All posts by yasmine

Take a breath, feel the beat in the rhythm of my steps

(3)BeautifulThings

My (one and only) sell-out t-shirt
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

[Three beautiful things from October 15, 2006]

– Wearing my favorite red t-shirt – I call it my “sell-out” shirt – and realizing it still smells like the Clinique perfume I spritzed on at Macy’s, four days ago. [The shirt reads “Coca-Cola” in Urdu/Arabic script, read right to left.] I have to smile whenever I see the above photo, which taken in San Francisco last July while I was lunching with college friends who are always so delighted to see me that I am constantly humbled when I think of how lucky I am to know such rockstars.

– Asking T how to correctly pronounce the following words:

– diocese
– ecumenical
– liturgy
– licentiate

and having him deadpan, “You’re asking the wrong person. I’m a fob.”

– Renewing my flickrPro account, two days before expiration. That means yet more photos for you to enjoy on the days when I’m too lazy to write. Which has lately been a lot of days, seemingly. Anyone else missing the long, long posts I was infamous for? Yeah, me, too.

On the side of the highway, baby/Our road is long

(3)BeautifulThings, Hit the Road

This is my favorite picture, even though it's fuzzy and out of focus
Blurry San Francisco, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Beautiful things:
Bumper stickers I’ve noticed lately, which have made me laugh –

OUTTA MY WAY. I GOTTA PEE.

EAT BEEF. The West wasn’t won on salad.

I LOVE AIRPLANE NOISE.

And my personal favorite – NIRWANA – which reminded me of when my favorite crackhead, Somayya, first moved from Pakistan to the U.S. as a five year old. As a fobby little kindergartener, she became famous for uttering lines such as, “I am vearing a west today and I live in Vest Sacramento.” Also, the very first English word she spoke was “cupcake.” See, this is why we’re friends, even though we’re related by default.

Three beautiful things: The transportation edition

(3)BeautifulThings, Hit the Road

Overhead Heading home
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

[From October 11, 2006]

– It takes me two hours to get to work in the morning, because two big rigs collided on the Sunol Grade on Interstate 880 and spilled oil across the freeway. Impatiently listening to the AM radio to pick up on any traffic updates, I hear the newscasters discussing their colleague’s fascination with my favorite cookies: “Every week, he bursts into a new realm of snickerdoodledom.”

– In the afternoon, I stop by Macy’s for a quick errand, opt for street parking rather than the garage, and discover, to my delight, that there are still 42 minutes left on my parking meter. (This, of course, means I spend way too much time doing extra girly things like checking out earrings, spritzing on perfume, and buying my favorite lipgloss.)

– GMail IM from Z: “Yesterday on BART, a little 4 year old girl said, ‘I have pigtails and you don’t!'”

(More than three) beautiful things: The semi-work edition

(3)BeautifulThings, NineToFive outside the 925


Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Okay, kids, so remember that part where I said I was going to post “three beautiful things” everyday? Well, clearly, it didn’t work so well, because – once again! – I haven’t really updated in nearly three weeks. The good news is, I’ve been scribbling down beautiful things in my lovely little Moleskine notebook, as I am wont to do with all potential weblog posts. The part where it backfired is the part where I neglected to type things out. But I guess the fact that all you all still stop by means you don’t mind reading about things three weeks later. Long live our communal procrastination tactics, rockstars!

Meanwhile, I’m drowning in project plans at work (three of them, kids, THREE!), so I apologize for what’ll be continued sporadic posting. But here’s some short stuff for you to read:

– Regarding the photo above, I recently posted it to flickr with the following title: “My fax cover-sheet got printed looking like this and I was so tempted to append a note saying, ‘Thank you kindly, clearly we appreciate your business/enjoy working with you,’ and just send it off like this.” I make myself laugh so much, you don’t even know.

– Funny subject line on email spam at work: “Hey, our boss got fired?”

– Funny spam subject line #2: “Offices have been closed permanently.”

– We received a shipment of new envelopes and brochures at the office, and I couldn’t stop going into the back room and lifting the flaps off the boxes and sniffing inside. I have decided I love the smell of new paper.

– Also, there was this work-related event where I had to do quite a bit of talking, and the Board has decided I am a “fantastic speaker,” as well as “articulate” and “personable.” Who knew? However (in somehow related news, just take my word for it), some Muslims apparently can’t handle headwraps, though. Muslims are so annoying sometimes. They needa stop with that drama.

