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Rumi and Kabir Bowling
An Evening with Two Ecstatic Poets If They Were Still Alive Today
Last year, as I understand it, Rumi was the best selling poet in the United States — more than 800 years after he passed. Kabir, too, is still being widely read — as is Hafiz, Gibran, and a host of other ecstatic poets from times gone by.
Most people assume these guys must have been praying, meditating, or fasting all day long. I don’t think so. They were way more engaged in the stuff of daily life than you think.
What follows is an homage to Rumi and Kabir — my fantasy of how the two of them might have spent an evening, in my neighborhod bowling alley, if they were still alive today.
RUMI AND KABIR BOWLING
I have been to the place where Rumi and Kabir are… bowling all night long. They are rolling perfectly round balls down a perfectly polished alley, laughing at the sound of the pins falling down, again and again and again.
Every time they bowl a strike even when they miss which is often, their aim wandering in fabulously random ways around this grand interior space.
Rumi orders a Heinken, Kabir a Bud Lite, their clinking of bottles some kind of esoteric temple bell ritual none of us will ever understand.
