Oneness

On religion: Its all the same light reflected off a different wall.

“All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. Sunlight looks slightly different on this wall than it does on that wall and a lot different on this other one, but it is still one light.”

-Rumi

Aliens

I figured it was time for a little silliness after all the seriousness around this place, so heres a funny little comic I stumbled upon (literally) recently:

Rhythmic Therapy

"Come, let's scatter roses and pour wine in the glass;
we'll shatter heaven's roof and lay a new foundation.
If sorrow raises armies to shed the blood of lovers,
I'll join with the wine bearer so we can overthrow them.
With a sweet string at hand, play a sweet song, my friend,
so we can clap and sing a song, and lose our heads in dancing."

-Hafiz (Ghani-Qazvini, No. 374); Sufi Muslim Musician

Unfortunately I've been pretty swamped with schoolwork lately and just living life to post something of content on here. I suppose a quote counts as content and can be just as valuable as my own insight, but I like to think readers (the few out there) value the personal more. This quote in particular I pulled out of a reading for a class, and fit my mood at the moment. I'm listening to relaxing music sitting in my room letting my mind wander all over the place, trying to tame it and wondering if that is necessarily even a good thing. My mind seems to dart from corner to corner, operating in space almost, my body a vessel it is simply attached to. The music expands me mentally, simultaneously inducing calmness and an excited awe. I'm almost like a kid in a candy shop, but all the candy is free, and I can taste everything and anything that I want to (albeit, with my ears).

I regret posting on this blog because it creates moments for me like this to just spill my thoughts onto paper, thoughts that I would feel foolish to bring up directly in conversation, or even in the classroom, but still need to get out. Its almost as if part of myself spills out onto the "paper" (in this case, my keyboard). In front of me exists a conglomoration of plastic keys, manufactured in some faraway land, perhaps not even by human hands. Same with my ipod, same with the desk that my arms rest upon. So many moments have come together to create this singular point in time, this release for my mind which is incredibly healthy and soothing. Humans need to express, and this moment grants that.

All humans need a therapist, a friend once told me. I don't agree with her, and know many people who would argue against that claim. I think, though, that every person needs therapy. We spend so much of our lives living and going through the motions that sometimes, a person just needs therapy - whether that therapy be music, writing, a sport, or hell, even just laying in the grass (or, in my friend's case, an understanding and sympathizing person). Each individual has a baby's bottle, a something that nurtures and satisfies the human need for happiness. Today, a saw a friend who is usually extremely angry, depressed, and pessimistic get his therapy. My friend was offered a position in film, a something he gushes about, a something that infuses him with passion. He sees three therapists, but this is the first time I have seen him truly happy in a long time. It made me so joyous, so happy, just to see him smiling, laughing, and legitimately loving and valuing his own life.

This blog, this writing? This is my therapy. This is my happiness. This is my life, for you.

Gratitude

"It is related that one time she saw someone who had a bandage bound about his head. She said, "Why is this bandage bound (round your head)? He said, "My head is paining me". Rabi‘ah asked him, "how old he was"? "Thirty years old he replied. She asked him "Were you in pain and trouble for the greater part of your life"? ‘No’ he answered. Then she said, "for thirty years (God) has kept your body fit and you have never bound upon it the bandage of gratitude, but for one night of pain in your head you bind it with the bandage of complaint".

-Rabi'a, avid Sufi Muslim

Bread

"While you are eating a piece of bread, try to recall the events that collaborated to let this take place. The oven's heat that baked the bread, the plowed earth before that, sunlight, rain, harvest, the winnowing, the being carried to and from the mill, the complex idea and the building of the mill itself. The many motions of weather in the turning of four seasons. And don't forget the knife that cuts the bread, the metallurgy and the skill of forging that blade, and your teeth, those original grinding devices. Then there's your stomach digesting the crust and there's the rest of your body being nourished, each part in unique ways.

Two hundred and forty-eight bones, five hundred and thirty muscles, three hundred arteries, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, your organs and limbs, your brain. As the bread dissolves, many intelligences within you are deciding and peacefully agreeing on how to divide the benefits. If there were discord, you would feel pain and cry out, but you don't. Now notice the unified human awareness thoughtfully living inside your body with a soul in communion with other spirit-intelligences. Observe how it sits at the junction of two worlds as a human being looking with kindness on other human beings. Some say this is the culmination of the body's long development and the beginning of the next transformation, that you that live with gratitude for food and thankfulness also for any difficulty, pain, or sudden disappointment, seeing those too as grace, that you live inside and outside time as an angelic breadeating witness taking in this myriad convergence of providential motions and that you are in yourself an individual soul being made from divine wisdom."

