Under the Umbrella of Your Shine

At the far end of the road. Beyond the tunnel. Right where you see a fresh bright light. I know you stand there. And as the sun sets every day, I smile to myself knowing that no matter how unending this dark tunnel may get, I'd always find you as my star light. 

Daydreaming Escapades

It was a barren land. Dust blew with strong gushes of heated wind. She took one step after another. Her frail body being pushed sideways with the pressure of the wind. where was she headed, she absolutely had no idea. Though she must move on. Walk on. The expanse of barren land around her continued as far and wide as she could see.

Last night, when the wind slowed down a bit and the chilly wind pierced hee bones,  she pitched a camp and sat trying to listen closely to the silence that enveloped the star lit, minimal landscape.

The small fire that she used to manage building flickered and hissed as the wind tried to topple over its meagre existence.

                     ₪----------₪

She felt a hand on her shoulder. Someone shook her. She looked over her shoulder and her elder sister stood there flaring her nostrils as she smoked a cigarette.

"Would you for heaven's sake get your chores done Sarah, before you start off with your daydreaming sessions!!" She shouted.

Sarah looked at the basket filled with washed wet laundry and picked up
One article after another carefully putting it out on the wire on the balcony. Children played in the street below, her thoughts wandering off into another realm once again. Far from the saddening crowd.

Specks of Dust

I closed my eyes. A tinge of indigo enveloped my vision, or probably lack thereof. I wanted nothing. You must be imagining the colour black, no I don't mean black. I mean nothing a nameless non existent colour that truly describes the shallowness within me.

Don't worry, I wouldn't bore you guys about mundane substance pertaining to events and happenings of my life. I realise this is a blog, not a diary, but then who are we to define anything at all. Whether that be colours, feelings or ideologies and perspectives on the world by and large.

                            ₪-----₪

The rabbit scurried into the rabbit hole, without gaining any notice whatsoever from Aliza, who sat under this blooming apple tree on this overcast spring morning. She looked like Alice, but then again who ever did truly know Alice to draw a comparison.

500km To Nowhere

I stand in a cold dark cave. Its pitch black. I cannot make out a single thing around me. A cold, wet smell reeks in the cave. A smell that's somewhere between a pleasant scent and a bad odour. As wet and cold as that of the summer monsoons. Enchanting. Yet also reminds one of cold clingy blood forming a pool and crystallizing slowly outside some butcher's shop in a small village in the mountains, where the heavy moist fog hangs insistently.

I snap back from my thoughts. I'm falling short of breath as if I'm trapped in a glass bottle with hundreds of eyes staring at me while I fall short of breath, while I stagger across the slippery side surface of the bottle. Eyes tear down my existence by their gaze piercing through me, in anticipation of not what would happen to me but rather with an excited flicker to watch death overcome. 

Like one watches a house fly, it's tiny wings being a beautiful prismatic film through which the morning sun filters it's rays as it bangs itself against the window repeatedly in.hopes of going someplace it's never been to before. A destination unknown, but a destination nonetheless.

I see a beam of light and a few muffled distant sounds of hurried footsteps and people calling out my name as I zone out into a slumber I had never known before. Headed on a journey I had never set out on before. With no destination.

And The Universe Smiled Down At Her That Night

She rubbed her eyes. They were dry. As if a cold dry winter spell had taken over a once happy village street. Just that way.

She was sitting in the snow. Her legs and bum nearly numb despite the layers upon layers of clothes. She wiggled her toes inside her scarlet wellies. It felt somewhat nice. The meadow was empty. Tall trees stood like melancholy guarding posts in the distance. She listened closely to the silence around her as the skies turned a shade of violet and the stars twinkled brightly in the clear skies.

She smiled to herself as she remembered him saying, "Everything will be alright!"

Impact of probably cliched words from someone who matters to you form like a keystone for the nearly ramshackle arch of one's emotions.

She got up and sang as she made her way back home.  Her balmy voice echoing ever so slightly making the stars smile down at her, "Are we all loost staaars, Trying to liight up theee daaark!"

