i'm only 22. and yet i keep having this recurring feeling... it's almost making me clausterphobic... like the walls of unmarriedness are closing in on me... like the life i used to know, the one full of young, carefree friends and fun, is being chipped away, wedding by wedding...
of course, i LOVE weddings. they're such happy occasions. people i love and good food and tons of dancing... fabulous combination. so yeah, each wedding in isolation makes me really happy. but then, at some point, comes pattern recognition. sometime after each individual wedding, when my thoughts begin to congele, it occurs to me that the weddings are continuing to accumulate. i think about the wedding i just went to, i think about all the weddings i've been to recently, i think about all the weddings coming up... and i can't help but feel something slip away...
i know i'm young. i feel like most of my friends are pretty young. and yet, i feel like *everyone* is getting married--and in their youth, no less (hence, straight outta diapers and into rings--see title of blog entry above). a few of my best friends/relatives in the past few years have gotten married at 21 or 22. the second wedding i'll be attending this month will be between two 22 year olds. wow. where are the irresponsible, college and post-college-aged years going, people?!
it's not just these people's ages either. it's sheer numbers. since i first went to college 5 years ago, i've been to *so* many weddings of my friends or family members... people that are roughly in my age group, often in the same stage of life as me. in the last 20 minutes, i've counted how many such weddings i went to, or that i was invited to but couldn't attend... so, in the past 5 years (not counting cousins i don't know or of friendly acquaintances to whose weddings i wasn't actually invited--because that would probably triple the number), the grand total comes to...
20, with 6 more to come in the next year (2 of them this month)
ummmm... wow. 26 weddings of my family members or personal friends, all roughly in my age group/life stage. i can't even imagine what the figure would be if i did stop and tally all the other people i know who got married, but who may not have specifically invited me... the number would be staggering. it's seriously ridiculous.
interestingly enough, my fabulous coworker javad just said, not 12 seconds ago, unprovoked by me or this blog post, "what is it with everybody in the world getting married?" good question, my friend. good freaking question. glad you're feelin' me on this one...
recently, my friend mojan blogged about how *everyone* is having babies (see july 5 here). so true, moj. perhaps the baby epidemic is an after-effect of a marriage epidemic that started 5 years ago and continues even now...
all i know is that everyone has gotten married recently or is getting married soon. and by everyone, i mean everyone but me. and of course, that's all wonderful. i support marriage, i plan on getting married someday. and if i get married sooner rather than later, i suppose that means i've been infected by this spreading marriage contagion. and that'll all be well and good, i guess, since we all have to grow up sometime, it's good to move on to the next phase of life, and i'm sure we'll have fun and stay friends and grow and change and all that... even after we're all married.
still, i have to lament the end of something. i'm not quite sure what the something is yet... i could assign the something a name, maybe a trite, generic phrase, like "an era" or "childhood" or "the simple life," so that we could then refer to the tsunami of marriages as "the end of an era" or "the end of childhood" or "the end of the simple life." but somehow, that all seems nondescript and essentializing.
i know it's more complicated than that... but because it came so soon, i didn't have enough time to think about it, decide what it is, and call it that. so for now, we'll just say that the it has come. and with it has come nostalgia, reminiscence, discomfort, joy, confused contemplation.
everyone and their cousin has joined the legions of married or soon-to-be-married people. everyone but me, that is (though incidentally, my cousins have joined as well). and it is what it is.
and it makes me realize that with each passing day, i can feel the dimensions of my kid box getting more and more contorted... very soon, i won't be able to push the edges out any further. very soon, i won't be able to stretch the sides into strange shapes and patterns so i can be comfortable inside. very soon, i just won't be able to fit inside anymore... i'll have to step outside the kid box. and once i've stepped out and attended 12 more weddings, i'll have to do my best to avoid getting sucked into the adult box...
and that is what it is.
