Mangoes and Maudlin Reveries

My deepest regret of late is the fact that I am allergic to mangoes.

One cannot experience the magic of a sweltering hot Desi summer without mangoes. As a rule I only allow myself one or two mangoes per season, followed by desperate bouts of drowning myself in lassi and water...but them zits still come, all-encompassing...much like the mythic swarm of locusts...only this time emblazoned across the contours of my face.

Recently I have been haunted by an image of myself at twelve relishing the laziness that a Pakistani summer is supposed to summon but no longer does. I have been trying to identify what is missing: the pace, the flavour, the sounds or the smells... all of which, when merged to perfection, managed to create an atmosphere of something old and timeless and beautiful simply because it no longer exists. It is odd how we can forgive our demons in retrospect because they dissolve into faded fragments that are somehow simultaneously pretty and pitiable.

Back to the mangoes - there is something about mangoes that epitomizes the East...they are inherently lazy as a fruit...or they inspire laziness... either way in our part of the world it all amounts to the same thing. I specifically remember myself in a time where houses had bare-chip floors, the old variety of cane-chiqs (spelt differently only to avoid association with poultry or hot women, not that I have anything against either) that were actually designed to block sunlight instead of filtering it in through intricate patterns, small knobbly knit darri's and the entire family- for better or for worse till death did them part, that or indigestion- needed to spend summer afternoons in one room because air-conditioners were a luxury and only one was allowed to run at a time. Summers meant that all my cousins - and that is an 'all' of thirteen- would get together in one room, perched waiting in front of one of those massive 'dechki's' with mangoes swimming in ice-cold water.

I now recall drawing my lines and tracing my alienation from society and family from this point. This could have been because the hostile nature of my epidermis ensured that I could never really join in, or because I was the one stuck with the job of peeling the mangoes that I wouldn't eat but could still smell. The languid scent of the 'chonsa' ought to be bottled and marketed as the quintessential fragrance for lazy afternoons or to insomniacs as a sleeping drought more powerful than Valium. It was the year where Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were an overwhelming influence, NTM evening programming proffered a daily sabbatical from the never ending hide-and-seek quest for survival with the parental units and the standard soap-of-choice was Imperial Leather and Palmolive.
We depended largely on mattresses, (I wonder why people hardly use mattresses anymore) and afternoon naps were compulsory, before summer-vacation homework regiments could commence in the evening. I cannot believe I shall say this, but I think I miss the time where a before-bed routine meant ironing three layers of school uniforms or when wake-up rituals meant an actual breakfast. Or perhaps what I miss is the fact that I was somehow needed - even in the worst capacity as a scullery maid - but needed nonetheless. People, I feel, can largely be bracketed under these two categories: those that need others and those that need others to need them. I am quite sure a third trajectory exists but I have yet to come across one.

I remember an instinct for self-preservation making an appearance in the least likely setting. I have seldom been one for afternoon naps, unless this meant my not having slept all night and having sleep spillover from morning to evening. This aversion is especially true in the context of 'regimented' sleepy time - I am notoriously bad with regiments of all kinds. So the afternoons used to mean the only time of day where I was cut some slack...with everyone asleep, it meant three hours to myself sans chores and sans snubs. I remember tip-toeing out of the snooze vortex, making my way to my own tiny room, switching on the fan, pulling out a book and stealing coke from the crates in the kitchen pantry, which I would replace when Baba Faiz made his evening round to the market.

Few can relate in spirit, but there is an inexplicable thrill in hiding and surviving in the throws of escapism. I have discovered that this only works when outside forces are in contrast contradiction. We need conflict to have something to battle against, survive and/or overcome because in surviving something, anything, we realise our mettle and the fact that we are alive or whether we feel we deserve to be. I remember setting alarm clocks to go off twenty minutes before everyone was to wake up and sneaking back into bed before they did. I am good at being sneaky, constantly planning my next word, move or thought. Which is why those two or three hours were priceless, they were precious because they were transient and every word read or absorbed during them took on a layer of added meaning because there was a purpose behind the journey. It wasn't just idle escapism, it was planned and a lot of planning had gone into bringing it about. This made the voyage - were it with Sancho in Don Quixote or with Peter and Wendy in Pan- all the more poignant. There was an active effort made to seek out the journey, which in effect made the crew worthy and was a journey of its own. Navigating moments in time is my specialty...I am distinctly uneasy with calm seas.

Perhaps this is what is oddly troubling...calm seas as far as the eye can see lay set out before me. There are no more battles and I have joined the legions of old, crippled knights who 'once engaged in great battles'. No one stops to consider that during the battle, every soldier dreams of peace and a home, and once he is there seeks adventure all over again. There is little nobility in contrived conflict, which is what I tend to rely on for inspiration these days. Manufacturing phantom potholes and problems to overcome has now become a necessity because I am lucky in the absence of real ones. Art and inspiration die without conflict, which is why it is necessary to keep the latter alive. Even if all I've got left is a long-winded diatribe about mangoes and allergies.

Times have changed all around. It isn't just me and my picture - it is the canvas that has changed. Time can no longer be whittled away by idly carving in bouts of activity when we choose. Time now chooses the activity and we are the ones whittled in. There are separate rooms now and separate air-conditioners running for hours on end. Television is no longer fun: it is frequent, fruitless and fabricated. We now have Mc Donald's and pizza and mangoes are uncomfortably wedged as an after-meal, if there is room or inclination for them.
There is no 'one' identifiable flavour, smell, sound or sensation to frame any memory .
It is all a congealed mess of mix-ups.

Either it is what it is and the blasted grass is just never green, or I am just bloody ungrateful...or, in all likelihood: a bit of both. There is a perverse prettiness in overcoming maudlin misery, but somehow when it has been overcome, when all is said and done, that prettiness switches tack to shabby.

In a banal setting, at an inconvenient time...does real beauty ever transcend?

On Nothing

I think I enjoy the challenge of a life that resists perfection. This is made all the more ironic because I tend to crave it...not perfection per se, but my version of it.
I can devote precious time, energy and thought into orchestrating the 'perfect' gift, the 'perfect' life, the 'perfect' insignificant other. Essentially this means that I can never win, which brings me to account for my hypocrisy. I have always considered myself disjointed from the rat race and the norm, but I crave normalcy even if it is of an unconventional, bohemian variety. This means a whole lot of time and energy spent in the struggle to appear, sound and think different...but I wonder, if one has to try to market oneself than which version is the self...the marketer or the product or neither? I suppose in some manner everyone thinks they are different, which would make everyone the same now wouldn't it?

The smallest things are setting up tent in my cerebrum at present: the newly discovered taste of a mohito (a Japanese variety of the Gin Martini with mint); the fact that I haven't clipped my toenails in a while and just today decided to wear new khussa's which means my feet are dying; the shame that always follows in the very rare instances where I feel I may be attracted to another human being and frame an immediate rebuttal to convince myself to counter the attraction with denial before I can be discarded, although it just happened to follow through in reverse order this time around; the many pending projects that I desperately wish to take on but am too scared to...like teaching, sponsoring children and learning the blasted guitar; the underlying twinge of guilt at the fact that I am sitting at work freezing under the blast of the air conditioner and the heat wave outside has people fainting by the dozens; the fact that my job is ridiculous and I cannot - with a straight face - pronounce that I am working for an Entertainment Department that produces soaps, which has driven me to write and attend press conferences again to seek some sense of vindication; the self-congratulatory sighs of relief in my head for the fact that should I eventually choose to leave this place I already have at least six great offers; the Watchdog Warden in my conscience telling me not to be cavalier regarding my future; the Bohemian Bandit in my soul reiterating that the future is meaningless if the me living it isn't me; the overwhelming nostalgia of listening to Rachmaninov's Third Symphony for the past 20 minutes; the fact that all I had for lunch was salad and I can't help but dream of pizza right now, that and a coke...a glorious, icy, frothy tank full of Coke; the terrifying notion that is making me think that I may very well be a profound narcissist concealed in the guise of an overtly polite, timid, smiley girl; my reading of Richard Dawkin's and his 'God delusion' solidifying my shaky negation of all dogma begging me to finally take that plunge, come out of the closet and openly admit that I am - after all is said, done and damned- an Agnostic; The fact that I told my mother yesterday to simply 'tell me what to do to feel less alone' and her response was that I should lose ten pounds, and that doing so would solve all my problems.

So here's to losing that poundage.
Can't knock it till I've tried it.

