I have now transfered my blog to blogspot:

http://awaisaftab.blogspot.com/

From now on, i'll writing there. You are all welcome to visit and comment. Thank you.
TIG has been a great place, and the people i have met, and the love i have received has been enormous. I'll never forget it.

A person's confidence is often more convincing than the rationale of his arguments.

* "He wept when he gave my father the news, that I am a leper. The Saracens say that this disease is God's vengeance against the vanity of our kingdom. As wretched as I am, these Arabs believe that the chastisement that awaits me in hell is far more severe and lasting. If that's true, I call it unfair."

King Baldwin IV

* "If we do not burn these bodies, we will all be dead of disease in three days. God will understand, my lord. And if he doesn't, then he is not God and we need not worry."

Balian

Kingdom of Heaven

Sometimes, before you can embark on the path of friendship, you have to stroll through the garden of romance.

Joyce describes the infatuation of a young boy:

"Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether i would ever speak to her or not or, if i spoke to her, how i could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires."

James Joyce, Araby

There are some people who by virtue of their superb psychological sense can judge what a person expects/wants to hear, and they say exactly that. And by doing so, they manage to earn the trust of that person. The ability to say right things at the right time is a huge advantage. And these people make the best liars, because their lies conform to your psychology and unless you possess a psychological insight equal to theirs, it becomes very difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood. People are so frail against such people, it's unimaginable... their ability to exploit the human tendency of trust is horrifying... the very idea of encountering such people terrifies me!

"Free will is essentially an oxymoron — we would not consider it 'will' if it were completely random and we would not consider it 'free' if it were entirely determined," Brembs said. In other words, nobody would ascribe responsibility to one's actions if they were entirely the result of random coincidence. On the other hand, if one's actions were completely determined by outside factors such that no alternative existed, no one would hold that person responsible for them."

[From the article 'Study hints that fruit flies have free will' by Charles Q. Choi]

So what is free will? Can an action be partially determined?

SCULLY: Mulder, that is still a fantasy.

MULDER: Scully, after all you've seen... after all you've told me you've seen. The tunnel with medical files, the, the beings moving past you, the... the implant in your neck, why do you refuse to believe?

SCULLY: Believing's the easy part, Mulder. I just need more than you, I need proof.

MULDER: You think that believing is easy?

(They stare at each other. She sighs. The fax machine beeps.)

X Files, Nisei

It's the day of Judgement... the court of God... He sits on his throne, people arrive one by one, and their fates are being decided... should he be sent to an eternal blazing fire in which he will roast forever for the finite amount of sins he has committed in the finite existence of a finite world... or should he be sent to an oasis of medieval pleasure, in which he can spend his life in the boredom of utter eternity?
And Lo! The Philosopher is brought forth before Him by the angels. This is a complicated case... the decision is difficult... the scales of balance fluctuate between his virtues and heresies. He deliberates and finally decides, "Take him to paradise!" The angels move but he stays at his spot... firm, confident... he looks up and says, "I don't want your paradise. If you want to reward me, give me annihilation. Bless me nothingness. Purge me of this existence. I only desire Death."

I don't know what happens after this.

Oh, the hypocrisy of the so-called religious moderates so pisses me off! These people believe that people should be flogged in public for fornication, that the hands of the theives should be cut off, that the testimony of women is half that of man, that apostates should be killed... and then these people have the nerve to call their religion a religion of peace! They live, they eat, they drink, they enjoy in a world of 21st century technology, but they believe in a superstition that is centuries old! They believe and propagate a medieval dogma and then they insist on being recognized as modern, progressive people! God, i am so pissed off!

This is something quite dark and disturbing, and i am not sure whether it is really worth sharing, but anyway, here it is, from the pen of Russia's great novelist Dostoyevsky:

"In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden- the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on.

"This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty- shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child's groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God'! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I'll leave off if you like."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

It has been my experience that most people when asked this question, "Are you happy?" tend to answer it in positive... and the huge prevalence of 'happiness' tends to make me quite skeptical of its validity. :)

Personally, i have classified the happy attitude into two types:

Negative Happiness: This consists of a relative psychological indifference to the problems of your life, such that they cease to bother you. You fail in an exam... you just shrug your shoulders and say, "So what? Its not the end of the world." This is negative happiness.

