Friday, May 23, 2003
Moon river, wider than a mileI'm crossing you in style some day
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you're goin', I'm goin' your way
Two drifters, off to see the world
There's such a lot of world to see
We're after the same rainbow's end, waitin' 'round the bend
My huckleberry friend, Moon River, and me
(Moon river, wider than a mile)
(I'm crossin' you in style some day)
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you're goin', I'm goin' your way
Two drifters, off to see the world
There's such a lot of world to see
We're after that same rainbow's end, waitin' 'round the bend
My huckleberry friend, Moon River, and me
Mina at 10:29 PM
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Today was the herald day of the summer.The kind of day where you wake up with the heat sitting on your chest. Settling itself into the air like a fat woman scrooching into a comfortable chair. Spreading bottom into crannies, heavy evenness.
The first real day of summer, today was the day where the heat sits in the atmosphere, seeping into your pores. Not enough to make you gasp, but enough to make the hair on the nape of your neck heavy, and the day turn into molasses. Languid, but not stifling because of the cooler, but redolent with the promise of sticky, thick heat. An idle day that flowed along like a silent river of cream, with me buried in a book after oh, so long! Glorious bliss to wake up and reach for a book, and just sit in one place and read and read like a starving person, as if this was the last book you'd ever read. I gobbled it up, and the whole time the leaves outside the window rustled in the lu, the sky shone a bright, hard blue and Ayesha went to Islamabad on an impulse and Salman went to Karachi and I stayed home and slept on the couch and read, and thought about doing Ethics, of stabbing Pete with a screwdriver, of pancakes and Gule. Nothing and everything.
And the whole time the heat sat around like a friend, like a birthright, like an old ayah pottering around the house. There, but not intruding, just extending opiate fingers to slow down time, sap away hunger, bring the world down into one little pinpoint. Green checked sofa, green lilies on the book cover, blue and green pillow, dark blue denim-clad legs over the back of the sofa. Toes painted sparkly pink. Wiggle. Green of the four Monet lithos on the opposite wall, and my mind is churning out phrases and paragraphs. Disjoint, but each sparkles. Each elusive, each the wonderful thoughts of the half-awake mind that would shine on paper, but die in the grasp of memory. Moth-thoughts, beautiful and elusive, born of the unbridled imagination. Drawn out by the heat that hangs everywhere and is churned by faihtful fans into a swirly, sluggish mess. Familiar, and yet it takes getting used to, every year.
Apollo of summer, today was.
Mina at 7:14 PM
Monday, May 19, 2003
“ There is strange, and yet not strange, is the kiss. It is strange because it mixes silliness with tragedy, and yet not strange because there is good reason for it. There is shaking by the hand. That should be enough. Yet a shaking of the hand is not enough to give a vent to all kinds of feeling. The hand is too hard and too used to doing other things, with too little feeling and too far from the organs of taste and smell, and far from the brain, and the length of the arm from the heart. To rub a nose like the blacks, that we think is so silly, is better, but there is nothing good to the taste about the nose, only a piece of old bone pushing out of the face, and a nuisance in winter, but a friend before meals and in a garden, indeed. With the eyes we can do nothing, for if the come too near, they go crossed and everything comes twice to the sight without good from one or other.There is nothing to be done with the ear, so back we come to the mouth, and we kiss with the mouth because it is part of the head and of the organs of taste and smell. It is the temple of the voice, keeper of breath and its giving out, treasurer of tastes and succulences, and home of the noble tongue. And its portals are firm, yet soft, with a warmth, of a ripeness, unlike the rest of the face, rosy, and in women with a crinkling red tenderness, of the taste not in compare with the wild strawberry, yet if the taste of kisses went, and strawberries came the year round, half of joy would be gone from the world. There is no wonder to me that we kiss, for when mouth comes to mouth, in all its silliness, breath joins breath, and taste joins taste, warmth is enwarmed, and tongues commune in a soundless language, and those things are said that cannot find a shape, have a name, or know a life in the pitiful faults of speech. ”
~ Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley ~
Mina at 8:26 AM
Saturday, May 10, 2003
Your face was turned to the windowSitting in the windowsill
Shoulders turned inward, shoulders now
So much thinner from the swimmer ones I knew.