Book Ends

I believe it is becoming impossible for me to ever feel genuine. By this, I suppose I am referring to acquiring a sense of self that fits in with my person – assuming of course that one’s person is the amalgam of head, heart and spirit. I have perfected the projection though… a precariously designed hologram of who it is I think I want Maria to look, act, speak, think and feel like, but I now find myself horribly iffy about whether the many will ever become one. In all honesty, isn’t that the point: to be one…whatever, whoever or however ?

These new questions have forced me to recount whatever I may have read in the past about amorality. I find myself wondering if complete absence of a conscience will somehow manage to convince me of my place and posit my person. There are too many thoughts vying for attention in my head and the disjointed narrative that results is merely an outcome of many nothings that have fused to become an over-whelming, all-imperative Everything: my perpetual quarter life crisis to find my place. My crisis tends to deviate from the norm on this point, it is geared more towards finding whether I can fit in somewhere or with someone by remaining myself and not as much about finding the self in question. I hope that I will simply grow into my person with time, because the premise for the person has already been set …all it needs now is filling.

I wish, desperately, that I didn’t have a conscience, but then I wonder… if I stopped thinking in terms of tangents: Good/Bad, Positive/Negative/, Light/Dark, Masculine/Feminine, Yin/Yang, Flora/Fauna, Yes/ No…would I stop thinking altogether? I doubt that an absence of conscience will pre-empt an absence of context. Context usually emerges in the form of opposites and even if opposites aren’t good or bad, they will always carry the sentimental baggage of the connotation.
I think that if I can somehow manage to have no conscience and am no longer bound by morality then my perpetual emotional calisthenics will cease and I can play God for myself. Heck, I could even be God, since the eschatological opposite of the omnipresent, All-encompassing entity that is often said to be Everything should naturally be Nothing. Taken in the pedestrian context of monotheism it would probably go along these lines: If God is Everything than Satan would be Nothing, which makes more sense if weighed in the sage-old scales present in the law of opposites. In this context, if one were to believe in the former than the opposite should be considered an equal, not a subordinate as we are often lead to believe. Ergo, the absence of belief and subscription to anything would make one God, or the eschatological equivalent.

I mean seriously, we all know that every story is subject to whosoever is telling it. Since we have only ever heard ‘God’s’ account of the tales the balance has been painted to lean only on one side. I believe it was Mohammad Ali Clay who questioned why “the Chocolate Cake was the Devil’s cake and why Cream Cake was Angel cake”…Exactly, what makes one better than the other? Here is where I begin to feel amorality would be a problem, not believing, thinking and feeling in a context of tangents would mean to cease doing so altogether.

I fear it would mean embracing the inimitable full stop.

I fear it would mean voluntary death.

After all, not living -even when one is alive- is akin to death.

The option to embrace such an existence was first proffered to me by an Atheist, Psychology professor (do take a moment to marvel over the underwhelming lack of paradox here). I have recently met two brothers who have both helped and harrowed my struggle to navigate my nocturnal disbelief system. Both are more than twice my age and both appear to be the free-wandering-spirits that I have always hoped to be or find. The sheer largess of their presence is overwhelming, then again, this may just as well be my cavalier tendency to hang on to the words of any and every person who I feel I can learn from. But these two are different they have a gift: they can stop time.

When they sit in a room clocks begin to malfunction. The dials wheeze down to nothing. The second stick shallows into the hour hand and all is suspended. I do not know how many odes I have written in my head commemorating the lazy, summer afternoons spent in the stillness of their presence, perhaps as many as there have been afternoons.
They appear to be the same person, then again they aren’t. I think Mother Nature got it all botched up and their minds were plied apart forcefully, because they should have been the companion-conscience of the same person. Not the same person…there is a difference. They are like the ephemeral age-old voices that live inside the mind, the ones that proffer a response for every word spoken and unspoken by a person, these voices are almost always counter intuitive and contradictory, but only because they are equal enough to balance out the context. It is a lot like the ‘Yes-No’ paradigm, just a little tweak here and there and Yes, becomes a “Yes, I mean it won’t be possible” and a No becomes a “No, I mean I would like to see you tomorrow”.

There is a thin line between the two, butter paper thin.

The first time I met both of them together they were sitting on a couch, clad in shorts and T-shirts, calm and conversation. They looked altogether too much like Bookends. I hadn’t yet met anyone who epitomized the Simon and Garfunkel lament, but now I have. The older one appears to be a sprite. He smiles an awful lot and it is a beautiful smile, but in my experience the most beautiful smiles tend to overcompensate for something, perhaps an overwhelming need to smile, because the subject has already dealt with too many frowns. I do this too, smile all the time to somehow delude myself into thinking that means I’m happy ‘all the time’ – believe it or not, it often works. This one climbs mountains and trots the twisted trajectory of landscape in search of something. I do not know if he knows what the search is all about or if there is a finish line, but I like to think he does it just because he can.

I suppose there are still something’s I need to believe in.

The younger one appears slightly more jaded, which is reflected best - I feel - in his sense of humor. Here too I find that I can relate all too well. That which They call Black humor interlaced with wry, cynicism and backed by knowledge is the perfect battalion to counter the insipid triteness of the compound other. This one said something delightful to convince me that a flushing out of all my toxic ideological baggage was in order, if I was ever to free myself. He said “Isn’t God after all that bottomless pit into which man empties his spiritual bowels.” Sure it isn’t as eloquent as Rousseau, but that is probably why it works. He calls it the cesspool concept: amorality refurbished. Me likey.

I usually resent redefining myself or my disbeliefs in the context of any form of paradigm or under influence, but in the case of independent bookends there is always an advantage…there are no limits to the number of volumes one can fit between them.

There are no limits to possibilities and the possibilities are subsequently limitless.

Peevish Pan

"Man wants concord but nature knows better what is good for his kind; nature wants discord" - Kant

I cant quite put my finger on it.
Somewhere along the line I find myself wondering more about the 'what the fucks' of it all instead of the usual 'why's'. I no longer comprehend what it is I am trying to do anymore. I call myself a writer, but I don't know what I am writing about...abstract nothings and everythings that have a hard time ending up as something. I look at my book sitting in its KB file and I can't seem to write it, even though I wrote it when I was seven. I wish I could be half as candid, honest and sincere as I was back then.
I think about my 'career' and I have no idea what on earth I want, but the past month has me convinced that this ain't it. I may be naive and idealistic but I happen to like me that way.
"What is that job called ...you know the one in which you're committed to the work, but the work isn't really that because its a goal. Where you get to change things, write, read, produce, direct and just 'work' on something that bloody well means something...anything?"
"Dreaming?"
"Yep, that's what I want to do".
"Good luck making money out of that."

Zing!

I'm beginning to think that the real culprit behind this lambent morbidity is Philosophy or my recent reading of it. Curse my need to try/pretend/make believe/act/contrive...try to be/appear/be considered...be smart and pick up these bloody bastards who get to me more than any of the rest ever did. I liked religion, it was easy to deny, easy to refute and practically fell all over itself when confronted with questions or logic. Philosophy doesn't do that, it forces my mind to loop itself into oblivion and I still end up asking the same question. Which,I admit, is practically an aphrodisiac. Then again, I hear myself ask some of these questions and the people who have heard of them - both the philosophers and the questions- immediately launch into a long winded debate on the merits and demerits of Post-Modernism vs Realism.
I just asked if you believed in magic dude!

Then again, many would say that someone who still considers Peter Pan the epitome of all wisdom, has little business reading Kant.
I just hope that's not why I'm reading him.
There is nothing worse than a perpetual reactionary.

Mauvaise Foi

We came across these two words, we don't really remember where or why, but we bless her tendency for copying down random, obtuse phrases and statements by people that appeal to us. These two in particular mean to 'deny one's potential, to put up road blocks for the self, Self-limiting' and it so reminds us of her. It probably reminds her of it too.

She opens her notebook and it sits littered with scribbled quotes and mangled aphorisms by 'Shrieky Girl', 'Man in Third Row' and 'Kitchen dude'. One of them jumps off the page "Hurt?! Fuck it, then stuff it in a place it can never come back from" courtesy 'Really Loud Girl'. We hope she realizes that this really is her calling: to watch and translate. She has never really been a doer or even a be-er...she is simply a wistful watcher.
But she dreams, and that always causes her to drift away from the merits of sheer observation. That is also the precarious point where she gets lost in fantasies; where she is experiencing things for herself. If only she could be practical and stay off course. She could find contentment in the sidelines.
There are few who really see it, but she could.
She has always been that sort.

We fail to comprehend what compels her to fight so desperately with us on this. What elusive, frangible tendency drives her to try and inject herself in reality and what the rest of them call 'real life experience'? Are such trite, transient moments better than a chance at phantom immortality?