Positive Happiness: This consists of the feeling of pleasure derived from a variety of actions; success, romance, physical pleasures such as having a good tasty meal, aesthetic pleasures such as listening to music or appreciating art, having some sort of an adventure or a thrilling moment.

Of course, in real life, these two types exist in conjunction, though the percentage of their contribution is different in lives of different people.

I would define happy life as one in which happiness dominates over sadness [no life is absolutely happy, ever]. However, i believe, that to lead such a life, the attitude of negative happiness is of greater importance... although it doesn't increase your pleasure, it acts to decrease your feelings of grief, and hence, contribute to an over-all positive balance of happiness over sadness.

Crucify a madman and you risk turning his insanity into a crusade.

"I'm not a fan of classification. It's very difficult to come up with a classification scheme that's useful when what you're most interested in is things that don't fit in, things that you didn't expect."

Ward Cunningham

"Remembrance is a form of meeting."
Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam

Oh, how i wish it was so! How i wish! But sadly, memory can never be a substitute for the actual meeting.

Making the time
Find the right lines
What do I have to tell you

I'm just trying to hold on to something
(Trying to hold on to something good)
Give us a chance to make it.

Don't wanna hold on to never
I'm not that strong
I'm not that strong.

I, I don't wanna say it
I don't wanna find another way
Make it through the day without you
I, I can't resist
Trying to find exactly what I miss
It's just another day without you.

Why can't you stay forever
Just give me a reason
Give me a reason.

[From the lyrics of 'Just Another Day' by Jon Secada.]

"A week ago she was just another pretty face in the class. Now she is a presence in his life, a breathing presence."

J.M.Coetzee, Disgrace

It was upto Saad to discover the 'mean streak' in me. :)

'There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another's faith.'
[Quoted in a letter to Einstein]

Crooks said gently, "Maybe you can see now. You got George. You know he's goin' to come back. S'pose you didn't have nobody. S'pose you couldn't go into the bunk house and play rummy 'cause you was black. How'd you like that? S'pose you had to sit out here an' read books. Sure you could play horseshoes till it got dark, but then you got to read books. Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody-- to be near him." He whined, "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya," he cried, "I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick."

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

Drawn by Saad Javed

Is my love life really so complicated? Hmm... that's not so complicated! :D

“The alienation is so thick you can cut it with a knife,” writes Peter Gorden, describing the atmosphere of Mohsin Hamid’s debut novel, Moth Smoke. With the richness of historical symbolism, the novel describes the decline of Darashikoh, a person on the fringes of upper-class elite in a Pakistan suffering from economic crises after the 1998 nuclear explosions. Daru’s deterioration is best described by Hamid’s own metaphor: a moth spiraling around the candle, seduced by its flame, revolving, falling, until it makes contact with the fire… the moment of union, and… the moth has been reduced to smoke and ash. The novel explores Daru’s obsession with drugs after losing his job in a bank, his affair with his best friend’s wife and finally his entry into the world of crime. "The book explores the idea of how you arrive at truth with conflicting narratives, which is what you do in law," said Hamid in an interview, and these multiple narratives are one of the best features of this novel. Hamid talks of arriving at truth, but me, I didn’t find a single truth anywhere… I just uncovered different versions of the truth. Is truth just the totality of these versions? The novel begins with a trial, and you are the judge, and the novel ends without a sentence, because it is you who has to decide whether Daru is guilty or not. And unless you are a 'fundo' (a word oft employed in the novel), you would not be able to answer this question of innocence. The life which Hamid describes is dark and gloomy, but his style, with which he does so, is charming and gripping. A highly recommended novel.

My friend H, to his mother: "Agar main koi larki na phansa saka tu main saree zindagi apnay aap ko maaf nahi ker sakoon ga!"

* The blank page
Reminds me so much of—
The void within me

* In his silence—
Is the love, he can not
Show in his talk

Awais and Saad

'... one tall and slender, the other short and fat. The reflections of the same soul in the cosmic house of mirrors, or uncanny coincidence?'

Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
Christopher Morley

I tend to agree with it and accept it as a provisional definition of success. But the question arises: what if the way you want to spend your life is 'wrong'... say, if a gangster wants to spend his life killing people, and manages to do that, would we still call it 'success'? In other words: Is success independent of moral considerations? If it is, then shouldn't such 'success' be discouraged.
The biggest problem with this line of thought is that there are no absolute ethical values... everything is relative. When you can't even decide properly what is ethically 'wrong' and what is 'right', the whole issue crumbles.

Looking at all the dissected bodies and faces in medical college, as well as in Atlases of Anatomy, it just makes me think, "Beauty really is skin deep."

"When love is for the highest bidder, there can be no trust. Without trust there is no love."
Moulin Rouge

And this bidding is not just monetary; it could be any form... when you love beauty alone, it means you'll abandon your lover the moment you find someone more beautiful? Or if you value intelligence, you'll ditch your partner when you encounter someone more intelligent? Someone more resourceful? Powerful? Richer? Think about it.

The Lamp

Written by Muhammad Awais Aftab

Blink!
The lights are out
The world is plunged
Into an inky darkness
In which solitary lanterns
Shine weakly like stars
There is another spark
That you see in this negritude
But mistake it not for a lamp
It is my heart
That flickers…

Published in today's Us Magazine.

"In a world of alienation the individual conqueror does not recognise himself in his victory and becomes its slave."
Jean-Paul Sartre, Marxism and Existentialism

I have certainly felt this alienation in a lot of my achievements and victories... as if they don't belong to me... that i didn't have either the ability or the right to conquer, but somehow, i managed to committ that act... it is almost something of a guilt... but people don't understand what is going on behind the superficial events; they are so eager to attribute success or failure to people, they don't even wait to analyse the factors governing that achievement. Even now, if i achieve something great enough, and people praise me, i don't really feel pride... i feel a certain hollowness, a nausea... i am so much aware of my own weaknesses and limitations... these victories don't belong to me; they have been imposed on me by some quirk of fate.

I was thinking about Memory today... the way events are stored in our mind, especially with reference to the sensory data. It seems to me that most of my memory of past consists merely of words and images. The lingual and the visual are the only components that i can discover in my mind. All other sensations are lost, as they have been transformed into words.
For example, if i try to remember the touch of a particular thing, say a piece of cloth, all i can remember is the words "The cloth was soft"... but the actual sensation of texture is absent from my mind. Or say, when i try to remember the taste of a dish i ate some while back, all i can remember is the description of the taste in words, "It was too spicy!" but i am unable to recall the actual sensation of taste itself. Visual data seems to undergo a better fate, but even then the motion seems to be reduced to almost static images. Smell, Taste, Touch, Sound... all have been transformed into words... have been lost!!!

* "This was what we Japanese called the 'onion life' -- peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while."

Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

* And some days back, Saad smsed me, "Sigh. This is an Onion era. Layers upon layers of selfishness and stupidity. And very unpleasant to see it."

"We are never as happy nor as unhappy as we imagine."
La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 49

And we are never as much in love or hatred as we imagine ourselves to be. :)

If you are unable to refute an argument, does it automatically mean that that argument is true? No, of course, it doesn't. It might be that one is not that intellectually capable of seeing through the flaws of that argument, and that a person with a sharper mind might be able to refute it.

And in fact, this is precisely what an average person thinks like when he confronts an argument challenging his religious or otherwise cherished beliefs. Normally, no person changes his views just because he can't refute a logical argument. At least, i have never witnessed people doing so. And this reveals that we don't lead our lives on the basis of reason, but on the basis of our emotions. We believe in something because it satisfies our emotional needs... and we change our views only when our emotional needs demand a new paradigm for proper functioning.

In a sense, we are all like Rousseau, saying to ourselves, "Shall I allow myself to be tossed eternally to and fro by the sophistries of the eloquent?" whenever we face an argument we cannot refute.

Once upon a time...

X: Did you miss me?
Y: I am not sure what 'missing' means, but yeah, i did think a lot about you.

"Every work of art is an uncommitted crime."
Theodor Adorno

And every love poem is an uncommitted affair... a poet's fantasy... the poem is like a spectre reaching out towards the reality, arms and fingers extended, but the tips don't make it by just a few millimetres... the whisper failing to crystallize into an audible voice.

