wrath and pride... my twin sins :)
then sloth and gluttony... don't remember what the others are...

well mr. psychiatrist... my father is the most intelligent and idealistic man i know (i don't know how he balances it).. my mother is the most scarily perceptive person i know.. the most intuitive.. and the nicest...
and the older i get the more i respect them.. and the more i find that people like them are rarer than ever

does that explain why i have issues with everyone i meet? does that explain my impossibly high standards? does explaining them really explain me?

yeah i didn't think so.

I never let it get out of hand, not even when I was drunk for dutch courage. Not even then. It was dark (he liked the lights out), and he licked my scar. All the way from top to bottom. And then my ear. It was fun.
I let him do that because he was cute, I was bored, it was about time. Single is a black label plastered to our sad, unhappy, angst ridden foreheads.
I spent the stupid un-sensible years of life being intelligent and sensible, and just as I relaxed my guard into the adulthood I relapse and get blindsided and turn into one peer pressured idiot cliché.
All because of that undesearving bastard.

I’m going to regret writing this in the morning. Oh well. Thats what happens when you have insomnia for so long i guess.

life is weird

we were sitting in the plane, and i was feeling gross because i ate cold pizza for breakfast, then found a hair in my food at Freddie's, then snacked on disgusting gogo club sandwiches. there was a bit of turbulence, and i was seated right next to the emergency exit and had to memorize the instructions in case we crashed and i had to rip off the emergency door (seriously! thats what the air hostess told me... serves me right for travelling with these new airlines.. what if i did that right then in some suicidal frenzy.. how would they stop me?). plus i was annoyed because i FINALLY for the first time EVER had a hot guy was sitting next to me (like.. one of those things you always want to happen but it never does) but my sister in a fit of untimely affection had done some complicated seat swap so i had to get up and go sit next to her (dammit). then she had nothing to read, so she started looking over my shoulder to read my cosmo article on the different types of orgasms that there are, which was too weird so i had to flip to a more kosher page.
so there i was pissed off and nauseous, not able to read what i wanted to read, when she suddenly shot up straight, and looked funny. Like you would if you were passing gass or something. a really introspective kind of expression, like she was looking inward. so obviously her madly-in-love-with-her husband jumps up with some kind of psychic radar and leans over, and then they kind of giggle and whisper together in some totally revolting moment. and i'm trying not to notice but hello we're in a plane so go get a room or something, but then she looks over, grabs my hand, and puts it on her little belly.

and i feel a little kick.

i was three and a half, and my mother asked me if i wanted to feel my little brother kicking. i was holding my milk bottle (hmM three seems kind of old to have a bottle.. but anyway) and i nodded, and reached up so i could touch her belly. her hand dwarfed mine as she held it against one spot, and sure enough, my little brother was playing soccer in there.

i obviously didn't go near my other sister in her i'm-a-psycho-bitch-and-i-will-kill-you pregnancy, so i guess this kind of came at me from no where.

men have it so easy. they can pee standing up (esp useful during camping) and don't have to have to worry about some kind of virtual death sentence to have babies. i don't think i can ever have children. i won't ever look serene and bautiful or have that glow. i'd probably be throwing up all the time. plus 9 months is a bloody long time, and 9 pounds is a REALLY huge size to come out of such a tiny place. but then again i never thought i'd have the surgery, and here i am with titanium rods in my spine. life is weird like that sometimes.

happiness is a nando's chocolate cake

The sedative has made the world pleasantly numb, the strep throat a distant burn, the coughing finally soothed. I close my eyes, and the world spins happily, lazily, like it should. I’ll spiral to pleasant oblivion soon, like i should.
I sit here contentedly, the deadline at 9:00 am tomorrow a lazy excel file too far away to care.
A distant part of me wonders why our souls scratch and claw our way up in every day life. Why everything should be so frantic, so stressful, so full of disquiet and fraught with itchy emotion. Why do I reach so far so high so fast? My body lies broken by the way side, long discarded because it couldn’t keep up. Yet I continue on, running the race, sinew muscle worn down to bone, eyes drooping heavy, key board blurring, writing, writing, writing. Till my being shrinks as consciousness wanes, till my vision tunnels, till my mind can only hang onto one last shred of thought, and still, still that one question of why remains, the one question that seems to haunt me to the furthest recesses of my being, to the frontiers and backwaters of what defines me.