Quis custodient ipsos custodes?
Who will watch the watchers themselves?

Oh why can't she just find solace in solitude?! She craves it, she is comfortable with it, she is even complacent and content in her world of paper, pencils and pixels. Why then does she crave companionship so? What does it offer that she has not been able to give to herself? Perhaps she ought to try and fall, just to give up on it once and for all so that we can all be together again. But she just can’t seem to stop.
Many might call her perpetual tendency to weigh and water down every step and the taking of it as a good thing. Most tend to mistake innate, pathological insecurity with maturity and we know that she enjoys the notion that she is being confused as such. But it appears that she can no longer justify her propensity to prophesize doom in every semblance of emotional contact, even if we know that it will play out to that effect eventually. It really has nothing to do with maturity or cowardice - it is plain convenience on her part to run from her destiny. She is ungrateful, to disregard her loneliness in such a cavalier manner, merely for a few snippets of flattery and flirtation.
This is the point where her proclivity towards navigating the moral mathematics of every waking and sleeping moment needs to come into play, in a bad way... she needs to be told that her initial reservations were justified and that she will only find redemption in actively nurturing them.
If there is a basis in past experience for caution and reservation, then grasping for those very straws to avoid taking chances doesn't signal cowardly behavior …it signals common sense, we tell her. But she is tuning us out more and more these days.

The beginnings justify the means towards an end. And the Endings are predestined to tune into bad beginnings, we tell her...but she continues smiling her goofy grin in the mirror and is humming Dean Martin madness.

We come across mention of Cumean Sybil and immediately bring it to her attention - the mythic prophetess who guided Aneas towards Hades and is often regarded as a broker for destruction. We tell her that at present her faceless form is permanently camped at her right side whispering salacious everythings in her ear. 'TAKE HEED,' we tell her. But she has switched from Martin to Doris Day and we are beginning to lose patience with her in this flimsy, floopy state.

All her apprehensions will come into play as she tries to navigate this entirely new tangent in her life: Romance or something like it. We remind her that she is incapable of freely-given-feeling and emotional emendations. But she is brushing her hair and putting on lip gloss.

Beentherella is a force to contend with these days, standing on her pulpit commanding her newly instated mighty army to counter our seasoned legions with freshly woven posies of hope and happiness. She is egging her on. She shoots Sybil down with Browning's "Our interests on the dangerous edge of things. The Honest Thief, the Tender Murderer, the Superstitious Athiest."
"Honestly", we ask her..."What good could possibly come of this foolishness?"
But she is delirious. She has never had many winning moments with her, perpetually the middle child. Maria has been consistent at keeping her around the picture but never really part of it and right now she is drunk with triumph.
"Who cares," she says. She mentions Pan.
We have learned, over the years, to let her be when she gets to Pan.
Sigh.

All this, because of a few kind words uttered in her direction.

All this, because some random man has proffered some seemingly-well intentioned, seemingly-genuine, random compliments.

All this, because she knows nothing about anything to do with any of it at all.
Pathetic.

What is she doing... giggling at her mirror?!

The Many Me's of I

We have been here before.
We stayed, we collided, we conversed but nothing really came of it all.

“You, my dear, are absolutely brilliant! A truly amazing talent. You’re going to go places,” the strange old man says to us.

We never really know what to make of such obvious compliments. “Going places” what does this mean? Does this mean we will be travelling and globe trotting as we hope to do; does it mean we are to be famous and successful; does it mean we need to find direction or does it mean that we are actually falling for such blatantly contrived flattery?
The old man is successful and famous and he thinks this is what we want from our life – overwhelming success, fabulous fortune and glittering fame. He asks us why we want to be a writer and we tell him that writing is the only thing that keeps us honest, sane…remotely human. He asks us why we haven’t made the most of our talent as if he has the right to demand our answers on the subject. We tell him that we are unwilling to compromise our vision and art for a ‘viable market’. He asks us if we are content hiding our ideas on paper instead of selling them and seeing them come to fruition in some form or the other – and we tell him that if that realisation means cheapening and tainting an idea that is good then yes we are happy to keep our head down.
He asks us how we intend to survive in this world without the hunger and ambition to be the best. He tells us we already are the best. We decide that we really do not like this man, because his manipulation lacks finesse. He wants us to want something we don’t over the something that we do. He is a horrible flirt at seventy and we are not amused. He thinks he can buy us by offering us a better pay package for working on a project that lacks both merit and vision and we refuse him.
We do not feel proud for standing up for our selves.
We are numb, our art is all we have left and we are not yet ready to completely disregard ourselves.

The me in us that enjoys her perky facade smiles at this new regressive reality that is forcing us into newer, uglier corners. She, the Sprite, is listening to a lot of old eighties rock anthems these days to enhance her layer of frivolity and appears to be succeeding. She is ridiculously smiley and tends to project a distinct bounce in her step for the express benefit of random acquaintances that cross paths with her in the elevator.

The me in us that acknowledges the effort that goes into projecting our bubbly self has grown more quiet than usual. She, the Hermit, slumps her shoulders forward on her desk at work and stares at the monitor in a manner that ensures a tangible disconnect from her surroundings, her 24-hour shift of designating denial coupons to several random actions is operating smoothly. She has her headphones plugged in and is numbing her emotions and senses with unhealthy doses of Tom Waits and Pete Seeger. She is reading Seneca these days to simultaneously numb her mind. She is painting yellow, magenta and turquoise swirls in oils to numb her spirit from scoping the stars.

The me in us that depends on her morbid cynicism and biting quips to deflect attention, affection and affiliation is working at her usual pace. She, the septic Circe, is slightly downplayed by our resident hermit these days but is always available to negate any offering of good will and compassion directed towards our person.

The me in us that controls primarily our higher brain function (with most of us being frigid and all) is exhausted by her perpetual propensity to please, provoke or procure answers from random sources. She, the pithy Pupil, is on a constant quest to find answers to unnecessary questions. Pithy also faces the added discomfort of never really knowing if this inherent trait of hers emerges from her need to appear smart, her actual desire to learn new things or her inordinate incapacity to filter out the abstract from the apparent.

The me’s in us that tend to drive us into most of our headlong hazards are preoccupied with perfection and penance, or some Utopic notion of both. Beentherella, the incurable romantic, cannot settle for the real over her sublime version of the surreal. She highlights us all as naive, idealistic, “lets-talk-glass half-full”, 'off to find our Happily-Never-After-ending' fools. Beentherella is a twin, her other half being the jaded Succubus that dashes all hopes of the rest of us ever listening to her in tandem. Which is why there are so many warring factions among our self. Succubus lives-glass-half-empty and Beentherella talks-glass-half-full as we all fall down.

We are frightened these days because a dangerous other has entered our midst. She is not one of us, a cold, granite creature riddled with guilt and fuelled with noxious anger. She is rather hideous really, far worse than Succubus who still possesses some nuance of reactionary charm. This new grim reaper Medusa is frightening. She shuns us all, we who have lived here for twenty four years, and is vying to take control of our self by banishing the rest of us into some dark hidden corner of that most-dreaded, dead drop, oblivion: Memory Lane.

She is powerful and persuasive.

Like we said, we have been here before but somehow our paths have never crossed.
But now that they have, rest assured we shall stay, we shall converse and we shall keep colliding until she is defeated.

Danse Macabre

It is an unforeseeable offence, one that I always recognise once it has already taken place. As I leave the room, it echoes and tingles against my skin and I recognise that I have been zinged like this before and that I promised myself I would anticipate the fall in the future. But somehow I always manage to fumble my way into it again. I find that I am almost incapable of honesty unless I am writing it and then it ends up being so brash and bawdy it usually borders on bitter.
I see myself alone once again, which isn’t really news, but this time my alone-ness is coupled with an underwhelming sense of detachment. That is new. I am never detached from my surroundings, which is why I make a conscious effort to appear so. If anything my surroundings are best acquainted with my person: I write on my walls, cover my bathroom mirrors in quotes and favourite lyrics, write in my books and adorn my room with photographs, pottery and all the precious junk I have made in my too few - too many years of existence. I have decided, as of yesterday, that I am finally ready to give up on any notion of family that I have been secretly harbouring and I am grossly disappointed in myself for not having done so in the past five years.
Some people never learn.
I am some people.
And yes, I suppose that means I must admit that I am people.

