Annie Q Syed » fiction

A Dream Exchange

annie — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:42:40 +0000

Of Demons and Dreams is simply a new category of word sketches for a bigger writing project.

The night assigns us its magic task. To unravel the universe, the infinite ramifications of effects and causes, all lost in that bottomless vertigo, time.

From “Sleep” by Jorge Luis Borges

Dedicated to Miles, the “fearless gentleman.”

A Dream Exchange.

Women who know about scorpions produce male children who live without fear.

These women know all about the greedy claws and the thin, segmented tail, that curves forward over the back, ending with a ...

quietus

annie — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:12:54 +0000

Four

This is the final of the Da Vinci Dreams series (four was the intention from the beginning); Tuesday’s Torrent stories will continue depending on time and “creative clutter” while I return to the work-in-progress manuscript. I want to thank Annika Ruohonen for this collaboration. Her photographs offer a sensitive and unique perspective and stand in a class all their own.

Da Vinci Dreams :: Quietus

“Of the shadow that moves with: there shall be seen shapes and figures of men and animals which shall pursue these men and animals wheresoever they flee; and the movements of the one shall be as those of the other, but it shall seem a thing to wonder at because ...

Time Blur

annie — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:38:26 +0000

Three

Da Vinci Dreams :: Time Blur

“Of the lights carried before the dead: they will make light for the dead.” ~ from “Prophecies” by Leonardo Da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, George Braziller.

Photograph Courtesy of Annika Ruohonen

I once asked Sarband “How do leaves dry?” and she, being hard of hearing at her age, heard “How do leaves die?”

“They don’t die!” she replied, more agitated than I would have expected regardless of the question. She continued, “The plant or the tree kills them off! Become a burden. Not as efficient as they age.”

Sarband always held onto the broom as if the broomstick really could ...

the cradle of stories

annie — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:49:18 +0000

Two

Da Vinci Dreams :: the cradle of stories

“Men shall speak with and touch and embrace each other while standing in different hemispheres, and shall understand each other’s language.” ~ from “Prophecies” by Leonardo Da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, George Braziller.

Photograph Courtesy of Annika Ruohonen

All stories come from fog. That is what Noor Baba told me.

A few years ago, on my way to explore Point Reyes National Seashore Park, I met a man named Noor Baba; I never made it to Point Reyes National Seashore Park that day or ever since.

Point Reyes National Seashore Park is a 70,000-acre national reserve which offers ...

Phantom Heart

annie — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:43:05 +0000

A few weeks ago while walking on the Upper West Side in New York City, I stopped by a used book store to look for a children’s book from my younger days. I couldn’t find it but I came across an old used copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks and purchased it.

I read a few chapters but since the book spans over 1000 pages it is not one of those books one reads from front to back. One night I came across the section in his notebooks titled “Prophecies” and was stunned by what he had written. Of course much is open to interpretation which naturally makes plenty of room for incorporating research into fiction. ; )
...

Satellite Love

annie — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:45:10 +0000

No. 20 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Maybe because it should be 20 stories to make it an even number; I had 19 before this one on here.

Maybe it really is true that stories come to you and you just have to write them. I don’t know all the reasons but I was unable to work on my current work-in-progress manuscript due to this story. I couldn’t find a photo that went with it so this Tuesday’s story is without one.

When feeling stuck on a bigger creative project, you have to find other creative outlets to make room for the bigger piece to flow.

I am “lucky” that I was able to “split” this story—the longest one ...

jigar

annie — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 16:34:30 +0000

No. 19 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

I wrote last week’s story from Budapest, set in Budapest, and said I must take a break from these until January so as to finish my current writing project, the main manuscript. And yet. Here we are. Again. This story just came together. What was I to do? So, here it is. Here is hoping, after this, I switch from ‘story’ mode to a much longer story, ‘novel,’ mode. The two require a very different mindset.

The Persian and Urdu languages refer to the liver in figurative speech to indicate courage and strong feelings. The term jan e jigar, literally “the strength/life ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 08:27:57 +0000

November 7th.

Centrifuge known and that which can’t be known. Orhan Pamuk. Duke Ellington. A love without drum roll of epiphanies.

If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.

It’s Sunday morning in Prague.

It is still a concealed dawn and the smell from the night rain stubbornly loiters on the cobblestone streets that echoed inattentive pedestrians yesterday. The magnitude of quietness in Prague is distinct: every stone has a story, every turn a whisper, every ally leads to a dim lantern that doesn’t reveal enough.

My mother and I arrived on a Tuesday ...

