On Finding Freedom

I have spent the past few weeks drowning in a sensation I cannot begin to identify. The trouble is that I am unable to decide if I am overwhelmed or underwhelmed. Whether I am drowning in a flood of colours, flavours and odours or whether I am drowning in a lack thereof. I am either beginning to believe that nothing exists or that everything exists. Either all is a lie or all is truth. This may have something to do with the fact that in my over-zealous bid to catch up on my 'religious know-how' for Oxford, I have begun reading the scriptures again.

The two Testaments and the Quran read together make for quite the grotesque picture, and much as I cannot empathise with a word in them, I find that I can't help being swallowed by the sheer volume of absolutes in dogma. I reckon, that I may actually be beginning to indulge a little in 'be all's' and 'end all's'. Not in the books, mind you, but in the notion of 'one or the other' that they all advocate.

This is not good.

I am not comfortable with absolutes. I loathe absolutes, and wavering between being numb or being a mortal universal conduit is not a pretty choice. I have taken to watching 'LOST' which I suppose is appropriate in my present position, and for some reason I find that I desperately want to climb a mountain. I am undecided about whether I want to climb it for the climb, the view from the summit or to foster the fall.

I have finished reading 'Simulcra and Simulation' by Jean Baudrillard. I thought a pinch of nihilism or secularism would keep me balanced while I was wading through all the scriptures but a certain observation is not letting go of me.

"The apocalypse is finished. Today it is the precession of the neutral, of forms of the neutral and of indifference…all that remains, is the fascination for desert like and indifferent forms, for the very operation of the system that annihilates us. Now, fascination (in contrast to seduction, which was attached to appearances, and to dialectical reason, which was attached to meaning) is a nihilistic passion par excellence, it is the passion proper to the mode of disappearance. We are fascinated by all forms of disappearance, of our disappearance. Melancholic and fascinated, such is our general situation in an era of involuntary transparency."

Ironically enough -in retrospect- I cannot begin to comprehend what any of this means, but I know that it meant something when I first read it.

An odd, intangible illusion of freedom or freedom from illusion.

Now isn't that the question?

Another Little Mermaid Diary Entry

24 September 1992

Dear Diary,
Today I watched a scary movie called 'Labrynth'. It is about a girl who loses her baby brother to the Goblin King. The Goblin King is always nice to the girl. He buys her a ball gown and he even dances with her at a party. He gives her many gifts and makes her special.
I think the movie is scary because she likes the Goblin King even though he is evil in the end.

Maria Amir

Little Mermaid Diary Entry

Late Night Time
3rd September 1992

Dear Diary,
I got a gift from mom today. It was an Ariel doll, she has a wedding dress and tail costume to help her turn back into a mermaid.
I have decided that when I marry Prince Eric, I want to keep my brown hair. Brown hair people are more smarter than red hair people and the red hair people are smarter than yellow hair people. Einstein says so.
(To clarify I have since checked and am unable to find proof to support that Einstein actually vocalised the following sentiments. However he was a 'notably smart' guy, I'm sure he thought it.)

But I have decided that I want to keep Ariel's green eyes because Green eye people are pretty-er than Brown eye people. Even Blue eye people are pretty-er.

Maybe Prince Eric will take one look at my Brown eyes and not want to marry me.
Maybe no one will?
I don't think I like my eyes.


Maria Amir

Swimming in Swan Lake

I find it increasingly odd how moments surprise you, surpass you, catch you as they fragment you into a million tiny pieces. Ironically enough, these moments almost always end up being the In-betweens, Go-betweens or Tween’s of time: a split-second leading on to a minute, where you step out of your car to open the gate and somewhere in the span of those meandering 22 seconds you feel all of your senses rise up and answer a calling to something you can’t begin to explain.

A real moment of clarity almost never lasts more than a micro-chasm.
You are altogether too aware of the wind blowing in your face, of the blossoms serenading the air around you, and you can hear the faint strains of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ as you begin to hum “I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream, I know you the gleam in your…’ and just like that it is over and you make your way back to the car. Life and time start again. It’s kind of like staring into a fire, or at a candle…something about the flickering makes everything still and the stillness makes you stand out.

I find that I am craving Time-tweens more and more these days. I see myself as the connoisseur of in-between seasons, the accountant of go-between emotions and the tortured Time tweener of unwritten passages that blind me in all the precious split seconds that I have lost from my life. It is odd how we never stop to consider how many chasms of ideas we dismiss because we just happen to find them skulking in doorways, driveways, hallways and run away’s. I triumph as the troubadour of dreams and possibilities, coveting new thoughts and old things.

I think it best to surmise my current self with Swan Lake.
You see, I have this thing about Tchaikovsky.
I am in love with his soul.
Have been for quite some time now.

I believe it started when I was about fourteen and I first heard it playing on my grandfather’s computer as he was clicking away at a bridge tournament with his CPU. I remember that I was holding a tea-tray and I froze as I heard the strains of music through the door. The eclipse must have lasted a long time, enough time for the tea to turn cold and for me to face repercussions for said turning of tea tables. But what I remember more was being haunted…hunted by the music of the self proclaimed ‘Creator of Captivating Nightmares’. I remember sneaking into my grandfathers room while he was asleep that night and stealing that CD. I remember switching off all the lights in my tiny room and plugging in my headphones.
I remember listening to it over and over again at full volume until it consumed me.

That captivating nightmare never really ceases to capture my emotions and my fears. I truly believe that the First Act of Swan Lake engages every spectrum of human emotion. Those seven and a half minutes are a lifetime if one can see them, read them and feel them fully.

Today I ended up dodging work and spending the entire day with my mother in her new house. As we sat in here atrium, engulfed by that gorgeous in-between seasonal sentiment that is both Sun and Wind at the same time, she had Swan Lake running in the background. The magic flooded every doorway, every window and every locked lost yearning I didn’t know I didn’t know. The crescendo at the end of the first act actually prompted me to do something I have never done before. My mother and I were both sitting in creaky cane chairs and she was having her tea as I sipped my morning coke. We were both painting our toe nails letting the strains of sound flow through us as I found myself picking up a red vial. I realise that it is an odd progression to have to experience all of one's ‘coming of age’ moments at the age of 25 - seeing as my real-time coming of age was a decade squandered in limbo - but this just happens to be one of my bigger break through's. I have never worn red as a colour, not in anything.
I am strictly a Turquoise person.
Still I found myself finally break an unwritten proclamation I had bound myself to at the oh-so precocious age of seven: Thou shall never wear red nail polish.
Let it be Thought a Wicked Thing To Do.
Let that Thought Be Adhered To Hereafter.
Only loud, over-confident, ‘womanly’ women wear red nail polish. Thou shall never join the ranks of women who are confident in their appearance and their ability and/or desire to attract the opposite sex.

I like the fact that I came of age, listening to Tchaikovsky, espcially the gospel of Swan Lake. I have often wondered how I would translate Swan Lake, into words if I were given the chance. I have wondered whether Tchaikovsky’s chords would speak as unflinchingly as Dylan’s poetry or Leadbelly’s musings or Bowie’s brashness.

Today, this is what I heard:
(Act 1: Waltz - Translation)

It is the ‘stepping out’ of my shadow that scares me
I so lack the nobility that every seeker must possess in spades

And you whisper to me, crouched behind curtains of dances we never shared
I seek your face in a mirror I am too frightened to look at
And I know you long to corner me:
comb my hair,
sing me songs,
play me prayers

I recognise your hope,
It hides behind my hurt.
We both hunt for our humanity
.
We are skating along the stars,
Wearing our scars with pride
You catch me as I fly and it costs you your fall.
I am Lost in the Losing, Loving and Looking
So I will Run again, Hide again, Hate again.
And you will not stop me…again.

