A Myth in Creation

'Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.' Josh Billings

My Absurd Years By M. Awais Aftab "I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know the meaning… What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms." -- Albert Camus It all began in early adolescence when I, a boy of mediocre abilities, found my imagination being sparked by the lives of great geniuses of history - the scientists and philosophers who had left indelible marks on human thought by their spectacular ideas and discoveries. Reading about their lives left such a strong impression on me that I longed to be like them; the life and routine of an average person repelled and horrified me, because it seemed to lack the nobility of the pursuit of truth and the sense of being a part of human history which I so craved for. What I felt then was sheer ambition: great dreams driving me forward and providing coherence to my life. They gave me a meaning, a purpose, a hope … something which I f

Empty By M. Awais Aftab I felt empty today Like a vacuum-bubble was inside me A black hole of thoughts Sucking all emotions and colours But then I saw That it wasn't a hollow void But a super-compression Of my fears and doubts Of unsaid guilt and unuttered longings Pressured and condensed Into a concrete, heavy emptiness… [Published in Poet's Corner , in today's Us Magazine]

There are two sides to fame, subjective and objective. The subjective fame is the feeling of being famous, the idea that you are famous, well-known, talked-about etc, which may or may not be true. It is entirely possible that a person may not be very famous but he is deluded with the belief that he is. The second is the objective side... the degree to which people really do talk about you, which you may or may not be aware of. One could be like Ludwig Wittgenstein, who returned to Cambridge after about a decade in 1929, and he was greeted at the railway station by a crowd of England's greatest intellectuals and thinkers, and Wittgenstein realized to his horror that he had become one of the world's most famous philosophers during the time of his absence. Well, in the normal course of events, the subjective aspect is derived from the objective one, and for a public celebrity, it is not that difficult to determine the extent to which he is famous: you can check the news that appea

since feeling is first by e. e. cummings since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a far better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry --the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says we are for eachother: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis

Meredith: OK, here it is. Your choice, it's simple, her or me. And I'm sure she's really great. But Derek, I love you. In a really, really big pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window, unfortunate way that makes me hate you, love you. So pick me. Choose me. Love me. Grey's Anatomy, Episode # 205

Even those people who commit suicide do not count death as a small matter, and they are startled and resist when death comes to them in another manner than the one they have chosen. La Rochefoucald

The two lovers There they were On two opposite poles Of the chaotic, neurotic crowd And for a brief moment They saw one another And sought one another Struggling to break free from The interlocked chains of limbs But getting lost and disoriented By the pushes and pulls And there he was The Moses of love Watching this with a subtle smile And he swung his rod And tapped it on the ground Lo! Behold! There was parting of the crowd And in the centre, they stood Facing each other… M. Awais Aftab

'The sea complains upon a thousand shores.' Alexander Smith

Postmodernists believe that a piece of text lacks a single, stable meaning, and that multiple interpretations are possible, none of which is the 'true' or 'central' one, and that a deconstructed text lacks this 'centre' of meaning and instead shows a free play of meaning, with meaning fluctuating between a number of interpretations. Postmodernists go one step further ahead and say that if language is fragmented, then human mind, which thinks in terms of language, must also be fragmented. But i wonder, is this implication correct? It is possible that a sentence per se has multiple meanings, but when you are thinking of that sentence, your mind is aware of only one meaning, the meaning that you intend to convey. As long as a sentence is out there as a 'text', as a subject of deconstructive analysis, it lacks a stable meaning, but when it is a 'thought' in your mind, there is a definite, stable meaning... that's what i think.

Ezra , as he explained to me the influence of statistics on his thinking: "A null hypothesis is a hypothesis which we assume to be true until statistical evidence proves it to be wrong, and which is rejected usually if the researcher becomes 95% or more confident that the data indicates otherwise. And my null hypothesis about women is that they are mean, cruel, evil, nasty and self-centered, and which i assume every woman to be unless evidence indicates to the contrary!"

'I stood upon the silent hill And stared into the sky until My eyes were blind with stars and still I started into the sky' Ralph Hodgson The painting is 'Starry Night Over the Rhone' by Vincent Van Gogh

Iqra Asad wrote a two part cover-story in Us Magazine ' Tea with Us ', which is basically an interview of the prominent writers of the magazine, which also includes me. Here is the portion relevant to me: His collaboration with Saad on 'Distrust Us' propelled him to stardom, but unfortunately (or fortunately?) he fell short of heart throb status. Undaunted by his failure to secure female fandom, he proceeded to churn out pieces on art and literature. Winning hearts isn't everything, after all. M. AWAIS AFTAB Occupation: Dissecting human bodies and human souls; a medical student. Age: 20 Date of Birth: 8th August 1987 Educational Institution: King Edward Medical University City: Lahore First article: My first poem 'The Rain Within' came in 2004. First article was a part of a cover story on Tuitions. The best thing about writing: The ability to influence people, and touch their hearts and minds. What I do in my spare time: Read books, chat with my frie

X: Have you ever had that feeling... that your desire to save the one thing you value the most in life may eventually lead you to lose it forever?

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?" Dead Poets Society

It is a general impression that a person who has a habit of quoting other people tends to lack original thoughts of his own. While this may be true in many instances, there are cases of exception. Someone may quote another scholar or a writer rather than using his own words not because the same thought didn't occur to him but because he feels that that particular quote provides a more elegant expression to his own thoughts. If a writer has already expressed an idea in very fine words, should a person still attempt to say it in his own words just for the sake of appearing original, given that the intention is merely to convey a particular thought to the people?

Recently i watched the movie 'V for Vendetta', and i really enjoyed watching... the story, the socio-political issues it raises, the characters, it was all very interesting. And then i discovered a spoof trailer of this movie at YouTube, titled 'C for Cookie', and it was so hilarious, that i had to share it on the blog. You'll enjoy it more if you have seen the movie:

Summer: God, he loves you. He got in a fight and burnt a house down over you. That's hot. What more do you need? Marissa: How about talking to me? O.C., Episode # 103

"Our African friends are more permissive in this respect. In the Zulu tradition, every man must compose a poem before his death. Probably without that he would not be allowed to enter the paradise of his tribe. Ought not all gods make this condition incumbent on their respective bondsmen. Perhaps, but heaven must have its peace too." Mushir Anwar, Why should poetry have no purpose [in Dawn newspaper, 6 March 08]

"The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life." Jean Giraudoux

"All history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography." Ralph Waldo Emerson I was going through some of my autobiographical writings, and i wondered that there were events that would appear to be very different if narrated by a person involved in it other than me. And simultaneously i realized that those differing versions would not be the 'wrong' ones, even if they contradict the versions i narrate, because they would have been told based on the limitations of experience of that person, just as my versions would have been told based on my limitations. And in such circumstances, the idea of distinction between a right version and a wrong version seems to break-down: all we are left with are a number of different accounts of the same occurance, none of which is 'wrong' in the usual sense of the word. That is to say, i realized that i cannot even objectively describe an account of my own life , because the people involved

Dure: "I don't know, sometimes I feel you make a conscious effort to be or maybe portray yourself as opposing anything which is even slightly conventional or conservative... even if that is the only 'fault' in that thing."

"Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We're more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right. It's very hard." Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass [Part 3 of His Dark Materials Trilogy]