What’s a wound? A small noticeable orifice where blood leaks out. Sooner or later patched up emerging as a harmless scar, which itself disappears sooner or later.

Blood, pain, marks. Such a physical, tangible, noticeable process.

And yet what do we mean when we say to someone…

--You really hurt me.

The whole thing about psychological damage i don’t understand is that there’s no blood. There’s no marks. You can’t tell. Yes, you feel it. You feel growing inside your heart and destroying you from within. But where’s the evidence?

For example, if you are trying to convey your pain to someone else – how will they know?

--Stop making yourself feel sorry. It’s a waste of time.

…Would be the response. Is that not rightly so? Because how can you share something with someone if you can’t show the evidence?

And if you can’t find it yourself, then how do you stop it? Tell me, when an old “wound” opens up from the past that you thought you stitched up, how do you stop it? Is it really a wound, or just a fragment of a ghost? 

If i was to convey it, i would say it thus :

--I was hurt long ago. I still feel pain. And i still don’t know how to stop it.

For the sake of chocolate, and for the noble cause of all chocaholics all around the world – this is for you.

As a connoisseur of chocolate, i must speak out against this fake, chocolatey tyrrany.

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, and infact anything that Cadbury makes is not real chocolate. When i put it in my mouth, all i taste is butter and fat. Just this fake brown smudging mess of artificial bullshit. REAL cocoa does not taste like that, at all!

I don’t understand why the hell people make such a fuss over it! I wouldn’t be so irritated if Cadbury’s wasn’t such a big deal, but the fact that people still get a kick out of such cheap imitation is foolish.

You want to taste real chocolate? Get a dark chocolate bar with 70% minimum cocoa, and sweeten it with sugar if you want to taste real chocolate.

This reminds me of Orwell’s 1984 when the state replaces all chocolate with this cheap imitation that tastes nothing like the original. Real chocolate becomes like gold and its looked at with such reverance.

Next time, DON'T pick up those stupid Cadbury’s bars. Pick up the swiss bars. Lindt, or Shwartz (spelt correctly?) chocolates are absolutely divine. Actually does it justice.

So i was sitting in the park reading Joyce on this beautiful day where the sky was totally clear and blue and there was a healthy breeze.

Suddenly i hear this odd group of screaming and laughing some distance away from me. I look and its a group of about 5 girls around my age who are playing tag in the middle of the park. I went back to reading my book and found it impossible to carry on with this annoying racket. So i marked the page and put the book down.

These girls were so bad at running. They’d scream in that girly way and act as if they were running for their life but in truth they’d probably be faster if they walked. But wait, something scary happened that i’d never expect to happen.

This whole thing was unbearably cute. Ok >_< i admit it. Sometimes when they’re not busy being obnoxiously fake they can be somewhat attractive.

This is quite a milestone for me because normally i’ve struggled to find any girl attractive because of how bloody hard they try to make this image that they aren’t.

So i watched them for a good 10 mins chuckling to myself whenever one of them fell over or accidentally flicked their shoe off their foot into the bush.

Before i scare any females off, i’d like to reiterate that i am a man and yes, i do have my natural male curiousities that i cannot control. So let me off will you!

The academic year’s just started but things are getting so messy so fast. Everything’s moving at top speed and it’s becoming difficult to actually grab everything at the same time.

What pissed me off recently, and has been on my mind ever since, was this talk about reducing (removing) government grants towards students from lower earning families, and furthermore, raising university tuition fees from the current £3145 per year to £5000. And who made this suggestion? The CBI apparently. Some elitist board of corporations who apparently have their finger on the economical pulse. Including the CEO of McDonalds. What the fuck does McDonalds have to do with my education?

Anyway the whole thing is going underneath a review next year.

What i don’t understand is if the government wants to cut costs, WHY on earth would you charge students more when :

1. We don’t earn money anyway

2. We emerge from university with huge debts

3. And go into a job market full of unemployment prospects

The amount of unemployed people has hit 2.45 million and is steadily rising. Quite clearly students don’t have the ability to pay anymore than they already are, so why would charge them more when it’s not in their ability?

There is a record amount of people applying to university in London. Quite ironically, that’s also reflected by record numbers of graduates being unemployed. The way it looks to me, the government is being extortionate to a group in society they know won’t bother fighting back. Which is sad.

