I’ve got the flu, spending much time doing nothing, can’t concentrate long enough to write something that might be worth reading ,and I can’t even concentrate on reading a book for that matter. So I just started thinking about moments/things that make me happy. This isn’t a serious analysis, just what came into mind, so obvious things might not be in there. Having written my list, I wonder what falls into other peoples minds when they randomly think of sweet moments?
- Strolling around Copenhagen in my light yellow dress, with yellow and orange shoes, being much skinnier than now
- Eating pancakes with syrup and fresh fruit at Cafe Norden
- Reading the right surah from the Quran exactly when I seem to need it
- Having kleenex with a protective balm right now that my nose is running
- Drinking green tea by the pool late in the evening in Tuscany
- Drinking the worlds best hot chocolate in lovely china at a Parisian café
- The days when friends wrote long interesting e-mails instead of writing on my Facebook wall
- Being overwhelmed by love for the creation
- Taking a break with strawberry tea and danish bread after long reading hours at the library in odense
- Going out to get our favourite bagel and chai latte after studying for hours at panum
- Listening to fasle taze by googoosh at full volume while walking home
- Sensing that something important is about to happen somewhere
- Feeling physically well
- Listening to shy boy by jordin sparks on my way home after passing a big exam
- Having silly photoshoots with a good friend all around city, trying out crazy poses
- Raspberry juice with mint leaves, citrus and lime and lots of ice cubes
- Trying on clothes that makes me feel like they have been made for me
- Opening up to someone I might trust
- Walking through the botanical garden
- Buying flowers for myself
- Giving handmade chocolate to someone who loves it as much as me
- Lying in the sofa after a long day watching sex and the city
- Going to cafe Europe and having a lovely brunch after an early morning exercise
- Sleeping when I am in need of rest
- Feeling inspired and managing to channel it
- Moments when there is no past, no looking ahead, just the present
- Concentration
- Dancing to a song that gets to my soul
Filed under: Random thoughts
Tired of Speaking Sweetly – Hafez
Love wants to reach out and manhandle us, Break all our teacup talk of God. If you had the courage and Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights, He would just drag you around the room By your hair, Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world That bring you no joy. Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly And wants to rip to shreds All your erroneous notions of truth That make you fight within yourself, dear one, And with others, Causing the world to weep On too many fine days. God wants to manhandle us, Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself And practice His dropkick. The Beloved sometimes wants To do us a great favor: Hold us upside down And shake all the nonsense out. But when we hear He is in such a “playful drunken mood” Most everyone I know Quickly packs their bags and hightails it Out of town.
This week has been stressful! Yes it has, but I’ve managed to figure out some things:)Yes, I will be moving in Feb, and I’ve found a place to rent alhamdulillah. It is bigger than I expected, and pretty charming. Nothing fancy, but old-fashioned and cute. I have no plans of buying furniture this time and make my moving heavy, so I am going to keep whatever is there already and make it cosy with candles and my laptop!:p It’s a small town, small hospital,so it should be easy enough to get oriented, but you never know:)
Work has been challenging this week aswell, learning more each day, but I end up feeling incapable of doing other things I find interesting because of exhaustion. I want to read certain books, study pashtu and farsi, exercise, find time for myself, but there is not much space left in my schedule. When I finally get some extra free time, I seem to use it unwisely, because I am not focused on my passions. Stress makes me forget them:p But I intend to take a 9 days vacation before starting my new job, I’ve decided where and what I will be doing! I want to stay at an all inclusive resort reading my books, both work and not-work related, exercising in the morning and maybe taking a swim! I need that, so hope it doesn’t turn out to be a disappointment, because you can never predict these thing. Expectations can be a dangerous things, so right now I am trying to focus on what is and what can be enjoyed now. Like the snow crystals outside, the beautiful landscape where I work (I have been intending to take a camera with me, but I have never gotten to that point YET), the sunset at 3-4pm, the full moon a couple of days ago, the scent of the fresh facial mask from Lush, the enjoyment of a good cup of tea after a long day. Everyday life can be quite pleasurable if you notice all the small things that surrounds you, and for me it’s amazing to see God reflected in all these wonderful gifts and moments. That is if you don’t allow yourself to get overwhelmed with negative feelings caused by stress and the feeling of being insufficient in everyday life. It is difficult, but usually in moments when I get annoyed or stressed out, taking a step back and analyzing myself, I always realize it is feeling insufficient in myself that causes me to react in a negative way. What I lack, somehow gets reflected in a negative situation. It might be an inaccurate description, but I blame it on my English language skills that need a little work:)
Anyway, time to sleep, I woke up 5 am after all:p
No More Leaving – Hafez
At
Some point
Your relationship
With God
Will
Become like this:
Next time you meet Him in the forest
Or on a crowded city street
There won’t be anymore
“Leaving.”
