Category Archives: (3)BeautifulThings

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.”

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.

Living on borrowed time out on the rim, over the line, always tempting fate like a game of chance

(3)BeautifulThings

Scattered thank-yous, mentally noted, from the past two, three weeks:

Thank you to the mailman whom I asked for directions when I got lost going to the evening of live Moroccan music in Berkeley. I don’t think you knew how to get there any more than I did, and you were suitably vague about what road I should take, but you were friendly and you underscored my new philosophy: Spotting a mailman when you’re lost is the best, relieved feeling in the world.

Thank you to the blonde guy biting his lips to keep from smiling at the Moroccan music dinner/benefit, for repeatedly switching around the lined-up juice bottles on the drinks table while the little boys who had lined them up giggled and rapidly shuffled them back into perfect order.

Thank you, neighborhoodies.com for keeping me amused for hours on a Tuesday two weeks ago, when I should have been doing productive things that would result in my having enough money to actually buy said hoodies and t-shirts.

Oh yeah, but I have a job now, for the summer. Thank you, people who gave me a job, for thinking I’m grown-up enough to handle work and for believing I’m actually worth hiring. Thank you for the money, too, because, I’ll be honest, I really do like money.

Thank you to the ambulance driver at Telegraph and 52nd, for not running me over when, oblivious child that I am, I nearly didn’t notice your speeding ambulance and its flashing lights in time. When I slammed on my brakes, so quickly I smelled the burning rubber from my tires, you continued through the intersection, turning in front of my lane. I did my usual throwing-up-my-hands gesture, and you smiled and saluted smartly.

Speaking of ambulance drivers, thank you, Ladder 49, for making me appreciate the work that firefighters do. Firefighters: You are ROCKING.

Thank you to the driver who so patiently waited at the stop sign on Homestead Ave., while the couple across from him at the intersection picked up their fallen groceries in the middle of the street. You didn’t honk, you didn’t throw up your hands, you didn’t seem to have any visibly impatient expression on your face. You just sat and waved at them to continue taking their time, and I feel blessed for having had the opportunity to witness your patience and grace.

Thank you, shutterfly.com, for sending me free prints. You sure know how to give a girl incentive to develop digital photos for the very first time (even though I’ve owned a digital camera since last August), and I’m staggered by the image quality of the photos I received in the mail. Oh, and my camera: I love you and your photo-taking, and your video-recording feature, too.

Thank you, clumsy young man who bumped into me on Main St.; your muttered “I’m sorry” and my unconcerned “Excuse me” gave the blonde girl with you just enough time to glance at me and squeal, “Oh my God, your pants are so CUTE!” She didn’t strike me as the type to be caught dead wearing my Elvis pants, but God knows I myself use “so cute” as a compliment more often than not, too, so I can’t fault her for the ditzy sort of exclamations.

Thank you, girl on Highway 4 who was driving with her bare left foot out the open window, for making me smile on my way back from a funeral. I know I’ve made sarcastic comments about these sort of driving habits in the past, but, still, I needed a smile desperately, and you did just the trick.

Thank you, man at the grocery store, for knocking on the watermelons for sale and bending down, holding your ear close to the fruit. There is an art to fruit-buying, and you clearly looked like you knew what you were doing.

Thank you, Jessica at the bank, for your handwritten, cursive Have a great day! notes on all my deposit receipts. Beyond the appreciation for your personal touch, I really do like your handwriting, too.

Thank you to the grinning blonde art student working on a painting in the library parking lot at the university, for noticing our curious glances and fully standing up and turning around to wave at us as we drove away. “Vhat a nice bwoyyyyy!” I laughed in my best Desi [South Asian] accent.

Thank you, A.M., rockstar extraordinaire, who had such a big name for such a small woman. If I could pick one single person whom I was convinced would change the world, you would have been it. And yet, you still did more in 22 years than many of us manage to accomplish in 45. Thank you for your exuberance, your passion, your dedication to justice and equality in all forms. We live in gratitude for your light.

Living on borrowed time out on the rim, over the line, always tempting fate like a game of chance

(3)BeautifulThings

Scattered thank-yous, mentally noted, from the past two, three weeks:

Thank you to the mailman whom I asked for directions when I got lost going to the evening of live Moroccan music in Berkeley. I don’t think you knew how to get there any more than I did, and you were suitably vague about what road I should take, but you were friendly and you underscored my new philosophy: Spotting a mailman when you’re lost is the best, relieved feeling in the world.

