Category Archives: Rhymes and unrhymed lines

You wear the day around you like it’s yours to stay around you

Casa420 and Familia, Rhymes and unrhymed lines

I ate it all This ain't henna, kids
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz. [Photo on the left taken by my friend A, cropped by me.]

The other day, I slipped on my green jacket (the one my father always glances at sidelong before asking rather scornfully, “What sport are you playing?”) and throughout the day I kept sniffing at my wrist. The perfume still lingering at the cuffs of my green jacket reminded me that I last wore it a couple of weeks ago, while spending our first real sunny (in the SF Bay Area) day with my lovely friend A, whom I first mentioned here, back when we initially began hanging out regularly outside of school, and later again here.

It was a gorgeous day. A and I hung out in town in the morning, and really quickly hit up Andronico’s to see what all the fuss is about (is it as cool as Whole Foods? I don’t really know, since I do my grocery shopping at neither). On my way out, I took pictures of the sunflowers, because roses are damn overrated, and you can’t go wrong with pretty sunshine flowers.

We headed up to the town of Martinez to pick up my brother, who was returning by Amtrak from a weekend spent in Reno. He called just when we got there: “My train’s running late. Why don’t you guys just go ahead and get some lunch in Martinez, and I’ll give you a call when I get in?”

“Alright,” I said, but little had I realized that Martinez is one of those quintessential small towns with perhaps some sort of quaintness that locals find charming (and it contains the county courthouse and the Amtrak station!), but none of the attention-grabbing sort of appeal that out-of-towners would be looking for. At least, not this out-of-towner.

We drove around (and around some more) and could find no place suitably intriguing enough at which to eat. Finally, I parked and we wandered through the Main St., where I photographed a beautiful brick wall and we decided to just duck into a coffeeshop for some cold drinks while waiting for my brother.

“What’s the difference between French sodas and Italian sodas?” I asked, and learned that French are the ones that contain cream. Next up, trying to figure out what flavor to order. I squinted at the flavored syrup bottles, some of them hidden behind others, and asked the guy at the counter for clarification. He rattled off the flavors – all fifteen of them, counting on his fingers – while I continued standing uncertainly. My lack of decision-making skills is well-documented (here, for example, amongst other places).

The guy looked amused at my still-confused expression. “Should I repeat them?” he asked.

I shook my head and made a split-second decision, bypassing my usual cranberry-flavored obsession in favor of my latest try something new philosophy, and opted for peach. And it was damn good, is what.

The brother called while we were paying for our drinks, so we hightailed it down the street to pick him up from the Amtrak station. He threw his bags into my car and settled into the backseat with a weary sigh.

“How was Reno?” I asked.

“It was snowing,” he said shortly.

“Gross. Well, at least you picked a good day to be back in NorCal, buddy. It hasn’t been this sunny for a hella long time.”

“I know,” he said, looking more cheerful. “Maybe I’ll keep my mohawk after all. It was such a long winter, it seemed kind of pointless having a mohawk, since I had to wear a hat everywhere.”

[There was so much beautiful sunshine, I drove around with the sunroof open all day long, and it was hella rocking.]

We stopped for lunch, where I devoured pasta and french fries and the brother kindly let me eat his share of fries as well. (If he weren’t already related to me by default, this is the part where I would have decided we were friends for life.) He also scribbled his rendition of my signature on my credit card receipt while I was in the restroom, and nothing made me laugh quite so much as returning to find him nonchalantly presenting me with the forged signature when he handed me my own copy of the receipt.

I dropped the brother off at his place, and then A and I headed back to my town for dessert. We parked and took a shortcut through Macy’s, where I insisted, “Wait! I needa smell good!” A, being patient as usual, stopped while I quickly spritzed on the first thing that smelled yummy to my discriminating nose (turned out to be Miracle by Lancome). Weeks later, I can still catch the faded scent on my green jacket.

We stopped by Ghirardelli for ice cream sundaes, then walked down the street and ate them while sitting at the fountain. Too soon, I had to head home to help my mother with some gardening I had promised.

So, I traded my friend and the fountain for my mother and vegetable plots. Tomatoes and jalapenos and squash it was. I HATE squash. But the gardening wasn’t as horrible as I was expecting it to be. (I always expect gardening to be horrible, because I’m lazy and I hate physical exertion and I admit it.) I had to deal with too-large gloves falling off my small hands, until I impatiently tossed them aside and dug through the dirt with my bare hands. And I didn’t even scream like a girl (not that I’m wont to do so anyway) when I noticed the snail making its slow progress up the side of my rainbow-striped skirt. But I did make a face and brush the snail off with one of the previously-abandoned gloves.

“How’s my little gardener?” said the daddy-o affectionately when he returned home from work that evening. “Wasn’t it so much fun?” I resisted an impulse to roll my eyes. I could almost swear he was more proud of me gardening for an hour than he was of me graduating from college.

(Just kidding – he totally got all teary-eyed at my commencement ceremony last year; I have it on video, thanks to the sister.)

But I did enjoy getting out of the house, being outdoors, reveling in all the fresh air and higher temperatures after the nearly every single freakin’ day of rain drama we had had going on for a seemingly longer-than-usual winter. And I enjoyed the feeling of sunlight shining down and warming my back, of using the muscles God gave me to plant tomatoes that I can hopefully soon use in made-from-scratch guacamole (mmm, guacamole!), the feeling of ants bravely forging up my bare arms (so nice to have a private yard/garden with no fear of prying eyes).

Which brings to mind some beloved Wendell Berry poetry, with thanks to Baraka for her recent post that reminded me how much I like that man:

Finally will it not be enough,
after much living, after
much love, after much dying
of those you have loved,
to sit on the porch near sundown
with your eyes simply open,
watching the wind shape the clouds
into the shapes of clouds?

For March 1st: So about that 25 thing…

Resident Rockstar, Rhymes and unrhymed lines

All I know is that I don't know nothing. And that's fine. Reassurance
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz. [Click to read in the original sizes]

Actually, I don’t really have much to say about the 25 thing, except:

1. The poetry in the photos above really resonates right about now. [Click the photos to read.]

2. I don’t feel 25. Actually, I never felt 23 or 24 either, or anything older than 20, ever. In fact, when I met up with Elysium for dinner in the Mission a couple weeks ago – the day after my birthday, no less – one of his first questions was, “How old do you feel?” and I think we decided 12 was a good answer.

3. Which is why this quote by Anais Nin, saved in my email drafts months ago for just this purpose, is so fitting:

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”

4. My brother’s birthday was two days ago as well (and my sister’s nine days before mine and our mother’s four days before that). On the afternoon of my birthday, driving to Berkeley so the three of us could watch a film at the Pacific Film Archive, I demanded of the brother, “What do you want for your birthday, buddy?” because I’m a firm believer in getting people exactly what they want/need, as opposed to random, pointless gifts. And mainly because, umm, I lack creativity when it comes to shopping for others.

