New year, new vistas

I love the new year, a sense of looking forward to the future, a sense of putting off the old and starting the new. New visions, new plans, new situations and new possibilities.

However, in reality, one year tends to be the same as the next, but for one thing, people.

The people we meet, the new relationships we form, are wonderful in themselves; and they also become the doorway to new experiences and opportunities.

Here is a poem about a Libyan man who is changing my life:

1. 
   Sam, the quintessential genteel Libyan,
   We stand aghast at your wistful, mystic air,
   As your culinary wonders touch deep,
   Our hidden needs for the wild, and esoteric.
   
2. Words you need, but what literary masterpiece,
   Could express the exotic meridian sunrise,
   Evoked, by your swarthy, otherworldly demeanour,
   And your wondrously, unsurpassable cuisine.
   
3. Your eyes speak a plaintive song,
   Heart’s longing to run on Arabian sands,
   In a mystic quest for a soul serene,
   Wading in waters of sun-kissed lands.
   
4. You are the dawn upon the Green,
   An endless source of dreams unseen.
   A Guru that guides to obscured shores,
   And unfolds keys to forbidden shores.

It has a jokey air to it because each time I would see him I would explain to him a new English word. As I wrote this poem for his birthday I packed it with new and interesting words for his burgeoning vocabulary.

He was the Falafel chef at the stand on Gloucester Green in Oxford, which was a gathering place for many North Africans. He was happy to have me around and through him I met many friends, men from Libya and Algeria. Through these friendships I gained an insight into those fascinating cultures where Arabs meet Berbers and something exotic and otherworldly is created.

He was also my first aid in my early, halting days of learning Arabic.

He is a deep friend, for himself, but for all the doors he has opened for me, for now, but also for the future.

May your new year be blessed with many such meetings. May you be bold and allow God to lead you to the new people, scenes and places that He has planned, if you would just believe and trust His inner promptings.

Happy new year,

Jake