The faces of God

Been reading about the mysteries and power of myths. What are myths? The music that we never hear but dance to all our lives? The road map to our minds and souls? May be the truths that reveals the faces of God?

The truth remains the same; time and place just gives it a different name, says the wise. Why do we search for it? I don’t know. May be I really am beginning to figure things out a little. I wish I could explain it. The patterns are beginning to fall in places - the stories, the songs, the poems and words of wisdom – they are forming shapes that I can not describe. I guess its all nonsense. Enough already.

Was reading this last night - http://www.barefootsworld.net/seattle.html. Hope this will make up for the crap above.

Ekushe February

21st February. The world has recognized the sacrifices our countrymen have made for our mother tongue by making it INTERNATIONAL MOTHER LANGUAGE DAY. On this day every year, thousands gather at the foot of the Shahid Minar (Martyrs Monument) to pay their respects. This year, I went there for the first time in my life. Quite an experience! Standing in the line for hours till finally you get to take your shoes off and walk past the Shahid Minar. Thought about the people that died today, people who ignored the guns pointed at them and moved onwards shouting slogans till the bullets silenced them forever. The bullets failed though…the slogans survived to live forever. “Rastro Vasha Bangla Chai.” They had a cause to fight for and they fought till the very end.

Later that night we had a real good time at the party. I had the most amazing conversation with a newspaperman who told me how we need to let go of ourselves before we can figure out the truth. Before we can really create, we have to get beyond ourselves, forget our individual identities to become one with the truth. Or may be he said something very different and I didn’t really get it. The point is, I enjoyed my time talking crap as did he. There was this guy from Australia who made really good drinks. The booze ran out before anyone really got a taste. Gave us a cause to fight for. So times are a little bad and its risky to get caught out there on the streets, at this hour of the night, with something illegal. But we didn’t care. Off to the ATM, out comes the cash, jump on a CNG and race to mohakhali at half past 5 in the morn. Wake the guards up and bribe them to bring you a bottle. Back home before you knew it. We had a good time. Somebody corrected me when I pronounced Jessore instead of Joshor. “I really hate it when people pronounce Bangla words according to English spellings.” I apologized. The guy is right.
“So how come we are all talking in English the whole time although we all speak Bangla?”
“I dunno”
“Cheers mate! To you man! You are the best bartender ever!”

Amar vaiyer rokte rangano ekushe February
Ami ki vulite pari?
(How can I forget 21 February, the day daubed with my brothers’ blood)

Rediscovering Bangladesh in Asif’s flickr

Been working with Asif vai for the last coupla years. Under his gentle and sober exterior the guy packs a mean sense of humor. He makes cell phone games to kill the time. It seems its not the only thing he is good at. Check out his flickr - http://flickr.com/photos/a-s-i-f/

Man! This sure is beautiful country with beautiful people. Wonder why we never see it that way.

bad start

I knew it was a bad idea when I agreed to go to the card game on a weeknight. Everybody was thinking about going to work in the morning and nobody really had much cash on them so you can imagine how boring the game turned. Tried to logon to the internet around 3 am in the mron and found the line dead. Ping…Response time out…
Smoked half a dozen cigarettes in the next two hours lying on the cold floor, trying not to think about stuff. Masum wont go to sleep and kept talking crap, playing with the phone and put all sorts of things in my head. Cell phones, wish they were never invented. They can be a pain when they ring. They can be a worse pain when they just wont ever ring.

Saw Foks, Mayasoom and Mastor getting ready to leave. I thought I’d stay in but for some reason decided to come home. Got a taxi easily enough and was real happy to find Foks had smokes on him. Looked out the window and watched the mad city slowly waking up on a misty morning. Was driving by the old airport and saw the whole orange sun disc rising, - a perfect circle. Was it pretty? May be. I was somewhere else. I hated it, all of it. I wanted to leave that road right away. I wished I’d never had to take that one again. I wanted to leave it all, the cab, the road, the city. Its over for me. I don’t want any of it and the city doesn’t want me.

Give me back my wings mean Skies! Give ‘em back so I can go away.

I’ll make my peace

I’ll make my peace with the world
Although it’s a mess, God Bless,
I’ll do what I can to clean up.

I’ll make my peace with the world
Although it makes me feel I don’t belong,
I’ll try and find my place in it.

I’ll make my peace with the world
Even though its far from perfect.
I’ll do my share to make good.

I’ll make my peace with the world
Although it drives me mad.
I’ll pipe down and say its not all bad.

I’ll make my peace with the world
Cause you are in it
And that makes it all worthwhile.

11

ZB did it again! What can I say…the guy is too good. If you have a thing for nonsense, go check out 11.

