Thursday, May 26, 2005
Saying I love youIs not the words I want to hear from you
It’s not that I want you
Not to say, but if you only knew
How easy it would be to show me how you feel
More than words is all you have to do to make it real
Then you wouldn’t have to say that you love me
'Cause I’d already know
What would you do if my heart was torn in two
More than words to show you feel
That your love for me is real
What would you say if
I took those words away
Then you couldn’t make things new
Just by saying I love you
Now I’ve tried to talk to you and make you understand
All you have to do is close your eyes
And just reach out your hand and touch me
Hold me close don’t ever let me go
More than words is all I ever needed you to show
Then you wouldn’t have to say that you love me
'Cause I’d already know
What would you do if my heart was torn in two
More than words to show you feel
That your love for me is real
What would you say if I took those words away
Then you couldn’t make things new
Just by saying I love you
More Than Words -Extreme
(props to azam, who sent it me first, many moons ago. and blueroses who beat me to it:) )
(abhi abhi nahien suna, gott promiss 12noon *lol*)
Mina at 12:21 PM
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
i must be really tired if i'm writing on this thing right now, because it's always that peak of just plain flop-onto-bed-fully-clothed sleepiness that seems to eject the best kind of randomness out of one's unconsciousness. ess ess ess. yuck. i spent two hours writing about lawrence and unconsciousness and being an individual, purely male/female thisthatandtheother. i also wrote something about how the things people as a whole lash out at are generally things that frighten them, not the things that offend their moral or aesthetic sensibilities. methinks this is true. fear is the biggest motivator of humankind to do all manner of fool things. it's also funny how one is expected to write continuously for two hours on an average and not make any bones of it.mum got me two bars of bournville orange. which means dark chocolate with a dark orange twist. it's beautiful. dark chocolate is sexy. so is amir zaki. if you're reading this, mister zaki, i would like to tell you that you have beautiful fingers. and you are sexy. and i am very sleepy, and am really not a pervert (that much) when i am awake and have the proton shields up betterly. so yes. induction implies hence that amir zaki is a bar of bournville orange; who'da known?
i don't like gorpy that much now, i'm thinking. it's a jaan, but an awami one. gorpy, my pets, is turning into a flyer for a tuition academy stuffed beneath your windshield wiper despite frantic wavings of arm at the pubey boy in the drainpipes and cap who will studiously ignore your 'nononononono!' slapping at the windshield and flick, stick it beaneath the wiper and carry on like a binary machine. flick, go. flick, go. their fingers slide over the pile of flyers like machines. practised efficiency and a touch of bravado; i guess it's all they can make of a job like that.
you looked jagged in the face today. jagged, like a dark cliff perhaps, or a broken bottle. this is interesting because 'black look' was always a strictly mister rochester thing til' now. i like it when words turn into reality. like mumble, i remember the first and only time i have ever mumbled, and it quite really did feel like i were talking around marbles. the rain in spain falls mainly in the plain- azamnoon! *points and grins*
the cat is not naturally potty-trained. the cat did not bring the divine knowledge of piss-in-the-sand with it, although it's getting the hang of it. the cat has also discovered how to climb the sofas and insists on stepping in its saucer of milk and then proceeding to walk all over my feet and then clamber all over my lap, leaving milky pawprints behind. i have resorted to smothering it with towel and rubbing vigorously after every hysterical feeding. what a mad kitten. cute, but totally psycho. it'll be the feline dorkmeister once it goes into the real world, the ADHD kid. apologies to anyone with it reading this, i was so hyper when i was a little tot that my mom thought i had it too, if it makes you feel any better. i didn't have it, but you should see me when i'm on a caffiene buzz. or underslept. or find a handle-walla jharoo with an equally loony person attached to the other end.
today was interesting. tomorrow will be better because it is the last exam and then i will read until classes begin again. read nonstop. just read and read and read and stay far, far away from this computer because i think i spend way too much time in this chair and at this desk and it isn't healthy. it's less weird if you spend your alone time reading a book, with the glasses and the frequently dodgy posture i'll be taken for a CS major soon and we all know how dreadful that would be. today i discovered that i share a habit with my grandpa- i'm always fascinated when things like that happen, genes are great :) it's a way of crossing one's legs, he used to do it the same way too. amma told me. dasti!
