A Short Love Story In Stop Motion By Carlos Lascano

This is a beautiful video I happened to come across, entirely randomly, on youtube. The animation is sheer genius, while the story reminds me ,somewhat, of the opening 15mins of Disney's 'Up'. 15 mins that had me sobbing my heart out by the way. Anyway, the song playing in the background is also one of my absolute favourites, Hoppipolla by Sigur Ros. The song reinforces the sweet simplicity of the story; the dream of a humble, unaffected and enduring kind of love. The sort of love that many would swear no longer exists, but which I feel many people, including myself, have had the honour of witnessing in their parents and grandparents (mashallah), arranged marriage or not. It is the kind of love which I feel is deceptive in it's simplicity and is achieved only through mutual respect, consideration, understanding and a constant give and take. It is the kind of love that I aspire to, and hope am one day worthy of.

Let Them Eat Cake.

Yesterday, while bombs blew up on Shara-e Faisal and outside the Jinnah Hospital, while people all over the city mourned for their lost loved ones and prayed for the wounded, while one of my friends attempted to make her way back home (she lives in the doctors colony within Jinnah), this is what I was doing:



Yes, I baked a cake, a gorgeous chocolate cake with fresh strawberries in the center. The irony of the situation hit me as I was beating the sugar and eggs together. The greater percentage of our population is finding it difficult to afford enough sugar for their tea and flour for their roti, but here I was making a superfluous cake for no reason other than the fact that there were fresh strawberries in the fridge and I wanted to try out my new cake tins. I am greatfull to God for having blessed me as He has, but they are days when I am excessively ashamed of myself. I feel like I'm two separate people arguing with each other. "What is wrong with you there are people dying, your city's in turmoil, what are you doing here" "No I don't want to hear it, I don't want to know how many people have died, I don't want to watch the news, just leave me alone, let me make my cake in peace". I feel so out of control that I feel it's preferable to just bury my head in the sand. I don't have any other way of dealing with it. They say that as citizens we should try and do something, but how exactly do citizens stop bombs from exploding? Governments are corrupt, people are angry, the extremists running rampant, we're in a downward spiral that no one can find a way out of, so we all just close our eyes and go along for the ride, living each day as normally as we can and to the best of our abilities, contributing in what little way we can. But how much longer could we possibly have before we hit the ground in a deathly splat?

This Is Going To Be One Of Those Posts.

I'm stuck. Something inside me is very very stuck. Obviously not physically; just emotionally...psychologically. I don't know why, I'm not even sure what. I just feel odd. Usually I can pinpoint what it is, what I'm feeling, these days I'm not very sure. Usually I write it out, but how do I address a problem when I have no idea what the problem is. I haven't written since September, I haven't wanted to write since September... I still don't... I just think I should. Stuck really is the only way to describe it.