You could make this place beautiful by Maggie Smith

Day 6.

A pantoum, a villanelle, a ghazal. 

I.  

"What does it mean to write about trauma in real time? Instead of going to work to avoid processing the loss, The Finder makes the processing her work. She's lost her narrative, but she's writing her story. She lets the loss touch everything, as if she has a choice."

I am in the forensic process of autopsying a cadaver. The event in front of me, laying flat, disgusting, beaten up, bruised, is another version of me that had perished, expired out of my present, some time ago. She had taken up a huge load of the wounds inflicted over the years by the stalker, the scars of which glisten on me now. I suppose I thought wearing beautiful coats would mask these damages. For a while it worked. But the ghost has rapped on my doors incessantly. The dead wants to be buried, it pleads. So here I am, looking down at her. She had demanded me to honour her. To celebrate her sacrifices and her pain. And so now, two years later, I am down in this basement, and I will. 

 II. 

"I'm out with lanterns, looking."

It is a timeless fact of life - that the best way to move forward is to be at peace with the past. I've spent so much of these past two years looking for a way back. To my former, jubilant self. To a time pre-problem, pre-pain, pre-divorce from my former self. I had liked her, I had enjoyed her life. Yet she had gone through a brutal experience and has passed beyond my ability to resuscitate. 

In the wake of this passing I am looking for guidance, for answers, for an easier path to remedy. I have tried sound healing, somatic exercises, counselling, sports, shopping, travelling, talking to the public about the experience, staying in my grandmother's rural village, hijama, writing, therapy, praying; All of which has helped easing the pain. But this time I am required to do the dirty work, to walk through the dark recesses of my own thoughts. This journey I am required to do alone. 

I am out with lanterns, looking. I need to meet her ghost and tell her it's time to move on. 

III. 

The Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa writes about torma and don. Don - a ghost that causes misfortune, anger, fear, sickness. Torma means 'offering cake'. You offer the torma to your don // The pain forces your hand.

My don turns to me, implores me to look at her and tell her all that she has not died for nothing. I tell her I am sorry for not being able to look her, to even acknowledge her, because her visage has repels me so. I have refused, again and again, even as she was being hacked to pieces, to look at her pain. 

Now I step into the cobwebbed room, and hold out a hand. I tell her it wasn't her fault. I tell her she had been so brave. I tell her she did so well. I tell her she is beautiful. I tell her she is kind. I tell her she has not died in vain. I tell her, ultimately, thank you. This gratitude, this torma, is my offering cake. I watch her eat, parts disappearing.

IV. 

Why are you telling these stories? Why air your dirty laundry? 

The truth is: The only way to clean it is to take it out and wash it.

The other truth is that: It wasn't just my dirty laundry, it was the dirty laundry of a failed social system. 

The third simple truth is that: My laundry gave others hope. 

 

V. 

I keep trying to make sense of our history - as if sense is something to be fashioned, and from what? Notions of the truth, or time, or experience?

The questions why and how keep swirling inside my head, like a water in a sink that refuses to drain, clogging up the system. "It didn't have to be like that," I thud my head against the wall. Yet I know there was no other way. The only way was to flood the entire thing and wait it out to flush away. "The only way to save me was to tell my story to the world." This is the only life I know in which I am saved. There is no alternate. 

VI. 

Here, take it. Is this enough? This is my material.

 It's a letter, as it always is. For now this letter is to myself. 

VII.

What is my unanswerable question? How to remain myself.

The astrological sign Pisces, reputably the most empathetic, self-sacrificing star in the zodiac, is comprised of two fishes swimming in opposite directions. Like the fishes I have pulled myself into contradictions, hiding away from my past emotions even as I rap about my healing journey forward. I have deluded myself with distance, coercing her into a part unrelated to who I 'really' am. My attempts to out-swim my shadow fish, my twin fish, is a fool’s errand, if we were all honest. It is cowardly because I wanted to be spared the burden of her pain. How to remain myself when all I feel is disgust and blame? 

