The Volume

A simple round of conversations became a shameful equation

2012-01-23T07:11:00.001+02:00

What I really wanted for my birthday was a red-velvet cake in the shape of my head, with all the details - hair, beard, nose - that looked like me. So that when people sliced a piece of my birthday cake, they'd have to have that moment when they're putting a knife through my head, seeing the rich red-ness underneath.

But it's harder to get that done than Cake Boss lets you think.

you have, before, but once upon a time you had more.

2012-01-04T12:18:00.001+02:00

No new years resolution, but a goal (among other more embarrassing ones): to write a short story of about 3000 words.

The big bang, when it was the size of a grapefruit

2011-12-05T21:54:00.001+02:00

I fall in the bucket of generally being chronically over-punctual and prepared. You'll find others like me, who would happily be ready and wait two hours for a thing, thumbing away through a book, or strumming to the aural indulgences of a podcast. Criminally early wake ups to avoid queues and traffic, and an indefatigable resilience that keeps a bum on a seat, waiting, waiting, waiting.Definitely a strange lot. They've (we've) made me wonder though, about how the overly prepared and pragmatic and patient take a seat on the dark wooded bench waiting for death. When it's not in their way to leave the hurrying and doing for the last moments or years, when they've conscientiously gathered up what they know they'll need, and then tidily collect themselves until their name is called out. In a year's time. In several decades.It may be just a reframing, away from letting go living and towards waiting to (after)life. But There's a seductive trigonometry that quietly spins itself with the nonchalant complexities of multiverses.

real magic isn't card tricks, big cribs and cars bitch (its making something out of nothing through this hardship)

2011-10-12T21:52:00.001+02:00

Summer nights, outside my window, remind me of empty cinemas. Dustilu lit in a wash of orange, neat and clean, and almost just vaguely pregnant with a susurruss of possibility. Most of the possibilities I think have me fraught with anxiety.

There's a vague nostalgia of my first and second years of varsity, when I spent incredible amounts of time tethered to a dial up connection late at night (it had to be late enough for my parents not to miss any phonecalls), doing old school blogging, deviantart projects, and the rest of it (most of this has been purged from the interwebs, except if you look really, really carefully).

The nostalgia is happy; it reminds me of when I madly chased down virtual paths, uncluttered because no one had heard of blogs (this was 2005, before facebook, when geeks had livejournals), and let me clumsily build a lot of the writing and digital art talents I fake today (its the premise for me having been made the editor of a varsity magazine, and making faces at a delightfully pretty girl there).

The nostalgia is worrying, because somehow, in five years, looking out the same window, its almost stuck in the same loop of feeling, and there's a little part gnawing away that I've only grown older and fatter, and not grown up or on.

It's far too early in the morning, to be calling

2011-10-11T18:03:00.003+02:00

'Acerbic' is a strange word, fully accepting and embracing of how intensely mongrel-ish it is. That mudblooded lovechild of 'assorted', 'acidic', 'asserted', and 'sherbet'. But the meaning of the word, a·cer·bic /əˈsərbik/ (Adjective): (esp. of a comment or style of speaking) Sharp and forthright, fits snugly into the smell and shape of the word itself.
Like a recently thawed Scandanavian with a small wooden hammer and a large grudge, who asks you to introduce him to a lovely canoe so that he can reclaim the word 'kiosk' from those ~~fat fingered bastards~~ robustly proportioned persons of diverse and mysterious heritage.

words get lost in the atmosphere

2011-09-22T21:10:00.002+02:00

"Come on skinny love just last the year

Pour a little salt, we were never here"
- Bon Iver, Skinny Love

My life's been tipped up and over these past few weeks, with the right motivation and divine inspiration, but the wrong (read: "unwanted") action that comes with not just a slight heartache. It's settled, for the most part, and while something completely remarkable has sprinted to a lethargic crawl, I'm better for what it was while it was being what it was.

I have sharpened into something tinged with not just a little more cynicism for it. I am a horrible shell of a person under this greasy nose and skin really, it's mostly that I'm too lazy to deal with the dramas of showing that a plastered veneer of niceness hides all of it away.

Or, you know, stuff and pity seeking, whatever, go away, nobody important cares.

I meant to talk about a/my (circle the appropriate) mission statement today, but I've barely the krag to make it the end of this sente

the wheel breaks the butterfly

2011-09-19T21:14:00.000+02:00

There are shelves of "life lenses" through which you can carefully squint and decide, quite rightly in the context of the lens, what to do with your life. I say "your" life, I mean my life.

But with shelves full of lenses, there are those that are violently justifiable as you look through them. There's a reason and a purpose and a clarity and a sensibility. But as soon you find two or more of these, the crispness which they refract light dulls to blurry over-photoshopped smudges of colours.

The work hard lens, chiming with commitment and work ethic and earning your keep.
The do what you love lens, glaring with engagement and purpose.
The this world is merely a fleeting shadow lens, glinting with the idea that the details of what you do don't matter, it's how you do them.
The guilty lens, reflecting my lethargy and contempt, and guilting unwilling change.
The goal-driven lens, focusing on ambitions and accomplishments, and that job titles and salaries are a way to keep score.
The hippy lens, which is dusty and in a box outside in the shade underneath some Douglas Adams.

I'm having a thunk about the work I'm chugging through this year, and whether I want to go back to school, or do something else. Or hustle and fuss through another year, and call it a year's experienced (and salary) earned.

Though I'm the better part of 25 years old, most of the trepidation in making a decision like this is the misunderstanding and confusion my parents will have. I don't know that they'll be able to rationally and objectively process what I'm doing and why. Well, no, I do know that they won't be able to.

I should have studied medicine. Parents are decidedly less tedious when you challenge their tedium with the fact that they are depriving you from saving lives.

Bully.

sometimes I think that I'm bigger than the sound

2011-09-04T19:13:00.000+02:00

Irfaan is:

creative, smart, focuses on fantasy more than reality, attracted to sad things, fears doing the wrong thing, an observer, an avoidant, fears drawing attention to self, anxious, cautious, somewhat easily frightened, easily offended, private, socially uncomfortable, emotionally moody, uncomfortable being looked at, fearful, occasionally a perfectionist, self-sabotaging, values solitude, guarded, hatese crowds, organized, second guesses self, likely to support marijuana legalisation, focuses on peoples motives, severely uncompetitive, prone to being lonely, not comfortable with spontaneity, prone to sadness, frequently worried, and very prone to intimidation.

whack with a whirr

2011-08-01T20:02:00.003+02:00

It's a strange sight, out of a Shaun of the Dead movie, to see dozens of men and boys, shuffling out of the doors of their homes, and moving along as if hypnotised, gently converging across the road to the same unknown calling, into a street, and up a few short steps through creaky oak doors.

Taraweeh can inspire some intriguing real-life imagery

I like to keep that higher ground

2011-07-26T19:26:00.003+02:00

Along the highway that susurusses into Cape Town, once were, two concrete hunks that tapered fatly upwards that worked as cooling towers for a now decommissioned power plant. "The towers" were an awesome point of reference when you needed to sabotage someone's journey by thrusting them into Athlone, or a mile marker to give them courage that they'd just made it out.

Last year, most of the city perched on high buildings and about the mountain to watch it implode. There's a video somewhere. You had to be there. You had to participate in sharing the moment. You had to experience it. Apparently.

And I watched amidst hundreds of people, as the first tower twisted in on itself, a jagged scar creaking impossibly fast up its side, and then falling like a fat four year old suddenly overcome by a glass door. And some seconds later, like a wheezing Toyota Conquest in a convoy of cars owned by far too wealthy relatives, the dull boom washed lethargically across us.

The twenty or so seconds that it took watching, whelmed me. Not overly, or underly, just sufficiently to say "oh, that's something". And that's what it was really, something. Some thing. A thing, of which it made up some.

I looked at some of the photos afterward, mid-fracturing, and it overwhelmed.

More than being a part of it. Which was peculiar. Second hand, sense-limiting captures of the event were more satisfying to see than having been part of the raw and unfiltered experience.

Which is out of the vein from what (I'm supposing) other "people" use to weight the satisfaction of experience. A feeling of authenticity - having been at the soccer match where you couldn't see the ball for spit, having stood in the crowds at the concert where you were jostled in the kidneys as distorted speakers argued with the screaming tits around, and other such fluff.

Part of the reason I mercilessly taunt with the economics of filtered authenticity, a DVD rather than a concert ticket say, is mostly because crowds of people upset me, and partly because it doesn't make sense, as a connoisseur of soccer, to want to cede the experiential indulgence of television, with its incredible definition, picture and replays, for the misplaced sense of participation sitting in an uncomfortable seat in an obscure corner of a stadium.

It's most likely all of this is an elaborate and over-rationalised argument that masks a stubborn streak of small-mindedness, cynicism, and agoraphobia. Still.

but really I've never seen someone so short

2011-07-25T20:05:00.002+02:00

In New York, with it's incredulous population of 8 million people, the world around you constantly hums and rustles. There wasn't a time I can remember, ever, that there was some sort of sullen (forget serene) silence about. Cars and people and stuff constantly happening.

When I got home, the silence of a Friday evening in Athlone was so loud, my ears buzzed the entire night.

When it gets well into the night, usually around 11:30pm, the silence that settles around usually gets so stark I can hear my electric blanket buzzing. And if I lean to switch off the plug, I can make out the ticking of my watch. Downstairs. It's wonderful.

In December's of old, before sister could drive, I used to take her to Surfer's Corner at Muizenberg Beach for surfing lessons. I used to park here, roll down the window in the back seat, stick my feet out into the air, and drown myself in Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and naps. And the sounds of the sea, cars humming in the distance, the occasional train grumbling past, and the chaotic scramble of dozens of voices articulating themselves poorly was a kind of magic.

look at the quagmire, look at the tread separate from the tyre

2011-07-21T20:01:00.004+02:00

Some people I know are doing a personal development course (much like, but somewhat different to Covey's stuff. Pre-Covey if you like) which, broadly, gets you to inspect your own personality and shortcomings (or why you are your own special kind of bitch), and then to poke around the depths of your past and understand why you've become that. And with that understanding, you can course-correct yourself to becoming a better person. Very cute.

My moulding through childhood and adolescence is vague. Not that I was moulded vaguely, just that I don't remember much, or even any of it. From the age of 9 through about 15, I just can't remember anything. I'd do an incredible injustice to retrospectively assert some kind of identity on my then-self, but I do know I was quiet, smart but socially retarded, very distracted, and very bullied.

Wow was I bullied.

Perhaps it's an adapting I've learnt from being constantly strange around other human beings, but I forget about people - sometimes fairly significant people, from earlier years - where geography and circumstance steer us apart, completely. Not forget as in don't remember when I see or hear about them, but that the sentiments and emotions enjoyed with them is boxed, shelved, and disregarded until needed (and even then, only engaged for a cursory inspection).

Best friends from primary school, high school, my early years of University have or are slowly sinking in an ether of forgotten. In almost exactly the same way I've forgotten all the Backstreet Boy song lyrics; fun at the time, but now tinged with a little nostalgia, but after a while, tiresome.

This should all have either some sense of remorse, purpose to become better, or something emotionally constructive to end with. But I'm not sure I know what that is. Apart from being sincere in my interactions with people (even when these are powered purely by politeness), I don't know that I care that I lose the space I reserve for people who once were important. The great ones stick of their own accord. The others, well, there's facebook for that, no?

