Bloody me...

had another dream last night... dont really remember the beginning... some woman was doing a commentary about how Christ shall rise or something... something about the west... and then i see myself in the crucified position... with stigmata wounds on my hands and feet. Blood gushing like a fountain from my wounds... There was this massive lightning in the sky and it started raining and the water was washing away my blood... the next thing i know is im dying and i had this enormously huge body that was placed on top of all these miniature people... and i kept on saying 'God please dont send me to hell'...

and then i woke up...
3.30 am. last night.

A reason to go insane

It was late at night on the eve of October 7th, 2005. I was in my bedroom getting high; either on the energy of the night or on marijuana; honestly I don't remember. It's safe to assume that I had a joint because in those days I did smoke up. I had previously sealed the door to my bedroom with Styrofoam and knocked down one of the windows overlooking the back of the garden, making a doorway and putting a ladder there. This was the only entrance and exit to the studio/bedroom which went under a tamarind tree into the back of the garden. I remember the night watchman standing at the entrance as I spoke to him and explained in my own way what it was I was doing.

I used to sleep on a single spring mattress that was aligned to have the head towards the holy cube in Mecca. On this mattress were black bed sheets, black pillows and a black comforter. I used to sleep soundly often feeling like my body was larger than life somehow. I was definitely high on energy. There was something about that night and the way the heavens above were aligning. I decided to use that energy to clean up the room. I was all over the place, going back and forth.

And then it happened.

I picked up the two pillows and placed them in the center of the bed on which i took this beautiful hand embroidered shawl that had rainbow colors in it, folded it neatly and placed it on top of the pillows. The comforter was next, making it a rainbow sandwich with black toasts. All this I packed up with the black bedsheets which I then tied up with one end of a long white rope. I found an old envelope I had designed for the KaraFilm Festival with the number five printed on it in Urdu and taking a pencil and a market i sat on the now white mattress with the huge black parcel before me, once again, facing the west.

The night watchman smiled. 'This is black magic' I told him. Not that I know how to do black magic; it was a pun on the words black and magic. The parcel before me was black and the magic referred to how I had been cleaning up the room so fast.

On the envelope I drew a black cube with a snake coming out of it and then with the pencil I started drawing circles in one continuous stroke. I sat still with only my wrist shaking violently as i drew more and more circles encircling the cube and the snake. It was almost as if I was drawing energy from somewhere and transferring it into the black bundle on my bed.

After maybe five odd minutes of energy transfers, I took the other end of the rope, walked down the ladder and buried it into the soil at the landing, meaning to transfer all that energy, negative and positive into the ground. I walked back up the ladder into the room and took the bundle and dumped it onto the floor. THUD!

That night I went to sleep with no bedsheets and no pillows. It was a sound sleep. I woke up the next evening unaware of what had happened that morning. After all, how was I supposed to know? I went downstairs and joined my family for dinner. I hadn't seen the sun at all. I felt dizzy. 'Do you know whats happened today?' my sister asked. I gave her a blank look. And then the family bombarded me with tragic news about the earthquake that had hit Azad Kashmir that morning, the morning of October 8th, 2005. I burst into tears. Crying hysterically I shouted 'put a gun to this fuckers head and pull the trigger!' I explained what I had done the night before. 'Do you feel like your body is larger than life at times?' my father asked me as his looks penetrated my forehead with energy I could feel. How did he know? And what did it mean?

I felt, as insane as it may sound, that I was chosen as God's right hand. That He had used me cause the earthquake. Everytime someone spoke about the earthquake, I had this immense guilt inside me. The guilt drove me a few months later to go upnorth myself on a photographic expedition to capture the horror and misery I had caused. The people there I spoke to said that it was like the day of judgement that had been described in the Book.

It was depressing to say the least. But at the same time, there was something about the energy fields of Muzaffarabad that made it an almost magical place. No one knew quite what it was. Maybe it was just the crux of Earths own energy field. Although I had a lot of company, I kept mostly to myself there. Then one day upon returning to my tent I noticed something strange. Someone had left a bundle in my quarters. A bundle made of white sheets used for wrapping dead people, tied together with a rope with thorns around the rope. It was almost identical to the bundle I had crafted myself back home. Ignoring it, I decided to work on my laptop and as I sifted through my photographs it felt as if someone had jabbed a huge nail in the back of my right hand. I screamed in agony. Was this punishment for the hineous crime I had committed? Whatever it was, had been on a metaphysical level as there was nothing there in reality. I nevertheless applied deep heat cream on my hand and tore out a strip of white cloth from the bundle that was lying there. This bundle was the first thing that reminded me of Jesus Christ somehow. It just seemed like his wardrobe with the thorns to make his crown and everything.

