some conversation/no contemplation/hit the road …

Glorious mundanity, Hit the Road, Suckool

some conversation/no contemplation/hit the road

“My poor baby,” laughed Somayya last night, “you need sleep.”

This was after we had walked halfway across campus from the library at almost midnight and climbed four flights of stairs at the parking garage only to find the entire level empty, with nary a car in sight. I stared in alarm. “Oh shit shit shit,” said the voice in my head. Or maybe I did say it out loud, I don’t remember. Don’t be surprised if I did.

“Umm, Yazzo…?” said Somayya quizzically.

“I could swear I parked my car here,” I said, struggling not to panic.

She was on her cell phone with D at the time. “Hold on, I’ll call you back,” she said abruptly. “We gotta find Yazzo’s car.” I was tempted to laugh at that, regardless of my increasing alarm. She hung up and turned to me. “You sure it’s not over at the Life Sciences Addition?”

“No! I parked it right here this morning, dammit. I could swear…” I trailed off, looked around the empty level once more, and said sheepishly, “Uhh, you know what, maybe that was yesterday morning…”

So then we had to walk, no, trek, all the way over to the parking lot at the other end of campus. That was such fun. All bitterness and sarcasm aside, though, the stars were absolutely gorgeous. And I think I’ve finally figured out how to find the Big Dipper.

The days are all trickling together into one never-ending blur. Now that I’ve gotten two midterms out of the way this week, I have a paper due today, and another midterm exam; tomorrow I have a presentation to make, and another paper due. I need to renew next year’s application for one of my internships, and at least do something to contribute towards my second internship, and revise my cover letter and resume and send them out for this job I’ve found that seems absolutely perfect for me, if only I can overcome my laziness. It’s the week from hell, can you tell? Actually, scratch that—I cannot even begin to contemplate what hell on earth must be like, much less imagine the sheer horror of hell in the Afterlife. I’m blessed far more than I deserve. It’s just that I’m currently so overwhelmed and exhausted that I found myself telling numerous people to “have a beautiful weekend!” yesterday, which was only Wednesday, for goodness sake.

I think I keep doing this simply because so far my focus all week has been on driving out to Berkeley on Friday to spend some quality time with the birthday girl. Two days back at school, and I already need to get away. This past weekend’s three days of the MSA-West Conference at Cal spoiled me—I’m tired, as usual, of my college town and the bland flatness of the general Sacramento area; I need the hills, curves, and diversity of Berkeley the town. It’s my birthplace, though I’ve never lived there. That should explain it all.

I also need some crazy stories. The funniest thing to happen this week was when an acquaintance asked my friend F, “Is Yasmine half-Black?” I suppose her negative response wasn’t enough for him, which is why he asked Somayya last night, “You sure Yasmine isn’t 1/8th or 1/16th Black?” I find that highly amusing. I don’t even look Black—skin tone, features, or otherwise. My skin tone is lightish like my father’s—not pale but slightly tanned, several shades lighter than my mother’s—but I would think I appear quite obviously Pakistani. Yet I find myself consistently mistaken for Italian, Palestinian, or Kashmiri. I’m not quite sure where Black fits in though. Still, going along with Phathima‘s advice, I’ve decided to view this as versatility rather than symptoms of an identity crisis on my part.

Random: Favorite new album these days is Maroon 5‘s Songs About Jane. Great road trip music. I’m speaking from personal experience, of course, and I’m not even talking about my commute to/from school.

In other news, I’m suffering from lack of free time these days yet still seem to have the past three weeks worth of weblog entries floating around in my head—disjointed thoughts, half-formulated sentences, scrupulously-recalled snippets from conversations in passing, strings of words carefully placed next to one another and readjusted daily as I’m walking, driving, lying in bed half-asleep. Whether it is a blessing or a curse, I don’t know, that once I deliberately fashion such phrases and sentences I consider it wasteful to not use them, and so they remain, stubbornly refusing to leave, taking up valuable and much-needed space in my brain, until I write or type them out, constantly rearranging them into a precise order.

