The Center Space

I’ve been gone for a while now so i’d thought i’d give a general update. I’m sitting here writing this with a huge bandage around my toe, and it is hurting like hell. So just as i expel emotional pain through my writing, i’m going to attempt the same with physical pain (does heartache count as physical or emotional pain? Discuss.) and hope that distracts me away from the throbbing pain of my toe.

It’s become increasingly clear to me over the past few weeks that what i need to be doing is carrying a small notepad and pen with me. Throughout the day i see something interesting, or i think of something thought-provoking, random poetry lines or perhaps the next sentence in my story. I almost feel sometimes that i need that notepad with me once my mind starts getting depressed and there’s nobody around me to talk to (or to hug).

These are all things i feel a small notepad and pen can help with. It’s different from carrying a huge A4 pad with you because things like that can fit in your pocket. But also there’s a much, much more important reason which really forms the topic of this blog post.

I always felt that writing, or literature in general, was an art that was concerned about humanity. On a literal level, it’s about the life and the experiences of other people, which then works on an overarching metaphorical level because it’s really talking about us and our own experience too.

So along with the obvious requirement of a huge vocabulary and the established poetical daring and eloquence that every writer needs, i think what really separates good writers from the great writers is the skill of observation. A really great writer has his or her finger on the pulse; they are able to absorb life in all its angles and dimensions, and their job is to document it.

I’m confident enough to call myself a writer, but not an established writer. Amongst my seemingly overpowering weaknesses, i do have one particular attribute that works in my favour. That is my ability to observe social and individual details in a very focused manner. Whether that be talking to someone i’ve never met before with brutal openness because i see their hunger for society, or looking in the face of a brother whose pain i know well and feel deeply, or maybe to feel a sense of longing for someone i have never ever seen or met. I am rapaciously attracted to the idea of exploring the root emotions of whoever i meet. I’m always constantly categorising experiences as writing material.

It’s an empathy combined with a sharp intuition and curiosity. In my time in college i have met so many odd varities of people, drug addicts, convicts, disabled, depressed people and yet time after time i never feel repulsed or disgusted. Infact i feel a desire to go on further and further and to really understand that person in their root. We all share this earth so why don’t we get to know each other?

Then all of that raw data becomes processed in my mind and forms my characters, every little detail. Down to their gestures, their manners, their evenings, the way they talk and dress. No stone is left unturned.

There’s a bad side to all this naturally. Sometimes i feel my inquisitiveness leads me down bad alleyways, i often find myself getting incredibly nosy and poking too far, too quick just because of that desire to form a really, solid, wide picture of what a person is. Sometimes i also find that i get it wrong, and that each time that i have, i’ve made a pretty serious mistake in my life. Nowadays what leads me is a natural neutrality. I always give precedence to the benefit of doubt.

What i’m really striving to convey in both practice and writing is this. We need to stop forming the basis of our understanding of people with themes. We can’t pidgeonhole people on their appearance, dress, religion, sexuality, or even just the way they go about their life. We should embrace the idea of talking to someone who makes us feel uncomfortable. If we understand other people as humans first and then everything after, then the world would be a better place.

Just read this genius.

---

“The phrase and the day and the scene harmonized in a chord. Words. Was it their colours? He allowed them to glow and fade, hue after hue: sunrise gold, the russet and green of apple orchards, azure of waves, the grey-fringed fleece of clouds. No, it was not their colours: it was the poise and balance of the period itself. Did he then love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than their associations of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from the reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism of a language many-coloured and richly storied than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose?”

From The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

Tonight i feel with such an burning intensity, the desire to go to university. I’ve been spending the entire night writing my application and doing research on the various institutions i’ve applied for, including interviews with students in their first years of English and my heart just suddenly bumps up the rate.

It’s like adrenaline coarsing through my veins….

I feel all of a sudden very powerful as if i am capable of topping the world over with my pinkie finger. All of a sudden i feel like i can do it. I can do it. I can get there if i try hard enough. The tempting allure of possibilities lending and extending their hands to give you a glimpse of a future that will dare to materialize once you expend the neccessary efforts.