i was listening to a song on the radio today, random songs they were playing, and this one song that wasn't very good generally had this lyric that was funny: 'if love was a service, you'd be fired by now'. hehe. reminded me of liz phair and green day, only whoever was singing sounded like a donkey trying to get into the choir.
you can make an album with b.b king and you can produce it and you can even try to warble soullly gravellyly but you will never sound like the king. you will sound like the two metaphors i just erased because really. it's ten past one a.m and i'm spouting for the sake of spouting. look! wooorrdss! like unca scrooge diving into his vault of coins, i swim around in these squiggles of my creation like a happy little rainbow-coloured fish in water at noon....sunlit water is one of the prettiest things in the world to watch, particularly when you're in it.
Mina at 12:34 AM
Monday, May 23, 2005
a softer world ~ www.asofterworld.com : e.horne, j.comeau
Mina at 4:02 PM
Sunday, May 22, 2005
a bit of whingeing.oh my sainted aunt. how did that happen? i don't know what happened....it was very, very cold, and i couldn't find anything. i'm not even sad. just a bit shell-shocked. oh my lordy lord. and it wasn't even, technically, that hard or anything. i don't know what happened.
my knee hurts. asal main. i hit the right one- which had been aching for a week anyway- on my bathroom counter really really hard; for a minute i thought i had dislocated my already wiggly patella, but i don't think that's asal main possible :P must put icepack on it.
i want my mommy. i don't want to run the washing machine and tell everyone to get the damn hell down and EAT BREAKFAST ALREADY and adjudicate between the cleaning woman and the cook and think of novel ways to have the chicken cooked for lunch and nurse a kitten and ugghhhh can't i just go sleep and wake up in september?!?! bhaaaannnn ammmaaaa i'm such a sissy girl but i'm in pain and i'm cold and i just took the shittiest exam in my entire life and i haven't written anything proper for ages and waaahhhh NAHIEN KARNA AUR! asal main rona aaraha hai.
Mina at 2:20 PM
Saturday, May 21, 2005
i rescued a teeny-weeny kitten! A'd been putting milk out for it for a few days (that it couldn't drink 'cause it's too young) and it was all alone, abandoned by its evil old mother mewling and tottering around on its big-pawed little spindly legs....the slider-down-the-stairs wanted to keep it but her sister is destructive with cats and A couldn't keep it so i elected to put it in a dabba and bear it home, buying eye-droppers on the way....it's two or three weeks old, in H the cat-pert's opinion (on the way home i had time to think of who-all to call for kitty info, and H was the closest-to-home- and called me instead haha)....the SS-clan wanted to call it bushra but dat not happenin' *grin* anyhoo....i don't know if i'm keeping it, but it's small and cute and had a little milk beard when i was feeding it, and at the moment is asleep in mum's loo in the bed i made it :))but cat-people! i need to know things like it won't die if i shut it in the loo na? and if it doesn't drink much millk at one go that's all right? just gotta feed it often? and it won't die if i don't feed it in the night na ('cause i'll be asleep eh he)? and should i leave the light on? what if it gets insomnia? do kittens get heatstroke? what'll i do if it pees on the carpet, 'cause mum will have a cow if she gets back to dodgy stains on the rugs : and if i leave him/her outside, will all the big huge other cats (and they're real big mean buggers) eat it up?
methinks me calling it yoda, even if it turns out to be a girl. in honour of 'revenge of the sith'. of course, that means technically calling it anakin but yoda's just cooler. and its head is bigger than its body anyhow :D
Mina at 12:21 AM
Friday, May 20, 2005
simpsons on mute. mina on mute. the little ones are asleep...they aren't little technically, but when they are asleep they are, curled up on a couch like photographs of time holding its breath. cooler droning. guitars on the playlist; soft sweet songs, musing away dreamily. i don't want to wake them up just yet...no, let's stay here in this shady, tree-lined lane leading away from the world for a little while more.Mina at 2:56 PM
"They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at- Elysian Fields!"scene one. streetcar. williams.
Mina at 9:40 AM
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Presenting: A Day in the Life of an SS MajorWritten, Directed and Shot by Fishie! In Technicolor and Dolby Surround Sound! Right-clickers will be Tracked Down with stalky blog-bot thing, drawn and quartered and fed to wild boars. Although why you'd want to right-click THESE in the first place is a bit of a conundrum in itself.
