Tuesday, January 25, 2005
tuesday's child
it's a graygolden morning. the kind of winter morning that starts comfortably after 7 pm, one in which you can crawl out of bed, and stumble out into the streets of lahore with puffy eyes and a need to have the sun slowly warm every part of your body. a morning to walk out into the early traffic, arms wrapped about oneself in alargewarmgreycoat. quite content with sharing the road with blurred out noise and dream-like hurry.
and me, who's always thought of the nights as her own, the most personal-spacetime spent watching mtv and talking to people on the other side of the world. (personal is an ugly word). to discover that my quiet curiosity with mornings, my third-person interest in something far away, turns out to be a love waiting in the wings to come hurrying out with arms spread wide. that, quite extraordinayr.
was up all night finishing rebecca. No, that isn't right. I fell asleep somewhere between 2 and 3 am. and woke up a small number of hours later, picked up a forgotten chapter and couldn't stop till the last word of the large page was hungrily drunk, lapped up in a hurry. went back to the introduction then, and finished reading a rather delicious analysis by someone up in london who won my favour by simply quoting plath.
what was rather weird was the note the introducer (?) ended the analysis on:
"Far from being an 'exquisite' love story, Rebecca raises questions about women's acquiesence to male values that are as pertinent today as they were sixty-four years ago. We may have moved on from the subservience of Mrs de Winter, but our enfranchisement is scarcely complete. A glance at the current bestseller lists will only confirm that the sly suggestion underlying Rebecca remains valid after sixty-four years:
both in life and in bookstores, women continue to buy romance."
Nope, no feminist diatribe - I was just surprisedo at the idea...the enfranchisement of romance linked to something bigger. someone reading this should have his eyebrow arched in a bizarre spread-out of coincidences.
Monday, January 24, 2005
10:14 pm, monday night.
music is like ketchup, it drowns out the realness.
today marketh the speshul day when i got to the climax of rebecca again... and realised that the magic was quite spoof. swish. gone. didn't read like a proper romance novel, just like the story of a silly girl who doesn't quite know what to do or say, who always stares adoringly and quite mutedly at the hero, without ever having anything half-way half-witted to contribute to the conversation. we're honoured with glimpses inside her head, where she entertains doubts and fancies by the minute, while in the real world she finds herself incapable of standing up to her own housekeeper, and even contemplates jumping out of a window at the latter's command.
the kind of person i have absolutely no patience with whatsoever in real life.
but music is like ketchup. remember i said it first.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
this of the dark nights and light talk
‘hey would you like to go out sometime?’
‘we’d be a nightmare’
‘one I’d love to have’
‘but it’s not allowed in islam you know’
‘we wouldn’t ever have to be alone’
‘then how would we talk?’
‘I’ll take care of that’
‘you sound awfully sure of yourself’
‘yeah I know, I know, kabhi ghuroor nahin kiya’
‘surity isn’t necessarily a good thing you know’
‘yeah, but…well…I dunno….sorta might seem like a good idea if we went out maybe…’
‘this is so filmi. It’s a movie. I’m the stupid practical voice of practicality and you’re the irresistible devil-may-care stereotype that girls dream about but can’t have’
‘so does it have a happy ending?’
‘happy endings suck. They’re so contrived, it’s like, hey you might as well hand out free saccharine injections to everyone sitting in the cinema’
‘no, no that way everyone watching it at home would miss out on all the fun’
‘we’d have to be the matinee feature. Face it, this ain’t no schwazznegar thrills.’
‘you ze sayin ze ladies would be able to resists tha charm of this here hero?’
‘no, but this is the ending scene. We’re the end of the world.’
‘but it has to rain before the world ends.’
‘and if it did rain?’
‘if it rained, I’d stand under your balcony while it pours and sing 3 am.’
‘and I’d throw down a rose and it’d fall on the black pavement and the colour would drain away.’
‘the rose would have a note pinned to one of its thorns, but before I could reach it, the ink would be washed away.’
‘and you’d go away, without ever asking what or why.’
‘and ages would pass, I’d meet someone else and you’d wait for a reply in abursity.’
‘and then one day, we’d meet by chance – I’ll pull into a petrol station to fill my car up, and you’d be there at my service.’
‘and you’ll pretend as if you didn’t know me, and instead of asking you for your keys, i’ll disappear’
‘but only for a second. You’ll come round the back of the car, I’ll open the door, and you’ll slide in.’
‘and turn to you with a smile and say…’
‘hey would you like to go out sometime?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
...inspired by reading the 400 movie quotes linked to by anarchy and gorpy writing about couples an what not.
hey, so glad you could make it
This is just one of those weeks where words don’t seem to be enough. Where I seem to be slipping into some kind of bliss, some kind of dream. Where I’ve started remembering who and what it was like, and how.
Time is a place.
Dreams about purple chart-like-paintings, walking through a city that could be New York, on a bridge, by a gray rail. Detailed scenes of applying a dark maroon lipstick. Of being in the house of someone who lives in another city, a city of memories. Of letting out, being, finally.
