She’ll become His Echo.

In a darkly dreaming reality, she’d place him, her heart rending song of silence and regret. See the monotones in this over-played, dully acted opera, where the range of rage of beautiful but gutless prima donna causes if anything a soporific ennui.

She wants to remain a three thousand and one piece puzzle that never got assembled, never got figured out, for the fragmentation colours her existence and completion incompletes her.

All women are mothers in one way or the other, but those who choose to adopt 25 year old babies instead of pushing someone out their vagina command commemoration. The degree of denial, and the heights to which you can lower your vanity to may not be something that thrills me, but on some fucked up meter that measures these fucked up things, that is some fucking achievement.

Some sentences love repetitions, some stories need to be re-told.

And the perception of these mechanical permutations, these told and retold old fables, escapes from the label of a cliché . After a while, we pantomime interpretations, and with elusive new awakenings ensure the survival of our bloody becoming in the cesspit of love and all things great—A hilarious subterfuge, but still what a shining dust of undead clichés.

On a lighter note, amidst all the cigarette burns, and a broken nose, what is that the different one ever did different? Was asked about reason, denied the significance. Closed her eyes, fell in love. Lived in between and at a distance. And how and why would it ever matter to ME: a motherless child? It shouldn’t. And has I ever deluded myself as a messiah?... Nah, never was interested in being the savior. It may be the patterns I hate, maybe, but that shouldn’t be about me. After all, when writing about denial, I can choose denial and not all writing should be mirrored in self and then written again.

The infinity of vanity, and disgrace, means an insurmountable calculation of relative parameters to decide what constitutes which. And then existing in between, neither here nor there but itinerant, an amorous whisper between triads of slander, a gentle kiss between angered fists, a few words that imitate care, when venom tastes sweet, words, words, words without their meaning, hope, hope, hope without any. Comfort? None but that comforts us. Visions? Of guardian angels or the God himself? No. Swimming in the intensity on the rhythm of 'haramzadi' . Forgotten promises of care- Such diverse collections of a thousand wounds and minute memories of a penis and making love, when she felt so revered as mother of her lover followed by another go at strangulation, and somehow something in between made it worth it?

She was torn apart. And love will tear her apart again.

For all the pain she has suffered, she may love him more. Organs, the fragile and flawless arms and legs that bear the bruises may make her value him more, for what good has been her life, hadn’t for the pain? What good has been the story, if lovers lived happily after? At least he didnt throw her around and kicked her on the belly ? Oh wait he did? Well they always do. The cliche needs to be accurate after all. 

For immortality or the illusion of it, she needs to be torn apart, to be remembered, to be painted and to be mused about. 
So
He’ll be her Narcissus, and she’ll become his Echo.

Of Authenticity of this Connection

The way desire, expectations and preconceptions influence our thematic interpretation of relations, plays havoc with any possibility of an essential connection. The imaginative effect of passing time on memories is something that troubled and fascinated me since long and in my convoluted narratives I sought immunity from it; to what extent in that seemingly insignificant effort, had I been successful, nothing can judge that, because memory can’t be videoed today and re-watched tomorrow. But I never wrote about the inherent distortion in memory to begin with. Time only adds deception to what already is maligned version of events and relations.

Living in a postmodern world with the apparent enormity of available information, results in a confused juxtaposition of notions, about every relation we ever have, about every connection we ever build.
And what fabrications these are, all lovers, all relations, we build to fit our perfect definitions for them. We conceive them to suit ourselves, our complexes, our longings and our hunger. We rob them of their existence, and re-mould those all, over years from rough diagrams to our completed masterpieces and fit them in closets, on our coffee tables, on our walls and in our beds, so that we may look from afar and see what we want to see.
This momentary accomplishment brings about a joy and sense of belonging, which inherently remains as ephemeral as the artifacts we create, and when slowly and silently, the faces we created start to erode our conquests start to crumble into disappointments. Then we start the blame game, because at some level of subconscious, we knew that this house of cards was meant to fall apart. We pick up the pieces, sometimes worship those- the idols of our imaginations and cry for them, at other times we burn them up just to feel un-betrayed.