“But it’s your birthday!” he protested.

“Vhatever. So what do you want?”

He scribbled something in the backseat for a few minutes, then passed a sheet of paper forward to the passenger seat where I sat. The top half of the sheet contained a list of books he wanted (he’s a man after my own heart, yes, he is); the bottom half contained the following poem for me:

Birthdays are the first days of our life’s travels
Tho’ our sight might unravel
and daggers may jab our arteries
It’ll never be hard to see March, annually.
And if you plan to last long
and pass on wisdom for your next of kin
Make sure you instill in them the intent
to invent ways to keep you amused,
‘Cuz without you, what would they do?

Apparently the brother knows me better than I thought he did. Because of course I keep people around based only on their amusement purposes. Stop being funny, and we just can’t be friends anymore.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

Links to love, Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Rockstar and Crescent

Sorry, my wannabe English/Comparative Literature-major tendencies wouldn’t let me bypass all this drama without making use of such an obvious pun. Apparently, I’m not the only one.

Truthfully though, I’m damn tired of the drama – of the emails, the articles, the conversations with friends regarding this mass chaos and fury all over the world. Also truthfully, I’m pissed off at Muslims who feel that engaging in such acts of violence (hurling gasoline bombs? smashing windshields? throwing missiles? Thanks, buddies, you’re really helping yourself and the rest of us look good) is justifiable. Calm the hell DOWN, people.

[For those of you who’ve been living under a rock lately, check this, there’s a wikipedia entry already, with a description of the cartoons in question here.]

So, not only because I’m tired of it all, but also because I’m not smart, analytical, and articulate enough to write up a real deal post on this topic, I’m sending you off with links yet again. Many of the weblogs I regularly frequent have already written about this, so go visit.

– Basit’s post is my favorite, because I’m feeling quite desensitized myself

– Yaser’s post is succint and to the point, something I always find admirable about him because I don’t have that quality, sadly

– Abhi at Sepia Mutiny: The Danish cartoon controversy: A contrast in protests

– Baraka at Truth&Beauty: Merry Go Round

– Safiyyah: Stupid Cartoons, Even Stupider Reaction

And for you slackers who are too lazy to click over to the weblogs I highlighted, here’s a beautifully apposite Rumi poem that Baraka appended to her abovementioned post:

When you see the face of anger
look behind it
and you will see the face of pride.
Bring anger and pride
under your feet, turn them into a ladder
and climb higher.
There is no peace until you become
their master.
Let go of anger, it may taste sweet
but it kills.
Don’t become its victim
you need humility to climb to freedom.

-Rumi

Off you go, children. Real post(s!) coming soon.

"We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting." -Kahlil Gibran

(3)BeautifulThings, Rhymes and unrhymed lines

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originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

The above photograph was taken last Friday, after I had completed Jummah salah (the Friday congregational prayer) in Oakland and decided to swing by downtown Berkeley really quickly. The lovely SI and I had discovered the Poetry Walk on Addison Street (as well as the Capoeira Arts Cafe, where we stopped to watch a group of small children practice their dance/martial movements) this summer, but my disposable camera photos from that day came out horrific, so I’d been meaning to revisit for a while.

Anyway, how could I not get down on the sidewalk and photograph the phrase “beautiful day” from all angles? We all know “beautiful” is my favorite word. I wince whenever I realize I use it about three times in the course of a single email, but what can I do?

You can see the entire set of photos here. [View each of them in the large size, if you have issues reading the poems.] I only took photos of the poetry I really liked, so if you want to see all the others, you’ll have to come to California so we can go wander around together. How’s that for good times?

This may be a good time to mention that the ramblingmonologues.com domain is about to expire soon. Many thanks to the rockstar who set it up for me, but this is just as well, I suppose, since I’ve been itching to switch URLs for a while now. I know the name is an apt description for my blogging style, but still, I need something different, a bit more creative. Change is good. We can handle this, right, kids? Don’t worry, I’ll be letting you know when I switch over. I’d ask for advice in this whole drama (and it’s not really drama at all; I just like using that word a lot, since I never have any real drama to speak of), but, sadly, I never follow advice even if I ask for it. Don’t let that hold you back, though, if you’re so inclined.

And the important stuff: May these last couple of days of Ramadan be blessed, peaceful ones for you and yours. I’ll leave you with my favorite poem for this Ramadan, actually, a portion of a poem by Attar called The Newborn:

.
.
.
Let loving lead your soul.
Make it a place to retire to,
a kind of monastery cave, a retreat
for the deepest core of being.

Then build a road
from there to God.
.
.
.
Keep quiet and secret with soul-work.
Don’t worry so much about your body.
God sewed that robe. Leave it as is.
Be more deeply courageous.
Change your soul.

Also: if you know someone who doesn’t have any family or friends to spend Eid with, then invite him/her to spend it with you. That would be a beautiful thing to do.

The foundations are canyoning

Loss and laments and letting go, Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Salaam Namaste

Nightly, I dream of rain and hail and snow-covered mountains, when in reality my local mountains are gorgeously goldenbrown and I daily chase patches of sunshine all over the house so I can gleefully warm up my fuzzy-socked feet.

The past few days, I’ve been reading countless news articles about rescue workers tentatively forging into mountainous areas, into villages that have been cut off from any sort of relief for days following the earthquake, hoping to ease the suffering of those who have survived but being confronted only with devastating destruction and the sickly sweet stench of rotting corpses. I’ve read about villages that are eerily empty of children, about feeble elderly people who – in a cruel twist of fate – outlived the earthquake even as their children and grandchildren perished, about angry survivors who feel betrayed by the lack of aid in their areas. Survivors who’ve been sleeping outdoors for days, who can already see the snow on their mountains as winter begins to set in. I obsessively hit refresh on news websites throughout the day, checking for updates about the aftermath of the earthquake. I’ve watched dozens of sobering video clips. The photographs just get worse.

Every afternoon, my mother asks me, “Is there any news?” and I know instinctively what she is referring to, because, let’s face it, most of the time we don’t really care about the news unless it affects us directly, unless it is about people from our motherland, unless the reporters interview and the photographs depict people who look like us. Yesterday, I went to the grocery store, and, just before I walked in, I made a sudden beeline for the shopping carts by the newstands, even though I needed only a few items and a basket procured from inside would have been enough. What I really wanted to see was if there were any above-the-fold articles about the South Asian earthquake at the newstands. Of course there were, enough headlines to get me sufficiently teary-eyed before I continued indoors to finish shopping for groceries and supplies I’ve never had to beg for.

