Here and Away

this post is reserved for baki…     (june 20) i may be a delinquent blogger  but i have been surely missing the company of baki who left in april and weng when she packed up in may. mga lola, i’ll see you soon…

Things are so unpredictable these days, like the power load shedding (brownout) schedules at home that have become erratic once again.  My going home. Or being told that I got a new nephew who is already seventeen years old (long story)… 

But if there is one thing that is “predictable” nowadays is that I am getting my dose of new poem everyday for this entire month.  Thanks to my subscription to knofp’s poem-a-day last year, they are into it again.   

My most favorite knofp poem from last year is Anna Akhmatova‘s “The Door is Half Open” which describes the difficulty that the author is experiencing in her relationship with her departing lover.  How can I not relate to it at that time?

The door is half-open,
The sweet smell of limes…
On the table, forgotten,
A whip and a glove.  

More clearly I’ll see
Tomorrow with fresh eyes
That life is beautiful.
Heart, just be wise. 

The lamp’s yellow glow…
Things rustle all round.
Why did you go?
I don’t understand.

You’re completely worn out –
Beating sluggisly…
You know, I read somewhere
That souls do not die.

So far this week, I like all the poems.  To name some, there’s Frank O’Hara‘s “Avenue A”,

We hardly ever see the moon anymore
                                                            so no wonder
      it’s so beautiful when we look up suddenly
and there it is gliding broken-faced over the bridges
briliantly coursing, soft, and a cool wind fans
           your hair over your forehead and your memories
                   of Red Groom’s locomotive landscape
I want some bourbon/you want some oranges/I love the leather
                        jacket Norman gave me
                                                        and the curdoroy coat David
       gave you, it is more mysterious than spring, the El Greco
heavens breaking open and then reassembling like lions
                                                          in a vast tragic veldt
       that is far from our small selves and our temporarily united
passions in the cathedral of Januaries…

Kenneth Koch‘s “Psychoanalysis“, 

I took the Lexington Avenue subway
To arrive at you in your glory days
Of the Nineteen Fifties when we believed
That you could solve any problem
And I had nothing but disdain…

But what I like most is Edward Hirsch‘s “Self Portrait” – the introduction says it’s a self reflection and personal reckoning of the author – his “minor triumphs and major failures” – a seeking of sorts, a looking forward to a future that’s different, freer perhaps, than the one he’s planned for himself…

I lived between my heart and my head,
like a married couple who can’t get along.

I lived between my left arm, which is swift
and sinister, and my right, which is righteous.

I lived between a laugh and a scowl,
and voted against myself, a two-party system.

My left leg dawdled or danced along,
my right cleaved to the straight and narrow.

My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation,
my right stood upright as a Roman soldier.

Let’s just say that my left side was the organ
donor and leave my private parts alone,

But as for my eyes, which are two shades
of brown, well, Dionysus, meet Apollo.

Look at Eve raising her left eyebrow
while Adam puts his right foot down.

No one expected it to survive,
but divorce seemed out of the question.

I suppose my left hand and my right hand
will be clasped over my chest in the coffin

and I’ll be reconciled at last,
I’ll be whole again.

It’s not bad to be getting a new poem everyday.  I like to be introduced to poets I didn’t know before.  And I don’t know, there are words, there are lines, there are themes in these summoned poems that I can just connect with… 

Life is like these arriving poems; I’ll never know what I’ll get.              

Shall I just revel with all these unpredictability then?

last night, while travelling with some colleagues back to islamabad from a workshop in abbottabad, i was singing “tehra suroor” inside the car…

o huzoor, tehra tehra tehra suroor…
tana tan tan na na tan ta na na tan ta na
meri batein, meri sansei, tenha ratein
tehra tehra tehra suroor…

involuntary outburst.  amjad turned on the the radio… 

today, a new song sticked in my head. thanks to my r.e.m. playlist this morning, this song kept on looping in my head while working on my pc… 

this one goes out to the one i love
this one goes out to the one i’ve left be–hind
another prop has occupied my time
this one goes out to the one i love
fi—re!!! 

another outburst.  saad’s astonished head emerged from his laptop… 

last song syndrome.  bow.

this morning, i was so excited that i am finally going to start a yoga class which will run for a month.  the fee is half the price of what is asked in the ‘art of living’ though it will be in a gym, not in somewhere far, picturesque and meditative – but nevermind, i told myself, it would even be  more challeging for a newbie. i have already cleared my work schedules to embrace this new preoccupation, dimension, horizon, in my life…

at 9:00 am, after depositing my stuff in the office, i went straight to f-8 markaz, looking for that gym called ‘robust’. the class will only be for one hour, every other day. right after the session, i’ll be heading to pindi to catch the 11:45 daewoo bus trip to abbottabad – skipped the early morning office car service just for this yoga class.  nevermind if i will commute for 3 hours going to abbottabad – i’m finally going to start doing yoga!  yey, yoyoga na ako! sa wakas!

the lady at the reception area said there’s no yoga class.  what?  no class – it was put off.  what?! … it was still confirmed as of yesterday…  but…

ahh, ye pakistan hai. this is pakistan! 

or was i april fooled? 

what’s the difference?