I was in a very strange place yesterday, I guess I am there today as well. And it was soothing to read some excerpts from a German movie called "Der Himmel Über Berlin" or in English, "Wings of Desire".
I'll just copy them here, and let you think about them as well...I'll copy them in the order in which they appear in the movie, for I guess that would seem more appropriate...
And what do you have to tell?
Cassiel: Sunrise and 7:22 a.m. Sunset at 4:28 p.m. Moonrise at [....] Twenty years ago today a Soviet jet fighter crashed into the lake at Spandau. Fifty years ago there were the Olympic Games. Two-hundred years ago Blanchard flew over the city in a balloon.
Damiel: Like the fugitives the other day.
Cassiel: And today, on the Lilienthaler Chaussee, a man, walking, slowed down, and looked over his shoulder into space. At post office 44, a man who wants to end it all today pasted rare stamps on his farewell letters, a different one on each. He spoke English with an American soldier--the first time since his schooldays--and fluently. A prisoner at Plotzenzee, just before ramming his head against the wall, said: 'Now!' At the Zoo U-Bahn station, instead of the station's name, the conductor suddenly shouted: 'Tierra del Fuego!'
Damiel: Nice.
Cassiel: In the hills, an old man read the Odyssey to a child. And the young listener stopped blinking his eyes.... And what do you have to tell?
Damiel: A woman on the street folded her umbrella while it rained and let herself get drenched. A schoolboy who described to his teacher how a fern grows out of the earth, and the astonished teacher. A blind woman who groped for her watch feeling my presence. . . . It’s great to live only by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity only to the spiritual side of people. But sometimes I get fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of forever hanging above, I’d like to feel there’s some weight to me. To end my eternity and bind myself to earth. At each step, each gust of wind I’d like to be able to say "Now!," now and now and no longer say "ince always" and "forever." To sit at the empty seat at a card table and be greeted if only by a nod. Whenever we did participate it was only a pretense. Wresting with one of them...we allowed a hip to be dislocated, in pretense only. We pretended to catch a fish, we pretended to be seated at the tables and drink and eat and we were served roast lamb and wine. In the tents out there in the desert, in pretense. Not that I want to beget a child or plant a tree right away, but it would be quite something to come home after a long day like Philip Marlowe and feed the cat. To have fever. To have blackened fingers from the newspaper. To be excited not only by the mind but, at last, by a meal, the curve of a neck, by an ear. To lie! Through the teeth! To feel your skeleton moving along as you walk. Finally to suspect instead of forever knowing all. To be able to say "Ah" and "Oh" and "hey" instead of "yes" and "amen."
Cassiel: For once to be enthused over evil, to draw all of the demons of earth from passers-by and chase them out into the world (Damiel blows). To be Savage!
Damiel: Or to feel, at last what it’s like to take your shoes off under the table and to stretch your toes, barefoot, like that.
Cassiel: To be alone! To let things happen! To remain serious! We can only be as savage as we are absolutely serious. To do more than observe, collect, testify, preserve! To remain a spirit! Keep your distance! Keep your word!
When the child was a child
When the child was a child
there was the time for questions like-
Why am I me
and why not you?
Why am I here
and why not there?
When did time begin
and when did space end?
Isn't life under the sun just a dream?
Isn't what I see, hear and smell
just a vision of a world before the world?
Does evil really exist?
Are there people who are really evil?
How can it be that I who is me wasn't there
before I was
and that one day I who is me
shall no longer be what I am now?
When the child was a child
he choked on spinach, rice pudding,
peas and boiled cauliflower,
and now he eats it all
and not just because he must.
When the child was a child
he once woke up in a strange bed;
now this happens again and again.
Many people seemed beautiful then,
now very few do at all.
He had a precise picture of paradise
and now he can only make a guess.
He couldn't imagine nothingness;
today he trembles at the idea.
When the child was a child
he lived on apples and bread,
it was enough then and still is.
When the child was a child
berries fell into his hands and they still do.
He felt shy in front of strangers
and still feels the same.
He waits for the first snow
and is still waiting.
When the child was a child
he threw himself with spirit into his games,
and now he masters such involvement only
where work is concerned
This, finally, must be serious
This, finally, must be serious.
