why do we still feel alone? Rather than expecting art to answer this nagging question, should we look for the answer on the soiled wings of persistent desires under which fragile filthy cockroaches hide their, and our, awesome images from within? ------------------------------------------------ To Doctor Al-Zakaria, who is trying, in every brave moment, to "refine" his soul Hafiz... Jogging By Moji Agha Aug. 11, 2002 Tucson, Arizona I am a walking poet. At least I try to walk. In the air of these days I find myself walking around bruised verses who become bruising verses, at times, mainly due to desperation, because the more these bruised and bruising despairing verses try to expose themselves to the "illuminating" inner essence of meaning, for they desperately need reliable mirrors, they become exposed to the terrifying reflections of their meaningless attempts at becoming coherent capable of reducing suffering. It is the role of any decent walking poem to reduce suffering; Right? My limping verses pretend to walk; No, they genuinely TRY to walk, whether I walk or sit in the helplessness of my loneliness, writing meaningful and meaningless hopeful and hopeless verses like these: The color of vulnerability; Can it be successfully smeared with a stroke of calculated luck? So, here is the question for today's air: Do walking poets love genuine meaning more than other mortals? I wonder if Hafiz* and Rumi* or for that matter Ferdowsi* could jog or at least walk in today's air? What about Omar Khayyam* whose bruising Rubaai'aat kick simplistic meaning in the ass making ordinary mortals run faster and faster because in today's air there is no time to be truly simple truly ordinary truly cognizant of interconnectedness?  In today's air we have to run, run, run and be constantly extra-ordinary till we run Earth into the ground till we collapse from the self-inflicted exhaustion of meaning in the carefully manufactured bosom of selfishness. Why aren't we safely resting any longer in the bosom of our mother? Let's ask ourselves some hard questions. Laziness is suicide. * Ferdowsi, Hafiz, Khayyam and Rumi are four of the greatest Persian poets, and in my humble opinion, four of the greatest poets, which this planet has ever produced. Every time I read what they have written many centuries ago, and I have the privilege of reading and hopefully understanding the depth of their thought in their own language, I feel truly humbled as a ?poet.? --------------------------- To the "freed" soul of my late mother, Batool "Khaanoom" Mazaheri Sublimation [In Chemistry: Direct transformation of solid substances into gas] By: Moji Agha November 11, 2001 Tehran, Iran As I see in every moment my mother's gradual death from my pollution from my selfishness my cells try to sublimate their helpless rage into "positive action" into the cancer of self-destruction.  Somehowthese days as we become more "civilized" we manage to experience another kind of sublimation: Our solid substantial meanings, born out of the witnessing of our gradual death of the gradual death of our mother, turn directly into gas into the hazy state of "anything goes" as if life is a genuinely superficial game of public relations. So, these meaningless days our mother, the fragile Earth, our relations the stars and our very soul go to the highest bidder. We are truly truly stupid, Woe and pity on us! Shame on us! Shame! ------------------------------------------------------------ To the soul-ful Mehdi who "asked" for a "grand" poem The Self-raping Word: Celebrating Superficiality Moji Agha Aug. 7, 2001 Tucson, Arizona Tonight a self righteous politician a merchant with a soul buried deep raped the word.  At first there was wordwith meaning then the word became me, Adam, then I became the word still... with meaning. Tonight the word is numb a faint smile paints its face as it lies in a pool of meaningless blood. As the word dies slowly it whispers to other words saying in calculated honesty which it has learned from its new teacher the politician the merchant the teacher that it seduced, in unconscious self-destruction, that the rape was not all that bad that the loss of meaning actually felt good that meaning begets responsibility that responsibility begets discomfort that no one wants discomfort that everyone wants to just feel good so what that it is superficial and transitory and begets more and more and more suffering.  So,dear politicians and merchants here is the word my probably sincere word come on go ahead rape it again and again and again because after the word meaning is no more then we all can feel good at least for a passing moment who cares that it does not mean anything, but our own stupefied demise. ------------------------------------------------------------------ O' My fellow co-inhabitants of Earth, in this age of selfishness, shortsightedness, and shameless "PR," let us not spoil our salt of meaning, because in doing so we will for sure kill our own mother! In the words of my favorite contemporary Iranian "Sufi" poet, the Late Sohrab Sepehri, "aab raa gell nakoneem" -- Muddy the water, not! PLEASE!
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