Category: Mindscapes

  • End of Dreams

    When we wake up, it will feel like a dream. A very real and vivid dream. All alone in blind darkness and utter chaos, the final passageway before us, we will pray for our light not to fade until we are safely on the other side.

  • Noname

    No matter which era, mothers’ dreams for their sons are identical. During the weaving of those dreams, knots of prayers start to appear, and bits of hope materialize. But often, all dreams are washed away through the black lines of the kohl. Because perhaps history fancied one color only. The color red.

    One.
    These three letters have many faces.
    The one we want all our lives,
    the one we never want.
    The one who stays with us,
    the one we never get,
    the one with whom we always stay upset,
    and the one that has his own opinion.

    Wait.
    Childhood’s wait for toys.
    The wait for rain after the prayers.
    Wait, keeps on going and searching for a name, keeps painting pictures at the street corner, keeps being stuck in the door lock. If the wait ended, wouldn’t the eyes look away and close themselves? Waiting is inevitable, but halting of the wait is not?

    The ways strung to our feet are uncountable.
    Life, clutching the finger of necessity, keeps on running. No sound, no tranquility, no promise, can stop it. The roar of desires mutes the voice, while the age of necessity keeps growing. Life. No, life never stops.

    One day I met a man on the street. He had in his hands two similar faces.
    I asked, “What do the two faces mean?”
    He said, “One is myself, the other, the world.”
    I asked, “Which one are you?”
    He said, “I have forgotten.”
    I asked again, “What is the benefit?”
    He said, “I have gotten accustomed to benefiting from misfortune.”
    Far away from there, a few words written on a plaque smiled, and both of us picked up each of our faces.

    Original in Urdu, “Kia Naam Doon”, by Sajjad Ali (from the audio album Chahar Balish)

  • My story

    Why is everyone looking at me?
    What do they see that I do not seem to notice?
    What is different, or interesting, that I clearly do not recognize?
    Is it some boldness in what I leave behind that seems to call their attention?
    Making them turn their heads to me?
    Or even worse, simply run away from me?

    They do not see what I see, and feel what I feel. They do not recognize where I come from.
    This freedom I possess overwhelms them, confuses them, humiliates them. They may think it is a burden, they may think it is a mystery; they may think I am just wild, or simply insignificant.

    But they do not see what I see, they do not feel what I feel, they do not know what I know. After all, I fall over you only to remind you that you are still a human.

    Thanks to Silent Reader for the text contribution.

  • Dreams II

    I want to thank Silent Reader for the following text contribution:

    “Can there exist anything, between the sky and the soil, that just by looking at it I simply become pale? Can its fragrance be so pure, so sweet and soft, that its memories fulfill my spirit? Yet, despite how ephemeral its life may be, one thorn can tear a life apart and leave the wound unhealed. But with the softest of touch of one of its tender petals, all the stars in even the darkest night can enlighten the universe.”

  • Cry

    I’ve had the idea to use a photo I took of a statue in a shopping mall in Chicago for a while, but the final collage as you see above came out very differently than what I had in mind when I started. The picture kept changing as I worked on it. And I kept thinking about a song by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, written by Shiv Kumar Batalvi. The song I fell in love with the very first time I heard it in a music store in Anarkali bazar, Lahore, Pakistan, years and years ago. The song that has meant many things to me depending on where I am, what I am doing and how I feel. I thought I’d share some of the verses from that song with you (translation)

    Mother, o mother,
    The grains of separation sting
    In the eyes of my songs
    In the middle of the night ,
    They wake and weep for dead friends.
    Mother, I cannot sleep.

    I am still young,
    And need guidance myself.
    Who can advise him?
    Mother, would you tell him,
    To clench his lips when he weeps,
    Or the world will hear him cry.

    

    Tell him, mother, to swallow the bread
    Of separation.
    He is fated to mourn.
    Tell him to lick the salty dew
    On the roses of sorrow,
    And stay strong.

    Listen, o my pain,
    Love is that butterfly
    Which is pinned forever to a stake.
    Love is that bee,
    From whom desire,
    Stays miles away.

    Love is that palace
    Where nothing lives
    Except for the birds.
    Love is that hearth
    Where the colored bed of fulfillment,
    Is never laid.

    Mother, tell him not to
    Call out the name of his dead friends
    So loudly in the middle of the night.
    When I am gone, I fear
    That this malicious world,
    Will say that my songs were evil.