bits and pieces

Glorious mundanity, Suckool

So the only reason I’ve been neglecting this place is because when it comes down to a choice between sleeping and updating my weblog, trust me, I would much rather sleep.

Anyway, I was informed by various unreliable sources last weekend that my writing style is intimidating, that I’m “detached” from my weblog, that I’m giving everyone a complex about writing and standards and heavy words, and that I need to sit back and chill out and discuss my non-existent soap-opera-drama life in more detail. Seeing as how I have neither hilarious nor profound stories to share at the moment, this sort of criticism is gratifying, because it means I don’t need to have any coherent structure for the following post.

As our friend explained his weblog, “My life is as dry as bath soap in its packet. But I pretend like it’s the ending sequence of some Bollywood flick.”

Good enough for me. So here’s my recent drama-queen life, in all its boredom-inducing glory:

– I don’t like raw red bell peppers. I definitely don’t like yams. And I promise I will stop talking about vegetables for now.

– My friend N dragged me to the drugstore yesterday so she could pick out some hair dye. Her hair is dark brown, and she wanted to dye it deep black. She asked for my opinion, and I said, Whatever. So she browsed the aisles while I grimaced at the cover of Ladies Home Journal and People magazine and whined, “Are you done yet?” I personally recommended the orange or purple hair colors, but she didn’t take my advice into account. Then again, would you trust the opinion of a girl whose hair you’ve never seen? Besides, the short, seldom-brushed wannabe-rocker hair I’m sporting these days isn’t exactly a favorable model of the perfect girly hairstyle anyway.

– I need to turn in my application for this year’s Women of Color Conference. I’m thinking of designing a workshop for it, too, but we’ll see how that works out.

– Yesterday morning’s Philosophy 15 (Bioethics) lecture was torture. I ended up sitting next to a guy who wouldn’t stop biting his nails for the entire ninety minutes, and in front of another guy who didn’t think anything of subjecting the entire class to his perpetual nose-blowing. I’m surprised he didn’t rupture his eardrums with that amount of pressure. And the professor was magically sporting a golden tan she didn’t have the day before. I bet you anything it came out of a bottle. I sat there thinking, Someone get me out of here already!

– My Psychology 130 professor is cool. He’s young, Indian, with a Ph.D. and no accent. This makes communication so much easier. He tells us cute stories about his daughter, a toddler who falls asleep every night listening to techno music.

– Speaking of South Asian, I’m only one of two or three in my Asian American studies class. I have never before been so aware of my Pakistani-ness.

– Muslim misfits at the MSA meeting. Love the alliteration. ‘Nuff said.

– Last night, I was IM’ed by someone I had almost forgotten about and whom I haven’t spoken to in two and a half years. Interesting conversation. I was chided for being rude, though I prefer to think of it as straightforwardness. If nothing else, the conversation reinforced the fact that I’m just as stubborn and hard-headed now as I was when I was twenty. Good for me and my Pukhtun genes.

– I love Berkeley.

– Parking at Berkeley is not so cool though. I’m talking about university parking lots. At my university, students can often be found speeding down to end of parking lots, hopefully asking the people passing by, “Are you leaving?”, cutting each other off for spaces. At Cal, the students wait patiently in a line for parking. Berkeley, of all places! Holy freakin’ smoley, what is that all about? I’m so disappointed in Cal. I couldn’t understand why everyone was parked in a line, why the people in front of me weren’t moving their cars, so finally I maneuvered out of the line and prepared to make my way through the lot in search of potential spaces. Two seconds later, the parking lot attendant stopped me and pointedly asked, “Are you leaving the parking lot?” I guess the kindergarten rule still holds true: Cutting in line is cheating.

– I love it when people I barely know, who were introduced to me months ago, remember my name and shout it from far away. What’s even more awesome is when they pronounce it correctly, too. Automatic rockstar status right there, I say.

– Chocolate milkshakes from In ‘N’ Out make my evenings beautiful.

– This morning, I sat next to a girl who had once spoken of me to someone else as having “the most fucked up attitude she had ever seen.” [Not while I was there, of course.]

Hearing of it later, I remember laughing, “But I love my fucked up attitude!”

She acts like we’re still great friends, and I act nice to her, because that’s just me. Such is life, and that’s the way this wheel keeps working now.

– This post is making me sound like I have issues with everyone and their momma. I promise, my life is really not this dramatic.

– I grew up watching mainly He-Man and G.I. Joe. What’s up with all the boy cartoons? And I wanted to be MacGuyver, but then decided marrying him when I grew up would be the next best thing.