But I shall miss you.
As all the Others scavenge your soul for scraps of shelter
I miss you as you long to give of yourself to Someone…Anyone.
Someone Else, Anyone Else.

Their voices, their talking, their taunting
Is more yours now, than you were ever mine
And I stand silently, seeing myself slip and stumble in your eyes.
I simmer as I catch you finding the someone else
To translate for you the Me that I used to be with Us.

So now you shall wait,
Now you shall wonder
Now you shall wander.

No longer will I give of my madness to save you.
You are no longer worthy of the wonder in me.

But if I ask you to run with me,
From me,
For me,
Behind me,
After me,
To me…will you?

Meet me in my shadow
So that I can count your eye lashes
Meet me in my shadow
So that I can see the colour of your cravings

Be the You that knows the I in Me
There are no ‘I’s in Them.
We will be safe.
There will be no ‘We’ in their World.

So, make that choice… ask me.

I shall say yes…
I shall run, I shall scream, I shall fade, I shall follow, I shall flounder
…but I shall say yes
I shall send you my dreams in a basket
If you would hand me your hopes

… I shall say ‘Yes’.

The Music Muse

Well, apparently I have been tapped, by the one chain letter I cannot possibly ignore.Here’s to the iPod Shuffle, and no that is not an oxymoron.
The Rules Goeth Thus: a) To be putting your player on shuffle. b) For each question, to be pressing the next button to get your answer. c) You must write the name of the song no matter what. Ergo there is no cheating, Bah!

1.IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY?
‘Dance Ballerina Dance’… Nat King Cole (Makes for a perfect response, I tell you)

2.WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
‘Travellin’ Through’… Dolly Parton (I’m a puzzle I must figure out… )

3.WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
‘By the River Dark’ … Leonard Cohen (Trust that to be a creepy, ominous prophetical, pathetical mess from the get go!)

4.HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
‘Roll another Joint’ … Tom Petty (Its bloody genius, the iPod! Prophetic, No … Sheeriously!)

5.WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR LIFE?
‘Circle Game’ … Joni Mitchell (And the seasons they go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down, we’re captive on a carousel of time. We can’t return we can only look behind from where we came, and go round and round and round in the circle game…)

6.WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?

‘The Loony Toons Theme’ (That’s all Folks!)

7.WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
‘Hello, I Love you’ … The Doors (Aww…shucks!)

8.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
‘Bring it on Home to Me’ … Sam Cooke (Mayhaps, mayhaps indeed…)

9.WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?

‘I’m Changing the Words’ … The Louvin Brothers (No kidding, words are my wonder)

10.WHAT IS 2+2?
‘Dance of the Infidels’ … Bud Powel (No Shit Sherlock, that goes for ALL kinds of math for you)

11.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
‘Khilona Jan Kar’ … Rafi (Umm morbid much, or is that an omen? I’m ignoring this one. As if an iPod is any kind of judge of character anyway. I mean, that’s just mean)

12.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
‘We Don’t Stand a Chance’ … Barbara Streisand (Hahaha, Enough Said! Its raining its pouring my love life is boring)

13.WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
'Let Love In'... Goo Goo Dolls (...)

14.WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
‘Honest Lullaby’… Joan Baez ( … And they slept at home resentfully covered in their dreams. Forfeiting my A’s for zero’s, future’s unforeseen)

15.WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
‘Wouldn’t it be Lovely?’… Audrey Hepburn (Yup, wouldn’t it? Because all I DO want is a room somewhere far away from the cold night air with one enormous chair, lots of chocolate, warm face, warm hands, warm feet and sitting absaBLOOMALUTELY Still!)

16.WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?

‘You Cant Always Get What You Want’ … Rolling Stones (Oh Har-Dee-Bloody-Har Har!!)

17.WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
‘Shall we Dance’ … The King and I (Oh Hoopiliciousness all round! 1-2-3 And!)

18.WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
‘Bye Bye Love’ … Simon and Garfunkel (I’m not complaining, there are worse ways to go, “Ta!” to y’all too)

19.WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
‘Kung Fu Fighting’ …The Village People (Don’t I wish!)

20.WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
‘Queen Jane Approximately’ … Bob Dylan (And your Father to your sister, he explains…That you’re tired of yourself and all of your creations)

21.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
‘All the Madmen’… David Bowie (Sheeshdomness this is too perfect! Because I’d rather be here with the mad men than all the sad men roaming free)

....Apparently I am not at liberty to exempt anyone who reads this as being tagged to do the same. Otherwise the wrath of the Music Muse shall be upon all your selves. Tune-less-ness shall be thy curse.I’m taking the last one back, ‘Tune-less-ness’ sounds like a worse curse (Alleged ‘tune-less-ness’ injected for dramatic effect) than Death.

The "Hoop La" Heart Finally Beats

I’m not quite sure how to describe my current state of euphoria, or even if it is possible to describe such a state at all. I am not accustomed to euphoria as an honest emotion, unless I am fabricating it for the benefit of an audience.
But euphoria this is…

There is something to be said for the power of an acceptance letter, any acceptance letter I suppose, but especially a university acceptance letter. The multitudes of silent emotions that race within you in those five to six minutes span a ridiculous spectrum. There is the apprehension that comes with finding the innocuous envelope and seeing it much smaller than you would have hoped. The mingled mass of dread and desperate hope as you open it and the sheer, resounding breathlessness that collects in the stillness as you read the first sentence. An eternity skulks in the silent corners of those masquerading minutes.
It can make or break that moment, that day, that year, that you.

“Dear Ms Amir,
I am delighted to tell you that your application for admission to the University of Oxford as a graduate student has been successful…”

It is oddly discomfiting the sheer volume of insecurities a mere letter can expunge. It almost makes it seem as if all of your earlier apprehensions were somehow silly, almost trivialising everything you have been; been through or done to get here. It is an odd experience. Truly...

All of a sudden there is a validation to simply being ‘you’, that you realise perfectly you should not have needed but are overjoyed at having all the same.

Lahore is beginning to look pretty these days.

Traffic isn’t horrific, it is bustling.

The weather isn’t rank, it’s misty.

The people aren’t boors, they ‘just don’t know better’.

You are suddenly saintly in your handing out of unbridled forgiveness, to those that do, don’t and shouldn’t deserve it. Nothing matters now that you’ll finally be out to make your own way, be whoever you could now be. You are no longer dejected about not being able to share this with your family. You are no longer vindictive about wanting to rub it into their faces that you made it. You are not upset about the scores of people who couldn't possibly be happy for you, are blatantly jealous or are looking at you with their raised eyebrows and “You couldn’t ‘possibly be serious’, Oxford…You! Pffffft!” expressions.

You are singing, painting and running every day and have finally learned how to play ‘Suzanne’ on your guitar. You are no longer worried about your job being a resplendent exercise in the art of time suckage, because it is giving you time to write and you are... like a crazy, obsessed TV-movie version of compulsive author. You are reading like there is no tomorrow, theology, philosophy and for some reason a lot of CS Lewis and Tolkein again. You are picturing yourself sitting and sketching in the purple meadows of Magdalen College and you catch a peek of yourself at the Bodelian. You are hoping you still remember how to ride a bicycle. You are beginning to forget the face of the woman who – upon hearing that you were hoping to be able to continue your Masters in Women’s Studies with a PhD in Comparative Religions – said that girls should really not study so much to prevent them from ‘adjusting to life’.