Overcome with grief and sorrow I came back after five days. On my way back during the few hour long car ride in the mountains I was enjoying a joint when I saw a flash of the Christ statue in Rio, glowing, made out of light. Some people say that he had come all the way to Azad Kashmir and spent the remaining of his days there. I dont know how far its true. All I know is what I have experienced and would continue to over the next few years.

After four years I don't feel guilt. I dont feel sorrow. I don't even think about it often. I have realized that I'm not important enough to be God's right hand. Furthermore I dont think he needs people like me to 'cause' circumstances for Him. He can do as and how He pleases Himself.
What I was part of that night may just be heightened levels of syncronicty; a coincidence. All I want to know is... why so many coincidences pointing in the same direction?

Another Dream

I was upnorth, perhaps in Azad Kashmir. We were all staring at the sky. It seemed like God had painted the sky on Corel Painter using Van Gough as an inspiration. There was the sun and the moon moving across the sky in a time lapse. Eclipses were happening. They were beautiful. I was standing in the crucified pose again and felt this bullet enter my brain. I fell to the ground and was dying in the arms of this best friend of mine I used to have a crush on during art school. As the last drops of life dripped away from my body, she was still there, holding me in her arms. She was even there as a gravestone moved over our heads and sealed us in the ground below. She didnt move from my side. I recited the Kalima as the last thing before dying and as the first thing when I came back to my senses.

What followed was a blur of people around me doing magic, witchcraft and emotional blackmail just to get me to not do what I was destined to do. What it was I was destined to do I was desperately trying to figure out in my dream until I heard the words " Apnee awaz bulund karo" which translates as "you need to raise your voice and be heard".

What was it that I had to say which is so important that it must be heard by millions around the world? Whats the message? Who is it from? And more importantly, why have I been chosen as the messenger? And then it all came back to me.

Truth, beauty, freedom, love. Earth, wind, water, fire, love. Love is the fifth element. If only we as humans showed compassion for our brothers and sisters here on Earth, if we showed each other love, this world would be a better place to be in. If only we could grow our own food from the Earth below, if we went back to the basics, maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't spend our entire lives being just another rat in the rat race; trying to make more and more money for needs we really dont have.

One is equal to nine is equal to twentyseven. The game shall go on for a few more eternities between God and the devil if somehow something isn't realized by us. What is that secret that is being kept from us? Are the dynamics of the universe as I really think they are. No, perhaps. This is only my conjecture. But it is conjecture based on solid reasoning.

I don't know what the message really is. This was a blurred summary of the feeling I had when I woke up last night. All I can say for certainty is that I am one dream closer to being the man I was destined to be.

Three times Three

Along with being high came a heightened awareness of all that was around me. Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. What was there and what wasn't. My thoughts ... I spent a lot of time just thinking when I was high. What I enjoyed most though was synchronicity. The paradigm of three times three. Switch on the television on a random channel and randomize the play list of songs on Windows Media Player and after a while just sitting and enjoying both at the same time. It would all synchronize. I, Me, Myself and the Universe. We would co-exist in perfect unison. I was the third corner of an equilateral triangle of audio, video and my brain; an experiment I later discovered Timothy Leary had done back in the sixties.

It was drug induced psychosis in the making that I wasn't aware of.

You know you want some...

I was eighteen when i started smoking cigarettes. My parents were away on a business trip and with my siblings studying abroad, i was free. I had the house to myself. Over came a friend of mine. My best friend at the time who had recently started smoking.

I had always seen my dad smoking. 'I want to try it as well', I told my friend as he lit up in the terrace. 'Are you sure you want to do this?' he replied. 'Yea, yea, I'm sure' I said as he passed me a Benson and Hedges and the lighter.

Spark, light, taste, inhale. Cough. Cough. Cough. 'What the fuck man' I remember thinking while choking on that first drag ever. I had a few more after returning to my normal breathing and then threw it away.

That evening I went by myself and bought my first pack of cigarettes. My heart was pounding violently against my chest. I drove back. Lied in bed. Lit up. I stayed awake the entire night and had five cigarettes altogether. I got high on the nicotine rush. I lied awake on my bed with my body going into shakes. I had fun. I had found a new pastime that would last the next twelve years at least.

