asdfalice's photostream

apologies for leaving my flickr unattended for so long, and then suddenly inundating it with all these crazynewphotos.

i've spent the last two months in morocco - studying arabic, exploring and taking some time to put all of life on hold and just breathe. aside from getting treated to stunning scenery every weekend (when i travel) and gaining a decent grasp of basic اللغة العربية (maha and khalid, anyone? haha), i've been hugely blessed by having time & space to stop, think and pray.

no place like a sand dune, mid-sunrise, in the middle of the Sahara, to a.) figure out what really matters and b.) learn to be still.

[my final oral presentation is tomorrow - i'll finish all the tagging and captions etc afterwards :)]

hamza! i was toying with words to title this picture but couldn't quite find one that fit what i meant - pause? hold? a halted moment, a breath caught in your heart, stopped in your throat, all time frozen and shrunk to a point of fluttery stillness...?
then i realized, ء is the sound and feeling i was looking for. in arabic a ء often comes at the end of the word, and it's vocalized as a glottal stop (although i hate that phrase it's so ugly). basically it's like you're about to say something but your voice got blocked by a sudden wall of air and you-

pause! stop! catch it, halt! be still just a second the smallest of seconds, amidst your rushing gushing world of consonants and gargles
dash it all, stick a ء in, make everyone take a new breath and a closer look, lean in & spare a moment for the details.

when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

- jack kerouac, on the road