Akhtar de mubarak sha!

Rockstar and Crescent

Akhtar de mubarak sha!

Eid mubarak, crackstars! Can you believe it’s over? Yeah, me either. Have a beautiful day, lovely people – may it be a blessed time for you and yours.

(PS: I don’t even get a real Eid – seminar all day Monday, projects on Tuesday, regardless of whatever day I would have chosen to celebrate. The good news: I’m taking Friday off to attend jummah at my favorite masjid [Oakland] and bum around in Berkeley and perhaps San Francisco as well. The promise of jummah in Oakland, after months away, is enough to make my week. Rocking good times.)

Three Things: The Home Edition

(3)BeautifulThings, Bibliothek, Casa420 and Familia

Chukairiyaan
Chukairiyaan, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

1. Waking up at 8am, realizing it’s a Saturday, and burrowing back under the warm covers to sleep in until 10:30. Washing my face, and then promptly sitting down at the computer. I check emails and weblogs while my mother pulls up a chair beside me and flips through catalogues and coupon books. We discuss an impending visit to IKEA (she’s never been!), and she tells me The Sister is on a newfound campaign to add a cat to our household. A cat would be nice, says my mother wistfully. She fondly recalls our previous next-door neighbor’s cat, Daisy, who used to keep my mother company in the garden.

2. I wash and condition my hair, then actually take the time to comb it out, too – albeit abruptly, top to bottom rather than the other way around, so that my impatient tugs result in lots of gnarled hair in the wastebasket. Still, it got combed. Since I’m a firm adherent of the “I don’t believe in combing my hair” philosophy, today’s effort is highly newsworthy and must be mentioned, especially considering I have conversations about hair quite rarely anyway (my favorite conversation is still that latter one, with a four-year-old, no less). I then sit in a pool of sunshine on the living room floor, willing my hair to dry while reading the last few chapters of John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, a book I love but have never reread since finishing it in one evening for my tenth-grade English class, eight years ago. In one passage that makes me smile, Gene says:

After the lights went out the special quality of my silence let [Phineas] know I was saying [prayers], and he kept quiet for approximately three minutes. Then he began to talk; he never went to sleep without talking first and he seemed to feel that prayers lasting more than three minutes were showing off. God was always unoccupied in Finny’s universe, ready to lend an ear any time at all. Anyone who failed to get his message through in three minutes, as I sometimes failed to do when trying to impress him, Phineas, with my sanctity, wasn’t trying.

3. Lazily sitting around the dining room table after we’ve just finished dinner, The Sister looks around at each of us individually and asks, wide-eyed, “Anyone want chocolate cake?” I laugh at her excitement, and she adds, “I’ve been looking forward to this all day!” Our mother, ever the practical one, advises that we save the dessert-consumption for after taraweeh [the nightly congregational prayers held during Ramadan], but the daddy-o – never one to refuse dessert – overrules that suggestion with an authoritative, “Well, in that case, we can have two! – one dessert now, and another one when we get back from taraweeh.” A quick peek into the refrigerator makes me laugh at all the choices available to us: apple-caramel-pecan cake, chocolate ganache torte, apple pie, chocolate-orange sticks, and, in the freezer, two pints of ice cream, one of which (my new favorite: Ben&Jerry’s American Pie) merited an excited email from me to fellow ice cream fan 2Scoops months ago, raving about how it was “basically exactly what it sounds like – apple pie with ice cream!” Just for 2Scoops, I would like to add that the American Pie ice cream is still SPECTACULARICIOUS.

Three Things (plus three more)

(3)BeautifulThings, Blogistan and the Wide World of Webs, NineToFive outside the 925

Sunlight shadows on the sidewalk, Friday afternoon
Sunlight shadows on the sidewalk, Friday afternoon, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

This afternoon, after clicking over to Blogger.com and pausing before signing in (believe it or not, this is something I do often: I decide I want to update this weblog, I click over to Blogger, and then I just stop, overcome by a feeling of overwhelming helplessness: Where do I even begin? – too many stories to share, and, clearly, I think too much and thus end up writing and sharing nothing)…so, anyway, in the few moments today as my fingers hovered restlessly over the mouse and I debated yet again whether or not to sign into Blogger, I discovered my new favorite weblog: it’s one in the list of current Blogs of Note, and entitled Three Beautiful Things. Someone named Spitfire left a lovely comment there that summed up the entire premise of the Three Beautiful Things weblog:

The natural, simple happiness of the commonplace things is subtle and beautiful, and yet it requires a well-trained eye to appreciate it.
Those who find in the small details the true reason for being alive are to be praised. The search for sources of authentic smiles is a difficult, but noble and delightful activity.

