Thursday, June 29, 2006
YUCK, okay?! YUCK INTO IN-FI-NI-TY.Mina at 12:02 AM
Thursday, June 22, 2006
i stand in a line of unfamiliar women, toes ready to dance in their red high heels.'choose a partner,' says the instructor, and the line surges forward to claim one of the nervously smiling menboy-boymen standing before them. for some reason i go straight to a slight, bespectacled young man wearing khakis, a white shirt and an expression of something akin to the dread of being picked last for a team. his name is stavros, and as i lightly place my hand in the slightly clammy L of his thumb and the rest of his fingers, he whispers: 'thank you for picking me.' i smile and follow his tentative lead, and tell him athens is beautiful. he smiles shyly, and changes the step smoothly.
in the pavement, at unexpected moments, i discover round yellow metal plaques. 'at this place on ---, 19--, michael something looked up.' 'on 17 march 1974, mary something adjusted her hat in this window.' and i would stop and look up, and wonder what michael saw coming down the sidewalk, or who. the shop window is still there, and i tilt the brim of my paperboy hat and feel like the unknown mary something, who is alive in the smile i present to the plate glass.
we creep down in the shadows and suddenly one, two, three, four, we've taken off across the clipped moonlit grass, running for all we're worth, chiffon dupattas bannering out behind us and hair coming undone. the stadium looms empty and shadowy around us, and we run up and down a burlap covered pitch, four small ghost girls twirling and whirling in the balmy night breeze, laughter dancing on the wind and mischief in our toes.
"I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head
and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
...
I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary."
women here don't wear wedding rings. they wear gold bracelets, two or three or four, and sometimes a strange expression.
curiouser and curiouser. say you're a codfish and we'll call it a night.
Mina at 12:41 AM
Monday, June 19, 2006
It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morningWhen the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my father learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in the saffron mist and seem to die
And I myself upon a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie,
Vine leaves tap my window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.
It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And tie my tie once more.
While waves far off in a pale rose twilight
Crash on a white sand shore.
I stand by a mirror and comb my hair:
How small and white my face! -
The green earth tilts through a sphere of air
And bathes in a flame of space.
There are houses hanging above the stars
And stars hung under a sea...
And a sun far off in a shell of silence
Dapples my walls for me...
It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
Should I not pause in the light to remember god?
Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable,
He is immense and lonely as a cloud.
I will dedicate this moment before my mirror
To him alone, for him I will comb my hair.
Accept these humble offerings, cloud of silence!
I will think of you as I descend the stair.
Vine leaves tap my window,
The snail track shines on the stones.
Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree
Repeating two clear tones.
It is morning, I awake from a cloud of silence,
Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.
The walls are about me still as in the evening,
I am the same, and the same name still I keep.
The earth revolves around with me, yet makes no motion,
The stars pale silently in a coral sky.
In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,
Unconcerned, and tie my tie.
There are horses neighing on far-off hills
Tossing their long white manes,
And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,
Their shoulders black with the rains...
It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And surprise my soul once more;
The blue air rushes above my ceiling,
There are suns beneath my floor...
... it is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness
And depart on the winds of space for I know not where,
My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,
And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.
There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,
And a god among the stars; and I will go
Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak
And humming a tune I know...
Vine-leaves tap at the window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.