– I think my family is making a hobby out of changing wireless phone plans every few months. This time, we’ve switched from Cingular to T-Mobile. According to T-Mobile, they’ll ensure we keep the same cell phone numbers, reimburse us for any expenses incurred with Cingular until our account with the latter is completely cancelled, and we can even buy the unlock codes for our phones off eBay and keep using the same phones with T-Mobile. Anyone know anything about that unlock code business? I need to return my ugly trial-period Nokia phone to T-Mobile and request another one anyway, since Nokias don’t do jack for me. All I can say is, if this turns into a repeat of last September’s experience, I’m going to laugh hysterically and thrown my phone away. Please, no cell phone is worth that much hassle.

– Speaking of phones, I received a call this morning from a girl with a San Francisco area code, asking, “Is Andy there?”

“Sorry, you have the wrong number,” I answered.

“Oh. Is this 925-___-____?”

Funny thing is, that is my number. Andy, whoever you are, you missed out, buddy boy. The next time you write down your phone number for a girl, try to make it legible. Or enunciate when you speak. Whatever works.

– I’m registered for twenty units this quarter. Man, oh man.

– I’m so behind in replying to emails, it’s not even funny. Actually, it never was funny, but that’s besides the point. If I owe you an email, I’m sorry. You’re a rockstar, and I’m just a lazy girl with no excuse.

– It’s probably a good thing that I’m taking a psychology course on human memory, because my memory just plain sucks these days. I used to be so good at remembering faces and names. This especially came in handy during my high school work on the journalism and yearbook staffs. Once I started college, however, it all went downhill – faces were easy to remember, but not names. I’ve been trying to make a conscious effort to improve recently. The result: I now remember names, and not faces. Wonderful. For example, I’ve had the following names stuck in my head all week: Claudia, Bessy, Aaron, Mena. The problem is, I keep forgetting who these people are. Clearly, I have issues.

– Gas prices are currently at $2.17/gallon. It cost me $30 to fill up my tank yesterday. Good Lord.

– Because I am so easily amused, I couldn’t stop laughing yesterday when L accidentally answered a question with the word “coronary” instead of “coroner.”

“You mean, like the artery?” I asked, before dissolving into laughter.

Later, out in the parking lot, as I was busy making fun of L, H said, “Oh, come on, if you spoke four languages…!”

“Oh, come on,” I mimicked, “I could speak four languages if I tried. You gotta admit, that was still hella funny.”

We walked to our cars, staggering under the weight of shared laughter. Good times.

– New philosophy: Good friends are those who let you make fun of them and don’t care.

– I don’t mind not knowing where I’m going, so much as I hate being lost. Those are two different things, somehow.

every time that i see your face,/i wonder what lie…

Conversations and Encounters, Glorious mundanity

every time that i see your face,/i wonder what lies beneath your smile

I miss my cute little preschool kids.

And I miss Dennis the Menace, too.

I was reminded of both this afternoon because I stopped by D’s apartment to say hello and was pleasantly surprised to find myself greeted with such unrestrained joy. I’m always amazed when people tell me they miss me. I suppose it’s a self-defense mechanism – a remnant of all those years of moving often as I was growing up – that I still manage to have moments of aloofness and reserve when it comes to friendship, even with those people I’m otherwise very close to.

“I’ve been looking around for your birthday present!” D announced excitedly.

“What? Why? My birthday was a month ago, woman. And, anyway, I don’t need a birthday present.”

“No, no, don’t worry, I’m getting you something. But it has to be something that just screams out ‘Yaz!’ to me. I haven’t found anything like that yet, but you’ll be getting it sometime soon.”

“And we need to see each other more often this quarter,” she continued.

“Maybe lunch or dinner,” I suggested. I’m easy to please – for me, hanging out with friends is all about the food experience.

“Yeah,” she nodded, then grinned widely. “And we can spend some swing time together, too!”

Later, during the drive home, I stopped at a market to buy some fruits and vegetables for my mother. Which brings up a few points:

– There’s yellow squash, and there’s zucchini. My family refers to zucchini as “green squash.” After all, once you cook them, both yellow squash and zucchini taste the same to me. Don’t tell me it’s just because I have indiscriminating taste buds. I’ll have you know that my taste buds are very discriminating. That’s why I dislike squash intensely, and I don’t even care what color it is.

– My family calls cilantro “green coriander” instead. As opposed to ground coriander, ya know.

– What genius decided that turnips and sweet potatoes are two different vegetables? Radishes, turnips, and sweet potatoes all they taste the same, once cooked. And I dislike them even more than I dislike squash.