I'm just a writer from the ghetto like Malorie Black

2011-07-20T19:32:00.006+02:00

One of the most difficult things I went through about attending Imagine Cup (last minute hustle, 30 hours of flying, long story) is the infectiousness of purpose.

The worst thing about having gone to the Imagine Cup, is after presenting a project that looks to make a difference in the world, and seeing hundreds of kids from every groove in this planet focusing on making the earth better, going back to being a suitmonkey dancing the corporate mamba. It makes me throw up a little bit.

I guess that's where some of yesterday's sentiment stems from as well; the fact that I'm competent and able to make a living/salary/money doing this job (and doing this), and the burden, in potentia, of being able to work towards some kind of social constructiveness.

It doesn't help that I work in a capitalistic pit while my parents teach and doctor in the public arena, the sibling looks for cures to cancer, and the people I generally like do great and important things to help and build and rebuild.

I complain a lot.

So yes, purposeness when you're not living out any can weigh down heavily on a guilty conscience. On occasion I feel compelled to sit at a table and be a socially productive citizen, with the premise that I generate business value all the time, surely I can apply myself for five minutes and be a proper citizen of the planet.

Blorg.

I wish I worked for Leslie Knope. Working life would be more sensible if I worked for Leslie Knope.

Things are not always

2011-07-19T20:38:00.004+02:00

There's a strange sort of delirium I have, especially when I'm feverish and have the flu. When I sleep I have intensely vivid dreams - the sort that you have full mental capacity in, but struggle to discern from reality.

I'm not sure, really, that this doesn't cascade into my non-feverish life, where I suffer these ideas and romances (especially about what I want to do in and with my life), that are curiously divorced from my own realities.

Work is an obvious fever here. My mind oscillates wildly between the ideas of working hard and honestly to earn a working man's hard-earned wage which is saved and spent, and the idea of work as a dusted mindlessness that shouldn't be given a second huff in a facadey¹ world that will end pretty soon before real life begins. When my consciousness grabs hold of the tendrils of one, it seems to lose and forget about the other completely, having me swing quite wildly between happy productive worker bee, and esoteric aloofness.

I am not carelessly forgetful or absent-minded, but I do struggle to remember philosophies and manifestos as I get distracted with my days. And so, apart from being generally agreeable and kind, I tend to fall short on enacting principles that aren't derived from common sense.

Not that I'm insincere or hypocritical to them; just that I get distracted very easily.

On some level, this makes me a fantastically awful person. But it's easily defended when you're generally nice and pleasant. You don't have to have sophisticated manifestos to navigate social scenes.

Think of yourself, right now, as being in constant fever. With your brain burning hotly and madly, and to your consciousness, obliviously. Confusing nonsensical sensations parading as moments of seeming clarity and meaning.

Makes you want to dance a little sillily², huh?

Footnotes:

Not a real word.
Also not a real word

Jason, you're the only one

2011-07-03T12:57:00.004+02:00

Thank you, to everyone who's helped punt my team (representing South Africa) in the Imagine Cup competition (if you haven't, no fear, you can still give us a gentle nudge here). The support and pride has been a little overwhelming at times, and I'm incredibly grateful to everyone.

The team leaves next Thursday for New York City, to present to 3 expert industry panels, and, hopefully, earn some recognition for hard work and innovative done. It's very exciting to see a concept that you helped shape and develop into a working prototype being acknowledged as being among some of the best in the world.

I won't be joining the team when they leave for NYC, in short, because the US consulate has denied me a visa, for reasons of "further processing required". It's been a little irritating, but it's kind of hard to feel sorry for myself when not being able to go to NYC means I get to continue as an employed, healthy, debt-free and smug little boy, and have the sorts of perks and comforts that make seem an utter corporate bastard.

That selflessly said, I have been a bit cynical when asked why my visa was denied; "Hi, my name is Mohammed. I'll give you two guesses." The rate at which Muslim South Africans are denied visas to the US is significantly high, but the sarcastic ranting has more to do with a slightly misplaced sense of entitlement. My ego is easily bruised.

Since I've started working, I've been keeping Imagine Cup as a mile-marker in my mind - something to work towards, and once done, it'll be a new phase or chapter or era. Time to set new goals, get through new things, and work out - now that I've settled into an employment routine - what comes next. That Imagine Cup is sans me now, and I feel a little loss and floundering.

So lots of chin scratching. These things, new things, next things, needed things.

we're at the top of the world, you and I

2011-05-31T19:45:00.004+02:00

It's a strange little life. And it's stranger all the more, that with all the privilege, the thankless graces showered upon, that days of relative ease, bountifulness, health and whimsical, mindless indulgences and luxuries, that it all blurs into a tepid ether that quietly seeps into dilated veins.

The struggle, I suppose, is the point. Slowly building momentum and mindfulness that's so easily unraveled and undone. Keeping at it. Persistence, discipline, the courage of convictions.

I try to resist it, in small ways, to keep the whirring of complex corporate machinery at an arms length. To make it a mindless routine, to keep some hunger to try and eke out mindfulness for meaning, and fullness, and meaningfulness.

I have five pairs of shoes, one for every day of the work week. A Monday pair, a Tuesday pair, and such. I have five shirts, with pants and a tie to match. I'm a little more of a maverick when it comes to deciding which pullover to pull over.

Trying to think through the clunkiness of work, and the dreary non-meaning parts of life like medical aid, and a credit record, and waterproofing floors, and pretending to be able to distinguish between the quality of sounds made by different headphones reminds me of my earlier varsity days as a then, would-be-accountant. Trying, incredibly hard to read and understand and learn and comprehend a ridiculous over-inflated utterly pointless piece of data. "If an asset is acquired in exchange for another asset (whether similar or dissimilar in nature), the cost will be measured at the fair value unless (a) the exchange transaction lacks commercial substance or (b) the fair value of neither the asset received nor the asset given up is reliably measurable. If the acquired item is not measured at fair value, its cost is measured at the carrying amount of the asset given up. "

Eyes flitting awkwardly over the words, like a reluctant strangler coming back to look for a lost watch. Mouthing the paragraph, reading it out loud. Utterly failing to understand or absorb it. Trying again, slowly, to read, to understand a sentence. A phrase. A word even. Please

(The accounting exam the paragraph above applied to, I studied more than 3 weeks / 80 hours for, and scored less than 40%)

Mucky headed, the best I can do is devour a sickly sweet cup of tea, tuck myself into bed early, and melt into Discworld, thank you, Terry.

just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets

2011-03-29T21:33:00.001+02:00

It would happen when he'd put his feet up to think carefully about an obscure process; enamelled molars impressing on a the end of a pen with an already considerably chewed upon topography, a cold mug of tea long since discarded on a pile of no longer useful post-it notes, and the entire world - hurling itself furiously at a million miles an hour around a nuclear inferno - utterly lost to an obscurity and insignificance of thought. A process, a business problem so small and utterly without significance captivating and whirring his pre-frontal cortex.

It was then that a part of himself would quietly point at what he was - a tiny speck already lost in a corproate plethora; and for a moment he was overwhelmed. By the scale of the universe and how capable it was to continue without him. By the gentle hypocrisy of what he wanted to believe work is and the work he now did. And the unbearable loss of moments that couldve been threaded together if he was somewhere else.

It would quietly push down on his chest, and with a heavy, gasping shudder, psychosomatic instinct would wretch him away from the cold, numbing fumes his conscious held ready. And with that heavy shudder, he always imagined his soul being shaken a little more loosely. And without really knowing why, he'd compress his palms over his sternum, strangely satisfied by the firmness of the bone beneath his fingers, weary and revolted by the satin flush of fabric as his tie brushed over on top of them.

waiting for the sun to disappear (there's nothing like breathing in)

2011-03-20T11:24:00.002+02:00

It's not really that I've not had anything to say these last few weeks and months, just that most of what I spit out comes out with hissing acidic and vulgar undertones which I immediately regret. Complimented, of course by an arrogant ego, I've been wallowing unfairly in my severely over-privileged life.

I'm grabbing for little moments of redemption for my perpetual pity-partying, but while sincere, they're distracting at best, and there are moments when I'm overwhelmed by what feels like the terminal temporariness and meaninglessness of everything.

It's difficult for most people to hear it expressed, but there's a space at the very peaks of these realisations that I feel eager to have my corporealness extinguished, or, less intensely said, that I feel I could commit to trudging mindlessly till that happens.

And it all feels ungrateful and selfish when I think about what I have that most people don't. And more and more confusing when I try to process that things are not important, and I shouldn't consider them too earnestly.

I don't know; I'm waiting for thoughts to make sense enough for me to talk about them without seeming pitiful and self-deprecating to everybody that hears it. Else it's just knitted eyebrows peering down the length of a nose at a confused little boy, or concerned but confused looks of listening people who nod in the right places and leave you with the hope and assumption that everything will work out.

I feel flat and without value to inject into anything (very different from feeling worthless). And while I have some good talents, they're wilting slightly during a time when work is going-through-the-motions and the rest of my life is trying to get enough sleep, or work up the enthusiasm to do something.

I'm fine. not overly depressed, just interjecting with a little more cynicism than usual, and a little subdued. We'll see.

nuh-uh bratjie, I don't think like that mos

2011-01-30T21:49:00.001+02:00

My statuses - the obscure ones at any rate - are usually the line of the song I'm listeniing right at that moment. When there's no music, it'll be the first thing someone says on TV or that I overhear (my bedroom window opens up to the main road of Athlone; always entertaining).

I'm properly a Boy Adult now; that curious space a Muslim Indian male exists in, when they're a fully functioning, earning & contributing adult, but not yet married. Its harder for girls though, since societal reverence for males eventually pushes even the most immature of the lot to the status of "man", but an accomplished but single 30-something female is still "the girl", as in "the girl is too educated for her own good", or "the girl makes nice roti's but".

I've also slowly started to realise, that even when it's your own wedding being planned (mine isn't / hasn't been, yet) - enormous parts of it fall out of your control and discretion into the invisible realm of family protocols and arguments of "but what will people say".

'Discretion' is a weird word, when you think of the word 'Excretion'.

There's too little support for young Muslim Professionals who want to save or exercise some of the tools of being fiscally responsible in South Africa while having Islamic Finance Peace of Mind (or in cape town anyway). Life insurance and chequing accounts are stupidly easily available, but apart from Oasis, there's not a lot of options.

Interest complicates my life.

There should be a strong Oasis/other campaign aimed at young muslims that shows them how to properly invest in the Long Term - rather than just kitting out annd modding their v-tec's.

I must consider my goals of work, life and marriage. What are ideal marriage goals (of what I want to be/contribute, & what I expect to have/be given) that pushes both of you to grow?

Thuppita, thuppita, and the hissing of airconditioning.

2011-01-10T12:41:00.003+02:00

I've had the mirfaan.co.za domain for a little while now, and in the throes of enthusiasm, copied across quite a lot of my blog posts from here across, and since then even written up two speculative piece on the dynamics of Facebook friends, and an idea I've had for a South African Indian comedy.

I've been haranguing it for a while now, and I'm still not entirely sure what my intention/the purpose of the domain is, though I do feel more and more that it oughtn't to be a blog - this one is wonderfully obscure for me to be more comfortable in.

So if you're one of the four people that read this, my blog will stay here for now while I hustle mirfaan.co.za into more of a portfolio shaped something that can be used to launch a product or career in a couple of years.

I should have probable thought of more to say than just that. Bah.

I just came to say Hello!

2010-11-06T12:10:00.001+02:00

Statistically speaking, with the biggest population of all time alive today - and increasing at a nett of 200 million people every year, I'm more insignificant than ever, and getting more so every day.

