Ambition
Is it mans greatest shame to accept a life without a purpose greater than himself, or is the aspiration his greatest hubris. Or is it his greatest bromide, disguising his lust for immortality
its just stuff
i have been terribly upset, for the last few weeks. ostensibly, the reason i have been distrubed is because i lost a couple of things. the days were crazy. i flew across the ocean to india, met my family after a long gap of time, tried to adjust to the new house they had moved to, tried to cope with the vague sense of loss of the old familiar house, a lost symbol of a semblance of a root - of special and twisted significance to a disinherited exiled gypsy like me, i met my boyfriends family for the first time, a host of new faces, a new culture, new values, a new ethos, i met my sister and her new family, i met my friends from edinburgh, my home away from home - from where too i had been exiled a year ago, and in the middle of all this newness, i got married.
in all the chaos that ensued, i felt even more unsettled than i habitually do. i felt like everyday i was packing a few essentials and moving somewhere. to my mothers room, to my sisters room, to the wedding venue, the reception venue, to my new husbands aunts house, to his parents home, then back to new york where i live and then in two days to san francisco, where he lives.
in all this moving and packing and unpacking, i lost two things. of all the things i had been carrying, they were perhaps the most precious: wedding gifts from my new mother in law, and from my new husband, respectively. i searched everywhere for days but i could not find them. i could not move past the loss. i fluctuated between sorrow and a vague sense of emotionless vacuum.
everyone tried to console me, to rationalise, that they were, after all, only 'things'. it didnt mean anything. when we were still there. they people. the relationships. the living. i got their rationalisation objectively, i understood. but still why did i feel the way I did?
because maybe i am a person of symbols. maybe because i have always been, in different ways, homeless and alone, and the symbols were all i had to cling to. maybe from the earliest times life showed me that people are fickle and love is fleeting. even the most constant of lovers are sometimes lost to death or chance, and best friends to a trans-continental move.
my parents came from india and bangladesh. i was born in syria, i grew up in india and dubai. i came of age in scotland and l live in america. my life is fractured. every one i loved has been lost. to life, to death, to moves, to chance or mood. nothing has ever been constant in my life. except the symbols. so i learned to cling to them. because they are the only things you can control
but i feel inside that i need to unlearn this. that it is just a false coping mechanism of a child born in a confusing complex whirl. i am now an adult. i have a self and i have a love and i have a life. i need to rest my anchors to these things. to my soul inside me and to my love outside of me. and that is what i connot lose
a "normal heterosexual male" just said the words "normal heterosexual male" to me in a conversation (about Ulleyses, by the way). And I was struck by the staggering unspoken pride in his voice that underlined the three words ... are "normal heterosexual male" proud of being "normal heterosexual male"? what is there to be so proud of for being a "normal heterosexual male"? OR for that matter, "normal" anything? also, if you did an average of either gender or sexual attributes, wouldnt the statistical normal lie somewhere in between the poles (n.p.i)?
new york blues
In the end it is such a lonely world. Just us and our unresonated thoughts and feelings. Burning our hearts to cinder. And unseen tears. And unheard cries. It is such a private world, the world of feelings. Why then do we so desperately crave resonance? Why do we fall in love with impossible ideas and dream impossible dreams And break our little hearts againtz the rocks of cold "normal" practicality. Mindless heartless ianane ugly reality. Bye bye sweet Boston. Hello cold New York. The secret to tolerating life is twofold: blindness and fakeness.
"Shine your teeth with nothingness. And sharpen them with lies. That's how you fight it"
"Shine your teeth with nothingness. And sharpen them with lies. That's how you fight it"
the footprints of pain
my pain, my agony, my angst, my anger, my hatred, my shock at the unfairness of my life and my hurt at its irony, is nobodys problem but mine, but it's leakage & footprint is suddenly everybody's business
heimat
I started writing this on the 24 October 2013 and never finished it. Today it is two years later and I still feel the same
24 October 2013
"Home" is such a strange word
Can you feel homesick
If you never had a home?