Illumination

annie — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:59:00 +0000

No. 18 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

This story will serve as a pause in the “Tuesday’s Torrent” series.

Dedicated to the woman behind the glass ticket booth at Szechenyi Baths in Pest, Budapest, Hungry.

Arpad was neither a devout churchgoer nor a committed atheist. He devoted his Sunday mornings to a shot of espresso, one cigarette, then another shot of espresso, and then another cigarette. After the second round Arpad would take a short break and look out the smudgy cafe windows until the waitress—Kaitln, the only one of the three who worked at Cafe V willing to serve him, given he would never as much as ...

Love Is Not a True Word

annie — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:25:58 +0000

No. 17 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

I wrote this story without any access to internet research. First for me. It was written on the Delta flight from JFK to Prague. There was no wifi connection on this particular Delta flight. I had a choice to not write—good excuse—or see where the mind goes when you have minimal information in front of you. I did have access to the New York Times and the Duty Free magazine.

Initial research from an article titled “Kansai Confidential” by Deborah Caulfield Rybak.

Dedicated to Sixto from Ecuador.

I liked Nara when she told me her very first story. Her English wasn’t perfect but I understood her without fault ...

the bridge

annie — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 19:10:04 +0000

No. 16 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

Capital “T” Truth

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

~ Max Plank

Before Thais was interested in architecture she had an ambitious interest in physics.

Thais became engrossed in physics after reading a paper published in 1933 by the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky showing that visible matter is only a small fraction ...

kinein

annie — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 03:46:55 +0000

No. 15 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

kinein, from Greek, to move

All memories belong to a Love that can’t be named.

Ovidio Ozseb Hermann, a retired Physics professor, was known for bicycling around town, a small village town not distinct from neighboring towns near Dorking, south of London in Surrey, England.

Ovidio often rode his bicycle on a small road surrounded by rapeseed crops—a tall, rough weedlike plant bursting with coarse yellow flowers—which draped broadly and brightly across an always neutral landscape. Some days he would stop by Ari’s Shop, a coffee shop that only served breakfast on Mondays. Ari had decided this would ...

intuit

annie — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 08:42:47 +0000

No. 14 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

intuit verb [ trans. ] understand or work out by instinct. ORIGIN late 18th cent. (in the sense [instruct, teach] ): from Latin intuit- ‘contemplated,’ from the verb intueri, from in- ‘upon’ + tueri ‘to look.’

They say somewhere near Inishrush, Ireland, there is a nameless, whistle-stop village, alongside Clady river, just upstream from the ford on Ford Road between Clady and Inishrush.

There you can find a man who tells you about horses’ hooves and if you can understand him you understand everything about your life.

Aindriu Manus is his name and he is hard of ...

Memory of Silence

annie — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:38:19 +0000

No. 13 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

It is no easy task to take a macro shot of such a tiny creature only found in southern Europe. Tim took this photo in Alès, South of France. He says he put his tripod and camera in a small stream and waited quite a while. The water level just came under his knees. He waited until finally one of the Copper Demoiselles finally sat down. Very nice capture! : )

The memory of silence is loud.

A distinct recollection I have, clear as the oxygen rich river, is that of an impromptu fishing trip in Montseny, Spain ...

Maat

annie — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:46:55 +0000

No. 12 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

Before there were mothers there were trees.

The aforementioned fact is well-known to all people who know such truth-learnings.

Ancient plants made it out of water 130 million years prior to the discovery of earth’s first modern tree which was 370 million years ago. Archaeopteris is an extinct tree that made up 90% of the forests. It took over a 100 million years for certain evolutionary features in Archaeopteris to attain trunks up to 3 feet wide and stand 60 to 90 feet tall. The features included rings—to support greater and greater height and weight bringing ...

Gravity

annie — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:59:16 +0000

No. 11 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

Your shadow is the reason you cannot fly. It’s heavier than you know.

Thais, like most children of her time, could fly since she was little.

Some researchers and a few distrusted scientists believe there’s evidence to suggest that humans achieved flight earlier in history—much earlier—so early, they say, that the knowledge of this technology has been lost and ancient stories that recount adventures of human flight have been relegated only to myth.

In 1898, a peculiar six-inch wooden object was found in a tomb at Saqquara, Egypt that dated back to about 200 BCE. The ...

Four Sides

annie — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:59:35 +0000

No. 10 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

One part of the authentic self wanders light years out in the interstellar spaces,

in exile from us.

The other part is buried so deep within us that to resurrect it would be another return from exile.