What is this feeling i feel…?

I’m too jumpy and excited right now. How will i ever get enough sleep for tommorow? Someone pack my suitcase right now, i want to leave for the campus in time for next morning’s lecture.

The night has this quality to reveal the extent of which my heart has stretched itself across many extremes. And tonight, licked by the darkness which colours the night, i’m trapped, once again, in solitary reflection.

And it’s not as if this moment has been born right now, at this very instance. It has existed, in tiny traces, building and building itself up.

Behind all of this tricky intellectual imagery, there exists something much more primal, more animal. The unrelenting desire to touch someone passionately, to share an intimacy that defies all words and all senses of communication. Isn’t that what we all want?

The past is a sort of guttural stop. The patterns and reasons and significance of all of those encounters have all left me, and i can’t remember them anymore. But what i remember are the intoxicating sensations of smells, sights, caresses. And yet these have long passed their expiry date, the memories raise grotesquely like a rotting, stinking carcass.

And the lack of focus…..if only i could make sense when i wanted to! But all power of mental regulation is thrown out – instead is the unforgiving assault of desire. Might i then step back and wish to be something more? To not yield to shallow feelings and to celebrate something more spiritual and selfless?

No. This is the missing ingredient. This is the little piece of suffering that makes me human.

Extract from the “Preludes”

4th Prelude :

IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Casting my lens backwards into history, amongst all the bloodshed, torture, greed and misery that forms our time, one particular aspect strikes out at me. And that has chiefly been the role and treatment of women.

What shocks me is the way in which women have had to literally claw their way to the surface of equality. Specifically talking about British history, it was only within the last 100 years or so that women finally had some degree of freedom.

And you know how you have that fundamental layer of childish innocence in you? I’m talking about that voice that cries out when you see something cute, when you play with children joyfully, when you feel a monumental sense of pain when a love is foiled, or when someone watches over you benevolently.

That voice spoke to me. And i, in my childish curiosity, wondered why women had to be subjected to this. Love exists between men and women. Why didn’t this natural force allow equality?

The truth is that i’m simplifying things. I’m not going to bother going into the analysis right now.

Still, that whole bloody history has really hit me, because i still do feel the repercussions. I come from a family, and also a history of a family where there’s more women in the family than men, and yet its the men who dominate, and ruin it for everyone else. As such i’d describe myself as a “male feminist” which makes people laugh, even me, but i’m serious when i mean that.

Nowadays we’ve been fortunate that women have been granted equality in political and humane terms at least where i live. I’m aware that’s not always the case in other parts of the world and, as always, that makes my blood boil.

There’s more subtle forms of sexism however, such as prejudice. It’s always hard to pin down because it pops up and disappears. But i mean simple presumptions such as, the woman stays in the kitchen, or women are just baby factories, or something stupid like that. There’s actually people who still believe this shit! I wonder if you could ever, ever eradicate such line of thought. And it’s the woman who’s in the position to be vunerable, since the man has the power to kick her ass if he wishes. It’s a sad, sad affair and you wish secretly in your mind that the woman would just pull out a gun or devise some sort of clever method to get her own back.

However, i’ve also come to feel the other side of the argument too. The term “masculinist” simply doesn’t exist because it’s been men who have dominated history for the past couple of centuries. But prejudice goes both ways. Things such as men lack intelligence or emotional depth. Or that men take a backseat when it comes to raising children. Again this kind of compartmentalized thinking pisses me off and although i to tend to side with women quite a bit, there’s definitely my times when i stick up for my kind too.

This reflection just came to me because we’re living in a world so complex that the simplicity that gender roles and perceptions used to provide to us is no longer adequate. It’s easy to categorise and live in a world where men do this and women do that. But the fabric is being torn because there’s things such as single mothers, divorced marriages, homosexuality, and gender equality that are being flung around in our world. As a result, gender just disappears. We’re no longer “boy” or “girl” but being examined and forced to practice from our most fundamental, elemental levels. Biological difference isn’t enough.

