It struck me today: There are very few people in this world with whom i'm at ease.

Human are usually very predictable. We can predict with a reasonable degree of accuracy what a particular person, provided we know him well, would do in response to a particular thing. At times, this predictability of behaviour strikes me, and the problem of determinism/free will emerges again in my mind. One of the most important test of free will is whether the behaviour of particular 'subject' [humans or AI, for example] can be predicted or not... if it can be, then that subject is not free... if it cannot be predicted, that still doesn't mean that he is free, cause the behaviour of a deterministic system might be too complicated to be predicted accurately. To what extent is human behaviour predictable? Think about it.

I was wondering today, if i died right now, what would people say about me in my obituary. Specifically, i was thinking, would anyone include the statement, "He spent his life fighting depression and despair."? Has anyone been this close to me?

"Give me chastity and continency, but not yet."
Saint Augustine

'Haan, yeh sahi hai ke main tum se piyar kerta hoon, magar yeh bhi sun lo ke agar meray bas me hota to main tum se kabhi piyar na kerta!!!'

[Translation: 'Yes, it is true that i love you, but listen! If it were in my power, i'd never have loved you!!!']

Hehehe. Not bad, not bad. I should try writing scripts for romantic films. ;)

It is strange how at times an intense problem leaves us unshaken and at other times a minor issue can lead to unprecidented mental turbulence. Just last evening me and my family were on our way to Faisalabad, and in the darkness, my father jammed the car into a partition between the two roads. The car was badly damaged, and the radiator and coolant was leaking, and a part of engine was also smashed. But me and my father were strangely calm. [My mother was a bit perturbed though.] We called a maternal uncle who lived in Faisalabad, and he came with a mechanic, and he also drove us to the city.

"I asked the wise man
To tell me the secret of life
The wise man whispered,
It cannot be told
It's Wrapped in Silence"

Rumi

So beautiful words, the only proper appreciation of them can be a reflective silence.

My heart is numb, has no feeling,
So while I'm still healing,
Just try and have a little patience,

Yeah, have a little patience, Yeah

Cause these scars run so deep,
It's been hard,
But I have to believe in me.

Have a little patience,
Have a little patience,

[from the lyrics of 'Patience' by Take That]

One's response to a music or a particular song varies considerably, depending upon the context and the particular mood. And the emotions are best stimulated when there is a resonance between the 'frequency' of the song and the psyche. For example, i have heard the song "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol many times before, with variable degree of responses [it's certainly one of my all time favourites] but a small while ago i heard it, and i became so sad that my eyes got moist. "In music the passions enjoy themselves" says Nietzsche. Well, they might not enjoy all the time, but surely music, when in tune with state of mind, can highly intensity the emotions.

The wounds of my soul run deep and any attempt of healing remains superficial and shallow. The cuts bleed anew at the slightest of scratching. Nothing that do i can prevent the onslaught of depression on my mind, as it rests in the recesses of my psyche. I am a chronic victim of my own mind. I am spared when i am in the company of friends, but when i am alone, the melancholy roars with a fierce fury. The silence which enshroudes me is a silence just in name... it is full of screams and shrieks, cries of pain and despair... the lamenting of a thousand banshees. I am afraid of utter silence... it bears me down with its weight, strangling me with unseen hands. I do not know where to look, whom to ask for help... no one understands me, no one can understand me... this is my own personal pain. I alone will have to fight, i alone will have to suffer...

"But not one fathoms the secrets of my heart.
My secrets are not alien from my plaintive notes,
Yet they are not manifest to the sensual eye and ear.
Body is not veiled from soul, neither soul from body,
Yet no man hath ever seen a soul."

[Rumi]

"Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?"