...but this one requires your input.
so anyone who knows me knows that i don't watch much TV or see many movies. now, TV i don't really like--unless it's basketball, in which case, ESPN is my friend. but movies... in contrast to my distaste for TV, i actually like movies. and i would like to watch them more. but i just don't see enough movies--i can't ever seem to find the time and just do it.
in a little over a month, though, i will dive headfirst into the abyss of law school hell. and now, i find myself hoping that when that happens, i can say that the life i used to know, the one that will recede as a hazy memory and a distant speck while i plummet through the air, was slightly enriched by some cinematic entertainment in its precious last days. thus, i hope to make the next month or so a movie-watching marathon of sorts (note that i use the term "movie" loosely--for a thorough and edifying treatment of this subject, please see here)
meanwhile, here's what i've been wanting to see or been told to see recently. this list is FAR from complete. so help me complete it. i'm basically looking for the following: quality films of all genres OR funny films that aren't especially high in quality but are still really amusing (please note: no horror films, and nothing vulgar or disgusting or scarring in either of the previous categories). so yeah, with those caveats in mind, please add to the list. and don't worry about adding something that you think "everyone" has seen--i probably haven't. so go to it.
austin powers 2
austin powers 3
book of life
bottlerocket
bride and prejudice
elf
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
farenheit 9/11
garden state
memento
mindwalk
outfoxed
polar express
run lola run
rushmore
saved
slam
shrek 2
the life aquatic
waking life
dear boys at the gym,
please remember two things (no dave matthews pun intended):
1. if you're going to be stinky while working out, it's a courtesy to others to wear enough clothing to stifle the scent you might exude. that way, i don't have to suffocate while trying to work out on the elliptical next to you.
2. if you're going to be sweaty while working out--so sweaty, in fact, that you'll be soaking in sweat and splashing your treadmill, the floor surrounding it, and the people next to you (like me)--please, for the love, use a towel. that way, i don't have to go fetch you one and offer it to you with a forced smile, so that i can then continue to run on my treadmill in relative dryness.
thank you for remembering these two very important things. i'm sure everyone's gym experience will be more pleasant now.
best,
naseem
does life consist of dealing with logistics? i feel like it does...
so i meant to comment on my new site design, but i didn't wanna overload yesterday with 2 posts. so i waited... but there were a few comments about the new look on my last post, so i figure it's time to explain myself...
basically, i'd been wanting a new site design for ages, but i never had the time or the energy to sit down and do it. for starters, it's unreasonably difficult to find free templates for movable type blogs--most of the ones out there that i've found are for the blogger format. when i finally did find some CSS stuff, i didn't like any of it, and for a long while, i couldn't summon the patience or the effort to learn how to change format, colors, etc.
yesterday, i finally sat down and started playing with my main index and my stylesheet until i made my new template look the way i wanted it to look. it took me a couple of hours of experimentation, but it was so much fun figuring out what different words signified in terms of layout, what all the crazy HTML meant and how to modify it, and how to put in hexadecimal colors. i feel more CSS-enabled now, though i obviously still have much more to learn.
you know, my first blog style was just something i found online and used without thinking much about it, mostly because a) i didn't know what i was doing, b) it was purple, i like purple, and it looked decent enough to me, c) it actually worked with my main index and i didn't have to format much, and d) it was winter, so darker colors didn't bother me as much back then. but now... it's summer and sunny, i found a suitable lighter one, and i fixed it to my liking.
now we can all read my entries easier and feel all fluffy and happy when we visit "like a fish needs a bicycle." yay! :)
i should mention that my fabulous music experiences continued the next night after seeing ozomatli... i saw wyclef at ravinia. my first time seeing him, and it was a great show. unfortunately, i couldn't take any pictures... evidently, the numerous frumpy puritan-clad ushers in white suburbia take their jobs very seriously. :) but it was cool... still a really fun concert. fairly diverse (in age as well as ethnicity), fairly chill, people were pretty happy.
my only complaint was that his set was more of reggae/guitar/cover than it was rap/hip-hop. of course, wyclef is a gifted guitarist, unlike most rappers, so it was cool to see him showcase that talent. but the show ended up being mostly covers of bob marley and some classic rock songs, and a lot of people were sad not to hear more rap repertoire from his earlier albums (i personally would've loved some the carnival). of course, he couldn't do fugees music so well by himself, but some of his own music still would've been nice.
he did do some fun stuff though... i liked this one rap he did (not sure if he was flowing or not) about a girl named nancy who stood him up for high school prom. he ran into her later, after he was rich and famous, she tried to get with him, and he laughed at her... it was funny. :) also, he pulled up 2 kids from the audience to sing with him when he covered "redemption song," and they were really excited and cute. so that was cool.
