Annie Q Syed » non-fiction stories

We could think what we wanted…

annie — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:34:44 +0000

I came home to grab lunch since my parents are here (well, right now on their way out to JFK for their trip to Turkey…they arrived late last night from California…unfortunately, not a long stay, but it will be a little longer on their way back from Turkey).

I told them this small story and said I didn’t have time to tweet share with folks. It’s been a whirlwind few days…all filled with magic and joy…but still a bit too fast…

They asked I write it down somewhere. And since this is the most organized space I know as compared to what is on and underneath my desk and shelves, here it goes…

This morning in the number 2 subway ...

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

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 ...

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 ...

The Granny Who Knew Time.

annie — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:56:53 +0000

Still Sundays.

October 23rd.

This Sunday I want to share Stillness with another all day long. I’ll take Stillness in any form but it is some fiesta when there is two (or more) to honor the muchness of nothing but together.

When we were growing up and even now when we all gather at our parents’ farmhouse Stillness serves as a blanket as well as a straw. In the hours of the morning everyone sits in the living room to have meaningless conversations—”No one really wears socks that color with a suit!”—to a profound statement thrown into the living-room air like a boomerang: “One can’t truly articulate actual self-realization.”

It’s as if the morning Stillness over the holidays and Sundays ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 16:10:29 +0000

August 28, 2011.

Perceptions that hula-hoop around reality: social media and beyond. Little boy who wouldn’t stop crying on bus. Walter from Verdi Square knows with certainty…

It’s truly a still Sunday here in New York City this morning. Not a sound from a dog, car, child…neither near nor from afar. Usually in order to capture this temperament of quietude I have to be up around 6:00 a.m. given by 9:00 a.m. the seal of stillness begins to pop, someone crunching a bag of potato chips in an empty hallway.

Yet somehow this is the least still it has ever been because of the tropical storm. The leaves are speaking loudly to the wind. I am not allowed to ...

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 ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:38:03 +0000

July 31st.

Misunderstood dreams shape-shift return to sleep in cities like Prague. Happy Birthday to my mother. Stillness is some Doppler effect.

It’s July 31st and it is my mother’s birthday.

I read this year’s July came with an extra offering: one more Sunday. I also learned that this will not happen again for some 800 or so years. I checked the facts on this. Such a combination occurs far more often than every 800 years. The last occurrence was in July 2005. The next one will be in July 2016. It might as well be accurate though. Yesterday feels like years ago.

Who keeps track of Sundays besides those who are harvesters of Stillness? No moment seems to return ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:43:53 +0000

Delayed posting. The website was down for 12 hours.

July 24th.

A woman named Yo; the windmill within, World Rivers Project; truth is a deadbody…

Stillness is some fog today and thoughts heavy sandbags.

There is a blanket of clouds made of stubborn gray covering the Prague sky for days now. Except it was shyly sunny yesterday evening. The sun was blocked again this morning.

The sun can burn yet its power is invisible against fluffy, goofy, bulky clouds who too visit at the mercy of winds. Mirror, mirror on the earth’s wall, who is the strongest force of them all? They all win against us as the elements draw even against one another.

Some days Prague feels like ...

“how are you?”: Maya Angelou on “Telling Truth”

annie — Sat, 14 May 2011 16:38:01 +0000

In a recent conversation I said, “I allow whatever needs to find me, find me. Or else there is no end to the search of ‘what else is there?’ It’s been like this ever since I was a young girl.”

This took me back to a letter I wrote in February 2009 to my closest friends via email. At the time I was living at home in California on my parents’ farmhouse, half-way through my year long hiatus from New York City, and friends sincerely wanted to know “How are you?”. Although I did not quite answer that question, I did share something relevant.

I share the email-letter below, only partly edited.