but stiff upper lip jeeves, chop chop, tally ho lad, etc etc.

how can it have been a year? i still refer to her in present tense.

we've only been in this city for two waking hours and three of us have
fallen sick. I can feel my strep throat burn little holes in my
tonsils, and every time i close my eyes a wave of black dizziness
threatens to overwhelm.

i have a deadline on monday. i have stuff to do. lots of it. and so
many things to read. my mind feels like wool filled jelly, expanded to encapsulate so many horizons its difficult to concentrate on excel
files.

we landed and there was a little turbulence. A beautiful arc of fork
lightening connecting to the ground for one brilliant second to
welcome us as we stepped into the waiting car.

my little brother's "bachlor pad" is suddenly inundated with family.
i'm sharing his room, haha. he screams like a little girl every time
he finds some "revolting feminine looking thing" in his personal
space. haha.

my father and sister argue behind me somewhere, over which supara to read. the maulvi's and relatives drone together in monotonous voices in the next room.

tensions are high. we're all trying to avoid the emotional deluge. my father sits a little apart, battling hard, battling silently, and battling alone. like the rest of us. sitting like zombies in a very crowded house full of memories.

but stiff upper lip jeeves, chop chop, tally ho lad, etc etc.

All ye still young enough to believe, still young enough to have that ever terrible emotion of hope, still young enough to look forward to an undefined future, to be ever aware of the eternal possibility of fulfilling the what if’s your lives: read on.

Reality is crushing. It’s a brutal tidal wave that drowns out individuality, it’s a land slide that smothers spontaneity, it’s the gale force wind that smashes your being into fragments.

Graduating is like being hurled into a black abyss. Your life flashes before you, almost tangible, echo’s still present in your bedroom, taunting. The first teenage phase of bouncing off the boundaries not your own, of hatred, passion and rebellion. Then the college phase, growing into your skin, silently screaming, whispering aloud, shouting across a quad and not caring how odd your voice sounds. Closing your eyes and discovering the voice that whispers inside, the voice that defines a ‘you’, a you finally understood. Of screaming out loud your inner being, throwing it out to peers with a bravery you never thought you possessed, being accepted, even successful.
Approaching the end with the last arrogant vestige of youth, facing your question mark of a future and tackling your resume job interview prep like you would write your 7000 word essay which is now a three hour process because you have the formula down pat.

Then realize that corporate life and academia are worlds apart. You struggle, naïve, idealistic, enthusiastic, trying to apply your essay writing formulas and your all nighter skills to getting volume of work done so you can get graded. Then settle in, understand the slow motion lifestyle that everyone works in, understand why work stops at work and should never be bought home, realize that this is not something that will end in a semester or a quarter, this is it, this is going to be happening for as long as the path stretches before you. You understand this is not a 50 meter sprint, it’s a long distance marathon instead, and all your skills, all your motivation, all your formula’s are for the wrong race. You plough on, slowly steadily, running, running, running.
You’re tired, crushed under the monotony and the repetition, the politics and the blue smoke exhumed by carcinogenic lungs.
You look up one day, and realize that the collar that chafed is unnoticeable. That the invisible shackles you forgot about are still binding you to your ankle chains.
You try to rebel, but its too late. You’re all alone, you’ve been assimilated into a faceless entity that is an adult, your life has ended and society has taken over.

And you’re too tired to care.

All you can do is write your mediocre blog, in memory of the what ifs you could have had, of the what ifs you could have been.

