Does watching creative people and music and programmes on telly make you feel creative?
Or am I so desperate to make meaning into my life and to 'get on with it' that I've superficially imbibed the creativity and energy of the Aag TV VJs and Indus News reporters, only to later crash and fizzle out without a sound, only to end up on the trash heap of wannabes-but-never-were-because-they-were-too-stupid-and-lazy-and-fucked-up?
I had a dream-like epiphany this morning which made feel all author-like and wanting to write a novel about my depression, and then to make a film, all the while incorporating Jungian MBTI and enneagram types. And then I realised there is no way I can do that. This personality thing cannot be brought to the silver screen and explored and presented perfectly in just two hours, or even three. Well, maybe three. But it's not as though I am capable of writing a screenplay.
And then I watched this programme on Indus News about the class system that is being perpetuated by the two-tier system of government schools and private schools. And people kept saying, Pakistan's resource is in its people and I felt like screaming - "I want to be one of them" - but how can I be?
It's all a dream, this saviour-type, Jeanne d'Arc desire to swoop in and save the rest of humanity (or an uneducated populace, in this case) by teaching them, devising a good curriculum, training the right people to educe. I can't be a teacher. See, I say it, but I cannot come up with an alternative.
The difference entre moi et Mohandas Gandhi, Jeanne d'Arc and Diana Spencer is that they stood up and did something. I can't bloody well say - oh, I'm only 24 years old, Diana didn't do anything until she was at least thirty, the same for Gandhi. Jeanne d'Arc probably was burnt at the stake at 24. Let me verify the age. She was 19. Bloody hell.
And I am beginning to realise that I have lived my eleven years in this city, blind as a bat. I have had or have been exposed to (depending on how generous I am feeling towards my mother) to such a limited spectrum of experiences, and they have been mostly terrifying and soul-killing and stressful, that I just assumed that because this is the Pakistan I experienced, this is all there is to the entire country; that is has nothing to offer to me. Or that whatever it has to offer is still inferior to what I left behind à l'Occident.
Or maybe, you're trying so hard to master the skills of eating and socializing and crushing and school and familial relations and stuff that you really aren't ready to understand even if you were bashed on the head with a wet, cold fish and Socrates is shouting at you: Open your eyes and see! Look at the world! See what it has to offer! The potential is all in you. Grasp it, mould it, make it part of You and then dazzle the world.
As they said in Akeelah and the Bee:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
We ask ourselves: Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
(Marianne Williamson)
Or as Wordsworth has told us:
To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an Hour...
(Auguries of Innocence)
But I have such a philistine family. They talk about 'survival' and 'do what has to be done' and 'practicalities'. And although I KNOW that musical instruments and everything associated with them are haraam and therefore should be discouraged; although it is clear that creativity and vitality and life and evolution CAN be acquired through means of meditation and prayer and philosophy and everything else that is halaal and available to us, I feel somewhat cheated that everything I tried to do which was creative was stunted by my Guardian parents.
But what can one do now? I am trying to educate myself; unlearning the things that do not work for me and learning the things that I should have known years ago.
To me, it feels I am stagnating. But I wish to put a positive spin on it. It depresses me each time I say the word. I wish to say that I am just germinating before the genius is complete to show itself. I always come back to the same refrain: I know that I was put here on Earth to accomplish something great, not only for myself, but for others. And yet, how can there reside in my heart this abhorrence to interact with those humans, while feeling an inexpressible urge to give myself up in the Quest for Him and bring everyone along with me?
What I now need to establish is how a catalyst ends up becoming one. I mean, magnesium oxide (was it?) is formed when Mg and O combine in compound form. So, what is my Mg and O and what is the process by which I shall become MgO and what changes will I bring about?
I still feel I need an Outer prophet to guide the Inner prophet. In fact, it makes a whole lot more sense now that I have written it down. As much as I would like to fool myself into thinking that since I am the catalyst, I shall be able to figure it out on my own, it's not possible.I am behind emotionally, spiritually and mentally and experientially. I need my little Visionary or perhaps another Catalyst to help me out.
And all my dearie Travis is doing is sitting on his bum somewhere, not giving a damn and probably doesn't even realize that I exist somewhere. What a turd.
