psithurism.

"did you see it?" 

"what?" 

"wind." 

"dude, we feel the wind, not see it." 

"okay. did you feel it?" 

"well, yeah.. why though?"

"we often asked the wrong question, ain't we?" 

"hmm, i guess so.. then, we confused ourselves in the process of getting the answers."

"okay, let say you're a doctor.." 

"no, i'm not." 

"that's it. i gave up." 

"haha. okay okay.. so, what if i'm a doctor?' 

"when a patient come to see you,  and this is the first time you meet him or her, what will you expect from him or her?" 

"hmm.. what? i don't know.. never be a doctor before.." 

"urghh.. i know this is going nowhere.."

"you be the doctor then." 

"ah, never mind who is the doctor. but i think, the basic are, the doctor need to know what are the patient's diseases or symptoms as the mukaddimah." 

"agreed."

"so, what if a patient came to a doctor, then he or she skip that stage and directly ask for treatments or medicines."

"both the patient and the doctor will be very confused. nothing will be cured."

"now, here is the thing.. did we ever talk to God about our sickness? how did the sessions going? did we sincerely explained everything we felt and going through? did we sincerely confessed to Him that we're emotionally and spiritually ill, if not physically sick?" 

"okay i've got your point. to simplify, did we fully put our trust into Him?"

"yup. unlike the doctor, this stage of confessing before Him, the purpose is never to let Him know what our illness are, He indeed know everything, even if we never said them. more than that, this is already part of our curing. let all the toxic thoughts inside our mind, heart and soul to come out. if not, they will be more and more poisonous.

"this is all about getting closer to As-Shafee; The Healer along the treatment process, because only He know what's best for us to be healed."

"just like the wind talked to us through its cooling breeze on a hot sunny noon. even if we can't see it, we still feel the coolness."

"the God promised us too.." 

"in surah number two and ayah number one eight six." 

"and if my servants ask you(the prophet saw) about Me, then I am indeed near."

thalassophile.

bayu laut,

fiu~ 

fiuu~

fiuuu~

"kau suka laut?" 

"suka." 

"sebab?" 

"air laut seluas ini, sentiasa nampak tenang. dan ia menenangkan, kan?" 

"kau yakin air laut tenang?"

ombak menghempas,

dush!

dushh!

dushhh!

"kenapa dengan air laut?" 

"lihat, kalau air laut tenang dan senang dengan posisinya, kenapa sentiasa ada saja ombak-ombak yang belari ke pantai menghempas batuan? apa yang dikejarnya di darat? atau apa yang mengejarnya dari jauh-jauh seberang sana? kita yang cuma berdiri melihat dari pantai begini, tidak akan pernah tahu apa yang sedang berlaku jauh di tengah-tengah lautan sana. kita menipu diri sendiri kalau berkata laut ini sedang baik-baik saja. kita tahu laut tidak pernah diam tenang selagi ada gigi-gigi air yang memukul kaki-kaki kita di pantai." 

"jadi, kalau mahu tahu tentang laut, bertanyalah kepada dengan para nelayan yang baru pulang dari berlayar. mereka pasti tahu apa yang sedang berlaku jauh di sana. kan?" 

"ya." 

"hmm."

ah tak reti la buat bunyi-bunyi ni.

"tenang.." 

"calm." 

"kau rasa hidup kau tenang tak sekarang?" 

"dude.." 

"no, you dont have to answer that.. it just popped up in my mind." 

"okayy..."

buka youtube in new tab,

search: relaxing beach sounds.

"seperti kepercayaan kita bahawa laut ni tenang, padahal hakikatnya kita tahu ia tidak, rasanya kita selalu menipu diri tentang hidup kita sendiri. sok ngerasain hidup tenang, padahal nggak, malahan berantakan. kita tidak pernah merasa cukup, ada saja yang kita kejar. kita tidak pernah diam, ada saja yang mengejar kita. pathetic.. really.. sebab terlebih sering yang kita kejar dan mengejar kita itu adalah hal-hal duniawi. we're delusional, we lose the sense of reality and truth.." 

"dan kadang, ada ketikanya datang peringatan dari Tuhan. tapi tidak selalunya peringatan itu lembut. sebab jiwa kita yang sedang lena terhanyut tidak boleh dibangunkan dengan belaian, ia akan lebih lena. ia perlu dikejutkan dengan sesuatu yang lebih keras, supaya ia sedar." 

