Spring 2006

Summer 2006 (couldn't figure out how to make a separate post for it without disrupting the entire pattern..)

“I could sit like this forever, I tell myself. There’s this uncanny enchantment taking siege of my otherwise restless frame, as I struggle to grasp words worthy of conveying the depth to which I wish I could express myself and somehow BECOME.
Hypnotic. Mesmerizing. Life has intoxicated me”

~

May 22, 2006
I refuse to set the rules
Much less live by them
Do I like this lack of commitment?
I do as I please and you
Can go your way
But I thought my words weighed more than just those
Sayings of those old folks in those big books
I thought they meant something
I thought I meant something
You want purpose and meaning
And so I talk
I talk till I only hear echoes from afar
I lost my voice somewhere
I hope you caught it for me
Resurrected a dying light
Or a dim candle even
Darkness towers in the distance
Approaching
Closer and fainter
Fainter and brighter - I am walking towards it
This purgatory of selfhood is
Worse than a life adorned with welcome materialism

~

April 5, 2006
Bismillah arRahman arRahim
There comes a point where reading the words of another and internalizing their borrowed meaning ceases to serve any substantial purpose. It starts out as a pebble, a stone, a boulder and finally, before you know it, your whole heart's gone hard and you're left lifeless. What happens is that at some point along the way, you stop making the connection between words and the meaning behind them. For every word speaks higher than itself. It conveys a twofold meaning the resonates within us and allows us to react to it by virtue of the substance of the words and the feelings that it arouses within us. Somewhere along the way though, even if certain words are cherished, others loudly lauded, their impact is almost flushed down a ruthless toilet. Why the crude terminology? Well really, when one isn't even moved by the most beautiful forms of communcation and language impregnated with symbols that ought to stir us to go out and do something or be someone, then clearly something is missing. And again, as my mom says, "you can't clap with one hand" -- its a two-way affect. Of course you can't say that "both the words and I am equally at fault". The words don't have a soul of their own until we recognize the soul behind their transient echoes and connect it with our own hidden, rusty sense of selfhood. But that must mean that somehow the sense of selfhood that was on a path of conscious development -- unhindered by the pebbles and boulders that stubbornly glared as you just as confidently strolled by -- that selfhood went off track. Unlike your past, when there wasn't even a track, there was merely cloud upon thick cloud that refused to hold you up. Since then, a track has at least been erected and maintained. Now, it is either changing directions or it has been tampered with. Or, its broken.

Mend yourself.


April 5, 2006
Every year for the past two years it seems as though I reach this routine stagnance. I just freeze, like a worn out ice cube tired of ingesting the cold air around it. Or even a flame, tired of being consumed by the endless waves of fire melting the very frame that once held each distinct flame on its own...at least in my imagination. And then I always wonder, is this self-induced, or is it above and beyond my control? And I always reply to myself: naturally, it is both. Why do I even bother succumbing to the same rather numb state of mind, rather glazed sense of self repetitively? It's like a 5 inch lazer wall has laid seige over my entire physical body and the profound awareness of life no longer penetrates through. At least not as much as it did during those good old natural highs. And again, what's difficult in characterizing this particular state of mind is that it isn't mercilessly inundated with woe upon woe and heartbreak upon calamity. I am no hamlet, no starstruck lover. I'm relatively at peace, or at least pleasantly holding on to the well earned internal peace of the past. Although, its gnawing against my very fabric when it initially whispers, whimpers and eventually starts screaming in pain, "it isn't enough! it isn't enough!" I ought to do more. I need to do more. Some revolutionary change of mind, heart, body and soul and of course it isn't happening over night. And is it even happening? Am I scared? I wonder. And what is this 'it' that I so casually refer to. This 'it' to which I give the right to define the very basis of my existence, and the fuel that will further serve to push me down this road called life. I wonder.

March 30, 2006
i find it funny how everything other than us, everyone other than us, every thought other than our own, every belief other than our own, every way of life other than our own becomes an outlet for us to somehow comfort ourselves in our own alleged superiority. our lack of understanding, our lack of knowledge, lack of emphathy, sympathy, emotion and depth is something we barely care to rectify instead.