Morning Note

Jai Paul Track 2 Str8 Outta Mumbai by le-pere-de-colombe

Hit Play.

I'm usually a person who wakes up on the right side of the bed. Mornings are beautiful for me. The sunlight hits my face after making a million kaleidoscopic glares on the stains of my half-open window. The aroma of daybreak permeates inside, infused within it the smell of all the small eateries scattered in my neighbourhood. A gull cries out with a wail amidst traffic, as if to enviously remind me of my own happiness. I text my friends, with a need to share the fuzzy feeling in my heart.

And every now and then you wake up on the other side. The sunlight slaps you in the face through the crack in the curtains. Hums of airplanes and animated choppers give an industrial sheen to the urban decay. The stupid gull just doesn’t shut up. And everything you feel is shit.

Like someone unscrewed the back of my head and gave my brain the closest shave. Raw skin and frayed edges and melting plastic. Desolate hopelessness. Nothing seems to point anywhere and feelings lie dead in a cocoon of rotten soul. And nothing be undone and unworked. Just like a backstage pass to an orgy of evil clowns.

And then you see a funny cloud. In the big blue of the sky. You hear the call to prayer. The brown stains on the shingles don’t look so dirty anymore. No, it’s beautiful. The clothes drying on the line. You hear something else. No, your speakers are fine. You laugh and you realize this is the first time you laughed all day. The thought makes you smile. And the smile widens, with your leg tapping the ground. You start humming to the music. And all the sounds and all the feelings connect in your body in familiar fission, blobs of colour everywhere. Romance in imbalance. We're all just chemicals after all.

[ Exits, content ]

Sleep Rant

It's all Skype's fault.

I love my laptop. Being a Core i7 clocked to 2.7GHz, with 1TB of space, 6GB RAM and a GeForce GT 555m AND JBL speakers to boot, it's the best thing to perfect my losing streak on First Person Shooters. In the case of a fire drill, I often forget to put on pants before exiting the building but I never forget my precious baby. But last night I wanted to smash it silent. Now before you call Child Protective Services on me, let me explain:

I'm having a wonderfully surreal dream when suddenly: too too toot .. (weird sound of a shit hitting the water) .. too too toot

..and on and on and on and on. The all-too-familiar sound of Skype starts blaring on full volume. Like a responsible student about to graduate (hopefully) and scared to shit about the future, I'd put myself in bed around 12:30, only to be woken at 2:44 by a very jet lagged friend from Pakistan who just returned from Australia. There's a moment where the dream merges with real life and you're clinging to your subconscious, hoping and praying you're still dreaming, but this idiot just kept going with his call. And then when every inch of you is awake, the call ends. And after hours of turning and tossing with closed eyes and then open eyes, I finally fell asleep again. At 5! Only to get up at 7am for class. Which stretched til 5 pm.

[Ladyhawke starts singing]
Life inside your head has come undone
Your soul descent to madness has just begun
But this is real life, oh no
You can’t fight it, oh no
Cause this is real life
[Gives Ladyhawke a bitchslap to shut her up]

I'm now going to bed to start the cycle again. Eyes closed, and Skype too.

Out of the Rabbit Hole

[Enter Scene]
Writer: Hi, I'm Usman and I've forgotten how to write.
Crowd: Hello Usman! Let's talk about this so we can delve in to whatever's holding you back.
Writer: I'm writing again! Fuck this.
[End Scene]

