My Music Babes

As salaam alaikum,

There are a few artists, some singers/songwriters, some vocalists, whose songs or renditions of standards have functioned like the soundtrack for my life at certain times. These are my Music Babes. The lyrical loves of my life, my vocal aspirations. These artists are (or were) prolific, soulful, genius, amazing. A unique, full, gorgeous expression of the human experience. I love them!

This is minha homenagem to them.




(1) Stevland Hardaway Morris - Mr. Stevie Wonder! He is my favorite artist of all time, and always will be. Where do I begin? Probably the first song I remember of his was my mother's favorite when I was about three years old, "Part Time Lover." Did not understand a word of it, but I can still see my mother dancing around the family room of my childhood house...especially since that moment was captured on VHS, now transferred to DVD. The next song that stands out in my memory was, "Another Star," which began with a cadence that reminded me of my brother's head. For my mother, my brother's song was "All I Do." I remember her saying how beautiful "As" was when I was in high school, but I wouldn't fully appreciate Stevie until college, when I fell in love for the first time. The theme song for that love will always and forever be "Overjoyed," a song that I faintly remembered from an 80s or R&B CD collection commercial from the 90s, such that when I hear one part of the song, I think of that blue screen that they would show at the end of the commercials. Where else do I go with Stevie Wonder? "I Believe When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever?" "Pastime Paradise?" "For Once in My Life," to go a little older? "Moon Blue," to go a little bit more contemporary? The timeless "Isn't She Lovely?" Masha'Allah! What a beautiful man!

Favorite lyrics: "We all know sometimes life's hates and troubles/ can make you wish you were born in another time and space./ But you can bet your life times that and twice its double/ that God knew exactly where He wanted you to be placed./ So next time when you say you're in it but not of it/ you're not helping to make this a place sometimes called Hell./ Change your words into Truth and then change that Truth into Love/ and maybe our children's grandchildren and their great-grandchildren will tell." - "As" (see above)




(2) Djavan Caetano Viana - Djavan! When did I first discover this musical genius, my Brazilian, seeing Stevie Wonder? I think I met him while touring Pandora sometime after I took my Brazilian history course in college. In that course, I was exposed to the song, "Haiti" by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil from Tropicália 2. I made a station out of that, and I think songs by Djavan came up from that. The first song I really remember from him has to be "Doidice" (my upload onto youtube, gente! It wasn't there before...). I just listened to it quietly while studying during my first year of medical school, until the last verses of the song, which I recognized were in Spanish. From then commenced my absolute obsession with this song. I looked up the lyrics, translated them the best I could with my Portuguese for Spanish Speakers knowledge, ordered Bird of Paradise on CD Universe so I could own the song (since it was not available for download), opened the cover, and found the lyrics that floored me: "After I discovered that there is you, I never existed again." Damn. That was me and MTQ! I thereafter discovered that I loved Djavan as an artist in general. My favorite songs of his to sing include "Meu Bem Querer," and "Pétala." My favorite song to samba and sing to will always be "Flor de Lis," as I did many a time in my samba course. And while "Doidice" will always be my favorite, "Oceano" is I think one of his most beautiful. I'm not done learning his standards, as there are others, but this man is brilliant...Stevie Wonder agrees. They did "Samurai" together! Beautiful man in his 60s with his beautiful son, Max Viana, by his side at both concerts I went to.

Favorite lyrics: "Me apaixonei?/ Talvez, pode ser./ Enloqueci?/ Não sei, nunca vi./ Preciso sair/ depois que eu descobri que há você,/ nunca mais existi." - "Doidice" (see above)
Translated: I fell in love? Maybe, it could be. I went crazy? Don't know, I've never seen it. I need to get out. After I discovered that there is you, I never existed again.)

AND

"Assim que o dia amanheceu lá no mar alto da paixão/ dava pra ver o tempo ruir." - "Oceano" (see above)
Translated: Now that the day has dawned there in the high tides of passion, one is able to see time ruin. (So poetic!)




(3) Elis Regina Carvalho Costa - Elis Regina. Before I heard this woman's voice and knew who she was, all of my music babes had been mainly men. For this reason, my alto is the most developed, although I think I touch the range of a mezzo-soprano. Then, I hear the Portuguese version of "Corcovado" by my one of my standards, my original babes, Tom Jobim (to the point I'd consider naming one of my kids Antônio Carlos). I didn't know at the time who the female vocalist was of this song I'd heard the smokey voice of Astrud Gilberto sing in English, but I liked learning to sing along with it. She enunciated so clearly, so uniquely...it was gorgeous. I discovered later it was Elis. I wouldn't know about her until I traveled to Brazil, coming back from the public health center in São Paulo, turning on the small television in the pousada to the novela, "Ciranda da Pedra," and hearing Elis belt out "Redescobrir," which was the theme of the novela. I still get saudades when I see that opening...that was my first taste of Brazil, as I barely ate in those first few days, nervous as I was that I was in a country where I didn't really speak the language. And in a way, my finding Elis was really a rediscovery, because she died in 1982, before I was born and 26 years before I would know any of her music. But her vocal interpretations of Brazilian standards, which got her credited as creating Música Popular Brasileira, inspired me in ways that a female singer never had. I found myself aspiring to her range, her passion, her soul. I laughed with her in "Vou Deitar e Rolar," and "Canto de Ossanha." I danced gently over her enunciation in "Só Tinha de Ser Com Você," which I have vowed will be a lullaby for my children. I fell in love forever after uniquely with her interpretation of "Aguas de Março," my favorite song of all time, as well as Brazil's. And I will always be blown away and forever grateful for her rendition of a song I had known for years from Pandora, but never like this: "O Trem Azul." There are so much more of Elis I've yet to learn and hear, but with "O Trem Azul," I get a little taste of what it means for there to be life after death.

Favorite Vocals: "O Trem Azul," when she sings along with the electric guitar. Or, just listen to the song A Capella.

These are three artists whose music I have a lot of and never tire of, the songwriters and singers of the soundtracks of my life. I fell in love with MTQ over "Overjoyed," and it faded away with "Doidice." And B went away with "O Trem Azul." Just a few examples. Beautiful people with a most beautiful gift from God! Masha'Allah!

[uncensored]: The Song I'll Stop Singing

As salaam alaikum,

Sometimes, there are songs that I start off singing and then I decide to stop singing because I either no longer like them or I just can't get with the lyrics.

An example are the following lyrics to this song that used to come up on my Pandora from Toquinho: "As vezes quero creer mas não consigo. É tudo uma total insensatez. Aí pergunto a Deus, 'Escute, amigo. Se for pra desfazer, por que que fez?"

Which translates: "Sometimes I want to believe but I'm not able to. It's complete nonsense. Then I ask God, 'Listen, friend. If it tends towards entropy, why did you make it?"

It's a question a lot of us encounter on either side of the believing pole as we develop spiritually, but I can't bring myself to sing lyrics such as these. While as part of my spirituality, I don't cut out the music, I am media literate and spiritually literate...I don't take things into my body that are more harmful for me than good, and that includes music with lyrics that are "not edifying," as my parents told me.

