About

Like diamonds in the night, too often we have been spurned, denigrated, for being uncomfortably  under foot. Like diamonds obscured by darkness, many have found it easier to deny or ignore the light we bear, the brilliance we are. No longer will we — or anyone — be crude stones, kicked to the curb, made to be the street, to pave the footpaths of those who seek  to exalt themselves at the expense of others. Consider these words, these works, to be the reveille, the evocation of the indigenous essence, the tropical fruit of this planet. As the sun rises on our realm, expect the squints and protestations of those unaccustomed to the light, our light, each of us diamonds in our own right, carbon crystallized.

Many of the meanings and references from our recent past have been revealed to be in error, or inadequately expressed, from an inclusive perspective. Darkness is not inherently ‘bad’, particularly if you are in the tropics, where the cool of shade is a primal form of sanctuary. Similarly, we are being impacted by an escalating rhythm of discovery & realization about the role of the ‘dark’ in the universe — dark matter, dark energy and glial cells, the ‘dark matter’ of the brain.

These new insights & perspectives filter down slowly into our social consciousness as premises and tools for discernment in ways many are often unaware of. Quantum mechanics helped inspire a very different mode of social interaction & lifestyle[*]. We are in an era of experience where many aspects of our existence are merging, overlapping, meshing in ways we have not seen in millennia, at a time when the paradigm for being and seeing was very different from what it is now.

Our art, literature, music, films — and now virtual venues like Second Life — are the mediums across which these new colors and symbols are conveyed, remixed and repackaged as new, but often being essentially variations on ancient ways. We are sifters, sieves, working to extract the nurturing essence, that which empowers us, from the frenzied whirl we move through each day. These diamonds, culled from the night of our perception, are presented here, the shared harvest of a farmer of consciousness, fruit from my orchard of poet trees…

“We are the digital drummers of the technical ether,
counteracting the inherent arrhythmia
and
harmonizing the fundamental discordance
which is the wilderness West.
As soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, mind to mind,
I & I be warriors,
our weapons lightning & the music of thunder.”

jamal ali
© 18 march 1991