Rumi

Heart Ache ... [Awais] says:
yaar, what was the name of house master of Jinnah?
folly,wickedness and longevity!® says:
sir nisaar
folly,wickedness and longevity!® says:
and sir arif
Heart Ache ... [Awais] says:
yeah, sir nisaar
Heart Ache ... [Awais] says:
i think he told in one of his khutbaas
Heart Ache ... [Awais] says:
that when Prophet went on Mairaj, he visited hell
Heart Ache ... [Awais] says:
and saw a person who had a heavy bundle of sticks on his back
Heart Ache ... [Awais] says:
and he tried to lift it, but he couldn't
Heart Ache ... [Awais] says:
and then he put it on the ground, and inserted another stick in it, and then tries to lift it again
Heart Ache ... [Awais] says:
and this cycle is repeated endlessly
Heart Ache ... [Awais] says:
i felt like that man today :)
folly,wickedness and longevity!® says:
AHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAH

Sigh. Life is going too fast for me. My gentle, fragile soul is being eroded away by the fast currents of time. I long for a calmness which i do not find... and what is more ironic [and sad] is that it is I myself who keeps on increasing the load and burden on me. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff... i am too soft. :)

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

W.H. Audin

Happy Birthday to the English-born American poet!

"Strange... how some men learn to settle and love only after battering one woman almost to death."

Aamer Hussain, What do you call those birds?

Sad, but true.

About a year or two back, I began writing an account of creation from a rather negative perspective, but which I felt held valuable insights in it. I had written its beginning paragraph only when I happened to read the essay ‘A Free Man’s Worship’ by Bertrand Russell, and in the start Russell had presented an extract of Mephistopheles telling the story of creation to Dr. Faustus. I was immensely surprised to read it because it appeared to be a perfect continuation of my own story. Since it was written with great literary style and charm, I decided to abandon the idea of continuing my writing, and rather keep my tale as a prelude to this brilliant account of creation.

This is what I had written:

PRELUDE TO HISTORY OF CREATION

Once upon a time when time didn’t exist, and there was neither life nor darkness, neither good nor evil, neither love nor hate and the Universe with its scintillating stars, blue-green seas and human misery was yet to be forged; existence still yearned for its meaning. Whatever there was, was a spaceless point and a timeless instant: the sole dominion of God. But ambition is not satisfied by this universal power over nothing; cruelty demands victims, predator needs preys and master, slaves. And so God decided to create the universe and the heaven and hell. Angels were designed to provide fun and amusement; mindless machines, unaware of their own existence, with the mere purpose of obedience. He chuckled and chortled as he observed them dancing around his throne in the guise of worship.


And this is the beginning of the essay ‘A Free Man’s Worship’ by Bertrand Russell, which I feel as if it were a continuation of the above aborted attempt of writing.

A Free Man's Worship
Bertrand Russell (1903)

To Dr. Faustus in his study Mephistopheles told the history of the Creation, saying:
"The endless praises of the choirs of angels had begun to grow wearisome; for, after all, did he not deserve their praise? Had he not given them endless joy? Would it not be more amusing to obtain undeserved praise, to be worshipped by beings whom he tortured? He smiled inwardly, and resolved that the great drama should be performed.
"For countless ages the hot nebula whirled aimlessly through space. At length it began to take shape, the central mass threw off planets, the planets cooled, boiling seas and burning mountains heaved and tossed, from black masses of cloud hot sheets of rain deluged the barely solid crust. And now the first germ of life grew in the depths of the ocean, and developed rapidly in the fructifying warmth into vast forest trees, huge ferns springing from the damp mould, sea monsters breeding, fighting, devouring, and passing away. And from the monsters, as the play unfolded itself, Man was born, with the power of thought, the knowledge of good and evil, and the cruel thirst for worship. And Man saw that all is passing in this mad, monstrous world, that all is struggling to snatch, at any cost, a few brief moments of life before Death's inexorable decree. And Man said: `There is a hidden purpose, could we but fathom it, and the purpose is good; for we must reverence something, and in the visible world there is nothing worthy of reverence.' And Man stood aside from the struggle, resolving that God intended harmony to come out of chaos by human efforts. And when he followed the instincts which God had transmitted to him from his ancestry of beasts of prey, he called it Sin, and asked God to forgive him. But he doubted whether he could be justly forgiven, until he invented a divine Plan by which God's wrath was to have been appeased. And seeing the present was bad, he made it yet worse, that thereby the future might be better. And he gave God thanks for the strength that enabled him to forgo even the joys that were possible. And God smiled; and when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and worship, he sent another sun through the sky, which crashed into Man's sun; and all returned again to nebula.
"`Yes,' he murmured, `it was a good play; I will have it performed again.'"

