railway tracks

i went to a train station today and learned that the distance between railway tracks is always 143.5 centimetres or 4 feet 8.5 inches. Why this absurd measurement? i asked my girlfriend to find out and this is what she discovered. when they built the first train carriages, they used the same tools as they had for building horse-draw carriages. and why that distance between the wheels on carriages? because that was the of the old roads along which the carriages had to travel. and who decided that roads should be that width?

well, suddenly. we are plunged back into the distant past. it was the romans, the first great road-builders, who decided to make their roads that width. and why? because their war chariots were pulled by 2 horses, and when placed side by side, the horses they used at that time took up 143.5cm.

so the distance between the tracks i saw today, used by our state-of-the-art high-speed trains, was determined by the Romans. when people went to the united states and started building railways there, it didn't occur to them to change the width and so it stayed as it was. this even affected the building of space shuttles. american engineers. thought that the fuel should be wider, but the tanks were built in utah and had to be transported by train to the space center in florida, and the tunnels couldn't take anything wider. and so they had to accept the measurement that the Romans had decided was the ideal. but what has all this to do with marriage?

it has everything to do with marriage. at some point in history, someone turned up and said: when 2 people get married, they must stay frozen like that for the rest of their lives. you will move along side by side like the two tracks, keeping always that same distance apart. even if sometimes one of you needs to be a little further away or a little closer, that is against the rules. the rules say: be sensible, think of the future, think of your children. you can't change, you must be like 2 railway tracks that remain the same distance apart all the way from their point of departure to their destination. the rules don't allow for love ot change, or to grow at the start and diminish halfway through - it's too dangerous. and so, after the enthusiasm of the first few years, they maintain the same distance, the same solidity, the same functional nature. your purpose is to allow the train bearing the survival of the species to head off into the future: your children will only be happy if you stay just as you were - 143.5cm apart. if you're not happy with something that never changes, think of them, think of the children you brought into the world.

think of your neighbours. show them that you're happy, eat roast beef on sundays, watch television, help the community. think of society: dress in such a way that everyone knows you're in perfect harmony. never glance to the side, someone might be watching you, and that could bring temptation, it could mean divorce, crisis, depression.

smile in all the photos. put the photos in the living room, so that everyone can see them. cut the grass, practise a sport - oh yes, you must practise a sport in order to stay frozen in time. when sport isn't enough, have plastic surgery. but never forget , these rules were established long ago and must be respected. who established these rules? that doesn't matter. don't question them, because they will always apply, even if you don't agree with them.


Tariq :: email ::
|1:07 am|
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become who you are

that is why it is so important to let certain things go. to release them. to cut loose. people need to understand that no one is playing with marked card; sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. don't expect to get anything back, don't expect recognition for your efforts, don't expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. complete the circle. not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. stop being who you were and become who you are.

Tariq :: email ::
|12:39 am|
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of happiness and the growth of love

Esther asks why people are sad.

'That's simple,' says the old man. 'They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumilate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.'

Esther remarks that many people say to her: 'You're lucky, you know what you want from life, whereas I don't even know what I want to do.'

'Of course they know,' replies the nomad. 'Hoiw many people do you know who say: I've never done what I wanted, but then, that's life. If they say they haven't done what they wanted, then, at some point, they must have known what it was that they did want. As for life, it's just another story that other people tell us about the world and about how we should behave in the world.'

'Even worse are those people who say: I', happy because I'm sacrificing my life for those I love.'

'And do you think that the people who love us want to see us suffering for their sakes? Do you think that love is a source of suffering?'

'To be honest, yes.'

'Well, it shouldn't be.'

'If I gotget the story other people have told me, I;ll also forget a lot of very important things life has taught me. What was the point of struggling to learn so much? What was the point of struggling to gain experience, so as to be able to deal with my career, my husbans, my various crises?'

'Accumulated knowledge is useful when it comes to cooking or living within your means or wrapping up warm in winter or respecting certain limits or knowing where particular bu and train lines go. Do you believe that your past loves have taught you to love better?'

'They've taught me to know what I want.'

'I didn't ask that. Have your past loves taught you to love your husband better?'

'No, on the contrary. In order to surrender myself to him, I had to forget all the scars left by other men. Is that what you mean?'

'In order for the true energy of love to penetrate your soul, your soul must be as if you had just been born. Why are people unhappy? Because they want to imprison that energy, which is impossible. Forgetting your personal history means leaving that channel clear, allowing that energy to manifest itself each day in whatever way it chooses, allowing yourself to be guided by it.'

'That's all very romantic, but very difficult too, because that energy gets blocked by all kinds of things: commitment, children, your social situation...'

'... and, agyer a while. by despair, fear, loneliness, and your attempts to control the uncontrollable. According to the tradition of the steppes - which is known as the Tengri - in order to live fully, it is necessary to be in constant movement; only then can each day be different from the last. When they passed through cities, the nomads would think: The poor people who live there, for them everything is always the same. The people in the cities probably looked at the nomads and thought: Poor things, they have nowhere to live. The nomads had no past, only the present, and that is why they were always happy, until the Communist government made them stop travelling and forced them to live on collective farms. From then on, little by little, they came to believe that the story that society told them was true. consequently, they have lost all their strength.'

'No one nowadays can spend their whole life travelling.'

'Not physically, no, but they on a spiritual plane. Going further and further, distancing yourself from your personal history, from what you were forced to become.'