In real terms, with an arrogant streak of optimism clutching at every part of my life, I'm slightly embarrassed to concede that I've one of the luckiest & indulged lives ever.

God has everything to do with anything; constantly needing to squash a young, plucky boys ego & sense of entitlement is an enviable curse to bear, but I'm desperately afraid of how easily I can become self-consumed.

But yes, for now, I just came to say hello.

all around, and away we go

2010-09-01T14:21:00.004+02:00

Flowers are fairly small things; that's why you need to have them in bunches to be noticeable. But flowers suffer the idea of themselves. Love, and kindness, and romance, and beauty, and other flowery stuff².

You reach out to touch a flower not because it is a flower, but because it's beautiful. You give your enamoured flowers not for the flower themselves, but for what it represents.

So in a way, no one ever really sees a flower. It's too small, and we haven't the time. We simply carry the predisposed idea of what flowers are.

Friends become flowers; shells and echoes of a long since decided idea.

We are flowers, on walls, on a book littered with faces.

Who's to say a fistful of daisies haven't withered to dandelions that have been at the mercy of enthused children with puffed up cheeks. Or blossomed to deepest scarlets, surrounded by thorns.

All of this absolutely stolen from here
If it were floury stuff, then it'd be rotis, and pizza bases and the like.

#SharedLinks - Louder than the action of all of us

2010-08-24T07:12:00.003+02:00

Links of Interest #001

Free Typography is a nice aggregator of artsier/graphic design flavoured fonts
BlipFoto lets you be a part of an animated film shown at the 2010 Edinburgh Film Festival; just add your pose and a camera
Creator of the Six-Word Memoirs, does an interesting video of the project
Dirpy lets you rip the MP3 out of YouTube videos
The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet. #SharedReading by Chris Anderson on the shift of how we use the internet
The 30 best free iPhone apps this year (allegedly)

Fasting For Change: My Challenge

2010-08-09T12:30:00.002+02:00

Hajira came up with the awesome Fasting for Change Challenge:

The challenge is thus: pick three tasks which have to be done during the month of Ramadan which would make a positive difference to the world, no matter how big or small. Ask friends and friends of friends to do it with you, and then blog about it or if you don’t have a blog, send me an e-mail and pictures describing what you did. I will have a link to all related posts on my blog and we will from there be able to calculate all the good that has been done.

The end result? Before Eid we will have completed a knock-on effect project that will have contributed towards making a real difference, for ourselves, for others and for the environment. Read more here

There are quite a lot of things to get elbows mucky in, and hopefully I do. But on top of that I want to take a little tearing out of Sheikh Babikir Ahmed's advice and, with the knowledge that all that guides me towards distasteful things is my own ego and desire, I'm keeping a diary of all the wrong, lazy, misguided things the month sees me realise. In that (hopefully small) list I know I'm completely responsible for those actions; there is no whispering, nudging or insinuation, just me.

Realising what my inherent flaws are, and combining it with a good system of deliberate goal planning, maybe I can realise some part of the person I ought to be.

There. Hopefully that's commitment enough to realise some sort of social pressure to follow through on.

It's all in the wrist: concept wristband for the deaf

2010-08-05T08:01:00.005+02:00

This is pretty genius actually: wristband which interprets ambient noise, vibrating to alert deaf people of danger

It's all prototype, but it could be a ridiculously awesome device. The prototype design is pretty sexy:

The extrapolations for everyday use is also pretty awesome; you could "train" speakers to pick up cries for help in hospitals, baby crying in homes, the rain (for washing), your cellphone (for when you're plugged into your iPod), fire, the Athaan.

Can you stay out for the weekend?

2010-07-08T19:13:00.002+02:00

I sometimes secretly dream of hosting a late night television talk show (not so much my own, I just dream of being Conan O'Brien, or a reporter for Jon Stewart for a while).

So if I were to have my own late night talk show one of the features I'd have is (c)hea[r]ters (the "c" would be scratched out, and the "r" drawn to look like it was squeezed in) - basically an opposite to the show cheaters, where if someone (lets call her Hannah) was part of a couple and they separated on good terms, and their ex (lets call him Steve) now has a new partner, a Hearters team barges in on them in a public place with cameras, and starts lavishing awkward praise on them (where Hannah gives Steves new squeeze tips on what he likes, a Mexican bands serenades them with Lady Gaga covers, and other general well-meaning awkwardness).

Cool, eh?

hoover fixer sucker guy

2010-07-05T17:03:00.000+02:00

These are some old works I finished last year :)

Open publication - Free publishing - More rns

Open publication - Free publishing - More uct

It dawned on me I'd seen it all before

2010-07-03T19:23:00.003+02:00

I was determined to write something this evening, but it seems I'm textually frustrated, so I'm going to skip any meaningful content, put Winamp on shuffle, and append the words "in my pants" to the song titles.

Balloons in my pants (Foals)
Some kind of nature in my pants (Gorillaz)
Flavour of the weak in my pants (American HiFi)
The Handshake in my pants (MGMT)
Superfly in my pants (Harris Tweed)
A winner needs a wand in my pants (Sufjan Stevens)
Disaster Button in my pants (Snow Patrol)
Killa Bunnies in my pants (Molok0)

You've not heard of the herder?

2010-07-01T09:53:00.001+02:00

Pretty hot local mix. Hit play and go do other stuff.

Zoo City Soundtrack by africandope

you're wasting your talent randy

2010-06-13T15:45:00.003+02:00

I've put out a prototype magazine (content by tweeps, not me). Tell me what you think!

*holds fragile ego carefully away from criticism* ;)

Open publication - Free publishing - More tcosy

Biggest thanks to Noorjehaan, MJ, Khadija, Azra, Rouen, Dinika, and Samina. I am ever grateful

it's the flat squashing sound of thumbs on spacebars

2010-06-01T15:43:00.000+02:00

liked this one, it's full of whimsy (and you're not quite sure if it's good or bad or both):

When you move around so fast and so much, bits of you flake off and stay everywhere you stop, and if you go too fast you get thin and confused and it’s hard to remember who you are or where you’re from because you’re so many people in so many places at once, all of them blending into each other and all of them blurring into nostalgia, and to get yourself back you need to stop moving and wait for the pieces to wander back into your town and your head and your body, and then you begin to remember and once you remember then you can get back to moving.

via

shadows only prove the sunshine

2010-05-16T11:12:00.000+02:00

Vanishing is impossible

Lasting is impossible

Being in two places at once is impossible

Speaking the entire truth is impossible

Instantly knowing Spanish is impossible

Living in the midst of ten thousand panes of glass is impossible

Being simultaneously masked and unmasked is impossible

Except in art

Art is the art of the possible.

From the Art of Possible

if your team is finishing in the top half of your table

2010-05-03T19:18:00.001+02:00

I haven't listened to local radio in just over a month now. I'm calling my switch to a blind mix of radio covers and new artistes that I've never heard before a shift in paradigm¹.

And the reason for switching off Gareth & Pierce in the mornings and Fresh in the afternoons is because if you think about it for a second, South African radio is just one big commercial lump being force fed to you. The adverts are relentless, the playlists unimaginative, the conversation contrived (especially the weekend breakfast show on 5FM).

And so I must declare a huge crush on BBC radio which I gave a wrangle at streaming today; its gorgey. Light and drifty hosting (though possibly because they're punting the bank holiday), a flurry of music that isn't strained from being overplayed, and the choice! oh good heavens, the fact that you can switch to Radio 7 and listen to Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes... *shivers thrillingly*

It's a burden on the cap though, so we'll have to shift to uncapped soon. This is all a bit of holly who ha, why're you still reading. shoo! off with you!

mouths the word "proactivity"

in the freefall, i realise

2010-05-02T21:47:00.000+02:00

Maths and the theory of the universe strike a harmonising note in the marrow of my bones, because its such glaring evidence of divinity and intricate order in a universe popularly known as chaos.

Impossible not to believe in if ever you've been properly assaulted with an unassuming hug. Its a kind of vectoral geometry that puts the whoosh into you. And don't let me get started on the widths of spaces between fingers.

now that everythings been stolen, I'm here to get it back

2010-04-13T20:33:00.000+02:00

you should always fess up to having great ideas. Roald Dahl says this in his autobiography Boy (which you ought to re-read, and follow it up with a good afternoon's sitdown with Going Solo). I have a truly remarkable idea. And a half.

The half idea is digitising the trawlings of the few dozen blogs I read into a quarterly e-publication (much like issuu.com) which can be downloaded for printing, which is completely content driven; the artwork, articles, images all come from the ordinary (hah! as if!) ramblings of the sphere (with permission, naturally), with the inclusion of short narratives (read "editorial opinion") to contextualise phrases, swear words and pictures. The idea wouldn't be to sell or advertise or serve any philosophy, its just a small way of eternalising writings that (I strongly suspect) will one day be lost.

I'm working on working on that.

The Fully fledged idea needs some ink and arm gestures now that I think about it. I'll get on that next week.

I'm afraid I still remain the luckiest boy alive :)

its been a long day, always, aint that right

2010-04-11T21:24:00.000+02:00

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master..."

— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

via the nooj

What Teachers Make

2010-03-30T11:26:00.000+02:00

What Teachers Make, or

Objection Overruled, or

If things don't work out, you can always go to law school

By Taylor Mali

He says the problem with teachers is, "What's a kid going to learn

from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"

He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about

teachers:

Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his

and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests

that it's also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company.

"I mean, you¹re a teacher, Taylor," he says.

"Be honest. What do you make?"

And I wish he hadn't done that

(asked me to be honest)

because, you see, I have a policy

about honesty and ass-kicking:

if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.

I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor

and an A- feel like a slap in the face.

How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall

in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.

No, you may not ask a question.

Why won't I let you get a drink of water?

Because you're not thirsty, you're bored, that's why.

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:

I hope I haven't called at a bad time,

I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.

Billy said, "Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don't you?"

And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.

I make parents see their children for who they are

and what they can be.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,

I make them question.

I make them criticize.

I make them apologize and mean it.

I make them write, write, write.

And then I make them read.

I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely

beautiful

over and over and over again until they will never misspell

either one of those words again.

I make them show all their work in math.

And hide it on their final drafts in English.

I make them understand that if you got this (brains)

then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you

by what you make, you give them this (the finger).

Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:

I make a goddamn difference! What about you?

one of us is gonna be running, follow, into the great unknown

2010-03-09T09:33:00.000+02:00

Things I've learnt from being Mutually in Weird with a Significant Another.

Don't give compliments

They're a bit like mascara because you have to construct them, making them smudgable and frail and as crushable as smarties under a determined heel. If there's a moment that's the love child of magic and wonder, and you want to say something meaningful to fill the soft silence with, start a sentence with "you make me feel..." and finish it without thinking. It's sincere and frightening and honest and will get you a Look more often than you'd like.

formspring.me

2010-03-05T05:22:00.001+02:00

I feel confessional, do you feel exploitive? http://formspring.me/mirfaan

flexing knees to try and abate the feeling

2010-03-02T09:15:00.000+02:00

This is clever.

I'm including a possibilities calendar amidst my life (read: "gCal"), so that on the bare moments that spring up and about can be thoroughly exploited.

As well, I'm thinking of including a Possibilities To-Do list of funning things (that don't necessarily need scheduling) to do, that can be lunged at. What would you get up to given the time and occasion? What're you Cape Town recommendations for things and such to do, hm?