One would think that I would have given up on both my parents a long time ago, but I suppose that some ridiculous corner in my being still feels the need to be accepted and wanted. This pathetic propensity to please and impress people, even as I contrive intricate means to avoid their company is finally beginning to weigh on me. My much-former therapist would say that it was the natural state of affairs to need to solicit everyone’s approval when one has been abandoned repeatedly for better prospects, and much as I have always resented the notion that I needed help, I suppose I wanted it offered nonetheless. But it wasn’t…at least never from the corners I craved. That’s the funny thing about ‘want’…it is the source that trumps all flavour and essence. Even if one were able to easily get ‘what’ one wants, the craving caves if it comes from the wrong ‘who’. And I have finally acknowledged that both the Beast and Beauty don’t have the time or inclination to ‘want’ to have anything to do with the many me’s that form an integral part of I. They do it, but they don’t want to and that makes me care much less. Okay, that’s a load of crap, it makes me care more but it allows me to accept that I need to stop!
It is a relief to finally face fiction.
This whole conundrum brings to mind a Sex and the City reference where Charlotte mentions that deep down “women just want to be rescued”. An abhorrent notion, even if it may be true. I like to think I am my own saviour as I have been for so long – me, my books and my frameless art.

I am tired of existing in a constant state of being and not living. The random snippets of Sappho and Nietzsche that I have been going over these days would have me convinced that this is all there is. That my dedicated regimen of hours spent sitting spellbound by Hollywood kisses and listening to Baez and Young is all contrived nonsense to inspire hope in the hopeless. That I should acknowledge and accept my agnosticism; my inability to nurture relationships even as I crave them; and my inherent disability to adapt to the mundane series of linear moments in the string of time they call life.

Practicality would have me pause, take stock of the fact that all reality is an illusion and that we’re all going to die anyway and just wash my hands off the whole thing. As my fingers travelled along my shelves yesterday in hopes of some good conversation, I picked out a few old friends. When I am more demented than usual I tend to pull out random titles and read random passages out loud as I pace the length of my room. The opening to Melville’s Moby Dick is - in my opinion - the best prose for this sort of thing…there is something about starting a sentence with ‘Call me Ishmael’ that offers and immediate suspension in present tense. I also love ranting out Douglas Adams, Ayn Rand and Cervantes at times like this. Each - when read out loud - is overpoweringly individual, which makes it easy to carry on with several ends of the conversation all by my lonesome.

I had written yesterday that I was afraid I might die today. I thought about it a lot as I was reading and came across a passage from Seneca, where he said that he passed Death walking along the Street of Sighs one evening. He said that Death was in a hurry and didn’t pay him much attention but that their eyes met in a customary glance. And I pictured myself driving the next day, slamming my car into a tree because Death wanted to get a good look at me but as usual I could not meet His eyes, so I kept looking at His feet.
Today as I was driving on my way to work I felt an eerily familiar shiver creep up my spine. I recognised it immediately because I had felt it thrice before. The first had me at thirteen just about to fall off a horse mid-gallop for the first time - the shiver greeted me somewhere along the split-second between my foot getting caught in the stirrups and my head hitting the ground. It brought with it a sharp thrill of not-knowing, a minute-miasma of images from the past, present and future spliced in a manner that made me unsure of whether I welcomed its presence or dreaded it. I suppose it must have been the former because the second time our paths crossed I was perched on top of my balcony staring at the five-story drop below. I don’t really think I would have jumped but I remember thinking about what might happen if a stray crow distracted me or the wind blew and I tumbled…I remember wondering how people would react or whether they would at all. Then I started therapy. The third time I sat perched at the corner of a bed, five years ago, frozen in the minute that would deliver my get-out-of-jail-free card from hell.
I got out.
But free would be pushing it.

Today the thrill made its unexpected appearance for no conceivable reason, I found myself wondering what would happen if I swerved my car onto the wrong side of the road…but I didn’t follow through with it. I considered it again for about ten minutes, until I told myself that I wasn’t really an adrenaline junkie and admonished myself for thinking about soliciting Death once again. We had been down that path before and I had won that particular War of Wills. He would simply have to do his own damn job this time around. In some Freudian context I suppose this means that when actually faced with death I might fight for life. I like to think that I would have more courage than wanting to hang on to a vague notion of searching for something in nothing.
I like to think that I will finally dispense with all false dignity and look Him in the eye.
But I really need to make sure He has the answers I’m looking for before I drop in for that final quick goodbye.

Miasma

It truly is the weirdest thing, to see oneself most clearly when everything around me is out of focus.
I have found myself in misdirection.
Its brilliant, twenty things at once...all abstract yet workable. For the first time the days are too small for the work I want to do in them and I am no longer complacent about whether or not it gets done.

My documentary has a sponsor, which will mean three months on the road...and if it looks the way it does in my head it could prove to be my Everest. My Everest isn't the summit it is the first step and all that comes in between. I have my historian/guide/soulmate if he will have me and thereafter its second star to the right and straight on till morning!
The novel is coming along, my seven year-old-self is holding God in contempt magnificently on paper. She is hounding him for answers and questions with a veracity and flow that was absent before, perhaps because the courage to follow it through was absent in both the object and the subject.
The camera is also proving to be a friend these days, not my usual flavour and it shall never battle my pencil for the latter won before it was ever picked up, but it is new. It is the beast of technology coupled with the beauty of my not-so-rose tainted glasses. I'm taking pictures and have even procured me a teacher, a renown master. The streets of the city offer much to capture and the pencil is coupling and coping well with the intended column. My words are flowing easier than ever before. Only those who know what I'm talking about really know what I'm talking about.

I never knew I was interested in so much....pottery is making an appearance again. I met an old man who - in the span of two hours - showed me how to use the wheel. In 120 minutes he gave me his life's worth of collected copyrights to twist into variable vessels of my own choosing and all this with a smile on his face. My first personalised purchase with my first paycheck will be a pottery wheel.

I'm finally beginning to feel as multidimensional in person as I always did in my head.
In glorious Tinsel Town this is usually the point where, a character in all her splendour is set up for the primordial stumble.
I hope I don't die tomorrow.
Then again, to die - in the words of the boy who never grew up- would be an awfully big Adventure.

An Ode to Narcissus

I believe they call this coming full circle.

I have been thinking a lot about Narcissus, for more than his alleged vanity or the cause for it. I have been thinking of him because I may just have developed a hyperbolic admiration for the symbol. Perhaps it is that simple... self love? Does loving ones' self mean one can't love others or is it the other way around? Considering I find myself inordinately incapable of this degenerate act: 'loving', I must admit the paradox plagues me to no end.

There are three different accounts of the tale in Greek myth but I tend to prefer the archaic, mortal version over Ovid's overtly poetic account - perhaps because it is the only one I have actually read outside the limited sphere that embodies the marvellous merits of Google- Narcissus was basically a jerk and therefore had many-a-man and maiden in love with him. This in my world is termed as possessing more-than-ample doses of the 'Asshole Gene'. That elusive strain incorporated in a man's genetic make-up that allows him to solicit admiration, lust and - yes sometimes even love- on the premise of his being a rancorous beast. This tendency in women is usually accompanied by the 'Saviour Complex' accounting for the not-so-complimentary strain in their genetic make-up that propels them to want to rescue and redeem men from themselves. It goes without saying (still, this is for the cheap seats in the back):

'People don't change.'
Let it be Written.
Let it be Done.

I am digressing from the subject (yet unheard of), Narcissus the Jerk was punished by the Gods (because apparently Gods have always only been there to do just that) for having spurned -in this case- his male suitors in the glorious tradition of Greek pederasty. The man in question being a chit of a dude named Ameinias who was ga-ga over Ass-isus. Narcissus gave him a sword as a gift, basically saying "Well if you'll die without me might as well get on with it" and the poor puppy did just that. The curse was put in motion, Narcissus fell even more in love with himself, this time via a pond and when he was met with the colossal indifference his reflection threw in his general direction, he called on the sword again, this time for himself. The entire transaction was commemorated in the birth of a beautiful flower by the same name - incidentally my favourite - growing out of his remains and doomed to stand at the banks of lakes and rivers staring at its reflection until plucked.