Cast Me In Concrete

That subdued light and the water of the lake reflecting a tinge of orange on the ash grey concrete facade. Soft halogen lamps lit up a stairway beautifully cut into the sloping terrain, leading to a deck where wind swept my hair as I looked at the expanse of the lush green hills echoing serenity and calm, in the distance.

There was something about that place. Its sublimeness of the structure tried to compete against that of the hills. Wild grass, yellowing in the autumn swayed at the banks of the lake with the gentle wind making them dance to a silent tune.

I smiled at myself as the sun dipped down and the colours of the sky being reflected in the lake, turned from a mild orange to a vibrant yet soft pink blending into the hues of a subtle violet. My legs lay sprawled in front of me.

"The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night."

Haruki Murakami

Lets Hum Along

The bus stopped in that ghost village in the middle of nowhere, the name of the village was Chillas, somewhere in the midst of the bosom of a rugged barren mountainous terrain. I wanted to slide open the window of the bus but dust got into my eyes and nose making it impossible to breathe and see after a while.

I distinctly recall that being blinded by the scorching sun rays and choking on at least a handful of glacier sand, I found a small firefly ignite somewhere deep within me, being cupped ever so gently by an uplifting sense of presence. The presence of my being.

I closed my eyes as my heart filled with a warm glow that had ignited a profound idea, that somewhere down the road, there will be no sandstorms to clog my throat and if I get lucky I might wake up next morning to find myself lying in a boat gliding upon clear turquoise waters and a puff of air would carry cherry blossom petals along.

Surging Bliss

She drew out the penknife that she carried in her bag in a most calm manner, but the fiery furnace of her warm brown eyes gave away the love she felt right at that moment for her year old son who was bundled warmly and sat plopped like a boulder in some Japanese garden, acting like the ying to her yang.

She cut the apple into small slices and handed it to him one by one.

Gul was so oblivious of her surroundings that she might as well have been sitting on the side of a busy road than the bustling airport terminal.

Looking at him, her heart surged with exploding bliss while she smiled down at him.

Climb On

Her eyes were welled up with tears. She couldn’t see clearly as to where she was going. The wind slapped her tear stained cheeks as she tried to wipe her nose on the grubby sleeve of her sweater than had changed from a bright red to a dull crimson, as that of clotted blood sprinkled by dust. Her loose bun loosened more as she climbed her. Strands of chocolate brown hair swashed against her face every now and the. Her straight, pointy nose was red at the tip from the chill in the air and the storm that howled inside of her. Her foot slipped as the gradient of the hill got steeper. She slid down a foot or two as she tried grabbing on to the earth, pulling out tufts of grass while making an attempt and managing to get quite an amount of the sweet deep brown earth stuck in between her fingernails as well as into the herringbone knit of her sweater’s sleeve.

She saw a bit of a rugged rock jutting out, covered with moss. She pulled herself on top of it, her feet dangling down into the air. She stared straight into the sky thickened with layers upon layers of clouds. The tears had dried up by now, her heart had calmed down a bit too. She picked up a daisy from a bunch that grew on her right, next to the rock. Closed her eyes lightly and brought the flower right under her nose. One could see her taking the scent in. and she thought to herself. “All in all, today went by well!”

Asha smiled to herself as the wind sang her a silent sweet melody. A smile that said: come what may, I’ll make it through one way or the other.

Puddles and Stories

She wasn’t born on a bleak January night and it wasn’t pouring either, but that’s how she liked to imagine it was when she was born.

The sun had just set. A faint hint of an orange tinge in the horizon showed that the sun was here a while back. The air was heavy with moisture and everything seemed pregnant, the air pregnant with moisture, the horizon pregnant with the on setting night and Zinnia pregnant with her baby. Pregnant to the point that it all seemed ready to brim over any minute. Partially it was Zinnia’s imagination and partially it all was true, because that’s how monsoons in Lahore make one feel anyway, especially one who is not accustomed to the uninvited guest that the weather like playing the role of.

She poked her finger into the ground, turning it by bending the lower bit into an L. she seemed to be looking for something in there. She took out the finger that had turned all muddy with the monsoon rain lazily pattered away as if it had all the time in the world and whispered to her between the plip and the plop, “This isn’t your land, this isn’t your story.”