With my new found habit came new ways of hiding the pack of cigarettes from my folks, an investment in breath fresheners, and new ways of sneaking out of the house for a smoke during the day. Night time was better; just lock the room, open the windows and smoke away all night long. I had a fear that the people living downstairs would discover the cigarette butts and talk to my folks about it so i used to collect the butts and packets and keep them in a locked closet which when almost full was discovered one day by my mother. She was horrified to say the least. She used to cry telling me not to smoke. I'm a bad son. I didn't listen. Now she just prays silently to God hoping I would quit one day. She's a sweetheart. I love her.

Experimenting with smoking cigarettes was fun. I wanted to experiment more. So the natural progression was drugs. I tried my hands at hemp when I was still eighteen for the first time. Friends were having some at a party and I decided to stick around and be part of the 'in crowd' and try my hands at it as well. The first joint I had was a thorough disappointment. Nothing happened. So I decided to have some more later and then some more and then some more and then some. I had a total of five joints during A levels but discovered that it was a downer and decided never to touch the damn thing again. Why do something that depresses you? And I went through an art school education without touching drugs and graduated on top of my class without doing drugs. I used to look down upon drugs. I had morals and values and ethics that proudly made me who I was. I wouldn't even be caught with people doing drugs or alcohol. And everyone knew this about me. It's just who i was. Who i used to be.

I sat on the balcony of his third floor apartment. Sea breeze blowing. Buildings towering around us. The night sky stretching out beyond our imaginations. Watching him roll a joint and then passing it to me he said 'You know you want some...'

This was a year or two after I had graduated from Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and was well into my freelancing career. I frequently went over to a friends place who would smoke up while I sat and spoke to him about fuck all.

The clouds of time fog my memory. I don't remember the exact conversation or persuasion that took place but all I remember is that after years of abstaining, I gave hemp another shot. A few drags later I burst out laughing. I liked it. I felt happy and floaty. I had rediscovered an old friend.

Days faded into weeks and months. Time would slow down and sometimes even crawl as I spent more and more time indulging into substance abuse. Met new people. Shared drugs as a common interest. Would go out, get high, enjoy the evening, come back and sleep. Hemp or Marijuana was a common indulgence in Karachi at that time. A small investment in Curine eye drops to fix the red eye syndrome and I was good to even go home for dinner and have a conversation with the family. Then came the investment in bags of dope for my own consumption which would be hidden in this box that only I knew how to open. Since I was freelancing and working from home, I would wake up, enjoy a joint and start the day off. At night, I would enjoy a joint and go to sleep. This invariably became accompanied by Vodka and grape juice to quench the thirst. I spent a few years being a junkie.

Breach baby breach...

'your baby is a breach case', the doctor told my mother some thirty odd years ago. And what followed was a series of maneuvers and massages around my mothers stomach all in an effort to turn my world upside down. Just to bring me into the world in a way that was safe for my mother and me.

She, my mother, told me once that while i was still in her womb, something unexplainable happened and a feeling of despair took over her.

After my last episode of being admitted wrongfully into the psychiatric ward at Aga Khan University Hospital, there was much research and discussions about the dynamics of how and why this happens and one thing that my wife brought to the family's notice was that in some cases, the fetus that undergoes stress and trauma may develop schizophrenia. Imagine that. What do i do now? Go and smack the gynecologist that turned my world around or just live with it? Just living with it is what I'm doing.

After all, I've handled my shit pretty well and never let it hit the fan until December 2005. True, I've been depressed since the time I came out of my mothers womb crying, but that never bothered me. The lower you get, the higher you rise. Kind of like what Newton stated about things that went up must go down. Thus my manic depression and my sensitivity to the slightest stimuli around me that would trigger it. I think its bullshit that real men don't cry. I'm not fucking Pinochio. I cry. Or used to cry. I havent felt depressed lately which is something I'm still trying to figure out the reason behind.

But throughout my life I've cried. I cried when Diana died. When the first concorde crashed. When my best friends dad would beat her up. When I saw a good movie. When i saw Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. Blah, blah and blah.

But I've been on medication. Stabilizers.Fucked up shite. So i don't feel depressed or dont lose it alltogether as I have in the past. It's allright. A mans gotta take medication if a mans gotta take medication i suppose.

Having said all this... I still don't have answers for how and why it all happened. Why the signs of this universe were pointing in the direction that they were pointing in or what it all meant. It's best to just pour it all out into this blog and vent I suppose.

And thus has started the greatest story never told.

Where do I start, Where do I begin?

in a sea of so many places, faces, phases, where does one start the story? is the story worth telling? are there others who share similar stories? i guess there is only one way to find out.

Here and Now

"i am here now and i love you..."