~a.q.s.

~~~~~~

My father has ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 16:41:33 +0000

March 27th.

Maybe life actually begins only when we start remembering. Understanding the ‘hereafter’ like my father. Deep waters of truth run in stillness.

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 again. Did I even take the price tag off the days leading up to today?

It’s March 27th. Soon it will be April. Three months into 2011. Flashes of 2008 come and go like ghosts not willing to accept the exorcism that is life.

It’s still very cold in New York City. We had a glimmer of spring, one beautiful ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:16:40 +0000

October 24th.

Symphony of connections that last and meetings that may not happen again.

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

Compared to most New York City slickers I walk slow. I have been told this on numerous occasions by friends and it is intentional. Others skip split seconds with their foot steps without noticing the rhythm between the sky and earth, beyond gravity, in which we float. I don’t understand the rush to nowhere.

Yet, when walking next to those who are visiting me from outside the City I still move pretty fast.

Walking around the ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:48:49 +0000

September 26th.

Noise, like all conflict, is internal. “le seul mot juste“. Life in HD. Roman Candles. An artist who can’t sell his work. Love is a mockingbird.

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

This morning I woke up to the alarm of papers and pages of books on my desk trumpeting. They hollered louder than my azote dreams. Their small Powwow gained momemtum due to the cool morning breeze, rhythmic and controlled, in and out my window.

No Sun.

Yesterday morning I claimed birds are louder than the sirens in New ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 14:48:03 +0000

September 12th.

Power of cleavage without breasts. “Mami Wata.” Stillness is not found in being still! Discover fire for the 2nd time.

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

New York City is moody this morning. The notebook papers and pages from magazines are dancing to the Fall wind drifting through my apartment windows. New York City is not one of those cities where the surrounding colors become more vibrant when it is cloudy. The lush greenery of trees and parks attempts to provide a polychromatic substitute for the heavy clouds. It’s not enough for ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:28:35 +0000

August 29th.

Rhythm of stillness. What’s in a greeting? Art for art’s sake, sex for sex’s sake, but no love for love’s sake? Tattoo of “Pole Star” by artist Alphonse Mucha.

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

I was out with some friends last night and a friend’s friend mentioned how she couldn’t stand the City: the noise, the chaos, the people, the rush, the pushing, the hurrying, the commotion of going nowhere too fast, the overheard meaningless babel of strangers.

Was I delusional? Stillness in New York City that I rave about—figment of my imagination? Was ...

Jewelry as “art object”

annie — Sat, 01 May 2010 06:13:10 +0000

In Art and Agency Alfred Gell formulates an anthropological theory of visual art that focuses on the social context of art production, circulation, and reception. As a theory of the nexus of social relations involving works of art, this work suggests that in certain contexts, art-objects substitute for persons and thus mediate social agency. According to Gell, an art object is a physical object that is considered to fulfill or have fulfilled an independent and primarily aesthetic function. An art object is often seen in the context of a larger work of art, oeuvre, genre, culture, or convention. An “art object” essence projected from these earrings which I had been searching for quite some time.

...

Bud on Love

annie — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 09:48:43 +0000

This anecdote belongs in the collection Nectar of the Ordinary. The exchange took place in August of 2006 between my college professor and me before he passed away a few days later. I hope it serves as a mediator between the infinite universal queries about love, however you define it, and your journey.

Thanks,

~a.q.s.

Celestial Sap: “Bud on Love”

How many loves in a lifetime? I first thought of Bud’s words after a trip to the bookstore Barnes and Noble right around Valentines’ Day in February 2010. As soon as I entered, there was the following display of books.

I believe it speaks for itself. I did not mind the rows of poetry ...

Nigerian Cab Driver’s Message

annie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:15:30 +0000

This true account belongs in the collection Nectar of the Ordinary. I met the individual to whom this story belongs in June of 2008. It was about time I put it on paper.

Thanks,

~a.q.s.

Unexpected Sap: “Nigerian Cab Driver’s Message”

One who carries a message bears the weight to share it. One who receives a message bears the Herculean task to contain it.

Sometime in the very beginning of June 2008 I almost got hit by a cab. Now it would seem an expected hazard of living in New York City but contrary to popular belief, cabs zooming left and right, stopping in the middle of traffic as and when they wish to pick ...

The End

annie — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:01:17 +0000

This true story belongs in the collection Nectar of the Ordinary. This piece will come after the “Note” which a few of you have read. This is my first finished piece for Nectar of the Ordinary which was intentional. The piece titled “Dawn & Anowar” was not originally meant for Nectar of the Ordinary but I decided it belonged there rightfully (minus some content editing).

Honestly, my only motivation for actually completing this is because I have lost the email address and phone number of the woman to whom this story belongs.

~a.q.s.

First Sap: “The End.”

It doesn’t take that long, about one and a half hour, for the breakfast crowd to clear out from ...