Lucidity

Redeemed by the presence of another, knowing that life exist yet beside you. Within the confines of my bare & white room, I take comfort in my room mate's softly breathing figure.

A casual silence suffused with that unspoken, familiar, longing for...I'd like to say 'Home' but that's not quite it. Sometimes it's starkly clear to me, how irredeemably vacillating I am.

I want, need, something more. More than this. 

Somewhere in my darkening mind, I realize that I, no longer have ambitions. I am comfortable, yes. I am perfectly fine with the path my life seems to be motioning for. I have more than accepted my current fate.

But I'm always the prospective kind. I look forward, to a fault. Abandoning the "here & now" (Star Wars reference for you there). 

I look for 'causes' to champion, something to fill the void. I like to be passionate. Love it. And this is where I lose myself. That hunger can't ever be satisfied with these fleeting fancies I preoccupy myself with. I'm perfectly aware of it.

Therein lies the rub (Hamlet y'all). Knowing a fault doesn't necessarily trigger a remedy. In fact, it just irritates, nags and worries. 

It's so easy to distract myself from my dilemmas. Right now though I want to be lucid. I am far from the Muslimah I should be (God, another Star Wars reference). See? I can't even be serious anymore. I jest with myself, for what else is there to do?

There is an answer for that, of course: Trust Allah SWT.

Not to love

When you decide to do / not do something you've always had not done / done, there is that one burning question, demanding to be answered:

What has changed?

Unravelling our own ulterior motives is not easy. Self-deception is a complex & organic defence mechanism.

Change is difficult. An upheaval of a system that works, used to work or at least seemed to.

Want / need, right / wrong. Spectrums of infinite shades. How can anybody not feel lost?

Occasionally though someone, having perceived you as the 'discerning type', puts you on the spot with questions. They ask you to analyse their motives, ask how you 'feel' about them. You know your answer will affect a change in them if you're not careful.

What do you say?

It all boils down to you in the end. To your view of your relationship with the person. To tell them what they need / want to hear. Lying is easy if you don't care.

But I care. I always do. I want to always do. And when I can't afford to, made to not want to, I suffer.

Hence, I make no effort to deepen any seemingly promising bonds with most people. What I already have is enough.

I contemplate all this in the shade of my iron clad desire to not love. To not love so I can truly love.

Imagine Dragons

What I listen to these days. Headphones + lying quietly in bed / a walk. Essentially, letting the world fade. Disappearing into a trance of simply breathing in & out. A meditative state to just take it all in. All as in life. Appreciating Life as it is, a state of being alive.

People are so tiresome. Not specific persons per se. I won't sum this up as my latent misanthropy (as I sometimes do) either. I view the hoi polloi as a kind of pollution. Crowds akin to smogs / exhaust fumes. In excess, unintentionally, they are toxic.

It's more of a collecting of the self. So I withdraw & wage war upon myself. To conquer the core of my being, I walk alone.

Rose coloured glass

View from my window here in Melbourne. Roomie cellotaped her rose to the glass. Lovely thing.

Sometimes though you just need to view things through rose coloured glasses.

Through my sadness

In the dead of the night I look out the window & look for something living. There were but the trees & the winds blowing gently, as if reassuring me that I wasn't alone. I stared, stared & stared only to start gazing at my hands. How foreign they seem. That this warmth, this flesh wrapped around bones, the skin cladding it that I was touching, that they seem very convincingly mine. Oh, but I know better. I am a soul, this body is temporary. I feel, my body does not. I experience the world through my senses but how I interpret them, how I process them, that is my existence. That is who I am. I am a soul blown into a body, both of which a blessing from The One, The Creator. This 'life', it is utterly absurd. There is no meaning on this earth. Hence, what comes after is what is promised to us. Why we must strive to simply be on this earth & preserve our souls the best we can, to remember what we've forgotten, so we we could return to that beyond.

So we live.

Le Morte d'Arthur (fanart)

Title: Le Morte d'Arthur (The Dead Arthur)

Medium: poster colour, pens, one A4 paper for each panel

I managed to finish this before I head back to Melbourne yesterday. This is basically the part where King Arthur breathed his last in the BBC Merlin finale. I love the show because it highlights friendship & loyalty as something equal to or even greater than romantic love. A very under-rated variant of Love.

"Arthur is not just a king. He is The Once and Future King. Take heart, for when Albion's need is greatest, Arthur will rise again."   

                                                                                                                                       —  Kilgharrah, The Last Dragon.

The company I keep

Contrary to popular opinion (of me), I don't actually fancy being solitary. I just prefer my own company when what available company are those whom I don't particularly care to keep. And I'm a rather particular person. My taste in character is what hampers me from being 'social'. 

I can be 'social', and 'talk more' given that the other party is receptive & interesting. Generally I define 'interesting' as people who read (note: ppl who read chick-flicks only don't count as ppl who 'read'). Y'know, the kind worth investing your energy in conversation with. Not the sort you'd talk about the weather, general small talk, *insert a myriad of humdrum topics*.

Friends = people that I regularly talk to &  hang out with. I go to great lengths to keep in touch with them (even if they study in Malaysia or the U.K. or new zealand etc. & I can only meet up with once in a blue moon (shout out to you, Maya heh). People whose thoughts I am privy to just as mine equally are to them. People that I actually miss when not around. 

Acquaintances = people I'm on friendly terms with but don't really keep in touch with (i.e. housemates, distant school peers).

I mean really, when you meet cool people, you just know you're going to be friends with them. 'Cool' as in those with common interests or uncommon interests that are interesting. 'Cool' as in your wavelengths just jive together regardless of em' matching perfectly or not at all. For example, there's this one girl me & a friend got to know via twitter. We met up a couple times over the summer break, and just hit it off (yes Huda, you hehe). 

Some people think they're interesting & unique & random & shizz when really they're just common with a extra seasoning of being plain annoying. I usually just humor these types & let em' please themselves while in my mind I quote Winnie the Pooh, "Oh, bother." Honestly, I prefer the company of people with no particular hobbies etc. but who are nice just to be around with. Quiet, pleasant, uncomplicated, most importantly non-annoying, ones.

I digress, what I'm really trying to do here is to debunk the whole 'go out, make friends' bs I've been lectured with over the years. You don't just 'make' friends, they come to you as the rizq comes to you from the Sky.

Landscape

The blue of the horizon
The mountains kneeling before it
The winding river ending at your feet
The trees lining it

The blue of your soul
The mountains of your mind
The rivers of your blood
The forest of your heart
     
There is a world within
          Walk, let your feet bleed.