And as Clare herself of Three Beautiful Things notes:

The thing about 3BT is, it’s not that my life is particularly beautiful (although I know as a single woman living in England in 2007, I have a lot to be thankful for) but that I find myself constantly on the look-out for beautiful things.

Leaving work at 5.30pm today, I swung the front door shut behind me, and something about the late afternoon light made me stop dead in my tracks. Seconds later, my bag hit the ground and I was kneeling on the walkway, camera in hand, snapping photos of the sunlight on the grass. When I’d decided a dozen photos was more than enough, I stood up, brushed off my knees, and, before turning away to head back to my car, I stopped and aimed one final, level glance at the shadows, thinking, I have to remember this moment so I can write about it later.

So, because I am nothing if not a proponent of celebrating the mundane (and a lover of the word beautiful), I’ve decided I’m going to try this three beautiful things exercise myself, in order to get myself back into the swing of writing regularly. Perhaps (I’m pretty sure) I’ll end up recording more than three things at a time, but the point – for me – is to just write. Simple, seemingly mundane things would be a good start, because in the last few months I’ve become so overwhelmed by what I haven’t written that it’s been difficult to get myself out of this blogging backlog and actually write.

I’m aiming to try this everyday. Ambitious, I know, but I’ve got to start somewhere. And because I’ve missed Blogistan comment-box conversations with my fellow bloggers and blurkers [blog+lurkers] so much, you are more than welcome to add your own three-things to the comments.

So, here’s my Friday: Things that made me smile, in numerical form. One, two, three, GO.

1. The way the late afternoon sunlight and shadows slant across the sidewalk. [See photo above. It took me far too long to decide which photo to post; they’re all so sunshine-y beautiful and make me especially happy because this past week has been all about the rain.]

2. Organizing a conference call for work – and having it go off without a hitch – and crossing everything off Page One of my four-page project plan. (I love the strikethrough function! Pages 2-4 must be completed during this upcoming week, though. Gross.)

3. GMail chat conversation with HijabMan about how he’s planning on flying notes around his office. The mental image made me laugh, and what’s even funnier is that I can imagine my co-worker/buddy B and I doing the same.

4. Phone conversations spent remembering karaoke with old co-workers, back in the good ol’ downtown Sacramento days.

5. Accolades –
HijabMan: “Wow, how did you get so lucky…? Dude, you are so a rockstar.”
Yasmine: “Because they love me!”
HijabMan: “I’ve never heard you say something so…self-centered.”

6. Quick GMail chat conversation with the buddy Z about how, as children, we used to light things on fire, which inexplicably ends with him exclaiming, “You, sire, are a DILETTANTE.”

HijabMan.com is back!

Blogistan and the Wide World of Webs, Links to love

Our favorite, funny balloon-maker and t-shirt seller is back, and better than ever. Check out the newly-relaunched HijabMan.com for all sorts of good stuff, including his gorgeous photos, of which he explains:

I’m not a photographer nor am I a journalist trained to seek out interesting subjects and present them neatly labeled and interpreted. My only explanations are that 1. I’ve been living my life in freeze frames since the age of 12, and 2. I love beautiful things. I am just a Muslim who travels, studies, and sells funky t-shirts along the way. When the opportunities presented themselves, I captured the faces that touched me. I love to witness the reflection of the Divine in all that I experience; I love to make you a witness by posting these photos.

I know HijabMan personally, so when he says he’s aiming to spread “a message of consciousness, of justice, of living a life free of people and institutions that exploit others,” you can be sure he is indeed working on those goals. Also, you should buy his t-shirts.

Meanwhile, I’m highly amused that, over at HijabMan.com, this little ol’ weblog of mine is linked right smack in between Khaled Abou El Fadl and Tariq Ramadan‘s respective websites. Wow, now I really gotta get all smart and intellectual.