This is why, starting next week, you may find weblog updates with startling regularity. Until then, be patient, bear with me, have beautiful days, be at peace.

Stay tuned.

nothing witty, urbane, erudite, or even coherent –…

Casa420 and Familia, Glorious mundanity

nothing witty, urbane, erudite, or even coherent – just a disjointed attempt to put my typing skills back in practice

On my bed is a thick knitted blanket. It’s just over five feet long, and narrow, the perfect length and width for my 5’1″ frame. My mother knitted it during the first year after I was born, using excess yarn she received from a friend and whatever extra yarn she had lying around the house. I’ve loved this blanket ever since. It has a golden-orange scalloped edge on one end, green scallops at the other end. In between is five feet of colors in no particular order, a riotous surge of unchecked shades alternating without pattern. Every few inches, there is a row in a new color.

The first two feet go like this: orange, white, purple, pink, gray, turquoise, brown, gray, bright red, yellow, green, gray… It’s not beautiful in the traditional sense. Some of the colors even look ugly next to each other. But I love this blanket. I love its warmth, and extra thickness, and how it’s sometimes almost suffocating in its heaviness. It makes me smile, and makes me want to learn how to knit. These days, I’d like to learn how to knit a nice, warm beanie for myself. Then perhaps I could stop wandering around the house with my hooded jacket, looking for all the world like a wannabe big bad Artic explorer.

Yesterday morning, finding the bathroom too warm after my shower, I raised the window and pressed my face against the screen, inhaling deep breaths of the cold air outside as my eyes wandered over the concrete wall and grape vines and geraniums running along the back of the house. I was struck by a sense of déjà vu – the last time I remember doing that, I was 12 years old, we were preparing to leave for Pakistan, and it was a different version of myself that looked out a different window-screen at a backyard scene from a different house in another city. That was ten years ago.

They say an individual’s sickness serves as expiation for his sins. I wonder if the past six days of illness have made me a different person, but really, I don’t feel any changes, nor did I even think to pray for any. They say a sick person’s prayers are granted, so I prayed some extra, and prayed that He would accept peoples’ prayers and supplications on my behalf, but other than that the days and nights were blurred into an continuous stream of fever and chills and restless sleep and gulping down soup and swallowing back endless pills and sleeping some more.

This is how not to be stupid like Yasminay: Don’t pull allnighters. Don’t pull almost-allnighters. Try try try to get work done ahead of schedule. And when your barely-started 6-page paper nearly brings you to tears on Tuesday morning, remember the fact that you never cry over academic assignments, no matter how frustrating, and that your tears must be related to other things. Like the fact that you have an excruciatingly-painful backache and a throbbing headache and, for God’s sake, a 104-degree fever. Why oh why are you even sitting here pretending to get anything done? The problem is, I don’t get sick often enough to recognize the symptoms well. But I was smart enough to take two Tylenols and crawl into bed with a relieved sigh.

Tuesday evening’s visit to the doctor reinforced my view that they never have anything new or interesting to tell me. Or maybe it’s just because my primary doctor, a young, curly-haired, fashionably-dressed Egyptian lady with pretty earrings, was out and so I had to make do with a substitute doctor who seemed a bit confused: “You may have holes in your eardrums,” she remarked.

I flinched. “I would hope not.” And, no, as a matter of fact, I didn’t have holes in my eardrums, thank you very much. I’m used to first-class treatment from my long-time ear specialist at the California Ear Institute (affiliated with Stanford University), an otolaryngologist with decades of experience who knows what he’s doing and constantly renews his offer of a post-graduation job at his practice (if I stick with audiology) and doesn’t scare me to death with stupid offhand remarks about my precious eardrums.

When I relayed my symptoms from earlier in the day to the doctor, she raised her eyebrows and stared me down. “A hundred and four degrees? Why didn’t you come in to see a doctor earlier?” I just shrugged, and waited for her verdict, the diagnosis, though she never did give me one, instead sending me away with a prescription for amoxicillin. Lord knows what I even had. Probably the flu. Truth is, I don’t really have much experience with being ill, so usually I’m very nonchalant about it.

