looking back #tbt

I didn't understand why everyone was feeling so disconnected after Frosh. For me, a new time had begun, I had so much energy, I knew so many people. I was buzzing with excitement, with the need to keep up a fantastic start and continue to do more for the college I had so quickly grown to love. Being recognized, being known, and being seen meant so to someone that thought they'd just remain a someone, a melancholic face in the crowd, so far away from home. I was challenged, I was driven, and sure enough, the fall came masked in many ways.

Just when I felt I got to grips with things, or started to get a grip on getting a grip, life pulled the rug. There I went, twirling sideways, whirling all the rationality out of my decisions and like a spinning top,  I was dizzy, directionless but always in motion for some weird reason. Every atom of my body appeared to be in collision with something, constantly fighting the urge to give up, or to give in to nostalgia, to negative emotion, or to the erratic currents of thought that tried to take the best away.

I had packed away 18 years of my life into two suitcases to move into my sister's downtown apartment first semester. The second, I moved to Newmarket into my new family home where I'd be eagerly waiting for summer- my whole family would eventually be making the big move from Dubai to Canada. It seemed like change was something constant everyday. It is when I look back that I realise that everything I knew about myself had totally changed.

I lost my fear and apprehension at Frosh. I found it again soon enough when I started to really get into my studies here. The fear of making it through first year with a 3.0, getting into my subject Posts, the fear of another failed midterm. The apprehension to connect with people again was fuelled by the cold unsettlement I started feeling because I missed home. I missed the security, I missed knowing what it was like to have my best friends around. I was uncomfortable in my own skin. The house felt empty, it felt temporary.

My life had gone so far in such short time. The university helped guide and encourage my interests; singing at open mic nights and the WW art showcase, helping out with the UTSU, reading poetry and articles in various college papers, and following the debate on the survival of women's varsity rugby in UTSG to name few. Just as I started the semester, I was already running for the First-Year student director, being exposed to student politics and so many extracurriculars, juggling my studies and relationships, and I was out of breath.

I got so tired because I was actually trying to get the little things right: get to class on time, deliver on my deadlines, ask questions, keep in touch with friends from home, and hold my own above all.

If I had to say anything to my fellow first-years, it would be this: first year ran right through us leaving holes in all of us, some managed to get theirs filled, others still walk around trying to figure what the means the most, what will bridge the insatiable gap between silence and action. Do the little things, get back to the basics. Go to a poetry slam, visit the greenhouse or check Queens St. West out. Do what makes you happy because if there's anything that UofT's drilled into my brain, its that time is so totally irreplaceable and your sanity is too.

If you want to know if it ends, it doesn't.  YOU get better though. How? You have to stop, and when you do, take a breather, and look back to work backwards; its a good way to know how much time you have left and how much time you need to move forward. These next few years are all about you. Make them worth remembering. 

'no sound but the wind'

lashes of multi-coloured light
sirens that deafen you
that separate our rational senses from colliding
into submisson.

you can't hear yourself over the sounds of those screams.
quieten all around us, please
don't lose yourself
in the need to survive here
it isn't such a cold town.
it isn't such a cold town.

i'm banking on the sunshine
while i'm getting drenched by the tears you cry
late at night
when you miss his arms.

i'm fleeing from the train that rushes right behind me,
the train that's coming to get me to send me back home.
it's a war out in our minds,
but i don't want to be separated from you.
why don't you see that behind your clenched teeth,
it's okay to show me you want to cry?

why don't you see we all need to be laid down.
we can make this home.
we can mend ourselves.

"I"ll help you carry the load,
           I'll carry you in my arms."