I had a glass of 7up in my hand and i was staring at the bubbles popping up on the surface, and it occured to me that:

Some relationships are like carbonated drinks (7up, Pepsi etc). After a while, the gas escapes and the relationship loses its "tingle" and excitement.

Some relationships are like wine. The older it is, the more intoxicating it gets.

And some relationships are like water. Nothing fancy like 7up/wine, but it is something you can drink anytime and it's the best thing for thirst. :)

There often come in life certain moments which i call 'moments of transcendence', in which an event or a person gives you a jolt that sends you on a short flight above the normal plane of your existence, and you get to have a view of your own life from an altitude, and many things about your ownself which you had previously thought that you perfectly understood, you see them in a new light... after a while, you fall back down to the your everyday plane of existence, but the memory of that brief transcendental view of life lingers and gives you an added insight. And you realize that something has now changed in you... something has shattered, but something new has also emerged.

"Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them," i hear the wise Nietzsche say, and my gaze falls down; i don't have any answer. "What are you trying to prove?" someone asks me, and the question echoes and re-echoes in my mind. Indeed, what am i trying to prove with my blatant poems? Trying to prove how skillfully i can transform my capricious emotions into poetic expressions? That i am daring enough to speak the unspeakable? That i am subtle enough to leak out secrets in unsuspecting, innocent words? That the guise of a poet has rendered me insensitive to the limitations of other people? There she stands in the corner of my mind, her finger pointed at me, and the word 'Shameless' resonates mercilessly and endlessly in my soul, until it becomes the stinging salt in my eyes, and trickles down on my cheek...

Please forgive me
I know not what I do
Please forgive me
I can't stop lovin' you
Don't deny me
This pain I'm going through
Please forgive me
If I need ya like I do
Please believe me
Every word I say is true
Please forgive me
I can't stop loving you

Bryan Adams

I don't know why i am used to making these stupid impulsive mistakes that throw a completely stable situation out of balance! Ah, what a clumsy person i am!
I am grateful to Saad for his kind words in this regard:

"Ahahahaha. Yaar, things like these remind me that you are still mundane/mortal/normal enough!"

Yeah, as if i am in danger of becoming an all-too-perfect demi-god, if i don't make these blunders. :P

Sigh. What a life, man, what a life!

"My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them."
Mitch Hedberg

How many fake social identities have we constructed, that stay alive just because we never cease to water them?

I practice every day to find some clever lines to say
To make the meaning come true
But then I think I'll wait until the evening gets late
And I'm alone with you

The time is right
Your perfume fills my head
The stars get red
And, oh, the night's so blue
And then I go and spoil it all
By saying something stupid
Like I love you
I love you...

[Lyrics from the song Something stupid]

* Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

* Where no gods are, spectres rule.

Happy birthday to Novalis!

Characters:

X-- Mr. Perfect
Y-- Miss Philosopher, Not-so-Perfect

Part 1:

X: Will you marry me?
Y: No, i am sorry. I cannot do that.
X: Why not! What is wrong with me! Don't you love me?
Y: You have only one fault, and that is that you have no fault at all. Your perfection is your only imperfection. You are so perfect, you make me feel sick and irritated. I can't possibly love a person who has no flaws in character whatsoever.

Part 2:

X: Ok. Fine. Then tell me how to become imperfect! I'll develop whatever flaws you want me to develop in me!
Y: It doesn't work that way. People don't love in this fashion. Your perfection has rendered you incapable of appreciating such every day psychology.
X: So, it means there is nothing i can do?
Y: Yes, no one can help you in this regard. Imperfection cannot be taught.

Part 3:

X: Hey, hey, wait a sec!
Y: What is it?
X: I do have an imperfection! I have finally discovered one! My love for you? Is that not an imperfection on my part? I am loving an imperfect person like you... that is an imperfection!
Y: I must admit that you have come up a logical paradox. But i must do as the philosophers do.
X: And what do philosophers do in case of paradoxes?
Y: They ignore them. :P Good bye.

All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
Helen Keller

Including all the people that we love, or have loved...

A good poem is capable of expressing a lot more than the poet had intended. A bad poem, on the other hand, is not even capable of conveying what the poet had in mind.