(this is a sequel to the untitled story written on Saturday, Febuary 19, 2005)

She comes in, and I immeditely know she’s different from the string of begums I’ve seen who are looking for revenge on cheating husbands. The Light is blinding in her, I could probably have seen it without the nine kajal rings that circle my eyes.

My Siqats scream in terror and hide under every available surface to escape from her aura. The Afrit* trapped in the Numaish-e-Sitara on the ceiling spreads its wings and strains past the blank painted walls of the pentagram that contain it.

She doesn’t even realize the chaos she’s created in the fifth dimension. Ripples of it echo into our world, creating goosebumps on her arms. The Ceflox on her shoulders flaps its wings frantically, keeping the hissing demons at bay. She sits serenely, unpreturbed at the table, waiting for her palm reading, ignorant.

I decide to part the curtain and enter, before my Afrit breaks the strands that bind it to the world. It took me seven years to get it there, and this skinny reed of an untrained girl manages to come in and almost undo all my work. I’ve never seen anyone with such a powerful aura before, and I’m a little apprehensive. I wear the amulet with the six runes of N’atiahs for protection from the Ceflox just in case. I must find out why the Powers have made our paths cross. I will make her regret upsetting my little pets.

“You’ll regret it beta” I tell the girl, but I intend it for the Ceflox. The girl is startled, the words register and echo through to the Ceflox. It quivers and contains itself. It knows who’s in power here.

I light my candle quickly, so the smell can sooth the Afrit and my other little pets. I trace the patterns of N’amahs in the air, and the walls between the dimensions blur. To my surprise, the girl reacts to the Changing. She starts as if she sees the fifth dimention. She peers confusedly at the walls, and the Siqats freeze in terror as her gaze passes over them. Who is this girl? She bears no marks, no runes, nothing that explains her powers. I must do something immediately.

I sit next to her, and the Afrit speaks up suddenly. “She is ignorant! Bind her!”, it screams. The Siqats come running. I hold her palm, and in the other dimension, the Ceflox screams in pain. But it is helpless, bound by the stupid rules of the Light, confined to the dimensions and too brainless to know it should break them. One of my Siqats plucks a hair from her head, another fills the Bowl of Whispers with rat blood. She sits ignorantly staring at me, and I almost laugh in relief. To think I was worried! I hold her palm, and offer it to my favorite pet. Delighted, it takes a bite, its first snack in ninety years.
The girl screams, and the Ceflox rises off her shoulders, something I haven’t seen in even the greatest of wizards in the last ninty nine years. The Siqats all squeal and run, but the Ceflox manages to catch the one with the bloody teeth. It touches it with one silver wing, and my little pet evaporates in a flash of smoke. The ritual is still incomplete!
The Ceflox stands guard at the door and faces the Afrit, each only a hairsbreath apart. I have to act quickly. I drink her blood, sealing her compliance and feel the amulet start to hum. The Ceflox collapses to the floor. The threads binding the Afrit are secure, at least for now. I take the rat blood, hold it to her lips. She screams, and calls the Guardian to save her. But rules are rules, and she is bound by the oath of her blood. She must do as I say. “Drink it”. Her mouth opens, and the red splashes into the mouth of the Ceflox. It screams again.

As always after the advent of rat blood, her soul opens, Ceflox and girl unite, and the walls of the seventh dimension open. I drink from the power, and laugh at what fools mortals be. I taste eternity, see beyond the veil of time. I see N’ataihs himself. I see the girl and her future, I see her downfall. I see her path of white turn to black, and I see how I can point her to it. “You’ll find him soon” I say. N’ataihs laughs. The walls close, the candle gutters. I recline back to my world, sated.

The Afrit laughs, triumphant. The Ceflox, its eyes bleeding, its aura dulled to a pasty transluscent shimmer, crawls on broken wings to the door. The girls gets up, slowly walks out.

