...And it is followed by a great deal of pain!

Hello. Today i am OWCH!-ing. However this OWCH!-es less than the OWCH of missing my family.
Speaking of losing innocence last night with Sarah got me wonderring whether I am capable of losing any more. And I know that finding out will either result in losing more innocence I did not know I had left, or just simply be too sad to avoid going into mourning.
I haven't done this in a while. Instead I've bottled them up and turned stone cold.
And that is why, now that Aslan has breathed on the witch's grotesque statues, I wake and find I miss my last and only conncetion to innocence and immaturity. The little one who is not little. The mature one, who brings out the Peter Pan Syndrome from the depths of Elest with pangs of torrential weeping for sorrow and for joy.

Saimecanii.
...

Never should we allow our youngest siblings to grow. We should do all in our power to protect them from what corrupted us and turned us adult.

'The fact is that I find in the day's light, in this diffused, pale almost shadowless luminosity, a darkness deeper than the night's.'

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller: Italo Calvino

...

Elle est Still sober, may God be praised, is not a pessimist. She feels sad about many things, because sadness is a beautiful, comforting place, and she has rather dark inclinations, which is why we (in the multiple personality sense) are goth, but she is not a pessimist. Thank you.
Having said that PMT and the odd depression doesn't count towards pessimism either. They just mean that we are female and we are an artist. Thank you.
Speaking of which: to add to the list of things which should never be under-estimated, such as feline affection and onigiri, there is PMT...

...Because it is a great sorrow that emanates from the merciful hidden soul of that place and that source of life and of love in the world, that God has retained in the fragile, female frame. And though we may never know why, what for and what it is saying to us, it is a sacred cry from the core of our human essence, and it is a reminder in the darkness of monotonous dawns and when stone hearts turn brittle in the banal sound and motion of tube trains, when nothing else could wake you.

I'm going to keep a tally of the amount of times I need to get up to shut the door after people who come in and out of this office fail to do so.
I've spent most of today in the eye of the most vicious draft, very productively producing report after report for the staff news letter, most of them concerning Somalia...CURSE, THEY DID IT AGAIN!

UB40 had this song, where the lyrics went something like, '...there's brother killing brother, people living on their knees, biting sugar coated bullets for the pain of this disease.' I don't know why I rememberred that today...but it got me thinking that one step after another, and eventually the turns you took disconncet you so severly from who you were. Standing here now, I wonder if the person I was, saw that eventually some good would come of this. And I wonder if that person was here now, would she still see some hope, or would she think it more wise to step away now, before I'm lost for good.

It's not the people I love that I'm trying to avoid and sugar coat the truth for, it's myself. And everyday I'm forgetting more and more, why.

Welcome back holy dark.

The woman who says 'mind the gap' at Mansion House station, sounds like she's saying 'mind the duck'.

I haven't gone out with the girls since last Sunday, and am feeling very...errr...cut off? In any case:

• Moved into new place at Earls Court, alhamdullah... Woohoo!

-this means we've moved up the property ladder, so to speak, and are residing amidst the cream of society, and this is good, because my poor, beggarly, self-destructive artist-ness is a romantic novelty in such an area.

• Got a job and working with Muslim Aid, alhamdullah... Woohoo!

-And this means we are using our creativity for the greater good of man and against universal sufferring, which makes us socially aware and as compassionate as an existential mindset would allow.

Why? Alber Camus, The Outsider, that's why. And that's probably the worst thing about existentialism...the fact that in a selfish world of utter human isolation, there really is no room for compassion.