My ghost hovers, hesitant. She touched our twin scars. Continuations of the same story. To remain myself is to wear these scars with honesty. To remain myself is to embrace all versions. Especially this one, the one I have denied, hated, and feared. The one whom I brushed away as weak, wanting, and emotional. I remind myself that she was the only one brave enough to throw everything in jeopardy so that I could be reborn. I remind myself that our shared wounds are two sides of the same story. I remind myself that even though to my eyes I am tarnished, it is the markings of a fighter. The astrological sign Pisces is a survivor, a winner and a warrior. 

VIII. 

I thought that I was vanishing, but instead I was only coming true. 

- Clive James

I thought that to accept my dead variation would be to die, but instead it has given me a new breath.

VIX. 

I wish to forgive, so this is aspirational. I write this aspirationally. The way you'll be remembered is the way you're living now, I tell myself. If you don't like it, change it. 

I want to forgive, but first i need to feel everything that stands between me and forgiveness. 

The frank truth of it is that it didn't strike me until last week that I needed to forgive myself. I had shrouded myself in such a thick layer of denial that it wasn't an occurrence at all. Now as I look down at the cadaver, writing these notes, my ghost is sitting next to me, conspiratorially nodding along and cracking a few smiles with her bloodied lips. I am not so scared of her now, I think, I could look her in the eye and not flinch. I could cradle her and we could weep together, and I could accept that she existed, exists, that she is a part of me that was perhaps one of the bests of me. No fight in this world leaves us unscarred, no wins exist where we are unscathed or unaltered. The ghost will hang for a little while yet, at least to see the cadaver be fully buried, somehow - this small ceremony I must find a way to do. For now I am feeling everything that stands between me and forgiveness. For now I am honouring her life. 

  

5 doors of January

 1. “Life’s aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be.”  

- Picture of Dorian Gray, hl. 10 January 2025

This puts forth the motion that life is meant to be fully indulged, regardless of the consequences. As immersive and tangible as this proposition persuades, obviously, there is a heft to having aims and accountability, that makes us find meaning within our actions, and form deeper connections. Despite my natural stance that every action is transactional, relationships and purposeful pursuit give depth to our character, and to spend a lifetime just exploring experiences without creating a deeper meaning seems like an entry level inquiry, that only benefits you. There is nothing wrong in this (unless it is at the expense of others), it's just that a person with an acute awareness of the variety of the world has the ability to seek, give or create more definition. 

2.  This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path—the my-isn’t-that-impressive path—and keep you there for a long time. Maybe it stops you from swerving, from ever even considering a swerve, because what you risk losing in terms of other people’s high regard can feel too costly.

- Michelle Obama, Becoming, hl. 12 January 2025

A core anchor to knowing yourself lies in understanding the perimeters of your desires and capabilities, and assessing how it aligns to your context to serve your future self. In an environment where 'swerving' is not as admired or encouraged as a conventional, linear trajectory, it takes a courage to take the concept under consideration. The biggest challenge of swerving is the risk of failing within an unknown territory, especially since failure is more visible than the act of trying. Swerving opens up avenues into doubt - not only from yourself but from others around you, who will question and judge your past decisions and your current state, forming views of your performance within a finite ideological trap, through the restrictive lens of societal norms. The only cure for this is to swerve regardless, to be absolutely convinced that for a different outcome to occur, you need to take a different path. And ultimately, to be assured that, at the end of the day, so what? 