The reason I have been thinking about Narcissus is, once again, Dearest Nietzsche. I have only recently begun reading 'Why I am so Wise' and I must say that I have seldom encountered the pleasure of reading a more profoundly gripping 89 pages. The contents are intriguing:

1. ECCE HOMO - How one becomes what one Is.
2. Why I am so Wise
3. Why I am so Clever
4. Why I write such good Books
5. Why I am a Destiny
6. Twilight of the Idols - How to Philosophise with a Hammer
7. Maxims and Arrows
8. The Four Great Errors
9. The Hammer Speaks

Were it anyone else the blatant self-love reflected in every sentence would probably prove disturbing, but then that is why anyone who loves Nietzsche loves him. Because he sets the premise for the fact that modesty and humility, while very pretty precepts, are inherently dishonest. Pretending not to be good at something that one is - beyond all doubt- good at, is basically lying if one were to tell the truth. Then again pretty lies are based on the premise of disregarding the truth. The cover of the book reads " I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful - of a crisis like no other before on Earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience." Ah, the blissfully brash iconoclast!

The narrative follows to cement the premise, Zarathustra doesn't lie even when he is lying, because he admits to it being the default human setting. House, the new silver screen synonym for Holmes, attests to this with his 'Everybody Lies'. How then, are we to disregard eons of conditioning towards upholding the perverse pillars of humility and virtue...both of which are associated with catalogues of social conditioning? A few days ago I told a friend of how I had been cheated out of a stellar concept during a board meeting, the concept was mine and the individual in question simply entered the room, cutting me off mid-presentation and claiming it as its own. It later on turned and flashed me a megawatt smile. I had two options: I could leave the boardroom and pick a fight, snitch or ignore it. I picked the latter and this time not because of my overwhelming cowardice regarding confrontations of all kinds, but because it was a conscious choice. This individual couldn't probably think up an idea like that if its life depended on it, I knew that I would just need a couple of hours to improve upon the premise .
Was this Vanity or Cowardice?

My friend told me I was a doormat, that I would be breakfast mulch in less then a week. I have a different take: I work hard to keep my cool. Really hard. I meditate, I read, I write ...all in the attempt to improve my person. That fabled improvement can only be made evident if I act different from most of the people surrounding me, it isn't idealistic... it is vanity. Perhaps not in the traditional sense, but somewhere in my head I know what Nietzsche means when he says "But the disparity between the greatness of my task and the smallness of my contemporaries has found expression in the fact that I have been neither heard nor even so much as seen." I read it and a malicious corner in my abdomen admonishes me for my hoity-toityness, but then I get it. Were I to stay in the doldrums with everyone else I should just quit while I am ahead, buy a pint of face plaster, a pair of stilettos and a brain that stops asking questions. But I need to keep asking something, so that's out.

Nitimur in vetitum
We strive after what is forbidden

Well so be it! The only point so far that I don't see eye to eye with the man on is here 'One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil' Neitzsche has downplayed the pupil grossly. What is so wrong with craving a life filled with questions, there is never an end of answers and the different trajectories that each answer proffers. Why then limit oneself to one question and one answer...which is the only path available to surpass the pupil and enter the realm of the professor- limiting the expanse of question. Now why would I want to do that? Although I suppose this choice may well be a passive-aggressive attempt to retain that venomous strain of humility. If one is predisposed to admit that one cannot ever know all the answers, vanity - however she comes- will always only be a polite acquaintance, never an intimate lover like Nietzsche likes her to be.
Perhaps this explains the man's penchance for Dionysos as the choice Deity - the proverbial God of Wine, Women and Song. The promoter of civilization, a lawgiver and lover of peace — as well as the Liberator, his purpose to free one from one's normal self, by madness, ecstasy and inebriation. The divine mission of Dionysus was to mingle the music of the flute and bring an end to care and worry.
If this be Nietzsche's mission than sign me up, but his account discounts the fall out. Pitting the Satyr (Dionysos) and the Sinner (Narcissus) against the Sainthood may not be the best thing. Although, I must admit that my apprehension draws largely from years of adverse conditioning in the gross glorification of all 'Glory Be' religious genres.

The Man said "Here there speaks no 'prophet', none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power called founders of religions."

Perhaps I am finally ready to listen to plain, intelligent prose over prophecy.

Bread Crumbs

I believe it has been three days since I was thrown.

By what exactly I am not yet sure, and I hope that I do not come across the information any time soon. There is a terse sort of plebeian mystique in not being able to recognise or identify my demons anymore. Several things happened but nothing really happened. I now find myself at an odd sort of paradox pinnacle, only it isn't a pinnacle its a plateau. Everything around me is stale, stable and serene but for the first time, the tidal wave of ideas in my head is threatening to shake me loose from something. I think that something is my complacency.

This scares me.

My corporeal complacency and I share a very deep bond and I have never considered severing it. There have been moments that have forced me to take stock of my laziness and momentarily move out of -what they all call- 'the Rut', but I like keeping the road leading back to Tartarus perpetually freckled with bread crumbs. I have recently been having nightmares. Nightmares where I find myself with a broom and tin pan in hand, wiping the smudged water colors clean. I see myself running around, attending meetings, heading ideas and waiting for paychecks.
I cannot bear the sight of myself like this...losing myself all over again.

Several things happened.

I read a column that brought me to tears sitting at my desk at work so that I found that I just HAD to email Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post. She talked about how life chokes poetry out of us. Of Koyaanisqatsi - a life out of balance. Of how the worlds greatest classical violinist Joshua Bell stood weaving magic at a subway Station in DC but no one stopped to listen, because magic lost the epic battle in time management ;

I met a soul mate, a sixty-something adolescent genius traipsing around the world in his bermuda shorts and safari hat photographing natural wonders and writing books. All the while smiling;

I met a man without a face, a congenital disorder had wiped it off his skull - there was a mouth and a bump where an eye-censor sat and a slit where a nostril used to be. All the while his mind worked and as he drooled into a pipe, leaking out mucus to a small bucket he mumbled and pointed and made scintillating conversation;

I stumbled across the discovery that I can translate photographs and picked up a camera again with the express purpose to finally write that column I've wanted to write for ages, regardless of whether it ever sees the light of day. To write phantom fables through traces of life in chaos;

My friend Tigger realized his calling as the next-gen Messiah who would single-handedly educate all the inhabitants of this country, cure Aids and introduce Democracy to our Land of the Pure...bouncing all the while;

I sent in my first attempt at Fulbright, confessing at length that I had no quantitative skills whatsoever but did they have room on board for a Hobo who wanted to sing 'Ring them Bells' perched atop the Eiffel Tower?;

I found that I may have missed my personal chance at seizing what an acquaintance calls 'Venomous Hope' and I may have misdirected my resentment at him for being right and forcing me to look the realization in the eye;

I went to Government College for the first time accompanied by a colleague and spent an entire afternoon in the music department listening to old tapes of student recordings on the tabla and harmonium- the air was musty, the afternoon hot and the atmosphere ecstatic;

I spent an evening with my driver Karamat and my maid Fauzia at Joy Land, which I visited after almost seven years, sat on an obnoxious ride that gave me a headache and scared the fading night-light out of me and had ice cream and pop-corn over conversation that centered around my procuring invitations to visit the villages of both next Sunday;

I downloaded loads and loads of Bob Geldof and Jefferson Airplane and stumbled across the discovery that songs like 'We Built this City' - though lacking in lyrical merit- are pretty damn awesome to hum in the shower;

I met writer friends for 'coffee' and had a coke, rather late. I managed to stay out till 10:30 and laughed for real;

I wrote a letter to the sky, saying everything and burned it.
Like I said…Nothing really happened.

Cain and Able

Much as I hate to admit it, I feel that I can no longer deny that there is much of you in me.

I am terribly ashamed of pleasure and I am quite sure I have you to thank for it. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, that is until I had to go and defy destiny by presuming myself perfectly capable of being happy by leaving and trying to live my own life. That one promise so inherently conflicts with the premise that I find I am incapable of dealing with it. You always covered your mouth when you laughed pretending you were coughing, not that it was often.
I always lower my eyes.
I try and tell myself it is a sign of misplaced modesty until it occurs to me, 'I hate false modesty'. At least I claim to do so often enough.

I enjoy the company of boisterous, complex and often brash individuals who flaunt their hearts and heads on their sleeves but I never do so. Now I cant’ help but wonder if it is because I am still ashamed. The funny thing is that I do manage to write in a manner of who it is I wish I could be: funny and smart. This usually ends up sounding contrived, manipulative and borrowed. Perhaps because it is.

I like someone.

There... I said it and I have never said it before, so I know how big a sentence it is.
Smaller than almost all the ones I put to paper, but larger than the whole lot combined. I met him last year and I vehemently avoided him like your voice in my head told me I should. I never met his eyes and I was predictably prickly and quiet. You would have been proud. I never shared a single conversation with him, but spent many-a-minute staring at him over the cover of my book. I think he may have caught me on one occasion and the moment he did I was deeply ashamed.
I wasn’t embarrassed, or curious, or playful and flirty…I was overwhelmingly ashamed. Like I was somehow dirty and evil.
According to your established modus ponens I probably was.
You were wrong about me not being a good student, as it so happens I turned out a sponge.