This brings me to my obsession with finding him and getting married. There's no point in going all hormonal desperado when there's not a thing I am doing or can do right now. Not for another two weeks and then for how long? I hate these bloody hormones.
I would have made an excellent angel. I think I'd love to do sajdah. Or bring rizq to people. Or take their du'a to Allah. Oh yeah, I'd love that job. If I was a high ranking one, I might be able to do all three. Ah, lucky angels with jobs and a reason for living.
If I am so snobbish as to not want to live in Karachi, then I am not going to find him here, am I? And looking for him on the Internet is a dud. Well, at least I tried it. It made me feel... abhorrent to myself, somehow. After all, that's not real. Well, not for me, at least.
Going back, for some reason, my 4 enneagram preferences have meant that I make everything Pakistani inferior. When it's the actual opposite. The people who come up with ideas like Aag Shorts, and the music and the spoofs of the power-sharing of Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari - that's utter genius.
And yet... I still feel so inferior. I just have no self-esteem. None at all. More than, let's say 5 years ago, definitely - but I lose it so quickly and seems to slide back into my foetal position, defenceless against the cruelties of this world. I just feel useless, without talent. Why is it always me who has to stop, take it in for ages, have a little start, then so again? This is a complaint at my own self, for not being 'that'. And always being different, always feeling different - in that bubble.
I feel now that the bubble has been torn away by my soul's frantic clawing to get out of this - space - I have no bubble left. That's why I flirt with my 18 year-old cousin, with whom I have no chance in Hell, that's why I become obsessed with finding my Soul and giving myself to him. That's why I spend day in, day out in this House of Horrors, with the family recycling the same attitudes and dialogues for me to digest and regurgitate.
That's why I hit my father. I had no bubble left.
And what seems half the time to be an asset, the perception that I have no affiliation with any culture as such and am therefore am a free-spirit, there is a sense of loss because I can't relate to anyone. But then again, I do have a culture. It's the post-modern culture and no one knows where they stand, really. And after all, us introverts have the tendency to feel like aliens who have come to observe the antics of the Earthlings. That is a pithy idea I picked up from one of those many introvert/INFP websites. I find it so heartening that I like to visualise it.
But it doesn't make me feel any more like a whole person.
Or am I so desperate to make meaning into my life and to 'get on with it' that I've superficially imbibed the creativity and energy of the Aag TV VJs and Indus News reporters, only to later crash and fizzle out without a sound, only to end up on the trash heap of wannabes-but-never-were-because-they-were-too-stupid-and-lazy-and-fucked-up?
I had a dream-like epiphany this morning which made feel all author-like and wanting to write a novel about my depression, and then to make a film, all the while incorporating Jungian MBTI and enneagram types. And then I realised there is no way I can do that. This personality thing cannot be brought to the silver screen and explored and presented perfectly in just two hours, or even three. Well, maybe three. But it's not as though I am capable of writing a screenplay.
And then I watched this programme on Indus News about the class system that is being perpetuated by the two-tier system of government schools and private schools. And people kept saying, Pakistan's resource is in its people and I felt like screaming - "I want to be one of them" - but how can I be?
It's all a dream, this saviour-type, Jeanne d'Arc desire to swoop in and save the rest of humanity (or an uneducated populace, in this case) by teaching them, devising a good curriculum, training the right people to educe. I can't be a teacher. See, I say it, but I cannot come up with an alternative.
The difference entre moi et Mohandas Gandhi, Jeanne d'Arc and Diana Spencer is that they stood up and did something. I can't bloody well say - oh, I'm only 24 years old, Diana didn't do anything until she was at least thirty, the same for Gandhi. Jeanne d'Arc probably was burnt at the stake at 24. Let me verify the age. She was 19. Bloody hell.
And I am beginning to realise that I have lived my eleven years in this city, blind as a bat. I have had or have been exposed to (depending on how generous I am feeling towards my mother) to such a limited spectrum of experiences, and they have been mostly terrifying and soul-killing and stressful, that I just assumed that because this is the Pakistan I experienced, this is all there is to the entire country; that is has nothing to offer to me. Or that whatever it has to offer is still inferior to what I left behind à l'Occident.
