Titanic Post

I named my motorcycle Jelal (sometimes spelled Jalal), because it is the name of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, the famous and much honored Persian poet. In earlier posts on this site, I mumbled something about my motorcycle having this big hump of a fuel tank that was really quite ugly and reminded me of a camel. While this harsh judgment was true then, it is not true now, because the experience of riding this motorcycle over the past months has given me new insights and has brought much joy into my life. Riding this motorcycle through the mountains brings up honest to goodness belly laughs and childlike giggles that just burble up from somewhere deep inside. What indescribable joy! The name “Jalal” does not convey this motorcycle experience as well as it honors a truly great man.

Reading Rumi’s poetry and the works of other Sufi poets, I have the sense that they somehow transcended gender as they always transcended religion. I’m not sure I can transcend gender, however. Therefore I am thinking of changing the name to something closer to what I feel about this bike and more in tune to the experience I have riding it, ah, her. Yes, something more feminine!

Trying to describe ones love of life, God, and the love between a man and a woman, and attachment to one’s motorcycle is difficult if not impossible. We only have our puny language and we usually end up using the same words and cliches in each case. Poetry, good poetry, lends these words dignity and depth.

When Rumi wrote about love and God, he used metaphors from the taverns of the time. For example:

• Wine is a metaphor for the divine love that intoxicates the soul.
• Getting drunk means losing oneself in that love.
• The cup refers to one’s body and mind.
• The cupbearer, (the Maiden who pours the wine) is the grace bestowing aspect of God that fills the soul’s empty cup with the wine of love.

This is heady stuff! There is even the “hangover,” which, I take to be the lingering effects of love. For example: I seem to have a perpetual hangover.

These metaphors of drunkenness are a call to experience. They reflect the Sufi sentiment that the immediate experience of God is far more crucial than any kind of objective or learned knowledge. This is the driving premise of all the great “mystic” traditions. Here is a verse from The Rubiyat by Omar Khayyam:

The cover on the wine vat is happier
than the empire of a King,
The wine more fragrant than a great feast,
The first sigh of a drunk lover’s heart
more blessed than the song of the greatest poet.

Now, if I could only think of good name for my motorcycle that reflects all this…