The boy at the register laughed at my huge bundles of cilantro. “You sure don’t mess around, do you?” he remarked. Three bunches for ninety-nine cents. How ever could I resist?

“Are you going to need some help out?” he asked courteously.

I glanced at my purchases and shook my head. “No, thanks, I’m fine.”

He didn’t so much as blink, but instead turned to page someone over the intercom to help me carry out the five bags full of groceries that I quite obviously would not have been able to manage on my own.

I’m too stubborn to admit when I need help. I’d call it a matter of pride, but maybe it’s just stupidity.

Getting back into the hang of commuting during the past week has been slightly exhausting, but it was easier today. I drove home squinting against the fading sunlight, placidly munching on an ice cream bar and listening to India.Arie and Nickelback. The latter always makes me smile, bringing to mind as it does a good friend.

Speaking of driving – For the person who stopped by my weblog while searching for information on “driving barefoot,” you’ve come to the right place. I’m glad to know you were able to read my thoughts on the matter. Please don’t drive barefoot. It annoys me, and that should be sufficient reason to refrain from it.

As for the person who searched for “dilemmas faced by a person who wasn’t able to manage the time,” you’re at the right place, too, buddy. Now if only I could make a career out of wasting time.

where, oh where, has my spring break gone? The …

Glorious mundanity

where, oh where, has my spring break gone?

The daddy-o decided to drive my car to work this morning, so I’ve been using one of the SUVs while out and about on the town today. I’m sure you will be disappointed to hear that I refrained from running over any innocent pedestrians or fellow drivers during my excursions. ‘Twas fun to drive a big bad SUV though.

Speaking of cars, today’s driving around town re-emphasized the fact that every other car around here is either a Lexus, Mercedes, or BMW. I live in a city where upper-middle-class (or do I just mean upper-class?) now seems to be the norm, which is hella scary. Stopping by here for a few minutes on my way back from the library, Macy*s alone made me realize I’m quite obviously not fashionably sophisticated enough for this place – at least, not according to my funky flared pants, headwraps, and flip-flops. But, at the risk of sounding like such a girl, which, I’ll have you know, is not something I’m in the habit of doing, I’ve decided my next paycheck is going towards this slick tunic at Macy*s. Hey, I’ll allow myself to shop there – but only when everything is on a 50% discount.

Did I just spend an entire paragraph talking about clothes? I can’t believe this. Shoot, all I really wanted was a scoop of double chocolate mint ice cream from Yogurt Park, but funds were low. Story of my life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go be productive. Did you know that the boxes are still sitting all around the room?

‘Nuff said.

conversations with (and documented by) my brother …

Casa420 and Familia, Conversations and Encounters

conversations with (and documented by) my brother the artist


post-its are the funniest way to document a conversation, really.

DISCLAIMER, AGAIN: Please note that I am not as shallow as this exchange makes me out to be. But, really, look at the heavy-duty bags under that first guy’s eyes. Workaholics or drug-addicts need not apply. It’s all tongue-in-cheek anyway. Just deal.

i’m waiting on the sunshine, the sunshine/i’m waiting for answers/i’m waiting to figure it out/i trip on my chances/i slip through my doubt

Hit the Road, Suckool

There is an edge of panic that one usually feels when familiar surroundings have changed, when safe boundary lines have shifted and blurred. It is akin to the feeling I used to have growing up when, waking up during the middle of the night in yet another new home, I’d attempt to blindly navigate my way around my bedroom, only to find unbroken walls where I anticipated doorways and wide windows where I expected walls.

On southbound Interstate-680, the beginning of the Benicia Bridge marks the fifteen miles remaining until I reach home. I think of it as the last leg of my 60-mile journey back to the East Bay every night from school. On rare occasions, I traverse the narrow southbound lanes during the daylight hours, but most of the time I drive at night, past the smoky glow of the oil refineries, over the sparkling lights dotting the edges of Suisan Bay and the Carquinez Strait, glancing down to the left at the famous “Mothball Fleet” just north of the bridge where the U.S. Navy stores almost a hundred various de-commissioned war ships and support craft at long-term anchor.

There is a nearly-one-mile-long stretch of freeway just before the bridge that used to curve towards the right. For over three years, day or night, I navigated it the same way: my left elbow casually propped against the bottom of the inside window frame, the fingers of my right hand loosely wrapped around the steering wheel, leaning back into my seat as I easily sped into the curve with my cruise control set at 80 mph.

For the past several months, the I-680 areas just preceding and following the bridge have become construction zones. Driving home one night, I found everything had changed. That mile-long portion of the freeway that once curved gently to the right now instead curves sharply to the left before veering into a right-hand curve, and these days I need both hands to navigate it. I am no longer secure in the knowledge that I know this freeway like the back of my hand.

