A wire brush

[Mike MacLeod]

My father used to make wood sculptures by taking a large chunk of wood with a heavy grain and burning its surface with an acetylene torch. He then took a wire brush and scraped away the charcoal, leaving the grain of the wood, the bones of the wood, exposed with great beauty.

Nevit Ergin's modern Sufi stories have a similar effect on me, I'm finding - rasping off the scales covering my eyes.

If you find that the Mullah Nasruddin stories no longer "work" to open you up, you're more than ready for this strange collection of scenarios and incidents. Ah, that "depth-charge going off in your nagual" feeling again!

[Mike MacLeod]

Hi Jane,

Not my hand. It was a photo I found on the web. I thought the curiousness of it spoke to the topic.

Be creative by all means! This is how "it" gets passed around. As my Shaykh says, even if only one of us in a million is worth entering into paradise, if we hold hands, we'll all get pulled in after him (or her).

[Michael Larkin]

Okay Mike - it's gone on my Amazon wish list. I may order it once I've received and read "Reality" by Peter Kingsley.

[Jane]

Is that your hand Mike? It is hard to see this picture and not to think 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" and also to wonder how an apparently wild bird comes to be sitting so calmly on the hand of this red jacketed person.

The story of your father and his sculptures makes me want to try and find something in all the wood I have in my garden, some great big trees fell in a storm earlier this year and are now piled up in huge hunks at the base of other trees. I know it wasn't your intention to encourage such creativity but there you go, you have all the same. Who knows something good might come out of the storm, the felling, the burning and the wire brushing etc.

I am a fan of the Mullah and his donkey, I like the old ones and like finding new ones too, I also liked the first Nevit Ergin story I've read, thank you for the link.