overall, not the playset i would've picked for him, but no artist i've ever seen in concert has played all (or even some) of the songs i wanted to hear. (shocking). that said, it was, all in all, a pretty good show. wyclef is still one of the most multi-faceted, culturally aware, and musically and lyrically talented rappers out there. glad i got to see him. yay for summer music. :)
so i saw ozomatli in welle's park last night for $5. ummmm.... WOW! money well-spent, kids. this weekend, $5 entry into the park allowed us to see not just ozomatli, but a lot of other great bands and acts, including tinariwen. props to the chicago folk and roots festival for making $5 go such a long way towards cultural education, local community building, and fabulous entertainment. :) i have a picture up on my moblog (to the right), though you can't exactly tell it's ozomatli. you'll just have to take my word for it... and then go see them yourselves, because it was amazing!
moving on to a less glowing review... have y'all heard the new destiny's child song on the radio, "cater 2U?" something about this one is really bothering me. it's not just run-of-the-mill irritating like the new gwen stefani songs. it's deeper than that-- i feel like the whole song is internalized misogyny, and it really hurts me to hear it. it doesn't just sound like this woman is "catering" to her man--it sounds more like she's enslaving herself...
women have been oppressed, subjugated, raped, abused, and subjected to domestic slavery for millenia. why, in this day and age, when Bahá’u’lláh has proclaimed the equality of men and women, and when the majority of the thinking world is quickly discovering the truth of this equality and at least attempting to take measures to realize it in practice, do we still have such regressive, sexist, disempowerment of self?
there's nothing wrong with serving each other--we as human beings were all created by God to serve one another and thus to serve Him. and husband and wife should serve each other, too--ideally, in an equal fashion. if there is to be any inequality in the services rendered in a marriage or in a romantic relationship, however, i feel like the men should be the ones doing more--if nothing else, just to overcompensate for the thousands of years of oppression and for the current state of still-existing societal inequality.
but no, it sounds like the women of destiny's child are determined to make themselves slaves--domestic and sexual--and to completely devalue their own worth as spiritual beings. i'm going to excerpt a few verses just to illustrate the degree of absurdity here...
"...My life would be purposeless without you...
Let me help you
Take off your shoes
Untie your shoe strings
Take off your cuff links
What you wanna eat boo?
Let me feed you
Let me run your bath water
Whatever you desire
I'll supply ya
Sing you a song
Turn the game on
I’ll brush your hair
Help you put your do-rag on
Want a foot rub
Want a manicure
Baby I’m yours
I wanna cater 2 u boy"
wait a second... her life would be purposeless without a man? i'm pretty sure God created each of us noble and that we all can do amazing things. putting that aside for a second though, untie his shoe strings? is he 5 years old? sing him a song? is she a paid perfomer? it gets worse...
"I know whatever I’m not fulfillin’
another woman is willing..."
ok, so she's just an instrument for his gratification? and he auditions women one by one until one of them fulfills him? and she's aware of being just one of the many in line for his attention, and she's still willing to try to fulfill him, lest he leave her and render her life purposeless (see above)?
"I'll keep it tight
I'll keep my figure right
I’ll keep my hair fixed
be rockin the hottest outfits
When you come home late
Tap me on my shoulder, I’ll roll over...
All I wanna do is cater to you boy"
right... sexual object, required to be constantly vigilant with respect to her appearance and his titillation, and always willing to pleasure him. i think this verse is particularly heinous...
i just really can't abide it. i'm so hurt by this. maybe i'm just sensitive, but as a woman, i routinely feel betrayed by other women. i feel like so many women out there are doing things that not only fail to contribute to our much-needed and long-overdue advancement, but are actually counterproductive to this process. among them are playboy models, female teen pop stars who prance around naked and sing about animalistic sex to stadiums full of 13-year old girls, and brainwashed fundamentalist women who believe and profess their spiritual and intellectual inferiority to men, and then teach these values to their children.
this song is just another example of how the pervasive media of this country can be used to proliferate warped, base, and foul ideals of human existence. hearing these vile words saturate the radiowaves, i can't help but wonder... do we really need more girls to believe their only worth is to be found in their physical attractiveness or in their ability to "cater" to men in demoralizing ways? do we really need more boys to believe that they can grow up to sexually objectify and domestically confine women?