3. "If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me Without my stir"

- Macbeth, hl. 15 January 2025

So many sentences in literature confesses the same sentiment - most particularly the quote from Imam Ghazali “What is meant for you, will reach you even if it is beneath two mountains. And what is not meant for you will not reach you even if it’s between your two lips.” I've loved the notion so much, finding it's connection to Qada' and Qadar, to Kun Fa Ya Kun, to destiny, fate, and purpose. However, the issue with Macbeth was his blind confidence into the notion, not realising that concepts exist as ephemeral ideas, that there are so many ways for a thought, a word, or a win, to manifest. Currently, much like Macbeth, with delirious optimism, I'm fighting the idea of wanting to simply sit back and let fortune take its course. However there should be a discount of the power of Dua, of Free Will, of the ability to influence a material change within the spheres of providence. In comic terms I guess it's understanding that canon events may happen, but there can exist variations to the story, depending on your actions. Destiny will arrive at the doorstep regardless of desires; but it is up to us to shape how it unfolds. 

4. "In those streets everyone moved faster than me, but what they didn’t know was that I had already moved too fast, too far, and wished to travel no further. I’ve been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately, about being a still point in the ceaseless rush."

- Sea of Tranquility, hl. 20 January 2025

There are moments these days where I consider that I have seen too much of the world. In these short years of my life I have lavished in both luxury and war, I have immersed in remote, cold mountain villages, in the dry Sahara dessert, flourishing with stars, in exotic private islands, in barren refugee camps. There is not much in terms of geography that feels novel. In my latest travels, echoes of past experiences are scattered around the itinerary, "I have seen this before, I have lived here", and I find myself with a touch of weariness. Around me everyone is still climbing or pursuing or driving. I am aware that this is simply a case of having achieved a majority of my childhood dreams, and that the cure is to simply opt the lens of gratitude, and steer ahead with goals anew. But for this entry I am just acknowledging my privilege, my emotions, and letting it pass through me. That aside, sometimes being in the present, really being in the present, requires you to just be and observe the world moving around you. And sometimes, that is enough. 

More from the Menagerie

"That feeling in your heart: it's called mono no aware. It is a sense of the transcience of all things in life. The sun, the dandelion, the cicada, the Hammer, and all of us: we are all subject to the equations of James Clark Maxwell, and we are all ephemeral patterns destined to eventually fade, whether in a second or an aeon."  

Mot

A list of learned words from literature, Oct 2024:

Somnolence

A state of strong desire for sleep / drowsiness

Fora

Plural of forum: meeting 

Metonymy

Alternative figure of speech e.g. love and heart

Mercantile

Related to trade and commerce / merchant

Dilettantish

Amateurish / frivolous

Archimandrite

Head of a monastery / abbot 

Neurathenia

Medical condition: chronic fatigue

Insalubrious

Run down / unwholesome 

Ecumenical

A number of different Christian churches

Sesquipedalian

Long; long winded

The Paper Menagerie

And so we read this, my darling, this book she wrote for you before she left, its ornate words and elaborate illustrations telling fairy tales that will grow as you grow, an apologia, a bundle of letters home, and a map of the unchartered water of our souls.

There are many ways to say I love you in this cold, dark, silent universe, as many as the twinkling stars. 

-

Time's arrow is the loss of fidelity in compression. A sketch, not a photograph. A memory is a re-creation, precious because it is both more and less than the original. 

-

The stars shine and blink.

We are all guests passing through.

A smile and a name. 

-

Our lives are ruled by these small, seemingly ordinary moments that turn out to have improbably large effects. Such randomness is much more common in human affairs than in nature.

That we accept our own frailties and subjectivity does not free us to abdicate the moral responsibility to tell the truth, even if, and especially if, "truth" is not singular but a set of shared experiences and shared understandings that together make up our humanity. 

==

I have not felt so reassured by a book as I have read Ken Liu's collection of the Paper Menagerie. 

Trust by Hernan Diaz

 

1. EVERY SINGLE ONE of our acts is ruled by the laws of economy. When we first wake up in the morning we trade rest for profit. When we go to bed at night we give up potentially profitable hours to renew our strength. And throughout our day we engage in countless transactions. 