You are finally losing weight out of sheer determination and have not had a ‘real’ coke in three days… this is the only dark cloud hanging over you. You are filling out visa forms and accommodation forms and scholarship forms and you are absolutely loving it, because it means that all of this is real and not just in your head. You are dreaming ridiculous dreams about applying for a job at Penguin Publishing’s or the BBC and are not stopping yourself from dreaming so. You are beginning to believe in big dreams. You are finally letting go of hopeless strains of ‘would be, could be, may be’ romances that danced around in your head but never happened because you were too scared to even smile in their direction.

You are making plans with a ‘real’ time frame and one that keeps getting narrower and you love that. You are wallowing in the nostalgic irony of how five years away from your father, your former self, your former corners and your former fears could have possibly brought you here. You are not sure if it is luck or hope, but don’t want to jinx it so you send a silent thanks to whatever helped you get here. You are buying balloons and almost daily narcissus posies from random street boys that give you an honest smile. You have taken to using ‘Hoop la’ at the end of almost every second sentence that comes out of your mouth. You have developed the ability to smile at select strangers, especially children in backseats looking out of the rear window shield.

You are buying Green Tea shampoo’s, Crest toothpaste and tangerine Body gels and have forgotten to purchase the toilet paper and cotton swabs on your grocery list. You spent almost RS 400 at the Al Fatah candy counter yesterday on a composite of skittles, crazy roll-up bubble gum and marshmallows.

You are dancing every evening in your room at 3 AM for No reason,
for Every reason,
for Any reason.

You are jumping out of your skin, bubbling out of your mind, skating on sunshine and walking on air.

It can’t possibly last long.

An Hour is Seven Years and Fourteen Minutes

I do not know if I am still here or where ‘here’ is for that matter. Lately I find myself extremely conscious of two things, the first being that I shall turn 25 this year and have almost nothing to show for it and the second that I may just hate the fact that I am a woman.

Both these observations met me a week ago. They told me that they had travelled through a month of absolute hellishness as I slithered in my blasé lethargy. Work has been non-existent of late, even for those of us with steady employment and I have spent my hours at the office reading a new book almost daily. Presently I find myself immersed in the travel diaries of hobos with excerpts from Kerouac, Guthrie and Faulkner. At home I find myself painting absolutely nothing just because I happen to enjoy the acrid aroma of turpentine and watching a string of films. My skin is ashen, my morale is at an all time low despite the fact that I am over the moon about my break-out moment approaching in September and my mother tells me my teeth are slightly crooked again!

But I am writing. For real it seems, with characters and some semblance of storyline. Unfortunately it appears my writing and my characters will lead to nothing short of a ‘father-daughter’ cliché. Perhaps I need to get this dynamic out of my system, my hope chest and my imagination once and for all. I do not really know if I am writing or performing an exorcism which is indicative of the vehemence with which I am taking to it.

Still, where is the sense in arguing with the dark confines of a hyper-conscious and endlessly spiteful Muse?

Observations Alpha and Omega met me while I was re-watching all of the Batman films for the umpteenth time. I am going over trilogies again, I began with Star Wars, then the Lord of the Rings, Superman, the X-men and now Batman. I saw myself dressed in a Batman (not bat girl, I can’t abide that woman) costume lying on a shrinks couch admitting that I had ‘Daddy issues’ and needed some help. I also heard Bat-self mention that I was almost 25 and I couldn’t believe that I still revered cartoon heroes more than real ones. I also confessed to a dirty dream I had about Christian Bale. The fact that I would turn 25 this year meant that it had been 18 years to the day I first decided to make an escape from myself. I was sitting in my tiny pink room planning on how to go about writing my first true confessional to my father and then running for my life. It also struck me that 25 is just five years away from 30 and that 30 meant a strike-off point for being an independent woman with a career, a husband and a baby on the way and that I was no where near any of those things. Somehow my mind jumped straight from Single, Fabulous and Thirty to ‘I am going to die ALL alone’ and this prophetic hyperbole was my cue to hyperventilate.

I didn’t hyperventilate.

And the lack of reaction is more disturbing.

Observation Omega met me while I was driving in Defence. I parked in front of the Mc Donald’s jogging park in Y-block and yearned for the familiarity of being flippant about important things. I do this often, stalk people from my car, while listening to some folk strains and sipping my coke. It hit me that I didn’t not like being a woman because of all the man issues, or the marriage issues or the appearance issues…I didn’t like being so damn ‘aware’ of everything: my emotions, my insecurities and my persistent longing. For the first time in my life I curse my imminent need to find ‘meaning’ in every damn thing I read, see, touch, watch or hear. I hate the fact that I can’t dismiss anything in my head and that I cant be ‘meaningless’ about things that – by every definition- ought to just be left meandering without definition. I always marvel at how people can spill around double entendres of ‘meaningless encounters’ and ‘meaningless conversations’, because I wouldn’t even know how to go about initiating either. Sure I talk gibberish more fluently than I talk sense, but there is always an emotional solvent to douse out the ‘meaningless-ness” of it all.

I don’t know if this curse is about me being a woman or about being just me, but I long to rid myself of it. It has been fourteen minutes spent staring at my computer screen mocking me. At times like this a flashing cursor and a blank sheet of paper are the most formidable of foes one can encounter....in any realm. That thing that people always say about how all girls are the same because they all think they are different, I wish I could truly believe it.

Its been fourteen minutes.

I am resolved to believe it.

Of Dark Beauty and Light Betrayals

I spy with my little eye something that begins with the sound of stillness.

It is rather beautiful… this time, this winter, this overwhelming sense of quiet. I believe I am even grateful for the constant power outages in Lahore these days, because there is a lot to be said for forced nostalgia brought on by the company of grandparents sitting by a fire in a candle lit room for two hours every evening. We talk about nothing and everything, as my Nani ‘tch tch’s’ and my Nana and I spend our daily load shedding interval debating religion and bashing it to bits with rhetorical philosophy, poetry and prognostication. I am also morbidly aware of the feeling of dread that lurks under my skin as I ‘truly enjoy’ myself talking to him, because I know that he might not last too long and that this moment, this particular quandary and this particular monologue might haunt me in the future.

I find myself studying his face while I try to argue with his mind, hoping to somehow simultaneously learn from both. I find that his face is a better teacher than his mind, because his mind can seldom entertain arguments, but his face contorts every time I stump something up there in that world he lives in. I love seeing it happen.

I have discovered that I genuinely love the dark - that I always have and perhaps always will. A few years back I used to think this was part of my para-literal quest to appear ‘mysterious’ whatever that means, but now I realise that I have always found darkness comforting. I can never understand it when people mention how pitch-blackness is foreboding. I always find bright lights foreboding. Light enhances every flaw and underlines every hidden thing, putting it out there in the open for everyone to see. Light uncovers a good deal of effort spent keeping secrets, and I have never been one for sunny days or brightness. Give me grey skies and impending storms any day. Contrary to what people presume, I dont enjoy darknes because it is morbid, but because it is soft, unsure and hazy. I am also partial to dim lit rooms and I never light more than one light-bulb.
Ironically enough this realisation comes at a time where I am re-reading Kundera’s ‘Unbearable lightness of Being’ and I am quite sure that he didn’t mean for his words to be taken so literally, it probably kills the romanticism of his impressions. I am well aware that had this been my novel and my title, I would take offence to a reader not delving deeper into my supposed sentimentality.

