"...What actors know about emotions is that they come in pairs, often in direct opposition to each other. That's what it is to be conflicted. We want what we should not want and we know it. We desire that which is dangerous or forbidden and might cause us to suffer. We fear success, embrace failure. We strive to be independent, longing at the same time to surrender to a burning passion. We hold ourselves aloof from the people we need and seek the approval of those who have no use for us...."

- Valerie Martin, "The Confessions of Edward Day".

In the quest for a song...

There are places only books can take you. The same is true for music. Sometimes it happens in public, I'd be doing something mundane (like eating or smoking), or slightly intellectually stimulating (like reading fiction): and all of a sudden there approaches a feeling of coziness, warmth and even euphoria. And, invariably, I'd find it's a piece of music playing in the background.

The last time this happened, I leapt out of my seat, approached the cafe manager, who looked at my (unusually) excited approach with apprehension.

'What's that song? Do you know the name of that song?'

He moved across the counter to where his vaio laptop was pumping music into the sound system.

He shook the mouse and motioned for me to come around. I did, and we both looked on. The name of the tune as shown on the player was a generic 'Track no. X'. I thanked him and walked back to my seat, slightly annoyed that my out-of-character act didn't yield results.

I'd heard of Shazam before, rhe music recognition app (application). I wondered if it worked for Arabic songs as well (or non-English songs). I downloaded it anyway. My plan was to wait for the song to come up on the sound system again (I was too embarrassed to request the song specifically), and then hold the phone to the speakers (high on the ceiling), and wait for technology to do its wonders.

Out of sheer curiously, I'd tested Shazam a few times on the way to the cafe and found, to my pleasant surprise, that it could recognize Arabic songs. However, after a few trials, it asked me for a paid subscription to continue to enjoy the service bla bla bla. Upon which my immediate reaction was to delete it.

When I got back home, I was determined to find the song by hook or crook. I spent an hour online, during which I'd listened to not less than 30 songs on youtube and rummaged through countless lyrics and play-lists, relying on bits and pieces of words I could extricate, with difficulty, from memory. Lo and behold, it's there:

Poem

The aftertaste of lukewarm coffee
and the looming doom
Tomorrow is a vacant bungalow
on the lake of endless gloom
A variable camouflaged from us
By a hundred spikes of denial
A camera slung on slumped shoulders
The crooked smile of the knowing
An expose for the rascals
And candle lit basilica, with depth
And the way you learn to hedge your bets
With each passing step

There's comfort in knowing that you care
There's lust in the way you long to share
You busy yourself with details
The room is stuffy, dark and bare
And the elephant that broods, in the corner, there
Quarantined in your hope of escape
Of clemency
Of repair

A scientist puzzles
over the invisible,
the unobservable,
The magnetic pull
Copious notes are made,
for posterity: beware!
And the journal of passion
With its wet periodicals,
and juicy scoops,
And love affairs

A flight across the gulf
Will get you, there
A border run
Despite the guards
for those, who dare.
And I simmer, here
Like a coiled spring
Waiting for the sign
the clue, the hint
That the road ahead
is bright, and clear
That all you wished for
is present, here.

Postcard From Heaven

A post card.... A window into the illusory afterlife that was designed by man to appeal to his delectations: women and an endless supply of wine. The tempting routes and inviting door bells. The winding alleyways, threading ancient buildings, descending ever so slightly unto a sea of deep azure in the far distance. The olive trees and the easy chairs by side walk cafés. Where did I see this before? I look for telltales of location, for a piece of solid memory. Here is serenity that could only mean a long history of agitation. Here is a calm that reflects a heritage of injustice and pain. Here lies the beauty of the goddess with the raised elbows, porcelain hands keeping hair in place. Like a migratory bird in transcontinental flight, wings spread against the winds, crossing thousands of miles in a posture of calm and indifference.

Behold the scenery as it unfolds, my friend. Here’s a peek of the brown eyes that snubbed snobbery and socialized with god’s apostles. Here’s the familiar look of promise that dragged your soul through the mud of time and the sludge of heartbreak. Here are the old scabs, blossoming anew. And your recidivism at the matters of the heart. “You are the repeater“, these two glimmers of brown gloss are telling you, “You are a repeater, you just never learn”. Here’s the barb wires and partition lines. Here’s the search for a homeland you found in the droopy eyes of a refugee. Here’s your hometown, with no respite for the weary, no break from the searing pain. The leftover of joy you were never able to collect, the hairpins discarded on a dance floor. And the volcanic ash that settled over the rich terrain and smudged your judgment and blurred the postmortem. Here is uncertainty and its derivatives. Here, my friend, is a land where the only thing you dread more than loneliness is companionship.

Those who paid no attention to Noah’s arc, those who hadn’t heeded his warnings, are no longer with us. The rising waters and its challenge held more promise for them than the safety of the ship. Those who couldn’t read the signs, or distinguish the shifting colors of the macadam on the way to wasteland, they are no longer with us. But we envy them nonetheless. They just shuffled along happily. Those who couldn’t read the writing on the wall, couldn’t decipher the text nor interpret the murals, are probably the happier for it.

For now, you continue to indulge in your selfish dance of catharsis. You try to emulate the arrogance of those who pick wild flowers for the sole purpose of depriving the sun of their beauty. You wish you could own the gloss of that postcard, morph it into an energy of your liking and convenience. But alas, unlike your fantasies, those colors are real, and they shall remain beyond your grasp for as long as you dared them to come close.