Browsing in a library. I order my library books online. I check the reviews, click "reserve" and pick them up. In and out in under two minutes. The other day I spent an hour just browsing through the library, I remember as a child roaming through the library, excited at all the choices that could be mine. You can lose yourself in the hallowed silence of the library as titles beckon you. I picked four books I never researched. The first I'm reading is by Paul Coelho and the first two pages were written for me. I must book browse more often.
Flowers on my doorstep. They remind me of who I love and that I am loved.
Love. It builds you up, it destroys you. It cradles you in its arms, it crushes you to dust. Love is powerful, it is beautiful, it is a universal truth, and once one loves, he who was loved, will never be forgotten.
Merlin:Ah, you know, lad, that love business is a powerful thing.
Arthur: Greater than gravity?
Merlin: Well yes, boy, in its way... yes, I'd say it's the greatest force on earth.
Life moves very fast. It rushes us from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds. - Paul Coelho
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Passing Time
X: When your job ends where do you plan to work? Have you started applying?
Me: Not sure yet, I think I might take some time off and work on my writing.
X: You mean just stay at home?
Me: Well, I'd be working on my writing . . .
X: But you need a job Aisha. Having a job helps pass the time.
I understand doing something for money, for enjoyment, for a sense of conviction, but to do a thing merely to pass time? Pass time until when? What exactly am I biding my time for? The prospect of doing a thing simply to fill up the hours of the day may make sense if you are waiting for lab results, or a job offer but passing time for no reason but for the sake of passing time? As though I have an eternity to squander in this way?
I fight trying to "pass the time" but I find myself doing it often. Sitting at my desk on Monday and counting the hours until the end of the day. Hoping the week will pass quickly, hoping Friday will come soon. Repeating the cycle every week. Yet what does this mean? That I live from one Friday to the next Friday? What is the time in between? Time to be passed? How awful to wish 3/4 of your life away like this.
If you're taking jobs you don't even believe in, or watching television shows that mean nothing, just to pass the time, then its time to truly examine your purpose in life. The cliche imploring life is too short is true, life is a nanosecond. You were not here on earth for eons and you are only here for a very temporary stay. How sad to waste this time, this precious time trying to figure out how to make the hours pass by quickly.
I'm trying to appreciate each minute, each hour, even if its pain I feel, its living. A hot shower on a cold day, my hands gripping a knife as I chop crisp vegetables, laying my head down for rest after a long day, holding a new book in my hands and turning each page. Each moment, a manifestation of life, a gift afforded to me. I should strive to create a better world, to find meaning and purpose, but I hope and pray that I never consider doing anything in order to simply pass the time. Time is passing, slipping through my fingers like fine grains of sand, I need not hurry it on its way.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity- Thoreau
Me: Not sure yet, I think I might take some time off and work on my writing.
X: You mean just stay at home?
Me: Well, I'd be working on my writing . . .
X: But you need a job Aisha. Having a job helps pass the time.
I understand doing something for money, for enjoyment, for a sense of conviction, but to do a thing merely to pass time? Pass time until when? What exactly am I biding my time for? The prospect of doing a thing simply to fill up the hours of the day may make sense if you are waiting for lab results, or a job offer but passing time for no reason but for the sake of passing time? As though I have an eternity to squander in this way?
I fight trying to "pass the time" but I find myself doing it often. Sitting at my desk on Monday and counting the hours until the end of the day. Hoping the week will pass quickly, hoping Friday will come soon. Repeating the cycle every week. Yet what does this mean? That I live from one Friday to the next Friday? What is the time in between? Time to be passed? How awful to wish 3/4 of your life away like this.
If you're taking jobs you don't even believe in, or watching television shows that mean nothing, just to pass the time, then its time to truly examine your purpose in life. The cliche imploring life is too short is true, life is a nanosecond. You were not here on earth for eons and you are only here for a very temporary stay. How sad to waste this time, this precious time trying to figure out how to make the hours pass by quickly.
I'm trying to appreciate each minute, each hour, even if its pain I feel, its living. A hot shower on a cold day, my hands gripping a knife as I chop crisp vegetables, laying my head down for rest after a long day, holding a new book in my hands and turning each page. Each moment, a manifestation of life, a gift afforded to me. I should strive to create a better world, to find meaning and purpose, but I hope and pray that I never consider doing anything in order to simply pass the time. Time is passing, slipping through my fingers like fine grains of sand, I need not hurry it on its way.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity- Thoreau
Sunday, April 05, 2009
aaloo parathas and udassi
I am in Florida helping with wedding preparations for my brother's wedding. The days are filled with aaloo paratha brunches, afternoon chais, and then the down to business tasks of meeting with photographers, decorators, organizing the guest list, and addressing envelopes. It's a deep sense of peace to be in my parent's home, a place in which I am still their child, to be with my brothers and to hear the familiar voices of my family so close to me.
And yet- there is this sense of udassi in me. As I prepare for his wedding, I remember my own. I was the first to leave, the first to sever the continuity of the dynamics of our five person family. It is always more difficult for those who are left behind. This is one of the rare weekends I'm here on my own. I can't help but feel a nostalgic ache at how precious these moments are, the five of us under one roof, still children in our parent's eyes. But my baby brother is grown up. He's getting married. How fast did time fly?
I can't stop thinking of my parents. How did it feel for them when I left? How did it feel to have family dinners without me at my usual chair? For decades we were the universe they inhabited, and then one day seven years ago, it became a memory of the way it once was. I moved on to my married life. My brothers moved on to college. Each time we meet, the same routines that decades entrenched in our psyches resume. Aisha cuts the salad, the others set the table. The same jokes, the same needling. Yet now we are all aware how temporary it is.
Perhaps it is this which fills me with udassi, a sensation like a rope swirling against my heart, tugging it enough to make it bleed. You create a family and then your family grows wings and flies away. And this ofcourse is how it should be. Yet, the truth is, your parent's home is always your home, and the homesickness no matter how faint it grows over time, always remains.
And yet- there is this sense of udassi in me. As I prepare for his wedding, I remember my own. I was the first to leave, the first to sever the continuity of the dynamics of our five person family. It is always more difficult for those who are left behind. This is one of the rare weekends I'm here on my own. I can't help but feel a nostalgic ache at how precious these moments are, the five of us under one roof, still children in our parent's eyes. But my baby brother is grown up. He's getting married. How fast did time fly?
I can't stop thinking of my parents. How did it feel for them when I left? How did it feel to have family dinners without me at my usual chair? For decades we were the universe they inhabited, and then one day seven years ago, it became a memory of the way it once was. I moved on to my married life. My brothers moved on to college. Each time we meet, the same routines that decades entrenched in our psyches resume. Aisha cuts the salad, the others set the table. The same jokes, the same needling. Yet now we are all aware how temporary it is.
Perhaps it is this which fills me with udassi, a sensation like a rope swirling against my heart, tugging it enough to make it bleed. You create a family and then your family grows wings and flies away. And this ofcourse is how it should be. Yet, the truth is, your parent's home is always your home, and the homesickness no matter how faint it grows over time, always remains.
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