These small, few certainties had built a fort around me for the past five years. That soft scent of stale cigarettes and aggressively-washed carpets, which could only be my house; the strange precision in which my name is called, each syllable at a time ,shadowed with a tone of finality; and that sense of selective solitude I’ve created despite it all.
There’s that thick drape I’ve drawn right in front of me; one that walks miles before I do,
Behind it, I’m that girl who stood on the 18th of July, under the rain,
in a country that never knew my initials, nor the weight of the constantly-alternating contradictions I’ve held inside. I’m that girl, that one lone girl, standing, with a soaked Pizza box, a torn plastic bag bearing vintage-covered classics, awaiting the arrival of a transportation bus. I’m that girl, right there, with nothing behind that frail shoulder of mine but strangers slightly urging me back and forth, a pale intensity to every entity I’ve known, a lightness of being.
Behind it, I’m that girl who construct pinnacles of lonesome midnights, a clock of wistful 11’s upturned, and yet no wishes see the peak of light. I’m that girl who listens to tracks of angst and tragic ends, on instruments that’d dissolve under my touch, their transparency, an obstruction to any reason or logic I’ve held dear.
There’s pain.
And an irretraceable ache,
And a fall from a once-cushioned grace.
And an open-ended question : "Why?"
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Friday, March 04, 2011
Take it all.
My tipped-to-the-side bookcase – break it down to irrevocable lumps of wood.
Step on it if you must; touch the shards you’ve brought down with that steel hammer of yours.
And those books of mine- dog-eared, frayed, with their laden sheets and penciled-in thoughts- Burn them out, those pages, rip them to the core,those salty tears, those fingerprints, those eye lashes clinging on just about, those days enclosed firmly inside – hotel rooms with white linen sheets withholding runaway schemes, bus journeys, waiting areas and airport queues– burn them, burn it all.
It won’t be an offense, not a felony, nor a crime; those fingers typing official documents with color-coordinated logos , filing city applications, and sending out already-planned requests; they won’t be pointing at you, they won’t see a sacrilege, they won’t know the severity of that smoldering scent of burnt literature and individuals.
Go on then, burn it all with ease; take your shoes off and dance on its ashes. Feel it under the sole of your feet. It wouldn’t matter. There are no mahogany tables, no courts, no stern voices questioning your motives, no justifications, no consequences that’d ripple your existence as you know it, no threats of demolishment, no conscience that’d drag the admission out of you, no substance that’d anchor you down to the ground nor the exact contrast that’d defy gravity and lift you up a bit. There’s just, No Thing. With capitalized emphasis.
So there you go, that’s my hand handing it all to you,
An that’s my soul- under your soleless feet.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Look at you, cradling that blue notebook like a porcelain doll; writing a story about a boy named ‘ Rami’ .
Look at you, measuring the widths of the page with a metal ruler and crossing the T’s, an end to an end.
You know you’ve never read a book with letters spiraling downwards and full stops falling off margins ;. So you sit on your elbows, knitting your eyebrows for hours, making sure Rami’s mother had a capitalized first-letter to her name, and his house, had a triangular red-bricked roof.
And you run, after each page ; my god you run with all your might ;
by the stairs, by the windows, by every discarded toy on the carpet ;
to grasp your dad’s arms and nudge him to see Rami’s smile as he buys his ticket to the moon ; to lay those well-crafted pages on his lap and pinpoint to the vase in the background, to trace the details you’ve prided yourself in,
Your heart is swelling, your heart is a helium balloon, your heart is that contained void in a closed-lid paint bucket; your heart is that dribble of a new basketball.
Your fragile little heart,
And your dad grins,
And he sits with his arms crossed;
And he tells you, with eyes that could only speak in steady volumes never in simple words
“ One day, the world would shudder at your touch, one day, you’d stand and know it all, and one day, every page of every book, would be watermarked by your intials”
And you,
Little fragile-hearted girl,
Believed,
Because you knew, there isnt a world but this – and it’s a just one.
Look at you,
Covering your eyes with the back of your hands; as the couple on screen kiss. You lower your head, willing time to tremble forth; the script to move along from that scene; it’s pitch dark behind your firmly shut eyes; it’s daunting to fear the loss of that grace they instilled in you ; it’s blasphemous, it’s the day of doom and those bones of yours would soon be igniting the core of hell.
You open your eyes, and you breathe ; that cold air of safety from within, the story is still intact without the kiss, it’s only here and there, that detail falters , but it’s alright ; you’re capable of justifying it all – Humanity sans kisses is the ultimate utopia.
Because you,
little fragile-hearted girl,
Believe,
Because you knew, there isnt a world but this – and it’s a just one.
Look at you,
Emptying your pencil case, searching for the thickest ink. Trying to scribble over that illustration at the bottom of the page ; it’s a six-angled star, gaping at you with that immorality and evilness they’ve warned you against ; you squint to shape it out, but you know it’s somewhere here, you’ve been taught to find it’s corners on architecture, t-shirts, mugs, blankets, ceramic patterns, and you can’t ‘unlearn’ such criticality. You just can’t. So you scribble, and scribble some more. And turn the page over; look at your hands, and hope that what you’ve heard them call ‘Judaism’ isn’t contagious. But it’s alright, because your Science page had been cleansed now, and that conscience of yours is polished. And words such as Zionism, Holocaust, Religion with an ‘S’ at the end; are merely concepts of someone else’s dictionary.
Because you fragile-hearted girl,
Believe,
Because you knew, there isn’t a world but this – and it’s a just one.
