x

Reda Haq

• I’ve graduated with an Upper Second Class Honours in English and Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. That was last week. It was good, the non-stop celebrating. The actual day was kinda bad in that I was ill – no nerves, I assure you, yet I threw up a total of 5times and collapsed while having my photo taken in the photography studio a mere half hour before the ceremony. But I made it through and we [parentals and J] went for dinner with Lucifer, her sister The Other Hand and their parents/ cousin/ friend which was lovely.
• I am currently job-hunting. Media. Journalism. Editorial for Publishing houses. PR – that kinda thing.

I’ve spent the last week predominantly meeting up with like_a_rosie, piesecki and bt_phonebox and spending excessive moneys on food and other consumerable goodies like exciting clothes.

We are currently trying to reorganise the house now that myself and the twinbrother have brought back all our respective junk from university…and we have guests coming tomorrow.

I also think I’d quite enjoy writing a script. We shall see whether this thinking becomes more of an urge in the coming weeks… I shall perhaps enlist the help of one Lucifer Knight to further this endeavour if she is not too preoccupied with her own writings… x

Reda Haq

On that note, if you’re not really into shortcuts, apart from the fairly obvious Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V etc for ‘Copy’ and ‘Paste’, when you’re in your browser and want to go to a website enclosed by the common “www—-.com” try just typing the word/phrase and then hitting Ctrl+Enter….

It inserts it for you!
Eg. hotmail Ctrl+Enter -> site appears!
Facebook Ctrl+Enter -> site appears!
Works in any browser – tis Genius, of a kind.

The impetus for this post was on learning that IE was messing up my blog html code… inserting stupid linebreaks. I think I’ve fixed it, but it may still be doing so.

What’s your browser-of-choice?  Or are you so utterly ungeeky that you really don’t care?… By which i mean really don’t care, as opposed to care but think you’re too cool to answer such questions.

I could go onto a Thunderbird Vs. Outlook debate, but firstly I’ve never used Thunderbird, and secondly, I doubt many people reading this really care…
Unless they are Techies [ComputerScience students] *cough* Ninja *cough*

and my sneaky twin who may be forced to make comment… Who chooses a degree where you take a course entitled Computational Complexity? - “What’ve you got Fridays?” - “oh, Complexity…”

FUNTIMES. x

Reda Haq

ETA: Baseless Optimism tells me I have the cool. Thus my geekness is negated.

I composed this in first year, 2 years ago now!!! Submitted it as my main Creative Writing piece, but I still rather love it, if you’d forgive my boldness in saying so. Unfamiliar with the Demeter/Persephone myth? Here’s the wikipedia’d take. Any opinions or criticism would be most welcome!

Epistle to Dr. Zeus

I

Dear Doctor, I write in firm truth’s pursuit,
Before this fraud develops to lawsuit.
Defendants such as this you’d wish to save
From matters of distress – it’d prove too grave
A verdict, both for your career and mine,
For without grapes, who could produce the wine?

So here I now come to attest one truth,
I pray you will not find it too uncouth.
That scent of sandalwood, those bloodstained lips,
In Love, mere mortals’ sights are thus eclipsed.

So long was she this sheltered and protected
By her dear mother, who never neglected,
To keep their humble council home abound
With jasmine, sage – sweet roses did surround,
To keep her hidden from the gaze of those,
Who gathered when her silver scent arose.

But she, fair rebel, clad in combat boots,
Dark eyeliner, and hair with aqua roots
Would often roam with her archaic smile,
Plastered into the depths of dark denial.
And with her nymph’an friends she would descend,
Into that neon mass she’d try to blend.

Her angsty, spaced-out gaze was not enough -
Rough? Yes. But now to prove that she was tough.
A powdered line a razorblade can draw,
Dear Doctor, now you spy the fatal flaw!
A lesson from Kate Moss was the new drill,
Who knew that good looks – minus brains – could kill?

Most certain, our heroine was naïve!
Her heart, so prominent, on her white sleeve.
Though her life was not taken, truth be told,
The symptoms did all seem to fit the mould.
Still, in that throbbing, palpitating sight,
She’d come to shine: a pure and wholesome light

That even Darkness could not keep away
And like a moth was drawn from black of day,
And plucked this cosmic flower from their midst,
Enveloped her in his black cloak and kissed
Her tiny, trembling mouth so limply wrought,
Intoxicated thus, her breath was caught.

