My productive paralysis fuels disappointment from many angles. “A loss of great potential” i have been repeatedly told by many individuals, close and far. Quite an easy thing to expunge when standing objectively.

The deeper, hidden story is this. I have traded reality for dreams. I took my receipt back and returned the unwanted product because i was unhappy with it. Dreams, unlike reality, do not stab you in the back with unexpected events, ideologies and expectations. Dreams remain faithful, because they have a sense of honour. Reality lies and cheats. It tells you something but means something else. It feeds you falsehood and disguises and expects you to play the act.

That is one of the reasons i respect literature. I respect because it, along with art and music, are the only things left that stand against this tyranny bravely. They make cutting observations at reality’s behaviour upon its guests, they heal and relieve the soul. That is why to this day, these modes of expression are still consumed.

Death then, is the ultimate victory over reality. It is the eternal dream.

I remain here surrounded with my literary objects and my mental sofa, relining quite comfortably as i approach my expiry date.  I am not brave enough to choose death. I have chosen for the lighter option. I refuse to react in the favoured moods of “proactive” behaviour. The whole idea is an elaborate mistake, because while pushing forwards and achieving goals and results, there remains somewhere deep seated, somewhere so hidden and secret within the essence of all lives, an unaddressed confusion.

They don’t know why they feel upset at times, when they get dragged down to The Pit. When the next disappointment arrives, they attempt to conceal it with the mask of proactivity, seeing it merely as an obstacle to be overcome. Yet the cycle repeats itself. The great irony is that this whole “proactive” approach is so determined in its vigour to find solutions, it still manages to contradict itself when the human in question keeps returning to The Pit time and time again.

And what about the modes of art? Why does the minor key in music even exist? Why do we endlessly watch dramas, read books, consume characters whose pains and joys satisfy those hungers of good entertainment by way of fully rounded characters? Do we even realise what we are saying by staying in line with this definition.

The whole thing is entirely pathetic and contradictory. I am tired of it. Austen and Wilde were tired of it. The difference is i have seen the puppetmaster pulling at the strings. I have broken the fourth wall. I can see life for what it is : a highly elaborate joke for all the otherworldly beings to enjoy and laugh at while they sip their heavenly tea. This whole existence has no justice, no purpose, no rapture. Now while the rest of you get ready for the next scene on stage, i will break the mask off and fade back into the shadow of the stage.

“When i was brought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy between two policeman, Robbie waited in that long dreary corridor, and before the whole crowd, raised his hat to me with a bowed head. I have never said one single world to him about what he did. I do not know to the present moment whether he is aware that i was even conscious of his action. It is not a thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. I store it in the treasure-house of  my heart. I keep it there as a secret debt that i am glad to think i can never possibly repay. It is embalmed and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears. When wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of that little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed for me all the wells of pity; made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken, and great heart of the world.

When people are able to understand, not merely how beautiful Robbie’s action was, but why it meant so much to me, and will always mean so much, then perhaps they will realise how and in what spirit they should approach me….”

Extract from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7k6uS0WqXU
Niyaz – Dilruba (Junkie XL Remix)

I absolutely love this song. It reminds me of driving some empty well-lit street insanely fast, in a jet black car, with the windows down and the wind ruffling through my hair and shirt. A feeling of forgotten adrenaline, rediscovered.

And Azam Ali’s voice…..*sigh* it just takes me places. Three things i pay passionate attention to in music. Drums, piano, and a woman’s voice. To me, those are the most beautiful things about music.

What is it about her voice…? It has that…mystical vibe to it. Like she’s not singing from her heart, but from her deepest soul.

I had Veronica sing for my remix track project, and god damn she has such a good voice. I found myself listening to the track over and over just for her voice. I can usually maintain a non-interest when it comes with girls, but as soon as i hear one with a good voice…my ears perk up. It suddenly taps into those deep instincts. Not neccessarily sexual, but deeper than that.

That is why i can sit and listen to Azam Ali for hours upon hours. I just feel like singing is one of the things women were just born to do. Men try, but rarely get as close.

Unless you’re Jeff Buckley. Then again he was a bit of a girl anyway.

Ever had those plans that you just wanted to carry out but just never happened?

Shit i feel so tired all of a sudden im gonna go sleep …

For all of the readers of this blog and for those who prefer to stay in the shadows, i have updated my book list. Simply click on any of the books on the left to be whisked away to some site to be prepared to buy it. Alternatively, if you want to know why i’ve put the book on the list, click on the “Book List” words themselves in the top left corner and you’ll see each book with a brief description of why i love it.

I encourage people to read as much as possible.