So while I am a believer alhamdulillah and while I don't cognitively shake when I hear lyrics like that...why would I take it into my body?

Allah (swt) made us so wonderfully...we make associations. Towards the end of my relationship with B, I started hearing the song in my head, "Silly fool, how'd you lose such a good thing," lyrics from Teddy Pendergrass, in reference to him, and also "Next Lifetime" by Erykah Badu when I started to realize that he wasn't the one. Our minds make associations like that, and since I listen to a lot of music, I make a lot of musical associations.

So I don't want to be going through a trial in life or witnessing the hardship of others and hear, "As vezes quero creer mas não consigo..."

But that's not the type of song I'm talking about. The type of song I'm talking about is like the one I wrote about in one of my chapters of RMD (it's been a long time!), a Desirée chapter called, "The No-Sex Violators." It goes a little something like this:

   No sex before marriage. At fifteen, this was just another song that Desirée heard her parents sing. It wasn’t one of their favorites yet, but Desirée knew it soon it would be.

The school is Godless was Desirée’s mother’s favorite tune these days. If her mom could, Desirée knew that she would forbid her from tenth grade health class because of the way they taught sex outside of the context of God. If her mother knew about the whole putting the condom on the banana thing, she’d probably be appalled. Desirée appreciated her teacher’s respect for her ability to make her own decisions, at least, with the safe sex curriculum. It was all in principle, though—a different principle than the one that made her refuse to put the condom on the banana she was given. She felt as if she were being mocked. In reality, she didn’t know what she stood for as she dodged the condom water balloons made by the guys in her class and made her way to Western Civ during passing time.

 No sex before marriage didn’t mean much to her because marriage at that point seemed so far away. It seemed a near impossible feat. She couldn’t even get a boy who was worthwhile to like her, so marriage and, she guessed, sex, were far away.

Oh yeah, putting the condom on the banana in health class...haha, Desirée chapters at some points were more autobiographical than fiction. This was one of the points. I didn't tell my mother until years later about putting the condom on the banana...and I did not participate. I figured I wouldn't be having sex any time soon...

...though as my roommate maintains, I just avoided having a teenage pregnancy. And it's true...I was a bit of a boy-crazy little girl. I had a different crush every year from the time I was five until I was 12. That last one, seventh grade, was a heavy one because the estrogen had kicked in...I had been menstruating for two years and puberty was behind me. I was ready. Me and this boy were going to get married at 20, move to Detroit and I was going to have a boy that I would make his junior. Yeah. I also got propositioned for the first time at 15 while at a conference in a hotel away from home. I knew nothing about birth control and was not that concerned that I didn't know. Teenage brain alert!

The little boy tried, too. He was 16...had his eyes set on me. I felt validated, as a teenage girl would, but I think what happened was this other guy who liked me, who was 14, kicked the other guy out of my room, telling him to, "stay away from [his] woman!" Yeah. Shenanigans.

But I digress.

So songs are powerful, whether they're actual songs or figurative songs, our own personal refrains that we repeat at intervals, that we're known for...

My mother's picked up her grandmother's: "Be thy labor, big or small. Do it well, or not at all." I'll pick up my grandmother's...no, not "I'll beat your ass until you shit," but maybe the, It'll be alright, "Eat a little shit, won't hurt," refrain. Me gusta.

But from here on out, actually, I vow to stop singing the following songs: Guys are all full of crap, men aren't worth two craps, the quality of men is zero right now, there are no good men out there...and all variations. Chose your favorite. I personally like the two craps one.

Why am I going to stop doing that? Because I realize what I've always known...it's not true!

I know it's not true, because if I didn't know it was true, I wouldn't be so frustrated by so many of the men who are before me...I would be resigned. If I didn't know it was true, I would have given up long ago. If I didn't know it was true, I wouldn't have been willing to take the L with B and taken the chance in that relationship...

It is not true!

I'm also going to stop singing, "All the good ones are already married" song, because that's also not true.

I look at this guy in my global reproductive health class. He's a really smart OB/GYN from Nigeria (Igbo kwenu!) and I'm really inspired by the work he's done and the perspective that he brings to the table. He's one of the good ones, yes, and he's already married, yes.

But then, there's this other guy. I've gotten to know him in the course of my year here...I think he was in my roommate's ethics class. He's a funny guy, usually sits with us during lunch and distracts us from work telling us stories about what it's like in Nigeria...he has one of those personalities that pops, really. I've gone to a couple of public health school parties and people have commented about us together...our interactions and whatnot. And at first I dismissed it, like, oh, that was just us acting silly. But now, the tone has changed now that he knows I'm no longer with B...who he met when we went out for the first time to Harvard's celebration of the 60th anniversary of Nigeria's independence...gala...I know, that's a long name. Anyway...

He's a physician in Nigeria, he's going to go back to Nigeria to complete his training after he's done with the MPH, and we're all done in about 3 weeks. I'll be his facebook friend, so we'll keep in touch. I've purposefully kept myself at bay because I feel like he may like me and I don't want to encourage him, but I'm to this event that the Nigerian student organization (that mysteriously I was not invited to join) is putting on this evening...

...and I was coming home to eat after an interview this morning and I just had to stop myself and reflect...wait, this is a good guy. I don't see him in class because he's in a different major, but he probably has a lot to offer. He's funny, he's kind...haha, he reminds me of a short, young, Nigerian Santa Claus, haha. He's shorter than me. And here I am, doing what I know how to do best...keeping myself aloof and avoiding.

He's actually not unattractive...you know, besides been a little short-n-stout, but you know...there's also the thing of him going back to Nigeria soon...and me thinking of him more like a cousin than someone I'd be interested in...more like a friend.

So no, there are good guys around! I'm friends with many many of them, and most of them are not attracted to me, but sometimes, they are...and I'm the one who doesn't respond. I pass them by because, realistically, someone better will come along for these guys, someone who shares the passion for them, someone who fits into their lives...but they are good men.

I'm just not going to like all good men, and not all good men will like me. That's fine.

But the more I've sung the song about no good men being around, the more I've come to believe it, being blinded to the fact that most of my guy friends are good men...including the brother friends, these are good men who, if they were so interested and if I were so interested, I wouldn't mind...I guess, going forward toward a nikah?

Haha, I'm still not sure what to do in terms of courtship with Muslim men...I think it's all a very individual path.

But yes, let me stop believing that so I can see more all of the good men around me, so maybe next time I'll pay more attention when there is obvious interest.

So I'll stop singing that song.

Rocket Love

As salaam alaikum,

Stevie Wonder always seems to capture my emotions...I guess he is my musical soul...composer.

An oldie but goodie that describes how I felt and continue to feel. Rocket Love.

"I longed for you since I was born, a [man] sensitive and warm, and that you were..." If I may switch genders.




You took me riding on a rocket, gave me a star, but at a half-a-mile from heaven, you dropped me back onto this cold, cold world...