Hello, I haven't blogged in over a month.
Why?
Life.
'Twil throw at you many a thing, like things, like pancakes which fly, and you will be overwhelmed by all these flying pancakes, all flying at you like a school of fishes (but not with wings), and you will not know what to do with them, and in your panic and confusion and struggle to catch as many pancakes as you can, you will spill the maple syrup all over the place, and everything will be sticky and mushy and damnit, who gonna clean this mess now, huh?
...
I've been back in London for over a month, and as of Monday I'm finally going to have a propper place to stay, where I can stop living out of a suitcase. Where I can put my clothes in a cupboard, have my own bed, and prance about the flat in my underware to my hearts desire. Where I won't have to worry about my presence being intollerable or tiring for others and where I will also have my own time, and space and strangeness in which to think and collect my pieces if they are collectable still.
What sucks most is that a week ago, in spite of the uncertainty and nervousness, I thought I knew what kind of a turn my life would be taking from now on. Lo and behold, I was wrong.
Now, return ticket gone, penniless, homeless and with my parents pissed off at me, I'm in London, and I don't know. I just don't know.
However, instead of looking at it like its some huge drama, which it is, I can just concentrait on getting a job as soon as possible, and hopefully figure things out from there.
As Asma said: a year from now, there is no way you will still be in this situation. Things will change. So don't worry.
The scary thing is, a year ago I couldn't have imagined all of this would happen. And I'm dreading what else is possible in the space of a single year.
2007, I aint particularly looking forward to you, but you know what, give it all you've got, coz I'm so down it's starting to feel like up now.

On a lighter note; to Shakila's amusement, Elest got chatted up by the waiter at Taro today.
Once upon a time that would have made me feel good. Those blasted pancakes, how they change you.

You left it, I sent it
I want it back
You left it, I sent it
I want it back

If I had you here, I'd clip your wings
Snap you up and leave you sprawling on my pin
This plan of mine is oh so very lame
Can't you see the grass is greener where it rains

You left, I died,
I went and you cried
You came, I think
But I never really know
I've served my time
I've watched you climb
The wrong incline
But what do I know

Accept it, Don't let it
Turn the screw
Accept it, And let it
Scream back at you

Now this applies both equally to you and I
The only thing we share
Is the same sky
These empty metaphors
They're all in vain
Like can't you see the grass is greener where it rains

And I lie behind you
And a cradle you in the palm of me
And I pat your hair down
I think will we sink or swim?
'Cause we could do either on a whim

In the garden Snake was a charmin'
And Eve said let's give it a try
Now lead us not into temptation
But Eve is the apple of my eye

-Eve, The Apple of my Eye : Bell X1

'But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Elliot calls 'hollow men'(...) there's one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are precisely the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki's childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intollerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course, it's important to know what's right and what's wrong. Individual errors in judgement can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned arround. But intollerant, narow minds with no imagination, are like parasites that transform the host, change form and continue to thrive.'

-Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

As dificult as it would have been to deal with narrow minds on a single front, said parasites have unfortunately penetrated too close to home. As Hamza Yusuf said, when asked by a suspicious non-Muslim colleague if he was trying to convert him: I'm still trying to convert Muslims first. My appologies to anyone whose feathers are being ruffled as I type away, our reality is a Muslim world where 'Muslims' brandishing usurped ideals and theories cut from reality, are murdering innocents, because some ugly, robed ponce, called the Pope, has no sense of history, nor diplomacy. Another narrow mind. And thus evil begets evil. And we're fighting a war against ignorance with Islamaphobes and stupid people who shame a handfull of enduring sanity by calling themselves Muslims. (I'm sorry, call yourself a Muslim by all means, but do it in the privacy of your own home if that is the only way you know how.)

I don't know about the experiences of others in regards to discrimination, but for Elestkimo, discrimination was the Turkish Government, and the random 'Oi Osama!' remark she could laugh off. Nothing that could touch her...this was until recently. I allude to the Tragic Hero metaphor again, because they really do stab you when the armour comes off, where it's most sensitive (think scar tissue sensitive), and it hurts. I swear it hurts. And you feel helpless, and betrayed and misunderstood. And when you finally stop pitying yourself because what you've lost is lost and you have to move on; you know that you can't stand about and not do anything. But biggots don't get converted and stomping them out would require brute force which will achive nothing as they themselves have demonstrated already...
... perhaps we just have to try yelling louder than them.

Yay! The Rant Board is back! Now y'all can shower me with praise or hurl insults and vegetables at me once again, just like in the good ol days :) And then there was much rejoicing, Bible style... as always, because Bible style never goes out of fashion.

'Molly, who am I? Whay am I here? What is it that I am seeking in this strange place, day after day? I knew a moment ago...but I've forgotten.'