The street, and those who served themselves who only stood to wait

Conversations and Encounters

After leaving work the other day, I stopped for gas. Fidgeting impatiently while the gas tank filled up, I decided to duck inside the gas station to satisfy my hunger. As my co-workers are all-too-fond of reminding me, this “eating a granola bar for lunch” business has to stop sometime. Real meals are the key. Which is why, at 5.30pm, I came to the conclusion that a quick candy run would alleviate my hunger pangs and ward off boredom while stuck in traffic on the way home. Maybe they would even have blue slurpees – any slurpees, dammit – inside the gas station.

Have I mentioned how hot it’s been in Northern California lately? It’s been really hot. So hot that I’ve taken to carrying a water bottle with me everywhere, which is a huge step for me, since impending dehydration is not something I’ve ever worried about before in my life. It’s so hot that when I closed my car door after removing my wallet from inside, I unlocked the car and reopened the door just to remove my water bottle as well, because I knew the water would become warm if it stayed inside.

I tucked the water bottle under my left arm and grasped my wallet with my right hand as I prepared to walk into the gas station’s convenience store. On second thought, What if they didn’t realize the water bottle was my own? I switched the items around, so that I was now loosely, visibly holding the water bottle by its neck.

Squinting at the numbers on my gas pump, I wandered into the convenience store. It was smaller than I had expected, and there definitely weren’t any slurpee machines to be seen. I scanned the few rows of candy. Nothing looked appetizing, all of a sudden, because I realized that I was hot and tired and what I really needed was not solid food, but, rather, something really, really cold to drink. Cranberry juice? There was none, except for cranberry-apple, if that counts, and, if you’re Picky Yasmine, then no, indeed it does not. Soda? No. Lemonade? Mmm, tempting, but lemonade makes me feel even thirstier when I’m already thirsty. Energy drinks? Just say no.

I stood with my face scrunched in uncertainty in front of the cold drinks section for a full two, three minutes as customers walked in and out of the store using the door right behind me. Finally, I gave up, turned around, and walked back out to my car.

I replaced the gas nozzle, then got in my car. As I fastened my seatbelt and fiddled with my CD player, I noticed a man standing a few feet away, seemingly directing a question at me. I watched his face, confused. Something about water? What the hell? I wondered. He saw my questioning expression, and repeated whatever he was saying, but I had no idea what he was going on about, besides the fact that it seemed to concern water.

Before my just drive on instinct had fully kicked in, I realized he was dressed in the uniform of a gas station attendant, so I rolled down my window. “Sorry, what was that?”

“You didn’t pay for your water,” he said flatly.

Oh, good lord. I was torn between annoyance and anxiety, but mostly anxiety. “No,” I denied, “it’s my own bottle. I walked in with it.”

“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t see you walk in with it.”

Without another word, he turned on his heel and went back inside.

What? That was it? I remained in the car, head turned apprehensively towards the store. Was he going inside for back-up or something? Wait, no, seriously, that was it? For reals? Did I look like someone who would steal a $1.25 water bottle? Even as I asked myself that last question, I knew it wasn’t about looking a certain way, and the man was quite justified in clarifying whether the bottle were mine or not.

Still, as I drove away, that last question made me laugh out loud, because I was quite a kleptomaniac in my childhood. Plastic jewelry, candy, makeup, Pez dispensers, knick-knacks and trinkets from the Exploratorium museum store… you name it, I managed to somehow smuggle it home. I only got caught once – for the Pez dispenser. Not that I’m proud of this, or anything.

But, no, as a 25-year-old, I’m not the type to get a thrill out of stealing $1.25 water bottles. My currently-preferred method of living life on the edge is to drive too fast (I tend to think of the speed limit as a suggestion – one which I conveniently ignore), gobble down fried foods with no concern for cholesterol, and thumb my nose at those who claim I’ll die of skin cancer because I deliberately spend so much time sitting directly in the sunshine, sans sunscreen.

Besides, if I really wanted to steal something, I wouldn’t go for $1.25 water bottles, anyway. Dangly earrings would be more in line with my tastes. Or perhaps I could concoct clever schemes to finagle cash out of sympathetic individuals, so that I could buy endless supplies of french fries and blue slurpees and crack, my ostensible drug of choice.

