تَبْغي النَّجَاةَ وَلَمْ تَسْلُكْ طَرِيقَتَهَا إنَّ السَّفِينَةَ لاَ تَجْرِي عَلَى اليَبَسِ الاسلام سفينة النجاة فى الدنيا والآخرة
Jun 17, 2021
Jun 7, 2021
Jun 4, 2021
May 3, 2021
Time for ink to run with blood
قِف يازمان على مَشارِف صَمتِنا
فالصّمتُ في بعض الأمورِ بيانُ
Kindly halt O time
Upon the verge of our silence
It is, indeed, worth many a word
Driving home several of points
(Translation mine)
In almost every field of life, many and strange sometimes are the answers worked out and proposed to good and bad questions regarding it and regarding what is beyond it and these answers and these questions certainly keep diverging from one person to another depending on the degree of disposition and state of affairs but the best answers to the worst of questions will always come from those who learn, seek to learn everywhere even in China and then would never feel tired, albeit feeling sometimes hampered and very often short, of learning on a regular day to day and night after night basis including sunny days, rainy days and holidays.
If knowledge is power, then it stands to reason that wisdom is how to invest that power (savoir faire/ the know how) so that it can help the good planning and careful building of bridges between those who know and those who are struggling on their way of obtaining knowledge rather than keep wasting time, money and energy on fruitless tarrying and parrying here and there mostly out of ignorance, egocentricity and xenophobic rejection of the old, the new and the different!
The world in which we are living now is unfortunately turned upside down and the most fortunate and strongest of mice and men in it are on their knees (notice now how honest and articulate they have become in revealing their feelings of fearfulness and cowardice in front of something invisible!) not just because there isn’t enough knowledge (The What) but also because, and here the reason becomes quickly its own consequence, there isn’t enough wisdom (and the how is now turning into how come!) so as to naturally go about profiting humanly from it and most of all safeguarding themselves and others from the dangers involved and which are mostly generated by them willingly or unwillingly.
Knowledge is not always human but wisdom, according to the best of human knowledge, has always been and will continue to be and thus should remain an added value catering for the welfare and sustaining the journey of those who are still human and who are always resisting and insisting on being human and for whom learning is always an important part and an incremental process leading to new questions and fresh answers.
Chokri Omri
(Regueb city, April 2021)
May 2, 2021
My Homeland وطني
Apr 22, 2021
الكتب، نصّ لجوزيف كونراد
Apr 19, 2021
We belong to life!
Apr 15, 2021
Mar 13, 2021
Nov 18, 2020
Oct 18, 2020
الحدود
عالمٌ جميلٌ
ظللنا نردّد
كيف نسينا؟
هل طرقنا الأبواب
أم ترانا أيضا نسينا؟
هاقد أغلقت الحدود
وانسدت الطّرق
بالله عليك أخبرنا
يا حلما يعاند ويكابر
ماذا يضيرك لو صرت يوما
فراشة في الرّبيع تطير؟
وأنت أيتّها الرّياح
إلى الوراء ارجعيني
وقومي بتحطيم ألواحي
وأحلامي وقاربي الصّغير
ولكن هذا وعد منّي
أن أقاوم وأبقى على العهد
شكري عمري
Oct 7, 2020
Sep 2, 2020
Ode to a mean and far cloud
O distantly mean cloud!
Don't you see?
Don't you gather?
The weather is angry and freaking out ..
I look out for you and for myself
while you keep running
from me and fade out ..
O sole cloud!
this earth is full of thorns
without you.
and the panels of my cottage
are sad and dark ..
Don't be like the false world
appealing to hypocrites
giving them fake crops ..
and to the good folks
making a waste land ..
~ Chokri Omri
Sep 1, 2020
الغيمة البخيلة
يَا غيمتِي البخيلةُ البعيدهْ
ألا تنظُرينْ؟
ألا تفهمينْ؟
هذا الطّقسُ غاضبٌ ومخيفْ ..
أبحثُ عنك وعن نفسِي
وأنت تهرُبينَ وتختفينْ
يا غيمتِي الوحيدةْ
من دونك الأرضُ أنبتتْ أشواكْ
وهذا الكوخُ ألواحه داكنةٌ حزينةْ
فلا تكوني كما الدّنيا الكاذبةْ
تُعجب بزرعها الكاذب فجّارْ
وتهينُ بقحطها وجدبها أخيارْ
ش/ع
Aug 27, 2020
AXES AND TREES
Karl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, once made a statement in which he said: "The world will ask you who you are, and if you don't know, the world will tell you (end of quote)." Now, this is what first comes to my thinking with regard to Jung's remark. It is maybe right at first sight but, in which case, it should be made clear that the answers we receive or seek out to advance or refrain from advancing to this type of questions are changing all the time as we continue to grow up and learn/unlearn from the world and from ourselves.
A few things then remain more to us hidden and unsaid than what might be found in the answers we give or receive from the world. We are a little better or worse than any questions of containment asked or answers of divergence, resistance and insistence suggested or still things of convergence, nodding and submission to the social norms and orders condoned.
When this is understood, we now trespass the gate of Karl Jung and say the following thing however farfetched or anachronistic it might be seen. There are no sufficient answers to those so called uneasy and deep-end questions grappling with the depth of the human experience in its simple and complex dimensions. And there are no free, easy and ubiquitous answers to come out from there.
To conclude, there currently seems to be, to my thinking, we have got two satisfying answers to this. One of them is already offered by Karl Jung himself. In it, he said: "In each of us there is another, whom we do not know (end of quote)." The second one is perhaps capable of sending shivers down the reader's spine. This is because when emperors ponder and think, they can also become historians and philosophers. And Here is the gist of what Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor, had hammered out with his axe on the tree of time: a request instead of a command to think and:
"reflect upon the rapidity with which all that exists and is coming to existence is swept past us and disappears from sight. For substance is like a river in perpetual flow.. And ever at our side is the immeasurable span of the past and the yawning gulf of the future in which all things vanish away. Then how is he not a fool who, in the midst of all this, is puffed up with pride, or torment, or bewails his lot as though his troubles would endure for any great while (end of quote)?"
~ Chokri Omri
(Tunis, 26/08/2020)
Jul 20, 2020
Only the stupid can believe that !
It is said that, in these times as in previous and coming times, only the evil can afford to be good. I do not beg to differ because, I should think, there is no need for that and, at the same time, it is far from being important. In the meantime, I find it necessary to posit the following supposition: the one who said that (only the evil can afford to be good) might have been desperate, weak and coward enough and did not want to admit what he had made of himself and reduced it to apart, of course, from shying away from making allowance for others to find out about that.
He should have muffled. If the evil can afford to be good, it will not, I reckon, continue to be evil. And even if it can, it must be for want of something of its kind and not for a noble or decent reason. It simply has got a bad role to play which is that of pretending to be good so as to make believe that real goodness does not exist or maybe has for long taken a trip from which there is no return. It thus causes desperate, weak and coward souls to condone and yield to it instead of resisting and insisting. The clumsy and ridiculous play is thus expected to keep going on.
But certainly not, for one thing, such a sweepingly superfluous and unwarranted statement can have an influence on those who knew and also felt deep in their hearts that evil is painting water no one will drink. They did not feel, furthermore, any need for drinking it. The One who gave them life has also given them good water. They simply do not need anyone besides to play trivial games on them and paint fake things for them. These are but few among the many who are trapped and deceived. I therefore and hereby submit that the ship of this deceptive, misleading and crippling statement has sailed by every literal and figurative means and has also sunk with the many passengers and shareholders of it in the vast and deep ocean of life.
Chokri Omri
Tunis, 19/07/2020