I can never figure out if I like Kundera, if I think that his subjective abstractness is genuine or put on, which is why I tend to re-read him a lot. It’s not like Kafka, where I know that re-reading the words will re-reveal revelation. But this time around there are a couple of quotes that pinned me “From that time on she knew that beauty is a world betrayed, the only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somehow” and “Betrayal means breaking rank. Betrayal means breaking ranks and going off into the unknown”.

I have been thinking a lot about what I find beautiful and the fact that it almost always contradicts the accepted perception of beauty. I find scary ‘beautiful’. Any and everything that I know intimidates me or that I find myself incapable of assimilating, I find beautiful. This can’t be good. Such a masochistic notion of beauty only means that one will be disappointed by it. This means that I set myself up for disappointment and mask it in the poetry of proposed beauty. What a load of shit!

The second thing that the combination of winter, quiet, procrastination and blues has brought to the forefront is ‘betrayal’. Ever since I regained some semblance of confidence in myself by getting into great grad schools and being short-listed for full scholarships, I have been battling betrayal. All this, all my chances and all of my freedom can be pegged down to the betrayal of a father and ‘the breaking of ranks'. Is that really a good starting point? Is the fact that I can’t stand - or seem to follow- rules a curse? There are two kinds of people that really, truly bother me… the ‘Too’ people and the ‘Just’ people. People who can’t help but throw in a synonymous ‘Its too cold, its too high, its too long, its too easy’ and the ‘Its just a cold, its just a building, its just the sky’. One eulogises and the other trivializes and I can’t stomach either. The problem is that the world can largely be segregated into these two people and their flock. The variables are few and far between and I am growing tired of searching for someone who I don’t need to explain, defend or sell myself to.

I just read a post on a blog I tend to frequent where the writer said “… I wondered at their stupidity for having allowed themselves to love someone so unreservedly” and for some reason that I cannot fathom, I feel horribly embarrassed.
I feel terribly Betrayed by my search for Beauty.


Well, now time passed and now it seems

Everybody's having them dreams.

Everybody sees themselves walkin' around with no one else.

Half of the people can be part right all of the time,

Some of the people can be all right part of the time.

But all the people can't be all right all the time

I think Abraham Lincoln said that.

"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,"

...I said that.
– Bob Dylan (Talking World War 3 Blues)

The Business of Breaking Hearts

He was eighteen years old, when she was eight and all she ever remembered was having fantasies about him paying her a compliment.
She had navigated all of her movements towards attaining this one, ever-elusive goal. She followed him around like a faithful puppy, bought his drinks from the kitchen even when he didn't ask for them and laughed at all of his jokes.

And finally here she was…
Perched next to him on top of a park bench in the midst of a warm summer afternoon. She alternated her time by glancing periodically at the peonies she had gathered and sneaking a peek at his profile, which was at least three feet above hers. He looked down at her and smiled.

“You, kiddo, will break many-a-heart when you’re older”.

She couldn't’t help but feel let down. It probably showed on her face too, but she was clever enough to bow her head so that her bangs covered her eyes in a shroud of ebony foliage. She had been longing for something simple, nice, warm…something articulated just for her. Just one sentence that she could pocket and keep forever. A quote about her eyes perhaps, or her smile, but this….well this wasn’t even really a compliment.
It was nothing really, just the promise of something …someday.

She was heartbroken, utterly desolate, as she flashed a cheeky smile up at him.

“But I don’t want to break hearts.”

“You will. Every girl wants to break hearts when she grows up.”

She decided then and there that she never wanted to be noticed or praised.
Never wanted to have this power.
Never wanted to deal with hearts.

Hearts were a messy and tiresome business and she wanted no part in it. Ironically enough, the more she denied her emotions, the clearer it became to her that she could break hearts if she chose to. That sentence stuck in her head like a salacious spell cast in skin “Every girl wants to break hearts when she grows up”. Did this mean that every girl was wicked or did it mean that every girl was weak? Why did love always require that something or someone 'break' or 'fall' or 'die'? Why were there no happy synonyms?

No, she wanted no part in the ‘heart business’, she didn’t want to 'break them' or 'capture them' or 'change them' or 'keep them'. Most of all she was scared that she might begin to like it if she started. That she too might begin to derive the same perverse pleasure she had seen streak the faces of so many girls her age. The coy glances, the batting of eye-lids, the perfectly timed flashes of pearly teeth…all designed and choreographed meticulously to break hearts.

Killing with kindness, they call it.

She couldn’t want that could she? The facade of emotion to mask emotions that were already hiding from themselves.
But a part of her still thought she might be good at it if she ever tried it.
She might even learn to like it.

This part was, predictably, the heart.

More Than a Friend

It was one of those mind-numbing moments.
A blow to the gut, an impact you can hear reverberating in your head before you feel a fist actually connect with your pelvis. One of your ‘elusive’ league of people sharing a long overdue secret- over a cup of coffee- causing your breath to catch and not slush out.

You recall this girl clearly from your college days; she was always someone who intimidated you for her sheer, unadulterated ‘goodness’ and unlimited reserves of energy. You admitted to her later on that you were even a tad jealous of her ability to not hold a grudge, to be pure and un-scheming in every ounce of her being, even when she was trying to get back at the world she couldn’t help being well-intentioned about it. You were jealous, because you had to work at this ability, you read books, meditated and constantly checked yourself with every conversation you partook in… but she was a natural.

She changed over the years, she lost some of her painful naiveté but she still couldn’t manage to lose that wholesome goodness. She told you that she really tried to ‘get tough’, because the world was a shitty place and the only way to manage one’s shitty life was give back as good as you got… but she still couldn’t shake her skin. You realise now that even though you both always craved being more spontaneous and worldly, you also nurtured your idealism because you felt it made you special in some way. This is what connected you, that you were both outsiders looking into the lives of others while you were so busy dealing with your lack of one. Your lives always revolved around the people in them and much as you both craved making them ‘all about you’ even your efforts were misguided because you tried to find a version of ‘you’ that would please everyone and that was safe. You realised that you were immensely grateful to a God you aren’t sure you believe in, for the opportunity to keep her in your life.
There are not many people you keep. You are one of those beings who float through life with a suitcase in your heart, you fill the case with books and music and colour but very seldom with people. People tend to zap you of your originality, so you keep very few from your travels. You allow them to permeate your skin and your thoughts just as long as you have to and for as long as they are there. The moment they aren’t, you shed them. They are only a handful that you go back and carry with you and you don’t regret this. ‘Your’ people, few and far between as they may be, are yours - you trust them and they matter. They don’t just fill vacuums in your landscape, they are part of it. You love ‘your people’ and you didn’t realise until that moment that she was really one of them. She wasn’t just someone you bounced ideas off of and enjoyed for her soft company. Somewhere along the lines you had pocketed her in your travelling bag and now you were scared that it might be too late to tell her.
She is one of the few who inspires you, you seldom admit to that.

