Tehreem Ali's Blog, page 4

‘But I guess ultimately what scares me about marriage is ...

‘But I guess ultimately what scares me about marriage is where do you find this person? You know a lot of times, most successful relationships, people meet through work, school, mutual friends. But what’s most interesting to me is when people just meet in life, just randomly. You know, I have a friend, he got married, I asked him like “Hey, uh, where’d you meet your wife?” He was like “I was leaving Bed, Bath & Beyond. I was looking for my car – I drive a gray Prius. I saw a different gray Prius, I thought it was mine, I walked up to it, I realized I had the wrong car, but I bumped into Carol, we started talking, that was that”. That’s unbelievable. Think about all the random factors that had to come together to make this one moment possible – this one moment that changed these two people’s entire lives: First off, this guy has to live in this particular town. Then he has to get a gray Prius. Then he has to need to go to Bed, Bath & Beyond. Then he has to go to that particular Bed, Bath & Beyond. Then there has to be another guy who also lives in town, also drives a gray Prius, also needs to go to Bed, Bath & Beyond, also goes to that particular Bed, Bath & Beyond at around the same time. Then they have to both park somewhat near each other, my friend has to leave before the other guy leaves, see the wrong Prius, think it’s his, walk up to it. Then the woman, Carol, needs to be near the wrong gray Prius for a million other random reasons. They bump into each other, they start talking, their entire lives are changed. That’s the most amazing and terrifying thing about life. It is, cause the amazing thing is that at any moment, any one of us can have that moment that totally changes our lives. You could be leaving the show tonight, bump into someone… it could change your life. You don’t know, that could happen. The terrifying thing is… what if we’re all supposed to be at Bed Bath & Beyond right now?”
-Aziz Ansari, Buried Alive
Filed under: Uncategorized

Why Poetry Is Everything…

“Writing; poetry, is in many ways a form of torture when you have to go back and revisit the times that destroyed you. The heartbreak, the loss, the grief, but in every word that is being written it’s a cleansing – a rebirth. Emerging from such darkness in hopes to touch a soul, and to show that in this age of technology, where we have become numb – that words can be powerful they can make us feel – they can heal. This is why poetry is everything.”
-Demetra Demi
Why Poetry Is Everything…
Filed under: Amateur, poetry, writing Tagged: poetry, writing

3AM Thoughts (21)

It comes by my porch and leaves watery messages in a bottle. No rest, no comfort anymore. Give me thorns for comfort is overrated. I am merely a ghost with a heartbeat. Why do you continue existing? How does the emptiness subside? Or is it immortal? A crack on my heart; a crease on your forehead. Listlessly wandering among these shadows and withering black roses in your Eden, I crumble to dust and ashes. Last night, I saw you shove away that dust and ash under your frontdoor mat. We use and we spend, and we walk away – never telling why. Yet I thank you for these words. The pain you send my way, I turn it into ink with which I write this, our memories shared together my paper.

Filed under: Amateur, eccedentesiast, eleutheromaniac Tagged: amateur

3AM Thoughts (20)

So young yet so damaged. So calm yet so frustrated inside. A look in the mirror, control these unshed tears, I say to my reflection. Broken and corrupted, how blissfully ugly – comes a sharp reply from the mirror. Vodka tastes sweeter than these bitter feelings. What hurts you less? the sharp edges of a 9-inch razor blade feel like soft caresses as compared to your words. No time, no time now. Run away. Stop, catch your breath. But don’t look back. Throw me a rope; the noose must be tight. A jab of pain and confusion covers my shadowy halo. Where do I go from here? There’s just the fork in the road up ahead, no destination. But oh no, look. Your ghost obstructs my view. Shake hands. Let’s be strangers once more. It is an easy enough game. Here, the wind seems closer. There, your heart drifts further. You fake everything; dripping memories I try in vain to forget. It is pointless. I sing a lovesong, but the orchestra is empty. I go the extra mile for you but you never bother to ask me to stop, catch my breath. Now you are lost, I am fading; you are numb, I am spent – we become wasted. So young yet so wasted.

