i aint no poker face

An inspired thread runs between the blogs, sometimes... it's enough to be celebrated.
I said at Azra's place just now, that we each have our prided space in enough dysfunction to keep us functioning... at an almost ordered, but often chaotic optimum.

In my case, it shows out in my writing's. Optimum is a day when the words flow unhaltingly, rivers into oceans and reaching their zenith just as I am about to crash for the evening to indulge in a read or a movie or a late night phone call to catch up with a friend... or something different. Seeking inspiration. Craving it. Replenishing it. Call me predator. My mind thirsts that way, insatiable for the most part.

It shows. When those days of being far below anything remotely optimum threaten my imaginary hold on sanity. It screams on those days. Raging, burning, and surging through every cell in my body. It shows in my writing; and more in my lack of being able to create at all. My facial expressiveness does little to save me the billboard status. I aint no poker face. That's for sure. Writing this book has proven that in oh so many ways. Zarreen's joys and fears have somewhat mirrored my own. In some cases she overcomes imagined hurdles that I have yet to surpass. In other's our lives are so far apart that it takes a little more than the stretch of my worn out muse. We need a vacation :) But not until the job is done.

I love some parts of this writing. Love, love, love it. I cringe at some of it. I cannot bear to read it! But nothing that the slicing and dicing phase can't fix. Or the delete function on my pc. But there's also some bits that surprise me. Lurking in the psyche somewhere, are these molecules and seeds of information that grow to tree's of like(ly) and unlike(ly). And they are made manifest in these creative efforts.

I want to paint again.

Now is a very good time to get started, methinks...

S

'bliss and blood'

"How did my hearts rose

become this astounding red?

Through being washed again and again

in waves of bliss and blood."

R U M I

The free-est thing: Eleven Minutes: p96

I forgot to mention in the previous post, that the story of Maria in Eleven Minutes, is also biographical. Paulo Coelho met her in Geneva, through his agent. here is another profound extract from Maria's diary:

"If I were to tell someone about my life today, I could do it in a way that would make them think me a brave, happy, independent woman. Rubbish: I am not even allowed to mention the only word that is more important than the eleven minutes - love.
All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that's a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives himself or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.
And the person who loves wholeheartedly feels free.
That is why, regardless of what I might experience, do or learn, nothing makes sense.
I hope this time passes quickly, so that I can resume my search for myself - in the form of a man who understands me and does not make me suffer.
But what am I saying? In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.
It hurt when I lost each of the various men I fell in love with. Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone.
That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it."

Hmm.

Confessions of a Callgirl

I have just stumbled upon this weblog: Confessions of a College CallGirl; the writings are as real as it gets, extremely well-written and emotionally charged. The story of a callgirl in New York City...she uses her blog to get rid of the burdens that sit on her heart and the dust that settles on her soul from her experiences, but then she also has this no-nonsense take on life and survival... one tends to pick up on some amount of self-doubt in her ability to really hold on to a worthwhile relationship (this is beyond the scope of her 'job')..ie. once she's retired. Even so, she speaks of the number of times she has in fact, tried to retire... and the ways in which the tide pulls her back in again...

Factual accounts written here are fascinating in the humanity and necessary compassion evoked by this blogger. The link love leads to what I thought was the most distinguished of her new articles in terms of who she is as a woman. I also enjoyed the style of writing...

oOo---10 Tips for Writers---oOo

1. Pencils are earthy. Hug a tree. Hold a pencil. Life flows!

2. Roller ball ink pens allow your words to 'feel' life.

3. I wish my dreams had ink at hand... They would make for some awesome scenes :)

4. Blueprints are not Buildings. Plots are not Stories. Brick by brick you gotta just write, write and .............keep writing!

5. Even the prison of the mind has a little window that lets the light of inspiration in. So keep your face to the window. Suns and moons are good friends to have.

6. I wish I had time to write contemplative sequels instead of daydreaming so much.

7. Daydreams are NOT agents of procrastination.

8. Procrastination is just a germination period.

9. After germination comes the rains. Naturally.

10. Rain makes me daydream. Sigh.

11. Happy Monsoons to all you fellow writers out there!


...Love and Words...
Shafinaaz

PS: I almost forgot. I met a very distracting dude recently. He was tall, dark and handsome. He showed me ID> His name was Inner Critic. Yea, he had oodles of dark charm. I'm a sucker, what can I say. It's tough, I know, but don't fall for him! Lol. Or her, for that matter :P

choices and minds

We all make our choices, she said

You made yours, and I made mines...

Aah, but... the point is that they are choices!

Indeed, she said. Choices, made. But led, by circumstance.

Choices still! he said.

She sighed.

I read your note with great interest, he said.

Yes? said she.

Yes. he said.

Made up your mind then, she said.

Yes. he said.

I see. So what? she said.

You tell me. said he.

I guess there's nothing more. she said.

Nothing? said he.

Yep. Choices, remember? she said.

You made yours. And I did too. Choices and minds are binding things, said she.

Aah? he quizzed.

Ah-ha! said she.

the night he died...

My family never talks about the night that my grandfather died. I heard it all at the hearing. They came at 2am. They broke down the door. They dragged him out into the street. And they shot him.
I listened as people told their bits of the story. I pieced together these bits like a puzzle. The picture of that night formed in my mind. The little girl crouched under the dining table was my mother. I recognized the sad terror in her eyes that she carries with her still.
My grandmother’s grip on my hand tightened. We sat in the gallery as they spoke. We didn’t look at each other. Not once. But we knew. The pieces we collected here were important. They were pieces of his body. And of a wounded families soul.

I grew up in a small town in the North. Giyani, it was called. This was my mother’s family. A humble people, the sePedi. My grandmother packed up her things and moved back to her home soon after he died. She took whatever she could, the children, chickens, the furniture from the wedding, the old gramophone that made them the envy of the neighbours in Orlando. Even the photo’s of her white wedding.
They lived a glorious life. I heard it all. But not once did they talk about that dreadful night when it all changed.

He was a gentlemen, she said. He listened to those fancy radio shows, and read the poetry of those great English poets. I paged through some of his books. Yeats, Shakespeare, Byron. Im sure, if he was alive today, I would have been an educated man. Still, I knew I was meant to live different from the rest of the gents out here in Alex. My name is the same as his. David Zondo. Same blood. Same vision of better times and better things. He was David Zondo the school teacher, and great thinker of his time. I am David Zondo taxi driver, with great hopes. My father left before I opened my eyes to this world. It didn’t matter. I was the offspring of a hero. A martyr. That was all I knew. That was enough.

Scripting, Writing, Being

The Durban Film Fest is on. And I found time to see Frozen. Chilling. A sterile warmth in the lack of colour, and yet enough colour in emotion implied. Enough of that. I attended an interesting scriptwriters workshop today. And im quite enthused by the creative energy, courage and inspired vision shared there. And I got to take in whiffs of ocean breeze. And I heard that Vivek Oberoi's shoot has ended. The one that had things blowing up over NMR bridge within view of our apartment. And so we can sleep without the sound of 'copters slashing through the air. etc. Aah, Durban.