Happy Valentine’s

It rained all night last night. Can make one feel worse than they have to. You put the phone away cause you know it will never ring. Try not to think about things. Watch Northern Exposure, crack jokes with the brothers, the clock ticks away, ever so slowly. Go to bed early only to realize you cant escape. Try to put that away, think about things to come, the promises the future holds. When nothing works, gulp down those sleeping pills and you are done with the night.

At work you actually do something for a change. Go out with co-workers and have a good time at lunch. Crack a lot many ‘maggot’ jokes that work. “I love you dude” says your buddy to celebrate the occasion. Not too bad a day. Hope it gets you through the night.

Why do we need this day anyway? Its special for people who are already happy. And who aren’t at that place it simply makes them more miserable. Bah! Well…don’t take me too seriously now. Just blowing off a li’l steam. In fact I got a great many reasons to be happy. So then…I’m off to celebrate. Have a good one people. Celebrate love and beauty. At the end of day, theres only so much that makes it worthwhile.

Setting off the crazy alarm!

Blame it on the wet wind

I hate it when you think
That this isn’t the time
And theres still time
To wait for the time.

My friend, its probably true
That patience is a virtue.
But you see,
For folks like you and me
Theres all the time in the world to be virtuous,
But the world’s got no time for us.
Moments – they make haste
Only to freeze for a split second
(to wink at us)
If today we miss the bus,
And tomorrow we make a fuss,
There'd be no point really.
That’d just be silly.

Don’t you see?
I’d let it all slip away.
I’d watch the sands slip through my figures
And laugh at them.
Believe me.

I wouldn’t give a damn if
I oversleep
N miss my own gig, any gig,
But I’d give it all to hold back
The ones with you.
For you see, I’ve let too many
And they cost me a pretty penny.
It took me a while but now I know
I should never let you go.

I want you here, with me, now.
I want to be with you, here, now,
When the wet wind blows,
And love flows,
I kneel before thee, time
And take a bow.

Grant me my wish. Stay.
Don’t let this slip away.

The wet wind

The wet wind is making me mad. One of these days I’m gonna set off the crazy alarm. You’ll see. Gonna flush you out in the open, rob you blind, take what is mine. You’ll see.

Hopeless

Cant say I went without. Have had my days. Had been a lot of things – the mystery man, the friendly ghost, the talking monkey, the weekend escapade, the dark secret, the sweet mistake, the disposable toy. Well…like I said, cant say I didn’t get any. Just that, for once, I’d like to cut it for real. To have everything that goes with it – good and bad. Like quitting smokes and taking showers and dressing well. Not like I didn’t try it. Just doesn’t go that way. May be I missed it and didn’t even know it. Or may be its just me. Oh well…

There's no doubt
The situation's dumb.
Hopeless even - one might add
Days go by - each one bad.

If this is not the case
Then would you tell me please?
Why do I act the fool?
Lock myself and loose the keys.

Why can't I just walk up
As a normal person would
And ignore all that hiccup
And say the things I should

Time waits for no one.
And it won't for me.
I must find my river
Before I find my sea.

After so much nothing
This remains to be said,
Don't bother my words
Just go to bed.

Wrote this during a psych 101 class. That was a long time ago. Things didn’t change much I guess.

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unhealthy height,
A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

~ Robert Frost

Highway Exit - Wayne Jiang

The Question

Love, a question
has destroyed you.

I have come back to you
from thorny uncertainty.

I want you straight as
the sword or the road.

But you insist
on keeping a nook
of shadow that I do not want.

My love,
understand me,
I love all of you,
from eyes to feet, to toenails,
inside,
all the brightness, which you kept.

It is I my love,
who knocks at your door.
It is not the ghost, it is not
the one who once stopped
at your window.
I knock down the door:
I enter your life:
I come to live in your soul:
you cannot cope with me.

You must open the door to me,
you must obey me,
you must open your eyes
that I may search in them,
you must see how I walk
with heavy steps
along all the door
that, blind, were waiting for me.

Do not fear,
I am yours,
but
I am not passenger or the beggar,
I am your master,
the one you were waiting for,
and now I enter
your life,
no more to leave it,
love, love, love,
but to stay.

~ Pablo Neruda

Found this in a free e-book with 61 of his poems.

Hotel California

I asked Tanim about it but then we didn’t finish the conversation. Does it ever happen to you folks that you suddenly remember an old song and keep thinking about it and then it kinda goes around. You hear it playing on the radio, in your coworkers PC or on a friend’s play list? Well…I’ve been remembering Hotel California a lot lately. Used to sing it all the time once upon a time (who didn’t!). I was thinking I had never really figured out what the song was about.

