ARTS INTERNATIONAL
Editor/Publisher, Bina Sharif
ARTS INTERNATIONAL covers THEATER, FILM, VISUAL ARTS, CUISINE, AND LITERATURE

Sunday, August 14, 2011

A GESTURE........................

A gesture, a remark, a look can ruin one's calm.
For example, if you are sitting in a cafe, calmly sipping your cafe macchiato
reading your book or even scribbling something on a nice hand made brown
paper and all of a sudden, "a so called friend with a high level career" walks in
and comes right to your table and says in a very aggressive manner,"Oh! you are always in a cafe, sitting and reading....."

Not even a hello, but the remark.....

But actually they are saying to you of course,(out of jealousy)

"Oh!, you have no career. You are always in a cafe, wasting your life."
"Oh!, I am busier than you are."
"Oh!, I have a career and you don't."

But how do they know that I don't have a career?
My cafe table is my office table. Its marble, its nice, its clean.
My books are on it, my pens and pencils and my note books and some lose
nicely textured papers for me to draw on.
Having coffee in a cafe is my career.
Reading a book in a cafe is my career.

But actually they are miserably jealous of me sitting in a cafe
sipping my coffee and reading a book.

They wish that they could just do that themselves.
They truly wish deep down that they could do what you are doing.
They wish that they could sit leisurely in a cafe and read a book. (It always seems to others as if I am sitting leisurely)................

Little do they know what goes through my mind...........
The thoughts, the memories, the remorse, the regret, the loneliness, the isolation,
the struggle with no results, the un-surmountable mountains of foreign lands,
the trauma of leaving, the trauma of never returning, the trauma of staying, the outsider,
the exile, the permanent exile which is perhaps easy to take in a cafe than in a narrow, windowless, airless dark apartment.

But to them I am always sitting,"Leisurely" sitting and reading without a care in the world.
Good for me...............me without a career and them, oh! them, always late for their career,
late for their business meetings but not late enough to come to me and make that remark,
as if I give a shit.......................

But they can't be honest with themselves, they can't express the suppressed angry wish
of not being in the cafe themselves, in that,"leisurely atmosphere, care free, artistic atmosphere."

But problem is money.
They want to constantly make money and be constantly leisurely too.

Its not possible.
There is no leisure while you are making money. Its all a hustle, at least while you are making
big bucks, I mean mega bucks...billions..There can't be leisure in stealing and scheming,
Your heart rate is at risk while you are stealing and scheming. It goes up, up, up and up.
The higher the number of bills you are going to steal, the higher the heart beat and higher
the heart beat, higher the stress on heart..................

Leisure comes later when finally you do get the chance to get to your luxury boat with a young
teen ager and even then your heart rate goes up...you have to match the coitus with the pretty
young thing on your lap and the heart is so stressed out that you might just die of that
supper heart attack..........

YOU SEE YOU EITHER MAKE TONS OF MONEY WITH THE HIGHER HEART BEAT OR
MAKE NO MONEY AT ALL AND SIT SEEMINGLY,"LEISURELY." IN A CAFE AND READ THE
NEW BOOK YOU JUST BOUGHT FOR A DOLLAR FROM STRAND BOOK STORE...........
EVEN THARE HAVING A STRESSFUL HEART BEAT, THE STRAND BOOK STORE I MEAN,
THEY HAVE RAISED THE USED BOOK PRICE FROM OUTDOOR BOOK STAND FROM ONE DOLLAR TO TWO AND EVEN THREE DOLLARS. NOW THEY ARE TRYING TO GIVE ME A HIGHER HEART RATE.....
BUT ONE DOLLAR OR NOTHING I SAY....
NO HIGHER HEART RATE FOR ME. NO. HIGHER HEART RATE ONLY GOES WHEN YOUR POCKET IS FULL OF DOLLARS AND MORE ARE ON THE WAY.
I CAN'T AFFORD EMPTY PURSE AND STRESSFUL HEART ON TOP OF IT.
I HAVE ENOUGH STRESS ALREADY TO PAY THE BILL IN THE CAFE WHERE MY ,"SO CALLED FRIENDS THINK THAT I AM SITTING,"LEISURELY"

Let me tell you once and for all. There is no money in the cafe. The money in the cafe is only
for the owner who also gets stressed out by seeing me sitting there for so long on a cup of coffee. I know he gets stressed. I can see it on his face and I can hear his fast beating pulse.....
"Money, money, money, he is thinking and less, less, less money from the table number so and so, he is thinking....Thats a lot of stress he is getting just from me and I am still paying for sitting there.

Trust me you pay, when you sit in the cafe. There is no money to be made. You pay just
to sit there and you have to eat or drink there.
You can't just sit there, you have to put calories in your mouth and weight on your big fat asss
which is getting bigger and fatter by the minute and all think that I sit there,"LEISURELY"
while they are thin like a stick.

You see when you make money, you run around, your heart rate goes up and you don't eat running around, so you burn more calories and you eat nothing....for me thats leisure but they all got their definition of the leisure wrong.................

I am sitting there gaining a hell of a lot of weight and thinking of my background when I was thin and young and sexy and had servants............oh! the servants, the servants, oh! how I miss the servants...............

Instead of coming here for equality and liberty and what else the first world offers? money I guess, i should have just stayed with my servants.

You see over there you never pay money for sitting. You just sit and sit and sit and your servants run around and bring you coffee and then you get old and fat because
you sat on your ass for so long.........................

But I sat here on my ass and got fat without my servants..............fat without servants, thats a travesty ...................a horror.............there is no fat woman back home without servants..........
I assure you. There is no fat woman without servants and money.
Only one immigrant in America.............fat servant less and money less woman sitting in cafe's being the envy of the career ladies.

But they, the jealous ones don't realize that I have to pay for sitting there. I call it, "RENTING THE TABLE IN THE CAFE."

You have to pay the rent and rent is money and I am still sitting there paying the rent and making the millionaire angry.
"I am spending money instead of making it.........you hear me, get off my ass."

But its alright with me but not alright with them. They don't pay my cafe check but they always come to me and give me their aggression and miseryand discontent and un-happiness.

They always say this to me, "YOu are always sitting in a cafe and reading."
And mind you not nicely either but with ANGER which is not so HIDDEN either.
"You are always in a cafe."
They say.

What should I say to them?

'Go fuck yourself."

Yes, thats what I should say to them but I am such a polite person, I learnt politeness by being with my servants at an early age.............after living here for such a long, long, long time I am still such a, "POLITE." person..............
Perhaps thats my career beside sitting in a cafe....................

TO BE CONTINUED