especially for Bob

(because I know he'll like it)

I wrote a poem that made my love angry

At me, or at the measure of my verse.

"Tell me then," I said, "What should I write?"

"Tell me", said she, "What poem could contain me?"

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

Search word: love

Poetry is, after all, a representation. It uses words and (by Rumi's day) writing. The very earliest human representation that we can still view and even admire is preserved in prehistoric caves such as at Altamira and Lascaux. The more recently discovered Chauvet Cave is considered the oldest (at up to 30,000 years old) and it contains a wide variety of representations, including vulvas of female sapiens sapiens:

Chauvet vulva @ archaeometry.org

see also animated graphic @ www.culture.gouv.fr

(I wonder: Have these vulvas been identified because French eyes saw them? Would other archaeologists have "missed" them or worse?)

It has often been concluded that these representations were made for magical purposes. In the case of prey animals, the idea is that they would improve the hunt. The vulvas may then have been engraved as an early form of erotic magic. The predatory animals depicted (large cats and bears) might be kept at bay by a similar controlling process.

There must be at least a grain of truth in all this. Do we not write in order to gain some control over our inner states of mind, our feelings, our emotions, our quirky perceptions and realizations? Are we not trying to capture and control the soul? For a man the soul has traditionally been seen as woman. Is this why he has tried so hard to control her, to repress her and oppress her? To bind her feet, insist she be skinny (or fat), surround her with prohibitions, cover her with veils?

Rumi's muse will have none of that, no. She insists on his coming to know her, she insists on intimacy, on love, and not control. The result was a much loved man in his day. I've found no detail on whether or to what extent women loved him but I can guess he would have been charismatic for them especially.

Almost every quatrain I have examined so far does indeed open up somehow in a way that can indeed reach out to Her totality. This is a kind of worship that does not restrict. Would that it could take over the whole world today.