Nightly Evolution

-- Nights of Evolution

Naked in the auberge rated with a billion stars,
vulnerably exposed for the night with it's cruelties to char.
The Divine power, rearranging these galactic spectra just for me,
harbor me from harm, heal me with your chaste charms.

A shooting star, sailing silently across the night,
diminishing, receding, animating the cosmic carpet by it's flight.
No thunderous lightning proclaiming its majesty,
like innocence burning in the playground of hierarchies.

An enigmatic perception humming in the back of your conclusions,
you keep your questions at bay.
The carnival of life just enough for you, to ignore
the drainage and the yells of your soul.

The music yells through chords,
the night sleeping, groans and snores.
The blind tells by the echoes, the deaf through the shadows
the savior for the day, night is here, they say!

Neons decorate the night, putting up a fight,
midnight-musers shy from the light, stroll into the night,
comfort seekers hide in the realms of dreams.
Dusk, one in all, everybody's peace so it seems…

So shine, shine from your nights….grow, emerge from yourself.
An occasion for evolution be the night...
Dawn blossoms from the twilight,
from the dust orchards ripen, Mona Lisa smiles from the blues,
mountains tower from the sea, from the shore oceans spread free...
Don't paint the night red, start to heal...
Evolve beyond the human clay, grow…glow...
from purity, with purity, into purity…gush forth…
Let tonight be a ceremony of matrimony…
Let light peep into these ancient shadows of your haunted nights.

My Time Horizon

”Nobody knows where you are, how near or how far… Shine on you Crazy Diamond” hums Pink Floyd into my room through the speakers of my IBM Lenovo while some distant flashes of lightning shear the darkness of the midnight outside my half-opened windows…
I understand the TimeHorizon now, all so clearly. The relation between my existance in this dimension of space, time and possibility, and with that of the days of the Mayans, the Mesopotamians, the Vikings, the Ottomans, and the Greeks, the Neanderthals and the Dinosaurs... I see it all, like a hollow crystal, so clear and yet formless. I understand why this present is my present, and not theirs... and why their present is not mine. I understand the reason of my existance in the age when I can have the history of time in my palm. It’s all like the orbits of the revolving cosmic elements. Since time immemorial you’ve been going round and round in seemingly silly circles, never realising that your very listless wanderings were forming the centre. The moment you stop, the centre ceases to be apparent. Then its not about reflection of light, its about dispersion of vision. You see it all so clearly, and yet nothing is seen. But then you understand everything in a strange subtle way...an intuitive wisdom.
..Yes! ‘Closer’ or not, the world IS getting ‘smaller’, and humans are turning into giants, as gigantic as the human cast can let them be. Nothing more, nothing less. And it's time for me to try to grow too…
We do grown up fast, each of us with our own priorities and visions, perceptions and definitions, with our own ‘history’ and a silent dream that we carry with us. Time sure flies by… Seems like just yesterday that me and my friends used to finish our junior-school assignments, and with a small multi-coloured football rush to the nearby “Tundekhel” playing ground to spend the evenings after school. I remember those quiet, stilly early mornings when some of us would rush there during our winter vacations and the army would be exercising their horses... tall and strong, muscular with long bouncing manes...steaming nostrils... they seemed so proud and huge then! Due to the early morning frost our toes would feel stone-numb and we'd jump up and down in our Nike track suits and Adidas football boots to warm up before we kicked the ball.
… All of us, now scattered and evolved, each with our own thoughts, conscience and memories… so many little worlds within one world. Some grew up straight and strong, some broke down in our "meddles", some lost our ‘selves’, and some chosen ones found some elements more than they ever lost.
All I can say now is that I hope we all find our own pot of gold at the end of our own rainbows…

Caught the Homeward Wind

- from my "On the Road Again".