While Pakistan childishly bickers over whether or not India has really been crossing over the Line of Control in disputed Kashmir to provide relief and aid (God forbid that the two nations should even think of helping one another), there are still remote mountainous areas that are cut off from aid, forgotten villages whose remaining inhabitants have been left to fend for themselves, and survivors who “take their quota of relief rice to a wet rocky patch wondering where to cook it” because they have no fire or utensils at their disposal.

I am reminded of part of a piece I wrote in January, in response to the Asian tsunami:

.
.
.
Like you, I watched the aftermath of
That tsunami thing on television.
Like you, I watched the faces of the people
Left behind,
Dazed and broken,
Shell-shocked and shattered.
What do you do when your world
Literally falls down in ruins
Around you?

What you do is this:
You scrabble in the cold, hard ground
And lift out chunks of dirt
To dig graves with your hands
To bury your children.
You pray that the vast world beyond your boundaries
Will be watchful and compassionate enough
To ensure that you receive
Clean water and medicine.
And food, too, yes, food.
But you can’t help but weep
In irony, in frustration,
When they send you endless bags of rice
And you have no clean water with which
To wash and boil the rice in.

And what you do is this:
You close the gaping eyes of your loved ones
And cover their faces with shrouds
And step back to watch as they
Fill the mass graves of victims of
That tsunami thing.
And you whisper fervent prayers over the bodies
Because you so desperately want to believe
That there was a reason for all this,
That God was not absent
From the world the day
The waters rose up in walls,
Only to leave behind the horror and stench of decaying bodies
And vestiges of colorful rags
And empty, flattened villages
In the wake of that tsunami thing.
.
.
.

It’s all heartbreaking, but, really, the earthquake survivors don’t need my tears. Lord knows they must have more than enough of their own. What they do need is food and shelter and medical supplies, and money to ensure that they get all those things. News sources talk about compassion fatigue and donor fatigue. I hope this is not true of all you people reading this, because we don’t have jack to be fatigued about. So scroll down and check the links below. As Hemlock said, “For those of us who can turn to our beds and sleep in comfort, I want to know how we can look ourselves in the eye.”

Again, RESOURCES & things to read:

Quake survivors answer BBC readers’ questions

Hemlock has posted a list of supplies that the NGOs are specifically asking for.

Baji has the following post for October 12, 2005 [The donations through APPNA are indeed tax deductible]:

The Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America, APPNA, has set up an emergency disaster relief fund for the victims of the earthquake. You can call in your donation by credit card or send in your checks to their office. If you want to fax, you can use this donation form. APPNA is 501 C3 organizations. All donations may be tax deductible as permitted by law.

A P P N A
6414 S. Cass Avenue
Westmont, IL 60559
Phone: 630-968-8585 or 630-968-8606
Fax: 630-968-8677
Email: appna@appna.org

Danial, a reader of this weblog, emailed me with the following info [Thank you]:

“I just wanted to bring to your attention the need for tents in the earthquake hit areas. We are not able to purchase tents here in Lahore anymore and there is still a dire need for them. So please get people to ship tents over to Pakistan. Apparently, PIA is willing to ship donated goods over to Pakistan free of cost.”

The document Danial attached explains that “3-5 million people have been left homeless and at least 200,000 tents are required, there ARE NO MORE TENTS IN PAKISTAN, ALL THAT WERE AVAILABLE HAVE BEEN SHIPPED TO NORTH. Please send as many tents (preferably waterproof, winterized) as you can. People abroad don’t even know that Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has decided to carry all donations from any of its stations wordwide for free.”

I know you like the word “free.” Find your nearest PIA station on the list of PIA’s worldwide Stations by Countries, and here is the list of PIA’s booking offices around the world, alphabetized by cities (see N for New York, C for Chicago, F for Frankfurt, D for Dusseldorf etc.). For more info, please contact Waqas Usman: waqasusman AT gmail DOT com, (Mobile) 92-321-4060186.

avari/nameh has also posted several links for relief and aid.

And, again, Chai is collecting donations for blankets and tents. Every little bit counts, especially considering that one American dollar is worth so many Pakistani rupees.

Blogistan’s very own lovely GrouchyOwl is in Pakistan, covering the aftermath of the earthquake for her newspaper. Wishing her much strength, steadiness, and safety.

[I know I’ve been going massively link-crazy lately, but this is the only way I can remind myself, and make it personal for myself. Add thoughts and ideas and links to the comment box if I’m missing anything. Thanks much.]

There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness

Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Rockstar and Crescent

In characteristic Yasmine-is-a-Lazy-Bum fashion, I’m a few days late in posting this update. Here’s wishing you much ease and discipline in your fasting, whether it’s for Ramadan, Navratri, or the ten days from Rosh Hashana until Yom Kippur for the Jewish New Year. Abhi has a lovely post over at Sepia Mutiny entitled My first Ramadan, and Monologist’s post, My Navaratri, reflects many of my own goals and longings for this Ramadan.

The first night of Taraweeh – the nightly congregational prayers offered during Ramadan – the imam announced that the masjid would be holding a food drive during this upcoming month and everyone should donate as much canned food as possible so the masjid could pass it along to the local food bank. He added that when he contacted the head of the food bank, the man there said in relief, “Thank you, I don’t know what we would have done otherwise; our shelves are almost empty.” The imam paused while the congregation mulled this over, then pointed out, “Most of us, on the other hand, don’t even know anything about that sort of hunger. We may be fasting during Ramadan, but we still spend twelve hours everyday thinking about what types of food we will prepare for iftar [the breaking of the fast at sunset].” We all laughed self-consciously, because we knew how correct he was.

Sure, we who have bewildering arrays of food to choose from at sunset are privileged; but maybe, in the long run, we’re also the ones that God rolls His eyes and shakes His head at. You know? All I know is, in our relative wealth, we often forget to be thankful for what we have, and to show active compassion towards those who lack the same.

Here’s Rumi on food, fasting, and faith:

BREAD – Rumi

A sheikh and a disciple are walking quickly toward a town
where it’s known there is very little to eat. The disciple
says nothing, but he is constantly afraid of going hungry.

The sheikh knows what the disciple thinks. How long
will you be frightened of the future
because you love food? You have closed the eye
of self-denial and forgotten who provides.

Don’t worry. You’ll have your walnuts and raisins and special desserts.
Only the true favorites get hunger for their daily bread.
You’re not one of those. Whoever loves the belly
is brought bowl after bowl from the kitchen.

When such a person dies, bread itself comes to the funeral
and makes a speech: “O corpse, you almost killed yourself
with worrying about food. Now you’re gone and food
is still here, more than enough. Have some free bread.”

Bread is more in love with you than you with it.
It sits and waits for days. It knows you have no will.
If you could fast, bread would jump into your lap
as lovers do with each other.

Be full with trusting,
not with these childish fears of famine.

