I broke ursa major and put her in my pocket
by Nooralhuda Al Qayem
Noor is a graduate student in the SMArchS Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, having graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and the History and Theory of Architecture. In her research she is interested in the intersection between media and spatial design and colonial, capitalistic, and patriarchal oppressive structures, especially within the SWANA region. Previously the Editorial Assistant for the books department at Frame Publishers, she edited and coordinated architecture and interior design books.
Figure 1: I broke ursa major and put her in my pocket: the exhibition space (2024)
Everything I have ever come to know and understand about the world and myself has been in pieces. My identity is a backwards prism, the colors rendered null by some mysterious optical alchemy. It is a broken constellation I struggle to hold in my hand. It is a shattered pinch pot, the pieces forever changed.
A question— is migration always a trauma? I mostly feel fine.
We live in an age of identity, with endless methods to qualify, measure, distil, and discover ourselves ad nauseum. A number, an acronym, a constellation, an essence. An endless self-curated auto-taxonomy.
A question— I make sense to myself, but how do I explain that to others?
A diasporan is a person made up of pieces; of fragments of times and geographies; a collage; a montage. There are temporalities and geographies that we hold within ourselves, places and times we have lived in and through, but also those we haven’t which nevertheless inhabit our bodies and minds. The magic of our being is in the dialectic mutation when our worlds collide. Who we are is the resulting supernova and the mess we clean up after it.
A question— if I am made of pieces, must I measure each one?
Figure 2: I broke ursa major and put her in my pocket: the triptych
In this sculpture series I made three pinch pots. One I left whole (sat on a wall), the others I sliced into 22 pieces each. I left one set as they were (had a great fall) and molded the pieces of the other (all the king’s horses and all the king’s men). had a great fall could theoretically be put back together, but all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, will never again be able to recover its past life. The prism of identity is forever altered beyond repair in the diaspora but can nonetheless be combined/negotiated/reconciled to make unexpected shapes and structures.
The Major Arcana of the Tarot is a story told in 22 parts. The Fool (card 0) jumps off a cliff and travels through life’s mountains and valleys, ending up in The World (card 21). But Tarot is meant to be a mirror, not a narrative. Its usefulness and employment as a tool for self-reflection lies in the relationships that emerge when the fragments are decontextualized and recontextualized, in different shapes, orders, and orientations.
A question— Am I looking for something to believe in?
Belief is a choice mediated through ambiguity. The power of mystical practice lies in its infinite and randomized potentialities, and the choices we make when contextualizing ambiguities and reassembling their fragments. A tarot reading has an undefined number of potential meanings, it is up to the reader to choose one of them to believe in. This practice is not divinatory; it does not predict the future. Rather, it reflects and reveals potential worlds in the present and empowers the reader to select one. The choosing of one world over another implicates its future, and in this way, the mystical practice collapses present and future temporalities into their immediate potential becoming.
A question— can anything be Tarot?
What makes tarot work is the deployment of ambiguity in the cards’ iconography, which lends them their particular but imprecise energetics. This opens the door for multiple potentialities, especially when the cards are put in dialogue with each other. Poetry operates in a similar way, engaging with unexpected uses of language in both form and content to produce new meanings. The project of I broke ursa major is the assignment of a diasporan poem (that is, a poem from a poet writing in diaspora) to each card in the Major Arcana. The allocation was informed by shared themes and imageries between the individual cards and their delegated poems. The instances of inexactitude in the distribution contribute to the idiosyncrasy of this poetic tarot. I then translated this deck to a hypertext fiction, allowing visitors to select a card and navigate across the poems through interactive links, eventually compiling a constellation of visited cards/poems as a tarot reading.
A question— will you be my puppet master?
Figure 3: I broke ursa major and put her in my pocket: the hypertext fiction
Hovering the cursor over a hyperlinked line, one can see the translucent ghost of which card the passage leads to. Importantly, however, this is not always the case, and the moments of slippage and serendipitous redirection complicate notions of choice and agency in both practices of self-discovery and mysticism.