I’ve seldom felt betrayed in such a way, not because I didn’t create my own idols, but somehow I ended up feeling that I betrayed them. I longed for and then conceded the possibility of a connection that is not defined by the notions of ‘what and how it should be’. I wanted a connection in which I am not shamed by nakedness, my own and of whoever was before me. It’d seem almost delusional, but every passing day it feels that I have that now. Funny that a stupid urge arisen from query of a colleague about never doing a socially questionable act, leads me to the conclusion. I may be delusional again, but this time it at least seems real.
Have we done it? Instead of creating a mold to substitute for a connection, have we actually built a connection? The time seems to favour that, as over the years the banalities kept fading away, and we kept evolving to our basic naked selves and connection seems to be getting stronger.
I am happy.


P.S
It almost seems unlike me to write in descriptive narratives instead of theorizing OUR bits. But then again, a lot has changed in 3 years, hasn’t it ? :)

Did he kiss her with kisses of his mouth ? :)

A stupid question just popped up my head and now I can't sleep.

Did Solomon marry Sheba?
Widely held Islamic belief is that he did, but Quran doesn't have an exact reference.
And ofcourse, my favourite part of Bible, The Song of Solomon, has various references about the supposed love between them.
Anyone who happens to read this blog, please have your say and I am interested in the account of all three religions, i.e Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Having said that, I'll try to sleep again now :(

Something I am working on, still Incomplete

He…
He who set about to write a treatise on sadness, slowly and unseeingly has lurked beneath the darkness of his incapacity to come up with a perfect word for his inability to be sad.
The repertoire of limitlessness gives birth to a classless distaste, a sheer ennui for all minutiae of reality and a million reflections of it. One or any piece of such rotten existence sums up thoughtless vagaries of arrogance, and vanity fears, and succumbs to meaninglessness of faith or the absence of it.

Follow we must because the flowing paths of pilgrims make an eternal outcast of me, an upstream escape be cut short by the ensuing stampede that crushes all outcasts and pilgrims alike and I have yet only lived voices. I am yet described by paradoxes and questions: I am not yet my description.

A curious innocent child with shining eyes, who used to sit in the deep spatial blankness in moonlit verandahs at night, to wonder, to explicate the infinite patterns in stars has long been disfigured by images blight.
On the unsure face of his simulacrum lies resting a bestiality and ravenous desire to scavenge on dolor, to understand for once what it would mean to be truly sad.

Away! Orphan child o mine! Away! I stultify with numbness, you.

Ah! The visions of paradise and fear of hell!

We thought then, thence and thereafter, Satan shall lead us not astral through greed and desire. I know puritans would scoff at me, for losing the sense of time, of eternity of heaven and hell. They would laugh, a convulsion their laughter is, the laughter of theists, which sends me shivers down me spine. But I keep losing it. It is barely important. When we move in a circle with the speed of the sense of history, we see how imaginative and charming but deceptive and elusive idea eternity is. But Oh! These are regrets speaking. Regrets, these are beautiful egrets that fly w towards the bland translucent moon instead of the splash dash of sunset at sunset. Always felt there was something about our voices, whispers that is independent of us: but then again, what inverted times these are. Seems I’ve been going in circles.

A tale of sacrifice—a heap of crap

I’ve always had an idiosyncratic sense of humour: more often mourning or exuding sadness of other people bring about fits of laughter in me. Interestingly, though I attribute such appeal to mockery and sarcasm to my own indefatigable hubris, I find narcissism and delusions of grandeur (mostly in sadness and in pain) of other people extremely comical.

Reading a tale of shattered love is always fun ( a device which according to my analysis remains by far the most popular modus operandi in blogging world, winning the race with closeted atheists and homosexuals), but recently I’ve read a piece which made me laugh even after days of reading—a classic example of rationality raped.

Our protagonist is heart-broken of course. And yes he has been mourning the lost love for ages. Of course, what is a life without a sense of loss and heartache, even if that’s an imagined one? But now in his search for grandeur, his delusions have taken a new turn. Not only he has a broken heart, an agonizing pathetic history of whining, he has assumed a new role--the most forgiving dumped lover with imagined omnipotence over the life of his unrequited love, as according to him in his fit of love or hatred, he can destroy all she has: D Now it’s actually the lowest level of stupidity, though masquerading as maturity in an impressive narrative, that I’ve come across in a while.