I feel like such a druggie, a pill-popper or something. Right now I’m hooked on amoxicillin, cough syrup, and Sudafed. The amoxicillin is interesting. They’re huge pills, hollow capsules, half brown, half yellow. After days of swallowing them absently, I got a bit curious and took one apart today to see what’s inside the plastic capsule. Nothing but white powder. So boring. I had been hoping for some exciting colors. Sudafed is my favorite – teeny-tiny little red pills that look like cinnamon candy. Don’t try this at home, kids.

I tried venturing out on Thursday. The sister was my chauffeur for the day, first to a meeting, then later to a (post-)Eid banquet, both in Sacramento. The latter event just made me irritable. One, I understand it’s nearly-impossible to expect Muslim people to start things on time, but can we at least try? Two, I start feeling claustrophobic in a roomful of South Asian people – yes, I know they’re my people, but really, I can handle them only in limited quantities. Like, say, one at a time. Three, why the hell can’t people learn how to park correctly? I was tired and ready to leave by nine. But, oops, we couldn’t, because three cars were parked in a nice perpendicular row behind our parking spot. Slick, real slick. So I stomped back inside and fumed and tried listening to Imam Suhaib Webb’s speech while I coughed and coughed and my eyes watered with fatigue.

“I think I know who those cars belong to,” said a friend of mine at the end of the program.

“Good,” I snapped. “Can you please tell them to move their damn cars already, because I’m really starting to get pissed off.”

She went to see what she could do, while her friend peered at me with slight amusement. “Are you mad?” she asked.

Now there’s a question I dislike, right along with “Are you mad at me?” Depending what mood I’m in, I find them a cross between condescending and naïve. And really, they’re just stupid questions.

“Oh, I’m not mad,” I said. “I’m exhausted and sick and I would have been almost home by now, except for damn people who don’t know how to park. I’m not mad, I’m straight pissed off.”

“Aww, you’re sick? I hope you feel better soon.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said curtly.

I came home and crawled back into bed and decided to spend the remaining few days at home with my family, people I’m mainly nice to, people who love me and make me soup even when I’m cross and childish.

The brother has visited everyday this week, a new record for him. I like to believe I’m special enough to merit that sort of solicitousness. Don’t burst my bubble, or I’ll hurt you. He regaled me with stories of his mini-road-trip down to Santa Cruz, while I entertained him with my numerous voice changes and mock-threats of, “Shut up, or I’ll cough on you.”

The flu is over, praise the Lord. All that’s left now is what sounds like a smoker’s hacking cough. Sometimes it nearly brings me to my knees. Usually I’m just bent over double, breathless with the pain of incessant coughing, assailed by a crazy dizzy fear that it won’t ever stop. At least the changes it’s wrought in my voice are amusing. Most days I sound like an 80-year-old man – when I’m not sounding like a boy who’s going through puberty.

I spent part of today lying in a pool of sunshine on the living room floor, right under the main windows, reading Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage, a collection of mainly profoundly sad short stories. I borrowed it from the library simply because the title made me raise my eyebrow, like, Oh Lord, here we go again with that subject. I’m not much into South Asian writers, and honestly, I prefer stories where everyone lives happily ever after. But she writes well. Good stories. Go read. Or don’t. Last night I lay in bed reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. Another good one.

The daddy-o made me take a walk around the yard with him today, while he showed off the six new fruit trees he has planted over the last few days: orange, pear, pomegranate, persimmon, fig, apple. Very nice. I told him that, next up, we need a nectarine or peach tree. He’s already decided it’s going to be planted diagonally across from the apricot tree. I feel useful in the garden, all of a sudden. I’m terrible at volunteering to help, but at least I give valuable advice.

