Annie Q Syed » wanderlust

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 ...

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 ...

Trajectory to Prague

annie — Fri, 27 May 2011 06:49:13 +0000

In many ways I am finished.

I printed out my so called “creative clutter,” the Tuesday’s stories categorized under Tuesday’s Torrent and Fluck Tuesdays, and stared at the pages without reading. 160 pages of short narrative fiction. I wrote all of that in one year. That is a lot of Tuesdays. Approximately thirty-eight stories, I believe.

Today I re-read a paragraph from a story that I randomly picked. I couldn’t believe I had written it. This was neither a judgment of it being good nor bad. I was absolutely removed from what I was reading. I literally couldn’t believe I had thought these sentences that all went together and belonged to certain characters who wanted to tell their story.

It ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 01 May 2011 14:44:58 +0000

May 1st.

“Our job as creatives is to give poeple what they didn’t even know they wanted.” ~ Tyler Weaver; “rocking a doll is not a spoken truth, it just is…” ~ from a reader; you will never have some answers; “Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names.” ~ Toni Morrison

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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Hello, May. Will you be full of maybes?

Maybe.

Whether or not spring is here in a manner we desire—less rain and more sun or less breeze and more steady—winter is gone. ...

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 ...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 15:19:42 +0000

October 31st.

I submit “Kafka” in my defense. The Prague in us all. Art is not spelled E-G-O.

I know many are expecting this piece to be either about Budapest (where I am right now) or Prague (which calls me back) but I apologize in advance: it is not quite about either. While traveling there exists a cognitive dissonance and I am just floating in the experience instead of writing about it. I will write more about Prague, but not now.

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

What can I offer about Prague that ...

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, 17 Oct 2010 16:57:47 +0000

Forgive and do Forget. Robert-Robert Frost: one question you should keep close.

October 17th.

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

There is a stillness that belongs only to the sky. It’s the stillness in between latitudes and longitudes. We can only know it from afar.

This Sunday I am sipping tea in a suburb somewhere outside Nashville, Tennessee, visiting my sister and her fiance who moved here recently for a short project. They were on a break for a week so we all flew in from the East and West coasts to visit them.

...

Have You Ever Wanted To Do This?

annie — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 08:13:42 +0000

This picture was taken around July 12th 2009. I wish I could do it again. Soon. Craving the sun. California = sunny = big fat myth. This picture was sent via email to some friends along with the following email:

the picture below—i just had to share. I had to text and find out what the heck these thingys are called even though i had seen them for ages in kansas and california and so many other places (thanks melissa for texting me back and letting me know what they are called—a HAY BALE!). well, this picture was taken a few days ago in south dakota….near chamberlin….in route to one of the native american reservations. ...

Permanent Visitor

annie — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 04:52:14 +0000

En route from Jo’burg to LA with a two day stay in beloved NYC, so technically from NYC to LA, I picked up the Christmas Edition of The Economist. Outstanding variety of topics. This one stayed with me probably because the timing was, personally, too appropriate!

Beware, then: however well you carry it off, however much you enjoy it, there is a dangerous undertow to being a foreigner, even a genteel foreigner. Somewhere at the back of it all lurks homesickness, which metastasises over time into its incurable variant, nostalgia. And nostalgia has much in common with the Freudian idea of melancholia—a continuing, debilitating sense of loss, somewhere within which lies anger at the thing lost. It is not the ...