Look at you, now.
A fool,
weeping for a world,
that was never yours.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
I’d like you to know it’s mine – that Quill & Parchment Bookstore,
I’d like to imagine you coming upon it:
Walking down that damp street; lifting your gaze slowly to the corner, and finding yourself touching your glistening veins in an unconscious attempt to test reality.
In your eyes, I’d verify its existence; that picturesque passion I’ve poured into this creation; that tiny sharp-edged scrap of my heart ; and a thousand ghastly days turned inside out.
It’s exterior is Aqua-blue. That distinct shade of late January; That shade of disparities: hostility, fragility, stillness, and chaos all at once; that shade of ripe fruit bowls and embroideries found in cribs, nurseries, and vintage jewelry boxes.
Yes, it’s that Aqua- blue. The one that comes to mind when I remember Tom Sawyer’s raft or Kindergarten lunchboxes. It’s the shade that streaks over childhood; over days spent using waterpaint on used-newspapers and drinking Horlex out of Lipton complimentary mugs.
.
The rims of the store are Golden, just here and there; a pale gold that refuses to shimmer but remains resolute all the same. It outlines the edges of those nine small, well-proportioned squared windows at the center of the door. It also refines those cursive ends that form “Quill & Parchment” on the high left. The words glide; the words shatter; the words break down again and again.
The window; an octagonal corner, branching itself outside, forming a peach seating area from within. Just like Boo Radley’s gift-bearing tree in “ To Kill a mocking bird”, the side door is carved with empty cubicles, where poetry and paper swans are left every now and then.
I like to imagine you, walking inside:
You look at the carpet, and remember how it feels to step on something that yields beneath you, you remember how the insignificant details, can make you feel alive again. You stand by the door; your heart tries to take it all, and you whisper “ A legacy, “. You look at the shelves, and you extend your hands, stroking one book after the other, because you know, they wept for you sometimes. You know of the ache that streams down their pages, and you know they hold my lonesome soul amidst their typewritten texts.
You look at the walls, and you know they’d never know the obsoleteness of unliving things. Frames upon frames of raw entities scraped off my lifetime, Van Gogh’s starry night upon Edinburgh’s skyline, upon E.E Cummings words upon Joss Weldon’s fictional creations.
I like to imagine you, placing your palm on one of the dangling single light bulbs, thinking of the days I vowed to bring back their worth without camouflaging them with feathers and crystals. You smile as your ears fall upon the instrumental melody of the Beatle’s “ Yesterday”, and you wonder why, I chose piano over violin; and you wonder if time is capable of changing vowels and tendencies; and you wonder if I still miss you.
And what came together in my head, will then fall apart.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
My little sister; she had a too-featureless scrapbook for an 8 years old– one of those with glazed pages that smelled like newly-bought school textbooks and fresh-off-the-stand magazines . She’d stretch its empty pages out on her Dora-imprinted blanket and place her little palms on the surface. “It’s too heavy”, she’d claim, “ I always run out of pages,” ; and the pages knew how to hold the pretense of containing it all ; a twist of her reflection, her always color-coordinated glasses, and that epic toothless grin.
Every time she’s asked about it’s contents, she’d circle her fingers around the borders, and say with utmost confidence,“ But don’t you see it? It’s where I keep them all; the kisses, the hugs, and the ‘well-done’ pats,” She’d take you then back to page one, and guide you all the way to the back cover ; million of off-to-school morning kisses, thousands of I-love-yous crowding unseen margins, and a whole world of smiles : her oldest brother tying her shoes, her dad trying to unscrew her nailpolish bottle, her 2nd grade teacher giving her the largest performance star; she’d take you through them all, until you’re left breathless,
That’s her scrapbook,
Mine, however, had no pages – for I wore it around my neck like a string of impossibly-knotted beads – strung together with such sacredness, such delicacy-that without it, one would easily wilt to the grave.
It’s made of that 8 year old girl, and of them-
Of that 12 year old boy- with his Pikacho Pijama pants and dream-cake cravings- how he chases that lonesome rabbit out of its hole, towards the carrot crumbs; how he sits infront of the barbeque fire with hands copying his English Homework and eyes watching his roasting marshmallows; how he flips on that unguarded trampoline with mischief and undoubted expertise; how he runs with all his might with someone’s gift safely tugged under his arms; how he giggles while reading the latest copy of “ Wimpy Kid”; how his heart is wrapped with an unfound tenderness, how he brings life, to life.
Of those random-outing days with my best friend – with car-filled conversations amidst crumpled cd covers, heavy scents of broken perfume bottles, and university booklets – how we tread topics like equestrians on the run, how we mount to utter joy, fall to complete devastation, and then mount again ; how we outline café visits and embrace papercups; how we condemn trivialities over plates of salted-calamari and mozerella salad ; how we drown in detail; how we drown in music, how we drown in ‘now’, ‘then’, and ‘because’.
Of that trail of memory I leave between the pages of my books – with lines; strands of them, emptying that well of nostalgic indentation within me; how hollow it makes me feel; how beautifully it carves the images of those I’ve grieved, of those who’s loss I’ve never learnt to quell; how it brings forth those long summer days with premium vividness, how it brings forth sidewalk laughter and rainy afternoons.
All of it; all of them- this sacred scrapbook, this personal rosemary beads of mine- had dismantled my nights and left me weeping in the wreckage- this fragileness of it all, this proximity that lies in the slash of Everything/Nothing, takes my breath away so vigorously; I can’t lose sight of it anymore. Not for a moment, No.