I've often been alone but I've never lived alone. When I was with someone, I was often happy but it seemed like a coincidence. These people were my parents, but it could have been others. Why was this brown-eyed boy my brother, and not the boy with the green eyes on the opposite platform? The taxi-driver's daughter was my friend, but I might as well have put my arm around a horse's neck. I was with a man, I was in love, and I might as well have left him and walked off with the stranger I met in the street.
Look at me, or don't. Give me your hand, or don't. No, don't give me your hand and look away.
Tonight is the new moon. No night can be more peaceful. There won't be any bloodshed in the city. I've never toyed with anyone, yet I've never opened my eyes and thought 'Now, this is serious'. At last it's becoming serious.
I've grown older. Am I the only one who wasn't serious? Is it the times that lack seriousness?
I was never alone, neither on my own nor with others. But I would have liked to be alone. After all, to be alone means to be whole. Now I can say it - as from tonight I'm alone at last. I must put an end to coincidence.
The new moon of decision! I don't know if there is destiny, but there is a decision. So decide! We are the present day now.
The whole town, the whole world is taking part in our decision.
We two are now more than us two.
We incarnate something.
We are sitting in the place of the people and the whole place is full of people who are dreaming the same dream.
We decide everyone's game.
I am ready.
Now it's your turn.
Now you've got to decide.
Now or never!
You need me. You will need me. There's no greater story than ours - a man and a woman. It will be a story of giants - invisible, but transferable, a story of new ancestors.
Look, my eyes. They are the picture of necessity, of everyone's future. Last night I dreamed of a stranger. It was my man. Only with him could I be alone, open up to him, wholly, wholly open for him, welcome him wholly into me, surround him with the labyrinth of shared happiness.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Monday, April 10, 2006
...being understood...to your son...
How difficult is it exactly to be understood? You know, how much does it take to have your intentions, needs, and thoughts to be interpreted in an honest manner?
Remember that time when everything was just jumping in the puddles, ringing doorbells and running away, eating as much candy as you could? And then came the time of ideals and perfection. Where love was true, friendship was integrity, and the biggest act of cruelty in life meant cheating on your homework. Slowly but steadily all those visions of "the perfect world" were ripped apart, layer by layer, like peeling an onion in your hands. Ripping open each layer, until you were left with nothing in your hands, and tears in your eyes.
Why is it now, that the noblest of intentions are taken into contention and ripped apart by sarcasm and this increasing sense of pessemistic negativity? Where the word "pure" can only be related to a bottle of "Le Blue" sparkling clean water.
I feel plagued today. I feel like leprosy today. I feel like a virus eroding everything, and everyone around me. I feel like a plague that would eat up humanity in one giant gulp. And that gulp will be followed by the most overdrawn and understood silence.
I feel like an Eskimo who is picked up from the poles and dropped smack in the center of the bustling roads of hot and humid Karachi. Being drenched with this sickening coating of sweat. Losing myself in the blurrs of life, complimented by the strokes of heat. Being dehydrated and seeing the world go blurry, and then like a picture tube blowing its fuse, converging into this bright white spot in the middle of the screen, and finally dissolving into total darkness.
Why is it that now, not only can I not be understood, I have also been gifted by the gift of being unable to understand another soul? Why is it when someone says something to me now, I start analysing it for the worst possible outcome. Like a paranoid doctor getting the flu, and starting out from AIDS and working his way down, eliminating the deseases in a top-down manner, from the most treachourous to the least. All the while being enveloped by his own paranoia...
I want to be able to take a smile for what it is. A simple and noble gesture, inclined to make you feel good. I don't want to take that smile and take it apart with respect to the conditions it was given under.
I want to buy a chocolate sundae and eat it whole, getting my fingers and mouth dirty in the process of consumption. I don't want to look for a napkin everytime I drop some on my clothes, or get some on my hands. I want to be there, in that moment of pure joy that came with eating a larger then life bowl of ice cream.
I want to close my eyes, and be understood once and for all, as who I am, what I want, and how I feel...
I want to close my eyes, and understand all those who love me, and matter to me, simply for what they feel, how they came to be where they are now, and who they actually are to themselves.
I want to take them as they are, without any intention of modification in terms of improvement, and I want to be accepted by them for who I am.
Do I really give a fuck about the things I think I give a fuck about? Or is it the things I have pushed aside that I really care about, but am too fearful to open the Pandora's box? Is this true for everyone I know?
