i read the "chapter" on death at my brothers funeral. i didn't know what else to say, so i let Kahlil say it for me.

so simple, yet so profound - i agree.

My friend Tish here enchouraged me to read Khalil Gibran only a few days ago. I read The Prophet first and cried throughout. Then I read The Madman and did the same.

The last poem in The Madman, "The Perfect World" describes precisely how I've felt about my life for many years. Like I'm lost, don't belong in such a perfect and ordered world, and I find myself asking, "why am I here?"

The answer continues to elude me, but there are times I feel I can glimps it, or feel it. It's difficult to describe a experience of something beyond rudimentary senses.

Like Khalil says, "Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. "

And it is my heart, my muse, that compelles me to write at times. When she does, I can hardly stop until she is satisfied.

Fortunately, like a snake, she has a slow digestive process. But when she's hungry, she strikes, and I am once again paralyzed until she decides to spit me out like a spent piece of chewing gum. After which I am left wadded and sticky on the ground, waiting to be an annoying suprise on the heal of some unfortunate oblivious passerby.

But that's only my resentment for having to live in this "Perfect World". Part of me also knows that .

I believe Khalil when he says that my heart knows in silence, like a secret which I can not know until I can remember "the language of that land" of which I am born, but have forgotten.