How to Make a Moment

Lost in a chain of non-linear non-moments.
The never-ending well of not happening, not doing, not wanting, not trying and not having.
Non-Moments, every one of them.
The minutes spent brushing teeth without music murmuring in the background, seconds lapsed tying laces without registering the weather, hours spent staring off into television commercials blocking out the smell of caramel.

We are curious as to what makes her carve this expression. "What exactly is a 'non-moment' Maria?"
All those faded scraps of time spent staring into space?
Or is it the numbing of senses for sensibilities?
But then are they 'lost', what an unfair analogy for an individual who perpetually catches herself fantasizing about lying stoned in the middle of her steel grey mat floor, listening to 'Moonlight in Vermont' by Chet Baker and waiting for the swirls to form on her ceiling. It is not the swirls that bring on the high, it is the wait for them.
Toes tingling, breathing shallow and starstruck lunacy...all spent in the anticipation of tingling toes, shallow breathing and legitimate lunacy.

Yesterday's caught and bound in today's photo albums bring new lows, the smiling 'you's and them's' bring lows, the tears bring highs. For now she is an ice-cube swimming in our glass of neat vodka, and wondering why the blues are more beautiful than ever.
Wondering why she never learned to play the saxophone.
Wondering why she never wanted to.
Wondering why she under-rates the importance of stillness.
Wondering why she is alone.
Wondering how smoke can take so long to curl into oblivion.
Wondering how many non-moments it takes to make a moment?

Then they come, unabashed... in waves.
The swirls. Shadows behind the mirrors of locked eyelids.
Bottle green, Electric blue, and Tangerine Pink.

And there you have it.... a Moment.

And so it begins...

There is much to be said of our country, its people and our predicament at present, and many have said it, however what still lacks definition is the course we are setting out for ourselves. In the past two weeks I have come to the very brash realisation that among the three major corners that define the Pakistani triangle that ‘Finally gives a damn’ in civil society, I belong to the Journalist corner. Just in case it needed clarification there is also a Student corner and a Lawyer corner.
You see I have very carefully avoided the responsibility, thrill and work ethic that belong to my particular fraternity over the four years since I have graduated with a degree in Journalism. I have done this in spite of the fact that I have worked in both a national newspaper and am now working for a national television station which has been put to the back burner…but that’s another story for another time. I prefer to keep my head down and skulk in corners but it seems Uncle Musharraf has put paid that. I may be the only Pakistani who can still be duly grateful to the Great Leader for helping me discover a notion of latent nationalism within myself.

I usually deflect all of my career responsibilities by claiming to be a ‘writer’ not a ‘reporter’, now it appears that both titles are equally fraught with involvement, emotion and drive. I think what has inspired me to join in the haphazard, but hopefully well intentioned, crusade to save the country is – to put it plainly- the fact that people finally give a toss. In the past two weeks since my colleagues have been protesting daily at the Lahore press club, I have seen a shift in psyche – the ‘burger’ psyche, to be specific.

We that not-so-elusive brand of Pakistani yuppie twenty something’s who can talk, think and trace down on our fingertips the reasons why we wish to leave this country and settle abroad have been bothered enough to take to the streets, albeit in our designer sunglasses and Nike’s. The protests have made it plain that there are two brands of Pakistani youth co-existing right now, the PBCA (Pakistani Born Confused American) and the regular home grown garden blend. These two people have never really been introduced before and the powers that be are probably unaware that they have made this particular introduction. We now march from our offices, to the press club to the high courts chanting slogans in both English and Urdu (for solidarity) and are recognising the need to tolerate the ‘other’ for something bigger than the both of us.
It is funny how fascism works sometimes.

To those of us who perceive ourselves through the visors of the ‘rest of the world’ we know our USP (the Advertising analogy means ‘Unique Selling Proposition): Pakistani’s are world renown for their incredible collective prowess at bigotry, cheating and taking the quintessential short cut. Presently we are also one of the most dangerous people in the world, which is probably the only thing keeping us that spot the UN has us believe we will forgo in ten years on the world map. We have never been a patriotic people barring cricket matches and we have never been loyal to a cause of our own.
The latter appears to be changing.