Wednesday Word Vomit

As salaam alikum,

Although I avoided making this thing student-y inasmuch as possible, I must say...aaaaahhh! To be done with that literature review is the sweetest feeling I've known in about one month's time. It was 17 pages of gold...well, not really. But it was 17 pages.

In other news, I keep writing zingers to B. Man oh man, if I do say so myself, when I'm going through stuff, I write very well. We gchatted and it was the first time we talked about the break up. He brought it up, saying that now that we're no longer together (whose fault is that, o senhor?) he needs to get out of Boston at least once-monthly. He didn't set up these trips when we were together. I then said aww, and told him I'd had a dream about him, and we were broken up in the dream.

He asked what happened. Why, I don't know, so I told him.

This is a true story.

In the dream, we were sitting together on the ground...either on the floor of my apartment or outside (I can't remember which). I didn't set up this part. Anyway, we were drawing a D on a piece of paper. And he mentioned something he wanted for "our kids." And then I reminded him that they were just his kids, that they weren't our kids anymore. And then he said, "Oh."

His gchat response? "I see."

I mean, dude, you asked! He knows my dreams very well by now. The first one that he was in, we switched genders, and he became the girl and I was the guy. Heh, he hated that dream, but it was because of his lack of taking initiative, something that I guess by being in a relationship with me he realized that he needed to do...

But anyway, I wrote him this awesome email that I would post, but since this thing is searchable I feel like I would increase the chance of him finding this site, if he hasn't already. But I liked it.

And after I wrote it, I just felt...even better than I'd already been feeling upon returning to Boston from my spring break. I felt relieved to talk about some of the things that I did with him, things that I felt like he should know. I illustrated him explicitly the process I'm going through to remove the little reminders of him from me, the way that he'd become enmeshed in my life. If we're going to be "friends," I can't have any secrets eating at me. By openly talking about us no longer being together, it gave me a voice to talk about how hard it was for me and that, even now, as I begin to move from my apartment, if I find small reminders of him here or there, it will give me pause, and I will reflect on it with a little sadness.

But then I said that it's little sadness that makes samba sweet. Then I hit him with the words of a samba that he liked from Djavan, when we went to the Djavan concert in one of our early outtings.

Mas não sei o que fez tudo mudar de vez. Onde foi que eu errei. Eu só sei que amei, que amei, que amei, que amei...

Which translates to, "But I don't know what happened for everything to change suddenly. Where did I make the mistake? I only know that I loved, that I loved, that I loved, that I loved..."

And I told him that I was glad that I loved, and the little bit of sadness makes my life more like samba, one of my preferred art forms.

A bit much? That wasn't the only thing that I included in the email, so it was even more.

But yes, this is Wednesday Word vomit...and I feel so relieved to get it all out!

I don't have class tomorrow, so I'll probably go in to my practicum site at 9:30am to meet with my lady at 10am. I'll get some work done for my practicum class as well as I'll work on my project a little bit, and then I plan to head home in the afternoon.

The bottom line of all of this is...there's a lot more work left to do for my practicum and this is only the tip of the iceberg, but at least I have two days of no class to do work, that I would take B back if I were convinced that he had direction in his life and that we could spiritually line up, but I'm unconvinced, so I'm not taking him back...and I'm back on the market!

Hahaha, this is a little tongue in cheek, but do any of you readers know of some brothers that may be interested? Or if you're brothers, are you interested? If so, there's another Muslimah available!

...emotionally, mentally and spiritually available for the first time maybe since I was 19, really.

End vomit.

Just Crazy

As salaam alaikum,

This has been the song of the day. It pretty much explains my reflection right now. Simple. Succinct. Not overly emotional, just sentimental enough. Repetitive like the thoughts are, captures the quiet astonishment. Dori Caymmi, "Só Louco."




Just crazy
He loved like I loved
Just crazy
He wanted the good that I wanted

Ah, foolish heart!
Why did you make me suffer?
Because to understand love
It's necessary to love?
Why?

Just crazy...

Amei! Hahaha, literally!

In other news, I sent B a final email, and I vowed not to contact him for a while, because I don't think it's actually helping me as I thought it would. However, I said everything I wanted to say, and I think that's sufficient for now. He's read it, no doubt, but he's not going to respond. I think weeks without seeing each other will be a good thing, not only so he understands what it's like to not have me in his life anymore but for me to be able to get back to a good baseline completely without too many residual feelings.

My hands are really dry. I need lotion.

In other, other news...Rep. Peter King? I haven't had energy to follow that fiasco. Achoo! I'm allergic to posturing. I will inform myself by catching up with the Daily Show and Colbert tomorrow, after I finish my last exam of the quarter. Two and a half months and I'm back to medical school...

And the struggle continues.

Elis Regina

As salaam alaikum,

Her songs are perhaps made more poignant knowing that she died at the age of 36 after battling years of depression and bouts of substance abuse. Even without that knowledge, listening to her voice, the sheer emotion that she injects into a song, and when so lucky, watching her perform on stage, gesticulating, dancing, doing her squinting-wide smile and laughing as she plays with the chorus and the lyrics...there is just nothing like experiencing songs as performed by Elis Regina.

I sing her "Aguas de Março" now as my default. In RMD, I imagine it as 18-year-old Desirée's theme song (as opposed to 15-year-old Desirée's "Sina" by Djavan). I barely knew of her when I heard her version of "Corcovado" with Tom Jobim and loved how the female singer enunciated each word, but I didn't know who she was. Then, while I was in Brazil, the first novela I saw when I returned from work in São Paulo was (what I discovered later was the remake of) "Ciranda de Pedra."

I watched the opening credits of the show and I was entranced, not only because the choreography was interesting for a period novel, but because of the song. See for yourself:







 Saudades total! I hear this, and I'm back in my little room in my pousada in Sampa in the winter, turning it on unknowingly to the all-powerful Globo and the novela das seis, wondering what I'm doing here in this country whose language I hardly speak. The feelings come back and I tear up a little...what a beautiful experience life is!

It was through discovering this song, "Redescobrir," (Rediscover), that I rediscovered Elis Regina, A Pimintinha (little pepper), A Furacão (The Hurricane).

I then found that she did a version of my favorite song, "Aguas de Março," and I slowly discovered some of her other songs. Slowly, because I have the tendency to find songs that I like and just listen to them for weeks before branching out and finding new songs.

So this weekend, as I was playing around with GrooveShark, I made a playlist of Elis' songs. So far, I am really loyal to ones I've heard before...but then there was this song that I've heard and liked by Lô Borges and I'd never heard the version that she does.

And as 70s as the music accompaniment is, her voice is timeless. I love that version of the song...it has supplanted all other versions for me. Such passion, such energy, it's some of the best of Elis I've heard.

The song? "O Trem Azul," or "The Blue Train."






Here's the translation of the lyrics:

Things that we forget to say
Phrases that the wind comes sometimes to remind me
Things that remained a long time without being said
The song of the wind doesn't tire of soaring

You take the blue train
The sun on your head
The sun hits the blue train
You in my head
The sun in my head

The chorus is a cooler play on words in Portuguese:

Você pega o trem azul
O sol na cabeça
O sol pega o trem azul
Você na cabeça
O sol na cabeça

Adorei!

