Wednesday, April 30, 2003

happy birthday to the most important person in my life....i love you, always and forever, my best friend, my pillar, my utha-oer of nakhras and getter of my jokes, the one who makes everything all right with just a word, or a touch; what would i do without you? i'm proud of the fact that i am your first-born, the first manifestation of your blood- and we both know how much of you is me ;)

Mina at 10:00 AM

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everyone survives.
the question is, how do you live?

Mina at 9:39 AM

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Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Blood

wellspring,
you make me feel real.

i watch your thick maroonness
and have proof that there is substance
behind these fingers,
mysterious machines that pump away under my skin
keep me seeing, breathing, tasting, touching
exist.
skin of different colour
skin that i've been told is alive
hair that curls
of its own volition
toes that waggle if i want them to.

pain, pleasure
fleeting decay

i am not an automaton,
wellspring.
you make me real.

Mina at 9:01 AM

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Thursday, April 24, 2003

the anger scale: 0 to 50,000 in three minutes, 50,000 to -50,000 in about the same time, give or take a few digits according to original scale intensity. could vary to a day, max.
why do i do it anyway? :PP
aftermath is always sucky. blagh.
eating crow. hahahahaaaaaaaa I'M SUCH A LOSER SOMETIMES!
note to self: think, luv, THINK before opening that flapper clapper of yours. hehehe.
love is warped. you can be a 100% asshole sometimes and still be loved. wow.

can you spell unconditional?

khekhekhekhe 'tis laughter of the heap big relief, i say!

*me runs off into the sunset laughing like a crazy banana*

Mina at 8:53 AM

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Monday, April 21, 2003

Silverfish
April 2003

Days of thunder rumble
A song
Through the canvas backdrop of my sight
Unrolling a new adventure at every fold-
Fold, re-fold
And fold again
The same tucking-in-

It’s almost too easy.

Too easy, too easy, it knocks a staccato
Drumming itself into a groove becoming smoother
By use.
I keep looking at the ground for a pitfall,
A crater, an open manhole
For me to fall in;
A struggle, a conquest, a dragon to slay,
Minefield to pussy-foot over.

There isn’t any.

The carpet doesn’t have bumps
Underneath its cosy frayed red fuzziness to stumble over.
Where’s the test? Where’s the epiphany? Where
is the blinding flash of mygodthisisit? I keep on looking.
It eludes; flick of spangled cloth around a corner, fading echo of anklet,
Last glimpse of fingers trailing down the curve of banister.

Silverfish, come to me with your sun and shadow,
Rainbow light of magic dust, showers of gold rain-
Memory-blotting, sense-conquering, breathless, insane
Madness of a single purpose.

Mina at 9:16 AM

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Thursday, April 17, 2003

'Should' and 'Ought' words piss me off. Why do we feel obliged to do things we don't want to? Guilt is a stupid thing. People are ignorant and people talk whether you're a saint or not, so why do we waste our time being 'good' when it really doesn't matter much? Why can't we get the most out of our lives and throw societal stereotypes and myopia out of the window? Why can't we say 'this is me, take it or leave it' and still be taken seriously? In the end, we aren't good because we're supposed to be; we're good because we don't get away with being bad, or because it feels right. 'Ought to be' doesn't figure anywhere. Why do we have to let ourselves be turned into MacNiece's 'automatons'? I will have my loony-goony dances, I will have my mumble-gumble songs and I will thumb my nose at whoever has a problem with that. Take your jealous longings and scram.
If I'm to be called insane, I will mighty well enjoy it.

Mina at 8:31 AM

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Wednesday, April 16, 2003

impulse, im’puls, n.[L.impulsus, from impello, impulsum, to drive on. IMPEL.] Force communicated suddenly; motion produced by suddenly communicated force, influence acting on the mind suddenly or unexpectedly; a force of infinitely large magnitude acting for an infinitely short time so as to produce a finite change of momentum. -- impulsion, im*pul’shon, n.[L. impulsion, impulsionis.] The act of impelling or state of being impelled; instigational impulse. -- impulsive, im*pul’siv, a. [Fr. impulsif.] Having the power of impelling; impellant; under the sway of one’s emotions. – impulsively, im*pul’siv*li, adv. In an impulsive manner. -- impulsiveness, im*pul’siv*nes, n.

