Wanderer

Wanderer, 

     Ask me not to describe, for everything lies so beyond the grasp of words. Let me unfold myself here in those layers of the unnameable and get lost once again. Leave me, but don't forget.

Never, wanderer.

The Minutes

   “How many cups of coffee do you now drink?”

    The tooth brush freezes in my hand for a second. I force it back into my mouth, get it out, rinse my mouth and reply, “Six, seven, eight…don’t really know. Why do you ask?” I get out of the bathroom.

    “Nothing just wanted to know.”

     I close the door behind me and advance to the living room. You have already gone there, seated yourself, in the brown arm chair, beside the open window. You hesitate for a second before taking the newspaper. You take it, let it drop, and smile. Curiosity was not filling me, you told me all the same: “It’s funny. You used to hate coffee back then.”

     ‘Back then’ hangs in the air. I ponder upon it. When was ‘back then’? You cut through my thoughts, “It’s very different now,” you say.

     “It’s very different now,” I echo.

      You jump from your seat, throw the newspaper and go. “Nothing worth reading about”, you muttered. I occupy your brown arm chair, beside the window. I pick the newspaper from the ground, and read. Later, I get bored and realize that nothing is worth reading about.

      I go to the kitchen and pour myself water. I look at the walls, as old as you and me, and ponder again on “back then.” I spill the water. I get out of the kitchen without clearing the mess I made. I go back to the living room, curl myself on the sofa. It’s getting cold. Winter must be impending. I close the window. I forget what I was thinking, but I don’t care. I’ll think something new. I think and think. I think and cry. Thinking makes me cry. I stop thinking and I pace the room. But memories flood me.

     “Back then” is fixed at a point in time. Every day, the distance between it and me widens. It creates a gap, a huge gap, and everything is sucked in.

    You come out of the room, the one at the end of the corridor. You don’t see me and it makes no difference. It’s not me you got out for.

     Between me and back then, there is a billion or so minutes, forever divided between two pairs of eyes. Two pairs of eyes see different things. And then, the past is lost, in between. It doesn’t scare me that now will also eventually turn into another “back then.” I don’t care for now. But the minutes, they hold me captive.

      You, wherever you are, so attached to me I cannot bear you, so faraway I miss you, have you ever thought of it? For the minutes do hold us captive. Years will pass through our entities, broken into minutes, and we’ll live, in them, never getting out, hoping we did. And we’ll live them, together, but away. It will kill us, but we’ll draw a feeble pretense of life. Now, we are only rehearsing.

     You get out. “You have spilled water in the kitchen?” you say.

    "Yes. I’ll go clean it.”

    “It’s okay, I already did so.”

    And you go away.

    You, whomever you are, do you still love me?

       

Another Age Trick

All through the day, there has been  vulgar music coming out from somewhere down the street. It's easy to tell somebody was getting married. It was noisy and annoying, and nothing short of agonizing when I had to study having it as a background.
  It's silent and still now. I have just hung up with my friend after having a prolonged conversation after which I reached the conclusion that even when I am okay, I am not okay. I also, for the thousandth time, kept on discussing how there is no chance for it to get better. At the end, I wound up lamenting my so-called adolescence.
   I kept on repeating, " But I am sixteen." over and over again, as though trying to convince myself that life is still ahead of me. It made things worse, for here's how it is:  I am sixteen and the last time I recall having fun in is three years ago; I have only one friend and it's because of my fastidious nature that does not accept to befriended with people who discuss nothing but the things that enter my very own category of  "things unbearably stupid it makes me want to throw up;" I have not crushed on a guy, been crushed on by a guy-the very sound of it is weird-or had any remotely similair experience for like, more than three years and all is due  to how this entire thing comes first in the list of things unbearably stupid it makes me want to throw up.
   I am missing out on life .
   Is this not just sad?
   I have not contributed in the HBBC for a long time now. I was pretty delusional when I thought that "I will just when studying gets a little bit less tough" It is not, but yeah, I have changed my reasoning and am now living with it. So, perhaps Insha' Allah, I'll be able to post this time. I really with too.
  There is Holy Quraan now playing outside. The sound of it is very beautiful. I think I am going to turn it on in the room and sleep.

Writing, Time, and A Beautiful Classic Poem

Pencils and papers have grown too intimidating.

     The mere idea of writing something sends a wave of dread through me. Words come with no fluency. Fear consumes my heart.  And then, I am left, with the conclusion that the easiest thing is not to write at all. 

     And it scares me that I may forever linger in this place. Forever "afraid of nothing..nonetheless afraid". But, it is true, it is easier not to write. It is easier to leave those velvet images of mine free of words and definitions; it is easier not to have to be faced over and over again with the futility of it; it is easier not to be disheartened every time I realize that not a person cares. I do not at all know if i am any entitled to call myself a writer; but if I were not a writer, I do not know who I'd be. 

   But no; I do not believe in this all, I never did. Because writing is not those few minutes when you put pen to parer; writing is a state of being. And I, I am haunted by words. I am haunted by long narratives that bereave my eyes of the peace of sleep; I get lost, deeply engrossed, within lined pages that have the little secrets of life in them; and my thoughts, my hellish thoughts. they consume me and send me to the brinks of insanity. No camera would capture that and steal it from time; only words. 

    And time, i have concluded, is a villain. I need it to freeze. Physics just says it cannot. And, according to my own belief, time is the progression of life; without time, we would be imprisoned by an everlasting moment of nonexistence. But then, that is actually my wish...never to exist.

P.S. 

      I am not a great fan of classic Arabic poetry and tend to have a great liking to the modern one. Today though, in my Arabic curriculum, I  happened to come across an enchanting classic poem written by Ibn Al-Roumi. It was a lament to his dead child. Even though we are not supposed to memorize it, I have read a lot already I know it by heart. Here are my favorite two lines:

 

فيالك من نفس تساقط أنفساً             تساقط در من نظام بلا عقد

and

و أنت و ان افردت في دار وحشة       فإني بدار الانس في وحشة الفرد

      

     

Getting Through the Night

I am too sick and tired.
Complaining about things that may never change has worn me out so completely.
And now, I am sitting on my bed, trying so hard to resist the gloomy gravity. Only at times like this, believing that an army made of one soldier can beat life seems like quite trifling.
I need somebody to tell me it's not. I need another voice echoing what I want so much to hear.
No voice resonates through the blankness but my own.
Is it too shameful to admit that I am alone?
Well, I am, very much.

Tonight, everything feels painfully alienated.

Measurements

My back hurts intolerably.
   I am now in that place where time starts having substance and meaning, and where squandering it does not come without consequences. Is not the mere idea that your entire future hangs on two years enough to send shivers down your spine? And then, it all takes me back to that thing I say quite often these days...."Stupidity Prevails."

    I need to get rid of this sense of duality engulfing everything, of this "Jekyll-Hyde" state of being. And you know, it all comes with bitter irony that makes me have the urge to laugh and cry at the same time. And the 'funniest" thing is, I am 16. I cannot bear how this number contradicts everything I am; even my very face is five years older. And yet, it does not make me hate growing up  any less.

I need a place where things exist beyond measurements. 

I am dying to write.
A feeling of disgruntlement combined with fear would take over me on asking any grown up why he no longer reads; it's the answer that freaks me out: "i don't have time."
well. I wish I had enough time to finish a decent post, or weave those long narratives that keep on hunting me into a story.
Sadly, I do not.
And it's like...I am still fe Thanwya Amma!