-----------------------------

Muhammad Awais Aftab

Second Law of Skull Osteology:

"And when you stare into the skull, the skull also stares into you."

[Nietzsche fans will recognize that this is a parody of his famous aphorism: 'And when you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you.']

I have started studying head and neck in Anatomy these days in medical college, and well, this is my first discovery:

First Law of Skull Osteology:

"All skulls grin stupidly!"

No exceptions. :)

"On all the peaks lies peace."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

And what lies for those who conquer them-- isolation and loneliness?

"It is July 27, 1890. Vincent van Gogh has already painted The Potato Eaters, Sunflowers and Starry Night. But connoisseurs have refused to acknowledge his worth – for some inexplicable reason. He has been snubbed by art aficionados and labelled socially unfit by his neighbours. He has cut one of his ears in an act of madness that may have method in it. All his life (he was born on March 30,1853), he has not been able to sell his paintings or drawings, whereas other artists, whose works do not have the ingenious colour scheme (and the strangely glowing stars) of Starry Night or the painful empathy with The Potato Eaters, are getting grander in stature by the day. And now, as some eyewitnesses suggest, Vincent has shot himself in the chest.

Vincent died mad, died destitute, died with a single ear, died with just one painting sold. However, death is important; he may have thought: one must try a hand at death if things are not working well. The Potato Eaters, Cypresses and Starry Night are masterpieces today, valued in millions. The person who possesses them earns respect, dignity and name. “Look, he has a Van Gogh in his sitting room.”

Excerpt from the article 'Vincent’s world' by Peerzada Salman
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/gallery/gallery4.htm

Starry Night, the famous painting by Vincent Van Gogh. I simply love!

Writer's Block: Death of a Poem

By Muhammad Awais Aftab

[Inspired by Saadia Asghar's poem 'Writer's Block' published in the 'Poet's Corner', September 8, 2006]

O poet! Mourn!
For a poem has perished
Fading away into the void
Stifled and suffocated
In your futile meditations
Trapped in your impervious mind
It was desperate to find
A means of expression:
To flow out of your thoughts
Be transformed into words on a page
Liberty from your mental cage
But your impotent pen
Your writer's block
Closed all gates:
And this soul of a thought
Was buried in the silent graveyard
Of your sub-consciousness
Thirsty, on the bank of Euphrates
Its death, an epic ballad in itself...

[published today in Us magazine by The News.
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2007-weekly/us-16-02-2007/p7.htm#1]

The kind of beauty which attracts me is not the bold, flagrant type... the super-model class beauty... i feel as if such a beauty also sends a 'Danger! Stay Away!' signal. The beauty which appeals to me is more of soft, gentle type... it is not the stunning, Hollywood appearance, but it has a certain grace which makes it aesthetically pleasant. The classification is not so strict... some girls are on the borderline, alternating between these two kinds. [I would have loved to give some examples from the girls around me, but of course, that would have been highly inappropriate! :)]

'Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure', says Lord Byron. An apt quote for the occasion, perhaps. One day for love in the year [Valentine's Day] and the rest of 364 days for detestation. Have fun. Happy Valentine's Day!! :)

This Valentine constantly reminds me of someone i lost, perhaps due to my own follies. My brother says to me that it important to realize when it is the right time to let go of something... but what if one doesn't want to let go, what if one just can't let go, what if it keeps coming back again and again? Anyway, my this year's Valentine is a virtual Valentine... the Red Lady... a ghost from the past. Happy Valentine's Day! :)

In the coming days, i will introduce you to different men of genius who were ignored in their own lifetimes, and had to go through the unfair torture of isolation and unrecognition.

I will begin with Julius Robert Von Mayer (1814-1878), the German physicist... a name that is largely unknown today, but it was he who originally proposed the universally applicable idea of conservation of energy, and also the view that the ultimate source of energy on eath is solar. But during his life, he was denied the credit for these ideas. Frustrated from this lack of recognition, and tormented by despair, he tried to commit suicide by jumping from a three-storey building. He survived however, but broke both his legs and become permanently invalid. He was later sent to a mental asylum, from where he never recovered fully. A tragic end.

