Saturday, July 22, 2006
I think through my nose
I know soundwaves crash against ears, nerves shiver on skin, light rays crisscross but never bend. But I don't know how we smell.
I can't decide whether my laundry's dirty or clean till I smell it. It's the kill factor when deciding whether you're presentable enough to meet someone after a day of driving around dripping in the sun. There's a smell theory that links smells to kissing. The other day I saw a motia-flower wala, the ones that throng cars at signals pouring blessings and shoving gajras through cracks in windows. He stuck his face in the flowers he was selling, closed his eyes and took a long whiff. Battling cynicism.
"I love the way you smell"A chinese restaurant wouldn't be one without its smell. A hospital wouldn't be as scary. People leave foresty smells in bathrooms after showers, and you feel strange using them after they go because it still feels like there's a bit of them lurking around. And clean powdery baby smells, the reason why you can't use johnsons as an adult ever. Who decided that men and women have to smell different? Segregated perfumes, but I still can't tell one from the other.
Sometimes I know what you're thinking through your smell. I can taste it on patches of your skin. When you step off a plane, you can close your eyes and drink in a city. When you've been in a carful of people puffing away, you come home with your hair smelling of smoke. Old airconditioned rooms tell stories of drowned comfort, shoes taken off long ago and leather couches that no one remembers having bought. Where do they all go, smells wafting away towards high ceilings like cold air, and through open windows. Like sounds, they couldn't totally disappear.
Maybe you could give me some wikiproof.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
battle and hum
bruce, clark and the grand narrative
bartenders and nurses by day, girl boxers by night. don't like muscles, even on the opposite sex. constructed, alien, cold. but your face doesn't look like yours anymore, words form loopy shapes in projector-lit classrooms. i peer squinty-eyed as farhan doodles me funky glasses on brand-new computer architecture books. But girl boxers, a dream. i could never punch a bag that doesn't move. blink through a bleeding trickling nose. girl boxers, not women, make me happy. reality tv doesn't do the cheap trick of fantasizing about misgendered misdemeanors. or maybe it was all just about the fight.
more and more leave as voices grow hoarse and loud. flashes of anger in a cool, calm-collected classroom. you can touch the words like violins. words like girl-punches, never soft, always trying too hard and still looking cool. everything has a neat little name. war crimes. rape. sodomy. sometimes you can almost
see words like little smirks, blue-toothed demonic-smiled shiny monsters.
sometimes i recycle doodles from a classroom long ago.
Monday, July 03, 2006
please start this exercise from page 1
no i'm not impossible to touchi have never wanted you so muchyou have msn conversations with childhood friends (does being 13 together qualify?) about the city, and the direction you're both trying to find. you realise that for all your postpostmodernism, you still likeneed institutions. you pick boys who look cute and restaurants you want to eat at. you have to break the crab's shell before taking out the meat within. it's the salt and the sun and the sea, but I haven't got my feet wet since I got here. If karachiites are creatures of the water then lahoris could be creatures of the earth.
But you're an Air sign. And the air becomes redolent of wherever it goes, but it can't stay.
instead of roots, we put down wires. terribly connected, i hide behind asadullah's favourite msn status,
out to lunch, and snicker behind nudges. i wanted to take pictures of that
jeeay altaf hussain billboard to mail them to you.
its 6 am and i dont know what to write
its just another love letter, and just another night