Lucky for me, I can’t really harbor much regret over the entire episode, purely because he could never have been the kind to have been even remotely interested, which perhaps is why I found him interesting. The regret comes purely from the realization that you and I are still inextricably intertwined. More so now that you are away, because you somehow managed to worm your way permanently in my head and have taken up residence in the general neighborhood of my conscience. If they want me, they better knock me down. Because I promise you I’m not easy and won’t be until there’s hollowed ground. Which, we both know, neither of us believe in.

So I am doomed then, aren’t I?

Doomed to never take chances and dance around delicious possibilities.
Doomed to want.
Doomed to wait.

Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus

'Mountains will be in labour, and an ridiculous mouse will be born'


I have recently taken to tackling Latin phrases, courtesy an old Latin -to- English phrasebook I found hiding innocuously under a pile of Jackie Collins paperbacks at Readings. The treasure cost me a total of Rs 60 and is proving to be a delight, simply because old cliche's in Latin somehow manage to escape being trite, they take on a new dimension. A dimension that extends language but is simultaneously defined by it.

Respice, adspice, prospice
Look to the past, the present and the future.

Granted this is probably not the best tidbit to begin with. After all, viewed atop my daily pulpit of yells and yoddles, I notice that looking to the past is something I actively avoid, but passively re-invent every day through my writing. This usually means that I avoid the present completely by altercating between a series of 'Wouldda, Couldda, Shoulddas' to conjure and circuit a future that has little or no premise in promise. I believe it was Sean Connery in Finding Forrester who said that 'In some cultures it was considered good luck to wear one's socks inside out'. In retrospect, I can attest to the fact that I took him very seriously.
Only that ever-elusive Irish luck still evades my grasp.

Armed by my own helplessness to find hope, but hoping for it all the same, I now discover that my phantom thoughts and dreams are fast taking on a scarier dimension. They are becoming real-er than they were and not real enough to change anything. I have begun living vicariously through the writings and readings of many-a-ghost writer in cyberspace. In some manner I have always done this in print, but I find that there is an unanticipated difference between the two. Even as my books are littered with untidy pencil scrawls and arguments in the margins the same tenacious tendency extends to interference on this new pixel-platform nebula. Where earlier I was perfectly content to butt-in by scribbling my end on paper, I am now displaying an untidy tendency to pose questions to the ghosts that light-up my computer screen and simultaneously my dormant cerebellum on a daily basis. The worst of it is, that whenever they respond they reaffirm that they are real. This in turn reminds me of how surreal they are, considering they know my thoughts and mind and vice versa, but nothing in the knowing extends to a tangible plateau. For someone who thrives on passive homo-sociality through cyberspace because it scares her in person, this new-found curiosity is debilitating. Now I usually end up e-mailing the writer as I pocket their thoughts for future consumption. This is troubling. Mainly because, even as they respond to my intrusive efforts, with sincere appreciation, a deprecating tendency to humor my pains or mild annoyance at my petulance...we are merely strangers who happen to walk past each other on Cyber street every day. And even though we may share the weather, or the music playing on boom boxes in the corner or skate the streets, we don't recognise each other. Not unless one of us bumps into the other and that defeats the purpose of strolling.

My bourgeois Ghost Town consists of several characters that inspire my curiosity. And in the great words of the recently-proclaimed-Great House, m.d '...since I'm not a cat, that's not really dangerous'. But I feel, Wilson's rebuttal applies in this case, the adage wasn't really inspired to ward-off cats... and I may actually get burned on this one.

One of these beings is noxious in nature, were I to view it as an ambient energy I would probably call it Apathy. It wards off all forms of company and all crevices of sentiment (something I largely depend on). Even its writings have an underlying layer of 'Venture no further, for here be Dragons', which I must admit is what usually inspires my steps to do expressly that. It challenges all accepted forms of... well almost everything, but does so within the premise of established, age-old principles. This tendency about Apathy always draws me, for while I tend to relate to most of its dilemma's I cannot bear to think that the only way to ultimately face them is the path it has chosen. I believe I turn to its thoughts every morning, out of some misplaced notion of medieval chivalry. I am determined to believe that the glass can survive half-full and it is insistent on the fact that the glass was broken a long time ago. That, coupled with its inherent dis-interest in my intrusive presence continues to prove alluring.
Women are weird that way.

The second of these beings is a Wordsmith. It plays scrabble with sentences and ping-pong with prose and poetry. Its thoughts are abrasive, but somehow retain a sibilant tone. It is somewhat of a friend from not-so foreign lands. I call it 'Chai'. For no other reason than the fact that its love of language, its aura of ephemeral lazy afternoons spent in mid-day suns and rain and its smiling tonalities - if indeed smiles can have sounds- conjure up images of what people tell me this addiction is supposed to taste like. I find that I cannot channel the sentiment through the physical social solvent, so I turn to my metaphysical Chai.

The third is a more recent discovery, it is brusque, bitchy and beastily beautiful. It moves at a much faster pace than I am used to and is succinct in any and everything it does. It is also rainbow coloured in my mind, not because it is gay, but because it is a kaleidoscope. It is a bottomless well of boundless energy and, seemingly, no artifice. I generally think of it as Ecstasy, or the closest thing open to the experience at any given time.

The Fourth is a mirage of music and words. Abstract to the point that I feel if I were a scrap of torn paper, it would be the torn, crumpled counterpart of a much-similar parchment. Aged and brittle, denoting that it cannot appreciate modernity, it appears to somehow be caught in the same time-warp in which I usually find myself. Looking perpetually for romance in reality but settling to grasp at the humour in all things as a consolation prize. I call it Tabula Rasa - A blank Tablet.

Living through dead writers is pleasant, poignant even, but living vicariously through people who are already living vicariously through their words is hard to keep track of, even for the likes of myself. The Blog odyssey, offers a foray into the minds of many, some of which you wind up wishing you had access to on a regular basis, until you have to remind yourself that they are strangers. That just because you skim their words every morning and skate their emotions, doesn't link you to them, at least not in any form more tangible than a click convenience on your template.

This is usually the point where I regret my 'Aloneness'. The corner where it begins to border 'Lonely'. Which is probably why I can't help but wonder about the thoughts and dreams of those who I can draw similarities to? Why I cannot let it rest.

Perhaps because all the 'real 'people I meet are anything but.
Still, hope springs eternal in Never-Ever Land.

To Idleness, with contempt

Deblitiating deliberations!
I find that even though I take great pride in my inordinate lack of purpose, being mind-numbingly idle is definitely no fun. Or perhaps it isn't because I am bound by the condition of having to sit upright in a chair without the luxury of taking off my shoes and flying off to meet fairies. I opened my day with Jack Johnson's 'Broken', a shower, a change and trailed my twisted trajectory to work. On the way there was Diamond's 'Forever in Blue Jeans' and some captivating Chet Baker.
I suppose my need to make the books and movies and music paramount priority in my world emerges from the fact that without them, life is just musty. It is, but I would much rather it wasn't.
This oh-so random musing is precipitated by the fact that its 4:18 pm, I have already written a brilliant series concept (Yes I say so myself as will others...for I am Spartacus, Bah!), have finished my bag book for the day... Machiavell's 'The Prince', good but no cartwheels for him. My pencil has scarred the pages with its usual But-I-beg-to-differ / I must digress, Sir! salutations and I am fucking B-O-R-E-D. I spent a good two hours on my novel, wrote neary 30 pages of which I have yet to make head or tail. I also wrote up two chapters on my thesis literature Review section and posted my Fulbright application. I have been tuned in to Duke Ellington for the past hour so I think I've exceeded more than my usual level of existential.
I've scrolled down Daily Times through and through, finally bothering to read the pages I spent a year working on and never deemed worthy of my actual attention. I've caught up on my correspondence and have just spent 15 precious seconds methodically applying lipgloss.

What scares me now is that even though my narration has elapsed it is only 4:26...and I'm stuck here till seven.
Nothing even remotely worthwile fantasizing about, especially considering my last but most recent crush's face has already begun to fade.
Short-term memory symposium sucks!

Project: Contentment

Jaded, Juxtaposed and Juvenile Malang reporting from Catechism Capital : Void of Maladjustment.

To,
Your Inexplicable, Undefined, Unbound Highest Entity, Universal Source of Knowledge and All Things Oh-So Great and Dandy.