-The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

Words which are very familiar for some of us, less so for others, but non the less speaking to the essence of our human predicament. It's moments like these that the Goth lives for. This and lots of pain, darkness and chaos. If the Goth can find non of this to angst over, the Goth will angst over not having anything to angst over. So when a Goth is angsting, it's probably best to not worry so much, and just simply partake in the dark and deep thoughts they choose to express if they are of the expressive kind. If they are not of the expressive kind, they will probably go sit on a roof for hours on end or under the bed where it's dark. When this happens you should let them be for a few hours and then climb the roof/ squeeze under the bed with them and just share the silence and darkness.
Be absolutely certain of your feelings for a Goth though, because if you do this, there is a great danger of the Goth loving you, and when a Goth loves you it is perhaps the best and worst thing in the world.
The worst: because the Goth will discover the deep tragedy in loving others, and will mope about that too.
The best: because a Goth's love is one of the most genuine and selfless specimines of that human emotion that is talked/sung/written about too often yet rarely really lived.

This is because Goths are Goths. and Goths are Goths because they were either unloved growing up, or they unloved themselves growing up, shutting out all human affection, because they are convinced they don't deserve it or that it's not real.
In retorspect then, at the heart of the Goth is a lack or loss of love. And if somewhere along the course of their grey, moping lives, they encounter it and it penetrates their thick walls, they will cherish it like King Haggard when he saw the unicorns, and thought he was going to die because it made him happy for the first time in all his life of unhappiness.
In truth, we are all looking for unicorns, Goths do so more actively and angst over the lack of them more openly. But I can promise you, when every one of us tastes the hidden disillusionment in the reality of their extinction, we each die a great yet silent death. The ordinary human being will only notice a slight sadness, a discontent from time to time. But us Goths spend the rest our lives mourning that death.

What's worse?
Being naieve,
or realising your naivety and being someting bitter...with a heart that's stronger, yet that much more harder?

I almost believed the latter, but thought's of Shakila's mysterious Baxter, and what he represents of all that is tragic but beautiful in the eyes of the divine perceiver, have made me realise otherwise, because that's how the Universe speaks to you;
through the poignant things people say for themselves without knowing that you, in your own world with your own ghosts, will find a consolation, as though it were tailormade for your hurting. Because the world, though ugly is beautiful like that, because it was fashioned by a beautiful hand.

Now, if I give in completely to your gift of disilusinoment, I will kill the voice which has spoken thus far, heedless of all that threatened it and submit to your selfishness. And though there is no love in the world as you've left it to me after all was said and done, I'd rather hurt to believe in something better.

To Write a Synopsis

It's as hard as you think squared. Basically think of a 100-odd page novel which consists of two storries with very vague connections and nothing really being fully revealed but implied. And then try to turn that into a 2 page and-then-this-happened-and-then-this-happened for some bald, bored literrary agent who'd rather have a story ruined for himself instead of reading the book. A pox'o how things are done, it's a travesty!

Pish! 'Zounds! and and what ever else Jacobean curses you can think of.

Naturally this one keeps having the urge to hide back between the pages of a Murakami, or subject herself to some Miyavi on the iPod...because the best way not to think is by always having something on loud in your ears. Alternatively there is standing under the shower in meditative blank mind mode. I think I fancy that right now.

I had a thought today. I'm gonna be banned in Saudi if I ever get published (inshallah). Perhaps I should go to Dubai while I still can.

Shower here I come.

Miyavi insanity all arround.

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music
And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart

And it breaks my hea-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aart
And it breaks my hea-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aart

-Fidelity

Regina Spektor has a weird video clip.
She also has a huge clevage.
I draw attention to this simply because it really is huge and not because I suffer from cleavage envy or anything. After all, being flat rocks. And it rocks because you can run (or stomp like an Elest even) without feeling self concious, and do all sorts of fun boy things.

I rememberred a few days ago that at some point in my life my friends called me 'Sevski'...when I asked Tas if she remembers why, and who'd started it off; She said it must have happened during the time we were studying Stalin and Trotsky in Russian history during year 11, and Ruqeya a.k.a Jade, was the culprit.

Meanwhile, I had lots of time to think today -during the long trek from the neighbourhood beyond the hills, over the hills in the dark, and finally home- and I've concluded that life is very weird.
Now, take a moment to look back on the what you've lived thus far. Go on, humour me. And bear in mind absolutely everythig...where you started off, how you grew up, all the changes, all the people, all the crap, and getting through it...till now, and then size it up one more time in retrospect to you at this moment...you think: Damn! I never saw any of that coming at any one point, and who would have imagined.

