Archives for September, 2007

I’ve been up since seven, will be be up at nine tomorrow, will probably collapse at some point this week, but I need to say this now, before the dullness sets in permanently.

There are so many things I do not know: the poetics of grammar; the infinite meanderings of spaces and dashes; the meanings of words and periods. the stories people have told themselves about the world; the stories people have told themselves; the stories people have told; tell. the mechanics of poverty; the machinations of power. names and languages; the Names and the Languages.

There was always a sense of urgency underpinning my awareness of my own and varied ignorances.
But a new despair has set in.
Not merely because I am surrounded by people who can speak at length on the social and political repercussions of multinational corporations taking ownership of corn genes (with independent farmers forced to stand like ancient kings ordering back the winds) or on the etymologies of obscure words traced in three different languages.

The things I bought with me here have withered and I am left with nothing but a conviction that I have fooled myself like no one else ever has. I have become now the shrill voice of practicality, unable to and afraid of beginning again.

I am without a frame of reference. The old ones are too shallow, too greased over with too many fingerprints.

I think of books now in a way I did not before. They are not yet boxes waiting to be ticked off. They are not yet things I can use to bolster my own ego. And in fact, they can’t be. The gaping hole that has opened up is too large to be filled any time soon. I have no excess knowledge left over to claim as my own.

Nor is that I have come to a sudden realisation of myself as one person in an immense world. In my personal, as opposed to my intellectual, relationships I have always known this, have always been awestruck at the vast distances we sometimes choose to cross.
No, that’s not it.

Words fail me now, there.
A debilitating silence threatens and I am staving it off with other people’s words.

This then: something approaching a barricade.

Ramadan days, the kitchen in my house falls still. Whereas in other months, it is the crowded centre of familial activity, now its floors gleam clear of skid marks and its countertops free of crumbs. There are no dishes piled in the sink, no empty cartons of juice in the fridge. The cupboard doors stay closed, the tea towels dry.
The equilibrium in the house shifts. The weight of family dynamics isn’t so much readjusted as diffused over a larger space. In our over-full apartment, this month we manage to somehow create and maintain individual solitudes. The constant, unintentional intrusions lessen. In the collective space that opens up, we are able to stake claims to unassuming, individual personhoods.

Ramadan nights are never long enough.
All the things that the drawn out day has let slip by, the night gives new urgency to. Even without these revitalised pressures, Ramadan nights have their own claims that demand fulfilment.
Tired, you meet them.

Because, like the act of abstinence, the decision to go through with the rituals is not so difficult. A lock falls into place somewhere. Hunger becomes a weight at the top of your throat and thirst a silence between your lips. These things become familiar. You learn to live with them, like the crushing weight of air. You withdraw a little to match the stillness growing within.
These things, the physical aspects of an intensely privately month, are not so difficult to accomplish. You pull them on like gloves: they stick a while and then become a second skin, the primary area of contact with the outside world.

*

The physical act of prayer requires a certain level of physical cleanliness. There is, therefore, a ritual ablution associated with the physical – as opposed to the mental or emotional – act of prayer. Having conducted this ablution, you are, until you next dirty yourself, in a perpetual state of readiness for prayer. There’s a special blessing set aside, not only for those who pray, but for those who maintain this heightened level of cleanliness, those who are always prepared to pray.

It has been months now since I have felt that way: ready.
Months since I have been able to take the wetness under my nails as proof of readiness.

—–
* The title I owe to Z, who sent me an email with that line as the subject. And she, in turn, was quoting Rumi:

There is an unseen sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness. We are lutes. When the soundbox is filled, no music can come forth. When the brain and the belly burn from fasting, every moment a new song rises out of the fire. The mists clear, and a new vitality makes you spring up the steps before you. Be empty and cry as a reed instrument. Be empty and write secrets with a reed pen. When satiated by food and drink, an unsightly metal statue is seated where your spirit should be. When fasting, good habits gather like helpful friends. Fasting is Solomon’s ring. Don’t give in to illusion and lose your power. But even when will and control have been lost, they will return when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, or pennants flying in the breeze.

—–
Thanks also to Yaser, who provided the following translation by Chittick (a literal one):

What hidden sweetness is found in this empty stomach!
Man is like a lute, neither more nor less:
When the lute’s stomach is full, it cannot lament, whether high or low.
If your brain and stomach burn from fasting, their fire will draw constant lamentation from your breast.
Through that fire you will burn a thousand veils at every instant–you will ascend a thousand degrees on the Way and in your aspiration.
Keep your stomach empty! Lament like a flute and tell your need to God!
Keep your stomach empty and speak of the mysteries like a reed!
If you keep your stomach full, it will bring Satan to you at the Resurrection,
instead of your intellect, an idol of the Kaaba.
When you fast, good character traits gather round you like servants, slaves and retinue.
Continue your fasting, for it is Solomon’s seal: Give not the seal to the devil, disrupt not your kingdom.
And if your kingdom and army should flee from you, your army will return, so raise the banner!
The Spread Table* has come from heaven to those who fast, for Jesus son of Mary has called it down with his prayers.
Await the Table of Generosity in your fast–the Table of Generosity is better than cabbage stew!

*See Qur’an 5:112-114.