Here’s an idea : Why don’t we get the fuck out of afghanistan and iraq? We’ve already looted all the oil that we can and established an asian base for western use. America’s a big boy now; he can handle his own cock. Britain doesn’t need to be hauling over there, spending god knows how many millions of pounds on “defence” when quite clearly back here at home the piggy bank’s getting tight enough already.

*deep breath* so that’s the political rant over.

The next rant :

This whole A level bullshit is reaching its climax now. I’m working hard, but the work keeps piling up. There’s a monumental lake of bullshit that i have to wade through just to get where i want to go. I just find myself more than anything hungering for that place in life that i desire with such violent passion.

Soon. Soon. It shall come soon if i am patient.

Getting back in college has also brought me face to face with those petty little teenage desires of mine. I mean, just when you think you’re striving for something higher, your impulses bring you back you down to earth to remind you that you’re just human after all.

There’s no easy way out of this. There’s never been an easy way. But that in itself is a reassurance.

I am halfway through The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I need to stop and write this entry and bring myself to a calm because i am so overwhelmed. It has been a long time since a book has inspired, communicated, and broken me in the way this book has.

I almost feel like i’ve spent my whole life looking for this book. And when it came to the point where i met its aquaintance, it was like i knew it all along, but it was stored so secretly in my heart.

What strikes me so much is how the events in the book are auto-biographical, in the sense that the plot doesn’t really exist – rather its you as a reader directly receiving Stephen Dedalus’s thoughts as the events revolve around him. Particular attention is paid to Stephen growing up and the complexity of his mind. As he’s young – the sentences remain very straightforward. But as he gets older, and as the world infuses more pain, the sentences begin to reflect that pain and mystery by twisting themselves into these dark, beautiful patterns.

There have been so many moments where i paused, re-read a paragraph and re-read it again.

“It shocked him to find in the outer world a trace of what he had deemed till then a brutish and individual malady of his own mind. His recent monstrous reveries came thronging into his memory. They too had sprung up before him; suddenly and furiously, out of mere words. He had soon given in to them and allowed them to sweep across and abase his intellect, wondering always where they came from, from what den of monstrous images, and always weak and humble towards others, restless and sickened of himself when they had swept over him.”

And i’m only halfway. I almost don’t even want to finish it. When the inevitable end does arrive, i will post my thoughts in a psuedo-review since this is one book that cannot go unmentioned.

Another thing was i got to see a really great 23 min interview with Alaa Al Aswany (who penned The Yacoubian Building, on my reading list to the left if you care to pay attention) and as with a few other individuals, i hunt these interviews down like gold.

He was talking about his latest release which was a collection of short stories entitled “Friendly Fire”, upon asking his reason for that title, he responded :

“I was looking at some figures for war casualties and was interested to see how there were very sharp reactions to friendly fire. I was interested in the term because i wanted to know what it is in the term’s very meaning that changes people’s reactions when the fire is friendly or not. So i released these stories with all the common theme that it is the people who are closest to you who can hurt you the most; and so the title “Friendly Fire” seemed like the best description.”

I love the way this man thinks. I really loved the way he reached that conclusion.

Thinking about it now though, isn’t friendly fire incredibly dangerous?

I mean, when adversity strikes you in the very places that make you who you are- or people close to you hurt you unknowingly, (and vice versa), i wonder if that damage is repairable?

The conclusion i’d reach is that, no, it’s not repairable. Sometimes you can’t just fix broken things. Sometimes it leaves a mark; a sort of war wound. Something that opens up every now and then when the stitches don’t hold.

I’m fascinated by this short story collection and i’m going to head out to find it straightaway. Al-Aswany has been one of the few prolific, modern day writers that i have immense respect and admiration for.

Eid has mostly been a messy association for me. Although traditionally celebrated as a really happy day for most people i know,  some of the worst moments of my life happened on Eid days, which i think was caused to due to the fact that any underlying tensions in a family are brought to the surface when we’re forced to act pretty to each other just because of some occasion. Arguments, long resentments, marks of disrespect all arose on Eid days. So quite naturally i look forward to Eid days with a mixture of apprehension and suspicion.