Now to get out of this mess.

Dear God, thankyou! Hyde's lost weigth, and looks good again.
And Tetsu has a bulldog which doesn't suit his pansy grin.
And you just know I have too much time on my hands. ...either that or I wish I had a car coz feeling this exhausted after going out and about in this damn city leaves me incapable of doing anything vaguely productive afterwards.

The adventures of Boris resume..
Late one evening Boris sits at his favourate corner in the pub gazing very intensely at the empty rum bottle on the table in front of him. The rum bottle sits there. Boris stares. The rum bottle sits...ordinary like...nothing special. Boris stares, all beedy, evil eye-balls. The rum bottle sits. Boris stares. 2 hours later the bottle is feeling very intimidated...but still Boris stares.
8 more hours later, when the pub is shutting up for the day, and the bar tender comes to shake Boris awake, we find out Boris had actually been sleeping with his eyes open.

Mizika caliyor, duyunmu sandin?
Al yesil bayragi gelinmi sandin?
Yemene gideni gelirmi sandin?
Don gel agam, don gel, dayanamiyram.
Uyku gaflet coktu, uyanamiyram.
Agamin oldugune inanamiyram.

-A Turku (folk song (and one of many)) about the historical Yemen war from which too many Turkish soldiers didn't return. No I shant translate it because it'll sound rubbish instead of tragic. But it's relevance is not merely the poetic appreciation kind...
Apparently my great-grandfather went to war in Yemen straight after he got married, and his wife waited for him for 7 years. After which he finally returned.
I find that amazing.

AAAAND, aparently my great-great-grandfather was sent to some Arab country during his army service, when the empire still had it all (though barely clinging) and he married an Arab girl...hence why they called our family 'Arab-ogulari' meaning Arab-sons...hence why our generation is showing vague signs of not looking Turkish.

Hearing: Perfect Moment, Hyde
Doing: The Violinist and Alexis Jezeabel, Elest Bint-Mustafa
Sitting: On Bed
Feeling: ...WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU...I SAID, I CAN'T HEAR YOU, THE MUSIC'S TOO LOUD...

Just remembered something I thought of, walking down Soho with Shakila that day we all had Haagndazs for the last time (and you remember what happens next, right Sha?) and I told her it, because it's a great and indisputable truth of truths. I think it was after she said something about being a disgrace to the neighbourhood.

Elest: That's nothing to be ashamed of babe, you should be proud.
Shakila: Well I aint alone, so should u.
Elest: Oh yeah.

any way, it was thus:
Every White clique should be penetrated by a loud and rude ethnic minority!
Somebody's gotta teach these people how to really laugh.

'nuf said bruv!

Today was Zafer bayrami, in Turkey. This meaning it was the day they celebrate the Canakkale Victory. This meaning, in 1914 with a broken army and very limmited arms, we kicked English, French and Greek hineys to kingdom come, and saved Istanbul.
So how do Turks celebrate? They drape tall buildings with massive Turkish flags and building-sized pictures of Ataturk, the dog of dogs. 'Why?' -you ask, since Ataturk had jack to do with it.
Because every good Turk believes that God's gift of a victory to the Turkish people in WWI was all thanks to Ataturk's great ass, on which he was reclining at the time, while others were giving their lives for it. So lets all praise him.

In any case though, below is a pic of Elest celebrating Turkish facism.



Yes that's a Hitler tash, coz I'm so funny.

...and Elest behaving more naturaly in her natural habitat, when caught unawares.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDvAZgIGoVY

A lecturer once said that the most tragic moment in an epic is the arming of the epic hero part.
Now, I'll tell you why it's tragic.
It's the Samson story.
Perhaps Achilles.
A life time of thickening skin against ignorant prejudices,
growing so strong, their cruelty only curls a smile in the corner of your lips,
and then someone stabs you when the armour comes off.

Hello. This is Miyavi.



As you can see, the resemblance is phenomenal.

