oh yeah, this

all right, so this is another year of a failed ramadan-blogging.  maybe - maybe - i'm outgrowing it?  because i stopped in august cos i was trying to take advantage of every last minute time i had left with my family and friends and life-at-home - who/which i won't see for another almost-year - and plus dude, i did stuff.  ramadan stuff.  i read ahadith like a crazy person, and i read biographies that i never had occassion to read otherwise, and i tried to actually pray. and often at the end of the day i would reflect on the stuff i learned and did to write it up, but i guess i got kind of lazy

which ok, i do regret a little bit right now, because i had a lot of stuff on my mind-grapes then.

and when i came back to school, it hit me right after my first suhoor that it was ramadan.  and then after that i didn't even have to try.  i felt love all around me and within me and from me and i felt so so so happy.  that is, until i couldn't fast starting on the twenty-third day (i am fasting today on the last day of ramadan, though, alhamdulillah). also, i have opted out of internetting in my room so that i study, which clearly offers even less of an incentive to diary.

anyway, i have come to two important conclusions:

1. i can get into unbridled and honest ramadan bliss when i am alone.  suhoor - alone.  iftar - alone.  and it's not just the subsequent fajrs and maghribs that are really nice to read, but even the act of eating food itself is so celebratory and kind of deep at thei same time, i guess.  ok HI, this is BAD.  but i think i understand why - after allah's blessings and love, i like to have ownership over my own fasting destiny.  it's completely up to me what to make of my whole experience.


2. the last ten days of ramadan are the saddest, but that's what makes them so amazing.  i missed six out of these ten days, including the 27th.  i'm heartbroken.  and it's not like i didn't du'aa and talk to allah and all of that for many of these nights, but it's not the same.  there's something about the physicality of salaat - i guess it lends legitimacy to things.  but then again, allah is so just and so loving that even my non-salaat praying must have counted for something.  i didn't ask to not fast for these six days.

today's the last day of ramadan, but alhamdulillah, at least i get to say goodbye.  however, this is a RELUCTANT, POUTY, WHEN-WILL=YOU-BE-BACK kind of goodbye, and it's going to take me a lot of time to spit it out.

hard and fast(ing) rules

the first day of fasting was pretty great. not because i was particularly good at fasting today, but because i got all of the awkward parts of "oh...nice to see you again, ramadan" out of the way in one day instead of spending a whole week re-learning the mechanics of the month. for future reference, here is what i re-learned:

• go to sleep early, part 1: i went to bed last night at around 2, i woke up for suhoor at around 4:30, and went back to sleep at 5:45-ish. i finally got up at around noon, but still wandered around all day in kind of a sleep-deprived, numb (and dumb!), nauseous kind of stupor. this is too much sleep -- i missed out on half of the day, and it wasn't even drool-on-my-pillow kind of sleep, my eyes kept snapping open because i was so anxious and excited about the first day.
  


• go to sleep early, part 2: so as an undergrad, i had 9 am classes during ramadan always, which was totally fine because i had the very excellent natural alarm clock going. after suhoor and praying, i would fall back asleep and then wake up a couple of hours later because of an exploding bladder. well, of course i drank the same amount this morning, but because i was so sleep-deprived as it was, my insane urge to pee was still not enough to wake me up. the result: i dreamed about standing in line to use public restrooms for a couple of hours -- so unromantic and not spiritual.


• grab your own copy of the qur'an: there are four of us at home, and i am the one who has had the least amount of time in the house. so my parents and sister have their own systems going. i picked up one of the many copies of the qur'an in the house, not realizing that someone in my family had it all bookmarked up. oops. i'll be reunited with my special copy in two weeks, but until then, i've found one in the house to use.


• don't eat too much for iftar: okay, this one i have NOT done in a while. at stanford, i ate what i ate in tresidder with everyone else and that was IT for the rest of the evening. but i was at home tonight. there is a fridge stocked with every kind of food in the world alhamdulillah. i ATE, and in a couple of hours contracted a gigantic headache and ended up barfing. again, not romantic or spiritual and actually majorly lame.