'How does one go about abandoning the story one was told?'

'By repeating it out loud in meticulous detail. And as we tell our story, we say goodbye to what we were, as you'll see if you try, we create space for a new, unknown world. We repeat the old story over and over until it is no longer important to us. '

'Is that all?'

'There is jjust one other thing: as spaces grow, it is important to fill them up quickly, even if only provisionally, as as not to be left with a feeling of emptiness.'

'How?'

'With different sotries, with experiences we never dared to have or didn't want to have. That is how we change. That is how love grows. And when love grows, we grow with it.'

'Does that mean we might lose things that are important?'

'Never. The important things always stay; what we lose are the things we thought were important but which are, in fact, useless, like the false power we use to control the energy of love.'



Tariq :: email ::
|10:32 am|
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of impotence and trust

She turned to a man on his own, on the other side of the room.

"Have you ever failed to get an erection when you've been to bed with a woman?"

The man avoided giving a direct answer.

"No, he's not." said the girl firmly. "But it has occasionally happened to him. And I know that if you had taken my question seriously, your answer would have been "Yes, O jave." All men, in all cultures and countries, independent of any feelings of love or sexual attraction, have all experienced impotence at one time or another, often when they're with the person they most desire. It's normal."

Yes , it was normal, and the person who told me this was a psychiatrist to whom I went when I thought I had a problem.

The girl went on:

"But the story we're told is that all men can always get an erection. When he can't the man feels useless, and the woman is convinced she isn't attractive enough to arouse him. Since it's a taboo subkect, he can't talk to his friends about it. He tells the woman an old lie: "It's never happened to me before." He feels ashamed of himself and often runs away from someone with whom he could have had a really good relationship, if only he had told the truth, he would have found out that he wasn't the only one. If he had trusted more in the love of the woman, he would not have felt humiliated.



Tariq :: email ::
|1:15 pm|
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mongolian creation myth

in the wors of the mongolian creation myth, there came a wild dog who was blue and grey and whose destiny was imposed on him by the heavens. his mate was a roe deer.

thus begins another love story. the wild dog with his courage and strenght, the doe with her gentleness, intuition and elegance. hunter and hunted meet and love each other. according to the laws of nature, one should destroy the other, but in love, there is neither good nor evil, there is neither construction nor destruction, there is merely movement. and loves changes the laws of nature.

in the steppes where i come, the wild dog is seen as a feminine creature. sensitive, capable of hunting because he has honed his insticts, but timid too. he does not use brute force but strategy. courageous, cautious, quick. he can change in a second from a state of ocmplete relaxation to the tension he needs to pounce on his prey.

and what about the doe?

the roe deer has the male attributes of speed and an an understanding of the earth. the two travel along together in their symbolic worlds, two imposiibilities who have found each other, and because they overcome their own natures and their barriers, they make the world possible too. that is the mongolian creation myth: out of two different natures, love is born. in contradiction, love grows in strength. in confrontation and transformation, love is preserved.



Tariq :: email ::
|12:54 pm|
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time is money

we always hear it but i could never see it for what it was worth. to me it used to be, not to waste time as you can do other things that could generate better incentives such as money. or so i thought. until some reading unearthed its true meaning.

what that sayin is tryin to say is that, its not how packed your schedule is but what you do with your time. you could fill your schedule with useless things to do and you would still not gain what you would have wanted. follow my drift?

a secretary and her boss works the same number of hours a day yet her boss earns so much more than her. why? coz her boss is doing things that would generate more incentives than his secretary. now i am not insulting or putting down secretaries or other such positions. what i am tryin to do is give you a better understanding.

are the things that you have done today, what could bring you your dreams and desires tomorrow? if not, then you are just wasting your time. sure we all need a break now and then but i was surprised to learn that even during a break, one can work towards their dreams.

money is not everything in the world because you can easily trade anything for money. a box, a car, a stereo set. sell those off and you got the cash that you wanted. but what about time? what can you trade for an hour or for a min more?

nothing.

you could buy things that saves you time such as a photocopy machine that makes copies instead of printing multiple copies on an inkjet. that is but one of the ways to 'make' more time. what most people would consider a waste of money because you can do it by other means fail to realise that the other means are more time consuming.

so what are you gonna sacrifice today? your time or money?

Tariq :: email ::
|6:43 pm|
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identity

it feels kinda weird.

i thought i had figured out who i am. where i was heading. what gave me strength. and what was my kryptonite. but somehow, just as i thought i was close to discovering myself, i realised how far away i was as well.

well the journey has barely began, i have been bombarded left, right and centre, all thanks to what i thought was a full-proof strategy. i was hopin for the best and expecting the worst but somehow the worst that i expected was nothing compared to what i was dealt with. obliterated? far from it.

while i have definitely strenghtened my mind in preparation for what is to come, i realise that the rest of me was left behind. while i have fathom the thoughts and dreams, i do not have the strength to carry it through. yet.

but i realise it now. what needs to be done. and i shall stand up and walk again. this is definitely not the last blow. but i know that come what may, i have what it takes inside to rise again.

i would like to leave you with 2 quotes which i found very inspiring and i hope you do too:

1. you have not failed till you give up

2. there is no such thing as failures, only learning experiences

(2) kinda contradicts (1) but i guess it depends on what your mindset is. choose the one that suits you best.

godspeed

Tariq :: email ::
|10:16 am|
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