Annie Q Syed » questions

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:58:42 +0000

February 5th, 2012.

The super bowl of social media and creativity.

I woke up thinking about Wednesday this morning. As if Wednesday was a person I knew.

This last Wednesday was a chaotic morning and no amount of breathing was going to lift me out of the mushroom of frenzy.

Usually calm and steady, on Wednesday morning I was agitated and hyper sensitive to noise. I always try to see what is the longest amount of time I can go without plugging into music with my headphones. This time even music didn’t help. People rushing to some grand nowhere. I joined them to head to one of the most dilapidated parts of New York City. Poverty has a smell ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:38:33 +0000

January 22nd 2012.

Biko. Coltrane. My father. Coleridge. Marquez.

Writing when you are under the weather is like talking in your sleep. Nothing makes sense; it all makes sense.

It is a Steve Biko kind of Sunday: “I write what I like.”

New York City is under the weather too. It snowed yesterday.

I read a post by a talented photographer in Finland, Annika Ruohonen, this morning titled “January in Finland.” So this is Finland in January I said aloud without realizing. Maybe my heavy head thought I was using “inside” voices when I was not. I tried leaving a short comment but due to computer glitches, password itches, the comment was lost as was the moment ...

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 ...

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 ...

Occupy Stillness. Viktor Frankl: the challenge of potential meaning to fulfill

annie — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:41:54 +0000

November 20, 2011.

Still Sundays.

The New York City skyline never gets old.

I am getting older; I like it.

Love too never gets old.

This month is over, this year is over, my obsession with time, truth, and love continues.

What do I want to be when I grow up? A writer? A doctor? A teacher? A lawyer? A writer? This time I get to decide how I want to be, not who based on what.

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People have recurring dreams. I don’t.

My latest obsession is putting into words this “recent” dream: I am in a field of teal colored dragonflies. They are everywhere. The field is on the edge of a horizon or so ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, 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, 04 Sep 2011 15:46:23 +0000

September 4th.

Spirituality is a nose everyone has. Thich Nhat Hanh on art. Words are a bow and an arrow. Diana by Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

From what I can recall: earlier this week…

Thursday: surrender should not come at the expense of exploding…what good is any practice if you are trying to hold it together as if life is some performance…emotions should be like pop-tarts: cold, warm, hot, toasted, and done. Would anyone reading this in Prague or Lahore know about pop-tarts? Of course they will! There is google! Why am I not thankful then?

Wednesday: Maybe this is why we have weeks made up of days, call them by whatever name, so as to track the shift of energy ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 18:58:40 +0000

August 14th.

“The present is the whole of the past concentrated.” ~ Iqbal; Bernard Shaw on Tolstoy’s “What is Art”?; opinions about opinions; Anders, the homeless man in London, on books.

I awoke this Sunday morning in some rainforest. The rain, glossy chandeliers, was falling without crashing. It took me a minute to realize I was in New York City.

It was nice to take a break from putting thoughts on the braille made of words last Sunday. Does Stillness too take a break? No, I don’t think so. We do. It’s hard to swim in peace: no sharks of conflict that actually bite, no shore of tomorrow, no ship of yesterday, how long can you stay afloat ...

“The Beauty Myth”

annie — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 20:24:55 +0000

Mama says it is to men’s advantage to recognize the reservoir of strength that is a woman (regardless of a man’s sexual preference). But in order to achieve this, she says, it demands a lot of deconstruction which begins by looking beyond a woman’s physical appearance and a man’s attachments to conscious and unconscious roles she is supposed to play. But that deconstruction can begin only when a woman is able to see herself beyond her physical appearance. She also says that unfortunately the stereotypes that exist about women exist because majority of the women are not strong enough to break them. If you look a certain way, you must be flirtatious. If you have ambition, you must be needy ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:30:38 +0000

An old Czech proverb: He who looks, finds. Loretta from AT&T. Bridges are made for crossing. “Lies About Love” by D.H. Lawrence.

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I just lost everything I had written.

For the second time.

The first time was very early in the morning—the wake-up sky was still coddling the night—when I decided to not actually write down the thoughts that were downloading through Stillness. I was a sleepyhead in awe of the magnitude of Stillness looking out my window on equally sleepy Prague streets. But streets in Prague are always sleepy, waking up from a different time.