So I googled it and all sorts of explanations turned up. I really didn’t like the Satanic cult mumbo jumbo. Although those had the most enthusiastic reasoning based on facts and tit bits. They just didn’t cut it for me. This one made the most sense to me –

“The truth proves far less satisfying than the myriad rumors that have sprung up around this song.
Hotel California is an allegory about hedonism and greed in Southern California in the 1970s. At the time of its release, the Eagles were riding high in the music world, experiencing material success on a frightening level. Though they thoroughly enjoyed the money, drugs, and women fame threw their way, they were disquieted by it all and sought to pour that sense of unease into their music and to warn others about the dark underside of such adulation.
In a 1995 interview, Don Henley said the song "sort of captured the zeitgeist of the time, which was a time of great excess in this country and in the music business in particular." In another interview that same year, he referred to it as being about a "loss of innocence."
The album has as its underlying theme the corruption of impressionable rock stars by the decadent Los Angeles music industry. The celebrated title track presents California as a gilded prison the artist freely enters only to discover that he cannot later escape.
The real Hotel California is not a place; it is a metaphor for the west coast music industry and its effect on the talented but unworldy musicians who find themselves ensnared in its glittering web.”

Source: http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/hotel.htm

Hotel California Lyrics | Download Track

good morning Dhaka

Sometimes I wish I had one of those fancy phones with good cameras. Like this morning while I was coming to work, Dhaka looked a little different somehow. Seemed as if the mist has made the whole city drowsy…everything was moving in slow motion. Even the cars weren’t honking as madly as they usually do during the morning rush. The trees looked dusty but pretty still. There was one tree that had big round leaves, half of which have turned red. Looked real nice that one. Wish I could post a picture and show you what its all about. Oh well…just take my word for it – it was a beautiful morning.

Tagged

Nowal tagged me a while back. I was gonna pass it on but wasn’t really sure what to do and then kinda forgot about it. Now that Bodda tagged me too and asked to pass it on to other five, well, I figure I better do it right away cause otherwise I wont have any blogs to tag. Now five things about me…well…here goes –

1. Am probably the luckiest person on Earth. Something always comes up and turns things around for me. The things that went wrong in my life…hell they coulda been much worse.
2. I talk too much. Many good jokes go bad this way.
3. Always have to figure things out; things I don’t get…well I cant leave ‘em alone till I’ve figured them out.
4. Want to write something good someday.
5. Spiders scare the shit outta me. I know they are gentle, clean creatures. Why on Earth they need so many legs! A few weeks back I went to a bookstore with a friend of mine. There was this book on exotic pets. My friend warned me but I went ahead and opened. Eeewwwwwwwww. Lets just say everybody in the store had an anecdote to share when they got back home.

Lets see, I tag Shakia, Elita, ZB, Bfob and Morticia.

Tonight I can write

When reality hits you in the face and truths change what do you do? You bounce back, pick up the pieces and move on. To be free you clean the house; make sure there aint any bitterness left. But what do you do with the good stuff? What do you do when you remember the things been said. Even if they were all lies, don’t they cut it at all? Well…the spoken words, the spent times, the drunken eyes…can a man ever really let go?

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, `The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not

The same night, whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

~ Pablo Neruda
[translated by W.S. Merwin]

Northern Exposure

Cant thank ZB enough for Northern Exposure. Don’t believe I have seen a better TV show. The directors, screen writers, actors – well they are just…well I wont even try. The characters, the scenes, the concepts…how on Earth people come up with things like that and pull ‘em off! I hope they will all die horrible deaths for making folks like us feel so little. People who actually read the boring stuff in this blog should definitely try that show.

Feel like copying everything I hear in the show in here. Especially the bits from ‘Chris in the morning’ (a radio show hosted by the character Chris, a lanky ex-con turned philosopher). For now chew on this –

“We dance round in a ring and suppose, While the secret sits in the middle and knows”
~ Robert Frost

Forgot to mention – the soundtrack is just as good. I hope Najmee brings me back a CD.

And the fall to doom a long way

[drafted this this morning. Forgot to post]

Had a number of things going wrong. First my check bounced with the matured FDR money and nobody had any idea where it went. Then turned the house upside down but couldn’t locate the IBA admit card which had my role number in it. Then things are not ship shape at work – still am slow. Now on top of that I am sick again. But somehow been feeling all right with it all. Just hate the physical weakness that’s all. I wonder whats been keeping me happy. Well…guess you don’t have to be analyzing all the time. Do you? Lemme just share something nice instead.

Should the wide world roll away
Leaving black terror Limitless night,
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential
If thou and thy white arms were there
And the fall to doom a long way.

- Stephan Crane