So it's been awhile, and to be quite honest, not a lot has happened. It's my first time home before 7 due to the snowstorm that has graced this already cheerful Monday. All I have to say is that I have come across some ridiculous people. I work with this disabled black guy who always makes comments like "typical woman" or, "I know how you women think, all alike" and I'm just biting my tongue for now but I can't wait for the day I blurt out a suitable stereotype to shut him up. I can't believe I'm even blogging about him. I always catch myself thinking about the latest absurdity he graced me with and get annoyed for wasting my precious apple thoughts on him. Ugh. Anyhow, work is cheery.
I keep thinking about Bella's post on character flaws and try to analyse my own. But how do you do that? I mean really do that without justifying them. I think I'm arrogant ... well I know I am but I don't really do anything about it. I don't really want to as I spent a great deal of my adolesence thinking that I was always wrong and, as a result, was quite miserable because of it. Now I largely despise the people I used to admire when I was an idiot. Now I've learned that I do infinitely better when I have faith in myself, and I don't know how to do that outside of being an arrogant prick. I think my self-depreciating humor is a result of this guilt, trying to make myself feel bad for being good. Please explain that to me. Or tell me what I already know. Please indulge me.
This blog is an exercise in arrogance. I keep reading all these comments about blogs being self-indulgent and how this complaint is en vogue. I really want you people to tell me I'm right. How lame is that? I mean is there a worse form of insecurity and bullshit? If I can find such interesting and engaging characters as you all in this weird, twisted sense of community, why am I so retarded when it comes to real life? I met an inventor today and he was just hilarious and smart and I just wanted to go get a cup of coffee with him. I wanted to pick his brain apart. Nothing romatic, mind, he was Canadian. I don't drink coffee, I'm more of a tea person. English Breakfast, if you're asking. I want to be surrounded by people who are better than me but then I either end up feeling pretty shitty about myself or realise that I've set up a bunch of architecturally unsound pedestals and get bored and move on. So what to do? What am I really after? Do I want to feel good about myself or am I more comfortable being uncomfortable? What am I basing 'myself' on - what's the scale? What do I really value? What is intelligence? And where does it live? Isa is a smart cookie and a brilliant read, and she makes it all seem so easy. If you want more examples, go on and peruse down the blogs I've listed. Don't forget Goldfish who has most certainly been injected by something unearthly. Everyone there has displayed ingenuity, something I've come to crave. I hate stating the obvious so obviously.. I want to be so creative and witty. What a stupid complaint. Ugh is right.
Oh.. and what the hell is going on in Lebanon?
Monday, February 28
Sunday, February 13
Melancholy
Just finished reading Mistry's A Fine Balance and I don't know what to do with myself. The poverty and misery he documents is something so real, touching on the same sadness that pervades everytime I visit my family and friends in Pakistan. The communal hatred that is actively exacerbated by government fills me with this ridiculous rage .. makes me think I need to do something and that I actually can. My grandmother used to tell me about the year of partition with India, when both my parents' families crossed the border and were subject to some unimaginable horrors. She remembers hiding in a grain truck to cross the border, looking through cracks to see the burnt bodies of Muslim children being paraded about on stakes. My grandfather was a Brig in the army and often took military trucks to prevent mobs from burning families in their homes. This vicious history was repeated not too long ago when a train fire in Gujarat triggered inhumane violence among Hindus and Muslims in 2002. The state government declared that the train was attacked when later inquiry revealed that the fire started from within one of the coaches. The authorities were not only useless, but criminally negligent in stopping the violence. I don't think I'd flinch of those vile, corrupt men were on fire before me.
There are other sides. In Waga, a town that lies both in India and Pakistan and is about 15 miles away from Lahore, one of Pakistan's three largest cities and my hometown, Pakistani and Indian Rangers perform a ceremony to lower the national flags before sunset. Every evening they act out an elaborate display of anger, perfectly timed and coordinated: what the Pakistani soldiers are doing on our side is being replicated by the Indian soldiers on the other side of the painted white line. There are stadium style seats on either side where people come to watch the display, shouting slogans and things as if they were at a cricket match. There is a whole lot of stomping and slamming of the gates once the flags are lowered and it is all wonderfully orchestrated. If you happen to glance at the adjacent field, beyond the tent where invited guests are being served tea, you'll notice a heavily armed barbed wire fence for as far as your eye can see, betraying the reality of parody before you. I've seen this a few times as it is always a lot of fun to watch the crowds get riled up and it's an excuse to get out and enjoy a beautiful sunset and perhaps steal some breezes from the searing heat. The last time I went left me speechless. My cousins' grandfather was also a Brig in the army and had crossed the border a number of times with truckloads of families seeking asylum at that very point in 1947, when one country became two. He is extremely weak as a series of degenerative illnesses have wreaked havoc on his body. He insisted that he walk from the car on his own, his first return since his initial crossing. He watched the ceremony with as much salute as his body would allow and absolutely lost it when the Rangers lined up to salute him. I will dig up my pictures from this and post them at some point though I don't think I could ever do that moment justice. I think it is these experiences that prevent me from accepting my present tribulations as anything more than a joke. People overcome intense trials every single day, all over the world. That's what life is. That stark reality makes my life seem like such a joke. I bitch and moan all the time, but when it comes down to it everything around me is so artificial. I am grateful, but I can't help but remember that none of this is real. The real world is very far away.