What did you think?

Rhymes and unrhymed lines

Since I’m trying to study for my neurobiology final and most of my real-life conversations for the past few weeks have been irritable outbursts about how much I hate science classes, I thought I’d share a poem I wrote a few years back. It’s a bit different from the last one. This one is something I wrote one night when I was annoyed about being constantly stared at whenever I’m in public, compounded by the misery of studying terrifying academic subjects I didn’t even understand. Oh, and I didn’t feel like working on a comparative literature paper. Yes, procrastination has been my lifelong hobby, what can I say. Anyway, by the time I finished the poem, I was too amused to be bitter anymore, and I remember printing out a stack of copies and gleefully handing it out to all my friends and acquaintances. It still makes me laugh, rereading it. It may have been three years, but this poem’s still very much me, except for the fact that I’m neither pre-med nor an NPB (Neurobiology, Physiology, & Behavior) major anymore. And I’m no longer so sure about that pediatric audiology deal either.

Apologies for all the scrolling. It looks a lot less overwhelming when it’s printed as two columns front-and-back on a Word document.

The poem itself was inspired by a passage from Chang-rae Lee’s novel, A Gesture Life, a brilliantly-composed segment that reminded me of my own insecurities:

What used to concern me greatly about leaving was the awkward impression you can sometimes have, say when you find yourself on an everyday street, or in a store, or in what would otherwise be a shimmering, verdant park, and you think not about the surroundings but about yourself, and how people will stop and think (most times, unnoticeably) about who you may be, how you fit into the picture, what this may say, and so on and so forth. I’ve never really liked this kind of thinking, either theirs or mine, and have always wished to be in a situation like the one I have steadily fashioned for myself in this town, where, if I don’t have many intimates or close friends, I’m at least a quantity known, somebody long ago counted.

What Did You Think?

I’ve seen them all:
The puzzled looks,
The furtive gazes,
The passing end
Of a sweeping glance.
You didn’t think I noticed, did you?
My own face remained
Serene and composed,
Until you had passed.
Want to know a secret?
It’s a mask.
And whenever you pass by me,
As I sit cross-legged on a park bench
Or stroll through the mall
Or let my eyes fall back on
The textbook lying open before me,
My head remains held high with pride,
But inwardly my thoughts are whirling,
Mirroring the myriad questions
Racing through your own head,
Because I know what you were wondering
During the second it took for your eyes
To sweep over me:
Who is that girl?
Where does she come from?
What is she doing here?
How does she fit into this picture?
Striding past me,
You leave in your wake
An unvoiced thought,
The most insulting dismissal of all—
(Did you really think
You kept your own face so very blank
After all?)—
“Why, I bet she doesn’t even speak
A word of English!”
My lips curve in a smile.
Laughter bubbles up in my throat.
I cover my mouth with both hands
In an effort to silence
An outburst of hilarity.

It isn’t your fault, I suppose.
You couldn’t know
That I probably speak
Better English than you do,
That my grammar is more precise,
My sentences (sometimes) more concise,
My sarcasm more biting,
My articulated anger more hurtful
Than you could ever imagine.

It isn’t your fault, I suppose.
You couldn’t know
That I’ve squandered away
Precious minutes spent
Racing against the clock
In an effort to correct the grammatical errors
That my chemistry professor managed to
Pepper his midterm exams with,
Instead of calculating rates of reactions
And industriously bubbling in
Correct answers on my scantron.
(Is the answer really always “C”?)
No wonder I’ve had so much trouble
Trying to remember
What a spectator ion is,
And what a buffer solution does.
And, by the way,
Why exactly do they call it
The “plum pudding theory”
Anyway?

It isn’t your fault, I suppose.
You couldn’t know
That I frantically wave my hand
In biology lecture
To correct the professor as he
Endeavors to scrawl tongue-twisting terms
Across the blackboard.
But please don’t ask me to define
What platyhelminthes are,
Or to explain what good
Comes from possessing
A hollow dorsal nerve cord.

Will it truly surprise you to learn that
Commas are my friends,
And my favorite color is red?
Am I in the wrong major?
Perhaps.
No one seems to understand
What exactly “NPB”
Stands for anyway,
Least of all myself.
Yet I’ve mastered the art
Of rattling it off my tongue with ease,
And learned to accept
The questioning glances that follow,
As a matter of course.

But did you really think
That you skillfully hid
Your complete surprise
At hearing me pronounce
Such words as “neurobiology”
And “otolaryngology”
With remarkable enunciation?
Oh, I’m sorry—
I left my accent at home today.
Is that so very disappointing
For you to hear?
“What? You want to be
A pediatric audiologist
When you grow up?”
It’s sad that I decided on
My career goal when I was eight,
While many of you
Are yet scratching your heads,
Trying to decipher
What the prefix “audio-”
Means.

Is my inherent sarcasm
Starting to shine through?
Let me tell you:
Words, when used wisely,
Can sting far more effectively
Than any concentration of
Hydrochloric acid you spill on yourself
While carrying out
Titration experiments in chemistry lab.

And I may be deaf,
But I can clearly hear
The unsaid thoughts
That flit across your face.
So next time you pass by me
And wonder how I fit
Into the grand scheme of things,
Don’t insult me by labeling
My English skills
As nonexistent.
Call me,
The wannabe English major.
Call me a rebel child.
Call me the girl with the funky,
Original style.
Call me a speed-demon,
Or a bookworm.
Call me by name.
(But whatever you do,
Don’t ever call me “Jasmin”!)
Lean over
And ask me for the time,
Or for my personal thoughts on
The meaning of life
If you wish to hear
My articulate, unaccented
Speech patterns.

If you squirmed with embarrassment
At recognizing yourself here—
Don’t worry,
I don’t hold grudges for very long.
But next time,
Whatever you decide to do,
Don’t walk past me and
Silently dismiss me with,
“Why, I bet she doesn’t even speak
A word of English!”
Because if you were to suddenly turn back,
You would see me shaking
With gleeful, barely suppressed laughter.
It isn’t your fault, I suppose.
You couldn’t know.

– April 2002

this season is cold. I have to write one paper by…

Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Suckool

this season is cold.

I have to write one paper by 10 a.m. and edit a second one and finish writing a third one by 6 p.m. And in between all that, I need to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be saying while MCing this little diversity program at noon. Why I agreed to do this is beyond me, except that when we realized we still needed an MC and the ensuing silence, hesitation, and lack of eye contact in the room became unbearable, I impatiently raised an eyebrow and snapped, “I’ll do it.” Not only that, I somehow agreed to present something of my own, in addition to doing the introductions for everyone else. Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. So now I have to go write a poem or flow or rhyme or spoken word piece or whatever you choose to call it, when really all I want to do is take a nap. Everything in my life is such a last-minute effort.