But the days and nights of sleeping are over. Tomorrow I’m returning to school after a week off, and the sheer amount of work waiting for me is frightening. I still have to finish writing that damn paper, and study for a midterm I’ve gotten an extension on, and read some research articles for one internship and present a workshop for my other internship on Wednesday to a group of freshman who’ll likely be fidgety and suffering from A.D.D., just my luck. And then more midterms and projects and workshops, seemingly back-to-back. O my Lord, grant me strength strength strength.

Sometime on Tuesday, after I had emailed a professor asking for an extension on my paper, she sent back a reply that began: Relax, it’s going to be okay.

I laughed. It must have been a really frantic email I sent her.

Breeeeathe, Yasminay, it’s going to be okay.

year ONE I’ve just realized that this weblog ha…

Blogistan and the Wide World of Webs

year ONE

I’ve just realized that this weblog has been around for a whole entire year now, and I figure some sort of acknowledgment of that milestone is in order. So let’s make this a thank-you post.

Thank you to –

– Al-Muhajabah, Bushra, Usman, and Yaser, whose weblogs were the first ones I stumbled across, and whom I still find cool for various reasons.

– Bushra again, for publicly calling me out on my lurker tendencies a few months later (resulting in my amazingly long email to her; if memory serves me right, she referred to it as a “roller-coaster” email), and for encouraging me to start my own weblog.

– The anonymous person who commented sometime back in the beginning and made me view my writing with a more critical eye.

– Diane, the only other hard-of-hearing person I know, who more than anyone understood my frustration in shopping for a cell phone.

– Alex and Anne, strangers who have possessed the courage to take risks and embrace change, and whose respective weblogs never fail to inspire me.

– Seher, who noticed that my writing suddenly, unconsciously, shifted from conversational to narrative over the past few months, and who recently reminded me of the importance of self-analysis and stepping back to look critically at oneself, the greater world, and other people.

– My beautiful sister, who understands the blogging madness, laughs at my stories, and advises, “You should blog about that,” between bouts of nagging me with “Did you update yet?”

I said to Somayya, laughing, this morning: “People on my weblog just can’t seem to get over my story about tailgating the Hummer.”

“That’s ’cause you usually come across as all level-headed and down-to-earth,” she replied. “They don’t know you like I do, all the craziness you’re capable of.”

So just to clarify, I’m not as serious as my posts make me out to be, nor am I always as happy-go-lucky. I’m much more than the weblog, and so many days I’m actually much less.

Either way, thank you all for being a receptive audience for my crazy stories, for sharing your thoughts and experiences via the comment box (and, sometimes, email), and for unknowingly inspiring and challenging me daily through your own example – spiritually, intellectually, and writing-wise.

Yes, I’m talking to you.

Thank you for making this an enjoyable and worthwhile experience.

This isn’t the end, don’t worry. I plan on sticking around.

And before you even ask – I highly doubt any drastic layout changes are in order, since my kindergarten-html skills are not up to the task.

But I am going to try to do better at replying to emails. Really. I hope.

i heart traffic school – day two Patsy: So tell…

Conversations and Encounters, Hit the Road

i heart traffic school – day two

Patsy: So tell us, Damon, how many tickets have you received?

Damon: Total?

Patsy: Yes.

Damon: Oh, I’d say about…25 to 30. *shrugs nonchalantly*

Everyone: *collective gasp* OHHHHHH…!

Patsy: *shrieks* 25 to 30??!!

Damon: *defensively* Whaaat? In all my years of driving? That’s not bad at all.

Everyone: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Patsy: *pained expression*

Damon was sitting next to me, and kept his sketchbook close at hand during the entire three hours, taking periodic breaks from participating to instead draw remarkably well-executed portraits of the people in the class. I wondered why he kept turning his head to look at me, until I surreptitiously glanced over to find that he was drawing my face, too.

Everyone kept asking, “Aren’t your feet cold?” I like wearing flip-flops in January, okay. I’m weird like that. Leave me alone.

Yesterday, we all received huge chunks of points for answering various questions correctly. Today, Patsy brought in gifts for those with the highest number of points. First place got an Uno candy bar. Second place got M&Ms. Third place got Three Musketeers.