She tells you about the cloud that has been hanging over her head for years, of how the disease was a shadow that had kept her from living or being who she was. You recognise the sentiment and the emotion but not the practicality of it. You have lived under emotional shadows, you have lived under abuse, but not this kind. Huntington’s Chorea is like a ticking time bomb. Living without getting tested for years means that every conversation is followed by the ‘what if’ of a 50% chance of having it. You finally realise what makes her who she is, not the disease, but the fact that she had a problem to confront and she does it on a daily basis. You know this because you were at your strongest when you were actually battling your demons, as is she. You know very well what separates you from the people in your life: Your Life. Extreme lives make extreme individuals, the good, the bad and the ugly. You have been all three at some point. It isn’t a pity party, it just is. ‘Normal’ concerns, normal passions, normal emotions have never been something you could relate to, because your life was never normal. This has made you who you are and it defines you by how you have dealt with it. You now recognise her strength somewhat, but hers is immense because it isn’t just emotional – it is mental, and physical and spiritual. You got out and are healing, she is still figuring out if she even can heal.

You are not sure if you are envious or ecstatic about the other remarkable friend in her life who is showing her how to live, seemingly for the first time. Every day you see her try something new, she is wearing make-up now, new shoes, new clothes and a new outlook. She smiles for herself more, gone is the embarrassed half-smile she earlier used to placate others around her. She is finally becoming herself and it is thrilling to watch. You have been there, you remember that place - where colours were brighter and every day meant new possibilities, that blossoming phase and you are happier for her than you can conceive. You realise that you are grateful to her other friend, she is a miracle worker, your jealousy stems from the fact that you found yourself alone but she has help. Then again, you always choose to do things alone and crying over spilt milk is foolish.

She tells you that she has finally decided to get tested and no matter what the result she will finally live her life the way she wants to. You realise now that you are overjoyed that she got nominated for the scholarship you were rejected for, she deserves it for something you didn’t, and that earlier twinge of ‘but why not me’ that you felt when you got your letter has completely vanished.
You will both be starting over this year and you are sure of it this time.
It WILL HAPPEN.
It will happen because she has earned it, every day of her 29 years, she has earned it by simply being and you have by learning to ‘be’.

Atkins aftermath

Its oddly disconcerting, how I could ignore for so long that one of the most beautiful things in the world is bread. I always figured it was coke and literature and my perverse, masochistic notion of love.... but nope, its bread.

A week and a half into Atkins and nine pounds lighter there is nothing I miss more than the all-encompassing absence of bread. Glorious, sublime, sweet, oh-so-sweet bread. Yesterday, my masochism drove me to tune into BBC food for a good two hours, I watched the French Lady bake her majestic Blueberry Pie. I sat and watched in acute agony as she bathed it in peach sauce. I am in awe of my hitherto un-discovered inner strength. I have battled emotional demons-a-many, but this... THIS is my Everest.

Being weaned off of Bread.
I'd much rather be in rehab for meth.

The 'It's All About You' Song

“And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life, is life itself” – Milan Kundera

There comes a point where you begin to believe your illusions.

That precarious juncture where the world and all that is in it really does revolve solely around you. The few people you truly cannot avoid interacting with are no more than holograms floundering along your atmosphere, but temporarily seeking you out here... on 'your' turf. It is all yours. It isn’t necessarily isolation, rather a hyperbolic narcissism carved to help nurture your notion that you are indeed special, even if you choose not to acknowledge, advance or advertise the fact.
That this is your world, your dream, your delusion, your destiny and your dimension.
They are the phantoms, random ghosts floating on pavements and sidewalks, but ‘you’ are the story and if there is really a narrative being carved out, then it is all for you. The God-voice is directed at you, is about you and is for you.

Such highly cultivated neuroses can only come from pathological people-phobia.
Which is why you are beginning to doubt if it is you missing out on the social experience or society missing out on your experience?

You leave work early and as you are driving home, you realise you just want to drive somewhere that doesn’t lead to anything, so you let your play list drag you through an hour of extra traffic to a section of town that doesn’t interest you, save in the fact that the traffic is minimal and you stop at a department store to buy a coke and some narcissus posies from the kid standing outside without shoes. You look at the boys’ feet and give him a smile and an extra 30 rupees feeling that this ought to make you feel less guilty about the fact that you can’t summon up a suitable measure of guilt for his condition.
You park your car in a McDonald’s parking lot staring at groups of youngsters seemingly living 'a Life' in the midst of what is supposed to be ‘your’ floor show. You idly deliberate about what the real significance of extra’s on a film set is, perhaps they just make blank spaces look colourful. So you forgive them their irksome clique. You have finished your coke and wait for the next song to start your car and head home. You have no one to call, no one to see and no one to care about and you are not quite sure if it bothers you as much as it should or if you are denying your denial again. Someone said that home is like a naked person, you don’t really understand what that means but you figure it means a sense of completion and wholeness and comfort and the like. So you decide you aren’t really headed home, just to the roof over your head with everything a girl could want under it.
You wonder why you want more.
You wonder why you are so ungrateful.

You reach home to find that the power is out, so you discreetly creep up into your room and carry your computer out onto the terrace and compose this inane rambling run-on-sentence dedicated to your overwhelming belief that someday it will all make sense and a day after that it will all begin to matter.

You recall a Dylan biography you saw last night that mentions ‘Seven simple rules for life in hiding’:

1) Never trust a cop in a rain coat - You realise that you, like most of your countrymen and women, don’t trust cops on principal.

2) Beware of Enthusiasm and of Love, each is temporary and quick to sway – You are aware that you generally fake enthusiasm and are as terrified of love as you are of not getting it so you will always ‘beware’ of both sentiments.

3) When asked if you care about the worlds problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks. He will not ask again – You do not really care enough that you really do care about the worlds problems but you remember, with a lingering sense of trepidation, that you are scared of looking people in the eyes.

4 & 5) Never give your real name and if ever told to look at yourself, NEVER look – You cultivate as many names as you do false impressions and whenever you try and look at yourself, you lose the battle to the illusions that seem to define you. You are completely safe from self-awareness.

6) Never say or do anything the person standing in front of you cannot understand – You never say or do anything of consequence in front of any person save yourselves.

7) Never ‘create’ anything. If it were misinterpreted it will chain you and follow you the rest of your life and never change – You have never created anything you have felt comfortable sharing and everything you create is misinterpreted in the process of its conception.

You wait till the power comes back to switch on some music and settle down in the middle of the floor in your ocean-print pyjamas with your paint brush in hand. You relish the acrid smell of turpentine and paint mixing with the rough gravelly strains of the folk-music strumming through your speakers. You dip the brush in blues for the Police man in a Raincoat; in pink for Enthusiasm, in red for Love, in a mauve haze for the World’s Problems; in yellow for Your Name and orange for your False Mirrors, in black for Not Understanding and you envelop it all in a green bottle for Creating Something.

And you cork the bottle in brown so that it doesn’t spill.

The Lost Prophets

It is becoming more and more distant with each passing day, the notion of a Self.

I currently reside somewhere in the periphery of my person, looking in and not particularly growing in any direction. I also find that I have begun to count the number of sentences that I start with this innocuous vowel, ‘I’. They are far too many, and yet they still fail to nurture that vague sketch of identity that I seek. A few days back an inane face book, 10-minute interview robbed me of an answer I think I should have had. The question was: ‘What is your centre?’
I find that I do not have one, I am flowing haphazardly, caught and thrashed intermittently in a wave of nostalgia, longing and whimsical irony. The waves are not progressive or regressive, but like most waves they are both and therefore neither. There is no centre. What good is an individual without a centre?
What good is an individual?
What is good?
What?

