Annie Q Syed » words

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:02:24 +0000

April 1, 2012.

April fool’s day. Yes, let’s have a worldwide recognition day to reflect that we are all such fools. We know so little and therefore we have so many experts of Knowing!

I want the weather gods to say, “Just Joking!” I want to hear It is all just a hoax that it is December temperatures in April. There is no global warming heading to an ice age. “Please laugh already!” I want to hear from the cold front that lasts longer and longer each month every passing year. I don’t want historians to describe in words “what was once known as Spring”; I want future generations to be able to experience it. Somewhere.

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Yesterday ...

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 ...

Under the spell of Jacaranda Trees

annie — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 01:41:00 +0000

I received a note from a kindred connection—and we share many connections—Linda Holllier in response to my latest, “The Marriage of Storytelling and Writing”, over at my website, and she began by quoting what I had written…

“where stories are shared under big jacaranda trees in South Africa about the color purple and dreams inside bones“… reading your latest I immediately thought of this photo I took so I am sending it on.

Also delighted to know that there is someone else who prints out articles and highlights passages! lol

By the way, October is the month in South Africa that the Jacaranda trees blossom.

Photo by Linda Hollier

...

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, 02 Oct 2011 18:18:42 +0000

October 2nd.

Lymph nodes for spiritual bacteria. Dialogue with the body (video link to blindfolded yoga with Marco Rojas). Notes from Protests and Revolutions: the phenomena needed for a revolutionary movement.

The windows in the bedroom had to be closed last night. The room was chilled from the October breeze, a carrier with a post-card from the future: winter is around the corner.

I wish I didn’t write as slowly as I do. I wish I didn’t see putting words on paper as setting lights on a stage (and on worse days delivering thought babies!). I wish I wrote as fast on Sunday mornings and when I attempt fiction as when I am writing an email.

However, I am ...

“Friendship is a fashion accessory.”

annie — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:18:00 +0000

Found this in the Meatpacking district near High Line in New York City: “Friendship is a fashion accessory.”

I thought about what could have compelled someone to graffiti this? Like what must he or she have felt to just scribble this…not much effort…

In this social media world where much is mostly a performance (unless you just what to simply share information and NOTHING more and Lord forbid if people can let you do that in peace) and world at large too I suppose, people want something special, unique, beautiful, without the effort and honesty required. When transitory is enough, how can you ever go deep?

Indeed, friendship is often a fashion accessory.

But then I took photos ...

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 ...

Photo of how I feel after I am ‘done’ writing

annie — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:20:00 +0000

From Still Sundays:

On Friday evening I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art and was mesmerized by this amazing sculpture. I am sure most people who visit there often are quite used to it and hence could and couldn’t understand my state of awe. I took many photos and I felt none captured how I was actually feeling when I saw it. I gave up and in my silence contemplated why I was so drawn to it. I thought about it rest of the night and then while listening to a group of percussion drummers outside an art gallery in downtown Philly it finally clicked. That sculpture is precisely how I feel after I am done writing—be it ...

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, 03 Jul 2011 10:51:24 +0000

From Prague

Stillness doesn’t need a day. My father says, “Marry someone who…” Katherine Anne Porter: “…one powerful motivating force that simply carries you along…”

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I didn’t think it was Sunday this morning. There is no time in Prague. Prague ate time a long time ago. What is a long time ago when something circumvents time from the beginning? Maybe there really are people, cities, and loves that are born outside the parameters of time. Time may have been their mother but they are still looking for the other half of their genetic make up. Eternal orphans that everyone wants to adopt but no one can. Ghosts that weren’t born so they never died.

Who defined ghost ...

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 ...

Dogfish ~ Mary Oliver

annie — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:53:00 +0000
Dogfish
Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing kept flickering in with the tide and looking around. Black as a fisherman’s boot, with a white belly.
If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin, which was rough as a thousand sharpened nails.
And you know what a smile means, don’t you?
*
I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; ...

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 ...

some words from the archives…

annie — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 19:15:00 +0000

Last night I had to clean the flood of papers in more than one room of my apartment. Usually the paper clutter of notebooks, loose pages and ancient term papers is contained in one area in one room when I go through materials. But I had to dig through the storage room (I know, hard to believe I have one in my apartment—grateful for this home in NYC!) for some papers that I have to submit now for a possible education related project in August.
I came across this piece. It just doesn’t get lost and always pops around no matter where I stuff it.
This was written in 1999 or 1998? I have no recollection of ‘actually’ ...

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 ...

“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, 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, 10 Apr 2011 23:21:15 +0000

April 10th.

Venice, Italy.

the nature of Nature and us. art & the energy of the artist. “What will survive of us is love” from Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin. Dedicated to my brother Zain.

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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Stillness on a Sunday in Venice is occupied and not readily available. Every street to stillness was closed off. A Sunday strike. Something I was not expecting despite my travels. I have written “Still Sundays” and worked on other fiction while traveling (despite challenges like time, family, technology) but ...

A 1000 Year Old Fakir’s Dream

annie — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 07:23:58 +0000

I don’t claim I can write poetry. It is not my ‘medium’ of expression or telling a story. Perhaps this goes back to the years when I ‘stopped’ writing. I felt poetry—my version (given what I wrote felt incomplete), not what I considered poetry—was my way out of writing seriously. Later I decided it wasn’t even poetry but just lists of fragments showing my perception of a particular instance. Words were my play-doh; I simply recorded the telling details; I affectionately labeled these notebooks my ‘forensic lab.’

If there are as many types of poetry as there are those who claim to be poets, then there are even more definitions of what constitutes as poetry. I am fond ...

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: ...

back to The Moon and Sixpence

annie — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 20:14:24 +0000

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place.”

I read The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham when I was around 11 years old. At that time my family was still in a remote desert town in the Middle East, a city that didn’t have any libraries and definitely no stores with any English books. I read it upon my father’s suggestion from his diverse collection of books. I told him the print was too tiny and it had all these words that I could not possibly understand and I did not want to look them up! He said I understood more ...

The Writer Must Protect Himself ~ V. S. Naipaul

annie — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:52:18 +0000

I find it interesting that I came across this article (of course through Twitter serendipity) just as I was–I am—in the process of editing a personal essay titled “The Soul of the Sea” (to be posted soon) which touches on some points raised below.

If an artist is to truly understand and empathize with another then he or she must also be willing to feel and understand how another judges him or herself. Something many are too afraid to do for the fear of coming across as judgmental. It is not easy to practice discernment which is not the same as judgment. Moreover, I am not sure if one can write fiction without judgment.

...

Still Sundays

annie — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 23:18:05 +0000

December 26th.

Paradox of fog. We move forward with what we don’t know. “Museum of Innocence.” Antidote to ‘Anxiety of Influence’, this time, by T.S. Eliot.

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 Sunday morning I tried to find an alcove made of stillness on my parents’ farm house while everyone is here for the holidays. On at least one other Sunday I have attempted and barely succeeded. I just re-read that particular “Still Sunday” where I discussed the paradox of stillness, commented that the earth is vibrant and moving, and then offered an ...