I had enjoyed the iceskateflow of thoughts zigzagging harmoniously, words leading an orchestra of thoughts in some perfect synchronization that was ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 11:00:59 +0000

It’s Sunday morning and I am writing from a small village near the Sovinec Castle. Owl’s Nest. That’s what Sovinec means in Czech. Sovinec is near a city called Olomouc. Yesterday we first traveled two and a half hours southeast of Prague to Brno and then north to Olomouc. We are quite east of Prague now. Olomouc is made of agricultural landscape where the sky is a moody painter and the earth is a palette. Capture that, lens. Feeling is a lens.

Usually when I write on Sunday mornings I feel Stillness offers Christmas presents for unwrapping—let’s see what’s under that tree of thought that grew so tall in one week? Some Sunday mornings I indeed feel as if I ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 11:26:23 +0000

From London.

I haven’t been in London long enough to specifically share what stillness of London on a Sunday morning tastes like.

However, there was lots of stillness in North London this morning that brought the following:

Something beyond evil. Spirals of Transmutation. Integration is the most demanding creative process.

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The best compliment I have ever received about my writing is: ‘it can raise the dead.’ It is also the most unsettling thing I have heard about my writing. When the living are more dead than those gone, one better know how to dance with goblins, ghouls, and dybuks—a specialized demon who attaches himself to scholars! I can’t two-step or waltz with another. I am a solo-performer ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 16:29:37 +0000

I used to write on Sunday mornings smack dab in the middle of Broadway.

Yes.

In dead center of the biggest and longest running avenue in New York City. The benches in the median dividing the opposite flow of traffic always felt like some rising from the Earth.

On 108th and Broadway. Not 109th. Not 110th. But 108th. As if that is some exact spot where Manhattan could be peeled and split open like an orange.

There is a small, beautiful park near by that I could go too, but no, I would always end up sitting on a bench that faces south, looking at where Broadway splits off to West End. On the bottom of the grand ...

Letter From RhapsodE

annie — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:12:01 +0000

I fell flat on an unfamiliar ground.

The view from an unfamiliar ground tastes like blood in your mouth: you just know it is not supposed to be there.

Ever since I was very young I have had some innate sense as to where to go when things fall apart. I am not sure to what extent it is voluntary knowledge, very much like some wild animal, I know what ‘needs to be done’. Sometimes it involves reaching out to a trusted friend or family member and other times it involves physically working through the unfamiliar territory.

The striking blow this time came as a surprise thought without any ribbons of fear. You are an imposter.

I feel like ...

Just a small note to note a year of Still Stundays

annie — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 16:17:02 +0000

June 5th

Last year around this time, June 6th, I wrote:

I have never been able to articulate the stillness of a Sunday. Those quiet hours of the early morning before a city, town, or village takes a big yawn and stretches itself into your routine which may include bills, laundry, emails, phone calls, errands, groceries, etc.

These mornings are especially unique in New York because the City doesn’t sleep but she just takes naps. And the longest naps are on Sunday mornings. [...] Some mornings I simply wrap the stillness of a Sunday morning around a pen and put fragments on a paper.

I have been asked by a few people to share more of my own thoughts ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 29 May 2011 15:39:21 +0000

May 29th.

Differences that don’t make a difference. Memory is a fog on the glasses of now. Art flows to the surface of some medium from an undersoul.

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

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Memorial Day weekend.

Thank you to all those who served to protect. I am sorry I don’t feel safe but I appreciate the effort. I really do. Maybe you didn’t know there would be another war, and another, and another.

A weekend dedicated to shopping, barbecuing, first trips to the beach, family gatherings, national media events. I hope ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 22 May 2011 13:22:32 +0000

May 22

A people without time, like stories beyond time. Time is a lover whose eyes never get old.

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

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5:oo a.m. came covered in dense clouds but stillness is not overcast whatsoever.

New York City, hush-little-baby.

What to make of the continuous torrential downpour in the last week? Sky, are your lungs okay? New York City sky: a wailing baby that leaves the adult to wonder if the baby has any air left only to hear another whimpering sob fall. I used to wonder if babies ...

“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 ...

be all your infinite selves: the vajra cross

annie — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 05:18:37 +0000

One thing you learn if you have a consistent yoga practice is how often your body and emotions shift in a given twenty-four hours.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday when I attended Marco Rojas’ yoga classes I was ecstatic to discover my synchronized breathing with the yoga postures. I welcomed a new strength in my flexibility which felt beyond ‘natural’: it was grounded, not merely stretchy.

Tuesday there is no yoga class.

Wednesday around 2:oo p.m. I began sensing this tightness shoot up and around like a grapevine hugging my legs. My adductor group of muscles around the hips coiled into an unexpected stiffness within a span of an hour. Around 3:oo p.m. I contained a completely different set ...