hearing women sing such things and promote such ideas is so much more offensive and heartbreaking to me than to hear men do the same. when men do it (a la vapid, misogynistic, materialistic gangsta rap), i feel like they don't know what they're doing or saying, they haven't been properly educated, and haven't experienced the negative impact that their words and their image can cause.
but women... we should all know better! we are daughters, sister, wives, mothers, grandmothers, and friends. we know the pain of sexism, of patriarchy, of not having a voice. we are emotional and spiritual beings and we have so much to offer to an ailing humanity. we can't do this to ourselves any longer.
instead of "let me cater 2 U," let's work on saying, "i am a noble being and i have much to contribute to our shared existence. i respect you and i thank you for respecting me. let us recognize each other's uniqueness, talents, and faculties, let us treat each other with love, and let us work together to achieve the true equality that our Creator intended for us."
dear officer douchebag,
i pity your pathetic, indiana-tollyway existence. you evil evil white man... your pretense to protecting public security and keeping the peace is so hollow and laughable that i'm sure even those in your miserable state of ignorance see right through it. just had to harass the already frustrated, stressed, and upset brown girl, didn't you? didn't care that i had been ridiculously lost, that i was very late getting to where i needed to go and thus very upset, that i was already really sad and crying. all you could say was "ok" 72 million times in a row, as if that's a satisfactory response to any of the questions or comments i put to you, and all you could offer was "they pay me to do this."
really? they pay you to leave real criminals alone and to waste everyone's time, money, and energy going after innocent, generally law-abiding citizens like myself? they pay to you to make up lies about my actual speed and issue pernicious tickets and consequently suck precious funds out of a poor future law student? they pay you to be a mindless automaton? you get money for being a complete and total tool?!?!
you asked if i had any questions. my question was, of course, (through sobs) "yeah, i have a question: do you have any human sympathy?" your inane, non-sequitir, useless response was, of course, (in impeccable yokel vernacular) "ok... ma'am, you were in violation of the speed limit." huh? seriously? even if that were the case, the question still remains... was it really necessary to give me a ticket? was it really necessary?!
i explained that i'd never had a speeding ticket in my life, that today was abnormal (even if i was actually going as fast as you said i was, which i highly highly doubt), and that i'd drive carefully regardless of whether you gave me one or not--hence totally unnecessary to ticket me. so then you asked when it was necessary, where you should draw the line, at what point you should give tickets...
fair questions, considering you have no discretion or intellect. i can understand how you'd want some guidelines. you were probably well below the cut-off IQ for traffic cops--they don't let you in if you're above a certain intelligence level, you know--so, naturally, you wanted some help. i offered some. "i dunno, give tickets to repeat traffic offenders, those going 20 miles above the speed limit, those with less extenuating circumstances than i've had today... but not me!"
after that comment--which i'm pretty sure your brain failed to absorb--i caught sight of a gold wedding band on your left hand. i'm surprised my body didn't convulse from shock at that point, because attempting to fathom a female in existence who would voluntarily spend every passing day with you was beyond futile. willingly subjecting one's self to that kind of agony is probably beyond human capability under normal circumstances--thus there must have been some mitigating factors involved in the acquisition of that wedding band that i don't even want to try to conceptualize.
moving right along, i must say--with no saracasm or exaggeration whatsoever--that i've never felt such intense, unabiding rancor and rage towards any human being as i felt towards you today. the ayatollah khomeini tortured, imprisoned, and killed members of my family and their friends and countless others of my co-religionists in iran. and yet, i don't hate him. but i hate you. i was so surprised and overwhelmed by my passionate disdain for you--it was like nothing i've ever experienced. you do not keep the public safe--on the contrary, you endanger and harass them. you are not a public servant--you are the scum of earth.
luckily, i'm pretty sure there's a special circle of hell reserved for you... i'll have to check with dante on that one, but i'm fairly certain that such is the case. when you are rotting there, i hope to send you an immortalized copy of my first ever traffic ticket, issued by your idle and self-righteous hands... preserved on acid-free paper, and framed in titanium and shatter-proof glass. that way you can treasure it forever.
until then, here's to hoping that the time that remains of your pointless occupation of a small fragment of this planet is slightly less of a vile irritation to others than it was to me today. i'll pray for you and for them and hope that it will be so.
a civilized human being, quite unlike yourself,
naseem
so today, delara and i were discussing the nature of happiness. she and i have quite a few personality traits in common, so we can often identify on things like this. here are some things we touched on...