Patsy: And, guess what, as an apology, you get a candy bar, too!

Me: *surprised* Wow, good stuff.

Patsy: Do you know why I’d be apologizing to you?

Me: For not giving me enough points?

Patsy: Yeah, yeah, nice try.

Me: I have no idea then.

Patsy: Well, it’s because I still can’t say your name right.

Me: *laughing* Come on, Patsy, it’s not that hard!

My candy bar is the Hershey’s Whatchamacallit.

(And all together now: yaasmeen. Got it? Thank you.)

The unexpected part came at the end, when we all walked out of the building, parting ways at our respective cars.

“So you live right here in _____, huh?” asked Damon (a.k.a. the guy with the sketchbook) conversationally.

“Yeah,” I said.

“How ’bout you let me give you a call sometime?”

Whaaat the hell? I did not go to traffic school for this.

And even though I turned him down (quite nicely and politely, I might add), it doesn’t make me feel better to have only just remembered that he’s walking around with my face drawn in his sketchbook.

Grand, just grand.

i heart traffic school – day one Patsy: What’s yo…

Conversations and Encounters, Hit the Road

i heart traffic school – day one

Patsy: What’s your name, hon?
Me: Yasmine.
Patsy: *winces at pronunciation* So what can I call you?
Me: *suppressing laughter* Yasmine.
Patsy: You really are mean, aren’t you?

Patsy: Alright, someone give me the two-letter abbreviation for “senior.”
Jason B.: Old.

Patsy: So, tell us, why are you here in traffic school tonight?
Me: For speeding on the freeway and tailgating a Hummer.
Everyone: OH MY GOD. A Hummer?? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Patsy: How close?
Me: Uhh, very close. He got out of my way.
Patsy: Mean one, aren’t you?

Question #27: If you are driving in the far left lane on the freeway and other drivers want to pass you, you should:
a. Pay no attention if you are going 55 mph.
b. Flash your brake lights to make them slow down.
c. Move to the right when safe.

Everyone: Make Yasmine answer this question!

The correct answer is, of course, “c.” No kidding, I already knew that. After all, that’s what the stupid Hummer guy finally did. Too bad I still got a speeding ticket.

Patsy: So what do you do?
Me: I’m a fourth-year college student.
Patsy: Studying?
Me: Human Development.
Patsy: And what part of humans are you trying to develop?
Me: Umm, I’m still working on figuring that one out.

Did I mention she made us popcorn? And tomorrow we have a pizza party!

“And those foremost (in faith) will be foremost (in the hereafter)” [56:10]

Loss and laments and letting go, Salaam Namaste

I, who supposedly never cry, watched my face crumble in the mirror as I stood before it early yesterday morning, arms raised in the act of wrapping a scarf around my head, my mother standing next to me as she relayed the message.

I left the house less than ten minutes later, and cried all the way up to school. Not sobs; I don’t sob. Even during the rare times that I do break down enough to cry, I never lose control enough to sob. Instead, there was an endless stream of tears that I had to constantly wipe away. I stabbed at the buttons on my CD-player, expecting to hear Matchbox Twenty, and was grateful when Surah Ya-Seen spilled out of the speakers instead. I flipped back and forth between surahs Ya-Seen, ar-Rahman, and al-Waqi’a, reciting along in a voice thick with tears.

I was dry-eyed and calm by the time I got to the university parking lot exactly an hour later. My tears are always short-lived, perhaps because we’re usually so geographically far away from the sources of grief, but mainly because, after losing so, so many loved ones over the past few years, there is eventually, sooner rather than later, a sense of numbness during times of sorrow.