I will survive today knowing that Babar had a son, and there's another couple out there who would make sure that their child will grow up to respect life, and value things that have real worth. It's the thought that their son would walk out into the world when he comes of age, and will walk out knowing that as long as people have the ability to change, this world that we, their fathers are ravaging, can change.
He would walk out from his home, with a sparkle in his eyes, and would take on all that is not right, and make it right. He would carve that little niche first, where human-beings will feel human. Where laughter would be cherished, and intentions praised for their goodness. And that little niche' will spread into the whole world like light overcoming night.
I would survive today...hoping and knowing that a better tomorrow exists, and would come. Where even I may be saved from my own fallacies. Where even my soul will be resurrected; out from the evils of contempt and hatred and into the warm shores of understanding and being understood...
Remember that time when everything was just jumping in the puddles, ringing doorbells and running away, eating as much candy as you could? And then came the time of ideals and perfection. Where love was true, friendship was integrity, and the biggest act of cruelty in life meant cheating on your homework. Slowly but steadily all those visions of "the perfect world" were ripped apart, layer by layer, like peeling an onion in your hands. Ripping open each layer, until you were left with nothing in your hands, and tears in your eyes.
Why is it now, that the noblest of intentions are taken into contention and ripped apart by sarcasm and this increasing sense of pessemistic negativity? Where the word "pure" can only be related to a bottle of "Le Blue" sparkling clean water.
I feel plagued today. I feel like leprosy today. I feel like a virus eroding everything, and everyone around me. I feel like a plague that would eat up humanity in one giant gulp. And that gulp will be followed by the most overdrawn and understood silence.
I feel like an Eskimo who is picked up from the poles and dropped smack in the center of the bustling roads of hot and humid Karachi. Being drenched with this sickening coating of sweat. Losing myself in the blurrs of life, complimented by the strokes of heat. Being dehydrated and seeing the world go blurry, and then like a picture tube blowing its fuse, converging into this bright white spot in the middle of the screen, and finally dissolving into total darkness.
Why is it that now, not only can I not be understood, I have also been gifted by the gift of being unable to understand another soul? Why is it when someone says something to me now, I start analysing it for the worst possible outcome. Like a paranoid doctor getting the flu, and starting out from AIDS and working his way down, eliminating the deseases in a top-down manner, from the most treachourous to the least. All the while being enveloped by his own paranoia...
I want to be able to take a smile for what it is. A simple and noble gesture, inclined to make you feel good. I don't want to take that smile and take it apart with respect to the conditions it was given under.
I want to buy a chocolate sundae and eat it whole, getting my fingers and mouth dirty in the process of consumption. I don't want to look for a napkin everytime I drop some on my clothes, or get some on my hands. I want to be there, in that moment of pure joy that came with eating a larger then life bowl of ice cream.
I want to close my eyes, and be understood once and for all, as who I am, what I want, and how I feel...
I want to close my eyes, and understand all those who love me, and matter to me, simply for what they feel, how they came to be where they are now, and who they actually are to themselves.
I want to take them as they are, without any intention of modification in terms of improvement, and I want to be accepted by them for who I am.
Do I really give a fuck about the things I think I give a fuck about? Or is it the things I have pushed aside that I really care about, but am too fearful to open the Pandora's box? Is this true for everyone I know?
I will survive today knowing that Babar had a son, and there's another couple out there who would make sure that their child will grow up to respect life, and value things that have real worth. It's the thought that their son would walk out into the world when he comes of age, and will walk out knowing that as long as people have the ability to change, this world that we, their fathers are ravaging, can change.
He would walk out from his home, with a sparkle in his eyes, and would take on all that is not right, and make it right. He would carve that little niche first, where human-beings will feel human. Where laughter would be cherished, and intentions praised for their goodness. And that little niche' will spread into the whole world like light overcoming night.
I would survive today...hoping and knowing that a better tomorrow exists, and would come. Where even I may be saved from my own fallacies. Where even my soul will be resurrected; out from the evils of contempt and hatred and into the warm shores of understanding and being understood...
Monday, April 03, 2006
The 90 hr Week
So yesterday I completed working for the equivelant of more then two weeks in one week. I guess the 90 hr week for us (that is the "I am actually" working class) is the equivelant of a double hundred scored in a test match, or a perfect game pitched in baseball.