I see her friends surround her. Stupid insignificant children, playing with worlds they have no knowedge of. I can still hear N’atiahs laughing across the dimensions.

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

*"Afrit" is a term borrowed heavily from "Amulet of Samarkand"

She was due any minute, and she was cranky as hell.
We’d gone for dessert because she was craving chocolate cake, and we fought on the way back. She scratched my arm till it bled, and I regressed to being 12 and hating her and crying screaming vented to my other sister on the phone. Bitch.

She went into labor a day later, and I knew without anyone telling me because I woke up to sounds outside my door, and then later my mother running in and out of my room to get something from the bathroom.

I had a dream that it was a girl, not a boy as the ultrasounds had shown. I remember we were all in her inlaws type house somewhere, together, looking at the new baby, and I was asking her how it turned out to be a girl and not a boy. “IA’s stupid wussy gene’s you know. So typical” she said, as bitchy, irritable and derogatory as ever. The baby, it was a little cherub with wings and wise eyes a thousand years old. She looks at me, and I feel a spark of recognition. I remember hugging her, feeling her fat cheek on my own and closing my eyes because of the overwhelmed love. They tell me to take her for a walk outside. I’m barefoot, the driveway is drenched in sunlight, and its so bright I can’t see. Ama is there. I think, but she’s dead, and a small part of me realizes its all a dream. Ama – my daadi – is there to see the new born. I give the baby to her, and they walk into the light. They walk to the gate, and then Ama turns around, comes back, and gives her to me. I’m in the shadow of the porch, I don’t want to go barefoot into the sunbaked concrete. We stand there for a second, three generations, three snapshots in time. One unborn, one living, one dead. The light, its so bright when I close my eyes I can feel the baby breathe, I can see my grandmother’s sight from beyond the veil, can feel my heart churn out blood to my living arteries. I hear my mother calling for us, so I turn around and then go back to the dark and close the door behind me.

I wake up to the 5 a.m. phone call “it’s a boy!”. My father, I can’t recognize his voice because its got an alien ring of excitement, ecstacy, and total awed thrill of a first time grandparent.

I go to the hospital an hour later, and I fall in love. My very own brand new nephew, a miracle in the flesh. I look at his little furry head, and his adorable hands and feet, and I vow to fight dragons for this child, to slay playground bullies, to clean his poop and walk him at 2 a.m. Surrendering to total unconditional love, to light, to all that is good and beautiful in the world, I hold him for the first time, and press his swollen cheek to mine, and feel an echo of familiarity, of eternity.

remember?

(i have 10 minutes before my self appointed break is over - i *hate* studying, i loathe it, i thought i had put it all behind me two years ago. figures, fate is bound to bite the ass that isn't looking. anyway)

i've forgotten what its like to be a child. for the longest time i had one foot in the adult world, but could also look back, easing into the black and white world of simplicity. i don't remember that anymore.
i can't:
- meet people and be confident they'll find me adorable
- play outside
- paint on walls and not care about what my mother would say
- wear skirts in broad day light
- eat the filthiest crap from the khoka walla's outside school and not worry about hep C
- get a 10 on 10 after i worked hard for a test
- get a star if i colored in my homework
- talk on the phone for 5 hours at a stretch
- hate my parents passionately and whole heartedly
- love my parents passionately and whole heartedly
- escape to my best friend's house when things got bad at home
- wake up whenever i felt like during vacations
- be giddy with excitement with something as silly as going to the park for a "field trip"
- love reading for the sake of reading, not do it to escape the world /procrastinate
- watch each and every single movie that got released no matter how bad it was
- drive my pink bike and let go of the handle bars
- be afraid of the dark
- believe i was friends with a jinn (a little weird but whatever)
- believe in the toothfairy/magic in general

(oops - times up... but i guess the list could go on and on if i let it.. oh well)