Every night, approaching the curve, I automatically prop my left elbow against the window frame, loosely loop my right fingers around the top of the steering wheel, and prepare to gently turn the steering wheel to the right. And every night, just as unfailingly, I belatedly shift my right hand down and slap my left hand against the steering wheel as well, slamming on the brakes as I enter the sharp left curve, sometimes gripping the wheel so tightly my knuckles hurt.

It’s almost like a sense of betrayal, this faltering of my once-unwavering confidence in speeding through that particular curve, in knowing exactly where I was going without second-guessing myself.

Somewhere in here, in words I don’t know how to put together as well as I would like, is a perfect analogy for my indecisiveness and lack of direction, and the constantly, swiftly shifted plans that epitomize my life at the moment.

When I was eight, my goal in life was to become a professional frisbee player and marry MacGuyver when I grew up. At ten, I wanted to be a poet. When I was twelve, I wanted to write an autobiography and become an illustrator of children’s books. [I had such artistic talent. I still do, I think. I haven’t drawn or painted for years, and some days I regret having let those talents go to waste.] At sixteen, I had an epiphany: pediatric audiology! When I was nineteen, I was a pre-med university student studying neurobiology and dreaming of life as a pediatrician. I’ve spent the last four years mentally switching my major a dozen times, though only once on paper. My academic vacillations have been well-documented on this weblog, I think.

I’m just going with the flow these days, and the flow isn’t taking me anywhere, as far as I can tell. “Life’s damn complicated,” I said to Yas last week. He responded with what has to be the perfect summation of my dilemma at the moment:

“True, but what’s more complicated is having a million choices, each open for you to follow, some seem easier than the others, some ways more inviting, others seem difficult but so rewarding, some seem like the easy way out. Then you can make whatever choice you want. What do you do? If you do one thing, you might miss another opportunity.”

The biggest topic of conversation amongst my friends, classmates, and acquaintances these days has to do with who is graduating in June, who is staying on for another year, who has applied to graduate school, who is moving back to his/her hometown this summer, who already has a job lined up after graduation, who has taken the GREs and MCATs, who is going to medical school or law school or business school. Basically, all conversations center around people who seem to have at least a vague idea of what they’re doing, which is more than I can say for myself.

It’s not that I don’t even know what I want to study. More like, it’s just that I want to study too many things, which is why decision-making is so problematic.

A friend asked me recently, “So where are you going for grad school once you’re done here?”

“I have no idea,” I said shortly.

He rephrased the question: “So where do you want to go?”

I rolled my eyes, having heard the same question far too many times already.

“It’s not about where I want to go,” I snapped, “it’s about what I want to study. That’s what I need to figure out first.”

He held up his hands in apology. “Okay, okay. So what do you want to study?”

I let out an impatient, long-suffering sigh, then relented. “Fine. I want to study a lot of things. Like child development and sociology and pediatric audiology and social and ethnic relations and comparative literature and cultural anthropology and identity formation and…”

I ran out of breath, stumbled to a halt, and raised an eyebrow in challenge, as if to say, “Whaddaya make of that, huh? You see my problems? Leave me alone already.”

He just stared. “Wow, masha’Allah,” he marveled. “You’re so ambitious.”

That, of all things, is not what I had expected to hear.

I’m not ambitious, really. I used to be, and I seem to have lost it somewhere along the way. If I were ambitious, I would have specific goals, wouldn’t I?

Me, I’m just b.s.’ing my way through life, one day at a time.

like a good book, i can’t put this day back The…

Bibliothek

like a good book, i can’t put this day back

The last term paper is due Monday afternoon and the last final exam is scheduled for sometime Tuesday (I really should figure out the exact time, shouldn’t I?), and then I’m free for a week. One week during which I’m going to do nothing but lie in the sunshine and read books. And sleep a lot. And have reunions with old high school people – but only the rockstars though. The ones who thought it was highly entertaining to repeatedly ask me where Aladdin was will just have to wait a few more decades to see me again, by which time I’ll have hopefully come up with some witty retorts.

And have I mentioned sleep?