Thank you to the blonde guy biting his lips to keep from smiling at the Moroccan music dinner/benefit, for repeatedly switching around the lined-up juice bottles on the drinks table while the little boys who had lined them up giggled and rapidly shuffled them back into perfect order.

Thank you, neighborhoodies.com for keeping me amused for hours on a Tuesday two weeks ago, when I should have been doing productive things that would result in my having enough money to actually buy said hoodies and t-shirts.

Oh yeah, but I have a job now, for the summer. Thank you, people who gave me a job, for thinking I’m grown-up enough to handle work and for believing I’m actually worth hiring. Thank you for the money, too, because, I’ll be honest, I really do like money.

Thank you to the ambulance driver at Telegraph and 52nd, for not running me over when, oblivious child that I am, I nearly didn’t notice your speeding ambulance and its flashing lights in time. When I slammed on my brakes, so quickly I smelled the burning rubber from my tires, you continued through the intersection, turning in front of my lane. I did my usual throwing-up-my-hands gesture, and you smiled and saluted smartly.

Speaking of ambulance drivers, thank you, Ladder 49, for making me appreciate the work that firefighters do. Firefighters: You are ROCKING.

Thank you to the driver who so patiently waited at the stop sign on Homestead Ave., while the couple across from him at the intersection picked up their fallen groceries in the middle of the street. You didn’t honk, you didn’t throw up your hands, you didn’t seem to have any visibly impatient expression on your face. You just sat and waved at them to continue taking their time, and I feel blessed for having had the opportunity to witness your patience and grace.

Thank you, shutterfly.com, for sending me free prints. You sure know how to give a girl incentive to develop digital photos for the very first time (even though I’ve owned a digital camera since last August), and I’m staggered by the image quality of the photos I received in the mail. Oh, and my camera: I love you and your photo-taking, and your video-recording feature, too.

Thank you, clumsy young man who bumped into me on Main St.; your muttered “I’m sorry” and my unconcerned “Excuse me” gave the blonde girl with you just enough time to glance at me and squeal, “Oh my God, your pants are so CUTE!” She didn’t strike me as the type to be caught dead wearing my Elvis pants, but God knows I myself use “so cute” as a compliment more often than not, too, so I can’t fault her for the ditzy sort of exclamations.

Thank you, girl on Highway 4 who was driving with her bare left foot out the open window, for making me smile on my way back from a funeral. I know I’ve made sarcastic comments about these sort of driving habits in the past, but, still, I needed a smile desperately, and you did just the trick.

Thank you, man at the grocery store, for knocking on the watermelons for sale and bending down, holding your ear close to the fruit. There is an art to fruit-buying, and you clearly looked like you knew what you were doing.

Thank you, Jessica at the bank, for your handwritten, cursive Have a great day! notes on all my deposit receipts. Beyond the appreciation for your personal touch, I really do like your handwriting, too.

Thank you to the grinning blonde art student working on a painting in the library parking lot at the university, for noticing our curious glances and fully standing up and turning around to wave at us as we drove away. “Vhat a nice bwoyyyyy!” I laughed in my best Desi [South Asian] accent.

Thank you, A.M., rockstar extraordinaire, who had such a big name for such a small woman. If I could pick one single person whom I was convinced would change the world, you would have been it. And yet, you still did more in 22 years than many of us manage to accomplish in 45. Thank you for your exuberance, your passion, your dedication to justice and equality in all forms. We live in gratitude for your light.

Things that made even a Monday quite a rocking day

(3)BeautifulThings, All-Star Crackstar Squad

I’m lazy and still working on writing about my meetup with Anjum – disgraceful, I know – but, meanwhile, here’s a long-ish post for you, about this past Monday, no less.

ONE. Taking a nap on the living room floor, smackdab in the middle of the pool of sunshine spilling through the front windows and onto the carpet. Specifically, falling asleep while reading Ivan Turgenev’s short novel, First Love, because that girl – Zinaida Alexandrovna – was so damn arrogant and annoying and self-satisfied that I just wanted to stab her. Or rip the pages out of the anthology. [Not so rocking: leftside arm- and shoulder-aches for the next day and a half. Did I mention I’m left-handed? This is problematic.]