Morning Song of Senlin
Conrad Aiken
Mina at 2:52 PM
Friday, June 16, 2006
you are gone. i didn't say goodbye for mundane life-reasons; left my phone at home, had class, didn't have credit. whatever. and although i didn't watch you walk away, your step forcing its jauntiness, your space is already filling up with the sound of the sea...whispering and rushing around silence, and i miss you already. ajeeb zyadti hai!! why're we being punished?! buss bauhat hogayi come back now.Mina at 10:31 PM
Thursday, June 15, 2006
feeling suddenly miserable. too much marquez and dead people who float into cities and stink up hostile stomach achy villages or were actually kicked in the head by a horse and only looked dead....uauaugghhgghhh! and now i'm seeing things everywhere; today is the second day in a row i've seen a black dog doing a doo in a flowerbed and today i saw a man with a picture frame of a malangy baba hanging from a thick kaali dori around his neck, and a man covered in bells and metal cylinders jingling and clanking most musically down a lane just off ferozepur road, holding out a metal cup most amiably for bits of change. kal i saw maha and she looked like she was trying to remember what eyes of a blue dog means. i think i'm going a little bit bonkers. this, and the fact that i'm germinating two poems at the same time, and i'm wearing green today so fecundity all around, and the sky is grey, mumbling rain about in its mouth, and it will rain and flowers will grow out of the cloud of my hair and i will dissolve into a little puddle of deliciously gloppy mud and when people pick the flowers they will smell them and say why this smells just like a girl i used to knowMina at 11:14 AM
Monday, June 12, 2006
good luck for the moizzay and the gree (pronounced gree.)am sad for all the sadnesses that are floating about...'tis a time of strangeness, of shapeshifting horizons and sudden pieces of sad stars. everyone's going. i keep forgetting to say what wendy calls 'a proper goodbye' because i hate them. other people are watching the ships of their love float away from them, and they haven't the heart to even lift a hand in farewell..can only stand and grieve quietly. and some people are mourning loves they will never see again. ajeeb sa waqt hai, all i can think of are ruined battlements and torn flags lifted by a tired wind.
on a happier note, the pool was hilarious today, i was so unusually social 'tis stupendous! i happened to be taking a breather in the shallow end smack in the middle of three aunties, who began to discuss whether the breast stroke would increase their endowment, shall we say, and how eminently un-allowable that would be for them...i grinned with them, feeling very social and friendly, then pushed off for another lap. on the way back the aunties and their various progeny decided to swim in tandem, so halfway across the pool i was faced by what was in fact a school of whales trundling away in a drowning breast stroke! i considered turning around, or swimming around them, but i didn't have time so i said mina, just swim through the jellyfish (dan dan dan). and i did, but was buffeted left right and centre by the passing horde...hahahaha it was madly funny, i had to just stop right there and just laugh and laugh, expecting a whale moo any second.
Mina at 9:50 PM
Monday, June 05, 2006
fuss day at school'haaan jeeee'
'i want to go home.'
'why?'
'i haven't taken a bath in two days.'
'EWW!'
'the atheenians were very bad people.'
'two-stick lollies are the most politically incorrect lollies, what if you only have one arm, how would you eat them then, huh?'
'okay, so who's pro-glo, and who's auntie glo?'
'sir fust of all...'
*whisper to neighbour* 'the boys played well'
'who is that?'
'she's hot! and i love her skirt...'
'i say we carry her off!'
'hahahaha- okay!'
'noonsaab mard bunn! guddi pinjo!'
'eik minute- aiieee hahaha'
'kya hua?'
'nothing, was being molested. you were saying?'
'see when girls call a bandi hot, the bandi is never hot.'
'nai o nai sunroof na kholein, hubs ayegi andar'
'hubs? hubs te ithay betha hai!'
hyahahaha summer quarter is always the funnest one :D
Mina at 6:14 PM
Sunday, June 04, 2006
my books are boxed, i feel so homeless *stricken* and boxed in two cartons for PAMPERS no less; my beautiful books are sitting in diaper cartons. and all my other junk has been sorted out and put in a box and labelled too. i feel like a hobo, an acutely uncomfortable, obsessive hobo hovering around the cartons wishing for infra-red vision so i can make sure no covers are slowly bending or dust-jackets being squinched at the corners :Sbut i went swimming today, which makes up for everything :D i am such a water baby! read a really yummy thought on water in shantaram yesterday, will put it up sometime later. that, and a very dishy plath pome i discovered one very very late night when the entire world was asleep :)
Mina at 9:37 PM