I’m often very aware of how bad my sense of smell is (despite my nose being quite large – large enough to annoy me) which may or may not do with how much i’ve bashed it into walls, gotten it punched in fights, or simply blocked up when i can’t be arsed to wear a coat on a cold day. My dad has a very bad sense of smell too. So i don’t mind inheriting that. I don’t mind inheriting anything from my dad as long as it’s not his perspective.

However i am incredibly sensitive to the smell of the air. How clean the air smells, or whether it smells one way or that – i can tell the difference straightaway. Part of this is due to the air around my area being so clean and fresh, so that i always have a neutral reference point – but it is also part of the identity of the area that i’m surrounded with.

Certain smells intoxicate me, they take me away to another place. The smell of arabian musk, the way mangoes smell in pakistan after you take them outside the crate, the industrial-sandy smell of Doha, the thick fluffy smell of the desert in Dubai – all of these i remember so distinctly.

Last week we went to a cargo area to pick up the new table and chairs for the sitting room. “Omg, it smells like Doha” my sister remarked. I already knew i recognised the smell, but she nailed it down. It’s the smell of sand gently skittering over the ground, the industrialist metal and wood, a distant hint of plastic but dominating it, the smell of hot tar on the ground as it’s being baked in the sun at 50 degrees.

I miss that smell. I miss the escape.

I had a terrible dream last night. That’s nothing new,  but this dream carried an element of despair rather than an element of terror and panic like my usual nightmares.

I was on top of a moderately tall building. This building was exquisitely made, it had plenty of balconies and the colour of it seemed solid. It didn’t seem to be dulled overtime. It reminded me of The Yacoubian Building in Cairo. On top of this building was a small crowd of people. Some of these people i knew, and some of them remained faceless, but they were constantly talking excitedly amongst themselves. The subjects ranged from clothes, to how attractive they found each other, or future prospects to come. Slowly as time went on, the talking noise grew quieter, but i realised i couldn’t understand what they were saying.

It was like their speech slowly transformed from English into some other form of babble that i was completely alien too. This distressed me, because some of the individuals in that crowd i felt very close to (as i do in real life) but i felt like i was being deprived of their society. Then the crowd gradually moved around and settled at the edge of the building.

They began taking their cameras out and started taking pictures of the view of the street below. For some odd reason, everytime they took photos, i could see the photo they took in my own mind. Out of curiosity, i walked to the edge to see what the fuss was all about.

Then they pushed me.

I cried out in surprise and managed to whip around and grab the ledge with one hand. They acted as if nothing happened. As if it happened on accident. “Guys….help me, i’m gonna fall” i asked desperately. But they didnt seem to hear me, and out of the pain of holding on, i let go.

I fell for what seemed like 10 full seconds. In the air, i tried to manuever myself so the impact would have the least damage. I ended up landing on my back.

The pain was horrible. It was a burning form of electricity mixed with a feeling of force. I screamed and screamed because it felt so painful. Then i realised i couldn’t get up. I couldn’t move. The pain had literally paralysed me to the spot. It was like planting a functional brain into a marble statue. It bought about an incredible hopelessness. Because i couldn’t even help myself up so i could find some help. It is perhaps similar to a child who while learning to walk, drops while trying to walk to a particular target of attention; the child cries out of grief and it is the grief that roots him/her to the spot. They momentarily forget how to walk.

I was screeching out. There isnt any other word to describe it because that’s what the sound was. Many tears came out, but it wasn’t an emotional plea. It was anger, frustration, mixed with despair. Then i realised that they had pushed me off. This realisation came very slowly, much how the sun creeps up on you at dawn when you’re having a sleepless night.

The pain moved from my spine and my neck into my heart. They had completely betrayed me, i thought. The pain aquired a sense of pressure and i thought that i was going to die.

The ambulance came, i can remember the lights flashing and dazzling my eyes. Gloved hands lifted me up onto the stretcher. I can remember recoiling slightly in my mind out of disgust when the gloved hand touched me. That feeling of cold plastic. Much unlike the warm touch of someone who cares, helping out. A touch so warm, you can feel their very heart pulsating behind their skin.

I hungered that touch at the moment. For someone to just lift me up and help me out so i could figure out how to move again. But all i felt was that cold, gloved plastic. Then they put me on the stretcher and into the ambulance. The doors shut and the whole place was dark. Gradually the darkness flattened. I thought to myself, “This darkness feels very familiar”….then i lifted my eyelids. I was back in my room again.

The feeling i got when i woke up was very familiar to me. I wanted nothing more than in that moment to cling onto something human, so i could just calm down. But then an odd thought struck me. Some of the people i wanted to seek comfort from, were the same people in the dream who pushed me off the building. This cold, logical realisation started putting out the fires of my emotional reverie.

