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Salaams from an humble lass of no fixed abode

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Salaams from an humble lass of no fixed abode
chiq
04/08/04 at 01:34:30
[slm] my dears.

Disclaimer: Dear Nomi, you told me to write, but I'm still in La La land and this is hard. I’m therefore blaming you for any meandering, samje?  :P Here goes, after months, some ramblings from a palpitating heart:

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[i]Somewhere, even now, a lamb was being led up to the altar steps, a lamb chosen for its perfection and purity: even its delicate hooves, its knobby, skinny legs, were perfect. The eyes of those who had chosen it were loving – they valued it, enormously. And the lamb itself? It felt this love and shyly looked up at the eyes around it glowing with desire. It would not comprehend that desire had different depths. Gratified, it would get to its knees, it would gracefully lie before its lovers, it would never suspect the blow.[/i]

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One theory is, we resort to the written word not to let feeling loose, but to escape from it, rather like seeing a mountain from a distant plain...“only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things”, quoth T S Eliot ([i]Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1992[/i]).

Perchance it is true, for it would not be an exaggeration to say that the past few months have seen me feel too much to write, or even speak. They have seen me transform into something of a...visible woman. You know, the garish anatomical models flung over with translucent skin, their insides on brazen display, bleeding a curious malice where their plastic makeup prevents their flowing blood. Nerve and muscle, bone and cartilage, lidless eyes and skinless lips. Abstract shapes, light and shade, the stuff of childish nightmares. [i]This is a man[/i], the legend croons silently, but it is [i]not[/i] a man. Laid out in such a unnerving fashion, these garish lumps of flesh in no way fulfil the expectations we derive from our common knowledge of faces. They have a quality of obscene rawness as if, in some horrific fashion, they have been flayed. A parody of reality grating on my jangled nerves. Malice.

I cannot look at these things too long, else I will see them when I next look in the mirror...with my bones jutting out so rawly now, with my veins throbbing thick and blue as a gas flame beneath my skin, lightening-stark and transforming me into mottled ice, with the inward fissuring that begins whenever I think of my human relationships...with everything that should be bound up carefully inside beneath a smoothly polished exterior breaking loose, flying wildly out to the surface and beyond...I am having enough trouble reminding myself that I am more than just a set of biological and chemical reactions, or a “bad person” who is ever making trouble for others, an extra mouth draining the earth’s food and air supply.

“Yes, yes, I am, I [i]am[/i]…”

A desperate, whispered affirmation even as the blackness envelops, smoking. [i]Treacherous[/i].

(It’s “only” withdrawal symptoms, apparently: following, uh, issues with a less-than-sensible doctor a few months ago...but alhamdulillah, the label has encased the problem in a shape and so contained it.)

What happened? Pliant as a plant that begs to be trampled underfoot, I naively stretched out my hand to the people in my life as if they could tell me who I was...they told me.

My world is now governed by alternating patterns of cynicism and drug-induced Lewis Carroll logic, it is a haze through which I am stabbing feebly to reach out to others (for help? To help? I don’t know)...and failing.

Sigh...sorrow pricked my raw eyes today most terribly as I read the posts in the Naseeha corner. The world is so much worse off than me, I want so much to reply to y'all (esp [i]you[/i] sis azizah - may Allah soften your pain) and yet...oh, I must excuse myself yet again, in mid-post, for I am growing tired...maybe I can finish this next time, maybe the second baby step will bear me from this embarrassing egocentricity to altruism, and let a smile break across my face like the sunrise once more. Ultimately, after all, ‘tis only in a brotherhood that the thing properly called the self may be found...

[wlm]
04/08/04 at 02:29:12
chiq
Re: Salaams from an humble lass of no fixed abode
yumna
04/08/04 at 07:20:04
oo sister chiq its sooo good 2 c ur post after such a llooonng time ..am really missing ur posts in my inbox :(...mayb also bc nobodys posting much now.. :)..anyway ..wow sister u write soo beatifully ...really admire ur writing skills..keep it up :-[..
ps sister i didn't quite understand ur beginning part but ..thought i should let u know (that is if u Don't know) bro Nomi has been banned from the board  :(

well anyway hope u keep posting on board! :-*..wat abt ur marriage ;) huh??


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