Which reminds me of another story, recent as well:


Smile on your brother!
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

While at the gas station sometime last week, waiting for my tank to fill up, I opened the glove compartment, pulled out the maintenance manual that came with my car, and tried to figure out if it was time for another recommended oil change, since I had just hit the 10,000-mile mark. I was flipping through pages when I heard a voice outside my open window say, “Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but…”

I looked up from my book and out the window. “Sorry, what?”

“Could you please help us out with gas money, maybe?” He was young and skinny, maybe in his late teens. He gestured at his car, parked on the other side of my pump.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Fresno,” he replied.

[That’s in the Central Valley, at least a three-hour drive.]

I flipped through my wallet, pulling out what little cash I had. “Here, I hope this helps.”

“Thanks so much!”

They looked slightly familiar, but, then again, I’ve spent time in so many different places that everyone looks slightly familiar to me, whether they’re acquaintances or strangers. They reminded me of the other boys at the gas station, months ago, and I momentarily watched them suspiciously, wondering if it were the same ones.

“How do you tell the difference between them?” Ray Bradbury wrote. “How can you tell which is honest, which isn’t?”

I can’t tell; perhaps I’m too nice or too gullible or I too easily trust those who don’t owe me the truth. But I believe in karma, I believe that what goes around comes around, I believe the world is a small place and we’re all connected somehow. These are some of the reasons why I give random boys gas money and why I smile sunnily at people who solicit donations in front of my local grocery store for various organizations, because even if I rarely ever have cash on me I still always pause just long enough to say, “Have a beautiful day!”, because that’s still a connection – however minor – and an acknowledgment that we share this world together.

And maybe I’m too trusting or too easily touched, but the fact that the recent gas station boy turned and waved across the parking lot as I drove away was enough to make my day.

I honor the place in you, of love, of light, of truth

(3)BeautifulThings, Links to love

I firmly believe that roses are overrated
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

A recent edition of the San Francisco Chronicle contained an article I read with interest. FINDING MY RELIGION: Nipun and Guri Mehta talk about their $1-a-day pilgrimage through India is an interview with two people I am blessed to know, although it’s been months since I’ve seen them in person.

I’ve mentioned Nipun and Guri (and Viral and Mark and Dipti) in passing before, describing them as people who are so beautifully inspiring on a daily basis that my words will never do them justice. I first met them all in November 2004, when – through an introduction from my friend SS – the crazy crackstabber, Mark, invited me to a Wednesday evening meditation at the home of Nipun and Viral’s parents in the South Bay. Nearly every Wednesday evening over the next five, six months, I regularly drove two hours from the Sacramento area to the South Bay, where I sat on the floor of a Silicon Valley living room with dozens of other people from all walks of life, cross-legged, eyes closed, in silence for an hour. After that, I would participate in an hour-long roundtable sharing of thoughts with the others, gratefully accept a homecooked vegetarian meal from Nipun’s mother, and then hit the road for the hour-long drive home to the East Bay.

Those few hours spent in the company of such conscious individuals are amongst the most peaceful I can remember. Time and again, I have started writing about them, only to discard my writing, leaving it half-finished. It’s true, I’ll never be able to suitably articulate their spirit of service, their compassion, the beauty of these people I’ve met through the Wednesday evenings. I’ll try again soon, though, because everyone should be lucky to know people even half as beautiful as these.

From the SF Chronicle article:

There’s a question posted on your personal Web site: “Do you have a spiritual teacher?” Your answer to that was, “Yes, you.” Is it sometimes a struggle to see everyone as your teacher?

Nipun: I try to see life with reverence — all life. When we were walking, we learned a lot of things. We learned to see the goodness in everybody, to try to learn from everybody and everything, even if it’s just a tree. I mean, when you’re walking and it’s really hot, and you see a tree and you say, “Wow!” — it’s just there giving shade to you selflessly!

So I try to approach everything with humility. You never know what can teach you spiritual lessons you need to learn.

Nipun’s brother, Viral, once gave a talk that, to me, sums up the spirit of CharityFocus and the people who are, in various ways, affiliated with it:

Namaste — in India when we meet and greet, we say Namaste, and Ram Dass gives a beautiful definition: Namaste means I honor the place in you, where the entire universe resides. I honor the place in you, of love, of light, of truth. I honor that place in you, where if you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.