The day started with me finding out that we were going to head down as a family occasion to some resturaunt, conviniently located on the other side of London. “Why the hell are we going all the way there just for one place? It’s not like anyone lives near it” was my outcry. Still, no response, so we started driving there.

Only to find we didn’t have the map in the car.

And that there was a football match on.

Combine the two and what you get is a frustrating wade through congested streets of cars with no idea of where you’re actually going. In the end it took us 2 and a half hours to get there.

“Oh my god. It’s one of THOSE eid’s” i told myself.

And yet i was overcome with this strange sensation when we finally did get there. A feeling that people are happy to see you just because you’re right there. Kids running to sit on your lap and talk to you. An auntie snatching your James Joyce book from you and demanding that you talk to her instead. I even got a call from Ashja from Saudi Arabia which was so nice.

I don’t think people will ever understand (since they’re not meant to – thats what makes the magic) how much these little acts of kindness do for me. Just when i’m not shedding the stress as i should – out comes these little pieces of consideration that totally revive me.

I could easily imagine myself to be Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment. Trapped in some dirty apartment room with only my guilty conscience for company.

Except that wasn’t the case. I actually did have a good time, which is always a good start.

It’s nearly 2 am and i’m sitting here with my bowl of cereal and headphones feeling pretty smug with myself. I’m guessing that most of you would consider overnight indulgences on a Sunday evening to be pretty damn crazy and counter-productive to the early Monday, fresh new week spirit.

Well i have two words for you.

Screw you.

Yes, screw you. Because on my timetable, i get my entire Mondays off.

When i saw the paper, i was so happy. To think i get an entire day off, and that day being Monday!

There is just something about Mondays i hate. Something about the way the entire 7 day week suggests itself to you within that first few seconds of you waking up. It’s not as if i’m thinking “Today is Monday” but rather i’m thinking “Oh god, Today is the whole week!”

But now i get a whole long weekend to myself while Monday whizzes me by. There’s about 3 things in this house that i only do when its empty. Practising music, singing, and exercise. Having more time to myself means more time being put into those things and that can only ever be a good thing.

I feel like those passengers in planes or trains that have the first-class tickets and get to skip the queues with that hidden smirk on their faces. Yeah, thats me! Smirking as my Monday arrives with no threats.

Your life is like a huge fortress with so many rooms and corridors. Each of your experiences are shuffled away neatly into the public and private rooms of this fortress. Some doors only some people have the keys to access. Some rooms can only be opened by one person. And other doors….you haven’t dared to open yourself.

But i want to know something.

When you’re trapped in a language that only you speak, who will learn it for you?

Who will come sweeping the dust and shadows off your heart, as people trample over it?

When you’re locked in that room, crying ever so quietly so nobody can hear you, who will come to address your despair?

Trapped in a place so strange that even your own blood seems foreign.

We’re always waiting for someone to say :

It’s alright. Lean on me. Stay here forever. I will take all your tears in my hand and crush them to dust. I will never leave you and you never have to be alone again. Look at me and love me, because i am here just for that. I have been here since the start. I understand everything, even the things your heart tries so desperately in its theatrical act to conceal. Stop it now, no more. This world is full of love and hope.

Who am i talking about?

Have a think about it.

Just a short story that i had thought of two days ago, and on this morning i finally managed to push it out. Enjoy.

-----


"Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh" was the first thing i felt when i woke up to one of my first sunset mornings in a long time. I was always one of those people who woke up as the same time as everybody else, to the same sun blared windows as everyone else, and presumably setting up a day which, like everyone else, i had felt was just another repitition of all the days that had passed before it. No harm in sticking to a safe formula that works, i thought.

Amidst the aroma of a swirling cup of dark coffee, an energy boost which i cannot live without, i took the dawn in with a reserved unfamiliarity. The warm colours that began to spread across the horizon like some sort of mist, the morning music that emerged from the beaks of birds, and above all, the dark silence that filled my neighbourhood with ghost-like qualities made everything feel secretive. I felt like i was behind the scenes of a great theatre show before the performance had began. Everything moved like clockwork, and yet nothing was actually happening. I was slightly unnerved by the silence of it all, since i’m naturally used to waking up hearing my household active with my families voices, the TV running, and all those other processes and events that remind you that you’ve woken up in the real world.