Cursing Her Memory

She blew into the straw pipe.  A glint and flicker in her eyes showed how happy she was. She looked at him, sitting beside her. His perfect smile and the sound of his hearty laughter taking her into a different realm. She broke off from the world around her and went to her own oblivious, floating world, just for a split second and thinking to herself, that if she could, she would treasure this smile and laughter and place it in a trinket in her memory as to never forget it. Little did she know that, she would, in the future, forget. She would blame herself and cry till her throat ran dry and the streaks of tear-stains would become so excessive on her face that they were hardly detectable. She just had to wait to see that day. The day she would swan dive a million times in a limbo created by her own thoughts.

Smile a Crooked Smile

Skip a step. Whistle a song even if you are pathetic at whistling or humming songs. I know the sweat is trickling down the nape of your neck, but who cares. you have now and whats more beautiful than now? To tell you the truth, nothing. So sing that happy song that plays in your head whenever you look at your childhood photo albums.Smile at that stranger on the street from your way back home from work. I know its been a tough day at work, but cheer up sweetychums because this day, this wind blowing in your hair,  the birds chirping in the twilight, nothing is going to be there again. Its all here. Its all now. Its all happening.

My Bleak Remains

You said I need not worry as long as you are around. The smile on your face and that confidence in your tone was all i needed at times. You were the best friend I could ever have had and yet more than that. I don’t know how to classify that “more”. But I’m aware that you were that. 

You aren’t around anymore. So the things you said I need not worry about as long as you are around, seem scarier to deal with while you are absent in person.

It all seems a little bleak now. Like a fake plastic world with fake plastic houses and hollow empty people that have keys in their backs to make them march around in an almost zombified manner. A world that’s fake like the tawdry flowers you see at a carnival made of cloth and even the corners are tethered and worn with all the black rain that continuously keeps pouring down, making these flowers that were once still acceptable to the eye just a mere props whose sight is now nauseating in itself.

I miss you. Not in the manner the word suggests. But like a gradual leprosy that’s overtaking me. Slowly, gnawing and chewing at the corners of my remains.

Dear, I'm almost home.

My heart's an orchard and yours a lily
I love you
Don't laugh, I know that sounds silly.
My heart's a rainbow.;
The shade you like the most is yellow,
Warm n comforting yet sad at times,
Comforting n cold at the same time.

I miss you is all I'll like to say tonight,
Cos its dark out there
And I have miles to walk
On this cold deserted road
Till I reach home.

Someone's at the Door

I did ask around for you. I swear I did. I asked them nicely. I asked them politely too. In turn all I got were a few hushes whispers. A sneer here and a grunt there.

It has been so long since I wrote the way you liked my writing, but I am trying to write in that manner. I promise I am.

Lately, my throat’s been bleeding. I wake up every morning with drops of blood smeared and dried on my white, filled cotton pillow-cases.

I want to tell you more about it but my fingers are swollen due to the wounds.

I’ll write to you some other time.

I’ll write to you on a better day, telling you of better times.

Oh! It is someone at the door. Knocking.

[Gets up. Walks to the door. Unlocks door. Gasps lightly. Tries to breath as invisible hands wrap a transparent cling film around her face]

Let the Demon Reside

I have a monster living inside my belly. It has scaled brown-with-mud paws with bits of shimmery green that’s able to catch the light every now and again through my windpipe as I open my mouth wide enough. It slits open these nooks inside of me. A small, nearly 5 mm notch a day. Blood seeps through these notches, trickling down like the tears of the woman weeping on the moon as she spins day in and out. It’s not the usual crimson, fresh and cascading blood that you usually see when humans bleed. It’s more of a rose madder tone with a tinge of purple to it as if some purple bougainvillea has been crushed to form a thick yet crunchy paste and added to it.

The monster flickers out its snake-like tongue every once in a while, to lick at the blood forming a thick, enamel pool at its feet. Licking it enough to just get a slight taste of it that might make him survive through the day as he tried to savour it through its taste buds.

It visited me every night in my dreams. I would usually forget the contents of the dream itself though would remember the vivid surreal surroundings and description of the monster itself.