The song 'Laree Chooti' is the rage these days, and the charm of the song lies in it's catchy tune and it's reflective lyrics... making it a treat not just for an average teenager, but also to a thoughtful mind, because of it's philosophical implications. Here i'll mention some of them which i felt... obviously, this is an instance of 'creative interpretation', arising from the interaction of the song and my subjectivity, and does not in any way claim objectivity of analysis.

Kya huwa jo laree chooti
Jeevan ki gaadi luuti
Khwab hai to mujhko na jaga
Zindagi ek pal mein saali
Yun palat gayi hamaari
Jhuth hai to mujhko na bata

Translation:
[I translated it as i felt appropriate.]

So what if i missed the bus?
Or if the train of my life is robbed?
If i am living a dream, do not wake me up
It took just a moment…
For my damned life to become topsy-turvy
If this is a lie, don't bother to tell me

The most obvious thing is, of course, the attitude of indifference to the apparent loses of life... the song sees life as unpredictable and transitory... there is also mention of fate in the next stanza... if this life is to last for a finite period, and the end result is annihilation for all of us, then what do these loses matter?

I also see this song as one of the responses to the existential dilemmas... the question of authenticity and inauthenticity raised by Heidegger and of 'bad faith' (self-deception) raised by Sartre. Authenticity and Inauthenticity are two modes of Dasein ('Being there'). Authenticity represents the choice of self, when you yourself decide what you want to be. Inauthenticity is its opposite, when you let others define who you are or when you work to fit in the definitions prepared by other people.
'Bad faith' involves not being true to oneself and attempting to elude responsibilty by making different excuses. For example, a person may believe in an unalterable fate decreed by an omnipotent God and that his life is already determined. This is an attempt to escape from the sense of responsibilty. Sartre calls it 'bad faith' or 'self-deception'.

This song, however, boldly confronts these philosophers, and says, "So what if i am deceiving myself? So what if i am living an inauthentic life? So what if i am guilty of self-deception? If i am living a happy and satisfied life in the state of 'bad faith', what does it matters to you? If i am living my life as a dream, then let it be, let me live in this dream... i do not want a reality which will only bring me anguish, despair and nausea! If my life is a lie, it makes no difference to me!"

I don't think this is a response which Sartre can morally condemn... an existentialist may disapprove of it, but he cannot show this attitude to be ethically wrong... this is one of the biggest limitations of existentialism... it cannot prove the superiority of an enlightened life to an ignorant one. Sartre indicated in his philosophical masterpiece 'Being and Nothingness' that he will write a book on existential ethics, but he never did... perhaps because existential ethics is not possible at all.

And it is precisely this aspect of the song which makes it enjoyable for me. :)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

* "A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push." [Attributed]

Happy birthday to the great genius who showed us the possibility of pulling the door open!

* "A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes." [Saad, this is especially for your consideration.] [Attributed]

* "The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one's eyes.) " [Philosophical Inverstigations]

* "To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning." [Notes from 1916]

* "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." [Tractatus]

Nothing is better than the unintended humor of reality.
Steve Allen

Nothing is also more striking than the unintended meaning of reality... random, chaotic collisions of events producing a sensible, meaningful result, as if it were all a part of some predetermined plot.

"If religion presents itself now [at the age of puberty] as theological dogma it may rouse the youthful passion for debate, and suffer dismemberment; if it presents itself as the pursuit of the good it touches the idealism of the changing soul, and becomes an ineradicable part of the personality."

Will Durant, The Pleasures of Philosophy

This surely reveals the brilliant insight of Will Durant regarding such matters. The religious opinions of a person depend a great degree on to what kind of religion he/she has been exposed to in youth. If his experience of religion is dark, dismal, suffocating... as a doctrine which imposes chains on human activity and limits human freedom... as a dogma which prevents mental and psychological libration, then chances are that the person will rebel against such a notion. On the other hand, if the version of religion the person is exposed to in youth is gentle, mild, liberal... as more of a moral advice than unquestionable rules... as a way of spreading kindness and good in the world, then surely the person would retain a strong religious element in his personality.

The tricky part is that most religions contain both elements... every religion has aspects which are hostile and suffocating... and every religion has components which promote kindness and good will.

"You know, it's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness... There is even a moment, right at the start, where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it."