This day had been destined however, to break the trend and start something new. Such a change had been suggested by my girlfriend who, on starting the summer holidays, insisted with such a fierce energy that we do something outside of London for a change.

“Come on! We’ve already been to so many clubs by now, we’re running out of places..” she said.

”What about all those other clubs further out, like say, the ones closer to your area?”

She groaned and rolled her eyes sardonically; a gesture i have become desensitized to.

“I mean all the GOOD clubs. Gosh don’t you understand anything?”

“I understood what you just said now….i think”

She fumbled in her bag and a mess of papers, makeup and countless receipts spread across the table. I sat there slightly amused until finally she pulled out what seemed to be a creased leaflet.

“Bournemouth?” i asked with an air of indifference.

“Beaches, the edge of the country, swimming…..it’ll be such a good start to our summer! We can find something totally new there!”

And so it was decided. We were arranged to get there by coach but of course the catch was that it was going to be one of the first morning coaches, forcing me with no other option except to wake up early, unconventionally early. The steam rose slowly from the mug and my nose caught some other foreign smell. A clean pure smell, the smell of grass mixed with what might have been water, but some other pure element that i couldn’t discern. I should explain. My sense of smell is incredibly sensitive, to the point where i can smell what’s cooking in other houses on my street. In my past life i may as well have been a sniffer dog, since i rely a lot on my sense of smell to make immediate sense of my surroundings. This newfound smell that i had sensed was the smell of dawn. It’s the smell of purity, before anything has touched it or defiled it. I must’ve been there for a long time, taking in this smell before i looked at the clock and decided it was time to get ready.

I managed to leave the house on time. The sun was still peeking above the horizon, taking its time before it came out. I was in for a long walk since the bus service didn’t start this early. The train station seemed like miles away, but having no other option i started to walk. My nose suddenly started to twitch and i smelt something familiar. Coming up to the park there appeared in the distance, a sort of purple haze. A big bush of lavender flowers. The smell was so strong, i almost felt like i was being drawn to it by a thin invisible string of scent. The lavender was being crowded by 3 or 4 bees, perching on its petals, desperately trying to extract its essence. Bending down, i took a stalk, ripped it from its root, and attempted the same.

The playground emerges in an instant rapture. Far away from all the pleasure, all the screams of delight, there lies a small courtyard with a sundial in the middle. Known as the “sundial” courtyard, it is crowded with a ring of different flowers, all overloading their scent to the sundial. He walks carefully to the middle. He is drawn to the purple-tipped green stalks. Bending down, he rips it from the root and crushes its petals in his fingers. Ah the smell! The smell is so gentle, so welcoming. It reminds him of what he feels when he is in his mothers arms. A friendly freshness that cradles your instant moment. And each day he may steal away a few minutes away from his crowd of friends, from his teachers, to this secret place of lavender stalks. His reminded that he is here. He is now. He will be as long as this beautiful smell lasts. Until one day, no more lavender stalks remain….and he waits patiently from them to grow….

I felt in that moment, which only lasted a few seconds, an intense childhood connection. A feeling that i had once had as a child that both me and the world were beautifully simple. And all we had to do was continue being that way. Until it came to the point where i had to abandon that. I had to be something all of a sudden and i yet still hadn’t figured out what that was. I was still in love with the simplicity of the past. The beauty of this gentle, sudden smell. It seemed to summarize everything. But since my sense of smell was something only i really had, i couldn’t explain it to anyone else. I could give them the scent, but would they really understand? I grew annoyed all of a sudden, of being alone and isolated in this secret understanding. I took a few stalks with me and carried on walking. I was already late.

When i got there, i saw her standing there with her arms folded, clearly annoyed. She stormed over to me as soon as she saw me coming up the stairs.

“What time do you think this is? The coach is about to leave already!”

“Listen, i don’t think i’m up for this.”

“What! And you’re telling me this now?”

”It’s not just the Bournemouth trip i mean…”

”Then what are you talking about?”

A whistle could be heard blowing and the person standing outside the coach was clearly growing impatient. He went inside the coach but left the door open.

“I’m not ready for all this…..searching. I’m tired of going to clubs and getting wasted and looking for fun all the time. It’s exhausting. Why can’t every once in a while can we just do something simple and normal? You’re a total party animal and it’s starting to wear me down.”

She didn’t seem to flinch and only replied in a sterner tone than i had been using.

