ANAX PUBLISHING
Elucidating the nature of the human condition from the unitive perspective
Shadow and Light in the Borderland
Poems by Selim Schaurer
The heavenly rhythms of light and dark and the ebb and flow of oceans haunt these devotional poems. Capturing the beauty and grandeur of nature as well as the inner landscape of memory and anticipation, grief and gratitude, awareness and heedlessness, they celebrate a pattern and a Patterner subtly communicating in every aspect of our lives: in our loves, our losses, and in the ever-waiting center of our own being.
Towards the Heart of Silence
Poems by Selim Schaurer
Photography by Shabana Dar Baker
Following the wanderings of a Californian exploring the Lake District, these poems simultaneously trace the contours of a rugged landscape and the inner psyche. Contemplative, open-hearted, and attending to the moment’s gifts, herein are hymns to the silence in which we become both more present and qualified by a greater Presence.
I see now what wasn’t seen in the dark.
~ Shadow and Light in the Borderland
Light clarifies, too, the inner horizon.
Palms lean, quiver with anticipation.
Cool breezes cover the expanse.
Dawn birds with their melodies
Are filling my heart with endlessness
And the gift of awareness.
Nagging doubts and fears,
~ Towards the Heart of Silence
Hopes for a savior to this day’s remorse
And any others, still clenched in knots:
Each have left a bread crumb trail
To angst’s undoing.
A traveled path, cleared
By saints and lovers.
SELIM SCHAURER was born to travel. By the age of four he had lived in three U.S. states and Mexico. His first year spent in Miami Beach—literally on the beach—may explain his “beach bum” mentality. The seaside is home. With a high school education in Carmel, Big Sur—then a veritable bohemian enclave, with writers such as Steinbeck, Stevenson, London, Twain, and Jeffers—Selim’s playground was the forests and beaches, and he explored on horseback the wilderness of the Los Padres Forest.
After higher education at the University of California, Berkeley, in the engineering department, he worked for three years at Douglas Aircraft Co., before importunity nagged on the end of a broken heart and took him to the open roads of Europe and North Africa by motorcycle and camper van, discovering ancient culture and ancient knowledge.
He settled, married, raised a family, and plied his trades in another creative cauldron, Marin County. He explored many paths, including the Fourth Way school, Native American spirituality, Jungian psychology, and process-oriented vision. But it was his destiny to remember his attraction that day in Paris when he had read Jalaluddin Rumi for the first time.
He has for the last twenty years, mostly faithlessly, followed Rumi’s words until faith has begun informing him. In the Lake District his observations found expression in his first book of poetry.
He continues his vagabondage.
Reviews
Sublime poetry, so awakening, provocative, precise and clear, like the tinkling of a clear stream and the depth of a vast lake combined. Such a sweet gift to anyone who might pick it up.
~ FATIMAH
Contemplative and devotional, and with keen eye for both the subtle signs and the achingly beautiful patterning in our lives, Selim Schaurer’s poems are a source of deep solace and inspiration.
~ DANIEL
A beautiful collection of soul-captures that make me look at my inner and outer landscape with fresh eyes. A must read for poets, nature-lovers, and all creative hearts.
~ SAIMMA
Vision
Anax Publishing seeks to explore and publish reflections both by word and in image that elucidate the nature of the human condition, its place in the natural world, its purpose and possibilities from the unitive perspective. We posit that everything seen, felt, intuited, or otherwise cognized consciously or unconsciously emanates from a singular source and is that Source at once creating and reflecting. We take our cosmology from perennial wisdom as taught in the Mevlevi tradition and the words of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi. All errors in thought are ours. We apologize and invite conversation and correction.
The image of the dragonfly and our name are rich with meaning. Anax comes from the ancient Greek meaning “king, lord.” There was a mythological Anax, son of Gaia (Earth). Anax is also the genus of the dragonfly. A series of synchronicities culminated when a stranger came to the bench near a fountain in a 300-year-old topiary garden and offered a fresh exuvia of a mature dragonfly. It seems the nymph instar go through a series of maturing stages until fully formed in a process called “incomplete metamorphosis.” This, too, is our mission.
Anax Publishing 