And I desperately clutch my own shaking fingers and try to get a grip
on myself before I can look at you.
Words? Words....I'm sorry? You- she- deserve better than that.
So Ï hold your hand in a clutch that is returned
with the same intensity,
My fingers close around yours, so thin,
Birdlike.
Your eyes are empty
As you tell me how it's hard at night
Because nobody's there any more,
How you keep thinking that she's just in the hospital,
Will come home soon.
Masooma called, her mother died too and she said it would get worse-
Oh God, oh God, what can I do?
Me, who has her mother
And you, who will have to see the empty bed across your room
Every single day.
Me, who can go home and cry- and go then go to a theatre festival
And you, whose insides have turned into ice.
Parents are supposed to die when they're old and gray
Not on your twentieth birthday
Not when they're only 51
Not when they don't even have the strength to say goodbye
I wish I could do something to take away the hurt
The grief that plays in every movement
The bleakness of your gaze
Anything to make it better
But all I can do is hold your hand
Listen, and keep the tears back.
And life goes on
Music, laughter, conversation
Food, rain, flowers.
It's a blur, it's a blur
Hazy in this onslaught
I drift, trying to cope
Funny, me trying to cope-
I still have Amma, I still do. You don't.
It's the lilt of a dirge
That is filtering my days.
Mina at 5:28 PM
Friday, May 09, 2003
Urgh, Blogger's made the spacing for 'Fire' normal! The lines are actually pretty skewed, a visual rebellion of sorts. Ho hum, welcome to the age of PCs, where everything stays on the left margin :PMina at 8:20 AM
FireOctober 2001
the flame of the spirit will forever remain,
unquenchable
triumphant, rising
from the depths of your world's mundaneity, a place where the flowers will never
bloom and springtime will never touch,
a world where it is winter forever.
you sent the ship of fools away
you ran
you hid from truth, from the fire
that kindles the dormant soul.
from the dregs of your conformity
shall always arise
the laughter of the one who has seen the joy
of the light
that the shadows of you philistines' little mind
will never darken.
you will remain in your cocoon
of the world,
of a society you'd spit on
if you had the courgae,
while the 'fools' will smile in their secret amusement
at you, who labels their genius madness
because his truth makes you afraid
because your soul will forever be barren
and his will sing the song of life.
Mina at 8:13 AM
Thursday, May 08, 2003
My shot at the dramatic monologue :) Written 2001.Ate*
I have resolved to resist
You and your tempting bulk.
There you sit; silent and complacent
Waiting for me to give in but
No sir, I shall not.
I will close my eyes- like so,
And sit far, far away from you- like so,
And pretend you do not exist.
That way I will be able to
Forget the temptation of grabbing you
Running my fingers down your spine
Burying my nose in your scent
And reading you from cover to cover
In one sitting.
I slide a glance at you from the corner of my eye
I hesitate-
And make a flying leap across
The room
Where you wait in your
2,000 page arrogance.
* Pleb note : Ate is the Greek muse/goddess of temptation
Mina at 2:50 PM
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
"The truth is there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when? Your life will always be filled with challenges... treasure every moment that you have and treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time with ... There is no better time than right now to be happy... So work like you don't need money, love like you've never been hurt and dance like no one's watching..."~Source Unknown~
Mina at 9:03 AM
Sunday, May 04, 2003
"Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that every one should study, by all methods, to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things....For this reason, one ought every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."- Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Bk. v, ch. 1
Mina at 11:07 AM
Thursday, May 01, 2003
With the lights out it's less dangerousHere we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
A mulatto
An albino
A mosquito
My Libido
Yay, a denial
- Nirvana
Mina at 10:27 AM