If there truly is a sea of translation, then we are all lost. The discovery that I am finding most of myself in this nonsense is oddly comforting. I like nonsense, no one tries to make sense of it and therefore it is perhaps the only notion left alone, intact and pure. Currently I am swimming deep in the lake of my Art and my anima; this always seems to happen when I listen to Dylan for a long stretch of time. Time loses its urgency to win races: ticking turns to tapping and tapping into swishing as all is lost. And all is found. That one elusive ‘End of the Year’ and ‘On to New Beginnings’ month rolls around and I spend my weeks tracing back every Dylan song I can find, which takes a lot of listening. Listening, which becomes easier to do when the talking is no longer yours to hear. It also drives a lost fantasy and lots of nonsense to the brim of what could be.
I like that.
I like that I am finally writing in pencil again, and not thinking about it at all.
I like that my writing, in retrospect, appears untidy and much resembles idle scribbling.
I like that my art is untidy again and that I am not trying to clean it up.
I like that I seem to be giving up on ‘cleaning up’ completely.
I like that I am beginning to like something about my ‘untidy’, ‘unruly’, ‘inconvenient’ nature enough to nurture it and let it breathe.
I like that I no longer find myself ugly.
I like many things again.
I like that most of all.

Recently I have been dwelling on some very beautiful blasphemy. An acquaintance asked why -since I was not religious- did I want to pursue my PhD in Comparative Religion? I thought about it and I am still caught in the web of transgressions that is currently thinking me.
I believe this is because I don’t want any proof anymore. I have spent altogether too much energy trying to disprove dogma and prove secularism. I wish to stop this by purely immersing myself in study for the sake of comprehension of the incomprehensible. To acknowledge and hopefully someday embrace the un-knowability of everything. Not to judge or defend, and I realise that this is the hardest part, but I want to see if I can manage it nonetheless. Truth be told, I have never really been able to stomach the glamour of religious mythology and/or history, this is ironic seeing as I sincerely covet mythology in every other shape and form.

The same person asked me what religion I followed. I tried to not fumble my explanation, seeing as it never really seems to hit home that I am sincere when I say that I truly feel that God, Faith and Religion are all simply the Muse, Art and Beauty. No matter how I say it, it always comes out corny and New-Ageish and that always makes it small. Alternate views are apparently unacceptable if they haven’t been allowed to marrow for 1400 years. So I changed tack and weaved him a whimsical tale about the Lost Prophets of Harmless Art. It was a very pretty story and I am quite sure I came off as intensely charming and fanciful in my naiveté. Even conventional people manage to dismiss art as something so pretty it couldn’t possibly be ‘THAT’ dangerous. We forgive the Sufi’s for downright heresy. We call them saints, why?
Because they were pretty in their criticism.
‘Pretty’ is always so much easier to dismiss.
And I saw him doing just that, the polite smile acknowledging the little girls talent and raw idealism. Her love for art clouding the ‘real gory stuff’ over, harmless deflection, he thought. There is a reason why ‘people’ say that ‘people’ can be stupid when it comes to Religion. ‘People’ can’t really help themselves. Believing is easier than thinking for most and no matter how prettily one dismisses Art, nothing forces ‘thought’ more than the Muse.

I am usually considered subversive because I cannot glamorize and revere religious prophets the way most people do. I don’t dis-respect them, but I don’t respect them for their alleged contributions either. They are historical figures I accept or reject based on what I read of history and how reliable I consider the sources and sightings. And if there is one thing history always tells us, it’s that it is utterly unreliable. I do no more or less for them than I do for anyone. This bothers people, I have noticed. For some reason it is okay to question God and criticise him, but not his sentinels. They are sacrosanct.
Probably because very few of us are willing to admit that believing in prophets who actually lived and were human is much easier than believing in the much larger abstract that gives them their identity and definition for supposed posterity.
I have always maintained that if prophecy was ‘divine inspiration’ then it was ridiculous that it was only relegated to decaying historical nuances. If prophets were – in fact - individuals who wrote and spoke a message that struck a chord in people’s hearts to connect them to something outside of themselves, then it was impossible for it to be just one message that would expire as easily as it has. This could be why we are all at a loss to find how to replace, update, incorporate or suppress it in the present. My ‘prophets’ would then be Dylan, Cohen, Guthrie, Chopin, Twain, Barrie, Tolkein, Mohammad Ali…perhaps just as many as we have in dogma: 1,24,000…and ever-growing in number. Every thinker has the potential for prophecy. Whoever manages to move me to tears and ecstasy has the potential be my personal saint. I find that reverence for actual experience is well within my scope of devotion. Reverence for the experience mind you, not so much for the sponsor. Pure aesthetic appreciation for a message that can compound in a manner that tugs at the soul strings every time it is delivered. I have never cried for our prophet or laughed with his history. I have never been moved to …well…anything.

Does that discount his being a prophet, No.

Does it discount his being mine, Probably.

I have cried however, even as I picture the death of a man as multi-dimensional as Dylan or Cohen or Ali. Of the last song they will sing, of the manner in which that message will collect in the infinite well of every other sentence they wrote or sang or surmised.
Words strung together like pearls and bullets ‘Our Goliaths will be conquered’, ‘We sit here stranded though we all do our best to deny it’, ‘Its hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender’, “ Float like a Butterfly, Sting like a Bee your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see”, ‘Our interests on the dangerous edge of things; the honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist’ … what makes them less inspired than gospel? What makes them less valid for resonance in the soul than prayer?
What makes it real, if the whole point is for it not to be?


Does any of it make the Wanderer’s prophets or Art religion?
Why not?
Then again, ‘why’ at all.

How to Make a Moment

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

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

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

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

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

And so it begins...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No sce teo ipsum

Know Thyself

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think I am a masochist

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

Bottled 'Green'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Riddle Run

“You can wake up now- the world has ended.”- John Stark

I seem to be making peace with myself at last. I have been told that I am lucky to be experiencing this sensation, even if I am altogether unsure about it lasting. I believe now that
disappointment seems to come in threes and having dealt with my incumbent trilogy of bad omens of late, I am now glorying in what I think is commonly described as the ‘hibernation’ phase. I am simply tired of always 'trying' for something, whether this means desperately chasing my escape out of here; an insight into who I am or want to be or just vying to impress myself and anyone in immediate radius with some notion of dormant greatness buried within my person.

My life is fast assuming the proportions of a road sign: Maria Amir- A Precautionary Tale. Hibernation generally denotes enhanced delusion in my world. Lately it has meant that the first thing I did when I heard about his death was to rent out ‘Ratatouille’ and order an MnM McFlurry. It has meant that my first impulse when I heard about finally losing a six-year probability was to laugh hysterically with Asma and watch Family Guy reruns. It has meant that when I learned that I was not called back for the Chevening interview - which two colleagues whose application essays I had written out were summoned to- I picked up a novel and made myself a cup of coffee to drown out my prickled narcissism.
I have missed reading without an agenda, just random reading with no purpose save ‘saving me’ from myself. The first bind my fingers pulled out happened to be “The Secret life of Bees” and there is a quaint stillness to the overly simplified American South that I find appealing and necessary at present.