Whew! Finally got to Old Delhi…”The City Of Djinns” as Dalrymple baptizes her in his book. The city that never sleeps, never tires… always moving, hustle and bustle forever. I glanced at my watch and realised that I had less than 30 minutes to make it to the station before I missed my bus home. I got an auto-rickshaw to the Tourist Station at 30Hazare from the outskirts of Old Delhi. All along the way, I was thinking of a back-up plan if I missed the bus …it was that close!
When I got to the tourist station I sought out the driver, a rugged old man in a worn-out khaki suit, and inquired as to how much time we had before we roared off. “Paanch minute baetee”, he answered with the typical Delhi slur. Five minutes! All the while, I had been sweating like an ice-cream melting in the Sahara. I strolled into the backyard. “Toilet-Only Staff” it said. I looked around and quickly slipped inside and latched the door. I stripped in record time, took a shower, dried myself as much as I could with my handkerchief, aired my jockeys and then…out! All before you could say “Obaid! You desperately need a bath!!!” Since the last four days, I had been continuously travelling by rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, the Indian Railway, the Metro and now I was to board an inter-state tourist bus.
The air cools down a bit as if to soothe my morning rush as I light up ‘half a ciggy’ with a bottle of chilled ‘mountain dew’ and try to jot down some sleezy lines before the engine roars to life and off we go again like a projected cannon-ball. “Well darling! Love has caught the homeward wind now”…
…Watching the world unfolding as we head on, fading thoughts flash through my mind, milestones whizz by, the summer sun shines high as banyan trees bow over my blazing path sheltering whatever remains of me on my way home. Sometimes, I wonder…How far is ‘away’, and how near is ‘home’… which turn is ‘right’ and which not.
A map of life, a map of life,
Where can I get you for a dollar and a half...
These lines spring up in my mind. Hmmm… "Map of life", I try to push it into my long-term memory as the title for my next set of lyrics…
… A long road stretching out before me, an engine roaring to life beneath me, a sky that opens out above me as a doorway to the cosmos…a part of the world around me, a beautiful destination ‘open all’ just for me, a light in my eyes and the peace of the heart, some titbits... I guess it doesn’t take much to make me happy!

The Journey to ‘Ordinarity’

...The midnight-darkness trickles into these quiet streets where fancy frilly faces dance in the day time, and as softly as it seeps into my days, it passes as gently, without a trace, leaving behind a whispering twilight that escapes from me even more deftly.
... A little laughter, a few hidden tears, ... a few kicks, a few licks, a few thrills, a few drills... what more could one want from these crazy hours that slip by so easily. No scores to settle, no forced promises to keep, no dark secrets to hide, no reason to not-be-yourself... I lie mesmerized like a baby, too amazed at my own coordinations, entranced like "Alice in wonderland", at a world that unfolds so mysteriously; already too colorful to redo, already too beautiful to complain, already too crazy to try to put sense into... and the midnights never fail to come... so punctually, so dependable... bringing with it a pause that never fails to "enlighten" us a little bit more about the daylight that whisked by... a momentary pause to prepare for yet another daylight drill...
A strange struggle, to become an ordinary instance of existance with ordinary ways, an ordinary human with ordinary desires and chases...ordinary days with ordinary secrets, ordinary downs with ordinary highs, ordinary days with ordinary midnights, ordinary joys with ordinary battles, ordinary carelessness with ordinary fears, ordinary crowds with ordinary estrangement, ordinary charisma with ordinary ugliness, ordinary questions with ordinary searches, an ordinary direction with ordinary waywardness, .... And it took me a long time to get here.

The Rhythms Choose Us

..."Don't want your grip, don't want your greed..." screams Metallica into my ears through a pair of headphones that never fail to accompany me through these nights. One of my best friends that stuck through thick and thin. The next number to be streamed into my ears is the number called "One" by Metallica. With a thumping rhythm, a melody of its own, this has always been one of my anthems, drumming in my head through all my highs and lows. Sometimes I wonder if it’s we who identify with the music or the other way round, we are identified by the music..? Do we choose the rhythms or is it the rhythms that choose us...is it that we choose to live or life that chooses us..? This thought takes me far off to Valencia, Spain where a friend who I met during my travels, lives. I've never been to Spain but I've seen enough of beautiful Spain on tv, heard enough about beautiful Spain from people who've been there, or so as they said, listened to enough songs about beautiful Spain, enough to be able to imagine Spain in its famed splendor. My friend, the lead guitarist of "Eudemonia", a band that experiments with 'philosophical music', is a serious musician.
From one of our conversations, I started feeling that we cannot create music, but rather that the rhythms flow into the mind of the composer. Maybe a fragment of the ‘Universal Music’ that for some reason, or no reason at all, chooses one of the abundantly scattered subconscious minds from us out here, and seeps in note by note, until we have a rhythm in this dimension in a form that all of us can interpret...a song! What actually is the element that we call 'inspiration'? It definitely is not something resident in out minds, as we do not have inspirations throughout the day. Is the term 'an inspiring thought' even sensible? It's the 'inspiration' that brought about the 'thought' in the mind. Hence, the 'inspiration' and 'thought' are two different entities. So if the 'inspiration' is not another thought of the mind, then how can it be classified. Is the 'mind' even the seat of the inspiration at all......?

Theatre Of The Absurds

Dim streetlights shielded by the milky mist,
where lanterns in a timeless moment swing
for the wayward to home, their bundles of confusion bring.