~ Harold Bloom

More than 3,500 years ago, 100 miles west of Luxor and 300 miles south of Cairo, there was a road next to the ancient Girga Road known as Bin Abas. It was one of the many roads which led to nowhere. Sometimes it brought the pedestrians ...

inspiratus

annie — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:22:15 +0000
No. 9 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent. Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

inspiration |ˌinspəˈrā sh ən|

noun

c.1300, “immediate influence of God or a god,” especially that under which the holy books were written, from Old French inspiration, from Latin inspiratus: “inspire, inflame, blow into,” from in-“in” + spirare “to breathe.”

“in you everything sank!” ~ Pablo Neruda

More dangerous than an affair is the idea of one. Affairs end; ideas live on once delivered to the imagination, Sogah.

I wake up in the middle of the night, Sogah—where is the middle when you never fall asleep? I dig through the ...

Ferraris & Lamborghinis

annie — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:39:21 +0000

No. 8 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

Children often grow up to forget that their parents—regardless of their intentions—were unreliable narrators for the facts of life.

Aix-en-Provence, a small town in southern France, was built around the dual identity: a town of water, a town of art. A visitor to France felt he or she had somehow ended up in Aix, as it is often referred by the local residents, even if he or she had prepared for a trip to ensure not missing out on this sun-drenched and easygoing hometown of Paul Cézanne.

Cours Mirabeau, one of the most famous streets in town, lined ...

While Sleeping

annie — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:04:23 +0000

No. 6 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

This photograph is bigger than the story which follows, which definitely can expand to a proper short story.

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation. ~Rilke

Faizel met Daisy, a woman who would eventually agree to marry him, on the train from Rome to La Spezia. Daisy was headed to Cinque Terre, located off the picturesque western Italian Rivera near La Spezia, and Faizel decided to join her.

He mistook her traveling alone through Italy for passion to explore, whereas Daisy had a ...

engram

annie — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:18:34 +0000

No. 5 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

I love this photograph.

engram |’engram| noun a hypothetical permanent change in the brain accounting for the existence of memory; a memory trace

The darkness belongs to no one between the hours of three and four. A suspension of theories, feelings, conclusions, that adhere neither to the night nor to the day. It is a podium wreathed with dreams, memories, and thoughts that are not quite yours to claim. What can’t be deciphered in those hours is invented for coherence.

Winds carry stories in them.

Some nights I like to think the stories in the wind that come ...

The False Door

annie — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:54:51 +0000

No. 4 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

Around the bend of Fort Street is a local dive bar which is easy to miss even if you are walking. The “No Smoking Inside” metal sign, which reads “O Smoking Inside” because the “N” faded off too long ago for Nusrat, the owner, to recall fixing it, gave the dive bar its name: “O Smoking.” Inside, a fog of stale smoke mixed with recent exhales welcomes. Winter nights are worse. The eye inflaming smoke is all the more thicker since the tabagie refuse to huddle outside to light their cigarettes. Usually the workers from the factory plants in the ...

“To and Fro”

annie — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 06:29:42 +0000

No. 3 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

(Highly recommend to view this photograph in its entirety over at his website. Although Tim Corbeel’s photography is a class in its own, this photograph has welcomed much deserved attention).

Cats are particular about where they sit.

These two, named To and Fro by their rather distrait owner, often sat atop a credenza—piece of furniture that became very fashionable during the second half of the 19th century—looking out the window. This credenza had small pieces of variously colored polished wood. The surface felt cool and clean underneath their paws.

Originally in Italian the name credenza meant belief. This ...

“Reflection of Love”

annie — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:05:30 +0000

No. 2 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

Some loves take the form of binary stars. The double stars orbit a common center of mass and often appear as a single visual or telescopic object when they actually are not.

Blaize didn’t understand spirituality in any form—with or without religion. But he understood something he could never quite articulate, even to himself, when he met Afet for the first time.

“No one names their child Blaize in this day and age.”

“Why-a?” Blaize asked, drawing Afet closer to him as they stood underneath the rotunda of the classicistic ...

Tuesday’s Torrent: “Apnea”

annie — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 07:00:24 +0000

I am honored to introduce the photography of Tim Corbeel. I discovered Tim on Twitter via a wonderful person @Loripop326. She had shared a link via a few others to “night photography.” I wanted to learn what that meant so I explored it. Many stunning photographs by some very talented photographers captured my fancy but I couldn’t take my eyes off this one photograph. Please hop on over there to check it out and then return. This happened to be Tim’s. I followed the white rabbit to another site and then another which lead me to the treasure chest of Tim’s photography craft. I discovered he was on twitter and the rest is…Tuesday’s Torrent. ...