Filed under: Amateur, eccedentesiast, eleutheromaniac Tagged: amateur

3AM Thoughts (19)

Do you know me by now, O child of the seas? I am a shipwreck you are looking for. Do you not see that by now? You stand atop your deck and speak in a hitch pitched voice. They do not even pay attention to you yet I listen. I listen from the black depths I sleep in; I listen from beyond the clouds dropping thunder on your ship; I listen with a heart. And the feelings in your voice are all cracked up, so rugged. You do not realize that, but I do. For the ones we ignore are the ones who notice us. Nothing ever hurts more than a loud love, a blinded passion, an ignored infatuation.

Filed under: Amateur, eccedentesiast, eleutheromaniac Tagged: amateur

3AM Thoughts (18)

So it grows quiet. The conversations you shared become bleak. His voice becomes an anthem you forget the lyrics to so you etch them down on your skin every night before falling asleep. You go to the grocery store and buy the usual. Breakfast tastes empty. The juice pours down from your glass into the sink as you watch its color disappearing, much like the warmth from your heart is disappearing day by day. There is no sink in there, so what will you do about that? Maybe learn, in time, that everyone leaves. Everyone fades. And things rot. The eternal sunshine remains no more. You become undiscovered all over again.

Filed under: Amateur, eccedentesiast, eleutheromaniac Tagged: amateur

3AM Thoughts (17)

It is just how bright someone’s smile can seem, how shinny a falling tear will look, how cracked up a voice can sound at 2 in the morning – that can make you catch a slight glimpse into their soul and make you fall in love with them…or hate them too. Hearts are wild creatures you know. Yet the ribs are not that strong of a fortress to hold them in. For after all, the more you try to cage a bird, the more it tries to get out. So all these feelings people keep caged up, do you ever notice or wonder about it that if they did not try so hard to contain them, they would feel a little more free? Because if you lose them, you are left with nothing; vacant. And it is only when you have nothing that you are truly free. Freedom is a tricky thing as well. It is demanding. I guess that is how some people prefer it: they would rather deal with the howling and clawing of that wild heart caged in their chest than deal with the demanding.

Filed under: Amateur, eccedentesiast, eleutheromaniac Tagged: amateur

3AM Thoughts (16)

The ride back home seems to be taking longer. It is a hot day, the

excruciating summer heat having made everything covered in a mirage before me: the trees on our side, the road ahead of us, the buildings behind us.

The inside of the car is becoming more cramped from the heat and the silence. The silence – it feels like a moth flying in my mind,

trapped, beating its wings hard against my thoughts. I get all fidgety so before I hit that moth with my words, I turn on the radio and turn the volume. Sounds of Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean instantly fill the cramped inside and I feel the moth rest for a while in my head.

I notice his hands hold the wheel tighter, knuckles turning white.

Are you a Jackson fan? I ask him with some coolness in my voice. He is always intimidating.

Who isn’t? he replies laughingly.

Many people, you would be surprised to know. Not everyone has the same tastes in what they read and hear, I think inwardly. Diversity is the only constant in human nature. He looks on at the road, oblivious to the beating of the moth inside my head, up about and buzzing again.

Well, I am not a huge fan of his music nor do I dislike it. I simply

tend to keep an open mind towards good stuff out there, he explains.

Then, after a moment’s pause, he asks me if I think one can lose oneself in music.

That is how it is for the majority, I tell him.

Where do you fall under, majority or minority? his voice holds a bemused tone in it now.

I know how they say majority always wins and such…but in my experience, I have found the majority to be wrong on multiple occasions. It is very easy to be deceased by the norms set forth by Society and illusions crafted in your mind since you were a baby. You learn to outgrow them and you become a part of the minority.

So you choose the lesser, the path less traveled by, he clarifies my point.

Not less traveled by. Rather, the one never traveled by, I’d say.

Another reason you become one of the minority.

Is music one of those roads for you then? he asks me imploringly.

It is not my road but merely my sole companion on every road I travel upon. I do not lose myself in it. I find myself in it.

In the background of our shared space, Michael’s voice starts to drift away as another takes its place on the radio. The moth in my head finally gives up and settles down for the remainder of the ride back home. He shifts awkwardly in his seat, trickles of sweat dripping down his broad forehead. Perhaps his mother told him to be careful what he wished for and he did not obey. Or perhaps he is remembering his own Billy Jean, if he had any, that is. I will never know. Scary what smiles and glassy eyes can hide. Time ticks away in the drops of this summer heat and his presence by my side becomes intangible among the mirage of Reality around me.