2. Only a fool would distinguish past from present in such a way. The future irrupts at all times, wanting to actualize itself in every decision we make; it tries, as hard as it can, to become the past. This is what distinguishes the future from mere fancy. The future happens. 

3. Every life is organized around a small number of events that either propel us or bring us to a grinding halt. 

4. In 1929, everyone heard D F# E A and, listening ahead, thought A E F# D. But when I heard D F# E A, the response ringing in my mind was G C B7 D.

Di Alam Maya

Note 10.

Book number 25: Why the caged bird sings. 

i. He closed in upon himself like a pond swallowing a stone. 

ii / iii. The days had become longer and more noticeable. The faded beige of former times had been replaced with strong and sure colours / Youth and social approval allied themselves with me and we trammeled memories of slights and insults. The wind of our swift passage remodelled my features.

iv. The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. 

v. Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. 

vi. To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal decision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. 

Amongst the many passages of impeccable prose penned by the mighty Maya Angelou. I confess it's been too long since I'd read a literature this eloquent; literature that was poetic, pensive, and playful. Literature that was not a caricature or an echo of the universally digitalised dialect. Coming to this from Britney Spear's autobiography was the sensation of being swallowed by an ocean wave after waddling in a pool. 

Joy Luck Club

"I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention."

"Lately I had been feeling hulihudu. And everything around me seemed heimongmong. These were words I had never thought about in English terms. I suppose the closest in meaning would be 'confused' and 'dark fog'."

"She learned these things. But I couldn't teach her about character. How to obey parents and listen to your mother's mind. How to not show your own thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so you can take advantage of hidden opportunities.Why easy things are not worth pursuing. How to know your own worth and to polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring."

"I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing. I remember the day when I finally knew a genuine thought and could follow where it went."

Notes from Santopolo

The Light We Lost

You propped your head up on your elbow and faced me. “Do you believe in karma?” you asked.

“Like Hindu karma? Or like, if I steal someone’s taxicab, I’ll be cursed to suffer the same fate?” I asked back.

You smiled. “There’s definitely cab karma in this city, but that’s not quite what I’m talking about. It’s not Hindu karma either. I guess it’s not really karma at all. It’s more like . . . do you think we get to love each other like this —so much, so strongly—because my dad was an asshole? Is it my reward for living through that? Getting this?” You gestured at both of our naked bodies. “Or does having this now mean that I’ll suffer later to make up for it? Do we all get a finite amount of goodness in this world?”

I sat up then and shook my head. “I don’t think the world works that way,” I said. “I think life is just life. We’re put in situations and we make choices and that’s why things happen the way they do. Taking the current when it serves. It’s that old question. The one from Kramer’s class.”

You were quiet.

“But you know what I’d like to think?” I continued, to fill the silence. “I’d like to think that it is karma. Hindu karma. That maybe in a past life I did something wonderful for someone and my reward is you in this life. I like that kind of karma better than your idea of a finite amount of goodness.”

You smiled again, but this time it was rueful. I could tell you didn’t believe me. “I like that idea too,” you said. “I just . . . I worry that it’s impossible to have it all, for all parts of a life to be wonderful.”

I thought about it. “I think they can be,” I said. “Maybe not everything all at once, but I think people can end their lives having gotten all that they wanted out of it.” And I do believe that, Gabe, I still do.

“I hope you’re right,” you said.

We never talked about it after that, but I got the feeling you still thought that no one person could ever have everything. I wish I could’ve figured out a way to shift your perspective on that—because what I think you were saying, what you believed, is that you have to sacrifice. This love for that love. This piece of happiness for that one. It was a theory that shaped your decisions, whether consciously or unconsciously. It was part of what pointed you down the road you traveled, what brought us here.