Also, I’ve got graduation on my mind, and I’m running low on sleep here, so the most amusing thing in the world to me at 3:30 a.m. is that “alma mater” sounds like “aloo tamatar.” Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all night.

so you think you can hold the world up by a string…

Casa420 and Familia, NineToFive outside the 925, Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Suckool

so you think you can hold the world up by a string.

You’re a tough crowd, Blogistan. I recently update this joint after a three weeks’ hiatus, and I get complaints that the post isn’t sufficiently about me. Not to mention the fact that every time I write about male friends/acquaintances/nice guys at Borders/old men at the post office and at cafes, my audience (that would be you) invariably articulates their suspicion that said male figure is hitting on me. JESUS. Peace be upon him.

Lucky for you, I have a love affair with post-it pads (and, more recently, pocket-sized Moleskine notebooks, discovered while shopping for birthday presents for my brother), and carry one (or two or three) around with me wherever I go. The end result? Three weeks’ worth of words, phrases, experiences, snippets of conversation, lines randomly recalled and quickly scribbled down in the midst of lectures and discussion sections, just so I could share them with you all on the weblog. That hiatus turned out to be a but more extensive than I had anticipated. I need to get all this stuff out of my head, and, although I could probably make individual weblog entries out of each of these, I’m far too lazy to even attempt such an endeavor. For your edification and amusement, then, I present an update almost entirely about me, list-style based off my post-it notes, and with minimal references to guys. Imagine that.

– The past month’s conversations included such highlights on my part as:

“Hi, I’m calling to check on the status of that tow truck I called in for, about forty minutes ago… What? No, I’m not in Southern California!”

and

“I’ve taken almost enough English classes at this campus to declare a minor in it, if I wanted. What do you mean I still need to take English 101?!”

Between these and a host of other disagreeable experiences, I’m sure you’re starting to see why I mentally referred to these as my What the French-Connection-UK! weeks. They were filled mainly with thoughts of homicide, and attempts to squash an ever-present rising surge of profanity in my head, and made me feel, by turns, like crying or smashing something. And since I’m not much of a crier, being a lean, mean, green smashing machine felt like a good option. Except I think Najm already has first dibs on being the Incredible Hulk. It felt like one really, really long day, the kind you’re just itching to use the “fast forward” button on.

– Let me tell you about my major advisor. My major advisor has the expressionless, dead stare down to an art. It’s highly disconcerting to be confronted with that blank look when I’m stopping by to get some questions answered and to ask for advice. Because she’s an advisor, no? No, apparently not. My advisor is not supposed to make me do a teeth-gritting, fist-clenching, sidewalk-stomping dance of annoyance in downtown Sacramento while trying not to shout on the phone at her that, “No, my minor is from the College of Letters & Science! So my minor petition is not supposed to go to the Dean’s office at Ag&ES; it’s supposed to go to the Dean’s office at Letters & Science, even though my major is at Ag&ES!” My advisor is also not supposed to ask in response to this, “Are you sure?” Yes, I’m sure, dammit, because I’ve made phone calls and tracked people down and verified everything I needed to know and even everything I didn’t need to know. Why are you not sure, is the question.

My major advisor also has a deplorable habit of answering one single freakin’ question of mine, then getting up and crossing the room to stand by the door while I’m still sitting next to her desk, mouth half-open to launch into my next question. Apparently, this is her signal that my time is up. No “Do you have any further questions?” No “Is there anything else I could help you with today?” Not even an “Okay, bye.” As I mentioned to my sister once, “I want closure, dammit!” The last time I was there, my advisor pulled the same “getting-up-and-heading-for-the-door” maneuver. I rolled my eyes and followed, accustomed to this by now. At the door, she flicked her finger against the stack of papers I held in my hand and asked, “What are these?”
“These,” I replied coldly, “concern other questions I wanted to ask you, but apparently you don’t have time for them today.”

My major advisor is an incompetent buffoon, my minor advisor is never available and should thus never have been granted that position, and how come I have a faculty advisor I never even knew about? No one tells me these things. Also, people who are getting paid to supposedly make my life easier should be doing exactly that. But, no, I am surrounded by morons.

Yes, I’m kind of bitter. I’m almost over it, don’t worry. Like I said, it’s been a long few weeks.

– H#4 (I have too many friends with “H” and “S” names. I swear I’m going to start numbering them like this) tried to talk me out of skipping class one day by grimly informing me that, based on her calculations, each time I skip one lecture, I am wasting $25 of that quarter’s tuition. My friends are such engineering nerds, can you tell?

– My new favorite word to use in everyday conversation is “periodically.” I do a lot of things periodically. Like skip breakfast, skip class, and not study.

– The last two movies I watched were Fida and The Notebook. I know, I know, I can’t believe I watched the latter either. If I could, I would surgically remove the memory from my mind. The best part about both movies was that everyone dies in the end. There, I gave it all away. Anyway, The Notebook was horrifically sleep-inducing, and I can’t believe all the girls I know kept recommending it to me. Geez louise. My sister and I were not impressed. Bean summed up our disappointment and disgust by pointing out, “Maybe it’s just that we’ve lost our sense of subtle details. We’ve gotten so used to the desi films that we can’t handle stuff like The Notebook anymore, because we’re just waiting for a full-out brawl.” Besides, that night I had a nightmare related to the movie. I swear. And I don’t usually even have nightmares.

– Somayya and I saw a Hummer limousine in Sacramento a couple of weeks ago.

– The first day of NPB lecture, having come to class unprepared, I asked the girl next to me, “Can I borrow a coupla sheets of paper off you?” Yeah, I know, how do you borrow paper? I guess I should have said, “Would you mind if I asked you for a few sheets of paper?” Not that it matters anyway, because I only took about two lines worth of notes and then ended up sleeping through most of the lecture, and the girl gave me a cold stare on my way out. I’m sorry I wasted your paper that I borrowed, geez freakin’ louise. Would you like it back now that I’m done borrowing it?

– My new favorite poem is T.S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday. Deja vu when I got to the lines, Teach us to care and not to care/Teach us to sit still. I have read those somewhere before, a decade ago in a book I can’t recall.

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

[…]

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

– I am taking two science courses this quarter – NPB (neurobiology, physiology, and behavior) and MCB (molecular and cellular biology). Yes, gross, I know. God knows why I felt the need to put these off until now, seeing as how I’m not a science person, except for the fact that I used to be really good at physics. But as long as they don’t start talking about cellular respiration and the Krebs Cycle and all that drama, I should be okay. Taking classes with freshmen and sophomores is always amusing, though. They’re the ones who show up to line outside the lecture hall twenty minutes before class even begins. But it’s okay, because I keep getting mistaken for a seventeen year old anyway, so I blend in just fine. Plus, I’m still perpetually dazed and confused all the time, and I rarely look both ways before crossing the street.