That is,God will climb into
Your pocket.
You will simply just take
Yourself
Along!
Filed under: Afghanistan, Poetry, Random thoughts, sufism | Tags: Afghanistan, humanity, identity, ignorance, only breath, rumi
I watched Avatar today, I liked it and I found it quite sad. It’s almost a reflection of the world we’re living in now. It made me think about Afghanistan and the arrogance some western countries show in their warfare in both Afghanistan and Iraq. But hopefully the world will change, it always does in when we reach extreme injustice. I have been always been pretty sure of my identity as an Afghan, not giving it too much thought. I have recently realized that there is not much “Afghan” to me (can you even define what an Afghan is?), as much as it is not much typical Norwegian to me. I can’t deny that both cultures have influenced me, but I am tired of definitions and the need to define oneself as something to feel at peace. I have had it with nationalism and ethnicities, because usually we use these things to distance ourselves from others, and define who we are as human beings. We all have valuable resources and should reach out to each other to learn and advance ourselves, not being afraid of losing our cultural background. Fear comes from insecurities. Cultures are dynamic, they are and should be in constant change, because only in that way we can advance and refine what we’ve reached until a certain point. Still, I hear people around me saying things like “I don’t drink tea with milk, because that’s Pakistani”. Sad that such ignorance exists.
People seem to lack “healthy nationalism”. If you really want a nation to advance, one should open ones eyes and ears and learn from the neighboring nations, because “we” and what we have may not always be enough. Baghdad in 1200 CE was the intellectual center of the world, inviting mathematicians from India, translating volumes of books from other languages, wanting advancement in sciences, poetry, philosophy etc. It makes me wish we were as open to new ideas, new cultures as in those days. Travels of Buddhist monks in 900 CE also shows how curious people were of each other, how highly they set spreading knowledge. I sound as an old woman speaking of the good old days, but the reason I am writing this is because sometimes we seem to underrate what we have accomplished in the past. So I wish we could focus less on what defines us, and more on what unites us with the rest of humanity.
Only Breath – Rumi
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion
or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any
origin story. My place is place less, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.
I am sitting here watching Sex and the city with my sisters, and enjoying it much more than the thousands of times I’ve already watched it. Mostly because I hardly have moments like these anymore, because life seem to consist mostly of work these days. Fontunately I had one week off before the christmas week, so I took a little trip to Paris with my sister. Yes, very romantic:p It was lovely, the christmas decorations at the Champs-Elysées, the shopping, the cafees, the food, the hot chocolate, the politeness and everything else! I wish I spoke French…not because it was difficult communicating, but because it is so charming. I’ve never really wanted to go to Paris, eventhough everyone I know seem to love the city. But all of a sudden it felt like it was time to get there, and there we were;) The only downpart was the cold, but being back in Norway, I realize that those temperatures were not too much to complain about. That being said, next vacation has to be somewhere warm; just relaxing, reading books, thinking and contemplating over things.
In the early dawn of happiness
you gave me three kisses
so that I would wake up
to this moment of love
I tried to remember in my heart
what I’d dreamt about
during the night
before I became aware
of this moving
of life
I found my dreams
but the moon took me away
It lifted me up to the firmament
and suspended me there
I saw how my heart had fallen
on your path
singing a song
Between my love and my heart
things were happening which
slowly slowly
made me recall everything
You amuse me with your touch
although I can’t see your hands.
You have kissed me with tenderness
although I haven’t seen your lips
You are hidden from me.