However this is not the important part. I like to believe that something tangible in me has shifted. Perhaps ‘like’ is not the correct sentiment. It is an awareness coupled with an intense bout of nostalgia for no longer really believing in all the silliness I rely on believing in. This decapitating realisation has left me stock still and I loathe being still. I have been still and the freezing notion of such inaction is all pervasive, everything comes back to haunt you if you are still enough to let it and since my tangible lethargy prevents me from being active in person, I have always depended on my hyper-active senses to compensate. The stillness within is deadening and given my incumbent fascination with death it is not a place I like to frequent. I know that it is almost always born of a latent lack of belief. It was the first thing that I thought of when faced with my trilogy of tangents: perhaps God is punishing me for my polluting professions. This made me angry rather than remotely contrite. It made Him appear petty and the universe more warped than usual.
But this is not what makes me stumble. The steady crashing of grand pedestals in the past 14 years has brought me to the point where I realise full well that I no longer put stock in all the things I profess allegiance to: my silliness, my inane rituals, my failed grandeur. Even though I continue to chase after them with increasing distraction I realise that I no longer believe in them enough for them to work and only the ritual remains relevant.
I feel altogether too much like Peter Pan at the moment where Wendy tells him she must grow up and that he is ‘just’ a boy. It is not the brand ‘boy’ that kills, it is the inflection ‘just’. As if somehow his entirety does not even merit a spasm in existence.
I find that I am not quite ready to escape my Escapism.
But somewhere along the past two weeks I already have.

I am taking to the park with increasing regularity. Running is a sensation I did not know I missed. It is rather sad, seeing as those of us blessed with motor function can always run, but almost never do. I have discovered that what I enjoy most is anticipating the stitch in my side that appears almost as soon as I cross my first round bend in the park and stop next to a quote post that remarks quite candidly “Respect Women…” the post after that reads “…please!” and I think it is my favourite presence in Lahore because it almost always makes me laugh, especially when I am feeling particularly miserable. Then there is a quote that states “Nationalism is the notion that ones country is the best in the world just because we belong to it”…I often end up sharing a not-so-secret smile with the many senior citizens who happen to chance upon the sign. Running has brought with it a sense of possibility. There are no words to describe the thrill of experiencing the complete absence of thought brought on by physical exercise. I should have tried it earlier, because listening to music without processing it; racing through an environment without observing it and shifting in the midst of people without caring is a respite I cannot manage any other way.
Of course this does not change the fact that when my eyes do happen to flicker off the ground ahead of me they invariably collide with a pair staring at my chest. However, I do not think this can be helped in my country and for once I refuse to be shamed into backing out. So I stare back down at my new Nikes and am on my way.

I think I ‘love’ to run.
And it hits me, isn’t that the ephemeral euphemism for Escape?

Dear Departed...

Serves me right for befriending an ailing 78 year old!

It has taken me two weeks to 'come to terms' with the fact that you are gone. I remember, quite vividly, sitting beside your deathbed and imagining this conversation clear as day but putting it to purpose has been harder. Had I done so the minute I got home as I originally intended, I should have felt selfish, finding it so easy to escape the loss in words but feeling it for too long would have meant a Eulogy. You always said that you loathed Eulogies. That they were nothing more than insipid details that people should have said to your face but didn't when you were alive, and only an all-pervasive notion of survivor's guilt made them utter them when one was gone.
I suppose I should be clear then that this 'is' in fact a Eulogy and I am in fact riddled with survivors guilt.

My grandparents have been telling me with much false bravado, that it is about time I began befriending people my own age rather than theirs, because I will lose many more that way. Perhaps they have a point but then I think to myself, you were not old. You were the youngest person I ever knew, old experiences, old pain...young spirit. I believe the romantics would call us kindred.

Do you know something, you looked happy lying there in your yellow room on that narrow bed. I suppose death is always a shock for everyone else, even if one has been dying of cancer for over a year. In retrospect, I do not think I can forgive you your cigarettes. I know you want me to, you reiterated time and again that if alcohol and nicotine had been lifelong companions, there was no point parting with them at the precipice. But it seems to me a colossal waste or perhaps this is just me being selfish. I would rather have you here and unhappy than otherwise and this does not bode well for my Zen aspirations but then you never really approved of my Zen aspirations.

You always told me to conquer the world.
I remember telling you I never wanted to conquer it, only to observe it but we never seemed to agree on this point.

I know that you knew me. I seldom manage that with people, the acknowledgment that they can see who I am and usually when I do, I drop them instantly. You were the only one I was drawn to. I wonder why that is. Maybe it was the fact that you flattered me, told me I was smart. Maybe it was because you thought my dreams were beautiful too. Maybe it was because you used to take my hands and tell me my dreams would come true by seeing something in them. I never really believed in lifelines or life scapes before you. Maybe it was the fact that you never did this for anyone else and this made me feel special. Maybe it was the fact that you didn't patronise my desperate need to feel special.
Maybe it was just the fact that you listened and you never really needed to.

I recall our last conversation clearly. The one we both had while staring insipidly at your cooling corpse. You were wearing your legendary maroon sweater, infernal cigarette in hand and were a little too jovial for the too recently departed while I was focusing very hard on limiting my responses to the vicinity of my mind by not letting them appear on my face as most of my conversations are apt to do. It is an odd thing, but I always notice it. Why is it that only women can be found collectively crying around corpses? It is almost like they are the only ones forgiven for the offence of showing weakness in public, because it is expected of them.


"I'm sorry"

About what?! What on Earth could there be to feel sorry about now?

"I didn't come to see you"

Busy?

"No... lazy."

We are who we are, kid.

"Any idea who that is?"

Not really, but I'm finally looking forward to finding out.

"Are you really? I mean I know you said you were a little apprehensive. Is it what we thought it would be like?"

You mean a 'revelation'?

"Yes."

Well 'yes' and 'no'. I think I anticipate a revelation but I haven't come to it yet. Its a lot of processing.

"What about guilt and consequences and mistakes... any of that coming in to play yet?"

Not at this point but I'm sure it will.

"And that doesn't scare you anymore?"

I don't think it would matter either way. I have decided on one thing though...

....

I'm quite sure there were no mistakes.

"So your leaning towards the 'no regrets' thing? I guess that's encouraging."

Yeah.

"Am I on track? I mean even with my beaten path on this whole thing, am I wrong?"

Why the self doubt all of a sudden?

"Well I think its called for, don't you?"

No. I don't think there is a wrong. Especially not with right intentions and I think the key may just be blind belief in your beaten path or at least in mine.

"I hate the term 'blind' belief."

I know. But that's what it needs to be.

"And you're sure about this?"

This I am sure about. Whatever the belief, it needs to be blind.

"You know I cant pray for you like this, right?"

I thought we were praying.

Paging Prince Charming: *Ting*

I have been pondering over past memories with more determination than usual. Recently, finding myself sorting through scores of old photographs and journals I am beginning to come to terms with the fact that I have always been a tad melodramatic. Here is something I wrote on January 12, 1994 “…I think I am being very emotional about all this. That's what they all say… that I am too emotional and dramatic. I am obsessed with beating her at her own game. And obsession isn't even an emotion. Is it?”
I was eleven then.

Apparently the 'obsession' grew over the years, because I remember, quite vividly, writing long, rambling letters about everything and nothing to no one in particular. I would sharpen up a fresh pencil every time, scrawl in the letters at night in my room, put them in one of those cheesy stationary set envelopes with Beauty and the Beast or Little Mermaid logo’s, seal them and bury them in the closure outside our house near the swings and badminton court the next day. I think I was passively inspired by all the 'Little Girl Lost' rescues that television had cemented in my mind actually happened.
I also remember discussing my behaviour quite candidly with my child psychiatrist and I would always close the conversation with a question “Do you think I’m normal?” He always used to say that he would think the behaviour abnormal if I tried to conceal it, but since I didn't he was just intrigued. I do not think he knew that I was a rather manipulative eight-year old and that I needed too badly to be perceived as mysterious and slightly tragic, but enchanting all the same. If he was privy to this information, he was very kind in concealing it from me.