Mina at 7:35 AM

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Tuesday, April 15, 2003

"Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
'Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain't been there before."
-- Shel Silverstein
(whoever that is ;) )

Mina at 7:58 AM

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Swinging is the closest you can be to flying.
To soar through the air, kick off your shoes, point your toes at the sky in
the hope that maybe one of these days you can touch a tree- or a cloud. And
then, back again for another try, the wind whistling through your hair and
your hands clutching the rusty chain that holds you; everything melts away
in the peacefulness of the back and forth. Innate trust in only a plank of
wood and some rope (or metal links) to keep you from splattering all over the
ground- humans are so simple; sometimes it makes me wonder why we ever get
ourselves in the muddles we do. But that's why we need parks with
butterflies flitting amongst small purple flowers- to remind us of the fact
that the small things in life are the most significant; some things you
think you didn't need until you realised how important they were in the
first place, in their own unobtrusive way. They're the things that you miss.
I'm not trying to sound like a sappy Chicken Soup editor, but somehow I feel
inexpressibly happy when I walk the dog in growing dusk with a little breeze
to keep me company, the birds twittering as they fly away home against a
sky that is changing colour, lighting up the clouds in what looks like a
Michaelangelo palette.

It's times like these when I skip home.

Mina at 7:40 AM

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Tuesday, April 08, 2003

I have become quite a champion machar-swatter.
They come to sit on my arms and feet and temples and gnaw away at my skin and conveniently, drunkenly, weave their way off into the air leaving me with pink welts that itch enough for me to scratch myself raw if I let myself.
Interesting how life can sometimes- most times- be like that. You watch things happen, react controlledly- sometimes the opposite- and get on with it. Sometimes you hit back.
Best thing: sit in the grass and laugh at it, float downstream with it on your back, watching the clouds and listening to the way the water splashes against your ears, making everything you hear sound funny.

I can't wait to start swimming again. And in the morning, I will sing 'The Three Jews Came From Jerusalem' for Ayesha and Gule. *grin*

Mina at 10:25 PM

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Sunday, April 06, 2003

An apple ice-lolly.
To roll down a grassy hill with a friend.
A cherry tree to sit in, and dangle your feet and pretend you were a bird.
To rollerblade in the park.
Singing 'The Three Jews Came From Jerusalem' and
Treehouses.

Mina at 3:16 PM

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As I valiantly take an acid green highlighter to chapter three of the damned VB book, the realization that I can’t think logically strikes me with greater force than usual. I dismiss the thought as putting up mental barriers like I did for math when I was in first grade and Amma sent me to Sister Clarina’s math camp, where I did her famous worksheets for a month every single day and still never really knew what the ‘joys of mathematics’ were all about. Eighth grade has me being told that I could very well do it since I knew angrezi. Which had me paying attention to word problems- and solving a few in class- but alas, it didn’t barnacle itself to my right-brained grey matter. That blinding flash of yippee when your calculations fit neatly into what is supposed to be done is awesome; unfortunately I don’t get it enough for me to sustain interest in fiddling around with numbers to no palpable end, other than passing an exam. The only thing about math that is intriguing is the concept of zero, but we won’t get into that just yet.
CS only proves the warped way in which I think: my flow charts are mostly correct, but done in a completely psycho way. I made that converter thing in CS lab better than Fahd the CS whiz once it occurred to me that just one button wouldn’t do three conversions. Incidentally, Gule had the exact same flash of integrity at almost the exact same time; both of us aced the friggin’ lab.
Maybe it’s the blight of the lefties. I call it blight only because we didn’t go to Kinnaird and chose instead to get a more ‘rounded education’ (at the mo, the only thing getting rounder is probably our backsides from all those carbs we eat for lunch), and landed up with Ismat Beg standing in front our desks while we pretended to look terribly intelligent and engrossed in a Pre-Cal quiz we didn’t know nuts about; Abid Burki and his anti-hat campaign and now whatisname Maud who reminds me of my godfather but really, never told us what the bloomin’ hell concatenation was.
I resent having to be the only one asking what logarithms and asymptotes are while everyone turns around in those annoying swivel seats and goggles at me. I don’t have issues with being goggled at; I have issues with having to ask, I have issues with being lumped together with everyone when teachers automatically assume everyone did math and computer and economics all their pre-LUMS life. I didn’t, and I’d appreciate some leeway here. I’m good at what I do, I don’t need to feel incredibly helpless when I sit in CS lab and be told to do a killer assignment when all I’ve been told about is Print and Dim and Result, and that I can’t break up the data into strings. As long as it works, who cares how you did it? Rabid CS TAs care, that’s who, and that bearded idiot who comes to poondify the freshies every lab session in guise of ‘helping’. Oh yes, we all know exactly what you're helping.
I don’t mind thinking differently; I hope that the point of being educated and my parent’s daughter remains that I can use my brains for something other than doing what everyone does. I refuse to be a sheep. Other than that, I like being warped. I've never been anything but. It’s never bothered me, it still doesn’t- the only thing that does prickle is the fact that nobody helps you out. If I told my CS instructor that I’m a lefty, hence right-brained and a dreamer and a writer, not a logician, he’d smile gently and tell me to shut the tootin’ up and study, like everyone else does. Excuse me, luv- I am not everyone else, and I don’t plan on being anytime soon. Read : forever.