And here i am, writing about it, in a completely collected manner. One of the hard hitting truths this year (but last year in particular) was that creativity goes both ways. As much as you can use it as a constructive force to create works which bridge connections, you can also use it self-destructively by creating feelings, emotions, and impulses which do nothing but sever connections to your own sanity and slowly but surely drive you off the edge. I realise this time i must stay calm.

However, i won’t deny that there is some truth in the dream. What is wrong isn’t what these people have done to me. Because it is a dream and therefore an expression of my deepest mind, the interpretations of these people have betrayed me. The way i have chosen to see these people, to categorise them, to relate to them, has ended up giving me nothing but pain.

As odd as it sounds, the true hero of the story was the gloved hand. Cold, but flexible, still capable of carrying tasks. And a glove can always be taken off.

“All the world knows, yet none know well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell”

Whenever anyone asks my opinion on a book, a piece of music or something similar before i have actually finished experiencing it, my response usually stays the same. I give general impressions but refuse to comment substantially until i’ve finished it and digested it. I’m sure this goes for most people anyway.

But what’s interesting is if you turn that question inwards. What would you think of your life? Of yourself? You can never really “finish” your life or yourself in the way we’d talk about consuming an item or an idea. And yet, the process of self-review is vital. I guess the foremost approach would be to look back on your history, whether that be immediate or distant history, and attempt to extract meaning.

And yet, that too never really satisfies. Because history is what you want it to be. The most biased historian is the autobiographer. History is so obscure and the only way to access it is to recreate it, but the truth of it will be lost to you. You’ll be too busy imprinting your own ideas of what your past means to you in reaction of what is currently happening right now.

So let us look at today. Let us cling to the passing moment. Pay tribute to those slices of time that remain nameless and shapeless, but pass through your soul with a knowing nod and a warm rub. Make this moment yours.

Dad phoned today. I reluctantly took the phone from mum’s hand. “Go by the window, you’re not going to get a good signal otherwise”, so i stood by the window, watching the ghostly shadow of myself in the window as i waited for him to speak.

He asked the usual. Every phonecall from him results in the same questions. You’d think that with the limited time we get to speak to each other, he’d come up with more original things to talk about. But no, the same old shit. But one thing struck me as different…..his voice. It lacked the usual steely tone. It was more softer, more rounded. He sounded older. It had been of course, a couple of months since i last talked to him, and nearly a full year since we actually saw him so perhaps change in those circumstances is more noticeable.

“I might be coming in July i don’t know i will see” he replied. “Um, okay” i said blankly. Then i waited. I waited a long time for it. I waited for the “i miss you” or something-along-the-same-lines sort of comment. I waited for so long, and it never came. “How silly” i thought in my head. Waiting is the sort of dumb thing i have done for dad and it never really struck me not to expect anything fatherly out of him, because i just did it out of reflex. I daresay out of hope.

As i put the phone down i was struck by how familiar the feeling was. It’s the feeling of scavenging every bit of love you can find. My lip curled into a smile because i had become so accustomed to this feeling that it became second nature. But in a time of stress, and from my own father, this particular scavenging had a painful sting to it.

Just came out of the shower and i’m feeling totally refreshed, even though its 12.35 am. Again we’re moving back to Plath’s idea of water as something that purifies the soul…..feels like that very much. But i digress….

I haven’t blogged in a while. And thats because between now and the last blog post, there’s been a lot of stuff that’s gotten clogged in the works. You could say mental clogging with me is becoming a bit of a cliche. While there’s always going to be a bit of that (and in turn, confirming the cliche partially) there’s also been a backlog of housework, family time, organisation and game playing that i have constantly put off in favour of college work and depressive moods (the two usually go hand in hand).

This past easter week i’ve basically worked on relieving those things because shit adds up….i look back on it and think how insane it was because i just did everything on autopilot. I didn’t think. Everything just occured as this logistical, natural operation. Things moved smoothly and efficiently with a disturbing automation. And now as i just slumped back from my chair i breathed a sigh of relief, it was almost like i cleared all the junk out.

Main thing that got covered this week was plenty of Team Fortress 2. I cannot express in words how awesome this game is. Wait, no i can : It is better than Halo. There i said it. What’s brilliant about it is the class-based gameplay. The game is a first person multiplayer shooter, now as Counter-Strike and Halo has taught us, FPS players come in all shapes and sizes. There’s those that like to run in kamikaze style, guns blazing and hope to take 3 players down before dying. Then there’s the ones who like to snipe from a safe distance or engage in intense long-distance sniper battles. The sneaky types, who love to use unorthodox map routes to sneak attack their opponents. Or the pack hunters, who love to hunt in packs of 3 or 4 people in order to efficiently hunt, like wolves. And also, the infamous campers, who sit tight in one spot and wait for people to come to them.

