During this pandemic, I have been thinking about connection and isolation. The new normal of quarantines and lockdowns has impacted my connections with people, and heightened my awareness of connecting with myself.
Category Archives: The Warp & Weft
The idea for THE WARP & WEFT was born in September 2020. It’s a multilingual archive of stories that hopes to capture the zeitgeist of that year. Learn more about the vision for this project by visiting ABOUT > THE WARP & WEFT STORY. This is an organic, ongoing project, where responses to the archive can renew and expand it. Please have a listen.
A spark bird is the bird that triggers an interest in birding or bird watching. For me it was the northern cardinal.
I was immediately drawn to Kalsoom Saleem’s story, “My Spark Bird,” and connected with the pleasure of spying the cardinal’s red against the white snow in the “deserted grey, white and black landscape” of winter. This brought to mind the many simple pleasures I’ve found during these dark times.
It is on those particularly still and heavy days that I sit and remember the birth of the universe. The memory contained in my every cell. My mind’s eye catches the moment when life burst forth and set us on this divine course.
दो हज़ार बीस। ये साल ख़त्म होने को आया है लेकिन ऐसा लगता है जैसे इस साल कुछ हुआ ही नहीं। सच तो यह है कि जो इस साल हुआ है उसका असर बहुत सालों तक रहने वाला है। मुझे अभी भी यकीन नहीं होता कि कैसे मार्च के महीनों में पूरी दुनिया रुक गयी थी। पूरी दुनिया। एक साथ, रुक गई। हम सब अपने घरों में बंद हो गए।
[Just Some Thoughts by Surbhi Dewan: Two thousand and twenty. As the year comes to an end, it feels like not much was accomplished. And yet, this year will stay with us for many years to come…]
I will remember this moment in history by the smell of hard liquor on my hands from the hand sanitizer that’s been available since there was a shortage.
ھم سب اج کل ا يک عجیب دور سے گزر سے رھۓ ھيں ۔ہز اروں لا کھوں ا نسان ایک و با کی با عث اس د نیا سے رخصت ھو چکے ھیں ، ان لوگوں کی زندگی بھی اتنی ہی قیمتی تھی جتنی کہ ميری اور آپ کی
[The Purpose of Life by Ayesha Javed: We are living in strange times. Hundreds of thousands of people have left this world on account of the pandemic. Their lives were just as valuable as yours or mine…]
My oldest book is a small red hardcover of David Copperfield. I was maybe twelve years old when my father reached to a shelf in his study, pulled down that book and said to me a little shyly, “I see that you like to read. Maybe you will like this. I read it when I was just a little older than you.”
I’ll start with the disclaimer that I am not a Ph.D. My formal education in Physics reached its zenith with my concentration in Applied Physics for my bachelor’s degree. But I never stopped searching for the truth, about the nature of our universe. Listen at your own risk, you have been warned.
I composed this piece of music in response to Shamoun Murtza’s ‘If A Tree Falls In The Forest’ and as a response to the tone of his voice. His story has to do with the age-old philosophical dilemma: “If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Afternoon dialects beneath a redwood canopy: two children skip ahead; their feet
grind the ground, crushing ferns, tearing tenebrous skulls of leaves. They giggle, while a vanishing world lies ahead of them.
Reticent was a word my mom used to describe me. I remember she said it with ease as if it were just a matter of fact. She was speaking to my kindergarten teacher who had growing concerns about my ability to socialize.