If I remember correctly, in my nocturnal world, I am close friends with it, but if so is the case, then why does it gnaw and scathe at my insides like it does. This thought leaves me completely baffled making my head spin like a child’s top on a floor with psychedelic patterns in neon colours.

I wake up to find myself hanging loosely like a string puppet, from suspending ropes, in a room filled with mirrors of all shapes and sizes as well as all deforming proportions. My wooden feet are nailed to the ground holding my body still as my head spins round and round crazily as if I’m a key at the back of a walking circus doll.

Let The Film Roll

PROLOGUE

Small dark room. Enter Me. A naked bulb hanging in the center of the room gradually lights up. Telephone on a small high table under the bulb.

Phone rings twice.

I walk towards it. Pick it up.

Me:        Hello! (smiles widely)

I’m great. (brief pause. Smile melts into a serious face. Nods while tears run down cheeks)

Light fades out.

CUT.

¤―¤

It has been a while now that I have been trying to shake my brains to be able to understand myself and all that surrounds me and constitutes the me that I am right now, but all to little avail. All that did make any sense to me was that this life is but a mere journey. I’m not making the clichéd journey reference but what I am trying to say is that it’s a journey that never ends. A journey where you are constantly striving to move on and get somewhere. Where death is not the end but another beginning on a newly laid road. It seems like a film where the frames keep shifting and at times the transition of one frame to another might seem disconnected or irrelevant for a moment but by the end of the story it makes perfect sense. It’s a part of the storyline and helps the audience unfold what the Director (Nature) is trying to convey.

There are points within the film itself when the Editor (Fate) rips off things in certain sections and pastes one scene next to another and as I’m the narrator of my own Film these moments would seem really disturbing. At least for a while.

I am quite certain that I can influence the Director and the Editor of my Film. Probably make them change how or when they intertwine by how I take my own Story along. If I carry it well enough, they might not feel the need to drastically change the sub plots.

Since it’s a never-ending spool of film, the best way to keep the story going would be trying to fill every scene and situation with at least a spark of an overwhelming sense of bursting happiness and fullness. The characters in my Film term this sensation as Love sometimes.

¤―¤

EPILOGUE

I stand in a rocky trail that merges with the wilderness that I see in front of me. The camera shows the whole landscape and zooms in and shows an over the shoulder shot.

Over-the-shoulder: looks at the stretch of wild shrubs and patches of Korean feathered grass and some wildflower overgrowth. The setting sun casts orange hues of the landscape. Camera moves across the horizon slowly. Taking it all in.

CUT TO: SLO-MO: Details of a bunch of coral honeysuckle swaying in a breeze in a shallow depth of field.

CUT TO: Aerial view of me standing in the grassland surrounded by wilderness. Camera zooms out slowly. Fades out. CUT.

¤―¤

“The purpose of life is life itself.”

                                                              ― Ayn Rand

¤―¤

“Listen to me man. This , right now, all this stuff you’re feeling, this is a footnote. Okay?...you’re going to get out in the world and stumble into something like contentment, I know it.”

“Is that how it’s been for you?”

“Hell no! But some days are alright you know? Some days are like a gift, and some days suck. But all of that’s okay.”

                                                                                                                ―Jesse Fisher & Dean

                                                                                                                                                ―Liberal Arts (2012)

¤―¤

The Void Between Mirage And Reality

“Hellooo!” trailed a hesitant voice tapping ever so lightly at my right shoulder.

I turned around taken aback by the sudden voice, as I softly stepped out of my own train of thoughts.

I was looking straight at a small timid face of a young girl with dark lightly arched eyebrows widely spaced on a radiating broad forehead. Her lips were plump and a deep vibrant tone of peach red as if she had swallowed the sun and the contours reminded me of early morning petals of a blooming rose. Her perfectly pointed nose nestled snugly between her high cheekbones, with the tip sneaking slightly into the air as if curious to know all that’s going around. A course-textured, deep red shawl was tightly wrapped around her head framing her oval, cherub-like face.

Her big, dark, watery eyes stared right back at me as she hesitantly questioned, “Can I talk to you for a moment please?”