Mina at 10:51 PM
Mina was a Happy Bunny this Morning.
Mina at 10:49 PM
Before she realised Today was PAPER DAY!
Mina at 10:43 PM
"Houston....
Mina at 10:34 PM
....we have a problem."
Mina at 10:26 PM
"Golly Batman, what're we gonna DO?"
Mina at 10:23 PM
"What do you mean, at LEAST five references?!"
Mina at 10:20 PM
"What? There's MORE?! ALIEN SPAWN! IT'S MULTIPLYYIIINNNGGGGG!!"
Mina at 10:16 PM
....!!!!
Mina at 10:11 PM
Then Mina had, amidst this chaos, a bolt from the blue a.k.a coherent, non-procrastinative thought: Why Not Just Start Working? Yeh to Good Plan hai!
Mina at 10:07 PM
So she took stock of the landslide, affirming the central problem: HOW WILL I GET ALL OF THIS INTO EIGHT PAGES? But casting this aside, flexed her brain and bravely Ventured Forth!
Mina at 9:54 PM
So, after changing rings on her fingers so that all of them had an equal chance to be in the limelight and also accepting a peach from the Queen Mother, she began to read...
Mina at 9:53 PM
...and read...
Mina at 9:50 PM
....and read some more (uff, aur kitni rehti hai?)...
Mina at 9:48 PM
...and got crackin' at dat paper!
Mina at 9:47 PM
And then Mina was Happy Again :D
Mina at 9:46 PM
i don't know why i like this one so much. it's like the tub of decadent from heaven-cloud-of-light. and the ring, of course. heh.
Mina at 1:21 PM
one of my favouritest pictures in the world: her royal Meesha-ness in her court of summer :)
Mina at 1:13 PM
Friday, May 13, 2005
"And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. "
if it is a fool
happiness loves then
gladly will i suffer dust
and siren light
"and death, i think
is no paranthesis"
Mina at 7:10 PM
i want to eat an orange. a musammi, and a kinnoo and a santra shot with crimson. i suddenly want an orange on a windy, sunny-cloudy day in may. since they aren't in season i think i'll get some juice instead.
Mina at 12:53 PM
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
i, mina farid malik, of the aforementioned selfassigned-insignificant-blob-of-philistine-curly in saeed ghazi's class, did something wonderful day before yesterday in his class.i impressed him.
impromptu presentation in class on 'barn burning', a short by william faulkner. i hogged most of the speak-time (sorry, snobby, i was on a roll :D), it being one of those epiphanous moments where the text and you become one in a perfect understanding of each other. and from there it's easy, it's effortless, it's poetry slipping off one's tongue like a shahtoos through a ring.
and saeed actually interrupted.
and repeated a phrase i just said.
and said it was 'a beautiful turn of phrase'.
i blinked, felt pleased and smiled and said to myself, 'finally, someone who is listening' (bilal was too, don't feel too jealous, mama butler;) ) and since i was busy making out verbally with the text, carried on.
i wouldn't be able to tell you the order of points or what snobby said in between but i do know one thing: it felt like home. this is what i know, this is what i do best. a text, words, and me weaving them together, trying to conjure up the picture of gossamer and light i see in them with every little cell of my skin. but the best wasn't just the moment, or the few heads that were nodding, or watching saeed respond to points were were making and being engaged on an equal level that was fantastic. no, the best was when saeed said the presentation was 'excellent', was 'beautifully phrased', was well-worded. was a whammy! and as if that wasn't enough (although it occurred to me after i sat down that i could have ended on the narrator's name metaphor, bauhat aafat ending hoti but it was just fine this way too), later on tania told me that saeed was
impressed. muchly. wow! i say, and do a little jig of joy. saeed ghazi was impressed by little old me! yay! but then she says that he said
'some of those sentences should have gone straight into a journal'
and buss. qayamat hogayi. it was like landing a marlin bigger than my boat. the problem with being a writer is that one must have a good dose of egotism to presume anyone would spend time and money reading whatever you gave them, and perhaps even spend a more time dissecting it and writing ph.ds on them and the suchlike. i keep reining in my egotism because arrogance is not a particularly wonderful trait to possess, especially given how transient whatever we base ours on is, always. but sometimes it's just liberating to let it loose and say YAY, MAIN TO CHA GAYI! and everyone'll get a good grade too, yay! and also, snobby and ahad brainstormed up very good insights to the text. so yay all 'round!
man alive, i love literature. and people who swim the same river, even if it's a different current. saeed's impressed, what a dasti pleasedness!
