You can take the words away, but you will never silence the heart. And if you really knew the heart, you will realize that is the root. It is where truths speak. So sew with the thread and needles, and tighten these lips. No matter what pain, sorrow and perseverance ought to be endured...

passion beats within these veins
& the truth will inevitably be free
so be afraid, if you should.

Sunset

Maybe it's the rational egoist in me stirring, but I made a detour on my way home from campus today. A little Shaf-time couldn't hurt. Lugging my textbooks and Tomato in my broken-zipper TNA bag, I decided to take a stroll by the canal. I witnessed my first sunset in 2011, and I was all alone, seated by the white stones separating the road from the canal. I watched the sun drown every thoughts I had in my head at that moment. All until the sky burned purple and blue.

Pure stress-relieving.
What more, it was surreal.
Sunsets have that effect on me.
I have witnessed many last year, so I guess I am dramatically making my first sunset of the year super-grand, even though it was just an ordinary sunset.
Yeah, I'm a nutcase for having a slight sunset obsession. Chances are....I may randomly start producing a sunset poem soon.

Maternal thinking

As aptly put by Sara Ruddick, it involves loving attentively. As opposed to fantasy or ideal love. It is love, holistically, with humble acceptance of the good, the bad...the real. It is the art of learning to let go, in loving pedagogically. Maternal thinking is an institution practicing attentive love. Thinking as the rational, emphasizing the intellect, as opposed to the stereotypical notion of maternal emotional/intuition. Mother as the mentalist, rather than the behaviorist. Children as open structures, demanding responses to meanings and perceptions to every day life.

Sara Ruddick made me realize that mothers have frequently been overlooked in their position as intellectuals at child rearing. More than we have given them credit for. More than I have given my mother credit for....

The beauty of uncertainty

There is reason why our lives are destined to be,
In a foggy midst of uncertainty.
For which, a premonition or notion of clarity will undermine effort.
And such will too, "defeat the purpose", to find a purpose,
(or purposes for that matter).
& lacking courage or motivation to seek,
Will be the doom of knowledge and wisdom.

So seek, we shall.
& chasing after every uncertainty is our destiny,
With each, unveiled in search for knowledge,
To discover humility from the Greatness of the universe
We hope.
Shall, one day, lead us to wisdom

Tourist

This is yours. You tell yourself it is. You reassure yourself what you have kept in the gripping palm of your hands, and what you hold strong in your hearts are yours. & only yours. Nobody else's. You are disillusioned. By possession. A feeling of triumphant that you forget the temporal sense of time. A notion of eternity, veiling the mirage of hours, minutes...seconds.

You forget that you are a merely embarking a journey. Which one day, will end. Forever is not in your hands. This is not yours. Nothing is in your hands. Look at your palms. Someday, everything will fade. Look into your hearts, what fire will burn when the fuel is dry and gone?

You are but a tourist.
Eternity exists, but it is not yet yours.
At least, not yet. I too, have been blind. & I am still waiting for mine.

Spring Fever

I have Jann Arden crooning Good Mother on my laptop. It is 4:07pm, yet I am sipping my first cup of hazelnut coffee, I woke up at 1pm. I should be reading for my Feminism Final, but I am completely hyped up off TED videos and lethargic enough to do anything right now. The spring season, and sunshine through my white windows have made me giddy. So my room is a little messy, with papers and piles of clothings on the floor. But I have never felt as contented as I do right now since last December. Maybe I've rid the winter blues and depressive mood out of system....

Now, I can't decide whether to continue doing nothing and let my TV be watching me. Or to start Feminism and nerd it up like I have every previous Saturdays for the past 2 months. Hmm.

Maybe I'll pick up Plankton. It's been a while.

Parachute

There is this thing you have on your back,
Moments and times you find it troublesome,
Silly thing would take up such space

And would hover over your shoulder.

For when you soar up above the sky,
The thing will come to follow you,
& when you lose sight of the ground,
Fall into the sky of blue....

It is this thing,
Colourful stripe of yellow and red,
That bursts from behind you
Turning your tumultuous landing
To a panoramic floating bliss

That is the parachute,
A lifelong friend
One who invests much faith in you.