The world pushes down its finger onto the hearts of men with an unforgiving force. It pushes and squeezes until it yields the souls of men, sucked dry from their shells. The world has no partners in crime. It fights you one on one.

In these moments of isolatory grace, i ask myself where do i find the will to go on?

It is not from the hollow promises of a materially fulfilled life.

It is not from the occasional interference of friends or enemies. Their momentary appearances come and go like lightning from the storm.

It is not from the vague, dust-filled history of mine, coloured and violated by a memory and mind so determined to betray its owner.

Neither do i imagine is it from the child within. Assaulting reality with its innocence.

It is from the inconsequential, spontaenous fragments of love that are shapeless and invisible.

It is from the roots of madness, where when they have emerged from their dark pits, begin to wear the shadow like a cloak, and begin a journey into the ridiculous and the sublime.

It emerges like an endless rapture when abstract ideas wear words as clothes, and merge themselves with the truth. The outdated words of a friend, the bitter words of yourself. All the words you could’ve said and meant.

It is inspired by an inhuman, animal gravity when faced with the prospect of losing its soul to a slow, painful and humiliating death.

Friend, I do not pretend to be a saint. However I do not desire to be the devil either. All i know is that this colourless, boundless freedom is where i exist. It is where i am from.

I’m sure there’s some of you that keep a diary. I could never live without mine. It’s coming close up to its birthday soon. There was just one mistake i did make, and that was reading out my diary aloud to myself.

There’s a reason why that stuff goes on the page in the first place. It’s there so it is locked away safely, never to emerge and threaten you again. The act of re-reading your diary is akin to watching the most dangerous animals on earth from a distance, very safely behind bars in some kind of gigantic zoo.

So here’s a tip to all you diary keepers :

Never read your diary out aloud.

They are the lyrics of a demon.

Lately i haven’t been posting on my blog because so much of what i have been feeling has been so hard to put into actual words. Reading James Joyce has removed that plug from my mind. I wrote a little section entirely from my mind without any tweaking to make it sound “readable” or “rational”.

The following post is a pure distillation of my heart and my soul. Try not to make sense of it, but feel what i have felt when i have written it.

I used sound as my inspiration, so if you’re interested please download/listen to the following track :

Track : Cicatriz Esp
Band : The Mars Volta
Album : De-loused in the Comatorium.

And listen to the track specifically starting from 6:00 to 9:10 or so. Don’t bother searching for it in youtube because the segment i’m referring to has been cut out by many uploaders. Your best bet is searching for the mp3. Anyhoo, it’s not really required but i thought it would help because that is basically where i got my inspiration from. Onward to the text :

-----------------------

--This feeling, do you recall its name?

Faint yearnings for some abstract, vague ideas of someone something when what who where please please, a begging for something to hit you suddenly with the full force of its desire. A suggesting beck and call. This is not the shape of my dreams or of my love, but a dark, rippling pool, sweetened by sugar, oozing out its shadow in awkward languid AWAKE patterns that are so scary dear god I am so scared when I reach that state I may not escape am I alive or am I awake?

--You are very much awake in a box room of mirrors.

It is always so frightfully odd when I look into those jewelled eyes of mine, I almost feel as if there’s a storm, CRACKing its way to the edge of the horizon until it spills until it shows itself, until the pretty little man is no more.

--Pull out his eyes. Apologize.

Torture, as established by the CIA is a highly effective technique to force human beings to the truth by blocking off all other routes of reason or emotion. And that is exactly what this human state of switching and turning and twisting is all about. He stands in an outline of shadow, carrying a false pretence that he is the LOVE and he is the TRUTH but in actuality he’s a out-hooded, no-apologies charlatan.

LIAR.

--I’m here. Touch me. Kiss me, he asks in a seductive manner.

He does not exist. He is a construct. I am not a node to receive lies like the radio. I have betrayed to the truth. I have defected.

I’ve defected.

--A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or
gentile, is he not?

--They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see
the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the
earth to this day.

--Who has not? Stephen said.

--What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.