“Look at us. We’re so young. The world doesn’t care. We’re gonna die eventually. We’ve got to use the time we’ve got to get as much fun as we can before everything turns so old and ugly. I planned this trip so we could get closer. So we could find something new…”

I sighed and looked at her painfully. “You still don’t get it do you? What we’re looking for is right here. It’s been here all along. We don’t need to travel all the way to Bournemouth, which is god knows how many miles from here, only to do the same things we do at home. I just wanted things to be simple and truthful. Instead it’s getting so complicated. I haven’t even figured myself out for god’s sake, and you’re still hauling me around on these crazy parties that don’t actually mean anything. I’m sick of it.”

She turned around and took one step into the coach.

“Fine, i’m leaving.” which she said with such an unaffected tone, it lead me to think if everything up to this point with her had really been worth it, or true. It was funny how one sentence in a certain tone of voice was enough to shake the foundations of all our memories. I turned around and got ready to leave.
She called me from inside the coach in a mocking, playful tone.

“Just what is that you’re holding in your hand anyway?”

I turned around to face her as the coach revved up and made even more noise to signal its departure. The familiar scent rose from my palms, soothing my mind.

“Just a bit of history……you wouldn’t understand.”

I was leafing through a lot of music videos on youtube and i was really happy to see that a lot of Tool fans are coming to appreciate The Mars Volta and vice versa. Its really to be expected because both these bands share heavy influence from King Crimson and Pink Floyd and if you listen carefully, you can really pick out the influenced segments.

Also whats really important to me is that these two bands are widely recognized for their work. I made a prediction a long time back that Tool would come to be remembered as this generation’s Pink Floyd but only time will truly tell, but if you look at right now as compared to a few years ago, Tool have come an insanely long way. Same with The Mars Volta.

Where am i right now musically? All i listen to is The Mars Volta and Tool and rarely anything else. I might occasionally listen to Miles Davis or Santana, something which just musically opens my mind, but i have developed this infinite love for these two bands and i don’t think many other musical acts will be able to touch that.

If you haven’t heard of these bands, let me briefly outline it. Tool is a mind bending sprawl through dark and surreal landscapes. It’s the kind of music that you sit down and do nothing except listen to it and peel layer after layer of its sound.

The Mars Volta is a band that has such explosive energy in their songs. I always listen to their songs in the morning and i always feel jumpy and energetic because their songs fill me with this kind of energy. My friend Tarik described it the best when he said “organized chaos” because that’s exactly what it is.

I do feel that if i go a day without listening to at least one or two of their albums then the day feels like it’s missing something.

It’s ramadan, so that means fasting from dawn till dusk, and naturally everyone in the house is really edgy because we’re really hungry and at some points – dehydrated because the intense London humidity gets to you so easily. When i do reach the end of the day and when its finally time to eat, i like to reward myself by going to the cereal cupboard and taking that big jar of chocolate spread out and eating it with a butter knife.

“Oh my god, that is so disgusting” my sister says.

“You have issues you need to sort out” my other sister says.

But i don’t mind. I sit there with chocolate happily on my face looking like a toddler while i try to contain myself. So on this occasion i wanted to grab something else to eat other than chocolate (though that itself is very satisfying) and went to the freezer.

I pulled out the first draw of the freezer and guess what i found?

Fucking salmon fillets.

Yes. That’s right. Someone had broken the sacred rules and bought seafood into the house.

For those of you who do not know, i absolutely hate seafood with a passion. There’s many reasons, but the basic fundamental reason is that it tastes how it smells and everyone universally agrees that it smells disgusting so…??? Don’t know why people keep eating it. When seafood is cooked in the house, either in the pan or the grill, i have to undergo what is called a “purification ritual.” Whatever was used to cook the seafood has to be washed vigorously 3-4 times over and over, then wiped down with olive oil a further 2 times to get rid of any traces (specifically smell and taste) of the seafood.

You know how they put warning on the packets of certain foods to warn you of any allergies? Such as “WARNING : May contain nuts or traces of nuts” or something to that similar extent? If i ever regulated a supermarket, the following warning would be put on all packets of seafood :

“WARNING : I taste like shit!”

*shiver* God knows how many purification rituals i’ll have to go through with those many fillets in the freezer.