[D found me at the library computers later that morning, doing some research for an assignment. Never one to waste words, she peered into my face and demanded, “Why are your eyes red?”
I could have said, “I washed my hair this morning, and got shampoo in my eyes,” and it would have been true.
I could have said, “Cold weather always makes my eyes water,” and that would have been true as well.
But instead I chose to go with the third truth, the real story, and felt the tears crawl back. She hugged me, then leaned back to look at my face. “Remember when your grandmother died two years ago, and we walked out in the middle of bio lecture because you were so sad?”
I offered up a watery smile. “I really traumatized you that day, didn’t I?”
“Yeah! It was good to know you actually have feelings though,” she said with characteristic bluntness. “But you really scared me. The whole day, I went around thinking, ‘Oh my God, Yaz is crying. The world must be ending, if Yaz is crying.'”]

The day passed in a blur. I grieved for her calm, even smile and the deep creases at the corners of her eyes. For the mysterious way she drawled her words as she spoke in Hindku. (Where did she pick up a drawl? I always wondered.) For the way she always pronounced my name as “jussmeen.” I laugh, remembering that now; she was the only one who could get away with it. I grieved for her youngest daughter – my little sister’s age – who lost her father recently, too. I grieved for all the times she listened to me haltingly, stumblingly learning to recite the Qur’an from her other daughter, and for when she said, “We used to be able to hear your daddy’s recitations from across the galli every morning after fajr. What a beautiful voice he had.” I grieved for her serene presence, her dark henna-dyed hair, the bread she used to bring us from the tandoor on the roof of her house. For her long, cool verandas that we escaped to during the summer months. For the late afternoon that her youngest daughter and my sister and I played cricket in her courtyard in the pouring rain, and she overrode my mother’s entreaties to come home with the gentle, “Let them play.” For the joy she took in her grandchildren. For the eighteen months when I lived just across the narrow galli and took her family’s very presence for granted – nearly ten years ago now.

I knew things had already changed by the time I visited three-and-a-half years ago, for a mere two weeks.
“Boboji,” I said to her, “I miss Baba” – our beloved Baba of the mischievous grin, our Baba of the potato kabobs, eggplant pakoras, and Chinese fried rice, who spent entire days refining his creative culinary endeavors while she smiled the indulgent smile of a wife who knows best to stay out of the kitchen.
She gripped my hands tightly. “I know,” she said wistfully. “The house seems lonely without him, doesn’t it?”

[“Grief is personal,” I once snapped at a concerned friend, soon after my grandmother’s death.
“I don’t know, that doesn’t sound healthy to me,” he said dubiously. “It’s always good to let people see you shaken or rattled every once in a while. Lets people know you’re still human and not an alien. Wait – you are human, aren’t you?”]

What inexplicably hurt me the most was that I couldn’t remember how I had said good-bye to her when I was returning to the U.S. Did I hug her tightly enough? Did I thank her for being a source of calmness and sanity for my mother during all those years she had to spend away from us? Did I thank her for her daughter, who patiently taught us to recite the Qur’an and read and write Urdu with staggering fluency? Did I thank her for her sons, who, following in the footsteps of their father, uncomplainingly filled prescriptions and delivered medicine for my grandmother? Did I thank her for her husband, who was a surrogate father to us during those eighteen months? Did I know then that every detail of her face would be imprinted on the back of my eyes even years later?

But I think I’m done grieving now. Already, yes. I’ll have to let her go eventually, and it may as well be this soon. After all, all I truly have to offer are prayers. So – May God grant her a reunion with Baba in Jannat-al-Firdaus, the highest level of heaven. May He reward them for the love they showered on us, the decades during which they somehow shifted from neighbors and friends into people close as family. May their marriage of patience, strength, faith, and affection be an example for all of us. May their generosity always live on, multiplying infinitely. May He bless all their families, and guide them through their sorrow. Ameen.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon.
Surely we belong to God and surely we will return to Him.

yeah, rochester plays mind games with jane eyre, b…

NineToFive outside the 925, Suckool

yeah, rochester plays mind games with jane eyre, but that’s a whole different story

