Muhammad Afzaal

“NOVEMBER

Now chill & grey November
Come slowly o'er the plain,
Drearily the winter wind
Sings songs of future pain.

Wrapped closely in deep grey,
She scarcely will let pass
A little ray of sun
To cheer the sodden grass.

She scatters with her hand
The leaves dried up and brown,
The few that yet remain
From gay October's crown.

Her eyes and dark and sad,
Sad for the dying year,
And often in the mist
There falls a silent tear.

Beneath a cheerless sky
The trees are standing bare,
The fog has risen thick
And she is no more there.”
― Beatrice Crane

“November evenings are often cold and dry. It is a season of loss and a season of despair. The world is brown and yellow and naked. The bears had hibernated and the migrants from the north had moved to the south. It was a time of no harvest – and a time of no plantation. All that the people around knew were to sit around the warmth of the bukharis and spend family time with their loved ones. It was the beginning of the spell of despondency. It was the parallel of summer and the heart the autumn-winter transitions. It was a season of sweaters and yathras and jackets. The earth around was cold and barren.”
― Tshetrim Tharchen, A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars

“First: breakdown, impossible to sleep, impossible to stay awake, impossible to endure life, or, more exactly, the course of life. The clocks are not in unison; the inner one runs crazily on at a devilish or demoniac or in any case inhuman pace, the outer one limps along at its usual speed. What else can happen but that the two worlds split apart, and they do split apart, or at least clash in a fearful manner. There are doubtless several reasons for the wild tempo of the inner process; the most obvious one is introspection, which will suffer no idea to sink tranquilly to rest but must pursue each one into consciousness, only itself to become an idea, in turn to be pursued by renewed introspection.

Secondly: this pursuit, originating in the midst of men, carries one in a direction away from them. The solitude that for the most part has been forced on me, in part voluntarily sought by me –but what was this if not compulsion too? –is now losing all its ambiguity and approaches its dénouement. Where is it leading? The strongest likelihood is, that it may lead to madness; there is nothing more to say, the pursuit goes right through me and rends me asunder. Or I can –can I? –manage to keep my feet somewhat and be carried along in the wild pursuit. Where, then, shall I be brought? ‘Pursuit,’ indeed, is only a metaphor. I can also say, ‘assault on the last earthly frontier’, an assault, moreover, launched from below, from mankind, and since this too is a metaphor, I can replace it by the metaphor of an assault from above, aimed at me from above.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“And all the time it's raining outside and doesn't look as though it will ever stop. Doesn't worry me at all, I'm under cover and am only embarrassed to eat my opulent Gabelfrühstük in front of the house painter who at the moment is standing on the scaffolding before my windows and who, furious about the rain which has temporarily stopped and about the amount of butter I'm putting on my bread, is splashing the windows unnecessarily (which is probably also only my imagination, since he is no doubt 100 times less preoccupied with me than I with him). No, now he is really working in pouring rain and thunder.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena