A Closet Full of Conversation

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded – Fyodor Dostoevsky

It appears that I am incapable of exorcising you and so I have decided that in the vein of a lost La Mancha, I too shall be content with my scars. My months in Lahore, drudge slowly now and as the accolades I had collected during my time in England slowly fade away, it appears that Oxford and you must have been a twisted dream. A dream that I am too scared to awaken from. Still, as Rimbaud put it “I am intact, and I don’t give a damn.”

I believe, I am spending my time re-living conversations, creating them, coveting them…mostly just talking to myself. It is becoming increasingly obvious now, enough so that I can occasionally catch people gawking at me through my car window and have bought myself window screens. I wonder if you have forgotten me already and I altercate daily between whether or not I would be grateful or gutted knowing that truth.

Living with the random swirling of my brain is exhausting: tweaks in time for a perennial plagiarist who never knows if she actually lived her life or is only now weaving it into view. Voices echo both in the back of my head and outside it but I still them by composing conversations, some that I have stocked up from childhood; others with you; yet better ones that I someday plan to have with someone who I am determined will not be you.

“Must you always pretend?” you asked me once.

I’m not that interesting when I don’t

“Have you even tried it?” you pushed.

I don’t need to, they were perhaps the most honest words I ever shared.

Is that the composite of human judgment then, conversation? If so, I can confidently claim that this year has been one of self-indulgent compositions for me. I have always been a voyeur of language and the only way to get my mind to stop tinkering its way into madness these days seems to involve rollicking off random nonsense both in and outside of my person.

“I will take care of you, you are my daughter after all,” my father tells me, after nearly eight years of my having lain eyes on him. I don’t have a ready answer to my skepticism, my bitterness or my regret and so I smile in response. I suppose that is what ‘forgive and forget’ is meant to mean but it doesn’t. I try to wash it down, in utmost benevolence to ‘forgive and forego’ but I am not sure if I am strong enough.

He asks me “What I wan’t to do with my life” in the same breath that he employs to ask me whether I would prefer pizza or Mexican for dinner. ‘Oh I don’t know, happiness might be nice. Love, even better,’ I muse to myself.

Get a PhD, I say instead. I know it isn’t a choice he would appreciate over marriage but I also know it is one he wouldn’t  begrudge me now.

It is disconcerting how all of my silent ministrations are directed at or around you – as if you have replaced one of the many incarnations in my head that I used to share myself with. Every minute detail; every odd lilting tail end of a half-formed world-changing philosophy; every unsolved epigram; every shoe purchase and song choice goes through you… they are all dedicated to you. You, who aren’t there anymore and were probably never there even when you were. 

Most of my days are spent writing letters to you in my mind… 

“My dear failed, festering excuse for persistent heartburn

I just watched the Matrix again with my kid brother. I wonder why all the references are Alice and Wonderland references? Ever think that there might be some credence to the fact that life is a giant, self-perpetuating computer game? Is that why you quit? Do you suppose I should, because I’m pretty sure I am playing against myself.

Remember how Cipher said ‘ignorance is bliss’, why couldn’t we have tried that? What’s so great about the 'Truth' anyhow, after all Dylan said ‘all the truth in the world adds up to one big lie’ and he’s pretty smart. Even you agreed with me on that. We never really pondered the merits of denial, perhaps we should have."

But I know, even as I say it that it isn't for me. I’m not one of those people beating the shit out of themselves to keep from asking a real question or worse getting a real answer. My denial travels a far more twisted trajectory. It makes mountains out of morals, gods out of men that I admire and molehills out of a god I cannot possibly love because he so desperately needs to be loved all the time.

“So why are you upset?” the voice -that I can never stop searching for- asks me as I paint my nails a bright fire-engine red, perched on my bed watching Yul Brynner grimace at Ingrid Bergman daring her to admit she loves him without giving anything away. Typical.

Did you know this is Oprah’s last year doing her show? I whine.

“And that is particularly upsetting to you because?” it presses on.

Well, she could at least have waited for me to make something of myself, called me on and then quit, and I was not being sarcastic.

My narcissism is humble enough to recognize that it has not yet achieved anything to claim a stake in the ego it could potentially develop. Which is why I am determined not to ever achieve anything.

“Why don’t you ever put any of your ideas down on paper?”Asma asks me.

Because, then I can’t change them and I’ll have to do something about them. Why don’t you apply for a theatre programme? I counter.

“I don’t buy it," she dodges. "We need to do something with our lives, move in some direction. Take on the world, stop being embarrassed about ourselves, lose the weight,” she’s on a roll as we both reach out for another chip, another pakora and another glass of coke.

You’re right but don’t we have to change to do all of that, I am apprehensive.

“Not necessarily, there must be SOMEONE who will like us exactly as we are?” she looks at me and we go on to compare lists that we have been drawing for the six years we have known each other only to crawl back into ourselves the moment we’ve digested the fries.

Still, I am patient and my patience is a pattering of images that I must pause and pillage without preference. There are conversations with the sprites in my head about fantasies that I could live in: my own personal reverie of a solitary walker, in a forest with a cabin, a lifetime supply of books, a typewriter and a coke fountain. A career that allows me to backpack around the world on a shoe-string budget but with ample material to fill several lifetimes worth of journals. A quaint ranch in the middle of nowhere...Wyoming mayhaps, where I can ride in the rain, read in the sun and write all the days in between. Occasionally there are conversations with an eight-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, both of whom have my hair and your eyes. They enjoy my company and think I’m an amazing mom. We watch every single animated release in the theatre; eat skittles; recite Dahl and Dr Zeuss with all the HOoo voices; take an infinite number of road trips; host midnight costume parties and dance. They love me and I don’t construct them beyond that…ever. 

Then there are conversations with my dead 80-year-old saviour, Baba Faiz.

“Maria Saib, aap ko hum ka yaad aati he?” he smiles at me from the beyond.

Sara waqt aati he baba, baarish mein kabhi aap ke bagher pakore nahin khaaye, I sob.

“Raat ko neend aata he na saib, dar to nahin lagta,” hand on my hair.

Nahin, I lie.

But it always seems to come back to you. You, who I sometimes wish I hadn’t met or fallen in love with until I remind myself that there are no victims in our particular equation. Until I remember that I did this, that this is my story not yours.

“What does this ‘Paimona Bede’ thing mean?” you asked me.

No idea, it isn’t Urdu its Persian, as I hastily email my mother to find out for you.

“So?” you press on.

Forget it, it’s a love song, I scoff.

“And I’m not allowed near those?” that smirk again.

You shouldn’t be. If you must know, it means ‘please fill my empty cup with love so I can breathe again’, I try and fail at affecting a snort.

“That’s cheesy…desperate actually. I wonder why all love songs are so damn desperate?” you ask me.

I didn’t answer you, did I?