-Baha'uddin Walad, the father of Sufi poet Rumi, on eating a piece of bread

Life is so simple, yet so intricately beautiful.

Celebration

Life should not be a waiting, but a celebration, as the person that waits is doomed to an abyss of neverending uncertainty and uneasiness. The person that celebrates holds no regrets...life lengthens itself through bursts of powerful emotion and love seldom found in today's world. So, I tell you: live. Live and let love, love and let live, just don't wait. Looking forward only ends in disappointment - so relish the moment and never breach the depths of yonder.

Reality

A while back I stumbled upon an article which questioned the reality of reality. Do we exist? How do we know we exist? Are we existing as a part of an alternate reality or simulation (The Matrix made millions toying with this simple, yet tantalizing and fascinating question). Descartes became famous for it, etched forever in history books as the man that was wrong, yet raised all the right questions (or at least, one essential question: Can we be absolutely positive that our own existence is real, that it is true?).

Inception, a more recent Hollywood hit, has captured the minds of millions of people worldwide with a similar concept, Facebook statuses everywhere throwing the greatness of the film (and, more importantly, the physical attractiveness of Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) into an endless sea of social networkers. Is reality just a dream? Is reality multi-layered, our futile human minds unaware of the truth that surrounds us? Does it even matter? If a human accepts reality as reality, even if it is not indeed THE reality - does that change his or her reality? The complexity of our minds opens them up to something like the concept of "inception" (which, if you are unaware, is the planting of a simple, basic idea into someones mind for the purpose of its grown and eventual overtaking of the mind). An example of inception could consist of me saying to you, "Do not think of radishes." You're thinking about radishes now, right?

References to an alternate reality in pop culture - on the web, in films, in books and in philosophy - engage the human mind in a thinking process which eradicates what our senses and experience tell us (that the world is real and it would be ridiculous to think otherwise), and replaces it with a simple idea that infests you like a virus taking over a computer.

A while back, a friend brought up that this thought had recently taken hold of her mind - the idea that the world is all a simulation, that we are humans existing somewhere else in reality yet experiencing our own reality as a simple simulation or computer program. At the time, a few articles by John Tierney, a writer for the Science section of The New York Times, had caught my eye. I would definitely check out the article if you are even remotely interested in this sort of stuff (and I'm guessing you are if you've made it this far). If you don't have the time to read it, though, what Tierney basically says is that, in talking to an Oxford philosophy professor, he was awakened to the idea that we may not really be people at all but rather a series of minds (or I suppose, brains) connected in a vast computer network brought together by a simulated world. Hypothetically speaking, Tierney says, technology can be assumed to extend past the capability of the human brain, and, eventually, far surpassing that - with the ability to harness and manipulate the power of the human brain. This is a scary thought, but this sort of brain-harnessing and/or manipulating ability might not be far off considering the sorts of "video game" technologies in the works. This Cracked article horrifyingly points out that Sony already has a patent for technology which will be able to fire ultrasound pulses into the brain in order to project sensory experiences. Combine that with even more advanced technologies at the time of its release along some sort of "Society" type video game (think The Sims on steroids), and soon enough you have the sort of world that the Wachowski brothers dream up becoming full blown reality.

You are probably very skeptical, as was I when I first started delving into what seemed to be an inevitable future of extremely detailed pixels and interactions with said entities. I looked a little more into what seems to be on the horizon in terms of mind/brain technology, and stumbled upon a CNN article within which Ian Pearson, a scientist for British Telecom, declared that brain downloads will likely be available by the middle of the 21st century. He says that the Playstation 5 (think about that, that's only 2 generations of gaming systems away) will likely be as powerful as a human brain. The fathomability of such a reality becomes more and more likely as the horizons of technology are observed closely. In addition to the prophecy about brain downloads, Pearson predicts that, "...computer consciousness would make feasible a whole new sphere of emotional machines, such as airplanes that are afraid of crashing. By 2020 Pearson also predicated the creation of a "virtual world" of immersive computer-generated environments in which we will spend increasing amounts of time, socializing and doing business." Basically, imagine facebook where you can touch and talk to your friends in person, without actually being with them. Crazy, huh?