Sometimes don’t you feel like we choose a mask everyday from our locker along with our shirts and flaunt it all through the day, finally taking it off before retiring to our solitude at night...a role through out the day and it is only when you are alone that you really are yourself with no mask and without a script to follow. Don’t you think it’s time to finally discover yourself for who you really are…

Rest a while, in the eden of oblivion…
Loosen yourself, in the gallery of your masks…
Introspect yourself, in the mirror of solitude…
Swallow a few tears, in the closets of your memory…
Resurrect once again, in the chamber of anonymity…
Arise, flaming…within the light of the smile of a beloved face.
Outstretch…reach into where you can yield to love and life.
Step down from the dais where life lives betrayed…
Step out, from the 'Theatre of the absurd'.

Credit card number, bank account number, social security number, license number, passport number enrolment number, telephone number,…number number! Sometimes don’t you feel like your identity is some combination of digits and alphabets! Don’t you feel like screaming out “I AM NOT A NUMBER!”

Stars, pretentious twinklers, peek into the milky splashes
over vacant hearts lost to numbers and cards.
The crescent growing, smiles in humor wise
over broken souls, defeated by pains and scars.
While I, in benumbing solitude try to figure
how, between souls, 'spaces' from 'distance' do differ…

We all need our ‘space’ but do you always realize when your cherished ‘space’ becomes a ‘distance’ and you become a castle with the drawbridge raised…and the ‘ivy starts to grows over your door’…

Figures huddled together around
the campfire that flings their lonely shadows afar…
Strange lights that illuminate the packets of void
amongst iron masks, cast with smiles…
Don't wait for the curtain to fall, only death the curtain boy's cue.
So let's step out…from the 'Theatre of the absurd'.
Let's listen to the serenade of Life…
And we may finally start to LIVE…

Meditate

-a journey through space, time, values and definitions.

Turn off the lights, close your eyes…lets form a circle and hold each other’s hands. Yes, let the music play in the backdrops of our minds. Now listen to me intently as I guide you through a short soft journey, and we may come back with the experience of evolution…

Midnight friendly to dreamers,
under the banners of peace.
Searched for the truth of reflections in the mirrors of illusions?
Now meditate with intent, to unify with the eternal cosmic affinity.
Hum a tune in harmony to the chants of the angelic bands,
Meditate with intent to unify with the essence of the truth…

“…there now…it’s working, isn’t it? The Heartbeats! You feel it, don’t you? Now we’re getting somewhere… carry on, I’m with you. The ripples through your back!...pay heed now. Sometimes, the Truth is best perceived through closed eyes.”

Pay heed! Pay heed now… Let’s depart…
Transcend this earthly plane, rise above the dimension
of doubts and queries, complexes, thoughts and inner dialogues.
With blinded eyes and open minds,
gaze into the abyss of your souls.

… if you can’t realize your soul, at least your mind… tell me what do you feel…Can it ever be told? Will it ever be told? Will it never be told…?

Let this be a moment of ceremonial matrimony between
traditional consciousness, your sub-conscious and your super-conscious selves.
Consummate yourself in this ceremony with celestial witnesses…

…aaah! And the music stretches and pulls you inner self…shivers! shivers!?

Awaken in a chamber, ancient and lost, in the ruins of a forgotten civilization.
Study the artifacts of your mind, uncover the tombs of your soul
for it is there that the answers lie buried under material debris.
In the silent echoes of nullity, hear the voices of your soul speak of wisdom.

How long will you toil for ends that only lead to other shallow beginnings.
Materialism has captivated our souls,
can’t you hear it screaming…”Wake up! Wake up, you degenerate!”…

Wake up now and embrace the seeds of your true identity.
Wake up now to find yourself .
Shed aside your fears and doubts, expectations and inhibitions, base self, foul society and conformity,
jump over the fence, for it is yonder that your soul waits for you.

Chanting in the background – “Thou art lost to the twilight zone,
a stranger greets the morning sun.
find yourself behind your social mask.”

In this moment, we sailed through space, time, values and definitions.
I invite you to my ‘Ceremony of Redefinition’.
Let’s redefine ourselves…
Uncovered your tombs? Shattered the mould?
Lucid, formless, rudderless… seeker of eternal peace.

Can’t embrace the light, and in darkness you can’t find delight?
Hither they cry and moan, thither they laugh too strong.
Caught in between, a misfit joker.
Don’t laugh, don’t moan,
draw the iron vest closer.
Rearrange yourself in the Gallery of the Lost and Found.
I invite you again to my ‘Ceremony of Redefinition’.