I don’t understand how come a act of utter desperation, not much different from a 5 year old girl who breaks her favourite doll to keep it to herself, rather than to give it to her 4 year old sister, be deemed glorious by the author, much less by a reader? And this utter animalistic desperation and selfishness is called either love or hatred, and then followed by a gigantic leap in megalomania by an assertion that not doing so is a sacrifice in love :D

Third rate affairs pretty much end in the same way, the jealous former lover exposing the old love letters, again an act which is idiotic as well as pathetic, how come not being a cry-baby for once translates into sacrifice in the name of ‘love’ is beyond me. The funny part is that the author actually is so deluded that he believes in his own crap and has added one memorabilia in his trophy closet. With Pain, Sadness, Lost love, there now rests Sacrifice, a collection of themes for his epic life, which to me appears only a pile of delusion that smells funny.
Can’t help laughing.

P.S
It’s been a conscious effort on my part to conceal the identity of said author, but in case anyone finds out (including that author), this post wasn’t meant to be a disgrace. Just that, it was becoming too hard to laugh silently. I do admire his narrative, it is just his delusions and subject that I find funny.

Cant get enough of Borges :)

Even in my umpteenth re-reading of the single book I have of the old man, he manages to fascinate every time.
He said that he imagines Paradise as a library, and I imagine Paradise with his infinite narratives:)

Bergman on Imperfection of faith as well as denial

I’ve seen some of Bergman’s movies before, his perceived masterpieces, Persona and Cries and Whispers, as well as the faith trilogy and Autumn Sonata.
The most recent addition was The Seventh Seal and one of the most powerful dialogue sequence made me smile.
I went back to my blog and re-read Pantomime and Sultry mornings
and wondered, would I have written these had I watched the movie before or the self imposed compulsion of sounding original and incomprehensible—part vanity, part fear—even in most universal of conundrums might have stopped me. It seems funny, when no one reads this blog anymore, I am giving away the key to two of narratives, which I tried so desperately to conceal.

Anyways, here is some part of our protagonist’s confession to death, disguising as a priest.

Block: Is it so hard to conceive God with one's senses? Why must He hide in a midst of vague promises and invisible miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don't believe ourselves? What will become of us who want to believe but cannot? And what of those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does He go on living in a painful, humiliating way? I want to tear Him out of my heart, but He remains a mocking reality which I cannot get rid of. Do you hear me?
Priest/Death: I hear you.
[Block turns to kneel before the priest behind the confessional screen.]
Block: I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me.
Priest/Death: But He is silent.
Block: I cry to Him in the dark, but there seems to be no one there.
Priest/Death: Perhaps there is no one there.
Block: Then life is a senseless terror. No man can live with Death and know that everything is nothing.
Priest/Death: Most people think neither of Death nor nothingness.
Block: Until they stand on the edge of life and see the Darkness.
Priest/Death: Ah, that day.
Block: [laughs bitterly] I see. We must make an idol of our fear, and call it God.

Times have changed and in these times, I don’t read at all. It’s been an year or so since I last read a book.

But still there are temptations I succumb badly and sometimes embarrassingly to. For example, anyone reading anything around me, I just have to know what it is :)
For those who knew me in my passionate days would know that is a small left-over from an addiction that mesmerized me for years though has left me now, but still with cravings.
Anyway, on my flight back home, saw a woman reading 'The Inheritance of Loss', and I, again quite stupidly sneaked around her until I found the name of the book. And during a boring shopping day with elder sister in main market, I walked into a bookshop for second hand books, while she was fighting with the tailor, and found that for 75 RS.
I haven't read it; I am not even keen on reading it.
But it starts with a passage of Borges, a passage I hadn't read before.
How bad can it be when Kiran Desai has read Borges?
I am not sure when would I read it, maybe I won't. But I know, even if it’s as bad as her mother's, I won't be hating it.

Here's Borges' Boast of Quietness

'Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of that same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword,
the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive'

Two pieces

After quite a while I jumbled up my first narrative in months and then another and read these. Then re-read both.
They don’t flow. (Its funny, how for me, above anything –verbiage, theme etc—flow mattered)
Why? I don’t know.

On a sidenote, I wish 'nakefeet' start writing again.
And had to go back to Valium after years...

anyway here they are...