– The first day of class, a guy in my MCB lecture leaned over to ask, “Excuse me, you’re not Fatima, are you?”
Who is Fatima and why does she look like me, is what I want to know.

– I’m officially losing my mind. The following three conversations are all the proof you need:

1) In a phone conversation a couple of weeks ago, Somayya and I were bemoaning the fact that we rarely see each other this quarter. “I know!” I said, “and we don’t even do our regular family weekend visits to see you all anymore.” Except I accidentally said “weekend wisits,” and Somayya and I both dissolved in laughter. It’s over, kids. I am officially a fob.

2) Last week at work, my co-worker K kept urging me to hurry up and finish the stuff I was working on, so that we could have our meeting. “We need to meet before 12!” he kept repeating, “because at 12, I’m leaving to go skiing in Lake Tahoe.”
“Stop trying to rush me,” I finally snapped. “Just because you’re going snowing does not mean our work schedules have to revolve around you and your stupid Lake Tahoe trip.”
“Snowing?” asked Somayya innocently. “What’s that?”
“I meant, skiiing. Or snowboarding. Or whatever the hell he’s planning on doing up there.”

3) “Tuesday Morning’s having a sale,” remarked my dad over dinner the other night. We love Tuesday Morning. How can you not be in love with a place that has everything 50-80% off?
We peered at the ads together.
“I don’t get this one,” I said. “They’re selling watches. Why are there random sunflowers in the picture?”
“You know,” said my dad. “Sunflowers? The sun? Time? Watches? See?”
I continued looking blank. “I still don’t get it.”
My dad gave me a pitying look and rolled his eyes, which is always hilarious to watch, because he absolutely does not know how to roll his eyes, so he always rolls his head around instead. “Okay,” he said. “You know how you can tell the time based on the position of the sun?”
“Ohh…” [pause] “Wait, why are the sunflowers there though?”
“Because sunflowers always face in the direction of the sun. Duh.” Except my dad doesn’t know how to say “duh” either, so it always comes out sounding like “daa.”
“Oh yeah. I think I used to know this, a long time ago.”
In the next life, I am going to be blonde.

– My NPB teaching assistant pronounces the word “iron” exactly the way it’s spelled: eye-ron. [I say “eye-yern.” How do you pronounce “iron”?] This was in reference to the structure of hemoglobin, or something. Clearly, I do not know anything about hemoglobin. Or anything about science at all, for that matter. Biology is bidah. The end.

That was a joke, by the way. I mentioned in an email to a friend the other day: “As one of my favorite Bay Area scholars/students of knowledge said in a speech recently, re. the Muslim community’s tendency to point fingers at one another and obsessively label things as haraam/bidah: ‘Well, you know what, YOU’RE HARAAM!’ “

– I’ve also recently realized that I never pronounce the “d” in “fundraiser”: Funraiser.

– Halaqa outing: As we were driving up Mt. Diablo, I remarked in reference to the hardcore bicyclists who were pedaling up the mountain: “Man, that’s hella exertion.”
My sister: “You just used ‘hella’ and ‘exertion’ in the same sentence. There’s something wrong with you.”
Me: “Hey, I’m a California girl with vocabulary, what can I say.”

– Yesterday, my right eye finally stopped twitching after three weeks. That’s an indicator of stress and exhaustion, someone once told me during freshman year. Some things just never change.

– Not to say that there weren’t good things about the past few weeks either. Like the Friday that was filled with rockstar friends, two (count ’em, TWO!) real meals, ice cream, offers to race down the stairs, jokes about the FBI watch list, and hilarious white-girl renditions of “I love you, 50 Cent! Holler!” And the officially labeled Tuesday From Hell, when I decided to “screw it all” (one of many such decisions in recent history) and finally escaped to the public park and sat on a sunny hill, eating french fries and watching the elementary school team play softball. And…well, I know there have been more memorable (in a good way) moments like that. It’s just difficult to be suitably grateful sometimes, and to keep track adequately. I think this post is an attempt at that. Sort of.

– The funniest thing to happen this week was when I set off the alarm at work. Apparently, you still need to have the security guard swipe you on your way out the main doors after 6pm, regardless of whether you have your employee ID card on you. I, inefficient multitasker that I am, dialed a friend’s number on my cell phone just as I was about to leave the building. At the exit doors, I swiped my ID card, heard a beep, and watched the little red light turn to green. At the exact moment my friend answered the phone, I pushed open the door and the alarms started blaring. It was great stuff, and I think the friend at the other end of the line was just as amused by the whole thing as I was. Luckily, the security guard was, too.

– Does your father call you on his rainy drive home to leave voicemessages in which he sings, “Raindrops are falling on my head! La la la la la lalala”? No? I thought not.

– I’m not a big fan of grape-flavored anything. Except real grapes, and sour green ones at that. But someone’s gotta finish all the popsicles I bought back when I was getting my wisdom teeth pulled. All those mornings of grabbing a red/green/orange popsicle out of the freezer for breakfast on my way out the door to school are over, and the purples ones are the only ones left. Six whole purple popsicles. Not so bad after all, actually, although I’m still not really a fan. But it leaves your tongue looking so dark purple, it’s almost black, which is pretty slick.

– I attended the Birth of a Prophet event at UC Berkeley a couple of weeks ago. It was even more beautiful and spiritually uplifting than I had hoped it would be, and you can keep your outcries of “Bidah!” to yourself, please. Amusingly enough, the event coincided with Cal Day, so I was bombarded with ads and posters and pamphlets and “Hi, do you have any questions?” while making my way through Sproul Plaza. Listen, I know I look like a seventeen year old, but no, I’m not a prospective incoming freshman, okay? I have enough issues being a prospective graduating senior, as it is, thanks.

– Every morning on my way to school, about forty miles from home, I pass a huge yellow/orange billboard advertisement for San Diego, advising, “CHANGE VIEWS, NOT CHANNELS.” 2Scoops, I’m looking right at you: Stop trying to infiltrate Northern California.

– The best way to make yourself feel better about an MCB midterm you more likely failed the hell out of is to sit in the sunshine and drink a medium-size hot chocolate with whipped cream. When the girl making your drink notices your drawn face and bleary eyes and turns around from the machine to ask kindly, “Would you like extra whipped cream on that?” just answer, “Yes, please.” There are few things in life that sunshine, hot chocolate, and extra whipped cream cannot make you feel better about.

– Also, strawberry ice cream with chunks of cheesecake is hella good stuff. Add that to the list. And blue raspberry jolly ranchers, especially when they’re vindictively grabbed by the handful from the candy jar of my major advisor who is a moron.