* we sometimes feel as if happiness is something we have to earn, rather than a state of being that we're always entitled to live in.
* sacrifice and hard work are not only important, they must be inherent in every aspect of life, otherwise we can't be happy and at peace.
* complete satisfaction or happiness is often not possible, and compromise is required in many aspects of life. consequently, we should somehow be happy with a lesser version of some reality that we had envisioned.
these are all interesting thoughts to me. it is especially interesting that, consciously, we may know these things aren't really true, but they are nevertheless operative--at least sometimes.
personally, i'm generally happy. in fact, people are sometimes surprised at how happy and smiley i almost always am. i don't know if i was always that way, but i feel like i grew a lot through the turbulence of adolescence... sometime in high school, my outlook changed, and i learned how to be a happy person, pretty much all the time. of course bad things happen and i have my tests, but i'm grateful that i seem to maintain a baseline level of happiness. i really feel like it's not a destination, but a mode of transport in life, and that's really nice.
and yet, i often feel like i still have ingrained ontological notions akin to the ones mentioned above... the necessity of constantly exerting myself, perpetually working hard and sacrificing, always having to earn things in life, not feeling deserving of a lot of things, not allowing myself all (or any) of what i would like or would aspire to. these thoughts manifest themselves at certain predictable times...
for instance, if i do something absent-minded or stupid, i find myself feeling undisciplined, mentally lax, or somehow undeserving of all the wonderful people and things i've been blessed with in life. though i'm still happy, as i always am, i can be really bothered by such things--perhaps disproportionately so, or at least more than the average person would be. actually, i did a few absent-minded/stupid things today, and i found myself experiencing these feelings. though i felt better soon enough and my self-criticism doesn't usually inhibit my abilities or interactions in any appreciable way, i can't help but think it's bad for my spirit to feel that way about myself...
in praying and meditating and truly reflecting on ways to improve myself, i wonder about what reactions and what courses of action are healthy and productive. perhaps my happiness would be better served in the long-run if i didn't always have such rigid notions of what i'm supposed to be and what i'm supposed to do.
i don't really have answers to any of this, and i'm not necessarily looking for them. just kind of musing, really... but i would appreciate hearing thoughts on this, if y'all would like to share them. lacking real closure, then, i'll just end this entry with some quotations from the bahá'í writings that seem especially relevant...
Happy are they who act; happy are they who understand; happy the man that hath clung unto the truth, detached from all that is in the heavens and all that is on earth.
~Bahá'u'lláh
Happy are the fair-minded.
~Bahá'u'lláh
Anybody can be happy in the state of comfort, ease, health, success, pleasure and joy; but if one will be happy and contented in the time of trouble, hardship and prevailing disease, it is the proof of nobility.
~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Happy are those who spend their days in gaining knowledge, in discovering the secrets of nature, and in penetrating the subtleties of pure truth!
~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
If we are not happy and joyous at this season, for what other season shall we wait and for what other time shall we look?
~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
i think i'm really enjoying sharing pieces of MSN conversations lately...
Greg says:
one day you'll be nice to me.....
nas says:
really?
nas says:
will that be in this world or in the next?
Greg says:
at this rate, im guessing 3-4 worlds from now
nas says:
oh well that's not bad
nas says:
there is no time once we pass away
nas says:
i'm sure you won't even notice
one, i need a new ringtone for my phone. i have sprint, and i'm overwhelmed by the prospect of searching through the (literally) thousands of options they offer to find one that i like. any suggestions for a good one?
two, both of the weddings i went to in the last month have had the wedding party walking out to pachelbel's cannon. they were lovely weddings. but hearing the music at each (and at others i've been to in the past), has led to me to a conclusion. i've suspected as much for quite some time, but i've now come to an official decision on the matter: at my wedding, no one will be walking out to pachelbel's cannon. of course, maybe i can worry about that when i actually have a wedding to plan... :)