Sir,
The many-me's of I, have hereby decided to undertake a mammoth new project, entitled Project: Contentment. With your permission we would like to make slight alterations in our daily regiment of pop-psychology deferrals, pseudo-smartassness and recind our monastic oath sponsoring our allegedly-illegal taps into your monopoly of thought.

This new resolution has been precipitated by our innate social and psychological complex to avoid homosociality and repent for our sins against the Gods of Antiquity. We are fully geared to partake of the Primrose Path of Dalliance (also stand in line) and be mellow and charming to cement our status as members of this race that 'they' call human, as per your permission. We - in our sincere efforts to prove our dedication to this cause - are willing to cut the proverbial Umbilical chord linking us to sage-old principles of Tolerance, Felicity, Individuality, Creativity and Freedom of Choice, Thought and Action.
Forgive us Father & Eschatological Compadre's for we have not sinned against the nature and nurture you have bestowed upon us and ask your express indulgence to do so hence forth.

In order to accomplish this, we have come to the cataclysmic conclusion that we must partake of that most-dreaded social lubricant. We, in all our senseless senses and thoughtless thinking, shall be joining three homosapiens for Tea this afternoon at 2:35 pm.

May you pardon our perjury,

Signed:
Ontological Misdeed Management Program
Experiment#43653764538475683765
Tag:Maria Amir
Planet: Earth

The Beauty of the Beast

It is scary and emboldening at the same time.

A few days ago, my grandmother asked me if I was still applying for Fulbright or if I still wanted to pursue 'this', she called it. I thought about it and said 'Yes'. She asked me if maybe I should apply for journalism, everyone has said it in some manner or another, but she was the first one to come right out with it. They all know as well as I do, that were it journalism on my applications there would be fewer rejection letters and I would even be eligible for a few scholarships. I think I considered it for a total of two minutes before saying, ‘It’s either writing or its nothing’. I don’t know if im being uncompromising or honest. I don’t ‘need’ a Masters degree, I already have one... I ‘want’ one. I want to sit in a classroom again and be pushed to compete creatively. To do what I love to do and do it with others who love it just as much. And that need makes the question subjective, which in turn makes it more than a matter of priorities, it makes it a dream and a voyage. But then again it is a matter of priorities; Do I want to get out more than I want to write?

I suppose for the time-being I shall be sticking to the original premise…I want to write, it is the only time I feel real. Like I actually exist, I breathe. Doodling in my notebooks and my books for that matter, conversing with blank pages, myself and dead authors...is the only time I feel like the Maria I hope I am. The best part is that the moment I find myself in an environment where I cannot navigate my bearings all I have to do is reach in my over-stuffed hamper-of-a-bag, get out my pencil, journal or novel and write and read to meet myself.

That is where the 'practicality debate' makes an appearance. I am not practical and I suppose I really must need to be. That is when all the doubts set in, followed by the perpetual need to prove that I am not stupid or dippy. Every time I meet friends going abroad with scholarships it hits me, your voice… ‘Stupid, Useless, Waste’ and in the middle of the night I grab at the headboard of my head-boardless bed to remind myself that I am out, that you are no longer here and that I am no longer her. Then I justify it somehow in my head by saying I’m an artist, that my applications aren’t the same as those for Business subjects and Environmental education. That I am not doomed to be dumb, because I was spiteful, pathetic and confused in High school. It is rather childish I suppose, to be so terrified of being 'dumb'. Not 'ugly' or 'silly' or 'lazy' or 'useless'...only 'dumb' really truly scares me.
I think about giving up on it all and doing what everyone wants me to do yet again…pick a person and get a move on. That’s when I become desperate and the walls start to cave in and I run around applying and re-structuring my application essays. Gambling my entire future on the notion that I can string a few sentences together. What if I can’t? I can write, but what if I can’t write what people want to read?
I remember how you used to relish taming your horses and dogs, how your face swelled with pride when they were chained, beaten and subdued. I know I will not tame the Beast or water him down to scare fewer people off. Because I just happen to think the he is beautiful. I love him untamed and inexplicable. Thats the only way I can love him.

I suppose I must organize myself and I am working on it, the problem is my…’gift’ -if that is what they call it- only runs on a liberally applied dosage of consistent chaos theory. It doesn’t work when organized, so maybe I need to work on scattering it to the point where it is only mine.

Maybe they, if they choose to take me, need to take me as I am.

Which means I need the courage to begin being who I am instead of talking about it.

Such a girl

I discover with a degree of decrepitude that I do tend to be 'such a girl' on certain things. These days the primary basis of that observation lies in House Md Season three with me acting the perennial shipper fantasizing about Huddy storylines...it doesnt help any that my job description encourages me to prolong my perpetul voyages in La La Land. Its either that or counting off the days till Harry Potter 7 makes it to the shelves and I have something else to obsess about to distract myself from my chronic lack of something to obsess about. One has to be really sad to get their socks off fantasizing about fictional characters hooking up in alternate dimensions.
I am really sad....Ka Ching!

Which is probably why the force is just not with me. Yoda would probably put it like this 'New-found malice in your heart there is young Padawan, leaking is your half-full glass of universal solvent'. No shit, Master. Indeed it is. For once I wouldnt mind fantasizing or crushing over someone in 3-D, real time, with a face and a smile and a fragrance (im not sure if that means aftershave really, but propriety demands I pretend it does). Then again, people are... well people... and even if im not 'as special as I may like to think I am, as do we all' I still am I.
And people always remain people.

It appears my romances or perennial lack thereof are perpetually doomed to a series of long-distance, anonymous correspondences. Perhaps because reality is always disappointing and strangers are somehow vindicated and justified simultaneously in cyberspace and old letters than they are in person. It is a depressing thought being doomed at the other end of a perpetually pending conversation that will never end in an actual meeting, but you know that if it were to do so it would simply End, so you thrive on playing along because it means something is happening, even if that 'something' is a big, fat nothing. Or, as it happens to be in my case, the several somethings that happen to be unabashedly obese nothings.
So, cheers to all my daily one-liners in cyberspace that form the pivot-point edifice of my fantasies and a large part of my composite conversation.
I miss having a best friend.
Then again, that requires work too. 'People work'...the scariest kind.

I came across someone writing this online and it struck some semblance of a chord:

Veritas
The truth, I strongly suspect, is that love is a bit of a twee (maybe even sad) little illusion, a happy story that we tell ourselves to pretend that even if everything isn't all right now, it will be in the future. Maybe. If we hope desperately enough.
We're not talking agape here.
Sometimes, you wonder…what's the fucking point? Why even bother? Does it actually even mean anything?
Nope.
Good night.

I suppose I should be depressed but im not. A gay guy that I don't know somewhere in the world I don't know, Knows what I mean.
That's something isn't it?

Probable problems

I love my problems of late, they are so base and silly that they are refreshing. I am losing time and inclination to drone on about the random wheels turning and tinkering in my mind, at least for the time being. I am quite sure I will get back to it as soon as time manages to fit me in to its busy schedule, pun intended.
My current lists of problems include the fact that I have not managed to find any semblance of decent parking on Davis Road, that all of my creative concepts at Geo are being appreciated but are too bloody long and elaborate for me to complete on time and the fact that the overwhelming combination of Blue and Orange desks, walls and seats is clashing with my contact lenses.
A small ray of light presents itself in the form of packed lunches, there is an elusive beauty to a packed lunch from home. I haven’t gotten packed lunches since I was about eight and the fact that someone bothers to wrap up a sandwich for me in tin foil every day is unbearably cutesy…in a good way…in the best way possible actually. The fact that today that lunch just happened to be a ‘Teenda sandwich’ is obviously anti-climactic but I think I managed to laugh it off quite comfortably in the cafeteria.
Other problems include Bank accounts which need to be opened immediately and procuring my fuel allowance considering I am broke till June and I am notoriously bad at being broke, of which I suppose I ought to be extremely grateful.

Passage perdition of the day: ‘To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real. It is no use starting late in life to say: “I will take an interest in this or that.” Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. A man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet hardly get any benefit or relief. It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do. Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death and those who are bored to death’ by Churchill, I suppose this ought to make me feel better, here’s to hoping it will serve its purpose.

These prettily, probable problems allow me to focus my energies on a random comment by a random acquaintance in cyberspace who raised my hopes up by telling me he had procured for me, a soul mate. Even though I promptly lashed out at him by pointing out that the entire epistemology centering on the search for such an individual inherently rested on the search and that the find had to be walked upon by the two souls in question, who was I kidding. A soul mate courier service could definitely find a market in atleast one of my worlds. Turns out the fabled candidate in question -deemed appropriate because he was the King of babble to my alleged Queen -is gay. I hereby proclaim that the new corollary for ‘cruel’ is ‘straight’.