TWO. Snail mail! Package from HijabMan, containing:

– Earrings from the Middle East! He had asked which I wanted more, flip-flops or earrings, and my shallow accessories-addicted inner rockstar told me to go with earrings, so I did. Because we all know I love dangly earrings. I can get flip-flops on my own anytime, but earrings from the Middle East? Lemme at ’em! So HijabMan sent me a photograph he had taken, I circled the earrings I wanted, and emailed it back to him with a note: “THE RED ONE IS MINE!” When I finally got them in the mail, my first thought was, Dayam, I have hella good taste. Alhamdulillah. Oh yeah, and I wore them right away, for the rest of the day. HijabMan is the awesomest. You should be his friend.

– Another mix CD from Baji, mix-CD compiler extraordinaire! Baji had given the CD to HijabMan to give to me when he visited California back in September. He forgot to hand it over, and the CD subsequently traveled with him around the world before making its way back to me. Baji will be so proud! This is a No-Theme CD, and it’s rocking. It also has TWENTY-TWO TRACKS, so it took me the better part of three days worth of errands all around town to get through it. I’m now listening to it for the second time, and loving it, because Baji has awesome taste in music, even though I didn’t recognize any of the songs (which says a lot about my taste in music, obviously). Baji, if I haven’t said this before, you’re my favorite rockstar. You’re lucky I’m not a boy and about ten years older (oh, and ten times smarter), or I woulda challenged TP to a duel and married you myself. I woulda!

…and it’s deja vu, because…

THREE. I ran into my brother the crazy artist at *gasp* the grocery store of all places. He grabbed my grocery list away from me: “Garbanzo beans? Oho, yaar! Chholay!“

I laughed. “Hey, speaking of chholay…”
His interest was piqued. “Naan ‘n’ Curry?” he immediately asked.
“No buddy, although, yeah, we should plan a Berkeley trip to eat at Naan ‘n’ Curry, too. But, hey, let’s check out that movie you really wanted to see.”

So now we’re coordinating plans to see Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World together, even though I warned him that the reviews I had read so far pretty much summed up the film as sucky. But I’ve got to see it for myself. Plus, I liked a bit of Shaheen Sheik‘s music in the past (back when no one knew who she was and her music was good), so maybe that’ll be some saving grace.

FOUR. Phone call from my favorite San Diego-an 2Scoops! Who always merits an exclamation point after his name (hey, I didn’t start it; I’m just agreeing) even though he is stubbornly weblog-less. Nearly five-minute-long voicemessage (“you know how we do”). Best line(s) ever, about the little kids who were – uhhh, praying? suuure – at the masjid during the same time he was:

“This one kid, I don’t know why he was dressed up like this, but he was wearing a karate suit, like, the white karate suit, and he had on a yellow belt and everything. And he would stand, and then he would kick to his right, and then he would stand, and then he would kick to his left…”

Apologies to 2Scoops if I mangled his story, but he talks so fast! (All the better to fit more hilarious stories into those five minutes, before he reaches the limit and the phone automatically cuts him off.) Also, hearing myself creatively addressed as “Y-to-the-AZZO” is enough to make me laugh for minutes on end, and people who make me laugh are my favorite people ever, and hands-down awesome by default. Seeeeeeriously.

FIVE. Discovering this slurpee machine! The only reason I haven’t been talking about blue raspberry slurpees on the weblog for months now is become I haven’t found any blue raspberry slurpees since last summer. Damn graduation. At least in college, I had a steady supply of such things. It’s enough to make a kid consider going to grad suckool. Anyway, remember I promised all y’all your very own slupee machines oh so long ago? That’s right! Vote for me!

SIX. Coordinating tentative dinner plans with Anjum, who is back in the Bay on business! [Actually, “tentative” is right; it’s probably not happening this time around. Aww sadness! We’ll make it work again, buddy!]

SEVEN. Checking out my friend H’s facebook profile, on which he had posted the following quote that he himself – such a smart man – had come up with:

“Realize that maybe living the moment is not all its cracked up to be, that perhaps we need to live not just for today but for tomorrow should there be one.”

Thank you, I needed that.

EIGHT. Email from my lovely friend, D. Best line ever: “Some days I wanna be a dude with a motorbike and no plans.”

Oh, me too.

A cold winter sun, my feet underground/a pale winter city, numbness for sound

(3)BeautifulThings, Conversations and Encounters, Loss and laments and letting go, Rockstar and Crescent

Bittersweet
Feeding the birds, Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

[You can find all my photos from this day here. They’re more fun when you view them individually, so take the time to click through one by one, if you get a chance.]