Unfortunately our equivelant comes with twice as much labour, but no accolades. There are no record books that keep record of my counter-parts accomplishing this feat, there are no congratulatory signs put up in coffee shops. Just the good ol' feeling of being high on dope without actually doing dope. Yes that's how I feel right now. And the way things are going, I might be able to accomplish another 90 hr week in succession. And that would be a first for me. I have never before acheived two consequtive 90 hr weeks. So let's just wait and see.
By the way, I am at a client site, and let me just say that the client sites I am used to are cement plants, fertilizer plants, conglomerate HOs. So ending up in a client site which is a casino is a very nice change. So the walk from my cubicle to my hotel room includes two water-falls, about 20 shops, all selling merchandise that no one needs, but everyone buys any way, complex array of slot machines and black jack tables, and numerous couples falling in and out of love or lust! Whatever is on the menu for the day.
So yes, I look forward to this walk that I do twice a day, just for the excess of experiences jumbled up into a mere 10 minutes. And I intentionally walk as slow as I possible can, just to savour everything. Oh and in the middle of it, I also pass through the Star Treck galaxy version of the employee area. Complete with a cafeteria serving 5 cuisines, deserts, and salad bars 24/7, and the hustle and bustle of 25,000 people of every ethnicity imaginable bumping into each other.
I think a novel can be written about this 10 minute walk. It would start out with a fairly ordinary Joe getting up in the morning and dragging himself into the shower, and end by our Joe ending up in a 5x5 feet cubicle, complete with two computers and a notebook. But I am sure if anyone ever reads this novel, it would be for the things in between.
Sort of like the reason we live our lives, for the little things in between. Those rare moments of honesty that come and go sooner then you can say welcome, my kingdom.
I am missing home and my family more and more everyday, and not a single day passes before I want to bid adeu, and just walk (rather fly) away. The thought that keeps me going is that the sicker I get of all of this, the more fun it would be touching home base.
Wow! There must be a greater plan of things, as I was writing this confession of missing my family, Alina just called, and well...just made my day talking to me!
So send out your best pitcher, this batter is ready to blast it out of the park...
Till next time then.
Unfortunately our equivelant comes with twice as much labour, but no accolades. There are no record books that keep record of my counter-parts accomplishing this feat, there are no congratulatory signs put up in coffee shops. Just the good ol' feeling of being high on dope without actually doing dope. Yes that's how I feel right now. And the way things are going, I might be able to accomplish another 90 hr week in succession. And that would be a first for me. I have never before acheived two consequtive 90 hr weeks. So let's just wait and see.
By the way, I am at a client site, and let me just say that the client sites I am used to are cement plants, fertilizer plants, conglomerate HOs. So ending up in a client site which is a casino is a very nice change. So the walk from my cubicle to my hotel room includes two water-falls, about 20 shops, all selling merchandise that no one needs, but everyone buys any way, complex array of slot machines and black jack tables, and numerous couples falling in and out of love or lust! Whatever is on the menu for the day.
So yes, I look forward to this walk that I do twice a day, just for the excess of experiences jumbled up into a mere 10 minutes. And I intentionally walk as slow as I possible can, just to savour everything. Oh and in the middle of it, I also pass through the Star Treck galaxy version of the employee area. Complete with a cafeteria serving 5 cuisines, deserts, and salad bars 24/7, and the hustle and bustle of 25,000 people of every ethnicity imaginable bumping into each other.
I think a novel can be written about this 10 minute walk. It would start out with a fairly ordinary Joe getting up in the morning and dragging himself into the shower, and end by our Joe ending up in a 5x5 feet cubicle, complete with two computers and a notebook. But I am sure if anyone ever reads this novel, it would be for the things in between.
Sort of like the reason we live our lives, for the little things in between. Those rare moments of honesty that come and go sooner then you can say welcome, my kingdom.
I am missing home and my family more and more everyday, and not a single day passes before I want to bid adeu, and just walk (rather fly) away. The thought that keeps me going is that the sicker I get of all of this, the more fun it would be touching home base.
Wow! There must be a greater plan of things, as I was writing this confession of missing my family, Alina just called, and well...just made my day talking to me!
So send out your best pitcher, this batter is ready to blast it out of the park...
Till next time then.
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