TF2 has condensed all these FPS player styles into seperate classes, each with their own distinct weaponry, fashion styles, voice acting and even special powers. I wont bother listing every single one in detail, but the one i will talk about is the Spy.

The Spy has to be one of the most brilliant inventions in gaming ever. Basically the Spy has little to no fighting capability, he has the lowest health and his walking speed is normal. But the catch is this : he can turn invisible for 8 seconds, he can also disguise as enemies, and also carries a knife with him. The knife is the main method of killing. If you stab a player in the back with the knife, it’s an instant kill – regardless of what health they have. So you basically have about, 20 players in one game intensely shooting each other with guns, and then 2 spies sneaking about, stabbing players in the back with the knife while they don’t notice.

The thrill of being chased and hiding in this game is unparalleled. If i am discovered as a Spy, i will literally scream in excitement as i try to get away without dying. Players will suddenly shoot each other in paranoia to check if you are a Spy. Sneaking into the enemy base, disguising as one of them, then moving amongst them and stabbing them while they don’t notice (then sneaking away with my invisibility) is probably the most fun i have ever had in a multiplayer game. So far i have clocked 172+ hours on the Spy and counting.

Other things, i got the Joker makeup and videos done finally. Sidra did such a good job on the makeup, i was really happy. And the vids were up on youtube finally. When talking with shuaib, i simply told him “it’s a part of me that needs to be expressed” and that’s honestly how i felt about it. That contributed largely to that feeling of clearing out junk that i talked about. I’m especially happy with the voice – it took me ages to get that right but i’ve finally done it.

I watched Lost in Translation again last night. It was so nice watching it again after such a long time. I felt like i was in the hotel room next to Charlotte and Bob. That i could just go out of my room, turn left, knock on their door and join them in their conversation. Also i noticed how attractive Scarlett Johannasson was in the film- the only film i will only find her attractive in since she went for the blonde look- and those scenes where she’s doing her thing by her own was just so…cute. Lol. Dont think i’ll go too crazy though because the smoking is a big turn off.

So i’m off to bed now after writing a bunch of incoherent crap. This isnt even a proper blog entry. It’s more of that cleaning junk rubbish. Ah well, let us see how well i fight the urge to play TF2 when i wake up tommorow morning….(i should say today)….

I’m no medicine student, but as far as i’m aware, the dangers to your wellbeing come in two forms. The first type are those sudden incidents that threaten your life very strongly and come short and sharp. The second types are those slow inflictions that happen very secretly and very steadily over a period of time; like some sort of potent poison.

It happens so slowly that you might not even notice it. Or while savouring its bitter taste, you might like to deny its existence. But it saps your strength all the same.

I must say that i’ve been avoiding this for some time now, but it’s time to come face to face that there is seriously something mentally wrong with me. I always wanted to fit into that age old conservatist rhetoric of not giving way to excuses, of being the same to everyone. In other words, i wanted to be normal and to not lower myself by taking heed of artificial worries. But there is nothing artificial about continuing nightmares, suicidal/self loathing thoughts, a feeling of being nowhere, waking up and double-checking reality just to be sure …..among many other things. Today i forced myself to look at these things and not to try and pretend like they didn’t exist.

I’ve been reading Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy and i’m on the final book. I was unnerved by it’s darkness, its grittiness. It was beautiful and still is, i havent finished the third book but i’m roughly halfway. Billy Prior is fascinating because of his split personality states. The war seems to bring out the cracks in him that were there long before, and eventually widen them till they give way.

The book’s exploration about what is sanity and insanity was highly stimulating, and like all my books, i took it on board. But as i was going through my writing something clicked. Why am i writing torture scenes? Why am i signing half of my work with the name “Garrett” and the other half with “Adnaan” ? Then i looked at the differences between the two authors. It was like night and day. I immediately trashed the Garrett stuff.

I’ve been writing words backwards too. This started 2 weeks ago. I don’t do it on purpose, but it just happens. I did it three times in my english mock. And then i wrote the word “exacerbated” but suddenly i had this niggling doubt in my head if it was spelt correctly. I kept rewriting the word at least 7-8 times on my plan paper, crossing it out each time. I felt like crying. But it was just a word.

I realised that my memory pushes back these things and represses them so i can’t remember. I try to deny any weird behaviour i have and i try to act as normal as possible. But it all comes out on the paper. It comes out in the dreams. And i can’t just ignore this anymore because if i do, it will destroy me from the inside.

It’s funny isnt it, how just when things are going the best for you, is when you feel at your worst. That’s when you know you’re going crazy.