Fragments
On Love, Loss and Resurrection
Writing is an act of resurrection.
I imagine that less broken people are less fragmented in how they see themselves and the world.
The way I experience the world, perhaps even before using words, is like a collage, with no direction or order. Memories, imaginings, dreams, actions and stillness mingle in retrospect like objects in outer space, with no gravity to organize them..
Like someone made of ‘papier-mache’, fragments are all I’ve got.
The trauma of loss has erased much of my memory.
I wonder about people who have complete, fluent biographies.
I am imperfect.
Perhaps the essence of life is its imperfection? Is that where vitality and energy come from? Perfection is static, it has no reason to move or change. But imperfection is a catalyst.
Stories, including histories, begin wherever the teller chooses to begin narrating, it could be thousands of years prior to the main event or minutes before it takes place. And the level of details or abstraction in the telling is also lenient. So, any honest portrayal of anything is basically fragmented. It’s all a question of where we place the frame, what the angle is, what stays in and what stays outside the story.
Lost love and absent love. One killed at twenty three, the other absent, inaccessible to me.
This book is an invitation into my mind, into what it is to be a fragmented identity, belonging yet alienated from my Middle Eastern country, at home yet not belonging in England.
Being fragmented is being on the margins, and from the invisible margins of life we get an interesting glimpse of the world.
Loving Poetry
What is it, to love poetry?
When does this symptom first appear?
How long does it last?
Is there any way of recovering from it?
Does it hurt?
Does it fill you with joy?
Sadness?
Stress?
Hopefulness?
Dread?
Does it invite you in and make you feel at home?
Does it feel like visiting a strict old unwelcoming mansion?
Is it easy to wear or does it need practice, like a long row of buttons on the back of an evening dress?