Mina at 9:24 PM
(happy birthday cowboy chess-boy, blogger chewed it up yesterday).onwards to the rant of the day!
cocky
men
i want to
bludgeon.
specially the ones that contradict themselves and just go on doing it and are convinced they're right!!!!! ARGhgGHgHGGHGHGhghHH!!!! today! in class! i swear the teacher's a bit too nice for her own good, i would have really let the fool have it....uff ufff i almost walked out of class when he waved an arm and declared grandiosely that he rejected the entire post-colonial discourse and also that lots of sub-conty people write living in the West, like Manto and Chughtai. i wanted to rip my arm off and whack him on the head with it.
"have you done the reading?"
"no, i had a presentation (err...so? does the word 'multi-task' mean anything to you?), but i know what deconstruction is about."
*skeptical look* "okay, why don't you tell us then."
"well. in the scientific sphere deconstruction is an organic dissemenation of the structure of living things and life but in the SS method of construction deconstruction is taking apart a text to discover what the meaning of the text is."
*the class (in other words me, H and the teacher) blink*
this guy would put the champion of the sophists to utter and complete shame. it's too much. he babbles on and on saying absolutely nothing and contradicting himself and when you point that out, he says 'that's what i was saying'. no, when you said that farhat hashmi was training an army of women to propagate the patriarchy through Islam you were pretty much saying that, you ignorant bullshitter! when i told him that Islam didn't propagate the patriarchy as far as my knowledge extends and that it would be slightly presumptuous to assume that Dr.Hashmi is part of some nefarious chauvinist plot to take over the world he didn't argue. he said "i didn't say 'patriarchy'."
.....
why, why, why me?!
"what do you think of lawrence's definition of consciousness?"
"weeellll....can you really define consciousness because it is something undefinable, because there is a yak on the top of a mountain in nepal. i disagree"
when in doubt, dissent. and not just dissent, but say something so utterly stupid that everyone who hears it will shrivel up and die of shock anyway so nobody will take-o you.
"there is no way that we're influenced by the West!"
he said this. he actually said that in our lives there is nothing to say that it's influenced by the west and that there was no such thing as the after-effects of colonialism on a people. and also that there are sooo many people living abroad and writing about our 'archaic traditions', and i quote him. archaic traditions?! what?!!? have you gone quite potty? and then he also held forth on how we should have an extra-long session on tuesday so that he could get out of presenting on monday because he's in the annual play on the weekend, AND that he has two papers due on monday. so do i, bozo! if you can't handle work then don't do plays! i'm probably being too critical here but frankly speaking, i wanted to throw a shoe at his head. i have the same papers due, and i'm not whingeing about putting everyone else through hell just so he gets one extra day to write down an ABSTRACT to READ OUT in class.....how hard is that?!?! eik to this phrase's become my takiya kalam but i swear to Allah Miyaan people are so annoying i want to throw rocks at them. did i mention that he had the temerity to suggest i swap presentation days with him? the pre-assigned presentation dates? is there 'doormat' tattooed across my forehead? "i'm sure mina won't mind"- newsflash! yes she will! with or without you spewing gibberish for seventy-five minutes!
*breathes*
i feel better now. it isn't easy being a misanthropic master evil genius, i tell you. and i gotta finish me stories and i found out i can't apply for the fulbright which is pissin' me off. kya museebat! when will i get me a hi-fi intellectual label!? but maybe i can land that fellowship in spain and take off after graduation, woo hoo!
OH and the most AMAZING thing happened yesterday, which i will wax lyrical on later 'cause abhi puppet is prolly here to pick us up. puppet is our new driver and is also one of the people i most want to throw rocks at. he's a good person, only irritating. and cocky as hell because he doesn't know i know how to drive and thus when i tell him to get out of the road-trash (rickshas, rehris, gadhey-gaariyan) lane or brake sooner he thinks i'm just a dumb female. i had to pinjo the cultus to ayesha's house to convince his predecessor; with this one i'm just going to make him pull over the next time he tries to race with two buses (and subsequently scare sana out of a month of sundays) and drive home myself. and leave him on the kerb too.