Filed under: eccedentesiast, eleutheromaniac Tagged: amateur

3AM Thoughts (15)

It is growing dark; dark and cold. So cold, she observes as she puts a warm blanket over my shoulders.

I do not need the warmth.

But you are freezing.

Do you actually think it is the coldness outside that is chilling me down to the marrow of my bones?

What else could it be, she asks me petulantly.

I am icy from the coldness within me, within my mortally callous and empty insides. My iced heart, these frozen thoughts that might never thaw again.

The warmth of love will thaw them, you hopeless creature. In time.

I do not know how to ride the horse of Time. It throws me down each time I try to mount on it, do you not get it?

Then climb on your demons and fly away with them.

What if I am not able to find my way back?

There is always a way. You just need to keep your mind open and your heart acceptable. Her hope is resilient, I notice.

My mind is nothing but a mass of corrupted, jaded thoughts; heart nothing but an ice popsicle waiting to be licked in the hungry mouth of Death.

You need to down some vodka down your throat right now, she advises me as she brings some from the kitchen cupboard that has been rusting since last autumn. The sound of her steps on the marble floor is a staccato in the winter silence around us.

What then? After the taste and the warmth from the drink fades away and my mouth tastes as empty as my soul once more, what then?

Then you taste the bitterness of life all over again, of course, she

tells me and smiles mockingly.

But then I remember that an empty vessel like me cannot burn from whichever color of a flame you burn inside it; it cannot feel the bitter taste because it has lost all it senses. All it can do,

inevitably, is be turned into a desert from the sands of Time.

The snow outside stops. The one inside me continues to rage on. She blows out the candle as the one inside me has grown stiff from not been lighted since a long time. Swiftly, she treads to her room to go to sleep, the night finally taking its toll on her, whereas it is an inviting party for my demons within as their day has just started. So I wrap the blanket tight around my shoulders, my sword and club in hand, and wait for the first soldiers to come and lay ruin to the battleground up here in my head.

Filed under: Amateur, eccedentesiast, eleutheromaniac Tagged: amateur

3AM Thoughts (14)

Yesterdays wash away into blues and crimsons on my heavy eyelids. I never see you coming, or hear the door slamming as you walk out of it each morning, eager to part ways with me and start new ones with a stranger. A briefcase in hand, the slight bit of toast on the side of your lip, the tinge of orange juice on your tongue – these feel like tastes of my own, fluttering butterflies on my walls. And right now, I am finding it hard to tell how much of our time was yours and how much of it was mine; which parts were yours and which were mine. Is that all we crumble to in the end? Strangers? For it doesn’t matter how much love is shared, how much tears are captured and smiles invented, how much handshakes are exchanged or how many kisses never blown on a skin but carried by the wind to the moaning trees instead – in the end, you come to see it was never enough. it will never be enough. That is when everything starts to play itself in fast moving flashes before your eyes – like broken records being played by the cruel hand of Fate – and there is nothing you can do about it except give in to those memories and let them melt you mercilessly. All the words said in moments of affection seem corrupted; every promise made seems fragile just like the crystal glass you broke accidentally last week; every caress and every embrace looks sharper than the edge of a razor blade. Where is your copper heart then? It is lying broken in the corner: neglected, forgotten, used, bent and twisted. You see how ugly it looks, the destruction it now carries; the destruction whose power to be inflicted upon your copper heart and iced mind you granted so

easily to someone else. So now you see all this, your ruin and your memories and you promise yourself to never love again. Their advice to trust love one more time fades in the background as you drown in a place far away where no one will be able to find you. Perhaps you do not want them to anyway. Life is short and their rules are too long.

And now you decide you will never be able to elongate your strength to follow them. Because everyone breaks. So have you, and now you are here alone, shoving the pieces of your broken self under the rug in the TV lounge where once you both sat eating macaroni from off the plates in your laps, candles flickering by your side as the lights went out.

Just like those lights, you go out too. But there are no candles here, not anymore.

Filed under: Amateur, eccedentesiast, eleutheromaniac Tagged: amateur