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

She doesn't love me
Oh my Lord
It doesn't mean it's a tragedy, tragedy
She doesn't mean it
Say that she don't
This doesn't have to be a tragedy, tragedy
Oh, no
This doesn't have to be a tragedy

All of my life
I was searching for the love that we had
Without knowing why
You turned around and treat me so bad

But oh, no
I'll just hold my tears inside
Oh, no
Maybe you'll find another lover who will cry

On the phone for hours
But we had very little conversation
We spoke of words with no meaning
We spoke of love with no end
I tell myself again

She doesn't love me
Oh my Lord
It doesn't mean it's a tragedy, tragedy

[Mark Antony]

To say that 'life is absurd and senseless' sometimes makes life more 'sensible' to me than the statement's antithesis.

“Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the reflection dwells on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me,” is the statement carved on the gravestone of Immanuel Kant in Königsberg. Happy birthday to the one of the greatest philosophical minds of all time.

Hi M. Awais Aftab!

Only few people know the art of conveying their true feelings into words through poetry. And believe me, you are one of them. I really like your poetry. Your poems are simply mind blowing. Keep it up and continue composing such poems.

Asma

20 April 07 Us magazine

What we can't say seriously, we say in humour.

And what we can't say in humour, we say it seriously?

I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
Emo Philips

"The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned."
W. Somerset Maugham

Sigh.

"When i was small, my Aunt Bigeois used to tell me: 'If you look at yourself too long in the mirror, you'll see a monkey there.' I must have looked at myself even longer than that: what i can see is far below the monkey, on the edge of the vegetable world, at the polyp level... I push my face forward until it touches the mirror. The eyes, the nose, the mouth disappear: nothing human is left.
...
Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face. Or perhaps it is because I am a solitary? People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?"

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

Happy Birthday to Anatole France!

* The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.

* A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.

* Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work.

* If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

* Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

* What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.

"A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it."

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them.
Edward R. Murrow

"He did it this morning...
he gives me that look.
What look?
To say...
your life is trivial.
You...are so...trivial.
Just daily stuff, you know, schedules and parties, and...
details - that's what he means.
That is what he's saying.
...
When I am with him, I feel
Yes, I am living...
and when I am not with him,
yes, everything does seem sort of...
silly."

From the movie 'The Hours'

"A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him but you can see his incomprehensible dumb-show: you wonder why he is alive."

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

"... and all he knew was that seeing her made him want to reach out and touch her, like a rare butterfly, just to see if he could do it, and if she would survive it. But like most rare butterflies, he suspected that if he touched her, her wings would turn to powder."

Five Days in Paris, Danielle Steel

"The women in his paintings-- he traps them in his world. You can get lost there."

A line from the historical novel Girl with a Pearl Earring, referring to the artist Vermeer.

The Passing Cloud

By Muhammad Awais Aftab

O! The passing cloud!
Tell me
Have you brought my beloved's love note?
Is your dark, gloomy colour
The colour of her thoughts?
These drops you sprinkle on me
Are they the tears from her eyes?
These circulating birds you escort
Do they echo the songs she sings for me?
The cool hasty wind brushing my face
Are they the kisses she has sent for me?
Torment me not, O Cloud!
I can feel her presence in you
The way you touch the strings of my heart
Evoking a music, so sweet and sad
Has not my lover taught you this?
And yet again
You remind me of my beloved's lips
Smiling, stunning but silent
Speak not, if you so wish
But drench me then -
Drench me in your rain
Drench me in my lover's tears!

Published in Us Magazine today.
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2007-weekly/us-13-04-2007/p24.htm#1

"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must."
Edward Bulwer-Lytton

That is perhaps why it is usually the genius who suffers; the talented one goes on in this world successfully. And the genius is not even given the chance to choose; his destiny is written and sealed. Talent gains glory in life; genius earns glory in death.

Once a celestial deva came to Buddha in the shape of a Brahman enlightened and wearing clothing as white as snow. And he asked Buddha many questions, to which Buddha gave his replies. One of these series of question was:

The deva asked,

What is attraction?
What is repulsion?
What is the most horrible pain?
What is the greatest enjoyment?

The Buddha replied,

Attraction is wholeness;
repulsion is unwholesomeness;
The most tormenting pain is bad conscience;
The height of bliss is redeemed awakening.

"Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets."

