“The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable” – Arthur Rimbaud
I suppose I am finally beginning to realise why intelligent people often fumble back upon the expression ‘never say never’. As opposed to initial appearances the 'never' doesn’t betray false bravado rather it provides an air-tight exclusion clause for the perpetually misguided. Not taking a stand (whether good or bad) allows us the ability to recant, change, deny and even fabricate where we are and what we feel. I suppose my previous post precludes me such luxuries but then again, I figure Beentherella is inherently born of contradiction and that remains the one fail safe I can always employ. Maria Amir simply figures that seeing as this is her blog, specifically constructed to nurture her phobias and delusions, she is at liberty to throw as many tantrums as she likes and take it all back whenever she wants to.
I, quite simply, miss being able to write the truth because I find I am no good at all at speaking it and doing neither is suffocating all three of us.
I have been back in Lahore for over a month now and I am quite terrified to report that not all that much has changed. Neither the city nor Maria have truly evolved and I suppose this was to be expected given the persnickety natures of both. However that isn’t to say that there aren’t tangible shifts. Maria is spending her time conscientiously avoiding both her family and her swamp-full of memories and is forging ahead trying to be simultaneously practical and optimistic. She is working towards taking her GRE so that she can apply for PhD scholarships, leave and avoid being ‘matched’. Lahore is somehow lonely this time around. It seems to be scared of itself and for some reason Maria can no longer tap into that innate sense of ‘belonging’ when she drives on the mall on lazy afternoons listening to ‘Mera Piya Ghar Aaya’ in her dinkie.
Beentherella is quite adamant that the two factions: ‘practicality’ and ‘optimism’ are mutually exclusive to begin with. She believes that Maria is adamantly avoiding all songs, films or literature that can exacerbate her malen-coma simply because she is missing N more than she cares to admit. Beentherella insists that Miller’s formula of the ‘best way of getting over a woman/man is to turn them into literature’ is the only solution to their mutual predicament. I, ever the faithful trapeze artist, am simply trying to manage both parallels as equally and faithfully as I can. And yet, while I know that I can hold in a great deal and that I have no problems being a social pariah, I realise that I value beentherella much more now. I feel that as much as we have tried to obliterate her in practice, she tends to crop up in job interviews where Maria will refuse a perfectly wonderful opportunity on the basis of some perverse standard of idealism that I feel they both still need to uphold. Luckily, neither of us have any qualms about employing Beentherella’s regular assistance to circumvent rishta’s on that same principle.
Being back in Pakistan is proving to be rather surreal, perhaps because it is alarmingly easy to ignore everything that surrounds us once again. We are driving around the city these days simply to avoid being in company for very long and I am spending the rest of my minutes reading Pyrrho and ‘actively procrastinating’. The latter contradiction referring to the fact that I am consciously choosing to ponder for hours on end about general nothings I feel we ‘ought’ to write about but have somehow lost the courage to. I am seriously considering writing letters to strangers as I used to when I was younger, it was certainly a less volatile method of communicating with people without actually ‘communicating’ with them. Perhaps I shall search for an address, somewhere that sounds lost…like Bavaria.
Maria is writing up lists these days, scores and scores of lists: shopping lists, goal lists, life-lesson lists (sic), grocery lists and lists of things she wants to try learning. She has started a diet-plan recommended by a nutritionist that diverts much of her attention towards missing things like coke, cheese and Abbot Road ke channay which help her to avoid missing other ‘things’. Beentherella is spending her hours perfecting her caricature of an imaginary friend that can fill in for the tangible best friend she has not yet managed to locate and I spend my time marvelling at how one person can manage to avoid them self in so many mirrors.
We have always been fascinated by two mythical contradictions: the Phoenix and the Unicorn. I find that at present both creatures manage to capture Maria and her doppelganger quite effectively. Maria is currently steamrolling her way into the appearance of maturity and some odd notion of ‘re-invention’ that she feels may vindicate the mess she has made of herself. She is labouring under the apprehension that she can fundamentally re-align who she is if she acts the part of the cold, practical, adult who -after having been burnt and reduced to ashes- can emerge triumphant. The odd thing about the mythology of the phoenix is that after its thousandth year no matter how productive the life of the bird, it is destined only to live as long and as 'like' its old self. This tends to negate all ‘reincarnation’ paradigms where redemption is ultimately offered up as a cosmic bribe for correcting one’s flaws, failings and the breaking of patterns. The only guarantee the phoenix myth proffers is the perennial presence of a pattern.
Beentherella on the other hand is flexing her elusive might to see how far she can push us all into obscurity. She has always considered loneliness to be a pinnacle and now seems to be settling in with the concept much more completely than she ever did in the past. She knows that we will not find him again. We, none of us, will manage another beautiful nightmare that is simultaneously true and terrifying enough to keep us morbidly intrigued; challenge our flailing convictions and allow us to jump again. I cannot honestly define whether the unicorn encapsulates beentherella or the elusive friend that she survives to seek. Marianna Mayer in ‘The Unicorn and the Lake’ describes the creature as “the only fabulous beast that does not seem to have been conceived out of human fears. In even the earliest references he is fierce yet good, selfless yet solitary, but always mysteriously beautiful. He can be captured only by unfair means…”
All I really know is that I have managed to get both of them in the same room, huddled in the same corner, sat on the same bench and writing on the same page. Of course, it is all artifice at preset: a cross between Dali’s assertion of false memories and true ones being akin to jewels. The false ones always appear the most real. And yet, it is better than the gaping 'nothing' that preceded it.
So for now I shall be content with the busy business of making something out of all of us.
