Stuck

I'm not kidding when I refer to Melbourne as a prison. I'm on voluntary confinement (solitary, when roomie's not around, which is fine by me. She's sweet btw). 

It's just that sometimes I just want to go out & drive or something. Walking is cool. It's fine. But you're just never, alone. Ever. There's always someone walking too. I don't like that. I only ever walk when I need to go to the pick something up at the local post office anyway.

Not in a city. You're never alone, but at the same time you always are. It's weird. Not that I go out, much or at all for the matter. What I'm saying is, I get sick of myself sometimes.

I get sick of my routine. I find stability in it, comfort too, to an extent but it's crippling. It really is.

Summers & Winters in Malaysia. Autumns & Springs in Melbourne. The cycle continues.

Another metaphorical bullet through the head & you realise what a low-life you are.

How does one ever shake off the feeling of being hypocritical?

Boundaries

At what point exactly do passions turn into obsessions that consumes more of you than should be allowed, in such a way that you unintentionally (or very much intentionally) sacrifice what is important for what only seemed to be important?

There's a fine line between being enthusiastic about something and being a complete fanatic. There are after all many kinds of idolatry that people aren't particularly aware of. Need to be very careful with this.

This concerns me. I'm the average fangirl who invests herself into fandoms. Plural, yes. I don't think I'm into all of them all at once, one at a time. I've phases. Typical anti-social behaviour perhaps.

The thing about all these nonsense is, they reek of dunia. Part of the nafs I suppose. My particular weakness. Mind you, I feel it important that I'm especially hard on myself because I need to give myself reality checks every now and then. So I keep toeing the line so to speak.

I can't be like them pure, focused, kakak naqibahs that seem to only take pleasure in doing good. They seem to be wholly undistracted by shite things (like I am). They always say that it's not an easy journey, to give up on these duniawi things. Ibadah being the purifying practice that governs their daily lives.

I haven't the strength of character to suddenly give up my fandom things (...I'm just not on that level yet. Pray that I will someday), I just need to remind myself, constantly, to not get too distracted.

To desire what God desire for us. To live life seeking the pleasure of The One. To taste the sweetness of iman, all the time. The straight path that I always need to remind myself of (Why usrah is instrumental as part of one's tarbiyyah btw).

With that, I greet April. Hello, hello.

p.s. I haven't penned a poem in such a while now. I don't have any feelings about it either. Just an observation.

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.