It was a series of impossible events, I got the car in the middle of the day when I wasn’t expecting it, my boss stepped out for an unexpected meeting during lunch so I could take off for half an hour, and on the way back the road that’s always blindingly empty was clogged with trucks and containers because Musharraf or S. Aziz was passing by exactly at that time. And my CD was stuck, so I was forced to listen to FM, which I never do usually. I heard the most hauntingly beautiful Sarah Mclachlan-like voice singing a cover of Hallelujah. Stuck there in a God forsaken traffic jam in the middle of Karachi heat with my boss tapping her foot waiting for my write-up, I forgot everything. Her voice is the closest thing to the transcendental experiences that Blake and the Metaphysical's talk about. I’m thrilled that Pakistan has such a person to boast off (its about time!) I wish Arooj Aftab the best of luck in whatever she plans to do, she deserves it. This story, in a weird way, was inspired by the song. The plot itself has no connection whatsoever to the song or the singer, so don’t look for any.

Soulmate

She sits in the dark, the solitary lamp throwing harsh shadows on her face, waiting, listening.

The room is huge, with a high ceiling, a wooden floor and echoes of library shelves in the shadows. She sits in a leather armchair in the center, with a gramophone by her side. She stares at nothing, just listening to one song. Again. And again. And yet again. Till the grooves are scratched and the needle blunt. And she continues listening, straining. Hoping.
She’s knows there’s something in the music, a sign, salvation. But no matter how many times she replays it, there is nothing but the same old guitar strains. But every time it ends, she picks up her skeletal, fleshless arm, replaces the needle to the groove. And with the start of each note, she listens with renewed hope, simply knowing that this one might be the right time, and the eons would be worth it.

She sits in the dark, the solitary lamp throwing harsh shadows on her face, waiting, listening.

spring cleaning

i'm supposed to be "studying" but decided to spring clean my blog. i'm exhausted and still not finished :/

you know you're in trouble when...

work rocks. never EVER thought i'd say that. can't stop grinning.

theres just something about frantic deadline filled days. squashing four days work into one, having that coffee on your desk but not having time to reach over and drink it, from remembering to do even the little things without compromising on quality, and just looking damn hot the whole day while you're at it.

:)

how far down we can bungee jump without breaking the cord? do we keep trying one more foot at a time? or do we just say fuck it all, lets just tie the whole length of rope and throw ourselves into the abyss?

there's always an excuse to lose oneself in depravity. theres always the daily monotony, there's always the shrieking screaming fights that shake our foundations and push us into the blackness.

we will all reach a pinnacle, the day we grow up, the day we realize that there'll always be temptation to fall, temptation to slide down the easy path, but what truely defines us will be the instances where we don't, the instances where we choose to crawl up on broken knees to the path less trodden, the path of princeples, the path of moral integrity.

history is a patient teacher.

i think i have a procrastination disease. its been a slow downward spiral starting from o levels to date, and a year ago i decided that this was it, i can't cure it i just have to adapt my life to it. this is easy to do in a corporate world environment where i'm pretty much 150 time more productive than most people anyway. in the last company i worked in, a couple of months before i gave in my regination and accepted this job i was so sick of the corporate bullshit and putting in 10 hour days and reaching near breakdown, i opted for the do-nothing-past-4:30 pm policy. any work i got, i did all the ground work immediately by 12 pm, then spent till 4 doing the extra jobs, phone calls, editing stuff. and it still worked as well, and i still reached my deadlines before anyone else. since when does pulling out an article from the internet take 3 days? corporate people annoy me.

what if?

i can't reread my blog. the one or two times that i've tried, i end up noticing all the spelling mistakes and awkward wording and the final product is so rehashed i just end up deleting the whole damn thing. so instead of going through the entire painful exercise, i just don't read anything i've written. for the most part anyway.

anyway. the topic of today ladies and gentlemen.