On Reminiscence, and the writing that flows:

Not all means. Not all is a confession. But it’s a making, making of silence that sweeps through, carried on wings of Notus, the calmness after the storm has passed, and in for this silence all angels and satans alike, seek refuge in the every bosom of God crying over their deafness. What good could be a hymn or a curse without hearing when you utter it? Immortals are not Beethoven; they can’t create music they cant hear.But what this silence brings to us, the innumerable children it bears, 1001 for ever soul, for these souls they feed on, functional vampires drinking enough just not to kill, but suck the soul out of our souls.
I had these children, my children, but I am alone now. Sometimes I hear them giggling, calling out my name, as I bleed out through all the pores in the sun, inciting them, inviting them to come back to me and feed on my soul.
Nostalgia or the absence of it—who knew not having a pain is painful as hell.
They left one in me, one that hopes that one day they’ll return, sailing on cotton clouds and spring breeze, scream out their delight and make me write the writing that flows. They’ll carry me that day, above the hovering winds, and that day I won’t die.

The Differential of touch:

Read your name on my lips as I struggle to say it, shivering in the coldness of my heart. You said we made love in this snow; I only feared the fatality of an embrace. You said you touched my hands in the dark; I only washed the blood on your thighs. You said the laughter was real; I searched for the screams of agony beneath it.
Your glistening hair brushing against my face etched bleeding paths of grace or disgrace on my destiny.
Few moments, always fewer words to say of differential of touch and obscure eyes.

Colours fade, but they won’t vanish
I’ve learned that—that’s the night and the shroud. That is my fear, of making you all that has to be-becoming of anticipation.
I wish a return to innocence, not vampire stories, not losing religions, not cupid arrows, to the first language that there ever was, before God taught me the names of all things. To revert back the evolutionary corruption to 'this' language, to be with you before the start of time, to know you and wonder to come up a word for us, and experience your touch, not knowing what to call it.
Imagine me, in front of four thousand galaxies, forty million years ago, as we approach the elusive the definitions of touch, of embrace.

Of 14th April.

What will cometh, in after a turn-play of eight days and nights, is not the end we sought with such perseverance and love but a promise of its realization (given a continuity of breaths and heartbeats for the years to come). We’ve come afar, over the years, of times when we clogged our consciences with imaginary dirt and realized that in that hypothesized descent we found the elevation of our souls. I prepare for the day with hopes and longings, taking hours to decide what to wear and how to smell, and reservations that this is day I’d be judged by people who loved you and claimed you till now.

When of glory, our story lacks it. No lengthy blogs can be written about a happy ending for it’s the flagellation (or the pretension of it) that is deemed glorious. We couldn’t have a fetish for sadness and hence the muse that draws admiration from similar imbeciles. Remember, right from the first day, we knew we’d make it work. Right from the first day, we laughed at the heart-wrenching tales of those seekers of sadness who remain totally oblivious that their tales of tears were not the mourning for a lost love but a celebration of the love they found—that funny trail of clichés and blood.

Of sacrifices again, we don’t have the scars to prove anything. We did whatever had to be done without a vestige of regret, so then again no ‘real sacrifice’ and no glory. I am so fortunate to have found you love, for you sought togetherness for togetherness, not for the pain that resides in its shattered debris

Of memories, we made some—rich, aromatic and blissful. Memories that’ll stay with us not for the things we did, for all that will be nothing new in coming years of growing old, but for the inexplicable dilemmas we faced in their making, the tremble and uncertainty of approaching each other and sensations that has never left us since. Such grownup children we were then.
Looking afar still, instead of weaving fantasies of perfect day, we care more about the things that can go wrong. And perhaps that feeling will never let us be free, but then again, better being together then being free. I’ve lost my eloquence over the years, and patience to find a line that fits; some otherday maybe, when I’ll have a day for myself I’d search for it. Till then, in these incoherent lines and such unimpressive narrative, I wanted to say, Happy Engagement. We've come through :)

P.S.
I remember what to throw at whom-literature at your dad, movies at your brother and jokes at your friends and all. In all that, I hope I get a moment alone to say something to you, something that is not so carefully pre-thought.

And finally Scorsese got an Oscar. Its a shame: Academy didn't nominate the guy for Taxi Driver, didn't give him for Raging Bull and now they honour him for The Departed.
A total shame :S

Wish you were here.

Anyone noticed the gloom in the air of Lahore today?
From the dark sky and seething susurration of cold winds through the tress, from the lifeless brouhaha on the roads to midgets pretending to be in love, everything is fading as a smoke ring would do.

Wish you were here. Not because it is Valentine's day, which I never believed in, but because today only you could rid me of the sadness of this city.