The reason why I am bringing all of this talk about elaborate simulated worlds and video games? Well, Tierney suggests that all these technologies could be harnessed, right now, and we wouldn't even know it - because we would blindly be taking part in the simulation. There is no way to tell if the technological advent of the brain has occurred yet, but we do know that it will, at some point, occur. So, for all we know, in reality the technological advent and subsequent enslaving of our selves has already occurred. Posthumans, humans if they are still around or just what Tierney dubs "The Prime Designer" - he, she or it who ran the first simulation, and thus enabled the continuance of our existence within the context of an "ancestor" simulation (one that replicates human history - in order to effectively immerse, distract and contain the human mind - up to the point of the enabling of simulation).

Color me skeptical yet intrigued. The proposition absolutely makes sense, and I suppose could be true - though I don't want it to be. Even if it is true, though, does it effect my reality? I have no way of knowing (ever, i would assume) if I was actually a part of a posthuman technological mind simulation, yet I still feel, I still touch, I still smell, I still think. My reality is reality even if it is not reality. Tierney and Bostrom throw out some bogus numbers to function as a "percentage likelihood" that me, you, or they are indeed actually a part of such a simulation. Why do those numbers matter? The question Inception puts forth is a worthy parallel: Does it matter if your world is the dream world or the real world if the dream world is completely real while you dream? I would say that no, it doesn't - though I absolutely would still like to know the truth, the reality, the real real if given the option. So it does matter on a deeper level, a level that probes my heart and my soul. If given the choice between the blue pill and the red pill, I choose the red pill. At the same time, I don't see "The Prime Designer" creating a Morpheus (or a Morpheus existing outside) to enable such an event to occur (if existence was even possible outside the simulation at that point in time).

I don't think the important question here is whether or not the world is simulated or real, but rather why this idea has such a hold on society as a whole as well as such a large presence in popular culture. As philosopher David Chalmers points out, the "brain in vat" or "brain connected to computer" theory could simply be a different metaphysical description of creation or of "being." This raises questions about modern society, though, in a roundabout way. Have we become so abstracted from life itself that we are unable to distinguish the real from the simulated? Can we not feel anymore? Do we, maybe, actually believe in hypotheses such as these because they most accurately reflect the blank, empty and fake reality that we live in each day? This is something that I am more interested in and will save for a later date (and almost certainly will be my next post).

In the meantime, Tierney has a few more interesting articles out in The New York Times for mulling over.

-This one deals with the moral implications of such a world, and considers what it would be like for "The Prime Designer" to create an "ancestor simulation"

-Another points out that the ethics involved in such a simulation would mean that certain emotions and life themes could give clues to whether you are indeed living in a simulated or real world (though this is a little bit circular...)

-Tierney lays out how creating a simulation would be possible, largely in response to a slew of reader comments insisting that its creation would be impossible

-His last article has a little fun, inviting readers to participate in a contest that addresses "The Prime Designer" him, her, or itself in the case that there is actually some sort of quasi-deity monitoring each and every one of our simulated lives (and here's the list of winners if you're interested)

Now, I shall go dream. Or will it be a dream within a dream? A dream within a dream within a simulated reality within reality?

Time

Is it that our hair grows more quickly as the years pass by, or that our years grow more quickly as our hair passes by?

Remember in elementary school, how long the days used to seem? Lunch lasted days of today, recess lasted a month. Take a day, or any period of time for that matter, and live it. I mean truly live it - cherish it, adore it, nuture it. See how much length you can squeeze out of time, but don't rush it. Time is ordinary, a construct, a something that may or may not exist according to us or the world - so, we ignore it. I challenge you to embrace it, feel it, get to know it. You might be astounded by how interesting and fickle time (and, on a greater scale, being) really is. Sit down, meditate, play a game but slow it down - whatever you need to do. Time can be manipulated in a sense, and its interesting what happens when it stops being ignored and starts being attended to.

It is a common complaint that life is too short. In turn, we, as humans, desperately and superficially try to extend life on earth by any means necessary. Maybe if we paid attention to being and time in the first place, we wouldn't have to run away from death. When our time came, we would be able to embrace it if only for all the attention paid to life itself - all the tiny details, all the nooks and crannies, and, most importantly, the vast amount of substance that passes through a lifetime.

Stop looking to the future ("I can't wait for x!"). Stop looking to the past ("What if..."). Live now.