Or maybe, you're trying so hard to master the skills of eating and socializing and crushing and school and familial relations and stuff that you really aren't ready to understand even if you were bashed on the head with a wet, cold fish and Socrates is shouting at you: Open your eyes and see! Look at the world! See what it has to offer! The potential is all in you. Grasp it, mould it, make it part of You and then dazzle the world.
As they said in Akeelah and the Bee:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
We ask ourselves: Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
(Marianne Williamson)
Or as Wordsworth has told us:
To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an Hour...
(Auguries of Innocence)
But I have such a philistine family. They talk about 'survival' and 'do what has to be done' and 'practicalities'. And although I KNOW that musical instruments and everything associated with them are haraam and therefore should be discouraged; although it is clear that creativity and vitality and life and evolution CAN be acquired through means of meditation and prayer and philosophy and everything else that is halaal and available to us, I feel somewhat cheated that everything I tried to do which was creative was stunted by my Guardian parents.
But what can one do now? I am trying to educate myself; unlearning the things that do not work for me and learning the things that I should have known years ago.
To me, it feels I am stagnating. But I wish to put a positive spin on it. It depresses me each time I say the word. I wish to say that I am just germinating before the genius is complete to show itself. I always come back to the same refrain: I know that I was put here on Earth to accomplish something great, not only for myself, but for others. And yet, how can there reside in my heart this abhorrence to interact with those humans, while feeling an inexpressible urge to give myself up in the Quest for Him and bring everyone along with me?
What I now need to establish is how a catalyst ends up becoming one. I mean, magnesium oxide (was it?) is formed when Mg and O combine in compound form. So, what is my Mg and O and what is the process by which I shall become MgO and what changes will I bring about?
I still feel I need an Outer prophet to guide the Inner prophet. In fact, it makes a whole lot more sense now that I have written it down. As much as I would like to fool myself into thinking that since I am the catalyst, I shall be able to figure it out on my own, it's not possible.I am behind emotionally, spiritually and mentally and experientially. I need my little Visionary or perhaps another Catalyst to help me out.
And all my dearie Travis is doing is sitting on his bum somewhere, not giving a damn and probably doesn't even realize that I exist somewhere. What a turd.
This brings me to my obsession with finding him and getting married. There's no point in going all hormonal desperado when there's not a thing I am doing or can do right now. Not for another two weeks and then for how long? I hate these bloody hormones.
I would have made an excellent angel. I think I'd love to do sajdah. Or bring rizq to people. Or take their du'a to Allah. Oh yeah, I'd love that job. If I was a high ranking one, I might be able to do all three. Ah, lucky angels with jobs and a reason for living.
If I am so snobbish as to not want to live in Karachi, then I am not going to find him here, am I? And looking for him on the Internet is a dud. Well, at least I tried it. It made me feel... abhorrent to myself, somehow. After all, that's not real. Well, not for me, at least.
Going back, for some reason, my 4 enneagram preferences have meant that I make everything Pakistani inferior. When it's the actual opposite. The people who come up with ideas like Aag Shorts, and the music and the spoofs of the power-sharing of Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari - that's utter genius.
And yet... I still feel so inferior. I just have no self-esteem. None at all. More than, let's say 5 years ago, definitely - but I lose it so quickly and seems to slide back into my foetal position, defenceless against the cruelties of this world. I just feel useless, without talent. Why is it always me who has to stop, take it in for ages, have a little start, then so again? This is a complaint at my own self, for not being 'that'. And always being different, always feeling different - in that bubble.
I feel now that the bubble has been torn away by my soul's frantic clawing to get out of this - space - I have no bubble left. That's why I flirt with my 18 year-old cousin, with whom I have no chance in Hell, that's why I become obsessed with finding my Soul and giving myself to him. That's why I spend day in, day out in this House of Horrors, with the family recycling the same attitudes and dialogues for me to digest and regurgitate.
That's why I hit my father. I had no bubble left.
And what seems half the time to be an asset, the perception that I have no affiliation with any culture as such and am therefore am a free-spirit, there is a sense of loss because I can't relate to anyone. But then again, I do have a culture. It's the post-modern culture and no one knows where they stand, really. And after all, us introverts have the tendency to feel like aliens who have come to observe the antics of the Earthlings. That is a pithy idea I picked up from one of those many introvert/INFP websites. I find it so heartening that I like to visualise it.
But it doesn't make me feel any more like a whole person.
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