Sophie's Modern Life

Monsoon Child. I flit, I float, I fleetly flee. I fly. Islamabad based journalist

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Songs that make Summertime Sexy.

Lana Del Rey - Shades Of Cool

My baby lives in shades of cool Blue heart and hands and aptitude He lives for love, for women, too I'm one of many, one is blue

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Faiz for Today

It's been a miserable day filled with sadness, talking to policemen who were mocking a woman brutally killed just because she loved and was lucky enough, perhaps to be loved. It's still May and most times this month makes Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 spring to my mind but today is a day for Faiz.

I used to sing along to Tina Sani's rendition of Bahar Ayee when I was 16 and think that it was about  rebirth and renewal but now at 27 it's more about being stuck in a bizarre repetition of pain . Nothing changes, everything remains the same. One of the activists i interviewed today spoke about how people will move on from this tragedy and forget and live their lives . To be fair why shouldn't they but how does one end this cycle of grief and unfairness, when will the silence of the oppressed become loud enough to shatter this indifference. 

It Is Spring Again

Faiz Ahmad Faiz

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English Translation by Agha Shahid Ali

It is spring, And the ledger is opened again. From the abyss where they were frozen, those days suddenly return, those days that passed away from your lips, that died with all our kisses, unaccounted. The roses return: they are your fragrance; they are the blood of your lovers. Sorrow returns. I go through my pain and the agony of friends still lost in the memory of moon-silver arms, the caresses of vanished women. I go through page after page. There are no answers, and spring has come once again asking the same questions, reopening account after account.

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I'm Going To Die Alone

Sitting in my empty apartment eating a chunk of brie. Hoodie, pink pj's and Carole King. Having a rather tragic Bridget Jones moment. And I don't see a Daniel Cleaver in sight, let alone a Mr Darcy.

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Across 110th Street

It has been a while since I last wrote on this blog. Somehow through some  fortunate twist of fate I find myself living in New York City and studying Arts and Cultural journalism at my dream school i.e. Columbia University.

It is a surreal existence, at 26 I already feel old and jaded. I enjoy my classes and my professors are brilliant yet somehow there is a certain zest that is missing and I can't quite put my finger on what that is .

Anyway, I just want to wax lyrical about finally moving to the city. I can see Riverside Park from my bedroom and the Hudson and Jersey. It's not the sort of arcadian beauty that England has spoiled me with ,

Yet when I wake up to see the snow coloured park , my heart skips. Or when I look out of my bay windows and see the sun setting on the river and the lights on the shore twinkling gently, it overwhelms me and suddenly this city is lovely. So so lovely.

It is not the New York of my Nora Ephron dreams, it's gritty and smelly and I'm perpetually broke. I live on the border of Harlem and Morningside Heights, a slope away from the 125th street station and in the mornings when running upstairs to catch the train, I feel like I'm in a song by Blondie or something by Bobby Womack. 

This film has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Short. Set on the station near where I live, it is full of the possibility of finding new love and spring and windy days. It made me weepy. Margaret Lyons of New York Magazine wrote this about Paperman "There's so much potential for love in the world, everyone. Let's make paper airplanes and stand at the 125th Street stop and open our hearts to the possibilities of meeting faux John Krasinskis or Amy Adamses."

I couldn't agree more 

[lesstalkmoreillustration]

Barnaby Ward

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Pink Tights Forever

[freshgypsy-deactivated20120406]

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freshgypsy:

“Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted.  Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world”

~ Hans Margolius

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I snorkeled in a translucent turquoise sea . I fed rainbow fish green hued bananas. I felt free. 

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It's a cruel cruel summer

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The world of magic is double, natural, and supernatural. Magic is impossible in a purely materialist world, a purely sceptical world, a world of pure reason. Magic depends on, it makes use of, the body, the body of desire, the libido, or life-force which Sigmund Freud said stirred the primitive cells as the sun heated the stony surface of the earth-cells which, according to him, always had the lazy, deep desire to give up striving, to return to the quiescent state from which they were roused

 A. S. Byatt, -The Biographer's Tale

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Oh I Wish I Had A Sun Tan I Wish I Had A Pizza And A Bottle Of Wine I Wish I Had A Beach House Then We Could Make A Big Fire Every Night Instead Im Just Crazy Im totally Mad Yeah Im Just Crazy Im Fucked In The Head

Lust for Life, Girls.

[gezzitjade]

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Oh to doodle like this..swoonilicious

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My coworker has been ranting about how she saw a fully veiled woman shopping. She said she was wearing a burkha and black silk gloves and buying white tasseled lace . I just found that to be  so poetic and random and beautiful. I saw this picture and thought of that image and how different it is from the one i just described. The simplest articles of clothing can evoke such different images on different people. 

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There are many reasons why bookstores are naturally romantic environments: the smell of paper, the soft lighting, the baseline understanding that those inside like to read, and are therefore probably not morons. Browsing customers often circle each other like timid sharks, the piles of books in their hands their only weapons. Heidegger implies late-night conversations over coffee and cigarettes; Rumi, a bathtub surrounded by candles. Ayn Rand indicates a need for a wide berth; Sarah Vowell means mornings spent listening to NPR while baking gluten-free cupcakes.

[lushush]

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Summer Approaches, neon fantasies, I close my eyes and see the dazzling light seduce me.

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Bliss

13 floors above the city I sit drinking perfume, alone in my cocoon except for the gentle hum of technology. I love being the first one at work.

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Life is all about the state of mind you build to face your death with.

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Fragaria

When I look at a strawberry, I think of a tongue, when I lick one, of a kiss. 

Édouard Levé

Strawberries: So many memories, square cardboard boxes stuffed with the juicy little buggers propped at every street corner heralding the beginning of spring. Reading Enid Blyton and imagining Arcadian picnics in the summer sun. Sitting in Murree  and drizzling cans of sticky sweet condensed milk onto sliced scarlet deliciousness. Going mad with cans of whipped cream and heaps of brown sugar while at university. 

I always wanted them to be my favourite fruit just because of the romance of strawberries and cream . So feral, so sexy and oh so divine yet always such a disappointment..

I wrote the following at uni, still feel the same way

 "Summer in England is overrated. I wait through the wet gloom of winter with hope and apprehension, I wait for the brilliant gauze of amber sunshine to protect my chilly bones, I wait for summer sales and fun bargains and most of all I wait for strawberries and cream. Yet May lumbers along with its wet spells and dreary skies, the sun plays peek-a -boo with my emotions and my bones stay cold. When it does come out, its brutal savage heat rips my skin like a plaster taken off too soon. Ugly red patches remain. The sales yield nothing but misshapen jackets two sizes too large or big bottles of soon to be stale bubble bath. The air is thick with the stench of sweat and sweet cheap perfume making me nauseous, I bump into slippery perspiring half naked tourists and slide my into the freezing supermarket. I shiver as I sift through the fruit to find my precious plastic box of much awaited fragaria. The strawberries look odd like perfect plastic replicas of my favorite fruit, a neat bow of green leafs adorn them, there is a star shaped golden sticker on the packaging extolling their origin. I sit on a bench the box of strawberries in my lap and a tub of cream between my leg, I halfheartedly prepare myself for an orgy of taste. It never arrives, the cream is sour the strawberries taste of nothing"

Listening to Bruises while typing. Days of nothingness produce such random nonsense..

I grabbed some frozen strawberries so I could ice your bruising knees. But frozen things they all unfreeze and now I taste like.... All those frozen strawberries I used to chill your bruising knees, Hot July ain't good to me I'm pink and black and blue for you.

Bruises- Chairlift