So an interesting thing happened for me after Prince died. A memory was sparked of a friendship at that time in my life. I had not thought of this friend in about 30 years. We were in high school, had crushes on each other, were deeply religious and got to know each other in this context. In my early 20s my identity was developing, as was his, and we kept each other company.

Prince blurred gender lines; he was gorgeous to behold, and he was unapologetically sensual. His music connected with a raw, hedonic part of me. At the same time, he blended in spirituality and love, a yearning for majesty and wonder, and this intrigued me. His music was the soundtrack of my life. The 80s were an exciting and scary time to live openly in any non-hetero way (LGBTQ). Yet that was how I lived; my integrity required it.

Lately I am exploring aspects of my identity, intimacy, sexuality, and spirituality. All this is percolating again; I did some searching, and found this old friend. I am hoping to reconnect. For what reason? Who knows? I only know that the spirit nudged me; I felt moved to look for him. As I live, I am waking up, learning to pay attention. I listen to what is true in me, take the next action, and listen some more.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Here’s the link in case the video doesn’t play here: Prince – The Truth

My mother was puzzling over this poem by Hafiz. Like much poetry, the best way to access the meaning is to sidle up to it and look at it from the corner of one’s eye.

The Salmon Run

I wonder how God ever gets any work done
when he could just be gazing at Himself
in awe all day? What discipline he shows.

I am talking about a real problem that will
challenge you someday, though you may
know nothing about that yet:

splendor taking over the place and rising
from your body like a sunrise–gods sitting
on a hill needing to bask in you. For it is true,
we help sustain existence.

All types of fishermen, merchants and seekers
will gather around you when you reach your goal.

They will be wanting to cast their nets into
the brilliant salmon run you become,

leaping into the sky, offering to take any near
along.

-Hafiz

First impressions: The fact this universe exists at all is marvelous. That life exists in all its forms — how can we not just sit around gazing in awe? It is a Mystery that anything is at all. We are part of it now in this form, we are gods sitting on a hill basking in it. We will also die, after which we become splendor taking over the place. We return to earth, participate in sustaining life. We are the fisherman, merchants and seekers casting our nets into life. The earth sustains us. And, if we are lucky enough to wake up — to realize we are one with everything — we can enjoy the Mystery all the more. There is no need to fear.

And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

–Max Ehrmann

“We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if the beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarls to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skein, or indeed, if we may be permitted one more stock phrase, in the skein of life.”

– José Saramago