I Am Therefore I Think

"Cabbage, car, plague germ, star: we're all kith and kin. Not, my sun-eyed love, "Cogito Ergo Sum" but, in our distinguished family, we can think because we are..." -Nazim Hikmet

Just a little quote to think about from Nazim Hikmet, from poetry which he composed during his time in prison in the mid 1940's. Its funny to consider the great, elegant minds that end up locked up in prison for the majority of their lives. The solace and elegance that Hikmet and other "prison poets" demonstrate (such as Nelson Mandela - one of whose poems and life was recently the focus of the Hollywood flick Invictus) is truly remarkable in the face of adversity. I hope that I would be able to equally come to peace with my circumstances if ever faced with something as trying.

A little off topic, but another example of this can be seen in an even more popular demonstration - that of Armando Galarraga, a pitcher in Major League Baseball for the Detroit Tigers. Recently, he pitched a perfect game against the Cleveland Indians, which is probably the single most prestigious, difficult, and, well, "perfect" single game achievement in baseball, and possibly even any other sport. A perfect game occurs when a pitcher retires the minimum amount of batters possible in a game - which is twenty-seven (9 innings x 3 outs per inning). This can only happen if: 1)The pitcher allows no hits, 2)The pitcher's team commits no errors, 3)The pitcher does not give up a walk. This is quite the feat, especially considering the pitcher is facing a major league lineup with some of the best athletes and baseball players in the entire world.

There have only been 20 perfect games pitched in Major League Baseball history (21 if you count Galarraga's), a history that dates back over 100 years into the mid to late 1800's. Each baseball season, there are 162 games played (with slightly less games played throughout the course of history) - an attest to how truly rare and impressive the perfect game is. Considering that there are 30 teams in ma jor league baseball (about 24 teams dating back to earlie r times), I'll use this equation to calculate the probabilit y of a perfect game occurring:

150 games (approximately) times 24 teams (approximately) times 130 seasons (approximately - again, I'm not looking up exacts, but the result will be close enough) divided by 20 perfect games. (150 x 24 x 130) / 20 = 1/23400, or .0000427. That means that, out of all the games that have been pitched in major league history, 0.0042 7% of them have been perfect games. Needless to say, that's a ridiculously minute number, and one that would put a pitcher in the Major League recor d books forever.

Now that I've established how amazing the pitching of a perfect game really is, I'll present Galarraga's case in this article on MLB.com. I would check out the video too - It gives a better representation of what happened. If the article isn't working or you don't feel like checking it out, basically what happened was that Galarraga had a perfect game going with 2 outs in the ninth inning. Jason Donald, the Indian's batter, hit a groundball to the first-baseman's right - so Galarraga had to hustle over to first to cover the base. It seemed like a routine play, a little close, but routine. When Galarraga stepped on first base, it appeared history had been made, with the Detroit crowd erupting with excitement and joy, with passion and pleasure at the rarity they had just witnessed.

But wait a second.

Jim Joyce, the first base umpire, had done the unthinkable - he had called Donald safe. Galarraga, though, took what had just happened with extreme class and humility, and a sportsmanship which I have never seen before. Rather than throw a fit or get in Joyce's face, Galarraga reacted in disbelief - but then simply smiled. He smiled and appreciated what he knew he had just accomplished, despite some petty call. I think Joe Posnanski, in this article, put it best: "And when my young daughters ask, 'Why didn’t he get mad and scream about how he was robbed?' I think I will tell them this: I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s because Armando Galarraga understands something that is very hard to understand, something we all struggle with, something I hope you will learn as you grow older: In the end, nobody’s perfect. We just do the best we can."

Galarraga's case is an example of how beautiful a human reaction can be on the highest of competitive levels in this world. His actions (or, perhaps, lack of action) is one of my favorite sports moments of all time. Like Hikmet, it is amazing to see what some human beings can do in the face of adversity.

God, Allah, That Thing Up in the Sky, or any of the other 97 names that may be applicable

"Allah is too big, and too open, for my Islam to be small and closed."

-Jehangir Tabiri, a young Muslim punk from Michael Muhammad Knight's eye-opening novel, The Taqwacores.

Just a short but profound quote to think about, for individuals of all religions (and even no religion).

The Impossible

Just a little tidbit for thought in the wee hours of the morning:

I have oft heard, especially since coming to college, the saying "you can sleep when you're dead." This, of course, implies that sleep is a waste of time - you should live your life to the fullest by taking advantage of all the time you have. But what about dreams? The excitement, imagination and exploration that occurs in dreams seldom enters the real world.

