Tag: introverts

Introversion – seventy nine

Introversion – seventy nine

A floor,
a wall,
and light that leaks in.

At times, I don’t even want to share myself with furniture.

Solitude with all the groans of a house is enough,
an intimacy of unspeakable proportions.

Ghosts of longing that open and close doors as they wish,
secrets that don’t pass their lips.

This house has an echo of women who have clawed at my skin for a piece of my soul,

ironically making me turn further inwards to flee from myself,
stay somewhere that I can control.

This light that leaks in,
a reminder that I have fissures that open without warning,
bursting with unspeakable sin.

Let this be a warning to my heart,
don’t let them near you,
remain in that room alone!

Insist on your intuition over their appetite,
insist on your vision over their illusions,
insist on your solitude over their lust,
sit in so much stillness,
alone in that empty room,
and be one with the dust.

The souls that endear you will inevitably be near you,
without formality and necessity for introduction,

we were created from an ether in the pre-world,
our souls will always find each other in this world and the next.

W.E.

Am I selfish for not wanting to share myself?

The gist of tye above poem is an apology of sorts,

try as I may, I often disappear into myself,
ironically away from my Self.

That oft gnawing awareness of the faults you harbour,
that slip between your fingers of guilty frivolity,
drowns you in a tug of war,
of second guessing yourself,

and that’s why I recluse,
it becomes a bit too much to swathe in a world of ‘sureness’, people vying to be the first one to be right.

What does it matter who gets to the end first,
if the journey was filled with dishonourable disregard.

There is a way,
I believe it to be quietude and seclusion,
introversion and accountability,
a slowing down rather than speeding up.

I’ve found myself just as many times as I have veered off the path,
only in the cocoon of solitude,
only ever alone.

I have never read of a man of worth or a woman of magnitude that has needed the masses to prop them up and I think it is deep in that wisdom we can find what society so desperately needs.

I will put this post up on my stories as a poll,
I’d like to hear your comments below on the above, even if in private.

Undisturb

It may be sincere, but it’s still invasive.

To pry a door open when all outward signs display its reluctance,
expresses quite clearly your persistence to chaos.

Some things shouldn’t be awakened,
some things shouldn’t be disturbed,
lurking may be a soul that’s too far broken,
and your ears may be filled, with a shrill that can’t be unheard.

Leave people where they want to be,
wait at the door patiently,
some doors don’t want to be opened,
irrespective of you having a key.

I’ve told you I’m too far fetched of too far fetched,
this solitude demeanour is on my being etched,
irreconcilable introversion,
A banished soul, a distant wretch.

W.E.

Recipe for men

Solitude,
has been a recipe for manhood in my family for as long as I remember. Floors groaned at three am when my father would walk across wooden tiles that I always thought someone had meticulously jigsawed across the whole apartment.
His belt buckle, I can still hear, then came the jingle of coins in his pockets as he set off quietly to his work day, alone.

I still drive by that apartment and assume that it belongs to us, my childhood will haunt whoever lives there until I can buy it, just for fucks sake and keep it as a memory.

My grandfather was a loner too, son of many sons of mountain people wedged in a village and on the other side a sea.

He’d walk, in the early hours of the morning to his work too. He’d toil the mountains, his father a shepherd and farmer.

My uncles, all land people. Quiet men, but robustly strong men.

There’s manhood in solitude yet!

Someone tells us that we’re of prophetic lineage, Hashimi to be exact and this seems to be on the lips of other families in surrounding villages.

I hear it more than once as if it’s a get out of jail free card, but I’ve wrestled with myself in just as much quietude as my ancestors for me to believe that it’s true.

Still on the offchance it is, I think of my noble grandfather – I hope he’s my grandfather – The Prophet who received revelation in……. Solitude but was believed in multitude.

The man who was responsible for transforming the otherwise then despicable Arab peninsula – perhaps now just as despicable – into the centre of the world.

Maybe it’s solitude missing from my people, stopping them from rising to that place again.

I’ve turned too many pages to not know that great men, men who’ve had the biggest impact, real impact were always introverted and preferred the humble sifting grounds of solitude over the cacophany of noise amongst people.

And so distraction feels like an enemy sucking my marrow and I feel bad for even thinking of people as distractions.

They don’t even get a chance to develop a relationship with me before I have ignored them based on their incessantly noisy approach to being heard.

Tap me gently,
wake me softly,
brush up against me with prose,
waft past me with a perfume so enchanting you pull me out of my shell,
but don’t vie for my attention with claptrap and hyde.

I’ll find you, I’ll hear you, I’ll notice all your nuances like I noticed my home, my father, like I think of my ancestors walking alone at night.

Quiet men,
noble men,
men of fortitude,
sunken in solitude,
bathing in introversion,
aching in longing for answers to all their ponders,
too proud to ask,
stoic in acceptance of their fate.

Men that thought so much, that their hearts beat double as fast, silently away from the masses,
men who all died early.

Maybe they all die when their need for solitude is no longer met, when they can’t keep enough of themselves away from people.

Maybe they die when their secrets are exposed.

Feeling all and nothing at once.

I like things,
that make me not know how to feel,
or make me feel everything at once.

Contradictory things,
and nothing.

My introversion depends on it,
there’s a crosswire somewhere,
alone is my cocoon,
yet I apparently need my intellect to get there,
that’s at least what Myers says.

But this is more,
or maybe God chose an optional extra for me,
means I throw out the category I’m meant to be in,
and am switched on by a feeling,
or a signal that I was meant to feel something yet didn’t,
to activate my withdrawal to silence.

