cosmography a small register of standing things

i. on the word, and what is meant by it تعريف

ii. the co-ordinates of the desk حدود الطاولة

iii. the same day in five calendars في تقاويم متعددة

Each calendar gives the day a different name. Set side by side, they give the day more meaning than a numerical dates do.

the hijri reckoning here is computed by mean synodic months and may slip from the moon-sighted calendar by a day in either direction; for the strict ruling, ask your nearest muezzin.

iv. the twenty-eight mansions of the moon منازل القمر

In the older arabic astronomy each night the moon halts in a different mansion (منزلة) along the ecliptic. The fourteen below are the visible half; the other fourteen pass under the horizon while we sleep. The dates beside them are roughly when the sun, in its turn, reaches each.

today, the sun is in the 6^th mansion, الهَنْعَة, al-hanʿah, the brand (ecliptic longitude 84.9°)

, continued in the lower hemisphere; for the catalogue see al-Bīrūnī.

v. the moon, the month before and after القمر هذا الشهر

the next four crossings

vi. stars visible tonight, from this latitude نجوم الليلة

A short list, given in the order they will arrive in the sky this month. Names are arabic in origin where I can tell, since most of them are.

• Vega, wāqiʿ, the falling eagle; in lyra, blue, very brightrises ≈ 21:00
• Altair, al-ṭāʾir, the flying one; in aquilarises ≈ 22:30
• Deneb, dhanab al-dajājah, tail of the hen; in cygnusrises ≈ 21:40
• Arcturus, al-simāk al-rāmiḥ, the lance-bearer; orange, in boötesalready up
• Spica, al-simāk al-aʿzal, the unarmed one; in virgo, blue-whitealready up
• Antares, qalb al-ʿaqrab, heart of the scorpion; red giantrises ≈ 23:10
• Polaris, al-jadī, the kid; the pole star, low herealways

on a clear night, looking from the roof, you can see perhaps twenty, and a hundred in the western desert. orion is gone for the season; he will return in the autumn, by way of the east.

ix. the weeks of my life أسابيع العمر

x. what is within reach, at this moment ما في متناول اليد

An inventory of objects within the radius of one arm extended from the chair. The list is honest, which is to say it leaves a good deal out.

• ×1 a clay cup of tea green, with mint
• ×1 a clay cup, empty, kept for company a smaller one
• ×4 books, of which two are open: either / or, ibn baṭṭūṭah
• ×1 a black notebook, A5, a fifth full not a moleskine, kindly
• ×1 a fountain pen, lamy safari, M nib diamine oxblood
• ×3 other pens
• ×1 a small photograph of my mother in college
• ×1 a wooden ruler, twelve inches
• ×? books i mean to read, on a shelf I will not photograph

last edited: 2026-05-08

xi. a creed, kept short on purpose معتقد

What I hold to, on this particular day, written here so as not to drift. Subject to revision in private; not in public.

1. That there is one God, and that mercy is His usual mood.
2. That a sentence written badly today can be rewritten kindly tomorrow.
3. That writing every day, even badly, is itself a prayer.
4. That the journal should be private, the blog public, and the heart neither.
5. That the moon is a sufficient calendar.
6. That suffering is real and so is repair; the second is harder to write down.
7. That to love a place well, one must learn to walk in it well.

xii. the people i listen to, in no particular order من أصغي إليهم

Not authorities of the doctrinal kind. Voices i return to when my own becomes thin.

• ibn ʿarabion a good day
• etty hillesumfor what i cannot say in my own voice without embarrassment, and for not flinching from a word that ought to be flinched at
• søren kierkegaardfor the diaries; for not pretending the question is settled; for the courtesy he extended his enemies
• georges bernanosfor proving that one can write about faith without first apologising
• czesław miłoszfor the sentence; for the small italics in The Captive Mind; for keeping a list of books that helped him survive
• annie dillardfor paying attention as a discipline rather than a moral pose
• my motherwho has not read most of the books, and is right about more of them than i am

xiii. apophthegms حِكَم صغيرة

Short sentences i have copied into the back of various notebooks.

xiv. things i refuse, with greater or lesser vehemence من المرفوضات

• quietlythe marketer's em-dash, or nowadays GPT's, any use of the corporate "we"
• more firmlywriting for the algorithm; reading reviews of a book i mean to read; replying to a letter the same hour i receive it
• more firmlyany prose that begins "in today's fast-paced world…"
• at lengththe sentence "everything happens for a reason"; it does, sometimes, but the reason is rarely improving
• at lengthcynicism for its own sake; the english phrase "to be honest," as a pre-fix for everything that follows
• flatlyany document that has the word synergy in it

xv. small private fears, listed alphabetically في المخاوف الصغيرة

• a.that the people I love will mistake my quietness for indifference
• b.that the river will recede
• c.that one day i will do somethnig magnific that my dad could not be shown
• e.that the language will go before the speaker, that there will be no one left who calls a thing by its proper name
• f.that i will mistake a habit for a vocation, or vice versa
• h.large fears, of which i will not write here, since to name them is to feed them, and they have eaten enough already

xvi. a note on the method في المنهج