Change menancing change. Times spent wringing, not saying, twisting doubts. Times spent talking as if nothing’s wrong and nothing’s right. And You are the victim of some great tragedy. I’m honoured to have been there, honoured to have kept watch, honoured. You read like a machine, but are great with feeling.
My name is might have been.
(Hole - Celebrity Skin)
Monday, January 17, 2005
by the sea
We conjured up sidewalks today
Dreaming about a town with sleek black roads
In that house a room, and in that room a closet. A mesh of furniture squeezed into a tiny room in which my mom and I lived for about a month while they finished up the rest of the place. There’s nothing quite like suddenly coming upon a huge grey space filled with long poles holding the unpainted ceiling up. The house with the brand new white jaali-kay curtains and my first alanis cassette on repeat. Sleeping for the first time alone in a new room – in a heap on the floor, on a mattress with a single bedside lamp and a book forgotten. The room that opened out into the huge main hall – the hall that served as a tv lounge at one end, with a little alcove for a dining table. The scene of many Scooby-doo cartoons watched before school. The house with the yellow room, the new stereo system, and the fan which I one day climbed on to the bed to reach and draw on. The room plastered with posters that would bubble up every time I took a hot shower. The house with the tiny gali at the back from where you could spot city school glistening and staring right at you.
House. Circa 1996 - 1998.
And I don’t know what quite brought that on. That house by the sea often slips out of memory: I usually just dream about the other house. The one I grew up in, the one whose corners I still find myself in in dreams.
Feel like dancing to Come Into My World today.
..these arms that were made for lovin'…
Friday, January 07, 2005
mm mm mm mm
Blood makes
noise.
Sitting in a room filled with too many cluttered surfaces and old carnival music.
Twenty dollars for the weekend. Tyres rolling over bumpy roads, dust flying and a long thread of a road disappearing into the horizon. Purpose and randomness, state and anarchy, the dichotomy you love to construct because you think it speaks to you. In your mind unfurls a map, crackled, taped up in places, scribbled with travel notes and cheap motels. Currency conversions, neatly folded clothes and a 'don't forget your lens-case' post-it on the fridge.
They've left, gone, ages long ago. Doors now bang ceaselessly in windstorms every year.
.
New Year's seemed even more artificial than ever. Every year, it seems more and more like being slaves to a meaninglessness. Why pretend that you need an excuse to celebrate? Rant.over()=true. Nah, that was too tz. I'd probably write something like Rant.setRant(true);
Ignore the last line if you don't feel like reading programming metaphors. I'm actually sorry that I do not feel up to translating myself ever. Maybe I give way too much credit to people who might understand a subset of my raw code over those who might get all of it if it's translated into an exe file. There's irony in here somewhere, please disregard it if applicable. Do not feed it with your neurosis, it will grow tentacles and feed off you for the rest of your combined existence.
Um. .. to counter the overpowering darkness...may I interest you in some of my favourite Sheryl Crow?
If It Makes You Happy
I've been long, a long way from here
Put on a poncho, played for mosquitos,
And drank til I was thirsty again
We went searching through thrift store jungles
Found Geronimo's rifle, Marilyn's shampoo
And Benny Goodman's corset and pen
Well, o.k. I made this up
I promised you I'd never give up
[Chorus]
If it makes you happy
It can't be that bad
If it makes you happy
Then why the hell are you so sad
You get down, real low down
You listen to Coltrane, derail your own train
Well who hasn't been there before?
I come round, around the hard way
Bring you comics in bed, scrape the mold off the bread
And serve you french toast again
Well, o.k. I still get stoned
I'm not the kind of girl you'd take home
Chorus
We've been far, far away from here
Put on a poncho, played for mosquitos
And everywhere in between
Well, o.k. we get along
So what if right now everything's wrong?
Chorus
Haha...how I love thinking that line in bold. I'm really not though - I'm clumsy (very often socially), I have absolutely no interest in making small talk, fake smiles make my face ache and I can see through your soouulllll.
I've been dreaming about meeting some people's families though. nessweird.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Huuungry eyyyyes...
Had this song running through my head all through Databases.
Did I take you by surprise But that one line sounds almost creepy.
With my hungry eyes. Hungry eyes and eye-candy.
(Eric Carmen - Hungry Eyes). But I haven't seen you in forever.
New Year's eve, 2002 - the first fog of the season. Still remember shouting through cloudy walls to a figure unseen.
New Year's eve, 2004 - the first rain of the season. Harmless rain, like far-away sprinklers.
"Social structures are all artificial". S's words resounded in my head all day.
surrealism = twisting rules = pattern recognition = language structures = map making
I scribbled this or something like it in Databases today.
Sort of thought it could be my calling in life.
Obsession and rain.
She only sleeps when it's raining. Have you hugged YOUR misery today? I wonder if it's just me who's repeated this analysis over and over till its truth seems to be self-evident beyond measure.
I wonder how many of us do that all the time.
Other evidence has shown
You and I are still alone
We skirt around the danger zone
And don't talk about it later.
-Suzanne Vega (Marlena On The Wall)