– As of yesterday, I have officially canceled my minor. Indecisions and revisions indeed. I thought it was going to hurt – and it did hurt for the past three weeks I spent agonizing over it – but, surprisingly, I’m more at peace with the final decision than I thought I would be. So, instead of seven classes (yes, I was somehow registered for seven classes, the seventh one being a microbiology class my advisor thought I needed – which I didn’t, but she’s a moron, as we have already established – and which I had forgotten I was even enrolled in) and twenty-seven units, which is absolutely insane for a quarter system (nine weeks of instruction, tenth week is final exams) if not even otherwise, I am now down to four classes and sixteen units. Much more manageable.

“Pay attention!” I crowed yesterday afternoon to my office colleagues at large, whatever of them remained past 5pm. “This is a monumental occasion!” I typed the “permission to drop” numbers that the Dean’s Office had given me into their respective fields on the computer, then theatrically wiggled my fingers above the keyboard in my best “spirit fingers” imitation.

“What are you doing?” asked K, looking up from his computer.
“I’m saying ‘eff it all’ to the program.”
“What program?”
“The ‘Yasmine wants to graduate with this Social & Ethnic Relations minor that she’s absolutely in love with’ program.”
“Oh.”

Thank you to all you rockstars who offered their input in regards to my “How useful/useless/irrelevant is a minor?” questions. If I didn’t ask you, I’m sorry, I love you, I was lazy, and you’re a rockstar, too.

– That said, this “screw the minor” deal only serves to reinforce my feeling that I’m one of those total slackers who diligently pursues something almost to the end, only to give it up in the last five seconds. This is a recurring theme in my life. Like last week, when I was up until 3am studying for an MCB quiz, only to be late to class the next morning because I couldn’t find parking. So, instead, I skipped class (and the quiz) and slept in my car for an hour, then woke up and, instead of heading over to my next class, I walked over to the student union and took another 2-hour nap in the study lounge. This nap-taking business is outta control.

– This morning, I used the carpool lane to pass a slow bus. I’m pretty sure this is highly illegal maneuver, but, what can I say, I love living life on the edge.

– I’m typing this out at work. K just stalked past me to get to his desk, a grim expression on his face. He pulled out his top desk drawer with a deafening bang, muttering, “I’m so hungry!”
“Yeah, me too,” I said sympathetically.
“And there’s nothing to eat around here,” he continued, fishing around in the drawer.
“Are you looking for your topsecret candy stash?”
“No,” he replied, pulling out a handful of what looked like condiment packets.
“Is that mustard?” I asked, spying a yellow packet.
“No, this calls for honey.”
“Dude. Are you seriously going to eat honey out of the packet like that?”
“Yeah. It’s soo good. See?”
“Good lord. Here, eat some Reese’s,” I offered, shoving my bag of miniature peanut butter cups his way.
“No way, honey is so much healthier.”

– My co-worker B just walked by. He stopped long enough to ask, “Have you ever seen a chicken with its head cut off?”
“Yes,” I replied, “several times,” thinking of all those months in Pakistan.
“Oh. Well, I never have.”
“It’s okay, you’re not really missing out.”
“Oh, okay. Just making sure.”

Why do I work with the weirdest people in the world?

– Yes, I still like Maroon 5, but I have a short attention span and I get highly annoyed when songs I once liked are constantly played over and over on the radio. Therefore, Maroon 5 is not as cool as Keane, whom no one except I seems to have heard of. Besides, how could you not like a band who’s British and therefore sings “cahn’t stop now,” which, to my ears, accustomed as they are to American pronunciation, sounds absolutely hilarious and cool. My lovely L lady, after looking at the cover of Keane’s album, wondered quite disparagingly why rock musicians never have much in the way of looks. Somayya and I contended that it’s because rockstars are more concerned with how good their music is rather than with how good they themselves look. So there, take that!

Yes, I admit it, I have fairly mainstream taste in music. I don’t really know obscure bands. All the obscure bands I do know start becoming rich and famous and everyone else knows who they are, too, and that just ruins the whole thing.

Speaking of music, no song has ever made me grin so widely as Coldplay’s “Yellow.” Perhaps I haven’t heard it often enough, so that explains why I’m not tired of it yet. Which reminds me – Gavin DeGraw, you’re a hella slick singer/songwriter/pianist/guitarist and all that, but I enjoy your music more when I’m listening to it off my discman and less when it plays on repeat on the radio. Stop it. Also, new favorite musicians, discovered while browsing at Borders when I should have been in class, include: Amos Lee, Ari Hest, Joss Stone, and Rachel Yamagata. I think. I’m not sure, since I haven’t listened to everything yet. But still, links are fun. Go explore.

– I need to edit my template. I need to edit the sidebar with the Gavin DeGraw lyrics, because I love that song but not when it plays on the radio. I need to edit my blogroll. I need to edit my life. Lemme know if you have any suggestions. Meanwhile, much love, have beautiful days, all that good stuff.

>continue reading

as if i haven’t already amply proven my nerdiness….

Bibliothek, Rhymes and unrhymed lines

as if i haven’t already amply proven my nerdiness…

Hi, my name is Yasmine and, lately, all my posts seem to be about books. I am a complete and utter nerd. The end.

Alright, so Baji is making me do this survey thingamajig under threat of incarceration, which actually doesn’t seem so bad if it means I get to take all my books with me.

Let’s begin:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Apparently, everyone is hella confused about this question. If you’re asking what book I want to douse in gasoline and light a match to, then, to be honest, I really have no idea. I usually only buy books I’ve already read and liked, so I’m slightly attached to all the books in my bookcases. If there were any I ever disliked, I most likely sold them back.

Oh wait, I know! Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherjee. It was handed to me by my 10th grade English teacher, who was amused by the similarity between my name and the protagonist’s and thought I would enjoy a novel by a South Asian writer. Umm, no. First of all, we all know how much I hate hate hate the name “Jasmine.” Vomitrocious! [See below.] Secondly, Jasmine was just highly annoying and kept making stupid life mistakes and apparently had multiple personalities because she kept changing her damn name: Jyoti>>Jasmine>>Jase>>Jazz>>Jane. What the holy freakin’ smoley?

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Do they have to be fictional characters from books? Because I did want to marry MacGuyver when I grew up. Okay, fine, at the risk of destroying any sort of literary credibility I’ve established, I would have to admit to crushing on the Goblin King from Labyrinth. Hey, I was ten. I remember watching the movie a few years later and just about dying of laughter (it was released in 1986, so what do you expect? Most other ’80s movies I grew up with totally rocked though). The Goblin King sounded much better in the book than he looked in the movie. I was a shallow kid, okay?

And I don’t think this constitutes crushing, but I’ve certainly always had a soft spot for Sidney Carton (he’s so damn jaded yet genuine) from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and for Charlie Gordon from Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon. I read the latter for the first time when I was about twelve, and I think it was the second book that made me cry. The first book was Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows, when I was ten. I wanted a best friend like Billy Colman, and I totally bawled my eyes out when Old Dan and Little Ann died. Alright, I think that’s it.