I read one of the comments. It translates to the following:

"I remember that the first time that I heard this song with Elis' voice I almost went mad. Even though I had heard the original, when I heard her and with that choir at the end, really, I cried."

Yes. Que emoção!

People say her daughter, Maria Rita, may be, in fact, a better singer than her mother. I do like some of Maria Rita's music, and she may be technically a better singer, but nothing will replace the passionate phrasing of her mother, and it's not fair for either of them to make that comparison.

Elis will always be one of my favorites because she sings songs the way that I want to live my passions in this life...full, fleshy, deliberate, meticulous, purposefully haphazard, casually in love with abandon.

Love is like this. It's like rediscovering the wonderful that life is that we learn as a child and are convinced that we're forced to forget as adults. Eu vou redescobrindo...

[uncensored]: Love / Haiti

As salaam alaikum,

So...I love him. Who? B. Yep. That's all.


Yesterday, I was so inspired, since I didn't have any reading for my Community Health Centers class, to translate the lyrics to the song, "Haiti" by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. So I did. It's probably rough in parts because I don't understand nearly any of the references in the third stanza. All with the help of Google translate.

Here's my favorite version of the song--the long version with Caetano Veloso only:




And here are the lyrics:

If you’re ever invited to ascend up to the courtyard
Of the House of Jorge Amado Foundation*

To see the front row of soldiers, almost all black
Wringing the necks of black delinquents,
Of mulatto thieves and others, almost white

Treated like blacks
Just to show the other almost-blacks,
(And they’re almost all black)
And the poor almost whites like blacks
How it is that blacks, the poor and mulattoes,
And the almost white/almost black that the same poor, are treated

 
And it doesn’t matter if the eyes of the whole world
Could, for a moment, rewind to a time
Where slaves were punished
And today, a drumming, a drumming
With the purity of uniformed high school kids
On the day of a parade
And the epic grandeur of a developing people
Attracts us, dazzles us, stimulates us

Nothing matters:
Not the trace of excess  
Nor the lens of Fantástico**,
Nor a Paul Simon CD
Nobody, nobody is a citizen
If you are going to see the party in Pelô***, and even if you’re not

Think of Haiti, pray for Haiti
Haiti is here
Haiti is not here

And on TV if you see a congressman in ill-concealed panic
Presenting any, but really any, any, any
Education plan

That sounds easy
That seems easy and fast
And it will represent a threat to democracy
On primary school level
And if that same congressman defends the adoption of capital punishment
And the venerable Cardinal says he sees so much spirit in the fetus
And none in the criminal
And if, while running the light, the old light, red, habitual
You notice a man pissing on the street corner over a glossy bag of garbage from Leblon****
And when you hear the smiling silence of São Paulo

Before the massacre:

111 defenseless prisoners, but prisoners are almost all black
Or almost black, or almost white/almost black that are the same poor

And the poor are like the rotten and everyone knows how blacks are treated
And when you go, turn towards the Caribbean
And when you fuck without a condom
And submit your intelligent participation in the blockade of Cuba...
 
Think of Haiti, pray for Haiti
Haiti is here
Haiti is not here


*Jorge Amado was a Brazilian author whose works dealt mainly with the poor black/mulatto populations of Bahia. His estate is preserved in Salvador and its supposed to promote the culture of Bahia.
** Fantastico is a popular Brazilian newsmagazine that shows up on their superchannel, Globo. It's like a week-in-review.
*** Pelo is a neighborhood in Salvador (as it's known to people in Bahia) that is a popular tourist attraction. It's the Historic Center of the Salvador, one where slaves were publicly beaten. The neighborhood is home to the first slave market on the continent.
****Leblon is the richest neighborhood in Rio. That's why the trash bag is glossy. It has the highest property values in all of Latin America.


I love B because I can translate this song, send him these lyrics, and he'll absolutely appreciate this more than anyone else I know. This is from an email I sent him yesterday. And of course, that's not the only thing...but it's little things like this that make us realize how much we make sense...

Keep me in your du'as!

No Lyrics

As salaam alaikum,

"E eu que era triste, desrente deste mundo, ao encontrar você eu conheci o que é felicidade, meu amor." Tom Jobim, "Corcovado"

And me, who was sad, disbeliever in this world, upon meeting you I knew what happiness is, my love.

...but that wasn't quite it, as pretty as it sounds. I was sad, yes, but was I really a disbeliever? I don't think I was. I think I still believed, but I struggled with understanding how to believe, and I still do. I think we all do. We trust God but since we don't know His plan or His methods, really, we don't know from what direction our prayers will be answered, nor in what plane our life will realize itself.

Because, face it, we Muslims, what we know in this world is the path of select Muslims before us, things that worked for them, paths that they believe to be the most right, the best fit. Our cultures dictate that, often, our families help guide us there. But these ways, though they may be the straight path, may not be the only way...

But I digress. I was sad, but I wasn't a disbeliever. I was disillusioned, yes, because I didn't understand and I didn't know how to be while I waited for my life to realize itself. I didn't like how I was feeling, and I sought to remedy it by submitting that I gave up on relationships, that I would dedicate my life to helping my brother, going back to living near my family. I no longer actively sought a relationship...and to weeks later, it happened, as soon as I was no longer seeking it.

Upon meeting him, I didn't know happiness. I already knew happiness. He didn't supplement my preexisting happiness, but he complemented it. With him, I'm coming to know a peace in my life that I hadn't had before. However, I fear no human being. The peace will increase as I trust him more, yes, but the peace that I know now is in coming to understand a little bit more God's plan for me...

For everything that I feel, I don't think there are lyrics that adequately explain it all.

There have been lyrics for other things ("Overjoyed" and "Doidice" for the entrance and exit of MQ), there have been melodies for sentiments ("Brandy" by the O'Jays for the dissolution of the remnants of feelings for MQ), but what I feel now, right now, has no lyrics, has no melody. It has no song.

And I think this is why, really, I can suddenly do without music. I clung to music at a time when I felt it expressed what I was feeling...from my hope to my sorrow, from my joy to my angst. But I'm growing now in a complicated spiritual state that most lyrics oversimplify or ignore. Maybe few artists come from this place.

I'm always a Muslim. So while other people would be wondering, "Am I falling in love?" in this whole process, I'm sitting here wondering, "What am I learning about Allah (swt) in this experience?" What am I learning about my relationship with God, His plan for me, how I am to be Muslim in this unique place and time in history, as a native-born United States Muslim, born into a capitalist culture that has lost hold of many of its original values, born into a struggling black subculture, born surrounded by the remnants of a once fervent black nationalism, born into an interfaith household, born exactly where God wanted me to be placed, but mainly, born Muslim?

What am I learning from this experience? I have to make things up along the way. I have no model of how to be everything that I am, so, with God's guidance, I have to pave a new way.

I am also getting to the base of so many of my intentions and getting to purify them. So many times I would participate in activities either to be seen or in hopes of finding someone along the way. Interestingly, the book club where I met B, I did for my friend, and it was a comfortable place. It wasn't to be seen. It was to eat dinner and talk about Africa. My participating in any event is now clear of this ulterior motive...ulterior though not necessarily sinister motive.