Not atlrsst any you remember
The Banished or those who have strayed
have little,
but a dwindling stash of hope,
That the pain of exile might one day end
And a fading stack of snapshots
Of memories
But a
loss
The impact of loss is proportionate to how integral a part of your identity what was "lost" was. And the strength of what is left.
I miss Heimat, as if the places and people were my own. It's an occasional sudden twinge of longing. But I recover
But losing you was losing my whole self ... The third time over. I have nothing left to recover
It's a wound I wrap up in series of bandages, douse in opiates and hide from view. And I can even pretend I'm normal ... Even to myself!
Yet sometimes whenever it brushes against something, or the moon is full, or my old arthritis is up, or the cat walks on the right side of the room ... It rips open and won't stop bleeding
It almost doesn't hurt anymore, or familiarity & understanding has rendered the pain impotent. But still I ave to hide to stop flooding the campus with my blood. My dirty filthy blood
I miss Heimat, as if the places and people were my own. It's an occasional sudden twinge of longing. But I recover
But losing you was losing my whole self ... The third time over. I have nothing left to recover
It's a wound I wrap up in series of bandages, douse in opiates and hide from view. And I can even pretend I'm normal ... Even to myself!
Yet sometimes whenever it brushes against something, or the moon is full, or my old arthritis is up, or the cat walks on the right side of the room ... It rips open and won't stop bleeding
It almost doesn't hurt anymore, or familiarity & understanding has rendered the pain impotent. But still I ave to hide to stop flooding the campus with my blood. My dirty filthy blood
heartbreak
What is it like, heart break and the loss of hope? Is it like a crick in the neck from looking back over your shoulder? Or a slow nagging numbness that settles into your bones. subtle & stubborn. slow & steady. Almost imperceptible. Except when it flares up in a raging screech against tomorrow, against having to move on ... Against the flying disk that sliced away the corpse
losing
The season of losing
can be beautiful
Fall prepares trees
For cruel winter
I am tired of losing
And I am tired of losing out
I am exhausted from sucking it up
From taking a hit. Letting it go
Ignoring it
I don't want my life to be perfect
I want one thing to like
I want one ray of hope
And one day that is not worse than yesterday
can be beautiful
Fall prepares trees
For cruel winter
I am tired of losing
And I am tired of losing out
I am exhausted from sucking it up
From taking a hit. Letting it go
Ignoring it
I don't want my life to be perfect
I want one thing to like
I want one ray of hope
And one day that is not worse than yesterday
the softly fading life
when i was a child it seemed strange that
one day you are so alive, and then suddenly you die
but as i grow older i realise,
you die one day at a time
one day you are so alive, and then suddenly you die
but as i grow older i realise,
you die one day at a time
as long as boy in a metropolitan indian city wants to be introduced to a girl because he heard she smokes and likes whiskey
as long as my best the most allegedly liberated culture is mildly ashamed to tell me she is frustrated because her husband has a lower libido than her
as long as men reading the line above are not smirking and saying i want to meet her
as long as women cannot casually and matter of factly "ask for it", or even heaven forbid, take it whenever they want it
as long as sex is taboo and sacrosanct and not just another fun and relaxing thing to do and a prostitute is not just a service provider
as long as whore is a dirty word
as long as tomboy is cool but pansy is an insult
as long as you feel slightly belittled when someone calls you hot
I'm returning "amores perros" and "the way we were" unwatched. And watching something trashy instead. I find I can no longer watch movies or read books that once really moved me, that talk about love.
"aisa asan nahi lahu rona
dil mein taqat jigar mein hal kahan"
Have you ever felt like that?
I loved Edinburgh a lot. Leaving it broke me. I rebuilt something. But it's very different from what I was before. Now I want a safe fun pleasant place to live. I don't want to love a city as much as intensely as hauntingly as Edinburgh. I don't want something to take the place that it once held. Let it's beautiful broken ruins stay untouched & holy