(No, he's not an adopted friend for Sushi, he's just a stray kitten with a mohawk who turned up in the living room like he owned the place. Hence meriting a name)

Regret is very bitter, and the bottom-far-bellow of very high places, inviting.
The ability to regret dawns...slowly, slowly, upon the world.
And one can find ones-self lying on ones roof at night, watching the stars (I swear there were a lot more when I was younger and wore funny glasses) and thinking: 'Why is Mars not visible yet? Is this secretly not August or have the astronomers lied?'
One can find ones-self in many many deep and dark silences, and under the influence of bad influence mullings.
Funny that cows are such happy seeming beasts when all they ever seem to do is chew and mull, chew and mull, chew and mull...and swat the random fly.
Which says what?
It says, if I'm resigned to all these mosquito bites I must be more aloof than a cow.


A classic Arabic/Persian (everyone including the Turks seem to be wanting to lay claim to this) story follows:

There was once a young man named Kais who fell in love with a girl named Laila, who wasn't particulalry beautiful or amazing, but this is irrelevant...or perhaps it's relevant because it says alot more about love than it would if she was beautiful. Because you see, thanks to the immortalisation of Laila & Majnun (which existed way before Romeo & Juliet, and is at a higher calibre of tale entirely) Laila has been transformed in the minds and stories of men into the embodiment of unmatched feminine beauty (so much so that according to another story a particular sultan who wished to see the legendary Laila, asks for her to be brought to him and upon laying eyes on her is shocked.
Sultan: Majnun loved you? you're not beautiful?
Laila: You are not Majnun.)

...So, Kais loved Laila, but Lail's family married their daughter off to an older, and very wealthy man. Kais, in his devastation and despair fled to the desert and went mad, hence why he was then called Majnun. Many years passed, word of the love-sick Majnun who roamed the deserts still spread far and wide, until one day, Laila's old husband died. Having been set free at last, Laila who'd heard what became of Kais, set out into the desert in search of him. When she finally found him, Majnun did not recognise her.
Majnun: Who are you?
Laila: I'm Laila.
Majnun: ...then what have I loved all of this time?

The Importance of Being like a child: or Cows and Why Not to Underestimate Any Sign. Ever.

-a rant-

There are symbolic dreams -dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities -realities that symbolize a dream.
Symbols are what you might call the honorary town councillors of the worm universe. In the worm universe there is nothing unusual about a dairy cow seeking a pair of pliers. A cow is bound to get her pliers sometime. It has nothing to do with me.

Yet the fact that the cow chose me to obtain her pliers changes everything. This plunges me into a whole universe of alternative considerations. And in this universe of alternative considerations, the major problem is that everything becomes protracted and complex. I asked the cow, "Why do you want pliers?" and the cow answers, "I'm really hungry." So I ask, "Why do you need pliers if you're hungry?" The cow answers, "To attach them to branches of the peach tree." I ask, "Why a peach tree?" to which the cow replies, "Well, that's why I traded away my fan, isn't it?" and so on and so forth. The thing is never resolved, I begin to resent the cow, and the cow begins to resent me. That's a worms eye view its universe. The only way the get out of that worm universe is to dream another symbolic dream.

(Haruki Murakami- A Wild Sheep Chase)

The 'cow' and 'me' here, might as well be Khidr and Moses, the time-traveller and the prophet, me (personally) and the snail in my planter...any two individuals/entities existing in separate plains of possibility or dimensions of thought and experience, but encountering one another, for a brief moment in the same now. I feel sorry for the snail in its pitifully slimy and slow excuse of an existance, and the snail, feels sorry for me; a loud and threatening giant, apparently so busy wasting energy with sensless comings and goings, to know the colours of the different levels of silence, and the shades of every depth of peace.

Likewise, keepers of different wisdoms, the cow's motives will never make sense to me, and my motives will never make sense to the cow, because we both see and experience the universe through our own very separate yet limited vision. Hence the worms eye view.

If our human senses are only capable of experiencing less than a billionth of the material stimuli in the immediate space which surrounds us at any given moment, then in retrospect to a universe with boundless possibilities incomprehensible to any one being alone, cynisims is one of the greatest sins we commit against ourselves. As the Turkish idiom goes, What fault is it of the sun, if you're blind?

One of the Prophet's (sas) prayers went something like this: 'Allah, make me full of wonder'. And that is why Lewis Carol put Alice in Wonderland, because she was a child. So, if you find a caterpillar chasing dragons on a giant mushroom, for Gods sake, don't tell him he's not supposed to exist, that's just rude. Instead you should ask permission to partake, and who knows what many other cows with pliers you may encounter on what wondrous trips, which await to broaden our worm universes.