"loss. failure. heartbroken.." 

"..serve as a brutal reality check." 

"but, its worth it." 

"sebab itu jadi kepastian terbesar bahawa Tuhan masih sayang kepada kita."

"Tuhan mahu kita pulang kepadaNya.." 

ada jumpa?

ha, dengar sendiri.

"ar-rad. dua puluh lapan." 

"hanya dengan mengingati Allah, hati akan menjadi tenang."

sambung sea gazing.

___

*so, rasa hidup tenang tak sekarang?

雨 - ame.

rooftop.

masih tengahari, belum malam lagi.

tapi langit gelap.

maksudnya langit mendung la tu.

angin pun kuat.

lagi-lagi di atas atap.

"hujan."

"kembali."

tap..

tap tap..

tap tap tapp..

tap tap tap tap tap tapp tappp tapppp..

itu bunyi detak air hujan yang sedikit-sedikit turun kemudian terus lebat. sempat turun dari rooftop ke tingkat bawah, yang berbumbung, sebelum lencun. cuma sedikit basah.

"kembali?"

"hujan is kembali."

"from? in?"

"from quran. in at-thariq; eleven."

"wow, ingat." 

"acah-acah.. padahal buka tafsir in a new tab. haha."

"ceh.. so, the ayah please.."

"demi langit yang menurunkan hujan. dalam matan asalnya, in arabic, the word 'rain' referred to the kalimah al-raj'i, *which literally means return."

setiap butir hujan yang jatuh dan menabrak kaca jendela, seperti sedang berlumba sesama mereka untuk menjadi yang paling cepat meluncur jatuh ke bawah. butir yang lebih besar, luncurannya lebih laju berbanding butir-butir yang kecil. faktor graviti. ada juga butir kecil bergabung dengan butir kecil yang lainnya untuk menambah saiz sekaligus berat, menjadikan mereka lebih mudah dan lebih laju meluncur ke bawah.

"air hujan, datang dari bumi. diangkat naik ke langit. kemudian turun, kembali pulang semula ke bumi. tidak kiralah jauh mana daratan tanah mereka tinggalkan atau setinggi mana langit yang mereka duduki sebagai awan, akhirnya ke tanah juga mereka akan kembali apabila tiba masanya. itu fitrah atau sunnatullah hujan."

"so we are."

"but maybe from the opposite departure gate." 

"yup. we came from above, sent down to the earth. and soon will go back to our origin too. thats our fitrah, to return back to Him. langit tidak mahu menyimpan awan selamanya, dan bumi(dunia) tidak akan menyimpan kita selamanya."

"ok, guess what is the best type of rain(raj'i)?"

"type of rain? rain what? rainy days? train? trainee? terrain? brain? drain?"

"dude.. hahaha. rainbow la.. pelangi.. hujan yang pulangnya sempat meninggalkan kegembiraan kepada orang lain."

"ya, betul."

sambung rain gazing.

___

*tafsir al-azhar.

ad-dhuha; three.

the third ayah of surah ad-dhuha start with;
مَا وَدَّعَكَ رَبُّكَ 

the word ما in arabic was used when you want to correct somebody. when you say 'no' to something they said, and you want to correct them. meanwhile, ودع in arabic was used in describing the inside pit of death. a grave side was called ودع. if they build wall around someone's grave and never goes inside it, like a tomb area, they build wall around it and they just never go into it again, this is also called ودع. similarly, ودع was used for as an expression of saying goodbye. meaning something you never come back to. like this gonna be walled off, you never come back to it. this inside pit of death, nobody gonna know what is in there, its gonna be left alone. 

Allah did not abandoned you, Allah did not leave you alone, don't get that wrong. thats the idea of مَا وَدَّعَكَ رَبُّكَ. 

this is for the beloved rasulullah saw, but understand it even for ourselves. there are time where we feel the intensity of iman. there are time where it is easy for tears to rolled down your eyes, for you to feel like you've repented before Allah and you feel a closeness to Him in sajadah, you just don't want to get your head from sajadah. there are time you're standing in prayer and you have an experience that only you know, nobody else except Allah knows. there are those experiences. 