*To you, thanks for being my best friend before anything else. You're my parachute. & I, yours. Happy anniversary

Sparks & Wellington

Walk with me on Sparks St.,
Turn left towards Wellington
I'll point you every first memory
I had in this city,
Of every curve I turned.

& the next time I pass by these places on the bus,
I'll photograph every memory we had
Strolling the streets in my head,
Yearning for the day to come again

It took you having to drive away,
To make me realize,
How crazily I will be missing you.

One of the weirdest moments ever.
I guess I am so used to being the one having to leave town
That it never occurred to me that you'd be the one driving away.

I guess this must be how you've felt,
Every time we say goodbye and I board the bus;
Empty and quiet.

Someday,
We won't have to say goodbye so often.
=) InsyaAllah

Imagine simplicity

In wide open landscape of greens
And the rocky mountain, behind me.
A river all around,
With a waterfall before me.

Where in the spring, the daisies will bloom where we picnic
& the sound of the falls, defrosting from what was left of winter,
Will interrupt our whispers,
To sing wonderful a melody

In the summer, we'll kayak
While you share me your thoughts and dreams
I, in my hay straw hat
You, in your black striped shirt

In the fall, we'll never have to rake the leaves,
For the wind will blow,
That we'll jump and lie on the orange pile,
Laughing like when we first met.

And every winter,
We'll sit by the fireplace,
And watch the snowy hills reminiscing,
The memory of us skiing down the valleys.

Build me my dream home there.

Emotional politics is nurturing the dogmatic mind that is not aware that they are dogmatic. Because they react with their emotions....emotions when not controlled under pressure of populism could nurture dogmatic minds. -Tariq Ramadan

Of Beauty & Vanity

Vanity is like an empty purple envelope.
It is pretentious,
Colourfully addressed on the outside,
& seeking acknowledgments along its path.
Merely evading such privacy, with such bulk nothingness
In one's life.

Beauty is like the an empty space.

It is invisible, but it exists.
Often searched, when already present
Discovered by the intrinsic eyes
So often yearned but never conceived,
For such 'emptiness' is truly a scatter
Of immeasurable entity

Tomorrow;

That I will be strong, despite rejection.
That I accept fate, as a destiny of future ends.
That I be humble by every circumstances that happen to me.
That I continue to move ahead, with whatever that lies before me.

To be hopeful is a sign of strength,

But to expect beyond the reasonable is gluttony.
So I just sit here, and hope and pray,
For whatever happens, is inevitable,
Of what is willed to be.

:) Wish me luck tomorrow, and pray for me.
I hope I get accepted, InshaAllah.

Marriage

Perhaps one of the most prevalent topics in philosophy and modern legality deals with marriage constructed as an 'institution'. Sir William Blackstone of the 18th century marked marriage as the 'civil death of women'. The status of a married woman was subsumed to the person hood of her husband's upon marriage. This was a system known as coverture. Eventually, the transition of person hood in marriage evolved from status to contract. We live in a century where marital literature has become consistent to legal vocabularies such as obligations, mutual agreement, offer and acceptance. Or maybe because I study law, I happen to encounter too much of this. But legal jargons often conjure in articles concerning divorce, such as benefits, prenuptial agreements, and access or custody. Anyhow, what was thought to bring equality and autonomy towards married women became a systematic form of discrimination to feminists everywhere.

The irony remains that marriage as a private practice is clandestinely oppressive. But when it is publicly acknowledged, not much has changed. In an article entitled Against Marriage and Motherhood by Claudia Card, the state as a third party in relationships poses a problematic condition.Card opposes marriage in its entirety claiming it to be an act of 'institutional slavery'. Now, clearly an abolitionist, pro-marriage, law student and 'undecided-unknown-unlabelled-feminist'  like me find this really fascinating. Of course Card blatantly puts out that she does not deny the rights of marriage.