It was not a clichéd manner in which she asked so. Her voice had a certain gripping ring to it, like the distant soothing yet observant ring of church bells echoing in a valley.

I nodded.

“I want you to always remember a few things. Things about me. I am a girl who doesn’t like people screaming or shouting in anger, even if it is not at me and I just happen to stand in the room. It scares me. A lot. I don’t like people being angry at me. Not even in the slightest of manners. It upsets me, though I do try not showing that on my face.” She continued in a solemn voice like that of a child trying to convince some elder of the existence of nymphs, fairies and mermaids.

She kept talking and I seemed to have gotten myself to be in a trance-like state. I stared at her as she stood with me in the cold, cobbled street with a street light in the background making her presence seem dramatically overwhelming and silhouetting her petite, fragile figure.

And suddenly it all started melting in light. As if I stood in a hot room set up with rubber props that had suddenly started melting and the colours melted down into one another. The street seemed to be crying.

Crying, melting and disappearing into nothingness and giving way to a blank, numbing light. The light didn’t hurt my eyes, as a matter of fact it was quiet soft yet it engulfed me and and the silence it carried along with it seemed like a murder of crows angrily screeching and screaming at me and trying to pull at my hair and skin.

I shut my eyes close firmly as I felt it all subduing.

I slowly fumbled my eyes open to find myself surrounded by sooty darkness. Not the kind of dark where one can make out shapes of things around. Darkness that swallowed you up steadily, like some fear that gnaws on your insides.

The Yellow Raincoat

Our childhood fears cling to us like kids clinging to the legs of their parents outside candy stores. These fears make and break us, not just only for those specific moments, but also later, when we are grown and make our own ways in the world, leading our ‘adult’ lives.

Most people like to put it this way that these fears ‘haunt’ us, making them feel wrong or putting complete situations under a negative light when actually they are just events from the past that have had a strong influence on us. They probably took place only to avoid some sort of similar clinging memory, though what we do not realize at their time of occurrence is how in an attempt to make it all right or picture perfect, we are forgetting that mistakes are a part of a healthy learning process.

From this whole idea another thing that I mentioned above is how we try alienating our childhood from our adulthood. It’s one life and dividing it into sections is somewhat absurd. In order to understand that lets take a look at how the human mind transform from a child’s level of thinking to that of an adult.

When a child is born, he is innocent in all manners of speaking.  As he becomes older and what we refer to as wiser (I would rather call this simply call this getting to know the conniving and plotting ways of the world)he loses contact with the pure innocent being that he entered this world as. However, that innocence does not diminish from within him completely. It does leave behind some traces that reflect every once in a blue moon at least. Those who try keeping the child inside of them tactile and alive, nurturing it and protecting it like an expecting mother, are the once considered fools though it is them that get to taste the true flavor of the candy bar known as Life.

So keep that child inside of you strong and alive because when things become too hard to bear at times its going to be that very child that is going to save the adult you by referring to sanity every now and again by telling you fantasy stories of pixies and nymphs that though seem other-worldly and quite pleasant yet hold small pieces of such information which would make you put on a your yellow raincoat and those red wellies and smile as u skip along from one puddle to another on the broken and bumpy road outside.

Adieu!

You are the morning wind. Chilly yet comforting. Caressing me and  loving me as you blow through my night gown. Tapping me on the shoulder gently just to make me turn around and smile at you.

You bring in the zest needed as a fix for my morning blues. You are that unforgetfully beautiful moment when the weak tangy winter sun shines on me as you tickle me through. You play with the flowers, making them dance to your tune.

They say that your tune is silent though I think that’s not so. All they need to do is probably listen closely.

You are that sparkle in the eye of a child as he stealthily eat ice cream in the winters.

You are that kind of a morning wind. The kind that gushes at a speed so overwhelming where needed, breaking and tearing its way through though flowing like a smooth river of liquid silver as the full moon shines on it as it snakes its way through mountains.

You are the morning wind. My favourite kind of wind.

I miss you. Come home soon to tingle my spine and envelop me in your warmth like you always do. The same kind of warmth one feels when holding cashmere kids in one’s arms with their coffee coloured wool as they sweetly ‘Baa’aaa’ in your ears.