So I now have a research internship with the M.I.N.D. Institute in Sacramento, and it happened so fast I’m still sort of reeling from the surprise. Not to mention the fact that I don’t know jack about research, and I don’t even know what exactly I’ll be doing. But whatever’s clever, Trevor, as Somayya always says. Anyway, it’s a gorgeous facility, lots of light wood and glass and a huge expanse of brick courtyard that my dad would fall right in love with if he saw it. And, last but not least, colleagues who are extremely professional, yet laid-back and chill. Dude, this is gonna be fun. I hope. Insha’Allah.

i don’t buy everything i read/i haven’t even read …

Bibliothek

i don’t buy everything i read/i haven’t even read everything i’ve bought

Speaking of books and reading, I went to the University bookstore the other day to return three textbooks and buy two more instead. I walked out of there with not only the two textbooks, but also four books from the Comparative Literature and English aisles. No, I’m not enrolled in any English or Comparative Literature courses this quarter, but I couldn’t resist wandering through those aisles anyway. This is becoming a bad habit. Actually, it has been a bad habit for years. Is there a twelve-step program for bookworms? The first step is admitting one has a problem, or so they say.

Hi, my name is Yasmine, and I have a problem.
So where do I go from here?

Anyway, my collection of books, though seemingly overwhelming, is actually quite carefully selected. For years, I’ve made it a general rule to buy only those books which I’ve already read and enjoyed enough to warrant my own copy. That day at the University bookstore, I bought:

– Selected Poems, Unabridged, by Paul Laurence Dunbar
– Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher’s First Year, by Esmé Raji Codell
– Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
– Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott

I actually broke my usual rule here, because Bird by Bird was a book I’d neither read nor heard of ’til that day. But I stood there flipping through the pages for so long that I decided I might as well buy my own copy. It’s a beautiful book, well-written and thought-provoking, amusing and poignant all at once. I haven’t even been reading it in my usual fashion: So far, I’ve read the last chapter, and parts of the thirty-page introduction, but only bits and pieces and random sentences in between. Somehow, it seems more fitting that way.

Only very rarely do I recommend books to people – not only because I don’t personally know anyone else who shares my love of reading, but also because I simply can’t be bothered to give book recommendations. Those who truly love books will always find books that interest and inspire them. Those who don’t – well, to be honest, I couldn’t care less. I’m impatient and selfish like that.

But if you deeply enjoy writing, or if you want to enjoy writing but don’t know what the hell you’re doing, or if you detest writing but are willing to change your stance, then I recommend you read Bird by Bird.

[p.s. Someday, I will own all the Norton Anthologies ever published. I will, I will, oh yes, I will. Just you wait.]

i don’t cry every time i bleed/my eyes are dry, but they’re bloodshot

Bibliothek, Resident Rockstar

i don’t cry every time i bleed/my eyes are dry, but they’re bloodshot

When it comes to saying “I told you so,” my parents have ample reason to patronize me with their variations of that phrase. This I freely admit. My mother mournfully shakes her head and says, “Didn’t I tell you so?” whenever I neglect my laundry and then race around frenziedly bemoaning my lack of clean clothes, whenever I oversleep and leave home late for school, and whenever I unconcernedly wave off her entreaties to clear the messy dining room table, only to have unexpected guests show up at our home soon afterward. My father stares sternly and says, “How many times do I have to tell you?” whenever I’ve missed a deadline despite his nagging, whenever I forget to pay my bills and my cell phone service gets cut off, and whenever I ignore his reminders to take my car to the mechanic for a tune-up.

Don’t you hate it when people are right all the time? Very maddening, not to mention embarrassing.

My father also says, “I told you reading in the dark would ruin your eyesight. You should have listened to me.” This refers to all my years of growing up, during which basically all I did was read books, except for minimal breaks for meals and sleep. No matter which house we were living in during any given time, I was always easy to find: Sitting on the floor of my bedroom, leaning back against my bed, poring over one novel or another. I read very fast, and, back then, I used to read about one book a day. My dad would wander by my room, knock on the open door, and peer into the gloomy recess, scowling at the dimness I was so unaware of, then snap the light switch on for me. I’d jump in surprise, startled by both his presence and the sudden flash of light, and look up, squinting, to see him frowning in the doorway. “Yasminay,” he’d say with ill-contained exasperation, “how can you even see? Turn some lights on! You’re going to ruin your eyesight this way, reading in the dark.” Looks like the daddy-o was right. Once again.