Cheers for the recommendation igm. On to The Life of Pi.
There are other sides. In Waga, a town that lies both in India and Pakistan and is about 15 miles away from Lahore, one of Pakistan's three largest cities and my hometown, Pakistani and Indian Rangers perform a ceremony to lower the national flags before sunset. Every evening they act out an elaborate display of anger, perfectly timed and coordinated: what the Pakistani soldiers are doing on our side is being replicated by the Indian soldiers on the other side of the painted white line. There are stadium style seats on either side where people come to watch the display, shouting slogans and things as if they were at a cricket match. There is a whole lot of stomping and slamming of the gates once the flags are lowered and it is all wonderfully orchestrated. If you happen to glance at the adjacent field, beyond the tent where invited guests are being served tea, you'll notice a heavily armed barbed wire fence for as far as your eye can see, betraying the reality of parody before you. I've seen this a few times as it is always a lot of fun to watch the crowds get riled up and it's an excuse to get out and enjoy a beautiful sunset and perhaps steal some breezes from the searing heat. The last time I went left me speechless. My cousins' grandfather was also a Brig in the army and had crossed the border a number of times with truckloads of families seeking asylum at that very point in 1947, when one country became two. He is extremely weak as a series of degenerative illnesses have wreaked havoc on his body. He insisted that he walk from the car on his own, his first return since his initial crossing. He watched the ceremony with as much salute as his body would allow and absolutely lost it when the Rangers lined up to salute him. I will dig up my pictures from this and post them at some point though I don't think I could ever do that moment justice. I think it is these experiences that prevent me from accepting my present tribulations as anything more than a joke. People overcome intense trials every single day, all over the world. That's what life is. That stark reality makes my life seem like such a joke. I bitch and moan all the time, but when it comes down to it everything around me is so artificial. I am grateful, but I can't help but remember that none of this is real. The real world is very far away.
Cheers for the recommendation igm. On to The Life of Pi.
Wednesday, February 9
Step up
I've just had my arse handed to me on a plate. I tried my hand at Bikram Yoga and survived maybe 20 minutes. The room was heated to 110F and after my initial bout of enthusiasm I found that staying vertical was no longer an option. A dismal failure, but I couldn't bring myself to leave. Instead I lay down for a few minutes then got back up to try again and again my head said no and so back to the ground I went. I stopped being embarrassed about 45 minutes in as I just didn't have a choice, and I realized that I just didn't care what anyone else thought. That was a bit of a release, but still felt like a total wuss. Definitely not was I was expecting as I used to do Vinyasa power yoga in a heated room fairly regularly when I was at university and didn't think that this would be too different. That was in a room at about 80F which is manageable, tonight I just couldn't breathe. It didn't matter that I am running farther and faster than ever, and am becoming stronger than ever in the gym. In there I was a total loss. So now this is my challenge. I'm going to be so proud of myself if I can achieve here and really can't wait to go back. I will drink about 4 litres of water beforehand and bring another 10 with me. I spoke to the instructor on the way out and she said that there is no room for ego in this practice. Now, if you've read anything that I have written you're pretty well aware that my head is pretty far up my own bum. Arrogance is a familiar term and while I know it, I've come to accept it.. vicious circle I suppose. I'd say that is why I have been able to push myself on the treadmill: I always try to use one next to one of the regular runners and push myself to where she is; or outside of fitness, I am always looking for someone better than me who I can learn from. Stupid and petty probably but I wouldn't get anywhere otherwise. The kind of fitness I'd achieve through this would be pretty exciting. In all, at least I won't be bored.
Monday, February 7
Poetry
"From Glacier Point one sees a grand contorted display of the power of water and gravity - water the chisel and gravity the hammer, and the sculptor your notion of the originator of all things"
-William Least Heat-Moon in National Geographic, January 2005
Tuesday, February 1
French
What is it about Vincent Cassel that makes him so unbelievably attractive? The eyes? The hair? Maybe it's the French. I think it's this glint he carries sometimes.. just makes you (me) want to be in on whatever it is that's making him smirk. Of course there's no contest when it comes to the ape, who is in a different class altogether. But I certainly am enjoying the view.
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