what if i quit my job tomorrow. what if i started my own business, my clothing line, my column, my own glossy magazine, my own art gallery. what if started taking my art classes, writing my book, taking salsa lessons and working out daily. what if i got healthier and happier and started socializing again, stopped being bored with the small talk and frustrated with the lack of anything to do. what if i took a vacation, starting from visiting M in new york, S in london, gucci in milan? what if i organized modelling shows, what if i did the event management i used to be so good at? what if i went for my masters in journalism, what if i went for a fashion design degree at FIT, or the art degree from Slade? what about my philosophy masters, my number theory masters, my pandering to every absolute whim and actually following through without all the mental turmoil?

would i be happy then? or would i just find out that with the more i do and the more i seek, the less i find? would i just be even more cynical and jaded, having filled out all the blanks in my life and realizing my life is still a blank?

analysis paralysis. too much thought leads to inaction. unfortunately for the intelligent, there are very few ways to silence the voices screaming in our heads all the time.

doogie howser

why doesn't pakistan have its own genius children to brag about? why aren't there news stories about 4 year olds who can multiply 6 digit math numbers in their head? as a nation are we stupid?

Q: if there was such an aformentioned prodigy, what would happen to them?

A: rich; they'd be sent abroad: poor; ignored, whelped and made to beg at the local street corner.

genius and practicality rarely mix. maybe we're just a giant country of untapped potential. maybe the aunty next door negotiating tailor rates actually has an IQ of 300. maybe the buswalla passing my car knows that one physics theory everyone has been searching for for centuries. maybe we go through our lives trying so hard to blend in, so hard to adapt to the rules, so hard to live up the labels slapped on our foreheads since birth that we forget to reach as high and as hard as we can, and in doing so actually achieve something orignal, something beyond medocrity. maybe one day we'll break through our internalized colonial shackles and actually stop running to easier lives abroad and choose to dig in the trenches that will make our country what it could actually become.

till that day, i guess i'll just keep numbing myself to reality as much as possible. i'll continue to do the minimum possible work and "get by" the job and life that i hate. i'll continue to sit by the phone and wait for miserable excrement that are men to make my life complete so i can procreate and eventually fulfill the destiny that was slapped on in small print in my birth contract.

but until that time, from the land of untapped doogie howsers, child protegies and stephan hawkins' this is Ms. Feet signing out.

let them eat cake

i'm bored, but not bored enough to be enthused by some "cocktail" party i have to go to tonight. not that pathetic yet. feel sorry for the person who actually came up with the idea, then implemented it, and for all the idiots who'll probably think its the coolest thing since sliced cheese.

as a social demographic we leave much to be desired.

shit.

why did i read that scrap. why did i go to the profile. why do i feel so gypped. why do i feel jealous? its been forever. why did i just have to remember everything. why why why WHY WHY.
MTHRFUCKERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

its not like a healthy person trapped in a body that doesn't work. thats how old age impacts, not sickness, sugery and recovery.

when you suddenly get hurtled into post operative care, you're drugged. not the flimsy joint by the bonfire kind of drugs, the real heavy duty ones with the self righteousness of pain relief and medical care behind them. you're dreaming constantly, the mind over active as every other sense numbs and turns inwards.

and you mostly have nightmares. waking ones. the ones where you stare at the orange duvet cover, hoping praying staring that you won't get sucked down, but you feel yourself suddenly turning somersaults and silently screaming in terror because you're still awake, you know it can't happen, but it is.

you have sleeping nightmares too. but those stretch out the time. every second ticks by in an hour. till you pray for sleep. till you'll do just about anything for oblivion. but that doesn't work either. because the second the blackness closes in, you're choking, you're being raped, you're being held down and if only you could gesture to the mother or sister sitting by your bedside they'd just wake you up and you'd be ok, but you can't, you're screaming and they can't here you, they want you to sleep and get some rest and not wake up in only five seconds.

you remember strange things in your waking dreams. you say out loud the entire monologue by jon luc picard at the beginning of star trek. you remember that one story read to you when you were three and scream out in your sleep that bloodcats are following you. you mentally solve three times crossward puzzles with your mother only reading out the clues.