I got my first pair of eyeglasses in fifth grade. The frames were turquoise and purple, and I hated them, even though they were solely my own choice. I don’t even remember wearing my glasses, except for the first day. My classmates were duly interested, then just as quickly unconcerned. But I still hated my glasses, and rarely wore them, if ever.

Two years later, I was on my way to Pakistan, where I lived for the next eighteen months. I didn’t wear my glasses there. I never once thought of them, much less needed them. I find that interesting, considering the fact that, once back in the U.S., I sat in the front of the classroom and still had to squint at the board every day during my eighth-grade German lecture. How did I manage to progress from almost normal vision to blurriness just in the short time it took me to fly from Islamabad to Sacramento? My theory is that Pakistan, with its vibrant colors and no-nonsense people, has a solid, steady visual clarity all its own. You don’t really need glasses there, so long as all your other senses are working.

Once back in the U.S. though, my vision seemed to go downhill. My German teacher noticed me squinting at the blackboard, and suggested I get my eyes checked. “No, no, I’m fine,” I assured her, and switched tactics – I’d stand right in front of the blackboard and copy down her notes before class began. She gently but firmly kept nagging me to go in for an eye exam. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s being nagged, so I stubbornly stood my ground for a few months. Finally, I went home one day and announced glumly, “I need new glasses.” So off we went. Gold-rimmed frames this time. First, turquoise and purple; now, gold. What was I even thinking? I don’t know; don’t even ask me. Another new pair a few years later – brown frames this time.

For the past two years, though, I’ve been wearing contact lenses, and couldn’t be happier. I can walk around in pouring rain instead of having to remove my glasses or constantly wipe at them. I make wudhu without, again, removing my glasses. I can wear regular sunglasses instead of having to order a separate pair of prescriptive ones. Best of all, I can see clearly out of the corner of my eyes, instead of having to turn my whole head. Sidelong glances are much easier with contact lenses. This, you see, is imperative for those of us who spend quite a bit of time driving. When you’re on the road and your vision sucks, there is a significant difference between checking your blind spots while wearing contacts, and doing the same while wearing glasses. With contacts, you signal, quickly glance over your shoulder, and switch lanes. So smooth. With glasses, you signal, glance over your shoulder and realize your glasses don’t cover your entire field of vision, especially that corner-of-the-eye area. So you squint to bring things into sharper focus, then finally switch lanes when it seems safe. It doesn’t require perhaps more than an extra second. But one second is a huge span of time when you’re on the freeway, traveling at about 75 mph.

Those of you who wear glasses regularly are probably raising your eyebrows and muttering, “What is this girl talking about? Glasses are fine. I’m fine with glasses.” Well, good for you. You’re a rockstar. I, on the other hand, have been commuting 120 miles a day, 5 days a week, for the past 3 years and 4 months, and trust me, I know the difference between checking my blind spots with contact lenses and with eyeglasses. I’m going with the contacts for this one.

Nonetheless, I ordered a new pair of frames a while back, and finally got them picked up last week. My sister wryly observed that the level of excitement I’ve displayed since then is usually reserved for the arrival of contact lenses by other (more normal) people. But I can’t help it – I’ve finally found a pair of frames I’m in love with: thin, black, and rectangular. They suit me as no other frames have in the past. Plus, they match everything – after all, 3/4 of my wardrobe is black.

But the reason I currently love my new glasses so much is due to a bit of verse by Dorothy Parker, that sardonically witty American author and critic. The lines made me laugh when I first came across them, almost a decade ago. These days, I’m just hoping she knew what the hell she was talking about:

Men seldom make passes

At girls who wear glasses.

Good riddance, is what I say.