Three days ago, I stepped inside the County of Alameda Administration Building in Oakland and set off the alarms on the security machine just inside the building’s entrance. Not just once, but twice.

Right, I am a serious danger to the world.

Was it the silver bracelets? I have skinny wrists but bony hands, and putting on and removing bracelets is too much of a painful process for me to do it regularly, so I’ve pretty much just left the same ones on for the past couple of years. Or maybe it was the hearing aid batteries. Thanks to those, I distinctly remember setting off airport alarms multiple times as a kid.

But no: “Are you wearing shoes?” asked the white-haired man at the…what is it called? security checkpoint? He tried to peer over the machine. Shoes? Why, yes, indeed I was, for once in my life. Stupid shoes. I resisted an urge to shake my fist at the ground. I always knew shoes were no freakin’ good for you.

“Raise your hands in the air and step back through the machine again,” suggested the man. I gingerly raised my hands in the air (I haven’t had much practice at it; hopefully that was the last time I’d ever have to do that) and walked through again. Another alarm.

The man just nodded and smiled and waved his hand to let me go through. I guess he had somehow come to a conclusion that it was the shoes, and that they were harmless. I took care of the business I was there for, and managed to walk out in five minutes. Across the lobby, the white-haired gentleman laughed and waved again as he saw me leaving. I waved back and called out, “Have a good day!” What a nice man. I liked this day already.

Once outside, I started for my car, conveniently parked right in front, but paused at the row of plaques hanging on a low wall that lined the building’s front plaza. It was a memorial wall dedicated to the children of Alameda County who have lost their lives by violence. One plaque for each year from 1994 to 2004. Some of the names stood out to me and I wanted to take photos, but wondered nervously whether that would be a bad idea. Setting off the security machine for wearing shoes (bracelets? hearing aids?) was amusing enough; getting busted for photographing an official county building might be a whole different thing altogether. But then I figured, The hell with it. It’s a memorial wall, I’m sure people photograph it all the time.

As I stood there taking photos, a man scrounging through the garbage can a few feet away looked over at me and muttered, “‘Bout time!” I glanced over, surprised. ‘Bout time, what? ‘Bout time someone noticed the memorial and photographed it? I wanted to ask him to elaborate, but he had already shuffled on to the next garbage can down the street.

I got in my car and sat there for a few moments, wondering what to do with myself. I had thought the Oakland stuff would take at least an hour, but it had taken only five minutes and I had nothing important to do for the rest of the day. I decided to stop by the lake I had passed while circling the block for parking. It looked pretty, and I felt like taking pictures.

I glanced cautiously around the perimeter of the lake as I was getting out of my car. Was it safe to be hanging around here, in this town I barely knew and a lake I’d never been to? But the lake was swarming with people jogging and strolling, alone and in pairs, and when I made my way down the path and stopped to take photos, I had to keep moving aside to let people go by.

I photographed a man feeding the birds. He stood calmly at the edge of the lake, throwing out bits of something, while the birds hopped around expectantly and, now and then, made a mad dash in the general direction of where he was throwing. Just as quietly as he had stopped for the birds, he was soon gone. I turned around from photographing the lake, and he had vanished. I shot photos of the water, the orange lanterns, and, oh, the birds. The birds were everywhere.

Two men paused while walking by me. “Taking pictures of the birds?” asked one in amusement. “Don’t you know you have to feed them first?”

I laughed. “Oh, don’t worry, they’ve been fed already.”

“What kind of camera is that?” asked his friend, “An SD40?”

“SD400,” I corrected.

He nodded.

“Have a good one,” said his friend.

“You, too!”

They continued walking.

I decided it had been a beautiful day so far.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that, in the past month, I’ve felt safer in my little bubble of suburbia than anywhere else [even though I now won’t drive to the grocery store just four minutes away without locking my car doors from the inside], that places like Berkeley and Oakland, which I once fondly considered only “genuine and eccentric,” now make me feel guarded and wary.

But you’ve got to get out and live, no matter what the cost or the outcome sometime. And maybe, if this is all that life comes down to, even this would be enough: Walks around the lake, words exchanged with kind strangers in passing, the remembrance of those whom we’ve loved and lost and never stopped loving.