"All men," says De Musset, "are liars, traitors, babblers, hypocrites, strutters; all women are vain, artificial and perfidious;... but there is in the world one thing holy and sublime, and that is the union of these two imperfect beings."

[P.S. This is my 200th Blog entry. I'd like to thank all the readers, and especially the sweet Sulail, the instructive Thalia, the lovely Angie, and my buddy Muneeb for making it a worth-while experience for me. Thank you so much!]

If I love you, what does that matter to you!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is a very violent form of unilateral love, and i can understand it because i once, temporarily fortunately, experienced this. :) This is a type of love which is irrespective of the response of the lover... but it would be more appropriate to say that it is mostly stimulated by a lack of response of love. But since the lover is reluctant to let go of the feeling of love, he/she retains this emotion without expecting or desiring any reciprocity.
A love which has no desire to be reciprocated seems a bit unnatural to me, almost inhuman perhaps... it's like loving a statue or a painting. Suppose someone says to you, "I'll love you no matter what you do! I'll love you even if you hate me!"... What can you do with such a stubborn lover? Uhh... gives me the shivers! :)

"I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there."

Charles de Montesquieu

Yup, i have read a lot of those myself.

Since there are no perfect persons, can there also not be perfect matches? My perfect match, hypothetically considered, would be imperfect, because it would complement my personality... and i suppose the complements of my imperfections would be imperfections as well. Hmm... this is a bit confusing, isn't it? :)

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without direction from another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolve and courage to use it without another’s guidance. Sapere aude! Dare to know! That is the motto of Enlightenment.”

Immanuel Kant

We, humans, are all creatures of deception. It is a source of constant amazement to see how people skillfully manage to deceive themselves in a calculated manner. Through amusing ways and excuses, they isolate themselves from the reality, forcing themselves to believe in illusions about themselves and other people around them. The acuteness with which the subconscious seals away the truth from the conscious is truly amazing. [Of course, i, too, would have my share of self-induced delusions. :)]

LAHORE - February 8: Birds on a tree silhouetted against a bizarre cloud pattern on a spring evening in Lahore. — Photo by Azhar Jafri [from today's Dawn newspaper]

Staring in the face of the impossibility, the mind gains a strange courage. When death is certain, the soldier fights without fear. When all hope is lost, bravery is unleashed.
[This is, of course, one of the two possible responses. The other is complete resignation and apathy.]

"I do not know which i was more, a lover or a poet. Both love and poetry consumed me. An affair of the heart brought me into disrepute; my poetry earned me a name which resounded all over Hindustan. Love brought me anguish; poetry, a feeling of ecstacy."

[says 'Mir Taqi Mir' in "Dehli", by Khushwant Singh]

In the beginning, there was Chaos....

"What's so great about gambling?" I asked
"What? One is completely in the hands of the powers that rule the universe. Whether you believe in it or not, you try to hypnotize the little ball and send it where you please. You wage war with the laws of physics, but they make a mockery of your commands."

I. B. Singer

"This jug was love-sick like me,
Tangled in a fair girl's locks;
This handle you now see on its neck
Was his hand on the neck of the girl"

[Omar Khayyam]

"Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities."

Aldous Huxley

This is a gem of wisdom which i kept forgetting again and again! :)

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
Albert Einstein

Speaking in parallal fashion, i think a true philosopher is also identified by his irresistable urge to think, to reflect, to analyze. Many times people say to me, irritated by my skepticism, why do you have to think so much! My answer is, 'I just can't help it. Its an irresistable urge.' :)

My friend Saad asked me yesterday, "If you were a gadget, what would you have been?" My answer was, "A pocket radio. You can tune in whenever you want. You can keep me close. Listen to all kinds of talk: from commonplace to reflective. I can be irritating but also soothing."

A song dedication is like a trap, a snare, which a lover sets for his/her beloved. Whenever they will hear that song again in life, they will think of each other. Its a virtual bond. The love may die, but this fragile link of memory will endure as long as the song will continue to be played.

In this moment, I need to be needed,
With this darkness all around me, I like to be liked,
In this emptiness and fear, I want to be wanted,
'Cause I love to be loved,
I love to be loved.

~ Peter Gabriel