(yaser on the Rumi phenomenon »)

I have this one problem. This particular problem made my undergrad difficult for me. It was the reason that every year I would set aside a few minutes at the end of every course to apologise to my professors.

Basically, I fell asleep in every class.

Even seminars that had maybe ten people in the room would find me at some point shamelessly and obviously asleep. It didn’t matter how fascinating the material, how engaging the instructor, how guilty I felt, I simply could not help myself. (Small mercies: at least I didn’t snore.)

At end of my fourth year, one of my profs gave out personalised “awards” to everyone in the class. This was a class that began at 8:30AM and it took me a good 90 minutes to get to campus. So of course, I generally spent the first hour or so of that class slumped in my backrow seat, utterly unavailable for comment. Then I’d wake up and do a damn good job of pretending I knew what was going on.
So I was only a little surprised when my professor read out my award: “for always sleeping in class – and then asking such insightful questions.”
It is a skill honed over summers spent with my father and vectors.

The thing about grad school is that the classes are kind of small. Think of the fingers you have on one hand. That is basically how many people I can expect to find in most of my grad classes.
So. Falling asleep? Not a good idea.
And before you suggest what you are going to suggest, coffee makes me even sleepier.
Continue reading this entry »

Then a strange thing happened.

I was lying in bed, the room dark, my arms crossed beneath my head. Staring at the ceiling, I thought to myself, the words sounding themselves out in the sudden stillness in my mind:

“I’m starting my masters.”

The emotion I felt right then was sadness, a weight settling at the base of my stomach.

I think it was that same night that I sent an email to someone at UofT, a short email that ended with the sentence:

“It sets the gremlins in my head to rioting.”

This was, what, a week ago? From then on it was all downhill. Too many of you will have proof of this in the form of the spectacular inanities with which I bombarded your inboxes, your fbooks, and (sigh) your bloggs.
For which I am sorrier than you know.
Continue reading this entry »

This might be hard for you to believe (or not), but I was on top of the course selection process months ago. Someone else, however, was even more on top of things and – more importantly – logged into ROSI at some freakishly early hour on the first day of registration, because I still ended up on the wait list for two courses. But pathalogical keeners aside, I eventually managed to get into all the courses I’d wanted.

Then I proceeded to waste the rest of the beautiful, beautiful summer.

(On a semi-related note – because in the world in my head everything is semi-related – I missed the sunset today by approximately thirty seconds, because it took me forever to talk myself into getting out of bed; and I missed the star show from the night before last.
Here g*d is, doing all this just for me, and I keep missing out.
Note: must make time for the sky.)

Round about last week, I had a series of personal crises – mostly regarding books and academia and yes, I am sad – and I looked at my course list again and found it, like my bookshelves, so incredibly unremarkable that I got a pain in my head. Because, looking at my course list, anyone would have immediately realised that it is true what they say about my being brown and leftist.

I have just now finished revising my course list. I still have an affection for things brown and leftist and my course selection still reflects that, but it also has a little to say about other interests of mine, like my fixation with the internetz. It does not show, however, that I still bear vestiges of survivor(/escapee) guilt from my Life Sci days. Nor does it show that I possess a remarkable ability to embarrass naive first years I have only met who ask me what I want to study (do not tempt me, in a crowded Toronto train, to begin talking about whiteness studies).

So what I am saying is: children! When I meet the assistant dean next week tomorrow, I will be awesome, aglow with the beauty of my course schedule. I will stun her with my excellence to such an extent that she will feel positively compelled to give me grants. Or at least a TA-ship.
Continue reading this entry »

My mother got her licence to practise medicine a few days ago. I was going to write a much more serious post about this, invovling issues of transgenerational memories; Canada’s medical system; family; pride and guilt; my mother.

Basically, it was going to be one of those posts that give the people who read this blogg entirely the wrong idea about me.

So anyway, after seven years of re-studying everything she learned twenty years ago, once assured of permanent positions in clinics and hospitals here in Toronto, my mother went shopping for clothes for everybody.

This morning she and the frosh brother went the University of Toronto bookstore. When I saw the blue and white plastic bags, I thought they’d made the mistake of buying all the bro’s textbooks new.
But no, it was worse.
She’d even bought clothes from UofT.

“It’s bad enough,” I say, “that we’re paying them thousands and thousands of dollars and they’re not giving me anything – you have to go and give them more money.
“I object.
“They’re going to have a sale and these clothes are going to go back to their original prices and they probably made them in China or India for 50 cents.
“I thoroughly object.”

As I whine, my mother pulls out the t-shirts one by one to show them to me.

She pulls out a blue-black t-shirt for the littlest brother, the one with the smile that people love.

I read the slogan emblazoned on the shirt, one eyebrow raised. “My kid and my money go to UofT.
“I can’t believe you actually bought that.”

My mother’s brow furrows and she turns the shirt around so she can read it herself. “What? I thought … I thought it said My kind of monkey goes to UofT.”

I could not make this stuff up. I try, but I cannot.

Thirty seconds after I saved this my sister says, as part of an ongoing conversation, “Maybe there’s something wrong.”
“With what?” I ask.
“You said there’s something wrong with your homophones.”
“My … hormones.”