Jacques Derrida

Does this also hold for self-referential propositions; that is, can one say 'I am a monster' [any eye colour would do!] without turning oneself into a pet?
God, these postmodernists really are baffling!

"Show me a thoroughly satisfied man-- and i will show you a failure."

Thomas Alva Edison

But what does that failure matter if that person is satisfied? What would a success matter if you are unhappy?

"A man who has become conscious of the absurd is forever bound to it. A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future."

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

My dilemma. I have stared in the very eyes of absurdity, and now i am it's eternal captive :(

"To-Do" Saying-- Author

"To do is to be." Socrates
"To be is to do." Jean-Paul Sartre, Plato
"To be or not to be." William Shakespeare's Hamlet
"Do-be-do-be-do." Frank Sinatra
"Do be a Do Bee, don't be a Don't Bee." Miss Connie from Romper Room
"Scooby Dooby Doo." Scooby Doo
"Yabba Dabba Doo." Fred Flintstone
"Inka Dinka Doo." Jimmy Durante


Taken from
http://www.i18nguy.com/humor/doing-being.html

This painting is known as The Scream, or The Scream of Nature. In a note in his diary, the painter Edvard Munch described his inspiration for this painting, thus:

"I was walking along a path with two friends—the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."

Kierkegaard, the father of Existentialism, wrote about his love for Regine Olsen in his journal:

"Thou sovereign of my heart treasured in the deepest fastness of my chest, in the fullness of my thought, there ... unknown divinity! Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. ... it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here."

Søren Kierkegaard, Journals (2 February 1839)

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Mr Nietzsche, you have hit the nail right on the head! :)

I had my first chat with Faiza today! :D It was quite pleasant, and i really enjoyed it. One thing surprised me though. Faiza said that she had met my sister, and this reminded of one of my early chats with Anum in which she had described a similar event of meeting my sister. The spectres of the past. :)
Over all, i think Faiza is much better than Faria in almost every aspect. To what extent will i be able to trust Faiza, only time will tell. Let's hope for the best at the moment.
Ah, the euphoria! :)

This is a short dialogue extracted from a series of conversations between Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre, which Beauvoir conducted in 1974, and later published in 'Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre'

DE BEAUVOIR: Were you ever attracted by an ugly woman?
SARTRE: Truly and wholly ugly, no, never.
DE BEAUVOIR: It could even be said that all the women you were fond of were either distinctly pretty or at least very attractive and full of charm.
SARTRE: Yes, in our relations I liked a woman to be pretty because it was a way of developing my sensibility. These were irrational values—beauty, charm, and so on. Or rational, if you like, since you can provide an interpretation, a rational explanation. But when you love a person’s charm you love something that is irrational, even though ideas and concepts do explain charm at a more intense degree.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton

I think love also does a pretty good job in producing this result. :)

Love should not be reduced to a ritual, otherwise it would lose its charm. There should be a spontaneity in its expression, a newness, a creativity. This is what makes it exciting, this is what makes it enjoyable. Rituals force you to express your emotions in fixed ways, in rigid patterns... which, for me, is lethal to the spirit of romance.

"So if you want to love me
then darlin' don't refrain
Or I'll just end up walkin'
In the cold November rain"

Guns and Roses, November Rain

Song and lyrics that would never die! At least, not for me.

It is interesting to observe that the society encourages romance in stories, films, dramas, art and poetry. Such works get a lot of publicity and appreciation. But, in sheer contrast, romance is strongly discouraged in real life. A person is expected to show love in real life through the pale, lifeless institution of marriage, and any criticism is waved away by the stereotypical response that the love between husband and wife is the "true love". But how do these people remain ignorant of their own hypocrisies, because the type of love they appreciate in poetry and art is a radically different kind of love.
The explanation is perhaps that the infatuatuous, passionate love is a wild, untamed emotion. It's spontaneous and rebellious; it doesn't obey any rules. In other words, it is disruptive to the fabric of society. It breaks away the strands of social norms. And therefore, not surprisingly, the society discourages this kind of love.
But we all have the instinct for this infatuatous love inside us, which needs to be satisfied. And how does the society accomplish that? Through promoting precisely this kind of love in arts, films, dramas. An attempt to fulfull, to live through their suppressed fantasies. [Perhaps this explains the observation that girls are much more interested in romantic literature, while simultaneously being awfully and dreadfully unromantic in real life. The reason is perhaps that they are subjected to a greater degree of social suppression.]

"Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labour in it, but they labour in it because they excel."
William Hazlitt

Although i wouldn't say that this statement is universally applicable, but there does seem to be a grain of truth in it.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors . . . Perhaps I would have liked to be my father, who wrote and had the decency of not publishing. Nothing, nothing, my friend; what I have told you: I am not sure of anything, I know nothing. . . Can you imagine that I not even know the date of my death?

Jorge Luis Borges

Philosophy is the best consolation for love-ache. :)

Have you had this feeling: you are waiting for something, something to happen... you are not very sure what it is that you are expecting, or maybe you subconconsciously know but don't want to admit to yourself, and that something is not happenening, and it makes you so irritated and low-in-spirit. Arrrghhh!!!

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.

John Ruskin

This is one of the best descriptions of the conditiosn of happiness in work: brief, but comprehensive. And the more i think about it, the more it makes sense. And i can verify it from my own personal experience.

The Lake of Mind
By Muhammad Awais Aftab

In the stillness of my memories
Your thoughts come
Like stones thrown in a pond
By children in their innocent games
The ripples dance
The waves glide
The previous stagnant surface
Is consumed by movement
But soon
The motion fades away
And the calm is restored.

Published in today's Us magazine.
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/mar2007-weekly/us-30-03-2007/p7.htm#1

She'll lead you down a path
There'll be tenderness in the air
She'll let you come just far enough
So you know she's really there
She'll look at you and smile
And her eyes will say
She's got a secret garden
Where everything you want
Where everything you need
Will always stay
A million miles away

[Bruce Springsteen]

The beginning of an infatuation is something that strikes you. At first you don't even know what it is that attracts you -- something in her face? Something in the way she smiles? You try to conjecture, to explain this mysterious emergence of attraction, but you remain uncertain. All you know is that you are in the clutches of a crush, and that you are helpless against it. Now, if it is a mild case, you'll wait for the storm to blow over. But if it is a severe case, you'll probably do something stupid. :)

We do not love people because of their abilities or talents. You may admire them for that, but love and affection are a different thing. We like people for what they are as a person. If you love someone because of some talent, then you are loving a mere ghost.

There is only one obligation you have: Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. No body can blame you for failing to accomplish something you didn't have the ability to do in the first place.

How does it feel to know that something that you had so desperately wanted has slipped out of your hands; that you have failed.
And add to this the realization that the opponent you have lost to is surely the more able one. If this doesn't lead to jealousy, it leads to a sense of despair and inferiority. A proper acceptance of defeat is an art; something which few people are able to master.

The Russells will always have more fame and glory than the Wittgensteins.

It is often said that the best things in life are free, but in a sense, nothing is free. Every thing costs something. Friends require time and money. Even for appreciating something as simple as rainfall, you need to have time... an expensive and rare commodity these days.

* It is not the genius alone who suffers; their true friends suffer with them.

* Hard work can make you successful, it can make you skilled, but it can never make you a genius. It is a curse you are born with.

* Nature has little affection for men (and women) of genius; they are all born with genes of self-destruction.

To all great philosophical questions, there is only one honest answer, "I do not know."

I saw the movie The Hours just a little while ago, and it is so awesome, it demands a silence in its praise. I am strongly reminded of a quote by Robert Frost that i read earlier today, "The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it." This movie too is an immortal wound. It'll remain with me for the rest of my life.

Some quotes from the movie:

* A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.

* I am ungrateful? You call me ungrateful? My life has been stolen from me. I'm living in a town I have no wish to live in. I'm living a life I have no wish to live. How did this happen?

* If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark. And that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.

* You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.

* That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other.

* I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.

* I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it's all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less. Sheer fucking pride and stupidity.

* To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.

Why do we live? We live because we are in the habit of living. There is no other reason.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken, st. 4 (1916)

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it.

The Poetry of Amy Lowell, From the Christian Science Monitor (May 16, 1925)

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

In the Clearing (1962)

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.

Happy Birthday to Robert Frost!

I know not of a single sin which a person can't justify to himself; i know not of single religious belief which a person can't rationalize if he really wishes to believe in it.