Colours or Twilight Wanderings

Black and white photos are sometimes so beautiful. Their simplicity highlights their lines and expressions and you see so much more than you usually would. But God created colour to make the world vibrate and buzz with life. Life is seldom black and white and things are seldom easy to see or figure out. Colour is magic.

I sometimes wonder if everyday there are different colours of magic dust floating around. These are the colours I have experienced:

Bright green: the magic you get from true friendship, pruned through experience and loyalty. Pliant, lively and mischievous, like a tree imp.

Regal dark purple: the magic of blood, kindred traditions, obligations and duty. Keeps you going beyond etiquette and formality, when all bonds are broken, those of kindred hold strong.

Bright red: an attractive magic; filled with power lust and feelings of superiority. This dust is experienced when those with power yield it mercilessly and it fills their head with a certain illusion of grandeur and importance.

Shiny yellow: superficial, glittery magic, found when buying a designer pair of stillettos or being surrounded by opulence and luxury. What a high, yet with no inner substance.

Misty grey: the magic of demisting; that ethereal sadness when fog clouds your heart with despair, you feel like life cannot carry on yet the magic lies in the human will to survive and overcome. Misty grey magic dulls the senses and makes life effortful, teaching us what we should be grateful for when it has been swept away by the wind.

Magenta purple- the magic found in romantic love. Causing the skin to glow, and the eyes to shine, this magic dust keeps the nerves skipping and the world dancing. Its depth is endless and holds many secrets not readily apparent.

Turquoise blue: Calming, the magic one finds in faith and divine belief. It descends on one’s soul like a balm during the least opportune moments and refreshes your outlook and actions.

**This colour thing is ultra subjective. Do you agree with mycolurs or have you created your own?

**** Click here for Dawud Wharnsby Ali's awesome Colurs of Islam song

On Fantasy: Watching lord of the rings for the first time made my love for Harry Potter waiver since so many of the ideas are similair. In the movies, Gandalf resembles Dumbledore, Harry resembles Frodo, Pippin and Merry resemble Fred and George, the ring is like Harry’s scar and also like a horcrux, etcetera. Yet I realised at the end, Rowling’s genius lay in taking these fantastical ideas and embedding them in a modern Muggle setting. However, this could also in the long-term be her downfall since the modern world is changing so rapidly. By creating a fantastical world removed from reality, Tolkien’s Middle Earth and even Pratchett’s Discworld keep themselves accessible to the imagination over generations.

On another note, Samwise was my hero. The shire lifestyle reminds me so much of how I grew up, in a sheltered, narrowminded comfortable environment not embracing the apartheid struggle or being instrumental in political affairs The reaction of the people of Gondor to the threat of Sauron reminds me much of our current suburbian citizens to the threat of crime. We retreat into complexes or emigrate which just exacerbates the ever-growing threat. It is only when we stand up against this injustice, hopefully with a leader such as Aragorn or Gandalf, that crime can be defeated.

Note to self or Being a Cow

On a drizzly windy day I sunk my toes across the Margate coastline. What serenity I found to be enveloped by clouds and foam and fog cannot be described. Suddenly, my mindfull thoughts were disturbed by the powerful whooosh of an airborne kite, blue and yellow, royal in its flight. It appeared to have a life of it’s own, traversing the atmosphere of it’s own accord. However, there was a couple with their arms in their air, guiding the kite and keeping it aloft against the winds and drizzle. I found myself staring shamelessly for many seconds or even minutes at them.

Fortunately for me, they were so enraptured by their endeavour, they had not noticed me. What kept me there mesmerised across many moments was the love I sensed within this union. The question that then arose within me was, did their love create the trajectory of the kite, or was the kite’s trajectory the source of their love?

To our anthropocentric and immodest nature, the answer may be simple. Humans built the kite and without our force and energy, it would not be afloat. However, when I look beyond the rigid boundaries of human logic, I realise that were it not for the kite, the couple would not be in such close proximity. Their movements, their stance towards one another, their joyous emotions and their support of one another all arose from the purpose of flying this kite. Their eyes were not lost within each other, but had created a force of light that radiated, up and down, between them and the kite. By forgetting each other and looking beyond, they had found in one another a source of strength and comfort. The Holy Qu’ran states in Surah Baqarah (V. 165) ‘The love of Allah in the believers is most intense’. The intensity of this love comes from the nature of it transcending the transient material world and liberating us from our wordly limits. This may seem like an overdone, overanalysed story of flying a kite. For me however, it made me realise that the love of things at the level where we are actually restricts us from higher journeys. We fall in love with a person and focus on their looks, their wit, their intelligence, their humour, their possessions and many other things that capture the mind’s wordly imagination. This brings to mind a verse of the Qur’an that says, “Say: If your fathers, and your sons, and your brethren, and you wives, and your tribe, and the wealth yea have acquired, and merchandise for which ye fear that there will no sale, and dwellings which ye desire are dearer to you than Allah and His Messenger and striving in His way: Then wait till Allah bringeth His command to pass. Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk. [Qur'an 9:24]”

This does not mean that we should not love the things Allah has blessed us with. It is only when loving these things becomes more important than the love we have for our Creator and His meesenger that this becomes problematic. Having a husband with green eyes and designer stubble will definitely make flying the kite more joyous for me. But the kite is foremost. I have related this story in the context of romantic love. There are many more levels of love to be found by cooperating in flying kites as exemplified by verse 103 of Surah 3: “And hold fast, all together, to the rope of Allah and be not divided; and remember the favour of Allah which He bestowed upon you when you were enemies and He united your hearts in love, so that by His grace you became as brothers; and you were on the brink of a pit of fire and He saved you from it. Thus does Allah explain to you His commandments that you may be guided.”

almost or soon or maybe are the new **** or ***** or ****

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQsdVma0kks

I fear ever saying almost.

Desperately seeking ad

There's a song that keeps playing in my head everytime I have a "yay-for-nooj" moment and I can't find it. Please let me know if you have it. I heard it once on Tuks FM but the only lyrics I can remember are:

"Astronauts miss gravity

Like I miss you

Human beings should never be

This close to the moon"

Rewards negotiable:)

Ok to the crore. My freaky name. Practically from the time I was born it gave me hell.

1990 French Ballet teacher: "Lorrey Jeanne, flex then point!"

1991 School kids in Australia: "Noo-what?!"

My honours class called me "Nora"

At work I'm called Nor Jeanne

Potayto or Potaaato

Or not.

My parents probably didn't think to travel a decade to when Google was invented to check up on the origins of Noorjehaan. Google says she was a famous Bollywood singer and before that, she was a Mughal Empress who married a drunkard and so became famous by running his empire (justification for my reluctance to be a "good Indian wife" straight after puberty:P?). I never met the woman they named me after. But I love her sons, they are the closest I have come to having brothers. Her life was sponged with demisting, but all the stories I love have some element of tragedy. I think I must spend more time understanding my parent's love for her. Hey if Nikhil Gogol could find some meaning in his name, nooj sure as hell will. I've already made one google entry I'm proud of:)

arb or just high

Sundays are the nutella on my teaspoon and the white stripe on my Inkomazi box.