we are travellers of love

it almost sounds like something that that poet of poets, Rumi, would say… forgive me, oh gentle reader, who would engender themselves to Byron (i do in my defence though have a first edition book of his poems). it is in fact a line from an old bollywood song. Rumi is a gentle poet, a soul poet. there is a slip under your skin quality about his words – ethereal, transcendental, all encompassing, with a seemingly effortless ability to condense murky, rambling thoughts into a few sweep-you-off-your-feet sentences. i adore his work but to reach the single point of understanding of his words (the aha moment)

is a bit like searching for enlightenment...

just within your grasp but so nimble, it jumps over the candle-stick and is gone before you can say ‘Om’. reading Rumi is like floating in the sea, legs and arms akimbo, bobbing gently up and down, the sun playing origami patterns on the back of your eyelids. there is a sublime nothingness into which you dissolve as the world around you vanishes under the soft thrum of the ocean in your ear. understanding Rumi, is like understanding love – so simple “i love you” and so complex “i love you“. 

‘In the Arc of your Mallet’ is one of my very favourite pieces and this line in particular, “i want to feel myself in you when you taste food” – was a line, which was to become for me

a memory created before it happened...

when the first baci di dama slipped into my mouth, it was like i was reading and understanding Rumi simultaneously. i was the sea and love and universe in one, experiencing divinity for a few precious moments. and in those moments, i understood that we are travellers of love, in the moment of every moment. but before i could say, well anything, other than “ohhh!” it literally, wafted away with only a few crumbs of hazelnut and the tang of dark chocolate to remind me of my epihany.

what was that? i said to myself? what was that?

it more than just a biscuit.

but how does one capture, explain, share nothingness and everythingness? how does one explain feeling oneself in oneself while tasting a biscuit? one doesn’t. one just has another one and experiences, elysian-ness.

homemade baci di dama... a love affair of hazelnuts and dark chocolate