An arrow drawn from Cupid’s own quiver,
Redundant now, but made the two shiver.
And leaning deeper, hungry in their lust,
Neither suspected that they could combust.
Though weariness shapes wariness as one,
The taking of one path can’t be undone.

He led her down a pretty primrose path,
And further down – “heed not the aftermath.”
He whispered it as delicate refrain;
An act that proved deliciously inane,
For when he tried to garner a response,
He found she was the queen of nonchalance.

II

He took her to a dingy little room,
As dark as night, as serene as the moon.
And here he lavished her with tales of woe,
Of how he was a misunderstood foe,
And whilst she helped herself to scones and tea,
He told her, through his tears that flowed so free:

“It is not folly, nor capricious wit,
Which tether me, so ready to admit -
But merely love, and love that is so real,
I find you too audacious to conceal
My true intentions, which may come as shock,
A marriage ring shall bind the marriage lock.”

She stamped and stomped and screamed to be released,
But would not leave before enjoying a feast.
A pomegranate seed, a cake or two…
Between the feasting, showed him her tattoo.
It would not take a gen‘ius to construe,
That gluttony was here seen sharp and new.

Meanwhile her mother grew hysterical,
And knocked from door to door, numerical
And ordered in her search to discover,
Just where her daughter was held under cover.
The wheat did come to weep, I must confess,
And with her all the land lay in distress.

With lands so sad, she sought to search the seas,
All seven of them, yet did not find ease.
The Oracle at Delphi gave no clue
“Some clairvoyant! Some soothsayer! Some fool!”
She cursed under her raw, grief-stricken breath.
This trying journey seemed to signal death.

And never did forever mean so much,
As when a restless mother could not clutch
And embrace in her arms her tender child.
Wonder when she evolved to something wild?

And desperation never threatened life
As now it did, so multiplied by strife.
She looked up at last to the stormy skies,
Berated herself for all those white lies,
And found herself addressing the heavens,
The clouds that lay in layers, steep sevens.

“Helios!” She called obsequiously,
“Bright sun, what is there that you do not see?
My daughter is vanished, where were you then:
On the night of the Twenty-First, at 4pm?”
The mother now looked certainly relieved,
For alibis, so quick, are not conceived.

III

She soon exposed a dingy little room,
Where sunlight fought through perpetual gloom.
The withered leaves, the petals were now dead,
And poor Demeter felt that her heart bled.
And in this land, dear Hades did reside,
Now Persephone suffered from divide.

And here I now come to attest the truth,
Before this fraud develops to lawsuit.
That scent of sandalwood, those bloodstained lips,
In Love, mere mortals’ sights are thus eclipsed.

A shattered fist, an undulating sigh,
A cry of mercy and a broken eye,
Will come to pass if something isn’t done.
I ask you now, dear sir, to draw your gun.

How now to deal with those who tempted fate?
How now to chastise and how to berate?
How to, both mother and lover, sedate?
The question: How to settle this debate?

Though I have reviewed all such evidence
I cannot see who’s worth deliverance.
This case does leave me poor and none the wiser,
I call upon you now, oh great advisor

So was she altogether free of sin?
Does beauty have a blackened soul within?

x

Reda Haq

castrating pentagrams

smoking helium in an enclosed sphere

buoyant

concentric, thought closer

dripping silver mountain water on

the river never meets the now shattered black sea

as the cuspate star severs paradigm paralysis

x

Reda Haq

ﺗﻴﺮﯼ ﺁﻭﺍﺯ ﻛﮯ ﺳﺎﻳﮯ۔ ﺗﺮﮮ ﮨﻮﻧﻄﻮﮞ ﻛﮯ ﺳﺮﺍﺏ

“In the wasteland of solitude, my love, quiver

shadows of your voice, illusions of your lips.” – Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Illusions

Hope, as it echoes, smokes eternity
Like a ripe volcano. A cascade of
Pyroclastic inhibition – Speed is
Beauty – Falling like a chiffon curtain

Veil. Where two lovers are indistinct but
United at dusk; where my answers are:
Reflectionless desire. Impressive
Versatility; I smoke it behind

A mask – Venetian in design.
I smoke hope cigarettes with speed, calming
Ripened nerves to ropes in a graveyard where
Lovers are united in smoke curls.

x

Reda Haq

yellow of the sweet-wrapper he’s just unwrapped
penny toffee, a disc now being spun

‘cross the horizon you see it glow, grow
sticky in his fingers – he’d liked Quality Streets

or was it Roses – you can’t remember
this one was always particularly sweet to the touch

and still dividing loyalties, as the disc spins
on the desk

you wait for it to land but he keeps flicking his nail at the edge
as though it were a coin, or a die

unwilling to decide one way or other, preferring
nothing to the silence from a twin you chose

Instead, the hazy way he looks as you hold tracing paper up to the light

x

Reda Haq

P.S. I HATE penny sweets… not sure why I just wrote a poem on the subject. Anything to avoid the imminent inevitability of essaying I suppose.