So, aside from the obvious health benefits, I'm not so sure I would live by this statement.

Just sayin'. Carpe Diem.

The Simple Pleasures

Recently I've taken to, well, just loving the simple pleasures of life. Each day lately I seem to notice little details that I usually don't, noting how simple they are in their beauty. It's so easy to become lost in the hectic haze of modern society that I think we sometimes lose sight of what can be profoundly beautiful about the simplicity of life. I sit here now, profoundly relieved, having just finished a research paper for psychology. I think with all the hustle and bustle of finals and the drive to be social, I haven't taken time to sit back and observe what is truly obvious: that life itself is absolutely gorgeous, a sort of dynamic piece of art which never ceases to fascinate. I've really been itching to get a blog post up because I'm sick of writing for a grade, so I think now I'm just going to release, a pouring out of my soul if you will, of what my soul has touched, felt, and perceived, of that which has permanently imprinted itself upon my being.

The simple pleasures:

• Watching my friend write on a banana and laugh about it
• The physics of a door swinging back and forth in Main Building, my dormitory
• Jumping in order to touch really high things, like branches
• Listening to Sigur Ros in this very moment (god their Icelandic is stunning)
• The fact that I'm alive (you might say well duh! but I'm talking about being alive, anyone who has experienced being alive, fully conscious of their own being and the being of everyone and everything around them, knows what I'm talking about)
• Having a profound experience at an amazing musical performance (my body extending into a tree and filling the room, fyi)
• Seeing my friends smile
• Hearing the voices of my parents
• Saying a prayer
• Talking to friends far, far away
• Vassar College and all its amazing people
• Being praised for hard work
• Chewing gum that tastes like yummy berries
• Making a summer reading list, and just the thought of reading for pleasure
• Realizing how much I have grown as a person
• Being asked to sing "Singing in the Rain" by three random girls in the middle of the day
• Seeing a family happy together
• Making the day of a child just by giving them a paper airplane
• When animals seem to smile
• Acoustic music to calm the senses
• Letting go of nagging stresses and worries which don't even matter
• Just being alive (not alive, but alive now)
• God
• Letting all your muscles completely relax so that you get that tingly feeling in your body

What has made you happy lately? How about right now, in this very moment? Think about it...

Because I'm lovin' the simple pleasures.

The World's Greatest Sport

"In our country, true teams rarely exist . . . social barriers and personal ambitions have reduced athletes to dissolute cliques or individuals thrown together for mutual profit . . . Yet these rugby players. with their muddied, cracked bodies, are struggling to hold onto a sense of humanity that we in America have lost and are unlikely to regain. The game may only be to move a ball forward on a dirt field, but the task can be accomplished with an unshackled joy and its memories will be a permanent delight. The women and men who play on that rugby field are more alive than too many of us will ever be. The foolish emptiness we think we perceive in their existence is only our own."
-Victor Cahn

Ireland

The heart of Dublin, Ireland

Tomorrow I will be departing for Dublin, Ireland, in what should be an extremely beautiful, enlightening, and exciting ten day trip. I will be traveling with both the Men's and Women's Vassar Rugby teams, in what should be an action-packed course of events. There will be about forty or so of us, so it will be a bit chaotic, but fun nonetheless. We land in Dublin on what will be Wednesday morning (March 10th) because of the time difference, and spend from Wednesday to Friday there getting acclimated. During the time in Dublin, we will be seeing Croke Park (the home of Irish Rugby) and the Guinness Brewery/Storehouse. In addition, we will be playing one match against Dublin City University Rugby Football Club (R.F.C.), which promises to be a tough match for us, as we haven't played in a game or had any contact since November of 2009. I hear Dublin is very similar to Boston, Massachusetts, a city which is very dear to my heart, so I'm definitely hopeful as to the time spent there.

The Cliffs of Moher

After a few days in Dublin, we head over to Cork, Ireland, which is a smaller city located a few hours southwest, along the coast of Ireland. It is in Cork that we will be spending the majority of our time as a team. There, we will be seeing Connemarra Coast, The Cliffs of Moher (which seem absolutely stunning in their beauty), Bunratty Castle, Folkpark, The Blarney Castle (the stone of which I will not be kissing, as the locals apparently take leaks on it - I don't blame them), and Dingle Peninsula. Phew, that was a long list. I want to be careful not to fall into the touristy-traps that these different sights seemingly set me up for. Instead, I want to learn a bit about Irish culture from these landmarks, and see of what importance they are aside from revenue generators. I'm very interested to learn about a country who actually respects the sport of Rugby.