June exams count 45%

2010-03-01T11:03:00.000+02:00

If I could have a tea party with 10 celebrities, they would be:

1. Douglas Adams (yes, I know he's dead)
2. Terry Pratchett
3 Conan O'Brien
4. Eddie Izzard
5. Richard Hammond (of Top Gear)
6. Adam Savage (of Mythbusters)
7. John Stewart (the Daily Show)
8. Tina Fey
9. JJ Abrams
10. Stephen Fry

I also considered Ed Helms, John Krasinski, Seth Meyers, and Eoin Colfer. Sorry guys :(

here I am, a rabbit heart

2010-02-22T13:15:00.000+02:00

gosh, this has been on my to-do list forever.

If you're afraid of losing your camera, but are hopeful in the good nature of the people that'd find it, take a picture of a not that says "ooh, you've found my lost camera. please give it back to me and you'll have earned a firm meaty handshake. Find me at these deets..."

same with your cellphone.

because that's clever.

rocks and eyes, greens and browns, and you.

2010-02-18T10:39:00.000+02:00

It's easy enough,

to endear you with written rhythms,

I start with "not a single day goes by..."

and sprinkle in a little measure of time,

(it's love, so it'll be minutes and seconds)

and how in each little sliver of right now,

I'm infatuated to blissfull incompetence,

and, you know,

stuff about being unable to wait for tomorrow,

and blaming you for my chronic impatience.

'fraid not kiddo,

you're much too zen for my soul

to want to bare claws and teeth

and chew and scream and throw away at this moment right here.

(you see, and this is a secret!

right here, right now,

it's made up of all the moments before,

I've had, you've had, we had,

so if I'm sincerely in mine right now

in the work that unstales my thinking,

and the hardship that humbles my ego,

and the people that inspire my ambition,

then the next time we have a moment

it'll be the accumulation of learning

and growing,

and sharing,

instead of hollow wanting)

So my ditty for you, dear,

is that you are remembered

and celebrated,

and your spirit shared

in the work and people and thoughts that are in this moment,

and I'll share their spirit with you,

and be washed with yours made up of others,

when we have ours.

And oh, some Regina Spektor lyrics innit as well.

Just because its poringe doesn't stop it from being fabulouth

2010-02-15T11:02:00.000+02:00

My sister, who was mostly feeling guilty about receiving an IPod from me for her birthday, bought me a pair of jeans for mine.

For my birthday, not my jeans.

They're quite okay, if not a little canvassy, and from Vertigo. They also cost R500. I am severely unimpressed about this, but she is a bit of a puddle when it comes to being sensible.

All that hubbub aside, just a little while ago I saw a screaming Queen in his dopey vest jersey and pointy shoes and accessorised fittings of pink, wearing, you'll guess, my birthday jeans.

I now own a half grand pair of gay jeans.

Its that kind of morning

2010-02-08T01:27:00.001+02:00

Its been an unfortunate waking in the middle of the night, with the news that my neighbour, a 40-something year old man passed away just now.

And I feel like I've just been in a car accident, that shivering pulling of the tummy, and unfocused restlessness of being not quite, but for all appearances, conscious.

I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to. I used to not care about living not all that long ago (not suicidally, rather in a whats-the-point kind of way), and its a pretty curious shift since. Life ends, people die, as a person that includes me, at some point my folks, and people I love, and that love me. Its cliched to say, but dying is a part of living.

The point and a more tummy-sensation flavoured realisation then; the stupid job & work bits are necessary, but shouldn't be the all. I hope in working I can lose as little soul as possible. I hope that in living I can gain as little anger & regret as possible. I hope that in loving I have courage enough to quell my ego to celebrate the shared spirit I have with with, and the conviction to trust in my Creator.

Its complex to say, but I may never miss you; I will remember your life and laugh sincerely.

mama told me boy someday a girls goin' to take your mind away

2010-02-04T08:39:00.000+02:00

Eddie Izzard tonight!

banana fana fo fana

2010-02-03T11:06:00.000+02:00

I know I've not been living up to my instigation of noting the bits and pieces of my day, but, and yes it's quite a doilee-in-an-indian-house predictable but, I've been busy and stuff.

School means full days starting at 4am, the Varsity newspaper's been bitchslapping me around like someone who's suicidal enough to have pissed off Azra, and the bouts of business aside, these last few weeks have managed, in an evil giraffe gallopping among the treelines kind of way¹, yes, the weeks that have only just shooed and shied away have swollen life impossibly wonderfully with happy and possibility and an increased chance of having a thumbwar².

I am flickring through though, and I'm not half chuffed to have made the most important part of a month *insert smiley here*.

So yes, to suffice to say life is unfairly wonderful³, and I'm willing to share if you come visit.

...banana fana fo fana...

that's right, I am seeing Eddie Izzard tomorrow, how'd you know?
I should perhaps refrain from any reference to Pooh Sticks, and, instead, mention that thumbs were caught in soft embrace.
Except for being broke, but that's hardly life, that's just money

P.S. While I refer to Azra with zero exaggeration, I'm not doing it as a reference to fierce and unmerciful, but only as I ever have, as a pointing out of an all too rare specimen of person who is confident enough in herself to value herself fairly to know how she should be respected, and how to respect others.

formspring.me

2010-02-01T20:34:00.001+02:00

go ahead, make my day with your questioning! http://formspring.me/mirfaan

formspring.me

2010-02-01T20:33:00.001+02:00

go ahead, make my day with your questioning! http://formspring.me/mirfaan

read my body language

2010-01-25T07:44:00.000+02:00

Ah! When I was a young lad¹;

From watching the first little snippet of Julie & Julia (which I abandoned some way through to say Hello, and be-bangle Another²), I caught the idea of using a repetitive creative exercise as a regiment, that churns some sort of discipline. I've started something similar with my Flickr365 project which I'm chugging away quite nicely at. I did miss a day, and could have covered for it, but it was an enormously overwhelmingly oppressing day so I've let that one be, elsewise I'm quite chuffed with the first twelfth³ of what I've snapped at.

The other thing that leapt from going through my 1000+ RSS feeds (more than half of which was MLIA, so win!), is that the dull & dreary blogging - which is essentially the digital version of Dear Diary, lets you express most the humdrum of your day in a fantastically boring way, which while not overly entertaining, does have the curious advantage of mucking out that bothering space between my ears.

And so I'm going to embark on two new regimentings, the first will be on this blog where I'll be kneading through a few predictably fangirl squee type tellings for 30 days just to reacclimatise to the wider blogging thing, and the second will be a new blog where I'll try to keep a consistently telling diary that covers the more boringer stuff⁴. If after a couple of weeks I can tease something ePublishable (I always get annoyed that so much of what's interesting that I come across gets lost in the ether of time and distraction) I'd much like to do that too.

I'm pretty confident I won't have any excuses with my new hyperaccesible phone⁵, and I'm looking to make the latter a five-month project.

Hello, I've missed you :)

Ta's for the hurrah's (this is my catch phrase for the moment), it really was a warming birthday with all the wishes
A Significant Another
ish.
which, given this blog, you can imagine is quite bad
squee!

formspring.me

2010-01-18T12:30:00.001+02:00

Ask me anything, ananyomously http://formspring.me/mirfaan

get your geek on!

2010-01-10T20:57:00.000+02:00

A cellphone is pretty damn useful, up until it breaks, is lost (read "stolen") or you need to change it. Then its an entire mission of copying names and numbers and details across.

But there's a fairly simple way to curtail that, as well as to preserve your contacts database (like a Blackbeerry would), all using syncml and of course, Google.

This should work for most recent phones (mine is 6 years old and works).

Go to Connectivity > Sync
Create a new profile (don't copy from another profile)
Use the following values:

Profile Name: [whatever floats your boat really]
Data Bearer: Web
Access Point: [select your GPRS access point]
Host: https://m.google.com/syncml
Port: 443
User name: [your full gmail address]
Password: [your gmail password]

Only check contacts (Calendar and notes are not supported - make sure these are unchecked), and for remote database use "contacts" (lower case)
Synchronise!

This usually takes about 3 minutes, maybe longer if you have profile pictures as part of your contacts.

And to view your address book online, just hop to http://www.google.com/contacts where you can edit them.

It's also a pretty clever way to merge two address books.

Lastly, entering Dates of Birth as part of your gContacts lets you generate an automatic birthday calendar in Google Calendar.

Whatever I'm unclear about you can hustle more details from here (for Nokia S40/S60).

Okay, this has been boring for long enough.

it just takes some time, little girl

2010-01-02T11:23:00.000+02:00

Hello!

I'm at the arse-end of the lethargic phase of my holiday, and from that you can take away the fact that my room is more organised than the Emperor Bonaparte's regiment¹.

I have a list of things I want to say, but these are written next to a list of things I need to do, so I won't look at it just right now. Instead, I'll tell you about two things I'm doing to acknowledge twenny-ten.

I've decided to do a year-long photography project, which is made up largely of taking (at least) a photo a day. So not the hugest bulge on a daily to-do list, plus phone cameras make it easier to do. I'm hosting it as a project on my Flickr, called, quite predictably, irfaan365. I severely recommend you do something half similar, because apart from it being sillily easy, by the end of a year you have a photofolio. Win.
The second is keeping metrics for the year - to be able to quantify the consistency and variability of things. So exercises, moods, cups of tea and some other things. Lifehacker shows some cool free life graphing tools and you might like lifemetric com and joe's goals for the simplicity it offers.

And now, Saturday!

that's to say, quite lovely and inspiring to look at, but very capable of being fucked up.

don't imagine the rain falling on you, imagine yourself rising up to meet each drop

2009-12-21T13:42:00.000+02:00

We are created from dust and clay. It's a pretty fair consensus amongst the religious and gets shuffled along with the sentiment of how common we are in Friday lectures at the Mosque. And it always tickles me the tone of derision with which it's said;

"We are made from dust. We are nothing, insignificant."

I never really got the hang of that. We're made from the Earth; we are, as we live, an organic extension of an incredibly complex matrix of inter-living. I am the Earth, and the Earth is within me - and through it I exist within, and when I surrender myself at death, without myself. It's thrilling to imagine being a part of that kind of magic, that we aren't alien in our world, we are a part of it, incubating a soul.

The next time you're about in a muddy field, lose the shoes and socks and squelch your feet in the mud and imagine yourself being connected, or remembering, where your skin (oh yeah, your skin and bones) come from.

What really perplexes me though, is the general disregard amongst our learned Muslims of the universe. It's there, why aren't we pushing through the thoughts of our Creator and spirit through an infinite expanse? It should be discussed more from our pulpits and at our dinner tables. It'll help the case anyway - don't tell me I'm made of dust, tell me the Earth and the sun are puny bodies in a majestic universe, that Bellatrix is four times hotter and a hunderd times bigger than our feeble furnace. When you consider the galaxy and the universe, you heart shivers a little to imagine yourself scaled to insignificance.

And the Universe, which is an undeniable creation, is something we are a part of too.

What do you need to make a man:

Iron enough to make a nail,

Lime enough to paint a wall,

Water enough to drown a dog,

Sulfur enough to stop the fleas,

Poison enough to kill a cow,

Potash enough to wash a shirt,

Gold enough to buy a bean,

Silver enough to coat a pin,

Lead enough to ballast a bird,

Phosphor enough to light the town,

Strength enough to build a home,

Time enough to hold a child,

Love enough to break a heart.

Iron, thallium, indium, gold, uranium, tungsten. We have an enormous mix of different trace metals within us. Fine and dandy. Thing is, while dust and clay are easy enough to come by, the amount of energy required to make an ounce of Iron can't be found in our solar system.

