false gold

Friend, in truth, you're the source of life's own life:

You read my letter when it reaches you!

No matter how strange, you don't tear it up,

Knowing my shattered heart as you do.

#1736: From Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi

Search word: truth

Last night my son and I watched Steve Martin's A Simple Twist of Fate, a modern movie adaptation of George Eliot's Silas Marner. I was drawn in by a strong sense of déjà vu, not only because I had read the novel many, many years ago but because that reading itself had triggered strong feelings of déjà vu: it had seemed as if Eliot was writing precisely about me, about my life, as if she had written the novel as a letter to me over a vast distance of time and space. The novel-letter seemed to speak about dark things in my family surroundings, about buried truths and false gold. When I sought out truth in Rumi, I found this theme of the letter sent to the beloved friend.

I feel lost for words, no wonder, since the shattered heart suffers from having lost the source of life's own life. We hoard, we lose all, we start again. Unity breaks up and reforms. Great writers like Rumi, like Eliot, like Frame, write love letters to the world, not only to anyone who might read them today or tomorrow but also to those who have passed away. A part of the energy behind this blog is a long-drawn-out love letter to Rumi. And through him, through one particular poet, to others. A truth must speak to him or it's mere baloney. Perhaps not, perhaps that is too much to ask of truth.

Silas Marner @ quasarcomics.com