I have been asking around my fellow-burgers what they are experiencing right now and the sentiment can be summed up like this:
“I’ve never really heard of a solid reason to love this country, I always grew up knowing that we needed to hate India, just never that we needed to love Pakistan,” said a friend of mine. I can relate to this sentiment, having always resented the fact that my generation was accused of apathy and lacking patriotism. We, the children of the Zia era, have only ever hard grand tales of Pakistani heroism and independence, we have seen differently. We have never known true leadership or anything to really take pride in, so why the expectations? If anything we were bred with a sense of anti-Indianism and not pro-Pakistanism. National anthems and ‘Dil Dil Pakistan’ always followed a sense of knocking down the neighbour, never real pride.

Something has begun to change though, it is hard to point it out in a canvas, but it is perceptible in the impression it leaves upon Pakistani people these days, something in the air…

“I’m not really sure I can honestly profess that I love my country, even now, but for the first time I’m trying to. I care enough to want it to stay on the map and I’m willing to get jailed or take a beating or two for that – somehow it finally seems worth it”, Abid Ali, currently a protester.

No sce teo ipsum

Know Thyself

I have lost count of the number of times I have heard people use the expression "I don't care what people think" and marvelled at how silly they sound saying it. A better way to put it might be "I 'try' not to care what people think or say about me", "I don't let people's opinions influence my decisions" but both are inevitable, and lets face it, both sound morbidly defeatist. I have had to come to terms with the fact that we all navigate our lives away or towards the 'people' that surround us, either way they effect the latitudes and longitudes of our course. If you are a rebel you are one because you do not conform to societal standards; if you are a conformist you are one because you do; If you are a nihilist it is because you just don't care like other people do; if you're a zealot its because you need other people to care as much as you do. People are unavoidable.
Even if you avoid them...
especially then.

It really would be a relief to -for once- not bother with the added perception of a larger, general, phantom audience. To look in the mirror and appreciate ones' face for what stands out pleasant rather than being bombarded with what needs fixing. It would be comforting to be able to take solace in literature, music and films without the added element of their ratings, their perceived triteness or depth or the general consensus that defines the "in thing". It would be good to just like or dislike something, anything on the premise of 'taste' that has not been outlined by the media, society, religion or culture. Then again, would it still be called taste without the bearings that confine it.

I have been tracing my steps back, which appears to be my strong point, thereby debilitating any chance I may have to move forward and I realise that all of my 'identities' both past and present have not only been effected by outside influence but practically outlined by it. At this point the realisation of trying to avoid concerns other than ones own becomes an added plight. The fact that I am presently trying quite hard not to profess opinions that belong to others has left me conflating abstract musings to define what is mine, if there is anything in my corners that I can claim copyrights to. I have always hated the notion that all creativity is essentially borrowed... I believe the polite inflection is "inspired". Somehow it cheapens both the muse and the musings. Recycling however, appears to have made it as the trump card of our time.

Recently, the borrowed perceptions that have driven me include those that pertain to my writing, my beliefs and my goals for the future. My ridiculous and rather pathetic propulsion to impress people almost always proves to be my downfall - the need to appear and sound intelligent inevitably trumps any chance of being so. I can no longer write without considering my readers, which kills the process or the solace I once sought in the simplicity of the exercise. Words no longer flow or skate pages because I debate whether they deserve to be there. My bigotry is boundless.

Is this really what I want... a sense of completion through an incomplete albeit hyper-intelligent notion of reality? I have learned that this also appears to be what I seek in the limited company I voluntarily solicit. People that make me feel dumb tend to impress me, which is rather silly when one comes to think of it, because it essentially means that I shall never be content with myself or anyone else. Perfection is not a human trait and by the looks of it, it isn't a divine attribute either. No one can 'know' everything about anything, so it is essentially a lost cause.

Perhaps I should stick to the 'look for someone to just 'be' with' adage rather than the 'look for someone to 'learn' from' notion. Teachers tend to become overbearing more often than not. They need students to feel smart, students need them to hopefully become 'not dumb'. Both conditions stem from insecurity and a care for what the 'other thinks'. I don't think there is such as thing as learning for the heck of it but it is a grand ideal to give up on.
Then again... I remain the girl who thrives on a perennial pat on the head awarded for a good answer given in class.

