Annie Q Syed » sublime flux

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 ...

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.

...

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, 15 May 2011 19:14:55 +0000

May 15th.

Some dance for the dead because they somehow still live. Sooner or later you come to what you recognize. Art is the marrow in the bones of 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.

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Rain came with a rapid succession early morning this Sunday. Rain has a heavy hand some mornings when it pours like this. It’s not sweet, smooth and aromatic like some cat in a dream that walks by you. Instead it is a wake-up call by the sergeant of time. The drumming pour shakes you awake.

Oh New ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 19:03:51 +0000

February 27th.

Freedom is not a delusion. bell hooks: ‘an anguished heart is never a brave heart.’ Jung: “the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious.” Trust.

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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It’s Sunday and I can’t believe I am writing.

Earlier this week I had decided I just couldn’t write anymore. In fact, I felt I couldn’t do much of anything anymore. I was paralyzed by the disillusion that came with the dissolution of a friendship. Having said that, people, including myself, have endured far worse: ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 17:53:32 +0000

Da Vinci’s Notebooks. Conch of stillness. “the bourgeois idea of reality.” Learning to die to live at the speed of life.

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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I wrote “Still Sundays” before it was a title of these posts and long before I had this website. It was still and it was Sunday and I liked how New York City felt in the early hours. That is all. The handwritten notes were short and only relayed my awe at stillness in the locomotion of New York City. Some pieces ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 17:38:57 +0000

December 12th.

Truth is a rabid dog. Plato on ‘kosmos’. Pythagoreans on ‘Harmonious Principles’. Emily Dickinson on Truth. Ignorance is not a matter of not knowing. Kerouac-’just a human being.’

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

Last night’s midnight drizzle has turned into icy javelins this Sunday morning in New York City. I moved aside all the curtains in my windowfull apartment so as to pretend it was a beautiful morning. That’s what one does on beautiful mornings, right? Walk over to all the windows and slide away the curtains for sunlight. Why do I think that? ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 12:47:13 +0000

November 28th.

Spiritual vampires. “love is worth nothing until it has been tested by its own defeat.” galaxy that is the soul.

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 stillness from where I write peels layers. Of New York City and myself. New York City—this breathing, reactive, organism in and of itself—seems a bottomless chasm where exploring can never end.

New York City is notorious for having uncharted terrain despite one living here a lifetime. So what can stillness bring to the fractures, crevices, openings that are within me?

Some mornings stillness anchors me to the peaceful ...

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 ...

2010: Sublime Flux

annie — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 08:47:47 +0000

Everyone has something profound to say once they have “made it,” whatever that “making it” may entail for that individual—making a certain amount of money, buying one house or many, getting married, having children or seeing them happily married, degree(s), fame, promotion, “security”, fill-in-the-blank. I want to talk about when you feel so far from “making it” that you can’t even spell it! I want to point at the stream of cataclysms of the betwixt and between. Events, one right after another, which lead you to finally conclude that life is really just that: one big transition. Death might be the only full stop—the rest of life is a series of commas, semi-colons, and any other punctuation point of your ...