It seems that God or White Jesus has put a plug in the overflowing drain in my brain that previously had words gushing out in spurts. Now I can't even get a good metaphor for describing this block. Not only, I can't even put a consistent flow of words together in business management assignments. Come on, man! All it takes for that is stringing words like "Critical", "Flow", "Process" and "Team" together to get something going. It can't be that a semester of constrained funds forcibly causing me into writing papers for money for my language-handicapped friends and dumbing it down enough to make it look like they actually wrote it was enough to crack the foundations of my love, personal expression! But who am I kidding, I can't even imagine doing that job anymore.
So something did crack in the past few years resulting in an abyss of unfinished and incoherent entries in this very blog that were never published. I'm writing this in the vague hopes of discovering what came up the rabbit hole that put a bullet in the writer's head. See! I totally borrowed that from the new Stallone movie, probably as a result of viewing the trailer a billion times before I play any song on Youtube. Makes me wish I was still in Pakistan, in the Land of the Pure and Ad-less Youtube. No, not really. Apparently the whole of Youtube took a cue from their advertisements and decided, like thousands of other Pakistanis cleaning car windshields in Greece, to scamper. I do miss it though. The family, friends, domestic help and even the rain and its predictable cousin, No-Lights. I'm wondering if that's the reason I can't write anymore. Maybe, it's the absence of my muse, HH (no, the wrestler has 3 Hs) who does't seem to remember me anymore. Maybe it's the MSc I'm doing in Business Systems Analysis and Design that caused my brain into rewiring itself for a more technical discipline. Maybe it's the pressure of finding a job after the end of it. Maybe it's the parental threat on getting me married the minute I get back. Or maybe it's just me being stupid and immature.
So now we're talking about maturity? The idea of it has long haunted me. I think my mind stopped growing after I hit 18. Hell, my entire head did. I don't think any guy likes getting asked for their ID when they're buying cigarettes when they're 27 years old. I'm 27, for fuck's sake. Give me my goddamn smokes!
So anyway, maturity is an ideal that's long eluded the likes of me. I think about it sometimes, what it is and how I should go about attaining it. Maybe the process involves not writing about stupid things at 3:44 am on a Sunday night. And then reading articles on Jack the Ripper operating around Whitechapel (my current address!), a hundred and twenty five years ago til it's 4:08. And then continuing to write about maturity!
I think Lars and the Real Girl had it kinda right when they say it's when "you don't jerk people around, you know, and you don't cheat on your woman, and you take care of your family, you know, and you admit when you're wrong, or you try to, anyways." I have a long way to go til I get there but at least with this definition, I still get to keep my Superman socks when I do. And in order to get to that, I should definitely call it a night and try to get some sleep before I wake up tomorrow and start my research into internships for the summer.

[Enter Scene]
Crowd: But we never really got into why you stopped writing!
Writer: Yeah, but in the hopes of continuing to write around it.
(crowd kicks writer out of the room)
[End Scene]

The Dunes of Dreams

052431012012
A Village, England 
Rivers and Roads by The Head and the Heart playing

I wanted to write.
Even for the sake of writing the shortest I've written.

At times it's nice to be rid of the pretense.
Even when it's not for the best reasons.
Even when it doesn't make sense.
And it's okay to not know.
Where you're going.
And have nothing to show.


Carrying the weak in her arms.
Hope is sometimes misleading.
Luring with her charms.
In bed with effort?
Uphill battles, tilts become receding.


It's not always a happy ending.
But feet firmly on the ground.
Eyes and heart on the tether.
And fear in the nether.
You'l feel like yours is just pending.

In Pursuit of Lightness

I used to have this recurring dream about a woman guiding me out of this maze of ruins. I could remember looking at her auburn hair shining in the orange sun as I followed her left and right. And then when I look away, I used to be outside and free.

(A bunch of stuff I backspaced)

The Portrait of Usman M. Khan looks dark and unfinished but I can make out the hint of a smile.

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

I've noticed that talking out actually helps. Even if the person talked to is looking at you with the blankest stare, it just feels good to let out something that's been in knots in your brain for the longest time. And less stupid than when you do it alone.

Keeping stuff inside just makes it fester until the the buzz of the flies feels makes you want to claw your brain out.

Scores need to be settled, apologies are to be given. Perhaps eulogies.

If it wasn't me, it'd just be someone else. Not now, then later.
Who knows, maybe worser?

Some people had a tremendous amount of influence in shaping how I operate. I wish to apologize for making them know me through the process. I was and still am most uncomfortable to deal with. I hope in some karmic way, I too can be a source of intention and perspective as you are to me. Without you, the Portrait would have been boring and gray and wearing a check shirt.
Thank you for showing me a bit of the way, especially when waters were murky and signs, undecipherable. And for adding layers to a stubborn consciousness to see just a bit more than before.