He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell
sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.

--History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal.
What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?

--The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human
history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

--That is God.

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!

--What? Mr Deasy asked.

--A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Daytime is an odd embrace. Beauty threatens with its splendour to dash itself to ruin. I gently walk around in an elated twirl, looking for flowers to cup in my hand, the sweet smell of the day, the next soul to collide with. I am a walking honeypot for the bees.

Soon the afternoon descends, the city coughing out the excess in a long, drawn out breath. I too, share many of these exquisite, painless sighs. I sigh off the fatigue that has gathered around like a cloud. Faint memories and desires are shaken off, as if they were dying leaves in autumn, each group of amber leaves appearing as if they were cut from a sheet of gold with a fine knife, scattered around with a delicate hand, swaying here and there, pushed along encouragingly. I am the boat that adjusts her sail to this current.

Darkness infects the sky. The soul is reduced to a whisper. And it is all calm, and silent, and terrifying. Silhouettes of nature obscure the bizarre cityscape. The view from the window is nothing else but this. Eyes cast down, preparing to trail lightly into a temporary death. The bed is hungry. It demands more. More touch, more feel, more energy. There is something missing here. What is it, oh what is it? The knowledge sinks into obscurity like fine ink. I become the ghost that fades back into dream.

Awakens once more into the odd embrace.

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil,
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turned fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell:
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

- Shakespeare

So i was talking with someone who plays Team Fortress 2 with me online. I always associate online gaming shooter communities with geeky teenagers with no manners and wit. For fun, i started quoting random lines from Ulysses. He suddenly said :

--Hey! You’re not the only one who’s read Ulysses you know!

This was my face :

I was in shock. So i started talking about James Joyce more and turns out this guy has read EVERYTHING and specialises in Greek epics. He’s actually convinced me to try reading them more. What's more, this guy hasn't even done his A levels yet. He dropped out of education. And yet he's read so widely and has such an extensive pool to draw from. It just goes to show that the pretty image of formal education isn't everything. It's just that. An image. "Education" is just living your life truthfully. 

I was thinking to myself, that people can come from the weirdest places. What are the chances of finding a fellow literature enthusiast on an online game?

This world is so weird sometimes.

Looking back in this week, i had several moments where, upon bumping into people on my way towards somewhere, those people would subsequently stop me and ask me :

--Hey, are you alright?

I started wondering why the hell people started asking me these questions so randomly. It really puzzled me and i was beginning to wonder why there was this sudden burst of spontaenous concern. I finally got my answer today.

Bumping into my politics teacher today, he said :

--Hey Adnaan. You alright? You look lost.

Ah, so that was it. It was that telltale expression on my face. That thinking, misanthropic, bitter look on my face. To be honest, i’m not very good at feigning normality.

It wasn’t all dull though. Last week i had bought James Joyce’s Ulysses and a lot of my spare time has gone onto thinking about the connections and complexity of the book. A lot of the time i was just lost in thought.

What worried me though is when people see through the mask i portray and they get it right. When they sense something’s wrong, take a guess, and end up with full marks. I find myself having to explain and justify my depressive dips, which i never really get down to. I’m always fully able to escape underneath the shallow guise of witless sarcasm and misdirection.

It was frustrating to me because no matter what i did, no matter what angle i portrayed myself in common everyday light, ended up as a fruitless endeavour since the more i tried to avoid attention, the more i attracted it. When you attract attention and intrigue, it is a double edged sword. On the one hand, it allows me to make heads turn and to inspire people with a few well placed sentences, but on the reverse side, i become accountable for my defects.

No matter what i do, i cannot stay happy all the time. And likewise, i cannot stay sad all the time either. But when i’m upset and depressed, i need daily mundanity to stay away. Just as dusk turns to dawn, i bide my time and wait it out. I wait till it’s over and then i come back into the light again. That’s just the way it’s always been. It’s not as if its a distortion of my normal life. These extreme dips ARE my life. And yet, when i try my best to hide that, and my face gives it away, what shall i say?


“And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

T.S Eliot

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.