I think I am a masochist

... and I 'hope' I don't care what people have to say about it.

Bottled 'Green'

I woke up today with a near desperate urge to paint everything around me a deep shade of bottle Green. This inanity is made all the more ironic by the fact that ever since I was thirteen I have been obsessed with all Blue hues, save perhaps royal blue…my bohemian truancies prevail at all times. I don’t really know what this means, only that the urge to see the world through matrix vision follows immediately after my entire world has been suspended in time and space.

My country is dying, quite literally, before my eyes. And it is no longer possible for me to ignore the ‘big picture’ because my job and my jumbled priorities at present both necessitate that I take our prevailing Martial Law very seriously. I have never seen this before: people taking to the streets with black bands, people being arrested right left and centre without cause or need for it, all media channels (especially my own) at the verge of closure because of the back-log of programming that has yet to make screen time…but really it goes deeper than that, somewhere in the past week, I have given up on any hope of something good ever happening to this place. I am the first to admit that un-consciously harbouring such notions was naïve to begin with, but in the past week, for the first time I have actually seen people stop reading newspapers because it no longer matters. ‘Something’ no longer matters. Whether we will be bombed into oblivion, die out of disease or be taken over by the US.
Somehow, those of us who can actually read and comprehend these words aren’t really part of it all anyway, and with our ‘one foot in, one foot out’ stance we will always be okay in the end. Whether in two years that leaves us country-less, identity-less or passion-less hardly matters, seeing as we pretty much lack all of the above anyway.

Yesterday I was trying to talk myself out of another political down spiral mood swing when my mother posed a rather interesting analogy to clarify why my efforts were repeatedly proving futile. “It’s kind of like indigestion, loads of crap piled into the pit of your stomach and no release. You know how they say that the greatest anatomical gift are the ‘bowels’ because the greatest sensation they provide is release…(in all honesty I haven’t heard this one before but now that I have it makes good sense) , but right now its all the crap just sitting there.” In effect that means that even though I am trying to talk myself out of it with my usual flux of films, music and inanities the crap is still sitting at the base of my gut and the sensation of needing to let it go is overwhelming.
That’s present day patriotism for you: A shit analogy

Earlier this month, I was scheduled for a move to Karachi, try as I might I couldn’t contain the thrill that being on my own was posing. Its that weird electric excitement that lingers despite the sound judgment in you stating that Karachi is the ugliest city in the world, living alone with your best friend will be a financial travesty, facing the elements -quite literally- will rip your naïve idealism apart etc. But it was my chance to FINALLY deal with myself. Regardless that option ended when our Karachi offices and the news desks were the first to be raided in. I think what I hate Musharraf for the most is that he took away my chance of flight, and that’s a good thing. If enough people are personally pissed off, it might actually make a dent in our conflated sense of apathy.

I have turned for solace towards two entirely independent texts “Your God is Too Small” by J.B Phillips and ‘Don Quixote’ for the third time. I am enjoying reading over my commentary in the pages of the Man of Le Mancha and Sancho’s glorious travels. But mostly it is Cervantes’ preface that has forced me to forego the familiarity of being flippant about the important things. The three page author’s note deals with a conversation he had with his friend about what to put in the preface that would impress critics and readers alike. What would make him sound smart enough, witty enough, brave enough?
The two men indulge in all manner of Latin phrases, Biblical botches and Salacious sidelines. The note ends with him basically saying, “My protagonist is a balding, emaciated knight travelling the lands for the woman of his dreams and contemplating all stories he can narrate later on to make her think him worthy of her affections” …I think he should do all the impressionable fibbing.

I love this man. I love the truth in his insecurity because it is mine and at present it is the only thing that gives me hope that all of my ‘pathetic neediness to be good’ can someday prove more fruitful than actually being good. I will forever think of Cervantes as a four year old, dressed in a knight’s costume with a stare so curious it can solder the paint off walls.

And I choose to think of myself as the unfortunately rotund side-kick who needs to live vicariously through those who live vicariously.