Not that any of y’all even care, but here’s my planned reading list for the week of spring break:

– The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

– An American Brat, by Bapsi Sidhwa

– The Mango Season, by Amulya Malladi

– A Breath of Fresh Air, by Amulya Malladi

– A Prayer for Children, by Ina Hughes

– The Storyteller’s Daughter, by Saira Shah

– Dreaming Water, by Gail Tsukiyama

– Train to Pakistan, by Khushwant Singh

– Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

– I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops, by Hanan al-Shaykh

– A Man to Match His Mountains: Badshah Khan, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, by Eknath Easwaran

– Women of Sufism, A Hidden Treasure: Writings and Stories of Mystic Poets, Scholars, & Saints, selected by Camille Adams Helminski

This list is more for my recollection purposes than for your edification anyway, so stop rolling your eyes. And who says I can’t get through this entire list in one week? Actually, even I probably can’t, but that’s not the point. Not that I even remember what the point was anymore. And, in reference to the above list, I’m not quite sure how to explain my newfound interest in what I laughingly call “ethnic” novels, but I suppose it’s related to the over-abundance of English and American literature I already possess. Change is a good thing, sometimes.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go calculate exactly how much money I owe in public library fines.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t do book recommendations. Read at your own risk.

one year, and nothing’s changed

Uncategorized

A young woman named Layla Kaiksow periodically sends out long, detailed emails to those of us who have asked her to stay in touch while she volunteers and does research in Palestine. It is fitting – in a bitter, ironic way – that her email received yesterday on the one year anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death reflects my thoughts from a year ago on how frighteningly easy it could be to become emotionally detached from all the heartbreak and horror on the other side of the world.

Layla’s email brought back the same disquieting sense of helplessness that characterizes any description and discussion of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Later, while scrolling through my weblog archives, I came across a post mentioning Rachel Corrie a year ago, and then again one month later in my post about Jenin. Sitting here, rereading my words from last year (and rereading Rachel’s series of emails to her family), I think about how easy it is for me to forget, to carry on with my life, to leave the courage and hard work to others. It’s been a year, and nothing has changed, but neither have I personally demonstrated nor contributed any noticeable impulses towards actively seeking change. It’s been a year, and I still lack Rachel’s courage, conviction, and selflessness.

Layla writes:

“I realized I hadn’t written in a while because you become numb to the life here and things that are really disgusting seem not normal but normalized. When you see people harassed everyday, you start to not want to write again and again about the same thing. The other day I was passing through the Bethlehem checkpoint and there were maybe 20 men lined up against the wall with their faces to the wall. They were all awaiting their IDs to be returned to them and of course were forbidden from leaving until given “permission” from the soldiers. It’s not that anything that happens here seems fair or even normal, but I have been here almost 6 months now and you start to think, yeah, this happens all the time. That is the biggest danger of the Occupation; things get so bad, and have been going on for more than 50 years that terrible violations of Human Rights become a daily occurrence.”

You can find more of Layla’s writings here and here.

it’s all in a state of mind Yesterday afternoon…

Conversations and Encounters, Suckool

it’s all in a state of mind

Yesterday afternoon, Somayya and I both groaned as usual when we came in sight of the parking garage and the four long flights of stairs we’d have to climb in order to reach her car, which was parked on the uppermost level.

We had just finished a cross-campus-and-back-again trek that included walking from the chemistry building to our respective internship buildings to the office of the registrar to the human development advisor’s office to the student union, and the thought of climbing four flights of stairs was not appealing at all. To be honest, it’s never appealing, and although we’ve walked up and down those stairs multiple times a day for the past four years, we never fail to mutter complaints about the exertion that’s involved.

I squinted and looked up as we approached the bottom of the stairs.

“Oh, my God,” moaned Somayya, “here we go again.”

I was about to tiredly mumble some form of irritable assent when my eye was caught by a figure less than halfway up the first flight of stairs.

“Hey, at least we’re not on crutches,” I answered in a low voice.

“What?”

“Least we’re not on crutches,” I repeated a bit louder, and jerked my chin up towards the girl at a standstill just a few steps above us. She stood stock-still to the side, her head bowed, towel-wrapped crutches placed underneath both armpits, while students indifferently maneuvered their way around her.

“Yeah, true,” said Somayya with a half-laugh. “I guess I’ll stop complaining now.”

When we came abreast of the girl, we looked over worriedly. “Are you gonna make it okay?”

“Stuck,” she said shortly. Her face was sheened in perspiration, and she seemed short of breath.

I glanced up at the seemingly endless steps remaining until the next landing, and winced. “I’m sorry,” I said sympathetically, at a loss for words.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” she retorted emphatically. “Feel sorry for people in wheelchairs.”

We silently nodded in agreement and continued on our way.

“Damn,” I said admiringly to Somayya when we reached the next landing, “that girl’s got some real perspective.”

The encounter reminds me of a saying I once read in relation to the Irish, and the ways in which their imagination and sense of humor come into play during times of great difficulty:

What happens is never the worst.

On the contrary, what’s worse never happens.