there are time in which you're crying before Allah, confessing before Allah, admitting your fault before Allah, and some of those are the most beautiful moment of your life. and when those moment go away, and maybe sometimes you wander off, and you go so far from that closeness to Allah. and you're done in a place, you're so far from that place now, like.. "man, i wish i can ever feel that again, i used to be good person. i used to be close to Allah, i can barely remember how that felt like but i'm in the dark now. there's no way that.. thats ever gonna come back, i've made so many mistake." 

in this ayah or this surah, Allah is addressing the messenger saw that he, rasulullah saw, is assuming he made a mistake. he doesn't know what it is, of course he didn't made mistake. but in our case, we know what mistake we've made. we know the mishap we've done. there are time we are close to Allah and our heart are touched by the quran. but then we gonna feel like just night(darkness).. and the night just wont end, we're going to feel that way. we know what we've done that harden our hearts and got away from Allah. but even to us Allah azza wa jalla is giving hope. 

the correction comes to everyone of us and its first and foremost comes to the messenger of Allah (saw), the most worthy of it, and that is مَا وَدَّعَكَ رَبُّكَ. 

and then Allah swt add;
وَمَا قَلَى  

dig into this word, another interesting arabic word, قلى. basically they used to called it as a kind of an acid. or its like a detergent. detergent back in the days was used to rub and scrub the clothes but when you're done with it, what you do with the detergent? you wanna washed it off and get rid of it, let it disappear, its not something valued once you've done using it. thats the original image associate with the word قلى something you use, and when its usefulness is done you get rid of it and it is worthless to you, it has no meaning to you anymore. the idea that you have someone very close, but now you want to get rid of them, you want to throw them out. قلى also used in the act of frying something, when there is an unwanted leftover, so you just throw them. 

there are two side of it, Allah is upset, Allah say farewell and Allah see you worthless and therefore He is disappointed with you and you're not worthy to Him anymore. this are the feeling that the believer can get towards Allah. "Allah think i'm worthless, Allah think i have no good left in me." people around you can make you feel that way and you start taking opinion of people and start projecting maybe that is the opinion of Allah on you also. that's the very common mistake we made. and that is something that highlighted in this ayah.

مَا وَدَّعَكَ رَبُّكَ وَمَا قَلَى
--Allah did not abandoned you nor He is upset.

___

extracted from the 'ramadhan with quran' series by ustaz nouman at bayyinah tv. full lecture on the entire surah can be watched here; ad-dhuha. beautiful surah indeed. basically, i just write down what's being said in the lecture and i think i skipped/missed some point. sorry for that and sorry for grammar yang berterabur. tak reti nak repair.

thousand towers.

rooftop.

"nah, sudah malam..."

pandang langit.
gelap gelita.
kosong.

"...pun masih belum nampak bintang. hahaha."

"light pollution."

"err, semacam river pollution? contaminated water? air pollution? jerebu?"

"ya. kind of. and what else? sound pollution pun ada.. emm, jap.."

keluarkan enset.
buka random mp3.
turn up volume to the loudest.
baca random message dalam whatsapp.

"hear me well?" 

"ah, not really.. and its annoying..  so, this is how it works. "

mp3 stopped.

"ha, sama macam pencemaran cahaya. ada masanya kita cari cahaya-cahaya tertentu, tapi pandangan kita terganggu atau mungkin tertutup dengan cahaya lain yang lebih terang, yang lebih dekat. macam cahaya bintang di langit, kita tak dapat cari sebab pandangan kita dipenuhi cahaya daripada bumi, semua yang ada di depan kita sekarang ni la.." 

"make sense." 

"itu cahaya fizikal, cahaya yang mata kita cari. by the way, hati kita pun cari cahaya kan? so, ada probabiliti berlaku pencemaran cahaya jugak kan dalam hati kita?" 

"ya, sure. maybe we haven't found the right light we seek because pollution was there, surrounding our heart."

"so, how to clean it up?"

"i dont know.. mungkin boleh try turn off unwanted light source. put some filter or something that can remove unwanted light from entering our heart. eh, kan we do light filtering in photography? like all those flawless picture.."

"ya.. or maybe we can move somewhere far from those contaminated light. there must be, at some distance, those polluted light atmosphere will no longer affecting our sight. on the other hand, the true light that we seek, shouldn't we get closer to it? to get a better view of it?" 

"yup."

pandang bumi.
warna warni.
benderang.

"surah al-buruj." 

"surah bintang?" 

"yup. buruj in this surah referred to the stars. and you know what, there is another meaning of the word buruj." 

