Notes from the margins. Handle with interpretive care.
May you be rain,
that wakes the parched river.
May you be tree,
that shades the lone river.
May you be moon,
that lulls the dreaming river.
Why can I not tear open this deafening mind,
and lay the full weight of my torment before Thee?
Yet Thou dost depart with mocking laughter upon Thy lips;
turning not once to behold the vessel Thou hast broken,
leaving a fondness, to burn in silence.
No eyes shall ever witness this agony;
it remaineth within the dark center of my spirit.
If this love were a living flower,
I would rip it from the very root of my life
and scatter it beneath Thy feet.
Though Thou mightest leave it to wither in neglect,
abandoned to rot upon the cold ground,
yet even in its death, all doubt would vanish from Thy heart,
and Thou wouldst know at last how deeply I have bled.
Uncrossed, the water stretches wide;
I say, O Beloved,
What if the vessel never part?
What if the journey be unmade?
Yet remaineth the quiet scar,
the stone, the tide, the waiting shade.
I say, O Beloved,
should the fragile hull of hope
sink down into the silent deep,
yet shall mine eyes pursue thy course,
and watch the voyage thou dost keep.
Is not the lap of present hours enough?
Must all the measure of my day
be spent in weeping for the bank
that lieth ever far away?
Nay; what is lacking in this place,
I fill with fullness of the soul,
for where desire taketh root,
there grows the tree that makes it whole.
Give a statistician fifty variables, and he shall weep for multicollinearity; give a machine learner fifty thousand, and he shall call it feature selection.
Blue heaven, brown breeze,
Broken stars do sing,
Trees do whisper, waters do murmur,
Vines spreadeth canopies too.
Sleepless sighs, forest path,
Yearning dreams do gaze,
Winds do rustle, moonbeams do glimmer,
Wild lilies weaveth garland too.
Crieth Adnan: "Dearest, heed Thou me,
Lone dreads do burn for thee!
Thy love, ahh, nectar divine,
Wherein my soul I resign."
In Statistics, one seeketh the p-value to prove significance; in Machine Learning, one keepeth changing the random seed until the metric looketh favorable.
If it be written in Python, lo, it is Machine Learning; if in R, it is Statistics; but if it be set forth in PowerPoint, ye shall proclaim it Artificial Intelligence.
Seek not the True Model, for it is written: all models lie, yet some lie productively.
Verily, if thou but squinteth with sufficient zeal, behold: all things become Gaussian.
In secret, O Dearest,
leavest something within mine smile,
in flower's scent,
in flute's lone song,
in wind's chanting murmurs.
In guilt, O Dearest,
takest something from the ever deeper layer of pain,
that tear of mine which blendeth with mirth,
that word unspoken in silent eye's reign.
O Dearest,
This day, cuckoo singeth sweet,
This night, with moon I shall meet.
Words, soft do murmur, heart doth quiver,
Body doth shiver, mind like a river.
Breeze, bloweth gentle, feet moveth not,
Words, fail upon the lips, thoughts held in a knot.
Petals, rain upon, smiles floweth murmuring,
Moon yet laugheth, swaying with the sea,
and therein fadeth,
the I of Me.
Such doubts have anxieties bestowed,
love of the beloved, forgone;
Such gifts of daily-dooms,
idle thoughts of sleep, no more.
Keep yet the sail furled;
the wind's face is but torn,
Perhaps in some path, rest awaits,
which came and then, gone.
Mine Beloved, for once
stand before Mine eyes.
May Thy gaze touch my heart.
Beyond all that exists, stand,
Stand where this abandoned heart
awaits sleeplessly for Thee.
This too shall pass, shall pass,
shall pass,
Mine beloved, this too shall pass.
The pain thou hold, nurture warily,
the grief thou started to love
in the dark—
shall leave you, it shall.
O dearest, this too shall pass.
The altar thou hast built of agony,
the sacred bleed thou clingest to,
burn away, burn away,
for even the altar must crumble to dust,
and the worship of thine own ruin shall pass.
O dearest, this too shall pass.
The sight of thee guarding thy wound—
O dearest, my soul crushes high,
crushes under the weight of thy silence.
Yet, mine... passes not, passes not,
it bleeds over thine,
until thine passes first from thee,
O dearest, when will it pass?
Mine beloved, let me, let me
come close and whisper to thee,
"thou must let the shadow flee..."
for I know, I know
thy quiet grief,
and all the sorrow thou hast nursed to be,
yet, it must pass from thee, it must for you—
and I to be free.
Of late there is come upon me a knowledge, and it may be that I am of them that are without.
I have dwelt upon this earth of God for years. I have beheld great kindness. I have beheld the hardness of men's hearts. I have beheld, above all, injustice that no mind can compass. I have seen the gentle ground down, and the cruel lifted up, and the ledger, seek it how I might, was never brought to even.
I cannot, with all the sincerity that is in me, bring my heart to say, that the Divine, who framed this world about me, with a might beyond the utmost reach of mine imagining and my reason, is a Kind one, or that He is kind altogether. Yet have I read many pages, dry, and yet not without savour, of them that would prove Him kind, in doctrine, in wisdom, in verse, in lamentation... and herein is the thing wherewith I can make no peace: that I understand them. The argument prevaileth upon the page, and dieth in the breast. If the Divine, in His exceeding providence, be Kind, be it so; these things are beyond my poor and broken being. I can have dealings with Him only in mine own reality, that is narrow, and is broken. And in that reality, Kind I cannot call Him.
And this I must confess, that it was not this end I sought. I came, if aught, in hope to be persuaded.
It may be that this maketh me of them that are without. Or it may be that to refuse to name cruelty as kindness is no forsaking of Him, but a stranger faithfulness, that holdeth Him to His own word. I can no longer tell the one from the other. Be it so. Yet this at the least I have kept: that I have not lied unto mine own soul.