A question— where do I go from here?
Figure 4: I broke ursa major and put her in my pocket: the found poetry
A final transmutation. Using the I broke ursa major hypertext, I produced three poem compilations and printed them on a single sheet. Then with translucent film in the same dimensions, I produced three found poems. The three original amalgamations are named Aleph, Bā, and Tā Major. The red found poems, Aleph, Bā, and Tā Minor are visual representations of the hyperlinks which led from one poem to the next in their production.
Finally, Aleph, Bā, and Tā Delta are the produced found poems. Found poetry is typically written directly on the source material, forming a palimpsestic text in conversation with the original and the appropriation. Here, the found poems spawn a formal gesture, one that may be superimposed onto texts other than their source, giving rise to unanticipated wanderings, however nonsensical.
A question— how many overlapping fragments before I disappear?
Below I have reproduced the found poems. In the Publication as Worldmaking exhibition these would have only been readable by matching the Delta translucent sheet with the corresponding Major poem compilation. The capitalizations and punctuation of the source material is maintained, and each new line is a circled word or passage. The source poems are credited underneath.
Aleph Delta
I’ve never been proud of you,
dreaming.
in a dim
imagination across the
lost
gaping wound,
helplessly forgotten
in Purgatory,
disguised in the
passion
for
that
silent horizon,
Before the Dawn
where I sit, frozen, unable to make a sound,
trading them and our memories
making it difficult for us to pretend
our imaginations,
Will
guide us to ourselves and our tragedy,
Once and once again
whispering good morning
for my loyal loves
again washed away.
with
as always: Everything.
After:
To the little girl in a village home I never met by Jennifer Wong, 2020
I Was In A Hurry by Dunya Mikhail, 2017
Once Upon A Time: Surfside, Miami by Richard Blanco, 2023
My Father Sings, to My Embarrassment by Sandra M. Castillo, 2002
Feet That Come Before the Dawn by Ramzi Salem, 2024
Bā Delta
there is a prayer at dawn
when my shadow is as long as I am tall
the sentimental
stops talking to you
lost
by boat,
in a sea of milk
but I learned it’s okay to glance down
on the back of the wind
in open whale mouths
at least once a day?
where
you will find
wide caves of
a fearful trill
boundless, limitless
on a nightmare scream
of things unknown but longed for still
Glad to be without you
for a while.
I think you could keep doing this forever.
So you might as well
been duped.
in the dark.
with love in my mouth?
as two spice-drenched beloveds
plucked green off
a little pouch of
paradise,
double-wreathed with
the century
served in hand
tiniest in all creation.
After:
Waiting by Noor Naga, 2020
Invitation by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, 2017
Caged Bird by Maya Angelou, 1994
How do I know when a poem is finished? by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952
Epiphany by Angela Jackson, 2023
Ode to the Tiniest Dessert Spoon in All Creation by Karen An-hwei Lee, 2018
Tā Delta
I dwell in the midst of
a nebula of confused elements,
whose dreams are arranged,
weighed,
recorded and catalogued.
governed by rules of blameless accuracy.
of consummate excellence,
of unfulfilled passion,
of lost souls, thou who
yearn for darkness
Oh, Rattling Chain,
narrow cage
his bars of rage
I’ve been let out.
I’ve been put back in.
I am in the dark.
the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
spreading our shrouds for us,
selling us our dreams,
leading us to our doom.
It won’t be long before the night
whose fragrant nectar has rooted in our throats
Has taken residence in my heart
whose thoughts are assorted
the master-thought of the universe.
a mad tempest that seeketh
thou who art lost amongst the gods?
After:
“The Perfect World” by Khalil Gibran, 1923
Caged Bird by Maya Angelou, 1994
Ode to the Prison Shadows by Najib al-Rayyes, translated by Sahar Ishtiaque Ullah, 1992
Epiphany by Angela Jackson, 2023
Feet That Come Before the Dawn by Ramzi Salem, 2024
Figures 1 by Author
Figures 2-4 by Gearoid Dolan