Day 7

I hate to say it, but I'm not going to yoga today. Isn't yoga supposed to be all about flexibility?? Just kidding.

Big exam tomorrow. Too much to prepare. Going to do ujjayi pranayama at my desk.

Day 4

I have been grumpy for a lot of the day. I took it easy, got my haircut, watched some parks and rec on hulu. Yet I was still grumpy. And I took it to the mat this evening. I just felt like the room was filled with bad bad vibes. And I felt absolutely no connection to anything other than how hot and sweaty I felt. I had been having problems with billing at the yoga studio and I found out before class that it was because one of the instructors tried to give me a discount rate but it got rejected. So just before I walked into the studio, I paid the full fee for a month of yoga. No student discount. No the-instructor-is-my-friend discount. Nothing. And at the end of the class, I had absorbed all this bad energy and my thought process was something like "I made a mistake! This is bullshit! I just paid $149 for THIS??! Dammit. I'm never coming back here. Dammit Zainab! You should have paid after class. DAMMITDAMMITDAMMIT."

I chilled out a bit on the way home and took the bad vibes as a challenge, a la Ammi. " Oh yea bad vibes? Cuss you. I'm going to come back next Friday night and kick the cuss out of that class." So maybe not exactly chilled out.

I showered, got ready for dinner at S's place and after I put some lipstick on I noticed that my bed wasn't made. So I made it. And it dawned on me - I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Literally the wrong side, the side I never really sleep on or enter or exit the bed on. The side I try to shift some of my weight to once I settle in for sleep so that I don't end up with a lopsided mattress. I don't know why, but it lifted the weight off my shoulders. I laughed, shared with N and now I feel much better.

I was in supine frog today and it was so intense, I had to come out of the posture. And just as I was coming out of it, the teacher was saying something like "breathe through the intensity. it's just like when you have intensity in relationships, things are bad, you are still commited to the relationship. you breathe through it. I guess I just breathed through the bad mood.

Muslim Yogi, Day 2

I went to a basic class today. I thought about going to the "hot power fusion" class that was being taught by one of the first teachers I went to at this yoga studio. But I went to the more basic class instead because it was being taught by a woman of color. And let me tell you, there ain't a lot of color up in that place. A lot of tattoos, a lot of piercings, yes.

I'm always nervous when I go to class with a new teacher. You never know what you're going to get. Am I going to have to ignore the exhortations to chant "om shanti shanti om" while trying to erase the images of Shah Rukh and Deepika popping into my head? Or am I going to feel like I'm being scrutinized and judged for being a softy in a class full of yoga hardbodies? Thankfully she was excellent. Just the right mix of challenge and encouragement, meditation and spirituality.

I felt especially strong in my side angle pose today. It's not generally a pose that I feel much in. It's usually just part of a another sun salutation. But today it was like I could feel my skeleton and muscles shifting, sinking and twisting into the pose. Like a deeper me within me moving into a deeper expression of the pose.

I thought about that today, how yoga makes me feel strong. How I sometimes forget that I'm building muscles and physical strength. Which is a shift. I used to think mostly of yoga as exercise. Exercise I really liked, but exercise nonetheless. But I think just writing about it yesterday shifted my perspective. I'm not sure where I am now, but I'm not obsessing about going to "get fit" or whatever. I'm going to practice.

Muslim Yogi, Day 1

I decided that I'm going to go to yoga every day for a month. The thought scares me. I paused for a good 30 seconds before I typed "every day". I almost typed "5-6 times a week" because I thought about "every day" and it scared me. But I want to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm doing it.

Tonight was the first night. It was also the first time I went to a yoga class since Ammi died. I was scared. I used to go to the 8pm class on Tuesdays with a friend last semester and the teacher would make me cry almost every time I went. He would say something to remind me of my humanity, of the fact that I am living, breathing, growing and I would be overwhelmed. After three and a half years of law school and two years of living in or on the brink of family crisis, it was hard to remember those things. It's so much easier to detach and carry on.

So I was scared I would end up sobbing in class. And I was scared that I wouldn't be strong anymore and I'd just be in child's pose the whole time because I haven't been to a yoga class in two months. But I was also excited. It was like seeing someone you love after a long time. Nervous happy excitement. I don't remember the last time I felt that.

It was difficult and it was good. I think what made it difficult was what made it good. The struggle of it and the peace of it. Sheets and sheets of sweat rolling off my scalp and drip drip dripping off the tip of my nose.

Almost nothing else feels the way yoga feels to me. After class, I feel spiritually and physically alive. But also absolutely still and calm. It makes me feel a little guilty actually. When I would tell my dad that I had gone to yoga, he used to say "what about the other yoga?" meaning, "have you done any of your prayers?" But I decided on the way home that I'm not going to feel guilty anymore. I'm going to fully explore this connection I feel to yoga.