No, really. Eight and a half planets and a sun 1,300 times bigger than us all put together couldn't make an ounce of Iron.

Iron is formed in the hearts of intense and unimaginable heats and energies that happen when stars burst and go supernova. Those celestial explosions, which would wipe out everything we can conceive in an instant, went into making us.

We are, of the universe. Say that out loud in front of an overly bearded Muslim type and you'll get reprimands of disbeliever. In my experience and opinion anyway. But knowing that we are a spirit housed in a living extension of the Earth and ignited with the majesty of the Universe, inspires a kind of serenity and wonder.If all of that's not indicative of a Power that we cannot begin to comprehend, then nothing is.

Go visit your planetarium, and look at the horse head nebula. They all exist within you. Yeah baby, you. Doesn't that make your creation and purpose all the more significant?

'Course it does.

never try to predict what sufjan stevens is about to do

2009-12-19T15:02:00.000+02:00

A decade of the noughties fades out to the anticipation and hype of "twenny ten"¹. more than three and a half thousand days since the millenium hype (and here I refer both to the MS Windows OS and the Backstreet Boys Album).

It'll be pretty dull to quantify really, ten years is just less than half my life². So instead, a list!

I am a pretty dab hand at candid photography and take some of the best portrait pictures I know. In the same vein, it upsets people that I never give them a chance to pose and they can get quite physical in their insistence.

The Google Complex is indicative of how, with so much more stuff to read and look at, people's attention has shifted from peruse to skim. And it makes me wonder how hard/easy it'll be for me to be forgotten. Not very.

People who have spent Christmas in London never forget it. New York is the third best place to spend Christmas after Jerusalem and Finland.

It's a fairly normal thing to be in limbo about life, when you don't have a specific direction to pursue or fall after. The biggest mistake in this though is that people busy themselves pointlessly - thinking that any effort is good effort. The two things Girl³ has shown quite nicely:

you can only go forward if you know which way you're facing, else its pointless effort and insincere contribution
when you're not oriented in any particular direction, busy yourself in things you love to do.

Lean against winds.

Typewriting is harder than you think⁴.

Coming soon to a gregorian calendar near you.
I had to sit and think really carefull about that. I'm barely two eleven-and-a-half year olds put together
Yes, notice the capitals!
And lovelier

I couldn't hear from the sound of the freeway

2009-12-15T05:46:00.000+02:00

Trying to arrange the last twelve months into a series of newpaper headlines that I can recite to you is hard. Not because I'm inept at doing so, but because there's been a little bit of polarity in it.

I've changed my working plan right around to something all the more gorgeous, I've had a full swing in my spiritual life and I'm fighting to push that last little bit back on track, I've been afraid and courageous at the actions of others, crushed and thrilled by a fringe and smile.

And while one of the most socially significant things hasn't really changed; that I'm not in a romantic relationship - there is someone that I'm specifically not in a romantic relationship with¹.

And so, as January and Muharram approach, I ask for what's best; for me and for others.

and if my mum is to be believed, that relationship can happen when I can afford my own appliances.

Once more, with feeling!

2009-12-12T16:58:00.000+02:00

heart.

we put this festival on you bastards

2009-11-15T17:10:00.000+02:00

On May 14, 2007 Irfaan Wrote:

Every person must have a story. Little bits of thread that wind his hours into days, his weeks into months, his years into a life. Some are extraordinary; tellings of might & courage, fames & fortunes. Some are ordinary, tales that have less excitement and adventure about them, that go about contentedly like little windmills swaying in the wind. You get those tales that are darkened with undertones of hurt and misfortunes, and those too make for tellings either triumphant or tragic.

Many stories take from all of these, and births a life thus far lived. Yours does; the sum of parts of learning, experiencing, living makes you. And no one can truly be fair to that - they may live and feel everything that you have, but the way you accept, and value things makes you intrisically different.

his head was a city of paper buildings, in the echoes that remain

2009-11-15T13:34:00.000+02:00

On 22 May, 2006 Irfaan wrote:

It's been a cold and blustery and thoroughly windy weekend, with a less than subtle promise of winter lingering in the crisp air outside; the tantrums of sleet upsetting the roads, snow adding a glaring frosting under the morning sunrise across the mountains in the distant east, and hail thundering across the decks and roofs mercilessly. It's breathtaking; the little gasps of mist gathering at your lips as you breathe the lung chilling air, the aching numbness in your fingers as they flit and flutter through the brisk morning air, trying in vain to get warm, a nose reddening ever so slightly. A girl looking lovelier than you've ever seen. And the arena that's nature never failing mesmerise: Walking across the broad bredth of University Avenue, the light winds lashing across the skin of a bare face,and exposed wrists hanging out of jeans pockets; swirling a ballet of leaves into a gentle eddy at my feet; stepping and crunching them underfoot. Looking at a nearly naked tree, scraggly branches almost bare, save the odd dull glimmer of orange and brown leaves, listlessly ceding any resistance to the wind whipping across them. Seeing a sole leaf at the very tip of a branch, perching up on it's stem as the wind breezes around it, like an eagle raising its head to peer at the horizon, giving it a seeming grandness and majesty about it. And as the leaf raises ever so slightly more at the insistence of the breeze around it, there's a screeching second where it lunges forward, the brown stem tethering it straining

In short, it was windy.

pray you're gonna make it, then you're done

2009-11-15T13:28:00.000+02:00

On June 28th, 2006 Irfaan wrote:

The point drifts, not of it's own accord, it's a summation of feelings that are felt; but impassive fingertips trail across a keyboard without prompting, and words rush after each other, stumbling and climbing over each other, elbowing and kicking to surface out into a melange of stirred and murky strings of thought and sentiment... it's all so loose and flimsily connected at the moment... attention wavering, enthusiasm hibernating, no drive or want or need, just a listless drudging way of going about all of it, taking what's there, and shrugging at what's not.

Everything and nothing has changed.

confess, your kiss still knocks me off my knees

2009-11-07T13:58:00.000+02:00

On November 29th, 2005. Irfaan said:

Which brings into the spotlight an old-new consideration I'm seriously thinking about; Varsity isn't my thing. Not by a yard, a mile, a javelin throw and a longshot put together and stretched. I love the people I get to spend time with, but I absolutely abhor what a varsity is, "and what is that?" I hear piquant voices asking with a smudged curiosity, and it is this; University is merely another institution that supresses your identity and self and freedom of being and individualism and instead leaves you with a numbered shell, one of hundreds of thousands of millions. Pretty brash statement to make, but it is. We conform ourselves to the thinkings and mentalities which we are taught, so that we can learn how think the way the lecturer wants you to. And do we conform? most certain-damn-ly, because that's how we do well, isn't it? Learning, recycling, regurgitating. [/bitchout] Back to my first point, I'm seriously considering dropping out of varsity and doing full time journalism, comedy, magic or media. I'm not the most intriguing of thinkers, and write pretty stifledly, and am a pretty terrible conversationalist, as this journal and my chats with some of you fully justify, but it's something that I rather quite enjoy. Now there's a word that feature very prominently in my current endeavours. I can't do what makes me happy, because there's no way of sustaining that happiness. It requires money, and money requires not doing it.

you've got to be good to yourself, um hm.

2009-11-01T07:55:00.000+02:00

Talents and abilities and intelligences

are cunning little beasts

inspiring our dependence

and pride and confidence

on what only ever are

the bars of our own confining cages.

Suckers.

and then hydrobots attacked

2009-10-28T05:34:00.000+02:00

Wednesday¹

Hello Wednesday.

Pomodora's have done more for my disciplining, its curious to say, than most of the rest.

And my "other"² birthday is tickling.

That is more or less the height and width of my living just right now. I've got breadth, baby, but that's for you to come and find out about.

Coldplay's Rainy Day. There's little else to say really

1. Imagine the scritching of a poor quality fountain pen on recycled paper here.

2. Which is more swallowable to say than "fake"

i always wonder about how to spell "berserk"

2009-10-27T09:49:00.000+02:00

"Good morning Lord Voldemort".

I (may) need to stop changing my name on other people's cellphones. May. (Nay/Yay)1

I do need many many engaging things to do, else I am crashing my day close to 8:30am and there's little that's to do to rebuild the momentum.

This is a completely unnecessary exercise in rhyming.

2009-10-23T11:36:00.001+02:00

Fascinating bit I hope I understood correctly from Arabic class: The words Binte (Daughter of) and Ibn (Son of) have at their root, the letters Baa and Noon. The arabic word transliterated as “Banaa” means “to build”, implying a notion that your progeny build you (and your legacy perhaps?)

via Saaleha.com

A-N-N-A always scrunching your face that way

2009-10-21T05:34:00.000+02:00

No One I actually know has watched Battlestar Galactica. This is mostly because people are silly.

The senses, I remember the third grade poster vaguely, wire up the world to our brains. Incredible and improbable, that colours, sounds, pressures, scents and tastes can be interpreted by organic circuitry through the clever arrangements of muscles and nerves.

I've realised that most people are immensely optimistic about their senses. The ability to see and hear and touch and smell and lick people in a meaningful way inspire a celebration of ability, generally.

No one's ever really been sad by the limitation of it. No one I know anyway.

The spectrums we can see, hear and smell are limited and puny, really speaking. And our touch and taste is held in check by temperature, toxicity and hundreds of other discriminators.

I am, ever so improbably, alive. And overwhelmed by what I can feel and the sensations I can construct and experience.

Imagine when we stop being restricted to dusty shells and fatty lumps of bloodied meat to engage, everything; gamma rays, solar flares, everything.

curled up like a cat at the corner of everything

2009-10-18T21:32:00.000+02:00

Stolen from enchante

Choose a Topic: Stars
Set the timer for five minutes
No edits

Pinpricks in the sky, little tears of punctured, lit pieces of Aluminium showing through shameful pieces of immaculatet velvet.

They are. They are so undeniable; gargantuan beasts of existence - bigger than you and I can bear or dare to imagine. They are. Furious and ancient; erupting with the might and splendour that would put a complex into a world full of rainbows.

They are. Everything.

But they aren't.

They are just stars. They are just things that you and I, and he and she knows. Things we don't care much about. They are meagre instantiations of metaphors and fill-in-the-blanks of romance.

Stars stop being stars. Not because they're not; they most certainly are - but because they're something we fail, in absolutely every single way, to comprehend. The distance, the size, intensity, the age.

Frames of reference, scales, comparisons. Go fuck yourself. Stars are proof that a thing far removed is forgotten in plain, magnificent sight.

Do you see me? Please don't tell I'm worthy of a nursery rhyme asking what I am.

The Affectionate, The Live, The Raw

2009-10-07T08:58:00.000+02:00

Everything starts now. That's not an overly hard sentiment to compel someone with; every moment after this one can be different if you decide it to be - if you decide now.

The moment, much like GTD is something I endorse with every spittle I can muster, but am finding increasingly impossible to settle install upon my elbows and days. I am trying again, trying less harder but lots smarter, and perhaps with a more stubborn streak of realism about. Well done me.

All the questions apply; what - who - when - how - why.

I'm afraid the terseness of "because" shall have to suffice until I have something defendable to replace it with.

But for now wish me a healthy fuel economy. And an ability to make things meaningful once they fall away into retrospect.

Hurro!

light the dark, ignite a spark

2009-09-28T20:00:00.000+02:00

I've given wedding rings some thought. I think I'll be found not slightly defeated if the ring my wife wears a decade after we're married is one as dreary as something that can be bought a jewellers.