every sense is heightened. when a finger accidently brushes you when checking bandages, its like someone took a pickaxe and severed your spinal cord. when someone brushes past your bed, its like you're an empty vessel, and every organ inside you rattles around deafening you.

when you laugh, its the worst. you feel like you're being stabbed with daggers, and the pain is so much that you think that this is it, you're going to die, but you've already inhaled and all that air has to come out and your brain signals don't know they have to stop and you exhale and laugh and cry with pain at the same time.

laughter the best medicine my ass.

then you're made to stand up, and you gasp because the wind gets knocked out of you the second your bare feet hit the cold floor. the room spins and you feel yourself go white, feel your life shrink to the two hands holding your arms.

then you sit up for the first time for ten seconds, then throw up and faint.

then you twitch for the next twelve hours, because your throw up included the muscle relaxant you needed to keep your muscles in check. the sedative makes you sleep, the twitching wakes you up every ten seconds. for twelve hours. you fall asleep every eleventh second because your body is exhausted, and you dream of flying through the air, then falling, then jerking awake. the jerk is your muscles reacting to the lack of relaxant. its so toxic the doctors are afraid to give you another dose.

then you slowly start talking. start singing with your dad for an entire afternoon and the nurses grinning and joining in when ever they come to check your blood pressure and medicatin levels every hour.

then you start getting embarrassed. embarrassed about the hospital gowns that you left wide open and didn't give a secnd thought to. embarrassed about the sponge baths, which you were too sick to notice before.

then you start getting hungry. but the staff makes your favourite food, and even though you're ravenous you can only be fed two bites before you get sick again.

then you start getting angry. angry at lying there stuck in a bloody bed with incompetant idiots surrounding you. angry at your irritating family who have no idea what the hell its like. angry at the doctor and his cheerful prognoses when you don't feel well and you don't feel better and you don't think it was a good idea to go through with the operation.

then you get so angry, that you stop waiting for the incompetant staff to help you out of bed and support you as you hobble your two steps daily. you push yourself up, grunting, spitting, drooling and sweating as your mother tells you to stop or you'll hurt your self, as you grip the hand rails till your knuckles go white so you don't pass out, till you take that first damn step in the walker all on your own and your mother cries because she thinks you're going to fall down before the nurses can come and help you.

and all that is just the hospital stay.

it gets worse when you get home.

remembered the randomest things while doing some very boring work. laughed out loud and made my cubical mate think i was insane

when?

when do we start questioning good intentions? when do we become cynical and hardened? when do we suddenly look at our actions and realize how far we have lost our way? when is the point when we look up and not recognize the pustulent monsters we have become?

is it after the point where we actually say "i am now a grownup". is it when we say "this is the real world". where we realize "the real world sucks, is this all there is to it?".

or is it when we get back into the hamster wheel that is our lives and finally realize that we're going in circles, that nothing is changing but our own perceptions of the view.

or is it when we get dizzy and fall, then dutifully climb back on because we can't take it, can't take facing our own mediocrity, can't take facing the fact that we'll never make the difference we want to make, that we'll never be able to actually do anything in the real world, because the real world isn't some reality show, its not something that can be taught in four years of hellish classrooms, that it doesn't come with a manual, that no matter how many books you read or how learned you are, that no matter what your IQ or what your EQ, no matter what your parents try to teach you, no matter how much your friends try to council you, you'll never learn, you'll never get it, you'll never be able to really get it, you'll never be able to understand it, you'll never own it, you'll never find the permanance and the satisfaction because its very nature is impermanance and dissatisfaction.

we are all just transient expendible pieces of fluff, insignificant, pathetic and mortal.

we are all just bound and gagged in a cave, staring at shadows cast by life.

we are all just miserable, inadequate players, strutting and fretting our acts on stage, full of sound and fury, signifying a big fat spitting nothing.