"what?" 

"tower. or something that rise up high." 

"macam burj khalifa di dubai tu?" 

"you've got a point there. burj is the singular version and buruj is for the plural. so, that should brought us to another point of view in our tadabbur kan?" 

"towers in the sky?"

"sort of. but lets write about that on another day maybe.. dude, i'm tired.. hungry.. and ughh, sleepy too.."

"write? but.. i thought this is a real life conversation between two anonymous."

"ah, whatever.." 

sambung star gazing.

je ne sais quoi.

rooftop.

beg galas di belakang, dilepaskan sebelah bahu.
dibawa ke hadapan.

keluarkan kamera.
keluakan lens.

"ini wide angle lens. focal length pendek atau kecil. kau tau guna untuk apa?" 

"untuk photo yang frame dia lebih wider kan?" 

"ha, betul.." 

"nama pun 'wide angle'.. obvious laa.."

cantumkan lens dan kamera.
buka lens cover.

set shutter speed.
set iso.
set aperture.

"do you realize this.. bila kita pandang dunia atau kehidupan dari frame yang lebih luas, wider and farther, lebih jauh, barulah kita faham kenapa setiap sesuatu ada di tempatnya masing-masing. pokok, sungai, laut dan bukit. macammana setiap mereka saling berhubungan, menjalankan peranannya masing-masing untuk melengkapkan sebuah sebuah pemandangan bernuansa damai dan indah. ini tidak kelihatan jika kita cuma berdiri melihat dunia di hadapan sebatang pohon." 

"nah, begitu dalam kehidupan, kita perlu melihat setiap apa yang datang ke dalam hidup kita sebagai satu identiti khusus yang memiliki peranannya yang tersendiri. mungkin itu ujian tertentu, atau manusia-manusia yang kita temui, juga kejayaan atau kegagalan dan sebagainya. semua sebenarnya saling berhubung untuk membentuk sebuah lukisan atau perjalanan takdir yang tersusun cantik setiap letaknya perkara-perkara tersebut."

angkat kamera paras muka.
dua tiga kali bunyi snap.

turunkan kamera.
buka lens.

ambil beg galas.
masukkan lens.

keluarkan lens lain.

"ok. yang ini apa?" 

"just another lens?" 

"haha. begini.. setiap sesuatu memiliki keindahan dan keunikan dengan caranya sendiri. indah dengan keindahannya yang sendiri. hal-hal biasa, kecil dan sepele akan kita lebih hargai jika kita tahu nilainya, keindahannya. cuma, tidak semua kelihatan dengan magnifikasi pandangan atau penglihatan berskala sifar. ia perlu kepada perkalian magnifikasi. perlu kepada perhatian dan penelitian. semacam uniknya struktur pola corak bunga atau rekahan pada sayap pepatung yang kita tangkap dalam mode close-up guna lens ni, macro lens." 

"ouh.." 

"your turn." 

"manusia memiliki fitrah, bila  terpandang atau merasakan sesuatu itu indah, mereka ingin menyampaikan pujian. dan mahu berterima kasih. kan? tapi, kepada siapa? seperti kita berterima kasih bila diberikan hadiah daripada orang lain. terima kasih kita adalah atas hadiah itu. nah, kepada siapa pula kita mahu berterima kasih atas orang yang memberikan hadiah itu? so, fitrah dibekalkan kepada manusia sebagai jalan untuk manusia sentiasa pulang kepada Tuhan."

angkat kamera paras muka.
dua tiga kali bunyi snap.

turunkan kamera.
buka lens.

ambil beg galas.
masukkan lens.

tangan masuk ke kocek seluar.
keluarkan phone.

turn on skrin.
buka lock pattern.

sebelah app camera ada app quran.

"you know what, dua konsep tadi tu asalnya aku dapat daripada quran study." 

"quran?" 

"yup. i mean, from literary point of view, ada dua cara we can look into the quran. first, macam guna wide angle lens. looking from afar, in a bigger picture, look how every ayah within a surah interconnected with each other. secondly, by the 'close up' or 'zoom in' concept, to look deeper into a single kalimah or word, dig into its root meaning, and how precise it was chosen for that particular place in an ayah. and thats how you will be awed in silence by the divine speech." 

"that's cool."

"ya, sejuk jugak atas ni."

sambung tengok pemandangan.