Part of it is political - I want to lean into the boundaries drawn around what it means to be muslim and how to appropriately feel connected to god/earth/nature/love as a muslim. Namaaz just has never done it for me. Yoga does.

I also want to push back on the orientalism that is omnipresent in every yoga studio and yoga class I've ever been to. I don't know a lot about yoga, but I know that it developed in India among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and all other kinds of people and has been practiced in India by all kinds of people for centuries. We don't all have to exotify India and Hindus in order practice yoga, do we?

The other part of it is personal (But can I really separate the two? Can I?). I'm not sure I have ever felt any strong presence of god or spirituality. I feel especially doubtful when I hear other people talk about how they feel connected. And in the last two years, if I had even mustard seed's worth of spiritual feelings in me, it's gone now. I don't feel any kind of presence. Except when I practice yoga. I want to nurture and develop the 5 minutes of peace that I feel after class is over. I want to deepen that feeling. Whatever it is.

So, day 1. Here we go!

spring

UPDATE: I made the pictures bigger because I thought the small size wasn't doing my babies justice.

I think it's my favorite season. Though when I eventually take notice that season are changing, I think to myself "this, this is my favorite season. spring/summer/fall/winter. I love the smell of things growing/warm nights and thunderstorms/crisp air and crunchy leaves/quiet that snow creates."

I noticed today how skinny the squirrels in my parents' backyard have gotten. It seems to happen so quickly. I wonder how their bodies know when the threat of frost is reliably gone.

Today I'm going to start digging up a plot for my garden. I'm honestly scared of the hard work it's going to take to dig up the sod and mix in the compost, transplant the seedlings, and seed the second half of the veggies I bought. I started a few seeds in little biodegradable containers last Friday and I'm so surprised that almost all of them have sprouted already. The day after I started to worry that I didn't put enough soil in some of the containers, that there wouldn't be enough room for them to grow. But then I thought, the only thing these seeds are supposed to do is grow. They are meant to grow, destined to grow. They don't think about whether there's enough soil. All they need is water, sun, and love. Which I give them lots of.

Last night I was talking to Ammi about them and then she said 'You treat them like they are your children.' It's so true! I love to watch them grow. And then I eat them.

here are my babies:

ambitious dino kale and collards

the shy zucchini sprouts

the reluctant jalapenos and karele

say my name, say my name

Twice today, and for two different people, I had to correct the pronunciation of my name. In response to my correction, the first person said in complete earnest honesyt 'oh, i'm sorry. i'm american.' Then she apologized when I told her calmly that I, too, was American. I'm not sure what to take from her statement. Americans are stupid? Have bad hearing? All have anglo-saxon names? Can't pronounce names if they're not anglo-saxon? Perhaps won't pronounce names if they're not anglo-saxon?

The other was a professor. He cold called me 'zuh-NAHB'. I didn't realize at first that he had called on me. After a couple seconds of silence I realized he was looking at me and so I kindly corrected him. He said it would take him a while to get it right, which to me implies that in future he will attempt to pronounce my name correctly. Yet he continued to call me zuh-NAHB throughout class. A few times he called on someone named Anna and each time I thought he was calling on me. The funniest part is that I've been called zuh-NAHB so many times before. Once even by this Muslim guy. I guess it's bad to assume that every Muslim has at least one relative who shares my name. Or has at least gone to Sunday school and learned about the prophet's family.

The hardest part is that I'm not sure most people say my name correctly, including myself sometimes. I let my turkish and arab friends say my name the way they grew up saying it, mostly because I see them bristle everytime they try to say it the Pakistani way. And then there is my Bangladeshi auntie who says it in a way that I don't even understand. But because it's coming from her, I love it and cherish it when she says it. It makes me giggle in fact.

How do you ask people over and over again to recognize your identity in the way you want it to be recognized? How do you ask when you know their version of your name is also technically correct? Is my named identity independent of its cultural and social moorings? And how do you tell people you really really like (or love even?) that they might just be saying your name wrong?



Beyonce looks so young here. I think this is before she discovered she was Sasha Fierce on the inside.

refracted

Yesterday I felt the walls of whiteness closing in again. I think it happens every 3 or 4 months. And I feel utterly helpless. Like no matter what I want or aspire to, someone else holds the reins. I think the feeling was triggered by reading about my friend's experience with the Mississippi Bar. As people of color living in a white white world, is it possible to have a sense of self or accomplishment that isn't mediated or regulated or modulated by whiteness? Law school is like the opposite of shining a beam of light through a prism - you start out with the rainbow and you end up with just white.