I think I'm going insane.

Spiders on the balcony.

I smell self-pity.

Mountainous rage.

Simplicity of truth vs. centrality of sacrifice.

“you changed the most” I change a lot.

No matter how much you go up the ranks in life, kids on the playground will always be around to call you a nerd.

I will neither confirm nor deny it.

Lead by example vs. education of leaders rendering effort to set example self-damaging and inefficient with regard to their talents.

1st grade should be all about media literacy & economic history (TV show idea here)

Consistency leaves no room for growth.

You might serve a purpose you did not intend to serve.

Wit without deceit.

The word “Allah”is whispered longingly both by the pure of heart and the most foul of creatures.

Pretty, happy kids are easier to love, more easily socialized and well-balanced, unless manipulated in some way.

Each esoteric experience makes the heart as a whole less accessible to our closest friends.

It’s not possible to be whole anymore and honest. playing up diff faces to diff ppl seems like the only way to get around. but it's so not honest. the limits of time dont permit thorough explanation of ideas motivating our choices, so the result is compartmentalization, fragmentation of behavior.

Why must I read an article to know what’s going on with half the ummah, why cant I just talk to them like human beings without it being particularly “business” related

Moral dilemma #692: choreography in a mixed gender environment. hypothetical solution: buy speakerphone and yell, "All males face the wall. Anyone who watches the director dancing will promptly be flogged." That should do it.

Aw shiznacky


"There’s a lot of confronting fears in 508."
ZAP - EXT. Vacuum of WHITE
Pure muslim: You have a lot of fears.
Radioactive muslim: Are you calling me immature?
Pure muslim: You complain a lot.
RM: I’m just acutely aware of inefficiencies.
PM: Then why don’t you do something about it? Lazy piece of-
RM:Shut up! I’m not smart enough, is that what you wanna hear? Alright, I'm not! I can’t write, my wit died, I don’t speak Arabic fluently and I talk to myself, okay? I’m INSANE.
PM: Instead of wasting all this time arguing with yourself you could’ve visited hungersite twenty times and fed a bunch of poor people. You suck.
RM: ARAEWGWREFTGGGGGH!!!!! ::strangles pure muslim::
PM: gag you're soiling gag my ABAYA!
END FANTASY SEQUENCE.

brittle eman will compensate with extremism or break entirely. i'm really, really afraid of myself.

i feel like i'm being stuffed into a suitcase.

i hadn't seen anyone outside my family for a week. it felt like an eternity. i was lulled into the way of things. then i got a phone call. five minutes of a human voice reminding me that i came from another world. i belong to another place. i serve some purpose and have carved out a place in hearts elsewhere. it was fascinating. humbling. frightening. and somehow, it boosted my eman. the raging voices inside my head were quiet. socialization tranquilizes people. maybe it's a good thing. i can't hate something with a human face a human voice, especially ones that think i'm real. Isn't that amazing? SubhanAllah. I'm real.

trapped in my own bubblewrap

"i am silenced by the complexity of the world" Eco

oh for a dagger with which to slash elegant drapes

how much you feel like a failure depends on your goals

If Truth were a Diamond Scimitar.
Hackneyed ideas tire me quickly. On the other hand, truth, even
though it's unoriginal, is still truth. but for it to deliver comfort
it must constantly be repackaged to engage the mind...at least for the
over-educated whose minds are gateways to the heart. excessive
reminders only test one's patience and frustrate the search for more
complex theories to explain esoteric experiences. if articulations of
truth cannot keep up with the heart, chaos will ensue.

SubhanAllah a tree is beautiful; the birds sing in prayer; death is
inevitable. But to dwell on these things again and again when time
makes one's mental energy so exclusive distracts one's focus from the
work at hand. reflection is so precious. i know, i know. but in
trying to embrace life, reminding myself of mortality exacerbates my
self-loathing. I will insha'Allah intend to live life without regrets
- the same purpose served by reminding oneself of death - but without
the constant expectation of a grave around the corner.

These days the Islamic camp exercises where we'd go out into the cold
forest at night, lay on the earth and imagine our graves seem unfair
to me. Yes, youth are wreckless and wont to squander their most
formative years. But scholars' incessant invocations of death pushing
us toward righteous action have a side effect: limiting access to
articulations of truth by creating a sense of urgency to devote
oneself to a path. Yes, time is limited; the earlier one chooses a
path, the longer they'll have to master and contribute to it. But I
guess I have ADD with regard to life's possibilities.

Yesterday. Drenched in my parents' driveway at 2am, I felt like a
solitary warrior under the city rain. Reprocessed acid on my cheeks
have never been more liberating.

I was in a crowded subway again. Wanted nothing more than to close my
eyes and touch the palm of the person next to me. I can't believe
there are so many people in the world. I feel stupid for not being
able to grasp this. my idea of jannah is to be told how they all
managed to live. (as well as full knowledge of every aspect of
creation.)

AirTran Flight 60: LAX to Atlanta
squid and tiger sharks battle under
the dark pacific
while streetlights on the freeway
and roving spotlights from downtown hollywood
swim beneath thunderclouds
like flashlights under wool blankets
viewed from the space that hangs under
star speckled skies
the space between
heaven and earth.
we are our own signs.

Motherhood without Fathers.
I have never wanted to be a mother. But I know so many women who do.
their mortal enemies are time and the infernal race known as Men. Is
adoption then the new rage? What would it be like for a generation of
fatherless children? I want to raise other people's kids. If I
adopt, I would like to be the children's "grandmother" and I would
tell them their grandfather makes a living as stardust.

