Rumi: This Place Is a Dream...You Wake up Laughing at What You Thought Was Your Grief.

"The dust of many crumbled cities settles over us like a forgetful dream... And always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again."

Years ago, my old friend Ryme Katkhouda at a fundraiser she organized for Syrian refugees shared a Rumi line: “The cure for pain is in the pain,” which I’d probably heard before but not thought much about.

Ironically, shortly after, my then-partner, in great agony, had a series of major cancer surgeries at the Cleveland Clinic and I would sometimes take refuge from the stress of the situation at the nearby Rumi Market, picking up morsels from around the world. I figured these were signs that perhaps I should dig into Rumi’s work. I did so and indeed, Rumi’s poetry helped heal many a wound — and inspired much of my art.

The best recitations of Rumi online were by Duncan Mackintosh in a series of interviews by a fellow I only know as Morris. At some point, Morris, who is now deceased, put up something that violated YouTube’s “community guidelines” (I think he claimed at the time that it was accidental). Google/YouTube in their infinite wisdom saw fit to purge his entire library. Not just the offending post, but everything — including his interviews with Mackintosh doing the Rumi recitations.

Kyle J Smith has been restoring these videos. This one goes through my mind every day in early spring:

This place is a dream.
Only a sleeper considers it real.

Then death comes like dawn
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought was your grief.

But there’s a difference with this dream.
Everything cruel and unconscious
done in the illusion of the present world —
all that does not fade away at the death-waking.

It stays, and it must be interpreted.

All the mean laughing,
all the quick sexual wanting,
those torn coats of Joseph —
they change into powerful wolves
that you must face.

The retaliation that sometimes comes now,
the swift, payback hit,
is just a boy’s game
to what that other will be.

You know about circumcision here.
It’s full castration there. (Laughs)

And this groggy time we live —

And this groggy time we live, this is what it’s like:
     A man goes to sleep in the house
where he has always lived and dreams he’s living in another house
in another town.
     In his dream he believes the reality of the dream town.
He doesn’t remember the bed he’s sleeping in his house in.

The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities
settles over us like a forgetful dream.

The dust of many crumbled cities
settles over us like a forgetful dream.

But we are older than those cities.

We began as a mineral. We emerged into plant life
and into the animal state, and then into being human,
and always we have forgotten our former states —
except in early spring when we slightly recall
being green again.

This is how a young person turns toward a teacher.

This is how a baby leans
toward the breast, without knowing the secret
of its desire, yet turning instinctively.

Humankind is being led along
through this migration of intelligences
and although we seem to be sleeping —

Although we seem to be sleeping,
there is an inner wakefulness
that directs the dream

and that will eventually startle us back
to the truth of who we really are.

There is an inner wakefulness
that directs the dream
and that will eventually startle us back
to the truth — of who we really are.

Hopefully soon.