This done, back to the highlighter.

Mina at 3:01 PM

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Saturday, April 05, 2003

Fati's getting married. Fati Khalid; best friend of little-girlhood. Buddy who climbed trees and jungle gyms with me; swung fearlessly high, arcing up impossibly to touch the branches of the trees that grew around the swing sets. Sidekick on equal footing, spunky as hell, taking it upon herself to defend me from other nasty little girls (although I could manage quite well anyhow), always standing by my side thumbing her nose at the world- which included any old principal or teacher. Fati, who has never been afraid of anyone or anything in her life, is getting married! Memories of the adventures we had keep running through the back of my mind, I feel overwhelmingly nostalgic as I watch her grin at friends, completely relaxed, looking beautiful in her gharara, talking to her husband, waggle her eyebrows when I pull a funny face at her. Good old Fati Khalid; now you belong to one more person; I hope you'll always be happy, and all your dreams come true. I told your husband he's a lucky man- clever boy, he agreed :)

Mina at 6:15 PM

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Thursday, April 03, 2003

There is a sparkle in the way
I have discovered I can throw caution to the winds.
It sparkles. Like sunlight
Does, when it filters in through a mesh of
Bamboo leaves and you squint up at the illuminated green and goldness
Of it and feel glad, happy to be alive in this breeze,
In this languid spring where the hours mosey their way along-
Only fools rush in. Yes sir, only fools rush in
And everyone else is Socrates; wise, rational Socrates
Who would think twice and never raise his voice.

The blood in my veins will not allow
Excessive sacrifice of the ego. I know that.
But a fool? A fool....it treads water in my head, this fool business,
Keeping its bobbled hat above the waves
Only fools rush in, and I can probably count the times I
Have done before I thought on one hand.

Fool, then? This selfsame blood can rush your name with it,
Whisper it through the elements, dye me in your hue.

I could get used to this sparkle. Very easily.

Mina at 10:58 PM

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Wednesday, April 02, 2003

someone please send a message to sisyphus that i know how he feels: i have just given goldie a bath and cleaned her kennel out, and trust me, jharoofying water out though a little hole in the kennel wall is not pretty work. especially when you've got a bright orange duster wrapped around your face to guard against the machars and the recent, alien allergy that likes to spring up these days.

i wish i could step outside of my body and watch me go about my life sometimes; i think it would be interesting to watch what i look like to the world.

Mina at 6:43 PM

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I have burnt bridges.
I have set alight floundering paper boats with a word.
My conventional niceties
Give birth to the twinge of remorse
I know its ‘all for the better good’,
Being cruel to be kind.
I feel a little sorry-
Your eyes were wide behind the tinted sunglasses.

And then you.You plead, you apologize
You appeal to past laughter to make it all right again-
Things you never usually do;
While I am just suddenly
Really sick of it all-
I never do either. I never do.

I have burnt bridges,
Set alight fetters that trail out
And pull at my skin, grasping
A hold; a hold to keep me mired in the past.

I feel churned out from the inside, I feel a dark kind of powerfulness;
A sense of being able to sort out the closet of my life
On my own, with no living tel-e-prompter guised in well-meaning love
To tell me what to do, advise me on what to say, what expression to conjure up—

The clutch has left grooves in my skin,
nail marks on my mind
but I am senseless to it-
I feel free, frighteningly free with a maniacal shade of wonderment
At the feeling.

Mina at 6:39 PM

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Tuesday, April 01, 2003

Beautiful Dreamer
Stephen Foster (1826-1864)

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the rude world heard in the day,
Lull'd by the moonlight have all pass'd away!

Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody;
Gone are the cares of life's busy throng,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea
Mermaids are chaunting the wild lorelie;
Over the streamlet vapors are borne,
Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn.

Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,
E'en as the morn on the streamlet and sea;
Then will all clouds of sorrow depart,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

Mina at 7:40 AM

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