I play piano in the Fishbowl ineptly.

friends are a collection of lifestyles.
sometimes the best act of unity we can muster is a night out at
coldstone's for ice cream.

how do people manage to form relationships when their ideologies are
so different? they never talk about ideology. there are so many
other ways to form bonds. humans are so...juvenile. a joke will do
it. a smile will do it. an allusion will do it. people don't think
that much.

how can so many clashing ideologies exist in the same person? it's
not sane. it breeds incurable neuroses that no one short of a
psychiatrist versed in political science, religion, history, astronomy
and the environment can answer.

funny how one's views are determined by one's function in society. what you must stand for vs what you would stand for in an omniscient vacuum.

you're only as real as what you can communicate, and you can't communicate without forms of expression, and one form of expression cant communicate the nuances that another can. master it all young, and when you're mind rages in the angst-ridden years of maturity, you will be able to deflect the forces that bring you down with sheer human energy.

legalities are like a spiderweb of highways strangling the earth from the sky. the sun rises and sets without shedding rays on seedlings weak and shriveled.

as haunting as swings on a windy day

what's honest vs. what's halal

i cant i cant i cant i cant i cant i cant i cant i cant i cant i cant i cant i cant i cant cant cant cant the heart is a minefield and your limbs are worth retaining
explosive boundaries offer nothing but confinement
a lobotomized submission to the routine
routine is serene and you're a masochist
no lies no solace
no lies no solace
i just want to live
because i have been given life
then why does a jealous mind instruct me not to breathe?

some days i want to be a neocon spy.

i think we scare our parents

secret moments can be both a source of comfort and inner turmoil

what if nbc universal is a dead end?

cop car zooms by
he should get a ticket!
random guy across the street: yeah, two hundred tickets!

my mom: who's blocking me?
tania, looks at me pushing the door closed: the door

i sleep with my clean laundry

ego, i want to strangle youuuuuuuu!!!!

i'm far too neurotic for my own good. i want - more than anything! - to call a moratorium on my senses, call a council of all the characters that occupy my mind, form them into an army, then let them take control of my lips and limbs in a more efficient, disciplined manner. I'd be more openly neurotic, but at least more efficient and disciplined. One hopes...

it's not faith vs. reason, it's the intellect vs. the heart, where faith falls under intellect.

what if i told you i have a duck in my pocket?

today i rewrite the rug merchant, tomorrow, the world.

Attack of the Nafs!

Attacked by a gang of ruthless munchkins from Shanghai, three fairy sisters decked in tacky headdresses from Chinatown reignite their sense of sisterhood (and mad skillz) to defeat an ancient enemy...

a memory of a dream about reality

promises whispered
under bare trees
and full moons
are meaningless

hello
my name is

fire
shards of glass
scar the skies

i thought i knew you

dew
simply
clings to grass

a beat
under speckled leaves

a summer wind
changes everything

too bad
choirs don't sing at midnight
yeah, too bad

his eyes cried "wilderness"

lost on hollywood blvd

tainted decadence
it's only 9pm and the stars below our feet reek
under perfidious neon lights
at least dim sum with spo this morning was magic
xiao and i make calls at 6683
until we realize it should be 6633
so we walk a little further
to geisha house
red lips seal the door
if there are strippers inside, we're leaving
a back way in
music blaring under red lanterns
low lights
hors d'oeuvre
chinatown this morning was magic
lost in rows of silk made for tourists
like me
like them
at least i know better
i believe
i feel
ill

hair with a scent of jasmine

the world has enough cowardly romantics.

we live in a society without time for people.

the question is, what destiny do you want.

you will never have enough time, you will never have enough money, you will never have enough support to do the things that need to be done. therein lies the struggle for nobility.

why does one have to struggle so hard to acquire knowledge that's of any quality?

for those hours, i disappeared off the face of the earth.

pumped full of vicatin you realize a few things about life.
life beyond time. or time beyond life.

it's easier to be a consistent, focused, productive person enveloped in your comfort zone. people like that - the world plugs into their roles in life. they are the nice, stable, dependable people you trust to become doctors and engineers.

the price of pushing yourself to the edge where it burns - is risk. chaos. radioactivity. i believe i am radioactive. a radioactive muslim.

you shouldve married the turk. life is easier when you're disciplined and militaristic. but maybe not when you're living in east london...

is there no one who views you as a whole person? we are constantly playing up different regions of our identity among different friends. and too often one's purpose is to be a bridge between contending people.

there is no tarbiya in mainstream education.

if you want something from this world, you have to compromise some of your beliefs. and the only beliefs i'm willing to compromise are those that emanate from the nafs (ego). inconveniently, they are also the hardest to subdue.

it hurts to realize that you're the kind of person who, if given the responsibility to save the world, would only manage to salvage a mere flower from the writhing planetary wreckage.

the "exile gene" runs in the family.

my humor only reigns in the realm of fantasy.

martyrdom tactics follow the stench of failure.

the ummah owes me nothing.

i live in a trash can. my name is oscar the grouch. GROUCH! no, really,
i live under my landlady's coffee table. because...i'm such a coward.

people grow more and more inaccessible as they get older. their time becomes more exclusive. i hate that feeling of experiencing it and being guilty of it.

suppress the instinct to crush the heart.

you're always creating a list of things you want to talk about but dont know when it'll ever be appropriate to discuss.

they hate it when they don't know what you're thinking. i bet it makes them feel insecure.

just lie down and watch the world spin.

i realize i'm not as intelligent as i once thought i was. i yearn for the elusive refined truth but too often catch myself mesmerized by lower-level observations.

my thoughts are consistently an inconsistent muddle

people are comprised of sentiments that took two seconds to form but whose effects are enduring

my wish is to prove to myself that memories have value. they will not wash away with time. at least film can preserve dreams in material form for a while. but ultimately, i know they too will perish.

i tend to blame everything on capitalism and its parasitic tendencies. though i know in moderation it's actually quite islamic.

quiet panic is not healthy.

i want to die.