Kinsale R.F.C.

During the time in Cork, we will be playing Kinsale R.F.C. and Fermoy R.F.C., neither of which I can find out much about (same goes for Dublin City University R.F.C.). I hear that American teams are expected to come out hard with an "American Football Mentality" and smash, while Irish clubs tend to be smaller and much more smart in their tactical play (much of the smallness comes from the fact that we will not be playing the First Sides of the clubs). Following each match, we will enjoy "festivities" with the host clubs, which I'm guessing will include beer and food - absolutely fine by me. I'm more curious, however, to find out what the clubs think of our rugby skill and playing ability, as most of the Irish players likely have played rugby since they have been able to walk (and I'm not even exaggerating).

Overall, I'm just absolutely souped for the trip and sitting at home with nothing to do the night before my flight. I will snap tons of photographs, as I hope to capture the soul of Ireland in all its beauty and rich culture. I'll probably have a post-trip blog post as a nice little contrast to this one, and I'm guessing it will be quite the contrasting experience from what I previewed here. I've heard Europe is quite different from America, but in a very good way - here's to hoping that's true. It'll all come to a close on Saturday, March 20th, when we fly back to Newark International.

P.S. - Did I mention almost every night is free for us to do whatever we please? It's going to be an absolutely epic trip.

P.S.S. - We will be staying at a quality five star hotel while in Dublin and a slightly more spartan hostel while in Cork. I'm pumped to experience each of them, and the hotel looks sicknasty.

Quote of the Day

"We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have—for their usefulness."

-Thomas Merton

Goodnight

There can be so much serenity, found amongst the dark
My ears feel the breeze of vibrations formed elegantly
Sometimes I like to question pessimism
Sure, maybe I have quite the good life
But here, on this raft, all is right
I am a man enclosed, yet so free
Looking up at my boundaries
I feel so liberated, floating above the cracked brown floor
The moon enters the room, a waxing crescent
Brushing aside the darkness, letting in light
Wait a second....am I dreaming?
It's simply the white of my smile.

Song of the Day

Passion Pit Vs Juvenile - Back That Sleepyhead Up

The Hood Internet



A sick mix I stumbled upon as I was rediscovering the amazing beats of The Hood Internet. I would put just the Mp3 on here, but its a lot easier to just embed the Youtube video. I like their mashup style, which I find to be either hit or miss - I tend to either really enjoy their mixes or think that they're forced together, which makes for an unpleasant listening experience. Check out the rest of their beats on www.thehoodinternet.com, where you can download most of their songs for free. The Hood Internet definitely makes for some good party music, and is easy to acquire, being readily available on their website for absolutely free. If you get a chance, check their stuff out. They already have four mixtapes out for the public (not including their specialized mixtapes, which focus on mashups with a single band or group) and I'm guessing that they're not even close to done yet.

For similar mixes/mashups, check out the following:
Milkman
Girl Talk
Super Mash Bros
The White Panda

Don't hesitate to let me know if you have any other suggestions for music of a similar style, as I'm definitely open to suggestion and on the prowl for like-minded music.

Electricity shocks, electro moves, transfuse the two and the body shakes. This music transforms - a beautiful craft - halting your anxiety, shaking you to freedom.

Samir

"Yet even as I spoke, I was flooded with a scary mixed feeling of both remorse and fear, and I prayed to God that Samir would beg me to changed my mind so that I would not lose face. And, lo and behold, he did. 'But Fatima,' Samir said, 'God is the only one who creates beauty. It is not by applying henna, ghassoul - that vulgar clay - or any of those other dirty concoctions, that you'll transform yourself into the moon."

One of my favorite quotes from a book I've been reading recently:

Dreams of Trespass by Fatima Mernissi
Said by Samir, a 9 year old boy living in a Muslim Harem in Fez, Morocco

Beauty

As the brushstrokes collaborated to create a new work of art, I simply smiled and appreciated the wonder of it all.

Caffe Latte

As I sit here on this throne
The subtle flavors influence me
A cascade of chemicals
Slowly invading my space
Yet it was a choice, a welcoming
Of this ever so interesting fluid
A leaf it began, froth it became
A brown rust upon an iron skillet
It sits there now, amidst powdery fields
The remnants of what was
The past invading the present
A coffee cup.