In the same scent, I'd prefer having a line of white ink tatooed across my ring finger than a ring to wear (which is different from a ring to have).

All the same I feel I am flirting with something not altogether justifiable when I seriously consider this as a ring to give:

We shall see.

proof's in my back pocket, with a stick of gum and a candy rocket

2009-09-28T19:50:00.001+02:00

hers is a little life

all of ours are

(just look at the size of Betelgeuse if you're fussing to offer me disbelief)

but I fear her love

and her live

(and very probably, her not yet furnished louvre)

would make a supernova blush

for red white hot fierceness

that's cool to the touch

and soothing to the feel

"we are not insignificant, you and I.

We are dots that infinity requires

to run through, so that it can exist.

I Promise"

he dabbled in dark arts himself in his youth

2009-09-28T16:19:00.000+02:00

“Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like “maybe we should just be friends” or “how very perceptive” turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.”

— Neil Gaiman

even though its really forward

2009-09-27T13:20:00.000+02:00

...there's just the right amount of awkward...

that's when I'll show you happiness the world can't see

2009-09-27T10:00:00.000+02:00

I'm a student, and through the sinful aspirations of wanting to be an Accountant at first *insert necessary repentance here* I've been one - a Commerce one no less - for the longest while.

As Africans, we are the custodians of the most mystical communal souls - and it is with a great flourishing of malicious contempt against this that we are competitive in our classrooms.

Competitive in the worst kind of way.

Doesn't it crush your chest to think you've perverted knowledge so much to think that we don't share our notes and explanations without reservation, that we try to earn the edge and the advantage over those sitting at our elbows?

How should this be, I don't know that I have the purity of intention to tell you. Can you tell me?

Please?

maybe you'll find something that's enough to keep you

2009-09-26T10:42:00.001+02:00

It's not just stones that broke my bones

2009-09-26T10:11:00.000+02:00

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

– Calvin Coolidge

I suspect, from the arches of my feet, that I require a more forceful shove away from self-perceived competencies and towards the conviction to see something worth doing, worth being, out.

doesn't anybody ever learn that the world's a subway

2009-09-24T08:54:00.000+02:00

You buy things and you keep them clean. You take care of them. Keep them in a special pocket. Away from keys and coins. Away from other things that should be kept clean and taken care of as well. Then they get scratched. And scratched again. And again. And again. And again. Soon, you don't care about them anymore. You don't keep them in a special pocket. You throw them in the bag with everything else. They've surpassed their form and become nothing but function. People are like that. You meet them and keep them clean. In a special pocket. And then you start to scratch them. Not on purpose. Sometimes you just drop them by accident or forget which pocket they're in. But after the first scratch, it's all downhill from there. You see past their form. They become function. They are a purpose. Only their essence remains.

via

Urchie and the Puffin' Muffin

2009-09-18T20:36:00.000+02:00

*These stories are true exaggerations about a girl and her ability to tickle life at the ankles and make it blush.

If you took a bundle of mischief, rolled it between your palms till it was a plump lump of clay, stretched two pointy bits at the top and two more at the bottom, you'd have something that was exactly unlike Urchie. Except of course that Urchie is plump lump of mischief.

The sun yawned into the morning sky, letting its musty rays stretch out over the horizon flushing it with a golden blue shimmer, as it lazily began to lift its head and get on with its job of trawling across the sky, stopping more than occasionally for a sip of tea along the way.

Urchie, a girl tall enough to put her hand on her head and be quite pleased with the result, completely ignored the soft display of the orchestral fireworks of light behind her, and instead stared up crossly at the tree she was standing under. She was not wearing shoes (she had lost them in a rabbit hole), and someone who was not wearing shoes, she told the tree severely, should have bright crunchy leaves to trample underfoot, not the bare cobbled path that there was.

Urchie added a squinted glare at the tree to go with her scolding, wrinkled her nose at it for good measure, and went to go look for a feather. She quickly found one, although it was still attached to a rather startled pigeon. Sneaking around the trunk of the tree, she gently tickled the birds feathers over two knobbly bumps of bark.

A loud sucking sound was suddenly heard, and with a gleeful giggle Urchie quickly poked her fingers into her ears, letting a rather flustered and ruffled pigeon return on with his day as best he can.

With a loud bang, the tree sneezed, all of its branches trembling for a moment and leaving a puff of falling leaves and bits of dandelions and weeds into the air.

Urchie watched as they all settled in pitter-pattering shades of browns and greens onto the ground, and with a yelp of excitement she leapt along a path of the crunchiest leaves she could find, skipping across the way to get a yellow umbrella that could smell.

When she returned later, with a dusty yellow sun napping in the afternoon sky, she could hear the clip-clop sound of horseshoes. Excitedly, Urchie opened her new yellow sniffing umbrella which she hoped would lure the horse, and quietly walked towards the clinking sound of hooves.

What she saw surprised her. Instead of the horse walking about on its shoes along the cobbled path under the tree she had tickled, there was instead a ragged looking boy with a flump* of hair on his head, dancing over the dried leaves and weeds with tap-dancing shoes. The metal-soled shoes were sparking along the cobbles, beginning to make the few leaves and the dried weeds underfoot smoulder.

As Urchie with her yellow umbrella open watched the little ragamuffin of a boy dancing around the tree madly, starting small fires in the weeds as he moved around, she could hear her umbrella begin to sniff.

And then an even more suprising thing happened.

With a sudden tummy lifting motion, the sniffing umbrella she had gotten, which was now smelling the smoky smell of the burning weeds, began to move up, lifting her up clutching tightly up along with it, leaving the both of them floating just above the tree, watching the dirty-faced little boy prancing around madly.

The umbrella bobbed gently, leaving Urchie flopping around wonderfully as her skirt chasied itself around her legs.

As she lolled along with her floating umbrella, the unwilling tickling pigeon of before, seeing a moment for revenge, flew to the umbrella and pecked two little holes into it. With a gentle sound of leaking air the umbrella began to sink back down, swinging Urchie along with it gently as it moved lower and lower, eventually dropping her ankle deep into puddle of mud.

Knowing that this counted as a bath, Urchie tucked the sniffing umbrella under a bush for safe-keeping, smiled to herself as she squelched her toes, and went to look for something to frighten the ragamuffin boy with.

______________________________________________________________________________

*Yes, a flump.

damnn straight, better than cupcakes

2009-09-06T16:52:00.000+02:00

Now if only I was good conversation and could sip tea neatly

It gets better everyday, even when you feel the same

2009-09-02T08:30:00.000+02:00

To start off with and throw a comma in (you know - like we used to do when we pretended to be professional and efficient and all kinds of polite).

Change is a constant. We all constantly change. It's a kind of assurance that you'll always be lovable, even if its in the spurts of hyper-temporariness that marks the momentum of living. Know what I mean?

I'd like to tell you the most wonderful stories, of things I discovered in bright, clean sunrooms when I was little. And how I learnt to use textiles and glue as a teenager. And I'd make you the most unnecessarily rich and clever 3d cards, just because.

Instead, I've been wrong too many times to be nostalgic about them days, so you'll catch me whimsical about all of it; giggling at a little boy with the strangest hair ploughing through it. "What's the lesson there sonny", maybe you'll ask, "be afraid of being afraid to fail", I'll say, and push you off a chair.

Today, anyway.

Find out things please; about how arches are strong, and waterfalls can be put into walls, and how the colour of bricks can be made, and what's the best shape to use to build a circle.

just like raindrops, even though you're a million miles away

2009-08-01T12:08:00.000+02:00

I once told a friend, that she is like an Orange. It was more a swirl of an idea and feeling than an actual articulable sentiment, finding me at a loss for words when asked they hypercomplicated question of "oh, and why is that?"

I promised to (try) and explain it in a story, rather than stuttering about with metaphors and weird squeezey hand motions. And so, I have

Grasses whispered as light bare footsteps pressed them gently against the ground, the tall green stalks caressing over ankles, heels and toes as the feet's owner, a girl who could only be described as "swishing", made her way through the dewed fields towards a distant figure. She scowled, simply to try and introduce her eyebrows to each other, explored the agility of her forehead as they began to wrestle animatedly, and gave her head a distracted shake as her fringe peeped down to see what all the fuss was about. She was as tall as a hand placed on top of her head, felt that an adventure wasn't complete if it didn't have a dance, and sometimes offered a curious smile when accosted with her name, "Olivia". She danced now, her hands gently cupping the round small adventure she was busy being enthralled with.

"Come see what a wonderful thing I have found for you," Olivia spoke gently over the shoulder of the figure she had reached.

Turning around at the curious beckoning, the figure, a boy called Henry, peered at her small, round object of marvel, held as gently as a laden bird's nest in her hands.

"It's not as dull as yellow, and doesn't swim in the thick treacle’s of red" Olivia said, tilting her head to the side to inspect the orb from between her fingers. "It's sort of in-between, you know, like twilight between night time and day."

Henry leaned forward to look more closely at it.

"And it does have the most enchanting smell. Light and wafty and fresh."

Henry offered a probing sniff to investigate this.

"It's firm and soft," Olivia's fingers squeezed into the soft rind in her hands, "all at once. So very many things. It's a wonder it doesn't burst with all the burden of having to be so much."

Henry stepped back and watched as Olivia reached for a knife and delicately sliced it, the two halves resting like bicycled-wheeling suns in her hands. He couldn't tell whether the glow of the fruit was reflecting on Olivia, or the glow of Olivia was reflecting on the fruit. There was a distinct halo about. It was both of them glowing, he decided.

"Delicious!" Olivia exclaimed with a slurping bite, "and not half messy," she wiped a trickle of the fruit's juice off of her chin. "We must find a name for it," she cooed at the two halves she held.

Olivia Robyn Ange. O.R. Ange. The letters of the bona fide girl of sunshine girl in front of Henry arranged themselves in his mind’s eye.

"Orange," Henry called out. "The fruit, and the scent, and the colour, and the texture, all of it. We will call them all orange because they're all part of the same kind of magic."

Olivia's face swam in a smile as she offered an orange half to Henry.

You've already won me over, in spite of the score

2009-07-22T12:32:00.000+02:00

Candyshells; the thin sugared crusts of smarties and astro's. Bright and delicate and able to be destroyed by a whim of motion.

Sometimes I feel that's what my spirit is made of; colourful and bright and decadent, but completely and utterly crushable.

A smear of squished jelly across thumbs and fingertips.

But I am well, swell, and only a little swollen.

I'll do it in beige, stipple effect, two days, we'll be sorted

2009-07-21T18:55:00.000+02:00

I got that Boom Boom Blergh. Really really. Two-thirds excitement and wonder and love, and a third, a big fuck off plethora-laden third, of apathetic disregard.

Love you. Much.

Don't want to hear your sad songs, I want to hear your blame

2009-07-12T21:54:00.000+02:00

“Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook. Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication. Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones that crimped your toes, don’t regret those. Not the nights you called god names and cursed your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch, chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness. You were meant to inhale those smoky nights over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches. You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still you end up here. Regret none of it, not one of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing, when the lights from the carnival rides were the only stars you believed in, loving them for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved. You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake, ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.”

— Dorianne Laux, “Antilamentation”

It's nice to meet you sir, I think I'll go, I best be on my way

2009-07-12T21:49:00.000+02:00

it's a circle, I mean, cycle

2009-07-12T21:35:00.000+02:00

My name has made the list, and I wish I gave you one last kiss

2009-06-20T10:26:00.000+02:00

I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…

Unknown Iranian Blogger. It's pretty sexy all round, how these kids are being for themselves. I'm in love with all of them; I want to hold their wrists and kiss their cheeks.

