Annie Q Syed » choices

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 20 May 2012 18:03:44 +0000

May 20, 2012.

Today: New Moon; Solar Eclipse.

It almost feels predetermined but Albert Camus’ words came to mind nonetheless: “benign indifference of the Universe”.

It is not a surprise that I woke up thinking about Albert Camus since I fell asleep while reading his words last night.

This Sunday morning’s energy is some light in water that doesn’t move quite as you expect.

Due to travels I have been mostly unplugged. I haven’t even had time to “tweet” that I have no time to tweet. This amused me. How strange is this social media trip that constantly makes us feel as if something is happening when nothing is happening?!

Writing today feels like it once did: only a few ...

Mama. Mothers. And Other Days.

annie — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:35:42 +0000

May 13, 2012.

Still Sundays

I’ve always liked the time before dawn

because there’s no one around to remind me who I’m supposed to be,

so it’s easier to remember who I am.

~ Story People.

My friend am(Erica) sent me the aforementioned quote earlier this week. She knows that once it is finally summer I prefer to start the day quite early on Sundays. However, I believe and know, with enough practice we can carry Dawn with us throughout the day and anywhere.

I am grateful for the sun after what seems like weeks of cold rain and windy clouds in New York City. We skipped right ...

Lotus Sunday

annie — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:08:12 +0000

Still Sundays

May 6, 2012.

The moon rode into Earthtown last night. I could hear its supersteps around midnight.

How wide are your shoulders, Time?

New York City is a funny bone of time zones. Usually when we are awake here the West Coast is still asleep and over the Atlantic people are ending the day. How many more ways can I be in between worlds?

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I finally finished a fiction short story yesterday. It is 700 words over the submission guidelines but other than that it is finished. I could make it into two different stories I suppose: keep one for myself and the other one for submission. Or I could diligently sandpaper it down to ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:31:55 +0000

April 29th, 2012.

It is so very quiet this Sunday morning. Partly because no one knows how to react to the fact that it is still winter in New York City and we are one day away from May. Compared to Friday the weather is supposed to be a little more “spring-like” this Sunday. Maybe spring has always been a myth. An ideal that doesn’t exist. Or when it does we only see a day or two of it. A tiny reflection of what is possible on this earth—some divine weather—if we don’t mess with nature.

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My work-in-progress manuscript has been stalled for a little over a year now. Of course in that time I wrote other ...

A Still Sunday with Love

annie — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:47:54 +0000

April 22, 2012.

Mirror Mirror on Stillness’s wall which Sunday is the truest of them all?

Last Sunday I was swimming in the lakes of nostalgia for certain places and this Sunday the present is all I could ever hope for.

Nostalgia, I hope you like the caricature we have created of you, a doodle of escapism framed in fad.

When I am nostalgic about certain places and times, it is without longing to “go back” unless I am desirous of being imaginative and want to go “back in time” to a period in which I was never born or participated. My nostalgia is more an impromptu tribute to all things for which there are no photos or words.

...

A Human Sunday

annie — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 18:56:50 +0000

Still Sundays.

April 15, 2012.

It wasn’t until this weekend, last night, when I felt there really is something distinctive about this time of the year, particularly April 15th.

In 1865 on this day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

The Titanic sank.

In 1927 a great American asset, the Mississippi river, became a tremendous liability when the sky fell down in the form of non-stop rain causing the river to burst and cause one of the greatest floods in American history.

In 1986 on this day American warplanes bombed Tripoli in retaliation of Libyan terrorism.

2012 seems packed with events but time is passing in slow motion. It is only April 15th and so much has happened all across ...

Third Avenue, BX

annie — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 02:21:42 +0000

Some days I work part time in the South Bronx.

It is one of the most dilapidated parts of Bronx, a borough of New York City.

Most people don’t know that New York City is comprised of five boroughs and that Harlem is in Manhattan and quite expensive.

“The hub” is the retail heart of the South Bronx, located where four roads converge: East 149th Street, Willis, Melrose and Third Avenue. In the 1930s the Hub had movie palaces and vaudeville theaters and a few decades after it became a national symbol of urban decay.

I have witnessed some extreme poverty in my life given my travels and work in legal and education ...

Stillness is a peyote that shows what is real.

annie — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:57:32 +0000

March 25th, 2012

STILL SUNDAYS

New York City can’t make up its mind whether to continue enduring pain and stay in winter or finally move forward into spring and summer.

Stillness is a peyote that shows what is real.

You can’t jump into stillness, you work your way into it and realize it is a fusion of all sorts of coming together.

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It was in Paris when James Baldwin was first able to come to grips with his explosive relationship with himself and America. Of course that is not why I went there in 2001—I have never followed in the footsteps of anyone—-this is not a boast, just a fact, just how things have turned out ...

Still Sundays

annie — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:14:01 +0000

February 19, 2012.