Is Mariah Carey, in the colloquial usage of the word, “FIT”??? cos my answer is a resounding NO. And yet people constantly disagree with me… plz girls and boys, take a second to answer this question… Mariah Carey, hot or not? I refuse to post a pic on my blog so google-image if you don’t know or can’t remember what she looks like. x

Reda Haq

It strikes me, nonetheless, just how much words can develop new meanings, so much so that the original is obscured. Often this is because they are adopted as proper nouns – names for things which become so prolific that usage in the traditional context is next to nothing by comparison.

Take Arsenal, for example, how many little kids running around in their Arsenal kit and scarves and whatever other paraphernalia, must take ‘arsenal’ simply as the name of their favourite football team, rather than a word meaning a supply of weapons or munitions.

In fact, how many of us Britons hear the word “arsenal” and think football before we think of weapon stock, not for lack of an extensive vocabulary.

We’ve probably all noticed this and I’m not really saying anything particularly new but it’s still sortof interesting…no?

And if not, apparently Arsenal are my team?! so at least I’m winning… Go gunners! x

Reda Haq

My housemates and I are saddened. x

Reda Haq

Fiction: The Body Artist – Don DeLillo

Short Story: ‘Other People’ from Fragile Things – Neil Gaiman

Non-fiction: The Culture of Time and Space – Stephen Kern

Fashion: I don’t wear the Hijab myself, but I still prefer to dress modestly… how fabulous is this?? With their rather charming tagline, Discover the Beauty of Modesty

… I think such fashion has great empowering potential. x

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A Few NEWish Songs:

• Needy Girl – Chromeo
• 11h30 – Danger
• DVNO – Justice
• The Bears are Coming – Late of the Pier
• Flux – Bloc Party
• Flex – Dizzie Rascal
• With You – Chris Brown

Slightly – A lot older:

• Paper Planes – M.I.A.
• Street Guru Pt1 – Nitin Sawnhey [this is rather brilliant] Pt2
• High Hopes – Pink Floyd
• Black Swan – Thom Yorke
• Take You On A Cruise – Interpol

Particularly cool videos:

• I Am Somebody – DJ Mehdi (Feat Chromeo)
• A Million Ways To Be Cruel – OKGO (Everyone’s already seen Here It Goes Again, yes?)
• D.A.N.C.E. – Justice

• This DUDE rapping – read the lyrics alongside it, my brother sent me the link. CRAZY SHIT! His remixes like this of Justin Timberlake’s My Love are also pretty damn SICk. “Keep it locked!” x

Reda Haq

I’d never been to France before in my life, shocking I know.

The song of the trip: Les Voisines by Renan Luc.

Much food – to be precise, cakes and pastries, were consumed. Patisserie Galore!
Pistachio Maccarroons are love.

Whatthebananas tried Escargots.

I wore a Beret. We’d planned this beforehand – a mass beret-wearing experience – we would sit in Parisian Cafés looking intellectual and arty. Being a Liberal Arts student, but accompanied by 2Engineers and a FrenchGeographist , I felt the need to welcome them into the cult of lazyness. It was FAIL. They thought ‘The Plan’ was a joke. A JOKE!?!

I adamantly wore my Beret without them. BAH!

Did you know Fridays are national ROLLERBLADING day in France?? There were some dudes showing their madskillz outside the Notre Dame.

There was some drunk guy babbling French at us near the Eiffel Tower, more to the point how he could tell I was Pakistani is still something of a scary mystery. like_a_rosie pushing the guy away and yelling “Non!” repeatedly was amusement enough.

I also crashed into a nun at the Basicila de Sacre-Coeur on MontMartre. Piesecki assures me it was her who crashed into me. Still, it was the icing on the proverbial gateau.