Love for me, I think, is so tied in religion and such a spiritual experience, I don't think anything wordly like the lustful lyrics to a song will ever explain what I'm going through as I arrive there.

Love Hasn't Changed

As salaam alaikum,

It took me 9 hours yesterday to twist my hair. Whoo! What an ordeal. It's my fault for making them too small. I meant to write this entry yesterday when I was so inspired, but after running errands today, this is the first chance I have to do it. Just as well.

I'm seeing B after not having seen him for two and a half weeks this evening, iA. And I barely talked to him over break, too. I maybe had hour long conversations with him three times...the rest of the time, it was trying to text him or just failing to call him. Break was lonelier, even though in the presence of my family, this time and I don't know why. I guess I just feel like my parents have their own routine and whereas those first few times I came home, we'd hang out, this time it was like I was just an accessory. They enjoyed my time at home, though.

But that's not what I was going to write about...

If this were even a few months back and someone told me that my life depended on not listening to music anymore, I would have declared myself unable. Now...I think I would actually be able to pull it off.

Why?

Because, I felt entitled.

What?

Yeah, it's confusing, but let me explain.

As I became a more practicing Muslim in college, I learned so many things about Islam and Muslims that I never knew. For example, growing up, I had little idea that some Muslims consider music to be haram. I mean, I did remember that my mother would "fast" music for the entire month of Ramadan, a tradition I upheld for about 6 Ramadans...so, stemming from her reasons for doing that, I could understand it. As I worked to decide how conservative I wanted to be, I considered stopping listening to music altogether.

In the meantime, I think Yusuf Islam had come back to music and I read part of his explanation why...I never got through the whole thing. I considered that pretty powerful...a revert who had denounced music, abandoning his career, coming back to music.

So, I resolved to employ what I now know is media literacy...I am very cognizant of what I take into my body, what it means, how it affects me. I absolutely will not listen to music with Atheist themes, even if slight, or any songs that go against my theology (if they are religious songs).

But now, at this juncture in my life, I see the wisdom in not listening to music that I didn't see before...

I said I felt entitled. That was the other reason why I didn't give up music. I was trying to be patient, and in the name of Allah (swt) and my Islam, I avoided all relationships so that I would be sure that sex would only happen in marriage, and that the process of my getting married was done properly. But at the same time, I was lonely, very lonely. There was a time in my late teen years where I cried myself to sleep nearly every night, I think, for every day that I was still alone. At the same time, I prayed and I prayed and I became more practicing and I prayed...but without the fullness of faith that all would be alright.

So, in my mind, I was suffering, but for me, it was a self-righteous struggle. Yes, I was just another Muslimah striving in the way of Allah (swt), striving, praying to achieve patience, persevering, in a time when my body is ready and fully capable of being a wife and a mother. Listening to music, whose themes addressed love and for me was often a catharsis...was the least I could do, the least of several other evils in my mind.

Because I was waiting, because I was perpetually single and in wait for half my religion to realize itself, I was entitled to have my music.

But now, I'm moving forward and on into uncharted territory. I'm never going to be perpetually single again...even if this relationship were to end, the 7 year drought (if I count from 18 onward) has ended.

And it's not that I rationalized that I no longer need music...I just, no longer feel about music the way I used to.

That being said, I did listen to about an hour and a half of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs on youtube while doing my hair and still enjoyed it, so it's not like I totally dislike music. I can just do without it.

So if someone told me that my life depended on it or that it was better at this point for me not to listen to it, I'd be able to do it.

But still, love hasn't changed.

And what do I mean by that?

I listen to some of the songs and I remember how I felt about my last major crush, MQ. The song that describes how I felt when I first started falling for him was "Overjoyed," by Stevie Wonder ("And though you don't believe that they do, they do come true. For did my dreams come true when I looked at you. And maybe, too, if you would believe, you, too, might be overjoyed, over love, over me"). The song of my disillusionment was Djavan's "Doidice." (translated: "I fell in love? Maybe, it could be. I went crazy? I don't know, I've never seen it. I need to leave. After I discovered that there is you, I never existed again.")

There's not one song that describes what it's like for me when I fall in love. The reason I can go without listening to music now is that I now feel validated...what I felt, those crushes, I fell in love with those men. I'm validated because I'm in the process of falling in love with another, and I'm not there yet, and I know where it can go.

I can't even put into words what my love is, but once I'm there, I'd follow the man to the ends of the earth if that's where he was going without batting an eyelid. For me, love is not mystical-magical. It's part admiration (of a man's intellect, his personality, his aspirations, his charity) and it's part my estimation of whether or not this person is good with God.

I'm not yet in love with B because I'm still gauging his faith and what he thinks about my faith. MQ was easy. He was already Muslim, so I made assumptions about where he was in his faith. But if B were Muslim, I'd be praying for him to propose to me already!

So yes...I listen to old music and I know, I've been in love before, and the formula is the same. Love for me hasn't changed. I'll know it when I'm there.

But now that I'm sure of it...and now that I'm experiencing a relationship...most of the music where people try to approximate the feeling seems hackneyed at best. It pales in comparison to the real experience and is valueless, often. Or rather, their value-thin.

For me, love is not valueless. There is no romantic love for me because romantic love sounds devoid of spirituality, while my falling in love is so linked to spirituality and my conceptions of religion...and practicality. I only fall for someone who I think has feelings for me back. That's not romantic.

So love hasn't changed. I still know how it feels. I'll know it when I get there, if I get there with B or not. But I'm growing so I'll get there in a more practical way, in a better time frame. I'm growing and I'm learning things that I knew abstractly would exist that I'd have to deal with and here I am, facing them, on to the next one, as it were.

Now, just waiting for him to get off of work so we can have dinner...the quesadilla I made and the cherries I ate will hold me until we finally get things going, which I posit will be 7-8pm.

[uncensored]: For the Longest Time

As salaam alaikum,

{Currently listening: For the Longest Time - Billy Joel}

I've always heard this song, and wondered what it was. I knew it wasn't actually made in the 60s for some reason, but it's a pretty good reproduction of the sound...although I think some key musical elements that were prevalent during that time period are left out, which made it seem not as authentic. Billy Joel's phrasing also isn't the greatest, but hey, neither is mine, and I like my own singing.

So a while ago, because of my knew relationship, I had said that music didn't sound the same. It's interesting--it doesn't, and it's still morphing. I went through a period of apprehension where no music sounded good, a period of doubt and fear where I would not listen to music, and then, last night, I felt compelled to listen to Love's Train by ConFunkShun, one of my old favorites.

And then I remembered. Back sophomore year of college in the heyday of MQ, I heard this song and felt it was how I felt about him. "Warm night, can't sleep / too hurt, too weak / gotta call him up. Dial that number / no one answers 'til 2 o'clock. And if by chance, you'll let me come over / out on the street, I wanna see you, baby..." And there I'd be, wistfully before the dorm where I knew he lived, wishing I hadn't declined his invitation to visit him at his room for my propriety because, what, I was only just now becoming Muslim, anyway, it shouldn't have been that important for me...