I don’t know how not to feel,
even about the sinisterism of all things interconnected and unimportant,
rippling off other things,
mundane as it may seem,
it carries with it a history of influence,
a DNA of repurcussion,
inescapable tragedy and elation from ancestors.

There’s nuance to notice,
I said ‘that make me not know how to feel’, I didn’t say ‘that confuse me’,
I’m glad my soul structures it this way,
I’m rarely confused,
I’ve spent too much time inside to be confused.

My liking them,
these things that make me not know how to feel,
or tsunami me with feelings,
are gene codes for comprehension,
there is no being without them,
every body feels them,
I’m just constantly micro managing them,
and no one likes a micro manager,
except when they’re confused.

W.E.

-unveiling

​-unveiling
An aversion to being known,

not unlike a lure to being unseen,

neither here, nor there,

not even in between.
Your eyes fail you,

if you can’t close them and see all that I am,

your heart betrays you,

if you’ve settled on my confines, your hologram.
I’m not yours, his,

hers nor mine,

I don’t belong here,

there, nor in any time.
Hybrid, morbid,

acid and livid,

alive, breathing,

spirited and vivid.
Most people are not brutal enough,

to punish themselves to the point of harm,

a sadism of pain,

to appreciate how alive they are.
The most honest experience I’ve tasted,

is that dishonesty seeps from my marrow,

perhaps here,

there is hope yet,

perhaps in this pool of maim,

this wound licking orgy,

is where I can relish in narcissistic pride,

mortality clenched between jaw and jugular,

that I have something left that resembles a sensitive heart.
And it’s precisely that sensitivity,

that keeps me from you,

worlds apart, worlds apart.
I have no interest in lending,

a fibre, nor borrowed time,

regrets have become,

an easily avoidable past time.
W.E.

Introversion forty two

introversion-forty-2

I am my own entertainment,
without narcissism.
I am my own refuge,
without oppression.
I am my own solace,
without depression,
I am my own man,
without any chauvinism.

Why would I wait for your entertainment,
when all that is needed is at my beck and call,
the world presents as a splendour of gifts,
loneliness and boredom is the lazy man’s shortfall.

W.E.

Race, introversion,  gender… 

race gender introversionInspired by a brilliant share by Susan Cain, Article by Kelly Wickham Hurst

Link to article below.

Here are my views on the article.

I can identify a lot with the article because of the similar shared practises that I believe cross over to any ‘minority’  race in a given demographic.

Pretty much my whole childhood and teen youth.

Dux of the school every year,  straight A’s,  middle eastern background male, born and raised in sandy hair, blue eyed Australia, no attention needed, I slotted himself into the mould of inattention by being obedient. No enhancement needed. Don’t need to nurture my skill, refine my abilities, push me harder,  to achieve more,  to be more, to give more of myself.

No, I had to sever from the education system to find myself and it’s taken me twenty years after leaving school, (fourteen after leaving university) out of my life to come to realise what I want to be ‘when I grow up’.

Because the guy sitting in the front row every class doesn’t need as much attention as the trouble maker in the back. Introversion becomes the codeine for a teachers attention as it numbs her/him from seeing you. Even at university level, especially at university level, because young adults paying big dollar need even less attention from older adults, earning enough dollar who also got no attention, vicious cycle.

That is until your art and music  teachers see you differently,  because God just built artists that way, they’re feelers,  they’re knowers, not prattlers, oh and my fifth grade teacher, who all woke me up to the idea I could do something. Still though, they’re just little nudges, not follow through pushing, encouragement enough to steer you or to set you on your course

Are teachers afraid to? Are they under too much pressure by schools, boards, govt to stay out of the business of people and just lambaste material into peoples brains emotionally detached from caring and loving the humans that are struggling to develop in front of them?

What could I have been if I was honed much earlier and didn’t have to wait for the hand of time, which often comes as the bloodied fist, to teach me? Why did time have to refine me all these years later when we offer so much respect and expect our pedagogy to bring out the best of our children?

Why are we fed this lie of education at government funded centres being so important if importance of each child is overlooked?

I don’t have anyone’s answers but my own which is why I decided to stop this downward spiral of events. I won’t let my children be relegated to the back of a classroom as a problem child that needs constant attention, albeit for the wrong reasons, possibly stigmatising them, turning them into self fulfilling prophecies of problems, just because they question everything and won’t take black and white answers, nor will I have them neglected because they’re mediocre and don’t rock the boat (because they are damned behaved), nor will I have them overlooked and not honed and pruned to grow as far up as possible, because they are complicit and do their work.

I’ve tasted it all and my introversion had me questioning these things from a very young age. I was quite aware of what gets attention in class, who gets the extra help during, before and after class. Who’s parents are the ones that are conversed to, what a gurgler of a system we have, so many children lost down it, never reaching the true brilliance they have inside them lurking  because a teacher, for whatever reason doesn’t have the time to devote to each and every child. But, I knew my place, shut my mouth and stayed away from frolicking the feathers of an over caffeinated, underpaid employee of the state.

This is not to blame the teachers wholly, but it is to blame them partially, because that bias, if they search deep within themselves, does exist, I know it does, I’ve experienced it growing up and as a parent, as a homeschooler who has five children. As someone who knows some of his kids just get on with what they’re meant to do and others don’t. I came to this realisation a while ago and spread my attention to them accordingly.

Anyway, rant over, check out Susan Cain’s post in the link below. Do any of you identify with this?

-W.E.

Quiet Black Girls—and How We Fail Them