Hand of God

03532103022011, It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) by Bob Dylan playing

Based on empirical observation, I can safely say I have never worked hard in my life. My father could testify at length to that in a grand engrishy english speech. My high school teachers used to say that too but when they say it, they're really saying "Ma'am your son here is one dumb motherfucker if I've ever seen one". But the D U D E in my A Levels was definitely a lesson in not studying a night before. A lesson I haven't figured out. I wish there was a switch you could turn on to get that healthy anxiety going at a reasonable time. The kind that makes you get up and about and work towards a long term goal. The kind that makes you turn off the procrastination switch. Routine has never been much of a friend and usually ends up being quashed by sporadic periods of grasshopping, and its sister, planning, is akin to control and control is a tool that we exercise to get a sense of definition in a universe amidst chaos. In short, it cramps my style.
I like to think I'm lucky. So at the very terrible risk of jinxing it and with the disclaimer, "Nazar mat lagao!", I'll like to write about the machinations I know as the Hand of God. Not to be confused with the famous hand of god of Maradona, and definitely not marijuana.
The Hand of God is that stroke of luck that puts the cogs in place as to get by or even thrive. It'll just happen that the text you didn't study for the next day's Final doesn't end up being included in the syllabus and that list that you were trying to cram outside the hall, a minute before the paper, is just asked for. With marks for examples! That is the Hand of God, ladies and gentlemen. The Hand is what you hope happens when you habitually sing in your car; and you're really trying to not sing when there are these hot women you don't know very well in the car but end up singing anyway, first muttering and then increasing volume with proportionate confidence until that moment where you fuck up the lyrics like a dirty scratch on a record, rather loudly too; and everybody hears the fuckup but keeps ignoring it silently because let's face it, everybody's been there and done that BUT you do the worst thing possible and look around, making that uncomfortable eye contact which erupts in laughter centered at you. The Hand is severely missed.
But it happens often enough and I've gotten so reliant on this system of blind luck that sometimes you're hoping for it. But if I'm expecting the Hand to occur, it wouldn't be the Hand of God and if it wouldn't be the Hand of God, then there is no Hand of God. As in the case above. Whatever it would be, it'd be predictable. And human.
I was sitting in my car, unwrapping a rather large sandwich when I suddenly got this bad feeling that I may have dropped some outside.
Thoughts at the moment:

1. I should check if I've dropped it.
2. No I'll just sit here and complete my sandwich. I'm rooting for the Hand.
3. Oh no! I've predicted the Hand so the Hand's not gonna happen and I should get out and check.
4. But maybe this is the Hand fucking with me, making me think it's not working but it really is. That clever ninja!
5. Oh fuck, why'd I think of that!

So I got out and checked. Everything was in its right place. I was just outside the usual park and there was a nice breeze reminiscent of a winter tragically missed. I finished my sandwich and rolled out and as soon as I did, I saw a Mehran with five burly cops inside looking like a clown car pass the exact place where I was enjoying the toils of nature. Then on Sunset Blvd., instead of taking the usual left on the 7th street, I ended up talking on the cell and missed it. I took the longer alternative route and again, cops at the exit to the road I usually take. Again! With enough sandwiches for a bloody picnic, I was rightfully grateful for these near misses and just passed the boys in blue, hand in salute. That is the Hand of God. On an ironic note, paranoid but pleasantly un-annoyed.

International Gorillas

Slackistan almost became that movie that people talked of so much that you no longer want to watch it. It's not like they talked about it; just how they weren't able to see it anywhere. The censor board apparently have their knickers in knots about a story of young people figuring out their lives and have banned the film in Pakistan. But if that Islamabadi girl I knew of from school could end up on the internet without her permission, why couldn't this movie too? I was under the impression that there was no sort of intellectual property that you can't pirate on the internet and I used to smirk thinking that when the grand time did come for I and all my ego to find the movie, we'd find it. The 15th page of "slackistan torrents" had me quitting and checking "dealing with failure" instead.
The incident reminded me of another time when I was looking for another desi movie that was proving itself hard to find. It was International Gorillay (1990) starring the who's who of Lollywood back in the day. The quest for this movie led me to the shadiest part of Rainbow Centre and even then I couldn't find it. It was available for $15 from a guy in Arkansas who dealt in cult but he would take cash only and that kinda killed it.
The premise was kept rather simple where a band of crooks and thieves reform themselves and then set out to kill ... Salman Rushdie. This Salman Rushdie is like a crime kingpin who is hell bent on destroying Islam as we know it ... by building casinos and making Babra Shareef dance. This Salman Rushdie also dies at the miraculous hands of ... the trinity of holy books ... that shoot lightning. Now this could be the work of opportunists who rushed to take advantage of the anti-Rushdie fervour that was spreading at that time OR I had acid and dreamt all that. Unfortunately for all of us, it's probably the former.
If anyone does have the film or would like to meet a paranoid dude in Arkansas for this brilliant cause, you know where to find me.
Next topic: Whatever happened to Babra Shareef? And can her dance really kill Islam? Stay tuned...