oh baby, love is the only art i care to master

ana ashoor bi farah jiddan alan, Alhumdulilah!

I booked my ticket to Istanbul to check out the artist community there and meet with some calligraphy masters. One of my Turkish classmates also introduced me to ebru (however, I am thinking China would be better for that), which I must check out while there. Also, tezhip (illumination) seems like something I could potentially excel in inshAllah and would really enjoy working with. Ah, the idea of tezhip is giving me goosebumps!

2 midterms done, 1 left to go in Media Arabic. sigh :)

hulm al ajeeb, madina al ajeeb

I have been having the same sorta recurring dream for awhile now, not in terms of events but place. It is like a city that I am in or walking around in or driving around in and I keep coming to the same place. I know I have never really been there before in the physical sense, and it seems to be a mix of a few places I have been to... seems to be parts Richmond, parts of nova, parts of cville, somethings from my imagination, etc. And I really don't like the place very much, but seem to be stuck there. Maybe if I have time at some point from the birnamij I will draw up a picture of it and post it. But I think the place keeps 'growing', its so strange... more things to discover and see (depending on my vehicle of transport). And the weather is different from dream to dream, it can be sunny, foggy, rainy, dank, whatever but the feeling I always get is that of glum. I really don't like the place at all, mostly because it makes me feel sick, and I don't know why, and I want to get out of it, so it's like I am testing the limits to where the place ends, but either I find a new place in the same city, or I end up in a location I have been to already.

Even more haunting is the fact that sometimes people or a particular person shows up in the dreams and I visit a particular house repeatedly in the dream, and really it's painful. Mostly because it is a house I want to stay at desperately, but it's not mine, I don't belong, or I am not welcomed. Every time I go it's like I have to sneak in or something strange like that, what is this place?! And then I have to tip toe around and not get caught by the owners, kinda like I am playing Maniac Mansion. Video game dreams, sounds fun right? hah yeah right! These dreams really aren't normal. Next time this dream happens and its a lucid one (because sometimes this happens), I am going to try to kill myself in it.

I don't get much sleep these days and I sometimes wake up more tired than I was before I went to sleep. Misery.

oh my heart! please don't burst, not just yet.

I am starting to think that if I don't go for umrah every so often, I will die of grief.

Alhumdulilah rabil alameen, our visas got approved.

things are different now when i walk by, you start to sweat and you don't know why

Lately my face has been breaking out to a ginormous degree, similar to my last semester of undergrad.... and this breakout is happening even after 5 months of accutane usage, benzoyl peroxide 10% cream, multani mitti, clay masks, brevoxyl face wash, and all kinds of other stupid things.

This always happens, when stress enters my life. I have reached another cross roads in my life, not quite sure what to do after the program. I made a map out of things with a list of enumerable possibilities and am anxious to see something tangible manifest. I am not too keen on coming back to the states, cause I am not too sure if I am meant to be going back to anything there (at least for right now), instead I want to explore what the rest of the world is offering :)

But still, there is always grad school to fall back on, I think I finally found a program that holds some charm and interest for someone as whimsical and fleeting as my "jack of all trades and master of none" self would find. And believe me, this came after awhile of considering what is worth getting myself into debt over, and what is worth staying in one place and working for awhile to pay back over. Alhumdulilah, maybe then if this grad school thing works out, I can finally get a motorcycle because that has not seemed to be a good idea here in Doha, by annnnyyyy means! But if I do get in, maybe deferment would be a good option.

Other than that, there is a large list of other possibilities.... maybe stay and work in Doha, which is becoming a great hub of cultures and peoples and opportunities (if it already isn't that, I hear they are even opening a water park here!) amidst a swamp of superficiality and contrived sense of being. Plus it is close to Jeddah and Daddy, which is always a plus plus plus plus plus to the max, Alhumdulilah. I am thinking it can't be that hard to scrounge up a few friends outside of the program? Maybe I could audit some Arabic classes here, who knows?

After that, I am thinking Damascus would be cool, Istanbul would be insanely cool, Tarim/Sanaa would be phenomenal (but in a little bit). Amman is always in the mix of things if need be, as is Cairo. And we all know if all else fails, I can go to Seoul and save up once again to continue these excursions.

Yeah but sometimes, I even think, this is all too much, I am too tired and I am not that strong, just give it up and maybe find a decent asylum or a side street to rest my aching soul on. Allah (swt) help me, help me, help me.

Do not surrender your grief so quickly

Let it cut more deeply

Let it ferment and season you

As few human or divine ingredients can

[Hafiz]

dear life

how much longer until you are over? :)

Road block

Continuing with muraqaba, I have encountered a hefty challenge, and am not quite sure how to go around it. Basically, I have learned it is no easy task to control your thoughts. It is insanely hard! But we all knew this I am sure... the crux of the problem comes when you have to empty your mind of thoughts and be void of thoughts... void of anything... completely empty.

Initially I start with distractors and jump from a thought to the next so as not to dwell on one specifically (and I am probably doing this wrong)... creating a whimsical frenzy and flurry of non settling thoughts in the hopes that they are so light and feather-like I can blow them away at once. If I settle on a thought for too long, I stop and know I am thinking about something and stop myself... then blow it away. Okay but the problem is here... if you are 'emptying your mind'... clearing it of everything... how do you acknowledge that you have cleared your mind without thinking that 'oh my mind is cleared'. Isn't that a thought.. or recognition... since I acknowledged 'oh yeah I stopped thinking about all those things and now my mind is clear'. What madness! What insanity! It seems impossible to clear my mind.

It is like there are somehow two compartments to how this thing works... the mind itself which holds whatever you are thinking, then the policeman mind portion which polices what the mind is thinking, but in reality it is part of the mind too and when you acknowledge that, the two merge and create chaos in the entire process, ahhh!

I guess I will just keep tooting along, because you know what they say - persistence pays off, practice makes perfect, blah blah blah.

Anyways, I am glad to know I am not entirely crazy, since I found this online which makes sense, but still doesn't help me:

"The theory of ironic processes of mental control hold that both the most and the least desired effects of attempts to control one's own mental states accrue from two processes: an intentional operating process (a conscious, effortful search for mental contents that will produce a desired state of mind) and an ironic monitoring process (an unconscious, automatic search for mental contents that signal a failure to produce the desired state of mind). Although the monitoring process usually functions just to active the operating process, during stress, distraction, time urgency, or other mental load, the monitor's effects on the mind can supersede those of the operator, producing the very state of mind that is least desired. An individual's attempts to gain mental control may thus precipitate the unwanted mental states they were intended to remedy."

[Psychological Science. When the Antidote is the Poison: Ironic Mental Control Processes Wegner, Daniel M.]