No sound but the wind by Editors

burning roses

memories slowly drifting towards me
and in the light,
it seems like all these scars come to life.

let's break all the mirrors in this house,
let's send the shards flying round,
because every minute i seem to stay,
i seem to die.

oh, let the walls burn right down
and let the curtains veil
this little girl's fate.

honey, you're growing up,
and it isn't a fairytale.
but it's okay because we'll find a way someday.

honey, it's gonna be tough,
and you're gonna be dismayed,
but He never gave you more than you could handle.

just light a candle,
and pray.
light a candle,
and pray.

that tomorrow, the cigarettes and wine,
they won't be the lie that separates your life and mine.
and all the money in the world,
can't bring you closer,
you have to will your heart
and fight like you're supposed to.

that's the way it is, honey.
that's just the way it is.

unnamed

We seem to be living the blur yet again. We seem to be walking the same damn line. Take me back 10 years. Take me back to the summer where we house hunted, where we ran naked through our pockets in search of pennies to pay for a home.

Shelter is not just an aluminium sheet anymore, the rain seeps in, orders. The mattress you sleep on today has a story, it was stolen. Hungry hands grabbed it away, a bachelor turned it into a wedding bed, and then threw it away when a baby was born. When your baby was born, 18 years ago, was your home small? Or was it large, was it too big to hold? The feeling of having to be a home for another being? Another life you held in the palm of your hand, you would be the hand that fed it, you would be the brush that painted the smile on its face, you would take it to school and help it live.

You would show it the world, a world that was too ugly to be rolled into a diploma, you showed her the chasm between theory and practise. You broke the sound barriers when you educated her with those words.

When i write, i talk at a thousand people at the same time, to a hundred people in a single glance and to a handpicked few in a single breath. Today, its 18 years after. And the both of you are here, another came in between to define the prism of light growing in her womb. And it shone brighter and brighter, but she grew weaker and weaker, and no matter how hard i try and save the hands that taught me how to live for the one that still has to live, age has caught up with you. and although the wise one tells me to be brave about death, how can i when your story has yet to be told? I stay away from it all, I’m sheltered by the walls that enclose me, the wings cover me, and so many others that try escape the shrewd nature of the world that lies beyond the walls of barbed wire, beyond the grizzly screens, and further beyond the pictures in the paper, black and white and red all over.

Still in the midst of all this instability, in the heart of this wall of text, there is a beating fighting young poignant heart. There is a point. Sailing across the gulf that separates us, you come to build me a home. I have a few more years left in me, i still have them. All i can say is I can still step into my Father’s House, I can still look up and praise, and I will still look up with no shame until there is nothing to look up to anymore. For that is how I came into this world, with my head thrown back, and my eyes shut, and my hair covering my ears.

Not the pretty way words are supposed to look on a page, no the beauty you bring is when the intensity of your eyes burns life into every syllable of this prose. When finally you swallow your fears and your pride and every single piece of your mortality that remains and you pause. Your stomach churns, because the hardest thing to admit is that you have reached the end of the page. So until then, i’ll put a stopgap in the inflated importance my generation gives to procrastination, and i will shamelessly waste away my days with you, until all we know is taken from us again, and we will be hurt.

And still from the ashes we shall rise.



Golden children of the sky, you golden children of the sky.

muskoca

"you never step in the same river twice"

I remember I used to be able to guestimate the time of the present day, it was a game for children in our school since watches were something only the rich kids could afford. The fancy golden brass strap with those little hands ticking away. Today, miles and miles away from home, it seems that not only do the 's's become 'z's, but the leaves of the trees in Muskoca are changing to their mortal hues...and yet, I remain unchanged. Stagnant. The hands of a watch that doesn't work anymore.

The lake stretches out infront of me. So much water, a sea of submission, the opportunity for immersion, or then there's me, the last grain of salt... left apart to dissolve in a flurry of emotionally turbulent times.

Today, my mind has the advantage of generating thoughts my conscience can recognise, so much so that it cannot keep up with them. I think louder than I speak now. However, there is no excuse for ignorance, and no fatality worse than it. So I'm gonna try and snap out of it, this isn't silence, this isn't wisdom, this is numbness.