But it is you who keeps me alive
Perhaps the time will come
when you will tire of kisses
I shall be happy
even for insults from you
I only ask that you
keep some attention on me.
Filed under: Afghanistan, books | Tags: Afghanistan, books, caravans, fiction, james a. michener
I just finished reading Caravans by James A. Michener, and I am convinced that every Afghan or anyone interested in Afghanistan should read the book. Having grown up abroad, my understanding of Afghanistan probably has its’ limitations. Most young people of afghan parents seem to have a romanticized picture of Afghanistan, its people and the culture. I have just the recent years realized that I know very little about Afghanistan’s past and its’ complexity.
Recent books written on Afghanistan also give a very limited understanding of this complex country that is some what cursed by its location. It’s a known fact that it’s extremely important to understand your past, to be able to handle your future. Keeping in mind Afghanistan’s past, it becomes easier to understand why Afghans today don’t trust whatever they see happening, because judging from the past, it could all be gone the next day. In a country like this, it’s a challenge to make people look forward and trust the changes. Depending on a system that might be gone or change the next day, requires strong faith in reform, which few people in Afghanistan have the luxury of having.
Having gone a little off-topic, I can share that the book is an easy read and has gotten great reviews from newspapers like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsday and others.
Wall Street Journal wrote on July 5 ‘08:
This novel from early in James Michener’s career is the fruit of wide-ranging trips to Afghanistan in the mid- 1950’s. Despite the contrived plot, “Caravans” has more to teach about the country and its people than almost any later work of fiction or travel writing. Michener gets everything right, from pronunciation of Kabul- “cobble”- to the archeology. The protagonist, and American diplomat, travels across a large areas of the country in 1946, some of the time with nomads, observing the beginnings of modernization, but also a public execution and mullahs spitting on those they disapprove of- a portent of the violent extremism in Afghanistan’s future.
Filed under: Poetry, Random thoughts, sufism | Tags: hafez, never say it is not God, Poetry, Random thoughts
There is so much to do, so much I want to do. But I am exhausted.
I woke up long before dawn everyday this week and I am still trying to adjust.
Is this growing up and being responsible? Cause I don’t like it! I miss my student days where I could chose to drop classes if I felt like it and sleep untill noon (or at least 8 am!), exercise, meet friends,
having delicious chai or tiramisu caffè lattes , walking through the botanical garden or just feeling happy about my new Chanel nail polish! Now I can’t even have long nails or paint them with those provocative shades. I know I am whining, and things will probably get better, after all, it takes time to adjust to a new work place. Not to forget the fact that I might be glorifying my student days, forgetting the nervousness before exams or early mornings sitting at board meetings, almost falling asleep.
But that is not the only problem; I miss the city aswell! I miss the energy, the crowds, the atmosphere.
I am not going to say more about that, I am too tired and I want my chai which I haven’t had all week because I had to
go to bed early. And I didn’t win tickets to the CNN interview with Obama the day he will be accepting the Nobel peace prize. I like Obama, not because of the hype, but because I love who he is after reading his book “Dreams from my father”, even before I knew he was a potential president candidate (I probably should have known, but I blame it on the fact that I was in Japan at the moment and didn’t have access too english media;)
That was a distraction, back to the chai/tea and some lovely poetry which is desperately needed by this hungry soul!;)
NEVER SAY IT IS NOT GOD
I taste what you taste. I know the kind of lyrics your
Soul most likes. I know which sounds will become
Resplendent in your mind and bring such pleasure
Your feet will jump and whirl.
When anything touches or enters your body
Never say it is not God, for He is
Just trying to get close.
I have no use for divine patience — my lips are always
Burning and everywhere. I am running from every corner
Of this world and sky wanting to kiss you;
I am every particle of dust and wheat — you and I
Are ground from His Own Body. I am rioting at your door;
I am spinning in midair like golden falling leaves
Trying to win your glance.
I am sweetly rolling against your walls and shores
All night, even though you are asleep. I am singing from
The mouths of animals and birds honoring our
beloved’s promise and need: to let
you know the Truth.
My dear, when anything touches or enters your body
Never say it is not God, for He and I are
Just trying to get close to you.
God and I are rushing
From every corner of existence, needing to say,
“We are yours.”
Hafez