My recent focus has been on all the “I have a dream” entries, it is a tad disconcerting to realise that one’s dreams can remain quite consistent over the years. I am pretty much still the seven-year old, except that I use bigger words now in lieu of outright fabrication.
A recent conversation with mommy dearest has prompted a new ditch attempt…

“Do you even know what it is you want?”

“As in from life?

“No in a life partner.”

“Sheesh, this again. You know just because your manipulation tactic is cuter than Nano’s doesn’t make it original.”

“Seriously, you have lists for everything else, your book collection, your “what I need to see or do in my lifetime” thing, your music…this one could actually help me out a bit.”

“But this list would just be…”

“Pathetic?”

“But much.”

“Your point is?”

“Ouch! Right, pathetic it is.”

“Ooh lets do it together!”

“Why not, we’re already part and parcel of the cosmic Ya-Ya sisterhood. You want to burn it afterwards and dance around a fire mom?”

“Couldn’t hurt.”

“I hate the fact one of me actually shrugged her shoulders at that.”

“Kiddo all of you, should be in on this…”

As some would know, my earliest Prince Charming personal Ad, consisted of a naïve request of the Powers that Could Be, for a betrothal to Prince Eric from the Little Mermaid. I was seven and my reasons were that the man had the good sense not to wear tights in public, loved adventure because he was a sailor, travelled the world and had a dog. When talking of essentials pretty much all of the above still apply, but I am told I need to be more specific about criteria so as not to be bamboozled by a gap toothed sailor who keeps a pet rat and cleans a fish boat for a living… and so Mom and I set about making me a Personal Ad.
A ‘normal’ person might find this process humiliating, derogatory and self-diminishing…I felt all this, but it was trumped by the sheer ridiculousness of the attempt. Frivolity always seems to win out over anything else in my book. I acknowledge that this may not necessarily be a good thing.
… Okay it may even be a bad thing, but at the end of the day the cavalier tend to die smiling and wondering what the hell the big deal is…a lot like the Fool in the Tarot deck.
I kind of like that.

“Do I start with something like 'Loner, utopist, child of 24 years seeks devil-may care globetrotter with a passion for coke, card games and obscene amounts of time whiled away in front of a television screen?'”

“Please tell me you want something a tad more productive?”

“Okay…who also enjoys large quantities of take out food, doing the voices for old black and white films with the sound turned off and thrift store shopping?”

“What in there is remotely productive?”

“… has some semblance of a job…”

“That’s it?! Some 'semblance' of a job?”

“…that allows him to buy stuff, appreciate art and the outdoors and purchase airline tickets to places I want to go. Better?”

“Not really, but an improvement. Some variety of a roof over your head might be a nice touch…”

“Buy stuff, tickets and a roof over my head, with running water and room for a dog.”

“Okay, what about brains…”

“Oh yeah, like that one ever comes easy. Okay no specifics, then someone who’s brain is multidimensional enough to carry on both coherent and incoherent forms of conversation for as long as we both shall live…”

“Elaborate”

“Okay, well… coherent would be something like ‘do you think God really meant for us to believe in Him if he really is All That?”…a perceptible shift into my version would be… ‘to me Theology is taking on a lot of Star Wars significance…I mean all that stuff about being with the force and the force not being with you. I mean its like Yoda is God always feeding us some trite feel good shit, which sounds weird enough to be smart, but is basically one-dimensional fact strung together backwards and why is it that the force not being with you has to make you Vader or Maul or plain evil? What happened to purgatory…and think about it purgatory makes no sense anyway, I mean basically its just another waiting room, I thought life was supposed to be the waiting room…”

“And this is required reading?”

“No, it would just be preferable if this conversation could be easily understood by the subject.”

“Do you understand it?”

“No, but that’s not the point, I don’t really mean understand just umm that he should have a follow up analogy that should be equally -or if he is perfect- more inane. Like a Douglas Adams Fan or an Arlo Guthrie fan, they would get what I mean.”

“Right. So what about looks?”

“I never can specify that one. My three main on-screen obsessions have been with too diverse a range: I mean there’s Yul Brynner who was bald, Johnny Depp who is perfect and Rex Harrison who was sarcastic, old and dead. I don’t like to think I’m looking for Bald, Perfect, Sarcastic, Old and Dead.”

“Neither do I”

“Okay then…teeth.”

“What?”

“Clean teeth. Can’t be with a guy who doesn’t have straight, clean teeth. Smokers are out.”

“That’s it…clean teeth. What about height, face blah blah blah, how in the Hell are you my daughter?!”

“Okay then, Good skin. Hygiene is important but so is a counter-balance untidiness.”

“And that means?”

“Well it means nada on the body odour and stuff, but nada on the neat, pressed and prim look too…”

“So you need to spread the ‘gypsy’ around?”

“I wouldn’t mind. Not really though, I couldn’t care…except that prim and proper anything just isn’t big on my priority lists and if it is on someone else’s I don’t think it would mesh well.”

“Fine then, how about a list of ‘MUSTS’.”

“Huh? I thought we were doing well so far…it’s the little details that count…and…”

“I just think this might speed up the process…”

“Okay. Must be able to make me laugh; Must be willing to act like a fool in public in order to accomplish the first; Must speak most of my languages, and be fluent in Hyper, Hoop La, Bah humbug and But Vy; Must not preach...anything; Must love coke; travel; trying new, crazy, childish things all the time; jumping out of planes, off bridges and stuff; Must be impulsive in hopes of drawing out my inner crab; Must appreciate that I need to mark my immediate territory – whatever it may be- with post-its of quotes, weird trinkets and lots of colour; Must love art, rain, junk food, talking nonsense and occasional sense, Star wars, Indiana Jones and animated films; Must tolerate the fact that I purchase scented toiletries, key chains, shoes and books in unreasonable quantities; Must appreciate the nutritional value of a midnight snack; Must understand the importance of collecting silly photographs, scrap booking and road trips; Must recognise the value of time outs and my pathological need to be alone for at least a few hours a day; Must not be Judgmental; Must appreciate the necessity that Coke, candy and cartoons are in my life regardless of my age; Must understand that I have issues and have some of his own to bring to the negotiating table; These issues Must Not include anger issues, bullying tendencies or “Oh look at me I’m a Man” issues; Must be able to enjoy movie marathons, play board games and take all of my pre and post rain and birthday rituals seriously; Must appreciate the importance of small, silly and inexpensive gifts; Must need to Want to be Happy as often as possible; Must not sweat the small stuff; Musts not wear labels or buy into them; Must know that I need to be dragged along into almost anything but enjoy it once I’ve taken my step; Must be a Master of the 'last minute plan'; Must think.”

"Must make me go - and this is to quote Asma- "*Ting!*"

"What?!"

" Ting! There has to be a *Ting*!"

"A *Ting*?"

"Like with Elizabeth and Darcy or Ariel and Eric or Holly Golightly...a *Ting* is non-negotiable."

“And the rest of these are negotiable?”

"If i find the * Ting*, maybe."

"So its the *Ting* or the List?"

"Pretty much. Mom do 'you' think I'm crazy?"

“Yep but its hereditary and I think I’ve changed my mind.”

“About the Personal Ad?”

“Nope about doing something about it.”

Join the club.