10 posts tagged “life”
shifting the pc downstairs has left the feng shui of my room down in the doldrums
the increasing futility of my thoughts, and in fact, any rational thoughts in general, is greatly frustrating me!
dont worry, be happy.
(...)
=D
yes yes yes yes... YES!!!!!11!!!1!!11!!!11!
the exams have finally ended.. not exactly on a positive note, but then again, any news of exams ending is instrinsically positive in any case..
need to work hard in the summers and be the behemoth that i want to become.. !! grrr@!
its a really nice movie. i absolutely love how the story has been told in an extremely simple manner - no shenanigans or catchphrases to remember this movie with. it doesnt need them. its above these petty things and the simplicity is perfect to show the fragility of life. its a really nice movie.
so lets start off from where we ended. its been nothing more than an assorted collection of steamy days and starry nights; our sweat drawn - our miseries compounded. these are the days when men like us give up their hair for an extra ounce of freedom. proponents of anti-art - listeners of anti-rock, when all it does is delay the attrition. inevitable. surely. look where logic has taken us. though. we shall go down in glory - with style.
(8) so tell me where, your freedom lies (8)
contrasting mental snapshots from yesterday:
- diagonally parked oil tankers on the roads
- talat hussain and co. lying around on some balcony
- altaf hussains speech starting with a half-hour (well, nearly) long ayat in a dramatic way while the people were 'staring in blank devotion as their leader spoke to them with unseeing eyes' - a bad play of words on a red sparrowes track
- cold drinks and assorted 'mashroobat' for the crowd in islamabad
- the three guys from ppp, pml n, and mma holding hands (the mma one was slightly reluctant) and badmouthing the pml q guy
- mushy and co. talking about their 'vulgar display of power' (another pantera album ironically) from inside a bulletproof box while the people were roaming around (probably looking for some drinks and food - the air of festivity suggested that you could not rule out the possiblity of cotton candies and ferris wheels)
- me thinking about a childhood friend (shahzaib).. we were 12 or something back then and i said something along the lines of 'oh man altaf hussain sucks haha' and he said 'oye altaf bhai ko kuch na kehna' - speaks volumes about the following and popularity of mqm
oh well.. and ofcourse, people dancing to dhols in islamabad and the constant gunfire and blood on the streets in karachi - a surrealistic depiction of human nature summed up by shakespeare, "the show must go on"
this issue of the online newsletter 'warrior of the light' (by paolo coelho) was pretty good.. i was never too inspired by his novels, quite the contrary infact.. but i like what hes trying to do.. people rightly say that oh hes crap and its nothing deep and quite shallow and is lame and so on and so forth.. but what he writes is really sweet and he spreads the message of warmth and hope in this world which is a cesspool of credentials where everyone is on his toes because they fear the earth under them might be swept away any time now, and that is the least one can do apart from whining and cringing at every injustice.. this issue is really simple and that is exactly what i love about it.. and its fitting that we were talking about the letter of descartes to an objection a fellow philosopher raised to his reconciliation of necessity and freedom of our will in class today.. we have the power to negate the truth; the specificity of the humans.. we can give our own meaning to necessary truths.. and no one can stop us from doing it.. who would ve thought that such existential thoughts were to be found in both descartes, on the one hand, and coelho on the other.. here goes:
As if it were the first time
I would like to believe that I am going to look on this new year as if it were the first time that 365 days have unfolded before my eyes. To see the people around me with surprise and amazement, happy to discover that they are by my side and sharing something so often mentioned and so seldom understood, called love.
I shall climb on the first bus that comes along without asking where it is going to and I shall get off as soon as I see something that catches my attention. I shall pass by a beggar who asks me for some spare change. Maybe I’ll give him something, maybe I’ll think that he will spend it on drink and just walk past – hearing his insults and understanding that that is the way he has to communicate with me. I shall pass by someone who is trying to wreck a telephone booth. Maybe I’ll try to stop them, maybe I’ll understand that they are doing that because there is nobody to talk to on the other side of the line and that is their way of chasing off loneliness.
On each of these 365 days I shall look at everything and everybody as if it were the first time – especially the small things that I am not used to and whose magic I have forgotten. The keys of my computer, for example, that move with an energy that I fail to understand. The paper that appears on the screen and for a long time has not been revealed in a physical manner, although I believe that I am writing on a white sheet where it is easy to make corrections by pressing a key. At the side of the computer monitor are some papers that I do not have the patience to put in order, but if I feel that they are hiding something new, than all these letters, memoranda, newspaper cuttings and receipts will gain a life of their own and will have odd stories of the past and the future to tell me. So many things in the world, so many paths trodden, so many entrances and exits in my life.
I am going to put on a shirt that I wear a lot and for the first time I shall pay attention to the label and the way it was sewn, and I am going to imagine the hands that designed it and the machines that changed this design into something material and visible.
And even the things that I am used to – such as my bow and arrows, the breakfast coffee mug, the boots that have become an extension of my feet after wearing them so much – will be coated in the mystery of discovery. Let everything that my hand touches, my eyes see and my mouth taste be different now, although they been the same for many a year. In that way they will no longer be still-lifes and start to convey the secret of having been with me for such a long time, and they will show me the miracle of coming into touch again with emotions already worn down by routine.
I want to look at the sun for the first time, if the sun comes out tomorrow, or at cloudy weather, if tomorrow is overcast. Above my head there is a sky for which all of humanity - over thousands of years of observation - has given a series of reasonable explanations. Well, I shall forget everything I have ever learned about the stars, and they will once more turn into angels, or children, or anything else that I feel like believing in at the moment.
Time and life have changed everything into something perfectly understandable – and I need mystery, the thunder that is the voice of an angry god rather than just a simple electric discharge that sets off vibrations in the atmosphere. I want to fill my life again with fantasy, because an angry god is far more curious, frightening and interesting than a phenomenon of physics.
And finally, let me look at myself on each of these 365 days as if it were the first time that I was in contact with my body and my soul. Let me look at this person who walks, feels and talks like any other, let me feel surprised at his most simple gestures, like chatting to the mailman, opening his correspondence, contemplating his wife sleeping at his side, wondering what she is dreaming about.
And so I shall remain what I am and what I like to be, a constant surprise to myself. This I who was not created by my father or by my mother, nor by my school, but by all that I have lived so far - suddenly I forgot and am discovering it all over again.
this is off the unbelievably funny hub called sublevels on dc++:
<EtherealSolitude> can i touch you in your special place?
<[ADMIN]S4R> rape!
<fenriz_> call it surprise sex, not rape.
the sun sets on a tropic isle and you are surrounded by stars shaped like dreams. you can smell the love in the air. the wind whispers a few cryptic messages from time to time. almost a tease. as you stare at the white beach. into the white beach. the tide. the distant waves. the horizon. a nameless void. this moment right here, right now, is incomparable to any souvenir. as you render the possibility of you being close to eudemonia, so close that you can almost feel it at the tip of your nose and you feel like closing your eyes. you realise that there is something missing. the beauty is drained of all relevance as you dwell upon the missing element. the last jagged ugly piece of the puzzle which may be worthless in isolation, but the most important thing in the world when it limps with a cane stick called perspective. that is, my friends, where frank sinatra comes in.