...and then I heard it again last night, and I had to struggle for that memory. I now identified the song with how I felt now...well, heh, except for the fact that the song is, on the low, about a booty call and yeah, nobody's booty calling...


And I realize, oh my gosh...I didn't think I could feel this way about anyone else.

I listen to love songs now and it's different. It's not a wistfulness, it's not a distant admiration of the beauty of a form, it's...this is happening, this is how I imagined it would be, but now I feel it, and while brain and gut has foresight, heart has no foresight into sensation.

I hate to sound smarmy right now, but...I feel more human than I ever have.

This is not to say that not having had mutual love makes you less human, no. This is just me. For me, I've always felt left out a little bit in not having felt this what so many others have. I am coming to empathize with an entire realm of human experience that I've never had access to. It was like going to Brazil and loving the culture and being able to speak Portuguese but not being Brazilian. Entering into this is like...getting my Brazilian citizenship. It may not be the greatest place to be or the most morally right place to be, but a lot of people attest to it, love it, salute it, wave a flag to it...swear by it, curse it, write song after song about it...


This morning, I sent B an email with Deve Ser by Jorge Vercillo. I didn't send him the translation (which I actually posted here), because if I did, man, it's pretty much what I feel right now, and I've never been that frank with anyone.

I've never told anyone that I loved them. I think I whispered it to one of my cousins when they were a baby once...but my parents, no. Not because I'm a cold bitch or anything, but because...we just don't do that. Each of my parents have probably told me once each...my mother maybe twice, maybe the second time she wrinkled her nose and made a gagging sound in disgust. Not that we don't love each other. I mean, no. My mother is my best friend. I love my family more than anyone on this earth, anything. But when I go home, I sit at my mother's feet as she eats. I call my father all sorts of alternate father pet names, from Daddy to Dadi, from papá to papai, and I want to be everything he wants me to be, even though I can't be, just to make him happy. My brother is my life when I'm really quiet and I realize myself.

I love them, but I've never said that to anyone, so I'm not sure when to do it...I'm Not in Love, but I realize that someday soon I'll be there, and wow...it'll be crazy to say it.


Muslims, my dear Muslim friends, don't think I'm abandoning the deen, that I'm disbelieving in God, because B isn't Muslim. Because of my background and my love for my father, I have to take an alternative road. I'm not saying that I won't marry Muslim, but I'm also not saying that I won't marry B, because insha'Allah (and yes, I feel okay invoking God's name), yes, that's where I'm going. That's all I'm saying. I'm going forth prayerfully.


But anyway, I'm curious if other music sounds different. Other songs that used to remind me of MQ, other songs that I used to listen to and wonder if I'd ever feel that way. The big one was Overjoyed by Stevie Wonder. It was my theme for unrequited love. Now, now...I don't know. It feels like the reprise. I think the song meant so much to me at the time, it's always going to be colored by that experience. To associate it with B would make it feel...recycled, unauthentic. That song is so 2004 for me.

I think there are a lot of songs in my repertoire that were unrequited love songs...the thing is, songs that aren't are sounding different to me...but very specifically to the stage I am right now.

Songs and poetry are very worldly things, yes, but I guess I always loved it because it helped me share in human experience, helped me love my fellow human being and love for him or her what I love for myself...you know, and actually feel it, and not just because I'm supposed to.

I love that I'm going through a series of feelings that so many others have felt before--culturally specific feelings, yes, mixed up in carnality? Certainly. Therefore haram. Depending on the context, yes, but no less human. We all self-regulate as we will, but there's something about realizing the humanity of what you're feeling, connecting with that common human experience...which gives you the agency to draw your own thresholds.

You feel this, this is beautiful, because you're human, and Allah (swt) created you. But as a human, He commands you, what you should and should not do, because of this, your nature, that He well knows, that He well created.

Like my mother said, lighting a fire outside of the hearth. Like Earth Wind and Fire sang, Reasons.

I'm just blabbing now and suddenly not feeling as sentimental. It might be PMS, actually. I'll leave it with this. A few weeks before B happened, I thought of this song, Nega Música by Itamar Assumpção, and I thought about how I was like, one day, this will be true for me...it's written about a woman, so I'll change the gender. "When you least expect it, [he]'ll arrive doing with your heart what [he] does well. And [he]'ll come loving you without fear... When you least expect it, [he]'ll touch the depths of your heart, just as a [man] can. And [he]'ll come loving you without fear..."

Não, não, não, não, não...

Loneliness's Dance / Dança da Solidão

As salaam alaikum,

Solidão é lava
Que cobre tudo
Amargura na minha boca
Sorri seus dentes de chumbo

Solidão, palavra
Cavada no coração
Resignado e mudo
No compasso da desilusão

Loneliness is lava that covers everything. Bitterness in my mouth. I smiled its leaden teeth. Loneliness, a word burrowed in my heart, resigned and mute, to the beat of disillusion.

I just met a man who is unreal. Like, I seriously didn't think I could be surprised anymore. I thought that that time was over, reserved for me at 19, not at 25 almost 26. I didn't know I'd be amazed anymore that someone could exist in a realm in which I also exist, and I less thought that it would be him, who on the surface is just like the rest of them, who on the surface I thought I could predict from his name, his face.

Never did I think that someone so much like me could exist, and that I wouldn't know him well enough to not have to get to know him. I thought I was it, but I am not. Muslims may disbelieve because of the circumstances in which this is all coming together but more than anything it seems like God made us for each other, three months apart, hundreds of miles away.

Prayerfully, I go forward.

Because I cannot let this pass me by. Because just like Paulinho Viola wrote, loneliness is lava that covers everything. Everything, everything, everything. It's molten and it stings, then it cools but it still covers and colors everything. It's heavy, it weighs you down, it obscures beauty and obfuscates emotion. It was bitterness in my mouth, unrelenting, all imaginings of love made bittersweet at best. "Nothing had the chance to be good, 'cause nothing ever could." I knew what was up, but I couldn't get past it. I tried to be happy in spite of it, loneliness. I smiled it's leaden teeth.

I personify it, but really, it's just a word. Loneliness is a word burrowed in my heart. It's still there. It still marks most of my early adulthood in which I found myself all alone, and I only felt like I'd only be alone for the rest of my life. Nothing seemed promising but loneliness for another day, and then another. And there it was, resigned, mute, hidden, inaccessible, irretrievable, in beat with my disillusion.

My disillusion, my growing disillusion, every day nothing happened, every month someone else got married and I was still single, every year that was the same old thing. My disillusion grew but I smiled loneliness's leaden teeth, grinned and bore it through.

I learned how to be through loneliness. I became a practicing Muslimah through this loneliness. It covered and colored everything, my desires, my prayers, my reason for being, my aspirations, my conception of my purpose of life. Through loneliness I've become the person I am today, trilingual, writing this novel, in love with Soul music, the latter because it gave me access to something that I thought I'd never feel.