So from Paris, with love …

x

Reda Haq

There are times when the monotonous suddenly breaks, like a delicate tearing, uneven. We fall through the fabric of malleability.

What Woolf called a ‘moment of being’, what Wordsworth knew as ‘spots of time’ where you see extra, more than vivid. Recognising positive negative space. The intensity of this moment seems more than reality, brighter and more dense than regular life.

I am orbiting the essence of life, rather than living it. The only thing that seems to cut through us is time.

Vladimir Kush – ‘Metamorphosis’

We flew balloons on a fuel called Love. And so with velocity, the time derivative of distance, we caught Beauty as it moved.

Whispering beneath the surfaces of things- I wanted to crawl between those movements, neither forwards nor backwards and how, now, to negotiate this fervent struggle? This frozen clocktime of a broken watch x

Reda Haq

Title is from Foals’ track “Balloons“

Having established that we actively wish to perpetuate our individuality and sense of self as unique, we next come to the ways in which we go about distinguishing ourselves. These can sometimes be, rather ironically, ways in which we end up identifying with others – our methods of fitting out help us to fit in.

Firstly, we single out things that we feel make us special. Our taste in music – the more obscure the better – similarly, our preference in film, in literature, our interests, we dress a certain way…

In a bid of self-indulgence, I’ll reveal to you, avid reader, that I’m massively guilty in attempting to achieve superior fashion uniqueness. Friends have told me I have a “weird but good” dress sense. (Doesn’t everyone enjoy the ambiguous compliment?) I’m aware I make an effort to appear different in the way I dress. I’m a fan of aesthetics. I enjoy beautiful clothes, I relish wearing them. I pick out clothes that are edgier, crazier, customise them even – these were plain before I attacked them…

I have fun browsing fashion blogs like thesartorialist and am conscious of the fact that my “individual” fashion sense is greatly influenced by other people or current trends – you go against the grain, but only a little bit, not completely. To think that you are a free spirit, unattached or influenced by any convention or trend, is either incredibly naive or inconceivably arrogant.

One friend even labelled my sense of style as “the Urban Gypsy” .. and indeed, labels is what it comes down to.

Being the intellectual beings we are, there is discontentment in too obviously following trends, being one of many thousand sheep in the world. As long as it’s not obvious, if we’re all sheep saying “moo”, rather than “baa”, our conformity hidden behind layers of distortion, then we’re comfortable. The distinction is in our perception. Balancing the sense of self perceived as individual or, contrarily, as a collective, is to realise that we can in fact be both simultaneously. A rather obvious paradox? On the face of it, yes. But its the underlying contradictions that the OxygenChameleon’s here to sell ya…

More on the confirmation of conform-ation, – lists, labels and fastracking friendships – in Part 3. x

I do, however, have a fascination with the way in which memory functions. The fragmentary, hazy nature of memory. The inability to clearly remember. We pick out particular things, recollect instances, smells, colours, the sensory. The texture and burning on your tongue of an extra-strong Polo mint.

Salvador Dali’s ‘Persistence of Memory’

Do you see yourself in your memories?

I remember being asked to recall my first memory and I was at a loss. I feel unable to distinguish those memories constructed from the stories my parents tell me, I imagine them to the extent that I think I remember.

Years ago, we went to the seaside – Cambersands I think it was – took my cousin, he was a toddler, the exact age I fail to recall. We had a fabulous time, built sandcastles with moats and bridges and ran upto the surf as the tide came in. He fell asleep in the car on the way home. When he woke up he’d already forgotten the entire experience.

It was something of an Epiphany, to see so starkly the affect of time and consciousness.

In the interest of intellectualising the trivial, I shall begin by telling you a short anecdote. The humour of which is derived at my expense. As always.

The summer before university started we [myself and 9friends] visited Carmarthenshire, Wales, for a week in order to celebrate the ‘End of an Era’. We vacationed in a cottage which was more of a mansion. It even boasted a chesstable; the centrepiece of the turret room. House insignia was displayed in tapestry form, crossed with real swords; it was all mightily impressive. The impressiveness of the mansion is irrelevant to my point, I just wanted to make you jealous. We arrived on Saturday morning and, always prone to curiousity, decided exploring our surroundings would be a worthwhile pursuit. We ambled past bushes laden with blackberries, saw green fields stretching all the way to the horizon, laughed at the scarecrow with a sandbag head. We then chanced upon some sheep. In my utter excitement, not because of my sheltered SE London upbringing, proclaimed “Haz look! Its a sheep! Moo.” The moment it registered, it was too late to recover.