This all means that I can put my perpetually pending identity crisis, existential dilemma’s and randomized eugenics on hold and focus all my attentions on an un-opened bottle of coke sitting on the desk next to mine.
Which presents as an actual problem.

"What's a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?"

*Disclaimer * : The following tirade has been initiated purely in the interests of venting and is not intended to pass judgment, ridicule and demean any social or income group, even though in practice it does all three. The writer maintains that she is not bitchy, proud or prejudiced but has been forced by the circumstances narrated to act all three for the time being.

What indeed!

I do not know what it is about men in this country that reheeeeeealllly makes it a constant-every waking minute of every bloody day - God awful - swallow arsenic to avoid eye contact - struggle to merely ‘be’ a girl. And yes! I fully recognize that this is a very old rant, met by a consistently nonplussed audience silently murmuring ‘So what, men are ass holes, deal with it woman’ clause. Believe me boys, we deal with it, but that is beside the point for now. For now, the focus of my frustration shall be recollection and narration, which goes something like this:

A new job means new adjustments and new people, both of which I get…within reason. The organization I now work for happens to be a large one and is ill-located, if one is to evoke the defense that a young, twenty something girl driving and parking at the opposite end of Davis Road, walking across the road met by a daily deluge of cat calls is justifiable: it isn’t…but that in no way means it isn’t annoying. My new job allows me to be creative, as part of my work portfolio, in short, all I am required to do is come up with ideas for talk shows, dramas, sitcoms and special events. I discover I am good at this job, quite good. It has been two weeks working here, I still don’t have my employee cards but my boss at Karachi has already offered me a promotion after my three-month trial period. I also realize that this amounts to bragging, and I shall fold on that account. I have never been particularly motivated…at anything, but apparently I still manage to appear so to my employers ‘tis a blessing indeed’, but this time it is different I am finally proud in some measure of something I feel I am capable of doing. This could very well be a direct result of my afore-mentioned bullshit prowess, I seldom talk to people at the workplace, but when I talk about work…I can do it well and at great length.

This is inevitably the point where I should mention that my colleagues are both men and during our orientation I was foolish enough to have deemed it necessary to prove myself rather too quickly. This seems to have rubbed off the wrong way. Today, I walked in to work an hour late, having called the HR manager informing him about the need to wait at NADRA offices to re-issue my original ID card, which I was told I required for my documents to be processed. I was given permission and as I met my colleagues I was told that - considering I was late - I ought to drive them to Bari Studios, Multan Road somewhere ahead of Samanabad.

I tried to inform them -as politely as I could- that driving around the outskirts of Lahore was not really part of my job description and that ‘technically’ my team was meant to observe a recording session the day before when both of them neglected to show up for work. I was informed that since I was the only one who had a car and I “shouldn’t set a bad example by being prissy and neglecting to do my job just because I was a girl”, in short that I should compromise. At this point I tried to evoke the “I don’t get paid till June, my car runs on petrol and I want to avoid driving in Samanabad” defense. This was met with a “Bibi, Rs 200 ki to baat he, aap fikar na Karen mein de doon ga aap ko, Gaari chalaane ki baat rahi to woh mein chalaa leta hoon”.

I cannot accurately decipher how much I regret the fact that I lack the ability to slap people down on impulse. I told the man that I wasn’t taking his money and I really think we should call HR to confirm a vehicle for the trip, at this point he threatened to report my ‘princess’ act to the our Lahore in-charge.

This is the point where I got stupid.

I think it was the ‘princess’ thing that got to me and I mean really got to me. I have met women who manage to make the princess label work to their advantage in the workplace and make it a point of principle to complain about tea, air-conditioning, their seat placement and everything that could possibly come in between. I try very hard not to be one of those, I bring my lunch so I don’t have to ask the staff to run around and get me anything, I even pick up my daily bottle of mandatory IV in Coke on my way to work and the only time I bother someone is when my computer decides to remind me it has a personality, which I find myself incapable of corresponding with. I am definitely not one of those women. I do not know if this sounds vain and I no longer particularly care if it does (even though my hint of an exclusion clause negates the latter) but I find it a constant itch being stared down by truck drivers and rickshaw people. Also this attitude appears to have no class or income distinction, I have been solicited by many-a-manner of person in my office for lunch or with simple random requests like “Would you like to sit in row#3, the AC is cooler there?” Fortunately I have limited experience with pick-up lines, but I find that the supposed sensation of being flattered that I have heard is supposed to follow is distinctly absent. I also find it hard enough to ‘politely decline’ considering that all I end up doing is mentioning “Aren’t all the AC’s the same size, and they are all working why would row#3 be any cooler than mine?”…until which point the expression on the solicitors face registers and I ‘get it’. I can’t for the life of me understand why women crave this sort of attention.

Anyway, coming back to my rant, I decided to drive my colleagues on a road to hell, in terms of both derivative and destination. The journey involved my colleague singing cheap Indian love songs (which I would normally be singing along to under entirely different circumstances) and making comments about how ‘touchy’ women have become. At the point where he mentioned that he may need to take driving lessons to hike up his standards to meet ‘Maria bibi’s’ I seriously considered stopping the car and asking him to step out. But it occurred to me I had no idea where I was and even less of an idea of where I was going so I was stuck. Once we got to the studios and everyone had marveled, pointed at and commented over the girl, who was unwilling to laugh along at their putrid humor or sit and share ‘actress jokes’, shooting began and I met two other colleagues who I considered better company. There’s no business like show business, point taken. By five in the evening I insisted we return to work, because I was not driving in the dark with these two men in my car in a place I don’t know (I obviously did not say this, I just acted like a petulant uncompromising little girl insisting we go back) and was met with a series of rolling eyes. Regardless, they consented and as I was driving back the colleague in perpetual question deigned to make a comment which finally managed to evoke a suitable response from my person. He said that English medium girls from a particular ‘class’ who thought themselves ‘pretty’ often found it ‘hard to work hard’.

I have yet to bite back officially but I will probably end trying to avoid the issue again just to avoid it getting dirty. I wish I wasn’t so scared of things getting dirty. However this one incident has brought to light several things, the first being that no matter how hard I try to pretend that social classes don’t exist and indeed, thrive, in this country branding people under social classes doesn’t negate it from being any less than a caste system. And within that caste system there are very few inroads for connection to be found, especially for women. I refuse to apologize for being educated or ‘pretty’ if that is the indentation people need to use to put me down.

I also refuse to allow middle class morals entirely brand my being.

I believe I just used the word ‘middle class’…funny, I thought that was supposed to be me.

The Last Muse

An Idea is born…

A new thought or an old one wearing a fresh new fragrance garbed in satin. It steamrolls across the canvas of the mind, zooming-in, all guns blazing to a conclusion it is desperately counting upon us to come to. We roll with it as far as we can, before one of us loses the other. Some distant corner intricately cultivates our combined demise, our infinite fall from glory.

It is a study of the self, to derive how we conceive, perceive and deceive our own creation.
How is it born?
How do we kill it?

Why the trembling nuance of an idea hidden within the manifold layers of language and cornered by culture is killed in conception? Why the feeble fetus of original thought is beaten and buried during its oh-so fragile pre-natal phases?

“Dim it down, Cut the corners, Sell it.”

Too Bold
Not bold enough

Too pretty
Not pretty enough

Too wordy
Not wordy enough

Too abstract
Not abstract enough

Too smart
Not smart enough

Too Naïve
Not naïve enough

Too Happy
Not happy enough

Too Sad
Not sad enough

Stupid, incompetent, amateurs…how dare you call yourselves creators! When will you learn?
What you call life flows and follows in the cracks, the valley, the in-betweens, the shallows, the half-times, the breaks, the procrastinating middles of any and everything, the Grey’s.
I, Inspiration as I draw my dying breath ask of you, Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve, of what use are your sight, mind and soul if they are closed to cracks and crevices.

When will learn not to speak to say?

Pretty Poetry

I think I dropped a poem here somewhere
It slipped through my fingers
To creep sulkily into the cracks in the wall

It was rather pretty
A pantomime of colours and dreams
Of happy endings and Everlots

I think it was small
Easy to lose or forget or forego
Perhaps that is why I lost it
Why it no longer felt important enough to linger

I’ve been searching frantically for days
Under my pillow
In my chest drawers
Behind my desk
Under the carpet

It really was pretty
I’m sorry I lost it.