As I finally put the book down, I can once again feel my heartbeat pacing at a much quicker pace.
The voices whisper, "call me by my name" and once again the thought slides across my brain, the part that is always comparing my life and creative force with that of others. I really wish I had come up with that concept and that title myself and had written a most beautiful work of fiction that would give honour to the beauty that the words emanate and pulsate out whenever I read them or speak them aloud.
Something very physiological has occurred to my brain with this book, this story, painstakingly written down for me to remember what it feels like to be innocent all over again, to be in really close physical contact with other like-hearted and like minded humans. To be interested in the human condition all over again, its superficialities and dramas.
I often wonder what it feels like to be a regular human being with regular emotions, regular experiences, regular relationships and a high level of energy flowing through ones body and ones life.
I have forgotten and all memories regarding what other people feel like, what they taste like, what balance human beings behave like... I am sure in my long history of being a human being, I have crossed paths with others who had full lives, full souls and were not so tormented as I was, as almost every other human being I have met who I had any meaningful relationship with.
Maybe I met them in passing, briefly as I walked the streets of downtown Toronto or drove past some of them in Karachi (irrespective of how difficult it was for me to believe that at the time that Karachi was my begrudging home). In London, there are plenty of alive people who live, work and travel here.
Immediately, a long list of actor and musician names come to my consciousness, both Bollywood and Hollywood. Never met any of them. Well, musicians a few, as I sometimes frequent SOAS when they hold concerts of various ethnic and national backgrounds. All insanely talented and connected to spirit as far at the musical genius goes, but I left the last concert I went to depressed. It didn't uplift me, and it was fun Cuban music. I might be picking at threads and feeding into more separation when I say this, yet I do sense that there is a distinction between something that is divine and something that hasn't had much humility and awareness of the divinity in all things.
And sometimes, even when there is no clear indication that God is being acknowledged, I can feel His light in a creative work.
Going through the chapters of Call Me By My Name just reminded me of the long hot summers in Karachi I wasted in front of the television, watching so many films because that was the closest thing I had to interacting with decent people, cool people, in countries I so desperately had wanted to live in myself.
It reminded me of the pain of the crushes I somehow managed to develop from a very young age of 7, the pain of shyness and of extreme inadequacy that prevented me from making any decent friends or even telling the boy I was attracted to, that I was attracted to him. The pain that brings up is possibly equal to the pain and embarrassment and lack of knowledge of what happens after one actually tells someone.
I remember hot sticky nights in Karachi, especially all of the nights when we didn't have electricity and didn't have a generator. We wasted so many nights and days just wilting and falling ill due to intense heat.
I wish I could report more vibrant memories, sort of those that came up when I read The Kite Runner or Kartography. Kartography was another book I read when I was 24 years old, before I ever fell in love and it gave me such an awakening that love with a man could feel so comfortable, so lovely.
I've never felt that love. No man has ever felt that love for me, and I am so much at peace about that - mainly because this is how my life has turned out.
There is always a part of my psyche, which I no longer pathologise as being disintegrated or cutting up in order to survive my life. This part of my psyche takes a massive step back from my human life, taking a disinterested eagle eye point of view in order to learn from it or to write about it.
I have always wanted to be as great a writer as Kamila Shamsie or Khalid Hosseini or Elif Shafak. their words heal in such a drastic way, they pull you into history or country or situation that one has never had a real taste of.
They experience life, record life, ask others about life, research it and then they write it all down. They channel the chapters, of this I am sure.
The reason I am so sure about this is because I channel the words I write, The really good writing I have ever produced was solely channelled, Allah swt wanted people to read these words in the relief of my individual experiences and life, and so that is what has happened.
Until it stopped. The inspiration, that energy that made me feel so alive - it entirely died out.
And this is why the sudden motivation to want to read the novel that the film was based on was a very surprising motivation.
This is the first novel I haven't been able to put down since reading The 40 Rules of Love by Elif Shafak.
This relieves me, as I flick from page to page. The hours pass by and I don't realise it. I feel that familiar sense of helpless addiction for the written word overcome me as it had my entire childhood and teenage years. The elation I feel when the characters are able to have profound moments with each other and the intense grief that I feel when they are quarrelling and apart are all indications that I am alive, that some of my own personality has come alive.
The one knack I have discovered about myself whilst reading these sorts of books is that I feel the sunshine on my face, the sweat trickle down my back, even in the cold of February nights in London.
The second knack is that I become so involved with the characters on the page, the desperate loneliness and desire to connect with people in reality diminishes into almost a dot, too tiny to be discovered, too distant to prick any more holes into my heart and mind.
I choose to not go to the gym on these days, because the contract between a dreamy imagined reality of a hot, summery and romantic Italy upon the pages and the harsh truths of disingenuous, disconnected and really real humans who are very much English, Londoners and dealing with a psychological operation that has taken them all down in their consciousness for the past two years will be too much for my highly sensitive nervousness system to tolerate.
In essence, I might end up losing my temper and punching the next person who carelessly pushes past me on the pavement outside Holborn or Kennington underground station.
Because one cannot live successfully in two timelines simultaneously. It just doesn't work well for the protagonist, nor for the ones around them. There is such a mismatch in frequency, in frequency.
Right now, all I want to do is fly in the clouds, listen to quiet and loud Italian phrases, smell the salty sea air, taste sand in my food, and recall a few good moments during my own short visit to Italy. Some stunning scenes by the coast.
It is a feeling. It is always a feeling that I am seeking to capture and to hold onto.
It is always a feeling...
Because reality is still just so very harsh, it makes my soul cry when I note the discrepancy between an idealised view of life on the page, and the reality of really broken and unintegrated human beings I encounter on a daily basis.
It doesn't matter which part of the world I am in, I always seem to hone in on them and seek them out.
I have spent most of my life seeking out a best friend to soothe that space that I always feel in my heart and in my life.
It may actually be that I will only find these in creative works, in the novels and in the films - they are the only humans who actually behave in a manner that isn't confusing, surprising, shocking or damaging to me or others in some way or other.
Of course, my viewpoint on humanity is in constant flux. Constantly.
I basically just need to meet much nicer people with whom there is a lasting connection, and all of the above will be redundant.
Well, at least, the rage against humanity has abated now. I am so happy about that. It is very exhausting being pissed off with myself as well as the entire human race.
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