Loneliness is, but with me it's no more.

No more loneliness. I just met someone who I didn't know could exist, which is something I've always wanted but something I never thought I could have. I didn't know that I couldn't know that he'd exist even while knowing him during this time.

So I'm sitting in my apartment, my roommates gone, and stopped by and saw me but he's also gone, and I'm alone, but I'm not lonely because insha'Allah I'll see him another day.

Loneliness no more. Now music sounds different. Pop was always hackneyed but now it sounds cheap compared to the real feelings. The more poetic of the lyrics sung by people like the Brazilians is exactly what I feel. The days feel different. The taste in my mouth, different.

No more leaden teeth.

And the disillusion is melting away.

Desilusão, desilusão.
Danço eu, dança você
Na dança da solidão

Disillusion, disillusion. I dance, you dance loneliness's dance.

We both danced it. And then we danced it with each other for a while but then we stopped and we looked at each other. We see each other.

Now, it's okay.

So, I guess it's time to sing a new song now.

E eu que era triste, descrente nesse mundo, ao encontrar você eu conheci o que felicidade, meu amor. - Corcovado

Visions/Mytopia

As salaam alaikum,

{Currently Listening: "Visions" - Stevie Wonder}

"People hand in hand. Have I lived to see the milk and honey land where hate's a dream and love forever stands, or is this a vision in my mind?" - Stevie Wonder, "Visions."

Never more has there been a more prolific artist and musical genius as there was Stevland Morris.

As my life unfolds in front of me, decisions yet to make, some of them good ones, some of them mistakes, the both of them formative for my future self, I think to what would be the ideal. What would be the ideal existence for my future self? What would be the existence in which I wouldn't feel for want of anything, an existence in which I would never wonder about the other side of things? It would be a veritable utopia, except not utopia, because that place can't exist...so it would be mytopia. My own Visions.



I see myself living in a community, tight-knit though diverse. Diverse how? Ethnically diverse. I actually see myself living in at least two communities simultaneously. One is ethnically and religiously diverse, but homogeneous in the sense that everyone is accepting (not tolerant...I dislike that word and its connotations) of each other. I also see myself being part of an ummah within my community, also ethnically diverse and not only accepting of this diversity, but enamored of it...embracing it with open arms, purposefully promoting it, not to the exclusion of those who would tend to cling to their home countries and all that is familiar, but opening them gently to a broader view of what it means to be Muslim. I see that.

I will be one of the physicians of the community. I will care for families, mainly women and their children. I will deliver some of their children, insha'Allah, help to promote health. Insha'Allah, I will be married, to whomever. I will have children, however they are. I'm not as concerned about how my children will be, in terms of their ethnicities, as it may be. I just grew up in a diverse place and I want my kids to, as well. I don't want to shelter them to a world of difference...a world of different faiths, beliefs, worldviews, perspectives. I want to shelter them from danger and preserve their childhood as much as I can, but I also want to school them such that when it is time to go out on their own, they go forth as tranquilly as I did. All insha'Allah.

I've already arrived so they don't have to. No one has to be a doctor or an engineer or go into law or business. I will, however, make sure that they are the best at whatever they want to do. Although I'm the child of an immigrant, I'm afraid I lack that immigrant perspective that caused our parents to have such staunch expectations. If I didn't become a physician, I could have done something else. The choice was never between education and carrying sacks of rice, as my father's reality was, or so he says.

Visions. It's a simple thing. I don't want anything magical. I just want safety, security to be as I am, to practice Islam as I see fit, practice medicine to the best of my ability...



I laugh on the inside. My husband, whoever. I lie a little bit. I've always seen my husband as Muslim, from the time I was a teenager when I first imagined my husband, that's what I see. After B asked me out, actually, I had a dream where I got married and could not have a nikah, which is what I've wanted since I first became more practicing in 2003 and learned more about Islam. And I was so sad in the dream, because then the marriage didn't mean as much to me. I didn't know who I was marrying (as with the dream I had in 2002, at 17, when I dreamt I got married in my high school building), and I didn't see him at the end of the dream, either. I didn't care.

I've been examining this week, these past couple of days, why I was so intent on marrying a Muslim. I mean, besides the obvious reasons, my being Muslim, my being a Muslimah, wanting to please Allah (swt), not wanting to end up like my mother who is isolated in Islam (though she has me, I don't want to count on giving birth to my best friend), all that jazz. But I realize...

Part of mytopia (which is reminding me of eye words...like, diplopia) has always been wanting to raise children in Islam. It's never mattered to me the ethnicity of my husband. In fact, I've always been attracted to people who were racially or ethnically different from me, not at the exclusion of black or Nigerian men, but in addition to, I guess. Islam is overarching. In fact, I almost preferred to blur racial, ethnic and cultural lines so that Islam was the strongest, so there was nothing to compete, unlike me, the Muslim Igbo girl, the oxymoron.

And I guess it still is part of my vision for myself, my future...but prayerfully, I tuck that away. Not because I've given up, but because it's irrelevant right now. I'm just setting myself up to be disappointed. I don't doubt that I could still marry a Muslim man, but children, as I tell my roommate, will burn your house down! I was talking literally, but also figuratively.

I would be silly to have not learned that lesson from my relationship with my father. Though my father taught me nothing about Christianity as I was growing up and somehow expects me to learn about it at my age, after a lifetime of being exposed to Islam and after doing my own study in college, I would plan to immerse my children in Islam while exposing them to other faiths positively (unlike how I was exposed to Christianity by my mother, which probably unnecessarily polarized my parents and the faiths in my mind at a young age). But...there is always the possibility that one of my children would come to me, tearfully as I did to my father, and tell me that they will never be Muslim, as my I told my father in 2005 (shortly after I started my xanga) that I would never be Christian.

So that's why I tuck mytopia away, prayerfully. With each step I go in life, including my life now as I agree to meet B for coffee, I will step forward prayerfully. The farthest I'm thinking forward is going to the Djavan concert with B. I do want to raise my children Muslim, knowing that whatever they do in life, they'll always have my love. I do want to have a nikah. I want to marry for the sake of Allah (swt), go forward in my life that way in the name of Allah (swt)...I shouldn't have told my father that I'd never be Christian. It was ugly, I was crying, and it was a negative way to go about things.

I should have told him, I am Muslim, and I will always be Muslim.

But thinking too far into the future, I've found, has always made me worry unnecessarily. It makes me cry sometimes, gives me a headache, makes me withdraw within myself. So I tuck my visions away until they become more relevant, until I am to marry, until I have my first child, until it's time to decide where I am to live...until...


"I'm not one who makes believe. I know that leaves are green. They only change to brown when autumn comes around. I know just what I say, today's not yesterday and all things have an ending..."

Wasalaam.

Desilusão, desilusão!