• pray isha as soon as it's time: i pushed it back until 11 tonight as i was trying to deal with my stupid food-induced headache. i ended up yawning (lack of sleep) and grimacing (too much food) and couldn't pray taraweeh. EWW, sanah.
  

other than becoming reacquainted with these essential ramadan level 1 skills, i had a good day, as i managed to squeeze in some level 2 things too. i read more qur'an than i have in a looong time, i kept my mouth shut, was pleasant with whoever i interacted with, and even avoid all sass-back with my parents. the result: my dad took me to see a hecka sweet outpatient surgery, and my mom and i bought muffin mix. it was a good first day, alhamdulillah.

why i ate it last year

i basically stopped praying fajr. i'm not really sure why - it's hard to get up in the mornings? but suddenly in my twenty-second year of life i suddenly decided that i couldn't do it, so i just stopped trying. i didn't even set the alarm anymore. and then after a while, i stopped feeling bad about it.

i've been struggling with prayer for a couple of years now, and it's hecka up-and-down, mostly down. but in addition to the let's skip fajr cos it's hopeless deal, i never read anything past fard. i don't do anything optional or sunnah or anything. bare bones minimum prayer. this i am ashamed about.

reading qur'an at least wasn't too awful for the first six months after ramadan, but as soon as summer in karachi hit my room was too hot to stay in, and so the qur'an reading dwindled after that too.

and whereas before i used to actively avoid even listening to gossip (other than celebrity gossip, cos dude i had to get my fix somewhere and people magazine is public domain enough for it to be not really gossip-ish, i don't know), now i'm all up in it. and that is horrifying as well.

now why i have suddenly collapsed into a disgusting pile of turpitude (and turd-itude) is kind of awful, and i wonder if it's really anything more complicated than the simple (and probably on-point) answer of "i'm lazy." fine, i'm lazy. but i'm also too lazy to change my ways. and i got to the point where i was too lazy to even feel bad about where my soul was heading. and THAT is what scares me. and i am SO SO relieved that for the last month or two, my guilt has come back and is mounting. at least i realize that i'm doing something bad - that means that the fear of god is in there somewhere, and that allah hasn't given up hope on me yet.

my eyes kind of roll back into my head when i encounter words like "hope" and "empowerment" (i blame this on a crazy good undergraduate education in anthropology + too much angsty poetry when i was thirteen), but right now, those are what come to mind. you are lazy, but you are also hopeful.

and as i was busy acting empowered tonight, i accidentally came across this hadith -

the prophet said, "none of you should say, 'my soul has become evil.' you should say, 'my soul is in bad shape.'" [bukhari and muslim]

i am still not articulate at all

omg, i seriously forgot what it feels like to feel good. i have felt like a sack of crap with legs for over a year now, if you'll believe that. i skipped the diaries last year because i was at this crazy crossroads in my life and i didn't think that writing stuff down would be any good. if that's the reason why my ramadan '08 was crazy lame, then wow, i don't want to take any chances.

i mean, it wasn't really lame, or maybe it was, i don't know, but it wasn't great. i have the same kind of ambivalent feeling looking back on it as i did after i watched watchmen. not awful, but definitely not any good at all.

but life has a trajectory right now, and omg i have NEEDED ramadan this year like never before. i think that things have taken a turn for the worse this last year, but to be honest i'm too excited and happy and beaming/tearing up/lip-smacking for some reason (chapstick? maybe) to really go into it right now. this is going to be an excellent ramadan, inshallah, because i'm going to squish in the awesomeness of two ramadans into one month somehow. inshallah inshallah inshallah. still in kind of disbelief, but that doesn't mean that i'm not super giggly anyway

thanks, pres!

not that i don't always love listening to state-sponsored ramadan wishes (i totally love the friction and the interaction of crazy "spheres" of culture and identity and somewhere in there is me!) - but this year i learned how to embed videos:

so we meet again, ya ramadan.