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Today I was telling Faaria I was having an identity crisis, and she told me I’d always been having one. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps I have always been restless and searching- a condition I could only interpret as unhappiness due to my apparent lack of emotional intelligence.

Non the less, recent events in my life have left me feeling empty and distrustful of too many things. When you’re younger, everything seems so clear cut. The world is black and white and you think you know exactly who you are, where you stand, how you’ll end up.
But as you grow older, the boundaries between things start blurring into each other. What was once pretty straight forward no longer proves to do exactly what it says on the tin. Names are divorced from their meanings and the once truths of life show their illusive faces.

The tings which have weighed most heavily upon me have been those associated with ideals and faith. When you are no longer sure of how you see things, you are no longer sure of who you are. After all, are we not defined by how we interpret the world around us?

This evening at the V&A museum, I got to catch the end of a lecture on Andalusian Spain and the Abrahamic faiths which lived in harmony within that unique culture. The Lecturer closed her speech with a poem from Ibn Al-Arabi that dawned over me like a consolation.

All these names, all these forms, these objects which we feel the need to sort through, understand and interpret to define ourselves…they only serve to complicate things. They become barriers, which we adopt out of convenience. When man’s mind comes upon a brick wall, that brick wall becomes his security and closure. He can now justify his lack of initiative to go beyond, to keep up the search until some great end. How are our modern day metaphysical barriers any different from the idols of Quraysh? Have we not turned our faiths into ritual, and name, and form and appearance? And what dark matter is really behind all those things?

I am too complicated, too intricate to trust myself with a name or persona, out of fear that I may turn that into something which will one day hold me back. And in that light, what have we left to ourselves but to be good?

Love is a funny thing. It seems that after a single disappointment, man will recoil and lose his faith in all things. And yet, even with our hearts breaking, we can still believe in love.
I leave you with the poem which inspired this.

A white-blazed gazelle
Is an amazing sight,
Red-dye signaling,
eyelids hinting,
Pasture between breastbones
And innards.
Marvel,
A garden among the flames!
My heart can take on
Any form:
Gazelles in a meadow,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Kaaba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of a Torah,
The scrolls of the Qur'an.
I profess the religion of love;
Wherever its caravan turns
Along the way, that is the belief,
The faith I keep.

Ibn Al-Arabi - Translation by Iberian Medievalist, María Rosa Menocal:2004

Oh I know that evening’s empire has returned into sand,
vanished from my hand, left me blindly here to stand…but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me I’m branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet and my ancient empty street too dead for dreaming.
Hey Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me,
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me,
in the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you.

~Dylan

Keep the darkness at bay with off-beat humour and the randomly absurd, we feel like Wes Anderson films and giving the Sultan of Brunei’s family a fashion make over, amidst pensively hatching MMM.
MMM is the Marry Miyavi Master plan: Because Miyavi is the hottest weirdo alive.

All of this is very healthy by comparison, and after all, exercising one’s imagination is vital if one is to benefit fully from a creative writing course.

So every day:
Pixy works hard
Pixy laughs hard
Pixy sings hard on her way home
Pixy prepares food for Sufi, who she feeds and dotes on with the kind of love that’s maternal, because Sufi (four in kitty years) is eerily like her when she was four and bare foot in a blue robe: shy, often aloof, but desperate to be loved.
Pixy writes
Pixy doesn’t think or remember
Pixy misses her family
Pixy fills her days
Pixy moves on

But somewhere in between getting rid of everything that might remind her and beginning brand new things, Pixy secretly keeps the picture of a little boy child.

But somewhere in between losing control of her breathing in the bath and burying her face in her hands after prayer, Pixy has to hold herself and remember to keep going even though she doesn’t know why and can’t feel anything anymore.

Pixy will never be the same again

Once upon a time there was Pixy and there was Blog.
Pixy used to believe it would not do to have anyone care about her.
Pixy used to believe that because everyone was so lonely, they should all act it, and not try to be something else- which was very silly behaviour.
So Pixy ignored all the other people who behaved very silly. She chose to be lonely and told everything to Blog, which was her inside-out space.
Then one day, someone cared about Pixy.
Slowly, and inevitably, Blog grew more and more neglected because Pixy timidly began to make a new space. This space was for that someone, and she carved it deep, deep inside the most vulnerable centre of her innards.
She never doubted a happy ending...because after all, sadness was always followed by happiness. Everyone knows that, right?

Now there is Blog.
Now there is a vacant space in the most vulnerable centre of Pixy.
Now there is.

Every night Pixy climbs into her bed on the sofa and holds herself tight so that she doesn't fall apart in pieces.
Every night Pixy tries to cry quietly, so that no one else is disturbed.
Her protruding breast bones heave with the things which threaten to consume her, because they have no outlet.
And every morning, as if some practical joker thought it'd be hilarious to tamper about with her, Pixy wakes up to find that her heart is whole again.
Like Prometheus, whose innards grow back every day for the vultures to tare out over and over for an eternity's sentence imposed by the angered Gods, Pixy's heart is ready to be broken every morning again and again and again.