Dança da Solidão - Marisa Monte feat. Paulinho da Viola

Translation below:

Solitude is lava
That covers everything
Bitterness in my mouth
I smiled it's leaden teeth

Solitude, word
Burrowed in my heart
Resigned and mute
With the beat of disillusion

See!
Disillusion, disillusion
I dance, you dance
The dance of solitude

Camélia became a widow
Joana fell in love
Maria attempted suicide
Because of her lover

My father always told me
My son, be careful
When I think of my future
I don't forget my past

Oh,
Disillusion, disillusion
I dance, you dance
In the dance of solitude

See!
Disillusion, disillusion
I dance, you dance
In the dance of solitude

When the early morning comes
My thoughts meander
I run my fingers over my guitar
Contemplating the full moon

In spite of it all, there exists
A fountain of pure water
Whoever drinks that water
Won't have anymore bitterness

Oh,
Disillusion, disillusion
I dance, you dance
The dance of solitude

See!
Disillusion, disillusion
I dance, you dance
The dance of solitude...

Beautiful song!

Free Woman

"O dinheiro que lhe dei pro tamborim/ não vai gastar depois jogar a culpa em mim/ o dinheiro que lhe dei não é meu, não/ é da escola, por favor não mete a mão..." - "Mancada," Gilberto Gil

That money that I gave you for the tambourine/ don't go and spend it and throw the blame on me/ the money that I gave you is not mine/ it's of the [samba] school, please keep your hands off of it...

This song is a samba song by Gilberto Gil. Although I started out samba-ing in my living room, looking at my reflection in the window against the black of night outside, once I reached the window I stopped dancing and gazed out at the Charles River. It was glistening in the light from the nearby baseball field in the park where I sometimes take walks, just to be near the river. Gazing out at the river from my apartment, which affords me a panoramic view, is just as good sometimes, especially on dark nights like these when there's no one to take that trip with me.

No longer samba-ing, I began singing the ballad version of "Mancada," nice, slow, sultry, leaning over the windowsill and looking at the red necklace of back lights that is Charles Street traffic, sultry like someone's watching. No one's watching. For 24 glorious hours, I've had the apartment to myself, which is why I'm dancing around my living room now only wearing a t-shirt.

It's one of those band t-shirts from high school, from band camp in 2000, so the beginning of my sophomore year. I've no use for those shirts anymore but occasionally wear them to bed. It's not sexy, but I don't need to be sexy to sleep by myself.



Sometime around 2005 or so, after the summer of 2004 where I fell in love and the school year of 2004-05 when I discovered that nothing was going to come of it, I started to refer to myself, in my mind, as "Free Woman." I'm always of the school that you should start pronouncing something, saying it aloud, even when I don't believe it. That's how free woman came about.

I didn't feel free at the time, like, at all. I would have felt free if I could have been in a relationship with that guy, but I wasn't. I didn't want to feel free, actually. If I actually had the choice between being free and being in a relationship with someone that I loved, I would choose the latter...I preferred the latter. But I was single, very single, indefinitely.

I mean, five years later, I'm still as single as I was then. That's proof. Five years is a long time.

In five years, that guy who I liked met a woman, they got engaged, they are now married.

In those same five years, nothing close to that has happened for me.

It took me a long time to feel like the free woman I was calling myself. That time came after I read Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan. I recommend it for everyone--it is a heart breaker, though, but it's humbling like nothing I've ever read before. I nearly cried at the end, because the last story was of a mixed Hutu-Tutsi family torn apart by that conflict--and that will always be the first terrible thing I knew about as a child, had nightmares about from seeing news coverage. If I think about the nightmare I had at the time, man, I can still cry...

Anyway, I read that, and I made a realization I should have long ago...I am a free woman!

I am in about the best situation that any female in the world could hope to be in right now, more than any time in my life. Because of the career path that I've chosen, I basically will always be able to support myself and will not have to depend on anyone, not even my father, for money.

Neither of my parents are pressuring me to settle down or marry. They actually thing it was abnormal of me to be worrying about it!

I have the choice of who I end up with, the choice of how long I want to be single, the choice of whether or not I want children.

And alhamdulillah, He's protected me for all of these years...from the maliciousness and violence of the world.

When it comes to the women of the world, I am sitting on top of the world. I run this. No man is out there controlling what I should or should not say, how I should or should not dress, how I travel, whether I travel, who I travel with. No one is forcing me to marry young, no one is taking my babies away, no one is spiting my baby girls, letting my baby girls die, taking away my baby girls in favor of my baby boys, threatening me until I bear them those baby boys. No one is raping me for sport because I am the wrong ethnicity. I don't have to marry for support, for life, for status...

I am really, really free...freer than others in my own country may be because of a series of choices I've made in life and really, the grace of God.

So from here on out (actually, since maybe about two days ago), I'm not complaining about single any more... I'm serious! I am single by choice.

I've been out with guys before...if I don't like them, I feel like I'm degrading myself. Allah (swt) will provide, the time will come...not because someone will drop out of the sky, but because it will be of my choosing.

In the meantime, I'm going to work on myself. I've always wanted to be a renaissance woman, so let me be a good doctor. Let me be a good writer. I'm going to work out at the gym and be pure hotness and work on singing this ballad-style samba. Why? Because I'm free!

...I can at least be sexy in the comfort of my own home, right?

Love and Truth Written in Song

As - Stevie Wonder

We all know sometimes life's hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your life times that and twice it's double
That God knew exactly where He wanted you to be placed
So make sure when you say you're in it but not of it
You're not helping to make this a place sometimes called Hell
Change your words into Truth and then change that Truth into Love
And maybe our children's grandchildren and their great-grandchildren will tell




One of the most beautiful songs ever! The most beautiful song I know...

Deve Ser (It Must Be)

As salaam alaikum,

So, nothing really to post about. I realize that, for anyone who attempts to follow my blogs, I probably post a lot, too much for anyone to keep up with. I just can't keep myself from writing something sometimes!

I just wanted to share with you "Deve Ser" by Jorge Vercilo. It's one of my favorite songs from the last novela I watched, "Viver a Vida," with my favorite couple, Bruno (Thiago Lacerda) and Helena (Taís Araujo). The lovely Ms. Araujo is pictured in the youtube clip.




Heh, by the way, I like the names of the actors so much, I might name my kids that...not after the actors specifically (I briefly tutored a 12-year-old Brazilian girl named Thais, and I liked the name then), but just because they're cool names.

If I had a twin, a boy and a girl, it'd be a toss up between naming them Thiago and Thais or Hasna and Hassan. Hahaha, I'm not very creative, I know...

Anyway, that's the music for the day...well, I guess I'll translate it...with poetic liscense, of course...

It must be
Like discovering an island inside of me
It's a sign that it would be like this
To begin to love you

It must be
Like the beginning of a fascination
Like the power of a revolution
To be touched by you

Because it was just like that
Just like springtime to sleep by your side
Because it was for me
Pure fantasy to reflect myself in your lips

It must be
Like, suddenly, the sky opening
Like seeing what I didn't at first perceive
To begin to love you

It must be
Like being blessed without knowing
Nor imagine ever deserving
Being loved by you

Because it was just like that
Just like springtime to sleep by your side
Because it was for me
Pure fantasy to reflect myself in your lips

Gorgeous lyrics! It fit so well with the novela, too.