I remember all the feelings, and the day they stopped

2009-06-02T22:09:00.000+02:00

ta Yumna.

Muizenberg beach, taken at Surfers Corner

embed the video on yer poem nikehead! (not yers, neil's)

2009-06-02T20:51:00.000+02:00

as ever, because my Noorjehaan said so.

Have I told you lately?

2009-06-02T17:32:00.000+02:00

Prayer for a Blueberry Girl

by Neil Gaiman

Ladies of Light & Ladies Of Darkness,

& Ladies of Never-You-Mind,

This is a prayer for a Blueberry Girl.

First, may you Ladies be kind.

Keep her from spindles and sleeps at sixteen;

Let her stay waking and wise.

Nightmares at three; or bad husbands at thirty;

These will not trouble her eyes.

Dull days at forty, false friends at fifteen;

Let her have brave days and truth.

Let her go places that we’ve never been;

Trust and delight in her youth.

Ladies of Grace, and Ladies of Favour,

And Ladies of Merciful Night,

This is a prayer for a Blueberry Girl,

Grant her your Clearness of Sight.

Words can be worrisome, people complex;

Motives and manners unclear.

Grant her the wisdom to choose her path right,

Free from unkindness and fear.

Let her tell stories, and dance in the rain,

Somersaults, tumble and run;

Her joys must be high as her sorrows are deep,

Let her grow like a weed in the sun.

Ladies of Paradox, Ladies of Measure,

Ladies of Shadows-That-Fall;

this is a prayer for a Blueberry Girl,

Words written clear on a Wall.

Help her to help herself, help her to stand,

Help her to lose, and to find.

Teach her we’re only as big as our dreams,

show her that fortune is blind.

Truth is a thing she must find for herself,

precious, and rare as a pearl;

Give her all these, and a little bit more,

Gifts for a Blueberry Girl.

Streetlights flicker, never got things so clean in the dark.

2009-06-02T17:23:00.000+02:00

I have a lot that wants to be told, but very little to tell it with.

Instead, just for now at least, under the moisturised thumb of my Noorjehaan¹, I'm meant to mention a quarter centuries worth of the best things I've read.

The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams
The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy (the five part trilogyby Douglas Adams
The Discworld/Night Watch novels by Terry Pratchett
Harry Potter by JK Rowling
The Draco Trilogy² by Cassandra Claire
The path to Zen by Alan Watts
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
What Islam did for us by Tim Wallace Murphy
THe Heart of Islam by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint - Exupery
Oscar and the Lady in Pink by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Blueberry Girl³ by Neil Gaiman
The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton
Danny, Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

That's as many as I can stretch my eyebrows to remember. The interesting thing, is that someone of 12 could have conquered exactly the same list. There is a part of me unwilling to grow. There is a part of me that is wondering if young Irfaan would be able to show the strength in the words about children above.

As opposed to yours
Harry Potter fanfiction, and quite frankly, better than Rowlings for entertainment. Holler if you'd like a copy
Here I'm referring to the original poem, a Prayer for Blueberry girl

it's only fallen frames, they told me

2009-05-28T17:17:00.000+02:00

I learn all my bad habits, watching you (it's true)

2009-05-28T17:14:00.000+02:00

Cool your hands down on the broken radiator

2009-05-28T07:37:00.001+02:00

Two years ago today, I should have been more, everything.

It twists, and it turns, and it secures who you become. Perhaps.

Caution & egoism, have made for the sorts of heart harmonics that are muffled by dusters.

And if there was a yes, today I'd have given a journal filled with stories & tellings; of her, of spices, of deft fingertips on the hearts of others. There'd be a curtsy. (or so my fancy themes my thoughts with).

"Hello, have you ever..."
"Once upon a time, yes"
"He listens to Beatles songs every May, trying to remember you"

I'm alive (at least I think life is something inside me)

2009-05-24T19:33:00.000+02:00

Oakened slats shape the light,
ushering them into an irregular square,
shelves of books, clippings in a folder,
hints of growing up, or at least, growing older.

Folds and rolls,
Neatly bound curios,
Inked and sealed, some of them still,
Half a months dust on a window sill

I'm not sure what is this where,
I am.
I could.
Even if it were you baby, it's not a sure thing I would.

My head is miles away from my heart. I'm waiting for it to stop playing silly buggers about girls who measure in fathoms, and work that has a tag for scrolls.

It's pretty lonely here, actually. You should come visit so that I can make excuses to not be able to see you.

The riddles and rhymes (will I see heaven in mine?)

2009-05-20T09:18:00.000+02:00

Scared of losing all the time
He wrote it in a letter
He was a friend of mine
He heard you could see your future
Inside a glass of water
The ripples and the rhymes
And he asked “Will I see heaven in mine?”

That is just the way it was
Nothing could be better
And nothing ever was
Oh they say you can see your future
Inside a glass of water
The riddles and the rhymes
Will I see heaven in mine?
Oh oh oh oh aaah

Son
Don’t ask
Neither how full nor empty is your glass
Cling
To the mast
Spend your whole life living in the past
Going nowhere fast

So he wrote it on a wall
The hollowest of halos is no halo at all
Televisions selling plastic
Figurines of leaders
Saying nothing at all
And we chimed, stars in heaven align
Oh oh oh oh aah

Son
Don’t ask
Neither how full nor empty is your glass
Cling
To the mast
Spend your whole life living in the past
Going nowhere fast

And what are we drinking when we’re done?
Glasses of water

Coldplay - Glass of Water (leftRightLeftRightLeft - download the album for free here: http://www.coldplay.com/lrlrl/lr.html)

You could see your future, inside a glass of water

2009-05-20T07:37:00.000+02:00

I just scored a 95% for this Reflective essay discussing my experience in learning and employing Management Philosophies. I'm not half proud of it, but to curb the bursting of an already over-inflated ego, I shall post it here and say not a word more.

Introduction

Reincarnation, the Buddhist belief of the constant reshaping of an individual’s karma in life after life, has a less literal but equally powerful counterpart in the Mahayana philosophies. It is an understanding that the process of rebirth for every individual is from moment to moment, where you are constantly being reborn as long as you identify yourself with a continuing ego, which reincarnates itself fresh at each moment in time.

Nirvana, which is the ultimate end of karma (when insight and awakening have been achieved), has the literal meanings of exhalation, and the cessation of circling of the mind. This “release” could, with contemporary perspective, be interpreted as defeat or despair, that life is utterly beyond any control and human striving is little more than attempting to stare down the sun.

An alternative view, which is one I hope to articulate while relating my experiences in this essay, sees this despair explode into harmony and creative power, based on the realisation that to lose one’s life is to find it – where freedom is finding one’s actions unimpeded by self-frustrations and anxieties which are inherent in trying to save and control the self.

These ideas that have just been described above may seem disjointed and out of context in discussing and reflecting on instantiating unknown knowledge (to the self) into experience, but this essay hopes to show that the success of the KENKEI development project which I have contributed to so far have, in some part, been attained through the strategies of encouraging “un-self-grasped” states of mind and being, where, as with nirvana, attaining the ambitions of the project have come about through not reaching for them, but instead leveraging the mindset and perspectives of the development team to let the ambitions arise unintentionally and with natural spontaneity.

To assist with the flow of reading this essay, I have titled the four experiences in the following pages as chapters of a story, “The Great Train Robbery”, which gives a pleasant continuity to thread the four events as connecting themes.

It is only with total humility, and in absolute stillness of mind that we can know what indeed we are.
Wei Wu Wei – The Tenth Man: The Great Joke (1966)

Chapter 1: Planning the Great Train Robbery

My Information Systems development team, TEAM: ROCKET!, have had an unusually rapid growth through the Bruce Tuckman normal, having already, in a few short weeks I believe, shifted into the final “Performing” phase of the four-tier model. In this experience, I wish to highlight the significance that punched the team’s evolution clean through the storming phase.

The Experience:

The Forming stage, was one I was largely disinvolved in (as I have a sometimes overwhelming sensation of guilt for showing and acting on social bias, or empathy with someone who requires assistance), having agreed with my teammate (and now Team Leader) to join whichever team he felt most comfortable with. With some anxiety, but much less fuss and ado, a five-man strong team was tacitly agreed upon, and after some deliberation and peering into the other groups being formed and individuals available, the team was consented to confirmed.

Once confirmed, there was the immediate anxiety and nearly tangible tension of having to find an appropriate sponsor and project for the team to develop. This clearly marked the storming phase of the team’s development with scepticism against and insistence for different proposals. And while this made for a fraught drive to the first potential sponsor meeting with five men sardined into a tiny car, it was with an air of lightness and the realisation of possibility that return trip made two hours later was made, with hints of the norming phase beginning to emerge in conversations on the return journey. This was a phenomenal shift in five people who had begun with unique concerns and reservations about the proposal, but left the meeting – which ironically saw a complete shift in the vision and purpose of the project than had been originally thought – with a collective enthusiasm and commitment to the project.

This has further been accelerated, through experiences discussed later in this essay, into norming – which saw the team acclimatise quickly to the complexities of different aptitudes and working methods, through the formation of the team tribe and breaking of conventional academic and intelligence stereotypes, achieving notable team successes.

The Concepts:

In Taoism, there are the Three Treasures (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 67. Approx 700BC); which refer to the ideals of compassion, moderation (or economy) and humility.

The TEAM: ROCKET! development project, which is a Content Management System handling the admissions, complaints and reports of Mental Health Users in the Western Cape with the aim of generating reports and information to assist the Review Board, fits two of these moulds at the outright – where it was explained to the team that the Review Board’s mandate was to protect the Human Rights and Dignities of people who didn’t have the capacity to it themselves.

Through some of the stories that were related of Mental Health Users being exploited and abused, the team shared a collective compassion for these people, and were humbled at the efforts of a handful of people. The third ideal of moderation is as a result of the unfamiliarity with high-end technology that the Review Board have – forcing TEAM: ROCKET! to structure their ideas as simplistic, efficient and intuitive.

The result of each of these things is tangible; the compassion for the Mental Health Users, and the exploitation and ridicule they have undergone before (and in some cases, still undergo), has inspired the team to be brave enough to undertake the project. The humility of what is being undertaken allows the team to be freely generous with tremendous respect, and the moderation which we are being forced to work with essentially preserves the usefulness of the efforts of the team.

Even the selected project name, “KENKEI”, is indicative of this ethos as a whole within the team. The Japanese word “KEN” has the meanings of “authority”, “economy”, “health” and “sword”, and the Japanese word “KEI” means “strong” and “system”.

The Understanding:

I do not think that these three qualities would have emerged had the development project the team picked this year been a corporate or commercial-based one. The sentiment attached to these projects would be based with the poorer values (in my opinion) of achieving wealth, making the team . As per the Dinokeng Scenarios paper, “3 Futures for South Africa”, the context which TEAM: ROCKET! finds itself in the development of this project allows for creative and legitimate participation as active citizens contributing to change (as discussed in Chapter 2) in the community, and ultimately a small fundamental change in the course of the country

The ultimate understanding here then is, that as individuals and a team, we are not only obliged, but fully capable of realising the potential of South Africa – we merely require the resolve and determination to do it.

We do not possess an 'ego'. We are possessed by the idea of one.
Wei Wu Wei – Ask the Awakened, Zen

Chapter 2: As Thick as a Tribe of Thieves

Having explained the sentiment and resonance of the contributing nature of the KENKEI development project, and its intrinsic importance to TEAM: ROCKET! I’d like to focus on a nearly parallel aspect that forms part of what constitutes the matrix of the team – i.e. looking at the glue of the philosophies and reasons which allow five individuals to mechanise as one uniform vehicle.