This rudimentary page will serve as another one of my many beginnings. Only today, the awareness with which I have to capture my thoughts add the slow effortless punch to the serious cocktail of practicality and sentimentality, of letting go to hold on, of coming age to appreciate the days of innocence passing...all, so that one day, one that lives for the joy of living in itself can enjoy the sharpness with which opportunity kick-starts the future. 

gravity

I leave my life to You, take it for Your's is the only promise has never let me down  -

What do you do when your hands fall to your sides and it feels like they're useless? That they aren't going to listen to you and your romping mind anymore. When your body refuses to move, when it needs to be coaxed and pleaded to, to just get you out of bed.

I've been living in sweet denial. In blissful ignorance. 'Gravity, stay the hell away from me'.

You know what I see infront of me? I see boxes. I see an empty letter pad and a bunch of envelopes. I see memories all across the wall, in the form of pictures, words, that damn corner that never could stay clean. I sit in the bed you tried to love me in. I see the lamp that I never switch off, my fear of seeing faces in the dark. I see through my cupboard doors. I see past all the clothes, I see my uncle's old yellow construction helmet. I wonder why we kept that all these years...I remember trying to put it on as a kid, never fit my head.

In the race to be different, to be unique, I forgot the primal thing about being human. We all share the same emotions at some point in our lives. I try everyday to be special, to not make the same mistakes as everyone else. I try to be the girl that everyone can trust and no one can take for granted. But there's this funny thing called irony, and it leaves you disgusted with yourself. I fail to get the words out of my mouth. But I know what I want to say.

I understand now. I see you. I see the big picture. I have to give back those old school books, I have to pack away those clothes, take the pictures, the tickets, the birthday cards, the timetables, the junk off my wall. I have leave this sanctuary bare, the way I entered it. I have to learn how to say goodbye again. Live by myself again.

Starting life by myself, accepting the fact that I won't always be able to see everyone I want to...I won't always be able to say everything. I realised not everything is meant to be said at once, some words carry more weight than others and some words need to be carried longer than others. You can't trust everyone all at the same time, as much as you'd like to.

I'm going to miss my life here so much. I'm going to miss all the people I got used to. I'm praying I can live as fierce as I want to. I hope I find what I what I'm looking for, I hope I can make wherever I'm going to a home. I want to make it big. I hope I always remember those that brought me to this part of my journey. Thank you God, for giving me life, and letting me live so far. Thank You especially for all those that love me, when times get hard, they never stop believing. I pray others will know the happiness I feel when I look back at my life in Sharjah. Nothing's ever going to change that. I have grown, and I will keep growing. 

Thoughts on being uprooted

I’m leaving so much behind, to discover so much more. The memories tangle, like streams of water. They twirl around my fingers, a rushing tap, a never-ending flow…smoothening out the coarse surface of my young hands, moving in parallel with my veins, streams of blood and water together separated by a fine line, the skin that covers me like a sheet in the night—that feels the warmth, the frost, the pain and most of all, the one true thing that is a signpost to my coloured name. See the hues of brown, the early creases of age, the lines of fate, the palm of my hands, surrender unchanged.

I bring the water, cupped to my lips, parched skins drinks and

I am filled.
Let go of the water, on my nose, hangs a drop, a liquid crystal, a transparent fluid rock.
It sustains me now,
it’ll sustain me then
when all I’ll have is life
and when I’ll need my friends.
How far away will we be?
No more, no more!
When one talks of a rose,
does one talk of how it rose from the ground,
how its seeds flowered and bloomed,
only to be plucked, cut from familiar bonds,
a scar left behind. But the roots untouched.
No matter how far I travel,
to the ends of the earth,
or standing on my doorstep,
no matter where I go,
I will leave behind something,
and discover that where there is a window, there is a door,
and I will walk through, moving forward, leaving my roots where none were left for me, leaving them where I found them,
in the earth,
in the water,
in my fingers,
in my blood, 
in my home.

Piha, New Zealand - when in doubt, always go to a beach. if anything, you'll see there's more to life than standing on the shore.


22 February 2012 14:49:12