Slavery requires an objectification of an individual, coercion and labor. I am curious about the objectification of individuals who engage in marriage. Do men and women become properties of...let's just say, the juristic entity, 'Marriage'? I mean, if corporations can be considered as legal persons, why not marriage? Legal ownership requires control, reaping of benefits, a right to sell and purchase, and a right to alienate others from enjoyment of property. Marriage controls a certain forms of behavior, and limits some social freedom. Marriages often result to a variety of health, pensions and dental coverage, consistent to the reaping of benefits. Can you sell and purchase individuals to marriage? Hmm. Maybe you'd require a next-friend in court to represent on behalf of Marriage, to buy and sell people to Marriage (think governments, maybe? I don't know). And finally, Marriage can alienate individuals from others to exclusively enjoy Marriage... Pardon my dirty thoughts but...uh, 'sexytime' as alienation??

Claudia Card claims we are all pressured to conform to the norms of society by engaging in marriage.  Thus, pressure is the coercion component, so I suppose 'slavery' in an invisible sense. Conformity is an interesting notion to ponder about. Morality requires conformity as a social cohesion. So if marriage constitutes as a form of conformity, does that make us who believe in marriage as also 'enslaved' to morality? Personally, morality defines social structures and behaviors. Deviation of the norm is acceptable, unless it infringes upon the rights of another (consistent to John Stuart Mill's Principle of Harm). Back to marriage as pressured, individuals make an autonomous and rational decision prior to being married. If a couple marries because of 'societal coercion', then why is marriage to blame and labelled as 'slavery' when the focal root of pressure is really 'society'?

Finally, labour in marriage is the notion of couples working hard to sustain marriage. The economic, emotional, physical, intellectual contributions to maintaining the structure of this relationship. The hope in this lies in the pursuit of happiness.

Marriage from Blackstonian analogy of civil death in status to contractual. I see a lot of materialism in marriage constructed as an institution. I honestly believe humanity has forgotten what love really means from the depictions of marriage as something economical and status-related. Maybe Claudia Card captured the empirical aspects, but I truly believe marriage goes beyond the physical realm. You need faith to know what love means. Faith is metaphysical, and so is love. Neither are material. So maybe we've loss touch with the spiritual essence in marriage? Maybe that's why divorce rates are so high! Even Slavoj Zizek said something along the lines of the media (as a source of the material) has distorted the perception of 'true love' as something unrealistic.

Contract law has taught me that humans are interconnected beings, always engaging in some form of relationship. Take a step further, and the interconnection we share with those around us in our daily activity contributes to a form of happiness. The connection we share with a significant other, provides us with a sense of altruism and partnership That when we feel the most solitary and lonesome in certain occasions, we have someone to find comfort in. I know for sure that spiritual fulfillment is not a social construct.

The saying goes: "Only a life lived for others is worth living"-Albert Einstein.
Take it from the man known to us as a genius. I'm sure such connotation does not mean slavery at the extreme end, but rather a balanced in understanding the self and understanding the other...and building mutuality in love.

I believe, humanity is not instinctively selfish. Probably just misguided.

We each have a purpose....
Whatever that may be for you, I hope find find eternal love and get there.

Yeah...I'm ranting.

Him.

I don't know how I got here.

But I know I wouldn't be here without His will.

I don't know where I'll be next,

But I pray He guides me to a path of beauty and honesty.

That He lights my way,

And more than anything,

The ways of my family, beloved, friends and everybody.

That He grants us all strength, peace, security and faith.

I know He is here with me. 

& I know He still loves me.

Your note

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird,
and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours,
we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness."

...and call it love.
Your fb note posted 2 years and a month ago was an incomplete quote from Dr. Seuss I stumbled upon moments ago.
You're my weirdo.  <3 =]

Concrete City

She tells me I'm sleepless
In Seattle
I won't be, anybody
Here

It's a concrete city
And everybody
Has someplace to be
But
Me

By the sidewalk
She says
It rains
Heavily

By the sidewalk
She stays
To be
Somebody

Deflated Balloon

While I sit in the library at 9:36 am on a Wednesday morning. Chewing on my toast with peanut butter jelly, feeling eleven again. And sipping my cup of instant hazelnut coffee in my mug, feeling twenty. I suddenly feel like a deflated balloon.

I don't know why.
I just do.

A new chapter.

Nineteen was a 'meh' year.
Here's to a new decade.
& happiness, love, beauty in simplicity.

And a life of surprises, without expectations.
My new beginning.
A crisp blank pages of white notebook,
waiting to be filled.