Mina at 2:55 PM
Monday, May 09, 2005
i love tony plus infinity. infinity being yellow, somehow. but yay for my favourite militant mullah, tony the cynical, angry, ferocious, protective he-man! *grin* heppy burday darlin'!!! (and wahan abhi tak hai i think so i'm on-time still hehe)Mina at 2:48 PM
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Thank you.Mina at 5:09 PM
"it can also be an imagnined state, of not me but an imagined character, in an imagined place :P. but yes, whoever it is, has to be in (or out) of love. but love is here, undoubtedly"bilal made me feel less alone in the entire endless spaces between the stars and the grass that is the world, because he and i aligned a similar vision the other day. isn't it presumptuous of me, to put myself in with the rest and speak of loneliness? but we all are, one way or the other, only some people find words for it and some cannot. i hear yours, and sometimes they are conduits for a voice i cannot articulate.
Mina at 4:49 PM
Friday, May 06, 2005
prodigal crackpot homecomingtoday was the return of regular hyper mina! i'm so glad! welcome back, girl, i missed ya!!! and what better way to mark it than attacking people with usman dawood, a bottle of water to swish around and a big fat jharoo? and when that got boring, cheering them in a circle of jumping, arm-waving shrieks ("yeeaaayyyyyyyy")? hahahahhaa....what a day, i don't think i've ever seen anyone run as fast as syds did with that spoon clenched in her jaw, or ali and nadia's burst of rabid speed for the three-legged race...hahaha they were running and bouncing at the same time!! doing the twist with everyone in the lawn to an elvis song, and ali khan sack-hopping for all he was worth hahahahha! what a good sport he is! and i also won the lucky seven (kissed the dice a la indecent proposal lol) and was horribly conned by aqsa the owner, who would put p.t barnum to shame- so for revenge usman and i stole her dice, then her ECS shoebox with the money in it, and then also attacked her stall with the jharoo while she dove in a corner of the stall and merciless kanita stood by taking pictures and laughing hysterically....and haan, i know how to tie two-no, three- different kinds of knots, courtesy ali the intrepid explorer :D oh haan! AND a rose! can't have a carnival without getting a rose! and met sanno and khan, which is always good. aur kiya kiya. haan! reenie they played yeah! so butt and i messaged you between doing a little jig with our water bottles...and amena and i did that funny rotate-your-arms-and-lean-back step we all used to do when we were thirteen-fourteen and had dance parties all the time...and hassan got water-ballooned and fake-snow and glitter sprayed several times, which was....interesting ;) and also ate ammara's horribly overpriced, very sweet but yummy brownie (maybe it was the sugar....hmm...hehe...that, and spending the last few days closeted in the library reading hemingway like there was no tomorrow and getting that massive term test over, and also feeling much better than i have in a week, no blood appearing scarily where it shouldn't and less antibiotics to swallow)...too bad i had to leave before the tug of war, i wonder if the babes managed to pin furrukh down for that at least....hehehehe, yay for the asian babes, innit?!
"perhaps that's only in your perception, mina" (ali khan in impeccable oxford accent)
"naww, we're all babes!"
Mina at 9:05 PM
she took him apart, very carefully. detached his ears, set them aside, evenly spaced. peeled off his eyebrows. gently wiggled his nose off, came to his mouth. she loved his mouth so she lingered awhile on it, ran her fingertips over their fullness. then she leaned down and bit it, hard, leaving behind angry pink-purple toothmarks on them like she used to when he and she were them and marking each other's skin with fire, struggling against each other's bones as they tried so desperately to fall into each other like water into the sand...branding each inch of flesh with each other's mark. but now he was gone, and all that was left for her were these closed eyes and salt-coin taste of his blood sizzling up from memory on her tongue. but at least now he was hers, hers forever...she held the coil of his breath in her fist, and in his stillness was the zenith of her possession of him. something in her glowed alight with happiness; this time he was staying forever. like he used to say. she pursed her mouth, and then with one swift, final motion, pulled his off. she breathed a small puff of a sigh.'hai, meri jaan.'
Mina at 9:03 PM