I ate a lot of Internet this weekend. I justified it because I ate healthy and kosher. The meat of the articles was halal. Fresh sources, great nutritional articles, lots of juice for thought. And I usually don’t eat meat: I had not browsed through any of my feeds or online journals in over a week. As is often with most things that happen to me, I had tapped in to the momentum exactly at the right time.

The right place, the right time, the wrong me.

I gathered that social media is going through some mid-life crisis. I thought Internet was only a baby. Don’t you first have to grow up, live (or more accurately not ...

Love like…

annie — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:27:42 +0000

February 12th, 2012.

Love like my parents. Love like yoga.

I like when I re-read something that I wrote and I find it is still accurate and applicable at large. A favorite t-shirt that never gets old. This brings me immense joy and surprise. Somehow it makes me feel I caught the hand of Time and danced to a short tune barely audible. I don’t feel this way towards most of my fiction attempts. Not yet anyway. I am deaf and Time mute when it comes to fiction. Then I am humbled: authors who passed the test of Time were indeed some gods.

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My eyes don’t make natural tears as easily anymore. I have to put ...

Practice, Practice, Practice; Emerson on Experience & Surprise

annie — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:35:44 +0000

Still Sundays.

January 15, 2012.

Last time I wrote fiction was June 2011. It wasn’t even a story but a sketch of words. Prior to June, regularly putting down drafts of fiction, however incomplete, was March 2011. All in all, last time I wrote fiction every week, be it a paragraph for the novel or some story shared on this web space, was December 2010. It would be fair and accurate to state that I consistently tackled the craft of fiction from March 2010 to March 2011 regardless what was shared here—and it was a lot that was shared in this online space. In fact, every Tuesday, come rain or shine or travel. I wrote in planes. I wrote ...

yoga versus yoga: my obiter dicta

annie — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 01:10:26 +0000

“I came to yoga not on a journey of personal transformation, but because I put my back out and couldn’t sit comfortably in a chair,” begins Claire Dederer in an article, “My Truce With Yoga” in the October issue of Whole Living magazine.

I timely came across this article that sheds light on the 6 billion dollar yoga industry. I share some excerpts that highlight my concerns:

I thought yoga was for self-indulgent, middle-aged ladies with time on their hands, or for fanatical vegetarian former gymnasts.

As I researched studios around Seattle, I noticed that yoga came in a dizzying array of flavors and strengths, often at opposite ends of a spiritual spectrum. At some studios, akin to stylish gyms, ...

Still Sundays: Shakti and Ibn Sina

annie — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:57:49 +0000

It is a new year after all.

Makes me wonder about all those other “new” years. I never felt they were new per se so it wasn’t that I got duped the last decade with the habitual hype at the end of the year. It is just that I couldn’t participate as authentically as I would have liked because I knew better in my bones. But this year is finally new.

new | n(y)oō |

adjective

1. not existing before; made, introduced, or discovered recently or now for the first time

2. already existing but seen, experienced, or acquired recently or now for the first time

3. just beginning and regarded as better than what went before

The word new ...

A Still Sunday, particularly today.

annie — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 21:21:51 +0000

December 25, 2011.

on criticism, on friendships come & gone, Keats & soul-making.

New York City is asleep although I have been awake for some time.

Silence is that music where we become instruments.

I have never experienced Stillness and silence this grand in New York City as this Sunday.

This is my first Christmas holiday and New Year’s Eve in New York City despite having lived here for over a decade. Usually I have always been “home” this time of the year, whatever that has meant: sometimes Lahore, other times Johannesburg or Durban, most often a farmhouse, my parents’, in California.

Last night I experienced New York City in a whole new manner. I understood why it is ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:24:53 +0000

December 18, 2011.

Herman Hesse’s Demian. “Tug on Anything at all…” A fortune-teller who could tell all but one thing.

It’s not easy to leave New York City. A stranger-friend, an Italian Ph.D. student, must return to Italy tomorrow as her yearlong fellowship is finally over. And she is not ready. I don’t think those who come to New York City for anything but an idea can ever leave that idea behind. At worst we carry that idea that is New York City with us wherever we go. At best, we return again. And again.

Love is a hard idea to give up.

What will she miss the most, I asked her? She held back tears and replied, The ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 19:07:18 +0000

December 11, 2011.

What is art without vision, then?; Symmetry Breaking; Darren K. Woods on his passion for opera; Music to My Ears.

I was immersed in life to my fullest capacity the last two Sundays. Every cell felt like a sponge for Stillness, joy, love, warmth, observations, growth…

There comes a point when living and experiencing catch a momentum faster than one can share through any medium. I believe that’s when the real challenge begins for one who has decided to undertake being an artist.

We are all creative (some more talented or innately gifted than others); however, not all are artists.

Art without vision is creative stimulation for pleasure. In order to have a vision you have ...

“Fartists”, Light triumphs, Grow!Grow!Grow!

annie — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:46:28 +0000

Still Sundays.

November 13, 2011.

Stillness is a guardian angel.

That being said, on days where the frozen wind in New York City feels like the wrathy breathing of some evil gods, I do yell aloud, forgetting all I know about seasons, climate, and weather, “God you can’t be real! Because no one in his or her right mind would actually create a day this cold!”

