Baraka
Beyond this mere corporeal existence…
This passage of time encased in a
flimsy sheath of skin,
there comes a moment when you
hope to experience the sensation of
something other than
the surge of fluid through your veins.

You masticate.
You copulate.
You defecate.
These things are given.
These things you expect.

Wading out of the ocean’s surf
like the primordial beast of ancestry,
that to which you’ve evolved
gives in to every sensory perception.

You experience the sense of touch as
rivulets of ocean flow down your spine.
The smell of brine through your nostrils.
The taste of salt over your lips.
The vision of a conch shell
there exposed in the receding tide.
The sound of…
And oh yes,
this is special…
The sound of the surf as it crashes on sand
and slithers away.
And this is a sound that stays with you
long after you’ve crawled up the beach,
gone bipedal
and headed inland.

Time may pass and with it
a multitude of sounds will vie for your attention.
Yet there will always be that serenade of the ocean.
And what resonation is deeper than this?
What sound vaster?

“Baraka.”
Let me utter that again.
“Baraka.”
Let me define it for you.
Baraka:
A transcendental sense of sound
that is unheard aurally,
yet you intuit its existence.
The odor of the holy.
The fragrance of the divine.
A sense of that from
beyond your corporeal being—
and yet not.
That of something extrinsic to experience
which you perceive to exist and yet…
let’s face it.
You will never be able to grasp this sense
for this is not a sense you can
hold in your hand.
Or is it?

There from a musty shelf of memories,
you pull down that conch shell
and place it to your ear.
There you hear that long forgotten
surf of amphibian ancestry.
And there in your primitive mind,
you discern nothing less than
divinity.
Behold Baraka!

And yet…
And yet there’s a chance that
all of this
is illusion.
That that which you attribute to
a mystical realm
might in fact be a misinterpretation of
that which exists in the here and now.
That what you are experiencing
as you hold that shell to your ear
is simply the reverb and
acoustic amplification of a sound
which emits from your inner ear.
Yes. An aural manifestation of
that inner you.
That coursing of blood through your veins.
As close to divinity as you’ll get.

Indeed,
if you’re looking for Baraka,
you’ve found it.

And yes,
precisely what you have found,

is you.

©06 Jack Hubbell