The last book you bought is:

How to Eat Like a Child: And Other Lessons in Not Being a Grown-Up, by Delia Ephron with drawings by Edward Koren. I bought it a couple of days ago from the Friends of the Library section at my local public library, and it’s hardcover, so it cost $1. Paperbacks cost fifty cents. The flyleaf says, in cursive handwriting dated 7/25/79, To Alexis, This is so you never forget how to act like a child. Love, Gwyneth.

Highlights include sections entitled “How to Laugh Hysterically,” “How to Tell a Joke” (Immediately repeat ten times.), “How to Torture Your Sister,” “How to Talk on the Telephone” (Hello. Are you English? Are you Swedish? Are you Italian? Are you Finnish? Well I am. Goodbye.), etc. The crowd-pleasing “How to Express an Opinion” offers the following word choices:

Yucky
Gross
Dis-gusting
Ugh
Sick
Sickening
Scuzzy
Smell-y
Oh, barf
Creepy
Icky
Obnoxious
Boy, is this dumb
Creeps
Crummy
Vomitrocious

And how could I not share with you all the author’s sage advice on how to eat ice cream cones?

Ask for a double scoop. Knock the top scoop off while walking out the door of the ice cream parlor. Cry. Lick the remaining scoop slowly so that ice cream melts down the outside of the cone and over your hand. Stop licking when the ice cream is even with the top of the cone. Be sure it is absolutely even. Eat a hole in the bottom of the cone and suck the rest of the ice cream out the bottom. When only the cone remains with ice cream coating the inside, leave on car dashboard.

…and french fries?

Wave one french fry in air for emphasis while you talk. Pretend to conduct orchestra. Then place four fries in your mouth at once and chew. Turn to your sister, open your mouth, and stick out your tongue coated with potatoes. Close mouth and swallow. Smile.

I freakin’ love this book! LIKE OH MY GOD, BECKY, YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW. Okay, I’ll stop now.

The day before that amusing purchase, I bought Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart for $1 from the American Cancer Society shop in downtown.

The last book you read:

Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, a “biomythography” of her life as a queer woman of color. While the writing is pretty sexually provocative at times, it is for the most part also lovely, poetic, and fascinating enough that I’ve left dog-eared pages all the way through the book. If you can handle reading about queer women of color, then I highly recommend it.

What are you currently reading?

Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. It was assigned reading for a womens studies course I took last quarter. I’ve only just started it, so I am quite obviously an academic slacker. Also, I read two chapters of Karen Armstrong’s new memoir, The Spiral Staircase : My Climb Out of Darkness, standing up in the unversity bookstore this morning, so I think that totally counts, especially since I’m planning on buying it eventually, unless I just end up finishing it by reading a few chapters every time I stop by the place. And last night, I started Deafening, by Frances Itani, which I had bought months ago (for $1!) and then promptly forgotten all about.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Do you realize how painful a question this is? You’re killing me. Five?! Geez louise. Alright, here we go:

– The Quran, as edited by Abduallah Yusuf Ali, because I agree with Baji – footnotes are a good thing. And I haven’t read the entire Quran in translation nearly enough times yet.
– The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. If there was one single book that helped me survive eighteen months in Pakistan (ten years ago) with limited reading material in English, this was it. My brother and I swapped it back and forth and discussed each story in detail, endlessly. Not to mention all the times the binding started coming apart and I had to keep gluing the pages back in. The brother still has it, because we’re all sentimental fools in this family. Hardcovered, four novels, fifty-six short stories, over one thousand pages… The island’s not looking so bad after all.
– The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. “The narrator is a downed pilot in the Sahara Desert.” Hey, if he can make it, why can’t I? It’s a simple, rich, and poweful little book.
– Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, by Ray Bradbury. Quantity and quality, all at once. I love this man. ‘Nuff said.
– The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, as edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell. As I mentioned recently, I love this book; it’s definitely one of my favorites. The funny thing is, though, that I keep re-reading the same poems and bits of prose over and over, so I definitely need a desert island in order to make it through the book in its entirety.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Baji is making this so difficult by already having picked the other bookworms I can think of straight off the top of my head. Who else likes books around here? Alright, here goes:

– Najm: because my fellow vampire child was online really late the other night, and, in response to my interrogative inquiries [is this a redundant phrase?], he confessed it was because he had been reading a really good book. In my haste to go to sleep, I forgot to ask what the really good book was. I also want to know what all those other books are, the ones he’s stockpiling on his shelves but has never gotten around to reading in their entirety. [Dammit, kk beat me to this. I shoulda posted this deal last night instead of saving it as a draft. What was I thinking? Well, fine then! I’ll find someone else! So there.]

– BAQ: because he’s a bookworm and I know it, and also because, as with me, conciseness is not his strong suit either, which means I’m anticipating a pretty thorough post in response, so I’m already rubbing my hands together in giddy expectation. Also because maybe this will give him a push to update.

– Queen_Hera: because she is the absolute best QUEEN of books, and I can imagine her eyes lighting up at these questions, and only someone with such an enormous collection of books would appreciate my excessive nerdiness.

– bki./: because he likes Eric Carle (which is always a selling point with me), but he clearly also likes a lot of other literary stuff as well, if his awesomely-composed “globalog” is anything to go by. Besides, he knows German. How many of you know German, huh?

Also, I’d like to cheat (and monopolize this quiz thingamajig) by saying that I’d enjoy hearing from the following people as well, if you’re up to it:

– Yaser: because he’s blunt and straight to the point, which I think is an admirable quality and so I always always trust his book reviews.

– Fathima: because I want to know what books are being read/recommended by someone who writes as amazingly as she does mashaAllah.

– HijabMan: because I’m thinking it’s going to be good, unexpected, or, at the very least, definitely different and thought-provoking.

– Sister Scorpion: because she reads everything. Also, because someday I would like to be as articulate, open-minded, hilarious, and talented (say, “MashaAllah”). So I gotta get a head start by stalking her bookshelves.

– Knicq: because he needs to update that joint already, and nagging fellow ramblers is so much fun. Plus, he thinks I’m funny, for some reason, and I totally suck at accepting compliments, so this is my lame kindergarten way of responding along the lines of, “Thanks, I think you’re cool, too, so, Tag! You’re IT!” [Okay, kk beat me here, too. Ugh! Creeps! Crummy! I give up.]

If you absolutely love books and I’ve inadvertently left you out, feel free to participate. Let me know so I can add to my ever-increasing list of future books to read. On the other hand, if you’re not a bookworm at all, please accept my deepest apologies. We’re so outta control. I accept full blame.