I have always been fond of the reality of how feeble we are. Of how excruciatingly real and raw everything is. How scary and beautiful.... like secrets in the open.
We are always in a moment and the passage of those instances like seeing trains fleet from a station one after the other.
Next thing you know you are barefoot standing in front of a mountain of moments that now look like a distant past.
I am very much fond of these mundane instants that pass me by. This mountain I have before me, of everything I am, all that I have felt. All the beauty I have absorbed in my bones from the yellow of the sun, the blue of the sky, the green of the trees, the salt from the sea and my eyes, the brown of the grains that I submerge my feet in on hot yellow days, the cold of the ice cream that runs warmth in my veins, and vanilla in my bones, the screaming of the birds, the roars of the traffic, the buzzing of kids with sticky fingers running in the field, the comfort of sunflowers, the stars that shine for you while the rest of the world sleeps.
I see the beauty in every molecule of this place. I miss. And here I blur into the walls of confinement, stuck in reverse.
Sherihan Gamal once said, “If you see the beauty in something, don’t wait for others to agree” make your own beauty, write letters, paint, scream songs you endear, the ones that make you feel alive, the ones that make your spine throb. Its almost as if the earth is whispering to us, as Edgar Allan Poe said “tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway” for being so cruel with it, and yet still giving us the room for love, accepting us for being terrible. All of me wants to scream what Anaïs Nin once said “I want to consume the whole world, devour it, chew it to pieces, and spit it out again—fresh, terrible, beautiful, alive in all its parts, alive and singing” ....for the days to come.
Until then, the world is taking a break and so are we. And that’s okay.
By Naila Ali,
Karachi, Pakistan.