the hidden realm 💭
& intentions for a summer in Vermont
Starting next week, I will be living in Vermont for the summer, sharing a home with two dear friends and a sleepy pitbull, and centering my days around writing. I feel the uncomfortable, stretchy feelings of change, new beginnings, and embarking on a path with little certainty of where it will lead. I’m leaving the NYC area where I have my family and an abundance of friends for a state where I know exactly four people. I let myself freak out for a bit, then I remember that I am the same person who moved to Gaza in 2017 and barely thought twice about it. Beneath discomfort and fear lives my intuition. Like a compass, it guides me to make leaps, this time towards the land of green mountains and icy cool lakes.
My intentions for this summer are to orient my time and energy around nurturing a book idea I’ve been mulling over for nearly two years. It’s wild to think about the concept of an idea, an amorphous blob of thought that lives in the imagination and gets nourished by the experience of being alive. I think about how anything we create, whether it be a meal or poem, begins in the unseen realm of ideas. I love hearing the ding! of a ripe idea, a force that tips potential energy into kinetic, compelling me to reach for the page. I’m reminded of a line penned by Ghalib, a masterful Urdu poet:
They come into the mind, these themes from the hidden realm,
The scratching of the pen is the voice of an angel.
Ever since I left Palestine two years ago, I’ve had this gnawing feeling that I have to write it down. But what it is has been mysterious and difficult to access. I look back on the experience with an overwhelming sense of love and gratitude coupled with an urgency to tell stories that counter reductive headlines and the plague of propaganda. I know that I’ve been forever changed by Palestine, and writing feels like the only way to figure out how. Every attempt I’ve made to act on this desire and produce a neat and clear synopsis of my idea has been frustrating, culminating in drafts that feel so far from the truth I am trying to excavate.
I sometimes think that I simply don’t have the discipline or talent it takes to realize a long-form project, that I’m more suited for the instant gratification of self-publishing this Substack or snippets of thoughts on Instagram. The more I’ve grown as a human and as a writer, the more I understand that complexity and impatience are incompatible. Big ideas are made up of smaller ones, interdependent and in conversation with each other, and need space and time to develop. I realize that my unsatisfying drafts aren’t failures, but compost needed to nourish a garden of thoughts. Making peace with the unsatisfying part of writing is a practice of patience.
Traveling to Palestine and Pakistan this year, trips I’ve been guided to by intuition, helped me connect dots I didn’t even know existed. I’ve connected with other writers over the years, particularly ones of South Asian and Muslim heritage, and feel more rooted in creative community than ever before. My head and heart are healing in ways that make me more receptive to life's multitudes, the thorns alongside the roses. The space in between, the void where nothing noticeably profound has happened, has been vital too. Like caring for plants, tending to creativity is a balance between active nourishment and stepping back to allow life to carve its own way.
I have daily writing goals for this summer, workshops and mentorship lined up, and a blueprint of a routine to keep me focused. But in truth, I have no idea where I’ll end up. Perhaps several weeks of creative excavations will confirm that this idea just isn’t viable, or isn’t mine to realize, or that it needs more time in the womb of imagination before it’s ready to enter the world. Or maybe I’ll find the threads of something beautiful, something that brims with the light of truth, that gives me the starting point to weave imagination into reality. Or, or, or…
No matter the outcome, I remind myself that having a summer to explore luminous, creative potential is a blessing unto itself. I get to be among mountains and rivers and lakes, old friends and hopefully new, and wake up every day to the task of whittling language into the shape of my truth. I get to point my antennae towards the hidden realm, scanning the radio for the voices of angels. It feels romantic; I get to live a version of life conjured in my dreams.
It can be easy to forget that simply being alive is a creative act — that taking in oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide weaves us into a tapestry with all of earth’s beings. The reward that most incentivizes me is knowing myself more deeply, not as an entity separate or superior to the natural world but as an inherent part of it. This goal feels less daunting than writing a book, perhaps because it’s not really a goal, but an exploration – expansive, alive, and enticing.
With this north star in place, I gather my books and journals, a swim suit and bike helmet, and head up north to somewhere new.
I am glad you found and purchased the book on Ghalib in the Lahore book store. Whatever you do, you have the support of family and friends <3