August 9, 2004
What justice can prose possibly do to
the soul poetry that is Haji?
Unbeknownst to many, Haj was actually
the offspring of a human father and a
female alatus, a winged creature that
otherwise bears a remarkable resemblance
to a human. He was named by his
star-crossed birthparents after the
magical land in which he was born, in a
universe parallel to ours yet very
different in many ways, most notably the
absence of celery. (It was a cruel,
harsh world in that respect, but in few
others.) His dear mother had but a few
days to cradle him in her gossamer wings
before he was spirited away (some say by
Hermes himself) to our space-time,
narrowly escaping the clutches of his
home world’s Anti-Miscegenation League,
which strictly forbade relations between
humans and alati. Upon his arrival on
Earth, his name was immediately changed
to Haj to forever disguise his origins,
even from his conscious mind. However,
deep within him, Haji still bears a
soul-knowledge, if not a cerebral one,
of his origins, and this has resulted in
a mysterious air of other-ness about him
that remains elusive, even as this
otherness reaches out to make connection
and receives gracefully your own
reaching out to connect in kind. ******
Ahh, but enough tales of magic and
wonderment, you say. You want the
skinny on the “real-world” stuff! Well,
when he’s not reading his dog-eared copy
of _Anna Kournikova: A Life in
Pictures_ (which he is very good at
holding steady in his left hand), Haj
can be found gleefully generating
delightful ear-candy, whipping dance
floors (or fields, or what-have-you)
into a frenetic flurry of ferocious,
fervent, and downright delectable
abandon. You see, Haj is an
instrumental member of the Sonic Jihad,
an organization which remains shrouded
in mystery, having no physical address,
board of directors, or any such
trappings of the modern business world.
(They do, however, have voicemail,
which means that they must be legit.)
Under the auspices of this mysterious
yet august body, Haj is able to set
bodies into motion all around the world.
No myth of fingerprints, the Hajster is
a veritable one-person sonic tsunami,
followed from venue to venue by his own
adoring “entourhaj!” ******
Haj has a driven way about him, which
his friends refer to as “intensity” and
his closest, dearest friends refer to as
“obsessiveness.” He has been known to
go without sleep for days in the pursuit
of kinesthecstasy-inducing auditory
greatness, to eschew food and water as a
test of his devotion to
Bingowithkyuandzi (Shinto god of
Scrabble), and to meditate for weeks on
the nature of perfection and how it is
expressed through mangoes. His
asceticism in the name of
self-improvement is second only to his
distaste for the Dave Matthews Band. ******
Despite a physique that would send
Adonis into paroxysms of jealous wailing
and gnashing of teeth, Haji remains very
sensitive about his freckled testicle.
This manifests itself in what appears to
be conversational, musical, and
board-game-related snobbery, but Haj is
really just a down-to-earth, regular guy
underneath that aura of cultural
elitism. But don’t let the fleecy
cozy-looking outerwear fool you – inside
lurks a cold, hard, calculating
wordsmith who will awe you not only with
his funky rhythms but also his funky
contributions to the Scrabble board
(though rarely his funk, for he is
indeed an avid bathist). Don’t even
_think_ of playing some pathetic parlor
game with the man; he is a two-game
wonder (and wonder you will, when you
encounter his steely gaze across the
spinning Scrabble board of battle), with
the duct-taped dictionary to prove it.
His sesquipedalian offerings run the
gamut from “aa” to “zee.” ******
But in all seriousness, Haj is a pretty
decent human being. I haven’t known him
very long, but I have managed to learn a
little not only of his prowess as a DJ
and Scrabble player, but also of his
generosity (having directly benefited
from his extensive sharing of his time,
energy, and personal resources),
intelligence (we’re talking the lonely,
existential-angst-inducing end of the
bell curve here), and what seems to be
(so far) a commitment to living life
fully and deeply - admirable qualities
all. Haji’s angels would never leave no
matter what he thinks. A soul like his
is surrounded by angels always.