Artwork my own

“Look its a sheep. Moo” I have never been able to live this off. Ever. Rosie gave me miniature wooden clothes pegs with sheep on them for xmas last yr. Min gifted me with a sheep notebook. Becca quotes it at me every chance she gets. Piesecki smiles whilst WhattheBananas cackles in the corner. As I say, I have never been able to live this off. Possibly because I keep retelling the tale, much in the manner of Conrad’s Marlow, such as now.

Which brings me, a little late, to the central image of this discussion, the concept of a sheep saying moo… All to be explored in Part2… Aren’t you excited? [HellYes! would be the preferred response here] x

photographs you kept
the arc – sketched by a compass
was the horizon
we went by. our plans as yet
undisintegrated but

getting there, maybe, perhaps
unbottled seascrolls
dredged between existences
if freshwater fishing
held as much charm as this now.

x

A friend [Q], who will remain anonymous, got a text from her BF [K] this evening. These are not Hollowegians btw so attempts at deducing identity are, most probably, futile:

K: “I’m in ‘Spoons’. Gareth stole candles to be romantic with Amanda.
I stole some ketchup if you want some.”

I found this hilarious. Not only because Q is an awesome person and this totally exemplifies the kind of relationship K+Q have – it couldn’t be any other way with Q-, but also because it is technically fabulous.

Break it down now…

“I’m in ‘Spoons’”: Simplicity. Oddness. Genius. What an awesome name for a restaurant. The pluralisation makes it all the more interesting as a clause. Taking the Matrix-popularised philosophy of “be the spoon” to a whole new level – be inside the spoon. Or Spoons, for there are many. That’s what I’m talkin’ bout

The oracle [not at Delphi, sorry] is wise in many ways.

“Gareth stole candles to be romantic with Amanda”: The framing of the phrase between the proper nouns makes it somewhat beautiful. Yet, contrasted with the very functional, logical, almost sequential nature of ‘did this in order to this‘, it establishes the perfect foundation for the next sentence…

“I stole some ketchup if you want some.”: The repetition of “stole”, coupled with the brilliant juxtaposition of the romantic of the previous sentence and the somewhat banal mention of ketchup in this one, is awesomeness in gooey tomato format. What a bizarre condiment to steal, and as proof of what? Affection? How utterly charming. I love the lack of questionmark at the end. The sentence doesn’t conclude so much as trail off… it’s not “I stole some ketchup for you”, thereby mirroring the framing effect of the “Gareth… Amanda”, it’s more offhand, a little more casual, a little more real.

I apologise, Q, to dissect your relationship and analyse it thus in literary terms.

Q, along with my brother, J, unabashedly appreciates the evilfusion of ketchup and rice.

I shall leave you to place judgement!
Please do, it’ll fortify my anti-tomatoeyrice argument.

x

finding it equational to -
equalify the tweed
sounds of pretention

inhalers. For when your breath gets
slower, shorter, take deep
calming ones. breath gets, breathe
not slower, but

fastidious, now, don’t let her get away
in thinking she’s indifferent
assuming and making hypocrisy
art form by which to measure
defiance.

to unfinish and leave open
to not balance the equation

not yet not the top coat of varnish

with an entourage of fabulous friends. Sparklers and Sparkly [beverages] in hand, we counted down, obnoxiously, from 10; watched as the London sky exploded along the length of the embankment.

Impressive it was.

I was not so well informed as to expect Ballroom dancing, but having been moreexcitedthanwords about the Strictly final, was majorly up for the challenge. First we learnt how to cha-cha-cha, jive and waltz. Omgz the fun. As the dancefloor filled up, we resorted to spazzing out to a variety of MASSIVE TUNES. This could otherwise be described as the manic-rave dancing practices of youth in modern discotheques, more commonly known as clubs. One of us even brought back the breakdancing worm. That was immense.

To an AWESOME 2008! May it bring you happiness and prosperity and peace. And pies. Or π, if you are mathematically inclined.

x

—

The title of this blogpost is from point 8. of Marinetti’s ‘Manifesto of Futurism’
- Out of context it appears a morbid statement. The manifesto itself is call-to-arms for speed, action, fervour, movement, revolt. A little lacking in subtlety, despite moments of beautiful phrasing. But then, that was the point.