![image.png](https://images.ecency.com/DQmf71LDQyJyuCZLyU644D3d5Moaz47U6ijaYtxtoDrw2Bu/image.png)


***
Even though I live in sub-tropical South Florida, the Egyptian desert is never far, for me... 🐫

In less than a week, I will be delivering a talk to [Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality](https://www.wisdomwayscenter.org/events-calendar/118q3emrhg8rzzlqijuwl4hzmgj899) recounting my spiritual awakening, around twenty years ago, in the deserts of Egypt. 

Here's a poem that I will be reading as part of my presentation, and below that a video intro to my background that I hope you will enjoy:
***
![image.png](https://images.ecency.com/DQmYVt6QFJN1xdxHWe7v7rU4sPUPXGXYewUSpB9HjR9arUp/image.png)
***
**Desert Revisited**

*under a whirling skirt of sky
streaming light and stars
groping for that tremendous hem
gingerly over quicksand*

*as though steadied
beneath some tongue and dissolving
not the absence of sound
but the presence of silence*

*or, as if transfixed
by a gaze, stern-serene
surveying a dream
foreign-familiar*

*incorruptible starting point
inviolable horizon
where eye and mind are free
to meditate perfection*

*there, begin to uncover
buried in dust and disinterest
the immutable letter
(first of the Arabic alphabet) Alif*

—Yahia Lababidi
***
Video: https://fb.watch/alrlYO0lX1/