Yet so far November feels like early spring. Will March then be like early winter? Maybe winter has never been that long after all? Climate change is changing.

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What do I know without a doubt this Sunday morning as this calendar year is almost over?

Light triumphs. Again and again ...

to really understand is divine

annie — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:37:50 +0000

Still Sundays.

November 6th.

No matter how many times I write about New York City it is not enough. Not enough for me and not enough for those who just don’t see what I see.

Rage is a bull and I am a champion rider who neither tires easily nor plans on retiring. At best I can tame the beast with humor. But I find cynicism easy and eventually boring; therefore, I take whatever it is that I don’t understand by the horns: the spleen wants to spit.

That being said I never write when I am angry. I can create a fury of words that can dissolve the deads’ bones, but actually write?—never. I don’t even “journal” such thoughts ...

Love, like New York City, is an Idea…

annie — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 17:21:00 +0000

Still Sundays.

October 16th.

I am writing from a new place this Sunday morning.

When you say something like that in New York City, you more often than not mean it quite literally.

I am not in my own neighborhood or even inside my apartment. I am in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood around 44th and 9th avenue. I don’t live here; I had to return my rental car this morning around the corner. When I woke up this morning I almost forgot I had even rented a car to go out of the City to attend a wedding this weekend. The only reason I remembered is because I realized I am out of tea and coffee and maybe I ...

self-existing magic of things

annie — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:49:44 +0000

Still Sundays

October 9th.

Filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky on “self-existing magic of things” and more. Your talent is a body. Marc Jacobs on innovation.

I find myself intellectually incapable to accept any of the etymologies offered behind “Indian Summer” and google’s curation of history doesn’t satisfy.

October is a solid indigo night, made for returning and leaving at the same time.

Autumn in New York is the muse for so many jazz compositions because only music can capture an indigo night.

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Yesterday I saw a film by Nathaniel Dorsky who has been making and exhibiting films within the avant-garde tradition since 1964. His works have bee shown internationally in museums and theatres and are in the ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 18:18:42 +0000

October 2nd.

Lymph nodes for spiritual bacteria. Dialogue with the body (video link to blindfolded yoga with Marco Rojas). Notes from Protests and Revolutions: the phenomena needed for a revolutionary movement.

The windows in the bedroom had to be closed last night. The room was chilled from the October breeze, a carrier with a post-card from the future: winter is around the corner.

I wish I didn’t write as slowly as I do. I wish I didn’t see putting words on paper as setting lights on a stage (and on worse days delivering thought babies!). I wish I wrote as fast on Sunday mornings and when I attempt fiction as when I am writing an email.

However, I am ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:23:28 +0000

September 25th.

made-up memories. a genetic predisposition to engage with life. a real dreamer. real magic. when the Universe bends to become the bow.

It’s so still that I can taste the difference: my black tea with milk is tasteless without the nectar of orange blossom honey this morning. I forgot to buy it yesterday.

Sugar doesn’t taste the same. Not in my tea and not what I can recall of it tasting when I was a kid. When I think of my childhood I recall sugar like a person with personalities, faults, issues, and plans. A relative everyone had to welcome because that’s what you do: pour sugar, large amounts, in desserts, eat items ordered in from bakery ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 16:40:56 +0000

September 18th

Although there is much to be written this Sunday morning, yarns of thoughts are spinning by themselves around the needle of stillness, I just want to observe and gather some more.

It has been a very full week, more eventful than my typical weeks, and although Sunday puts it together, however fragmented, I am going to need much more time for this week.

Next Sunday I will wake up earlier than I did today to feel Stillness exhale on my skin instead of my gasping for it this morning. Today I slept in Stillness and awoke to the sudden announcement that it is cold and Autumn has arrived although the colors of Fall haven’t quite made it yet.

...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:11:40 +0000

September 11th

You have to be very alive to dream new dreams; Mama: relationships like buying a house; Whitman.

It can never be just “September 11th” in New York City again like another September 9th or April 9th or whatever other date that comes by every year. This date now means many things to many different people. But history is filled with such dates. Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is just another day “when something awful and atrocious” happened to most, but to a few it remains as fresh as September 11th is to some of us. Soon another generation will come for whom September 11th will mean differently than it does to us now.

When will death mean the ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:00:43 +0000

August 21, 2011.

Normal is another world phenomenon; Helping the exceptions stand out for all of us in ANY form is art; From the memory box: desert sky and Wilma Rudolph. The foremost task of education.

Stillness is a flower that doesn’t always have a fragrance. Or perhaps the perfume is sans alcohol so one has to be really sober to take it all in. Similar to a real yoga practice, what comes forth is not always bliss but gunk. But if you allow some space and don’t hold on, the gunk slides away, and real bliss doesn’t always feel like happiness but it surely feels like freedom.

Today’s Sunday is some shy rapture. It’s raining everywhere it seems, including ...