the doors of ijtihad

so word. i'm in this land. typing on a strangely arranged keyboard. feeling quite a bit strangely arranged myself. you have never seen so many beautiful men in your life. and "hotel california" is playing right now, from somewhere, and it feels like my life! oh, dramatics. the picture-frame life, the life frame-by-frame, exquisitely composed. this is mine.

language--you are a baby again.

they feed you so much! my stomach is discoving new dimensions of itself. thank heaven for ramadan coming soon! or else my body will have made a lot of new dimensions for itself, too, by the i time get back.

fat and happy, and a sticky-handed baby.

many ways that i could choose to disect this experience so far, like a scientist. many ways that i am disecting it constantly, without being able to help it. but so far, i've felt kind of strangely resistant to reporting back to say that i did so-and-so today and saw such and such a fascinating thing. later. pictures, later, and long-winded e-mails and breathy letters. later, later.

call for prayer is being sounded right now. beautiful, beautiful. that's all. space in me unseen, sight undreamed. the thing about citizenship in life is that you really can't talk about it. i think it's the eternal paradox about this thing; step outside to describe and you loose some time. you loose some life. be it. and even this, now, this is like the most ironic string of thought ever, or to think it is the most ironic thing. think the whole citizens of life deal hits life at what may well be its most basic paradox.

anyway.

beauty, that's all i have to say. dusty, ancient beauty, and me a baby on the edges of herself.