But I really would like to think that’s not the case. That you can have a father who loves you and a girlfriend who does the same. A career that’s rewarding, and a personal life that is too. But maybe you’d say that if you have those things, maybe it’s your health that will go. Or your finances. Or God knows what else.

ignis, flame, feu

“She said that she thinks of every romance she’s in as if it’s a type of fire. That some relationships feel like a wildfire—they’re powerful and compelling and majestic and dangerous and have the capability to burn you before you even realize you’ve been consumed. And that some relationships

feel like a hearth fire—they’re solid and stable and cozy and nourishing. She had other examples—a bonfire relationship, a sparkler—that one was for a one-night stand, I think—but the wildfire and the hearth fire are the two that I remember most.”

“She said it depends on who you are. On what you want. She said that hearth-fire relationships

bore her after a while. That she prefers wildfires, but that she’s starting to think she might want something in between. Oh, I think that’s what the bonfire was—where the relationship is always on the verge of being all consuming but doesn’t quite go that far. She said she hasn’t had any of those

but wants to find one.”

“Can you tame a wildfire or grow a hearth fire?” I asked.

"She hasn’t had any luck transforming a relationship from one to the other. But, I mean, if you extend the metaphor, firefighters can tame wildfires, so maybe people can, too. I guess the question is if you can tame them without putting them out completely.”

A hundred secret senses

“The next world is 'segregated'? You can go to the World of Yin only if you're Chinese?"
"No-no! Miss Banner, she not Chinese, she go to Yin World. All depend what you love, what you believe. You love Jesus, go Jesus House. You love Allah, go Allah Land. You love sleep, go sleep."
"What if you don't believe in anything for sure before you die?"
"Then you go big place, like Disneyland, many places can go try - you like, you decide. No charge, of course.” 

- Amy Tan, A Hundred Secret Senses

Seeping sentiments

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened.

You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister.

Everyone is finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.

That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home.

Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them.

Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.
Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood.

Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.”

Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back.
Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need.
This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life.

Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.

Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

Paulo Coelho

Whatever I couldn't muster up to say myself, I suppose one of the greatest authors of our time has crafted it into words.

Tarot

I've been tucked deliriously these past few weeks in volumes of Sherlock Holmes novels, courtesy of the e-book apps in my phone. The odd moments in between classes and commuting find me nose to screen, tremendously enjoying his mind-boggling mysteries with Watson. Holmes' ingenuity lies in his deductive powers, solving cases through intense observation and his ability to notice even the most, seemingly inconsequential details. How coincidence in rarely chance, and how the smallest matter can prove the bearing of something. Which brings me to note the most obvious statement: you can tell a lot about a person by cognition, and map out the points of their character.

As a general rule everyone is seeking something, holding a desire for success, or a deeper purpose in life. You can see various other aspects in the way they stand, in the way they walk. Whether they slouch or strut, if they are confident or reserved, introverted. By the tone of their voice you can see a myriad of facets, if they are naturally cautious or very pleasant and sincere, or just putting up a face for society. Most jovial people wish for something intimate, and the quietest one possess something they care about, very, very much. Angry people have often faced sorrow at a point in their lives.

By someone's writing you can tell if they are a team player or a very independent, bold individual, and how they handle trivial affairs, or even how much sincerity they put into promises. It's they way they cross their t's, in the dots or streaks of their i's, and the round of their o's. A person's signature shows varying things, how much they want to be appreciated, or if they are practical or complex. Through simple conversations you can see what priorities they hold in life, the weight of their relationships, and how they perceive themselves - and from there, find how far they would like to go and what they would sacrifice to obtain it.

These are not conclusions based entirely on prejudice or discrimination, but through clear, logical observations. They do not apply for everyone, and I've come across people who adore so much of their own opposite that it's hard to engage exactly who they are inside. It isn't the reading of body language in specific contexts and emotions, because both loud and quiet people can be nervous and twist their fingers behind their backs during public speaking, for example. It's in neutral situations that you can see what a person is like, though multiple scenarios can show how many layers they carry to their characters.

But even after all this you can never really tell a person for who they truly are, because everyone changes, even slightly, through time.