The Experience:

This is a concept which only makes sense, and can only exist once a common idea (referring to the KENKEI development project) has been identified. There is no doubt that there is a socio-political undercurrent within each of my team members and myself, as university educated young men, to want effect change in the world, and challenge the status quo’s that surround us. The project we have selected has unearthed the potential and opportunity to make a meaningful and memorable change and contribution.

The KENKEI project has thus become an idea, which divides the lives of TEAM: ROCKET! into a “before KENKEI” and (what will become) “after KENKEI” – signifying the creation of an idea which creates, as Seth Godin describes in his 2009 TED talk, a “tribe” of individuals which are distinguished by leadership.

The Concept:

The concept of a tribe, is based on the common identity of individuals wanting to, and collectively being able to change the world – and wanting to connect with others who share this spirit. It is an unusually powerful mixture of (joint) leadership, the connecting of people, and common ideas, of people who generally are not homogenous (in their cultures, religions, etc.)

This lack of homogeneity within TEAM: ROCKET!, where there is strong contrast between esoteric, pragmatic, practical and conceptual personalities, is overtly apparent. The common thread of the KENKEI project however, and the idea of contribution and ability to promote change attached to it though, sees a shift in the efforts and direction individual team members exert could achieve (as illustrated in figure 1 below), to what the tribe of TEAM: ROCKET! can now achieve (as illustrated in figure 2), with less effort. The model may seem a contrived visualisation of “the whole is worth more than the sum of parts”, but it really is that simple an obvious a concept – the team seems to build a sixth member in and of itself, by satisfying the yearning of five formerly disconnected individuals.

Figure 1. Visualisation of the effort expenditure of individual team members, indicating the scale of effort and expertise that is needed to be exerted over.

Figure2. Visualisation of the effort expenditure of five connected individuals, specifically indicating the more specific and specialised direction range individuals can now take up, as part of the tribe.

The Understanding:

Understanding the phenomena of tribes, especially in the TEAM: ROCKET! context, can be broken into the following parts:

Challenge: It was the combination of being assigned a project to do, with the individual yearnings of each team member to participate and contribute towards something of significance that instigated the tribe behaviour within the group.
Culture: Though individual culture varies significantly across the group, the shared idea (of the development project) connected us to create a meta-culture, endorsing all the parts that make it up.
Curiosity: The success of the tribe is as a direct result of the questioning nature of the team members, and the willing to challenge and wanting to change the status quo.
Connect: Identifying each other through the common idea is insufficient to produce meaningful change. A connection between tribe participants is necessary so that the understanding and compensation that makes the whole greater than the sum of parts can be realised.
Commitment: As discussed in the first chapter, and will be discussed further along, the identity each team member has, with the idea is a critical factor in his ability to contribute to the tribe.

Are we not wasps who spend all day in a fruitless attempt to traverse a window-pane - while the other half of the window is wide open?
Wei Wu Wei – Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon

Chapter 3: A Wheelman doesn’t rob banks, he drives cars.

Even though there is a general homogeneity in way of formal education that the team members of TEAM: ROCKET! have, it is with extreme reluctance that I endorse the idea of having five equivalent members who have the same perspective, skill sets, and are capable of exactly the same things. Breaking free of the predicated constraints of academic ability (which are ultimately based on the instantiation of solving the needs of industry in the last two centuries) has allowed for a more vibrant and less constrained engaging with problem at hand.

The Experience:

Within TEAM: ROCKET! there is a necessary common set of academic skills – in code, modelling, and approach to understanding and interpreting problems. We are fortunate, however, that despite a relatively similar formal education, that there is a significant degree of natural specialisation and associated creativity that has emerged with specific individuals; these include aptitudes in the more traditional arts of design, collaboration, organisation, as well as the less typical instances of synthesis (creating hybrid ideas and solution), build-a-rounding (achieving similar end results using alternative methods), and imagineering (focussing and methodically evaluating imagined creative possibilities).

Apart from the ability for each member to contribute something wholly unique to the project, adding both value to the project, but also within himself in having the idea endorsed by his peers, the true beauty of these individual talents is that usually they are expressed communally (within the group), and while one person may head a specific specialised project up, it is usually instantiated and realised by more than that one person – creating a shared experience in which one or more other members can now instantiate knowledge which wasn’t theirs, but regardless now forms a part of their own consciousness.

The Concepts:

The “liberation” from academic ability, along with disengaging with the idea that literacy (the ability to interpret) is more important than creativity (the ability to create), allows the team to value what each member is good at, and what they value. This acceptance of natural talent removes the stigma from what individuals may otherwise be uncomfortable sharing (in TEAM: ROCKET! these include Zen and Taoist philosophies, learning Japanese, tending to fish, homeopathy, social media, and many others), and in so doing removes the limitations of method-like behaviour – where the team would make expectations about the abilities and working practices of each other, and use a limited mindset in tackling problems.

Instead, the ability and comfort for every idea individuals have to be expressed as fully as possible, explodes the inspiration resources and potential of the team to create solutions, as well as shifting each member to a more open evaluating mindset, where they are forced to consider ideas and concepts which may otherwise fall beyond their intellectual paradigm.

The Understanding:

The shifting of mindsets is indicative of the ability of TEAM: ROCKET! to encourage and instantiate knowledge so that it creates different forms of intelligence; Diverse Intelligence, which includes abstract, kinaesthetic, sound and visual intelligence, Dynamic Intelligence, which allows for ideas and concepts to be compared, shared and contrasted, as well as Distinct Intelligence.

Creativity thus becomes defined as original ideas, which bare value, and promotes an intelligence which fuels itself and anyone who shares in actioning upon it – regardless of their existing knowledge of the underlying concepts.

There is no mystery whatever — only inability to perceive the obvious.
Wei Wu Wei; All Else is Bondage: Non-Volitional Living (1964)

Chapter 4: Double Crossing is a Part of the Modus Operandi

Double-crossing, is the art of betrayal which is achieved when a competitor (referring to myself) participating in the ‘fix’ (in this context, the development project), has agreed to throw their game (here, encouraging the idea that each of the other team members understands a unique sense of ownership of the project, as explained below) but instead competes as usual (here, referring to the fact that all the team members are being coaxed the same “unique” understanding), against the original intention of the collaborators (here again, referring to the fact that each individual feels he has a “unique” sentiment of project ownership).

The Experience:

In an attempt to usurp the possible culture of Team members assessing each other’s contribution as clinically divided parts of the project as a whole – where the sentiment of “why should I work harder than him, when we will earn the same mark?” is negated. This view of equivalences, I feel, is not a naturally occurring or harmonious balance, rather it is one which is contrived and compromises on the potential that could otherwise be achieved (if team members were not concerned about an asymmetry of contribution within the team).

In light of this, there has been constant cajoling on my part to each of the team members, introducing and reinforcing the idea that KENKEI is their project, encouraging and fostering a feeling of ownership, and significance to them – where each team member values the project not as a comparable division of the whole, but rather as a tangible extension of themselves.

The Concept:

The Taoist concept of Wu-Wei, to do without doing, underlines the management undertaken on my part, and to an extent, unknowingly by the Team Leader, to negate this effect within the team, which ultimately translates to a positive-resultant manipulation (which could perhaps be viewed as being perverse) of members within the team.

The Understanding:

This personalisation of the project, which complements the fact that TEAM: ROCKET! members have entrenched themselves more deeply into unique project roles than other development teams appear to have (where the natural talents have resulted in highly specialised roles, achieving tasks of research, collaboration and coding), substantiates and translates the personal importance of the project to appeal to the ambition of the individual ego, as well as the responsibility of the collective ego (i.e. the tribe) contributing to the team

Realisation is a matter of becoming conscious of that which is already realised.
Wei Wu Wei; All Ask the Awakened: The Negative Way (1963)

Conclusion

I began this essay by discussing reincarnation as the continuation of an individual’s ego and consciousness. Having delved into complexities and nuances that mark the systems development project, and relating the development and experiences of TEAM: ROCKET! to a wealth of diverse ideas and philosophies, is and of itself a cheeky metaphor of the complexity of the problem being solved, and the diversity and associated wealth of the philosophies and temperaments of the members of the team, creating, quite poetically, a paradigm between the project which TEAM: ROCKET! defines, and TEAM: ROCKET!, which some of the ideas I’ve explored and touched on here, define.

Now, take a breath, and imagine the complexity and richness of what defines each of these philosophies – from the conventions of thinking hats and against method-ism, to the spiritual perspectives of Taoism and Zen, to the new generation ideals of celebrating and nurturing creativity. The explosion of ideas and things which connect the KENKEI project, and TEAM: ROCKET! is a supernova the size of a universe. Everything is connected.

And it is the ability and willingness to connect which is the ultimate energy propelling TEAM: ROCKET! along a full-blooded and curiosity-tinged course through the development of the KENKEI project. Connecting with each other in ideas, spiritualities, philosophies, the yearning for liberation from traditional moulds, and, not least of all, the collaborative ego – which is being reborn, in every moment, with a vibrant and irrepressibly diverse collaborative consciousness.

As we progress, our ability to release life to the harmonies and whirlwinds of creativity becomes a more natural and deeper process, enlightening and awakening the consciousness of the team, and pushing us another inch closer to Nirvana.

END.

I've only got one, and I've only got you

2009-05-10T17:11:00.000+02:00

Infogram showing the most frequently occuring words on this blog

get yours here

Clear the skies, I've got an order of Thunder!

2009-05-10T13:37:00.000+02:00

I wrote this ~~for~~ about a girl two years ago. I quite like it still (mostly because it has Douglas Adams references in it).

Thunder of June

Words, are wonderfully cruel.

Because you see, my dear,

They

art so craftily hid

Cloaked in loops and whorls,

Graceful scratches and flitting swishes -

never showing what they hide, until

It’s Unhidden.

Sounds we can instinctively pre-empt.

A Softness. A Deepness.

Little bursts of entirety

Held in a stringing of harmony

Not so, in the struts and arches

of darkened smatterings upon white

Where each syllable hums its own.

The orchestra of conscious

threading and weaving;

glorious constructs and spiteful veneers

adding, adding, adding…

a sum of parts, weighing and adding

heavier and less heavy

though seldom weighing the same

Oh?

You see, you chime.

Words are the thumbnail.

the bowl,

our souls.

(or whatever you have that comes closest to it).

So fill or empty yours

and angle yourself

against

a flick

and resonate

You could be my enemy, there's still enough time

2009-05-09T17:18:00.000+02:00

I want to give up on:

wanting to be different, simply for difference sake.
trying to be important rather than useful.
ambition where my ego accomplishes instead of a purpose.
caring about having owning, reading or watching things because everyone else likes them.
trying to have a perfectly organized workspace.
trying to be super happy all the time, rather to be peaceful instead.
being everything to everyone.
fitting the mold of my astrology, INFJ profile, or other some suches.
constantly improving myself at the cost of the present.
thinking I don’t have the time or skills to make my dreams a reality.
caring about knowing everything in advance before I take action, rather to learn to react.

Blisters on the street ripen under the 2 o'clock sun

2009-05-09T13:54:00.000+02:00

Mix what you love, love what you mix

Piano/Cello Mash: Love Story (Taylor Swift) vs Viva La Vida (Coldplay) - by Jon Schmidt
right click on the link, save as
see the video here