Part of some amazing photos I read about in an essay on the medieval practice of 'reading'. Isn't it interesting that, in the second image, rather than look at Mary with the baby, the young woman is flipping through a book, with her fingers between pages?

This Tree

This tree is confident, not arrogant. She trusts her strength against what comes. Holds herself high enough, but in humility. She only takes the space she needs, narrow at the base where other life must grow, but limitless in its top. Opens with elegance and grace. Doesn't bend to wind, nor curl onto itself in rain. Lets snow settle on her branches, flake by flake, because she knows that just as it came, it shall leave, drop by drop. And what makes her beautiful is what she's endured. Every scratch, every bruise- a new pattern on her base. And though her skin only thickens, she hasn't lost her vulnerability, nor her sensitivity. It only takes a scratch to expose the raw green that rests behind the thick, rough brown. Only takes a prick to feel the wet, freshness of her tears on your fingers. And yet she never drops her gaze, nor turns away. She is patient, and it is only because she is patient that she is the center of this landscape, the shelter above my head, the surface I lean against, the reflection I aim to see in the mirror.

She feeds me my breaths.

Yes, finally, I have found home.

Yesterday was the first time I casually sat on a train and rode through a landscape covered in snow. A white horse only visible because of dark eyes. Sheep grazing, rather 'digging' through to graze. Men and women, holding hands in trails parallel to tracks. Children sledding on small mounds of snow. I'm in the British Library, sitting at a desk in a beautiful room, still awed by the fact that I can order a book from 1200, put it at my desk, flip through its pages. I can't get rid of the feeling that I'm still on that train, that all I need to do is turn my head and look out of a window, past my reflection, and catch sight of a river, hardened just enough to hold a thin layer of snow. Ducks standing in places where they once swam, turned upside down and fished. A fallen tree's branches caught frozen in a creek.

So I Don't Get Too Comfortable

Where are you from?
No, where are you from from?
Some president you got there, no?
How did you get here?
Your parents ran away?
No? Then why is it that you don't cover your hair?
So, which do you like better, here or there?
How is it that your English is so good?
How funny. What a strange combination. Now how is it that an Iranian girl ends up studying English literature?

We were standing in one of Ici's ridiculously long lines on College Ave. It ran down the block. We stood at the trunk of the third tree from Ici's door. There was a father, holding a dog's leash in one hand and his boy's hand in the other. His daughter was swinging herself around her his legs. We'd been standing in the line for five minutes predicting the flavors. There was this moment of silence before we both turned to each other.
"We don't have to get ice cream from here."
"No, we don't."
"I mean, we could walk down the block and get ice cream from Haagan Dazs."
"Yea, it's just as good."

We left the line, both knowing quite well that we were settling for something far inferior, that no ice cream beats Ici ice cream.

I find myself in memories like these. Random memories with no significance. Yet, in those moments when I'm digging my face into my scarf so my lips don't go numb, I have a Tesco bag in one hand, and an ice cream in the other, thinking about the medieval relationship between Christians and Muslims that I find myself in some mundane moment of my past life.
I always smile.

Memory is a strange thing, turning moments of nothingness into 'moments' worth recalling.

I need to leave. The pavement that marks the circular route I take to class and back is worn, and I am struggling to keep my head lifted to the tops of the buildings and the branches of the trees. The sky is beginning to drop too low, closing in on me. Maybe it's because I'm weary of this Friday when I get the mark for my paper last term and I have my first dissertation meeting. Whatever it is, the fire in me is beginning to dwindle and another weekend alone in this room will put it out. I need to leave.

Ramadan at Glacier

This week marks the second week of the month of Ramadan, a month often characterized as a month of starvation. For me, this Ramadan has been far different than any other. This year Ramadan has fallen in the summer, and though the hours are long, incredibly long, I've taken a different approach to the month. For me, it isn't about what I've often been told it's about-- to feel for the hungry, to avoid temptation, to practice the "rules." For me, this month is about grounding myself, learning to really live.
We started our Ramadan at Glacier National Park. Though we didn't fast for the week,I felt the essence of Ramadan more than any other year.
Living a city-life, one is programmed to believe that man is the eternal prophet, that any message the earth has to give or any task that must be done, can be and will be done through us. We change what we please to create what we need. But, as I stood surrounded by vast snow covered mountains, on earth covered in wildflowers, only steps away from the most pristine, limpid lakes, I saw the dynamics shift before my eyes. The place of man swept down from the top to where it belonged, with the rest of wildlife.
Here we were the prey. And there were no rules we could set or plans we could make definitely.
One night we pitched a tent and made a fire. We went to sleep, and left the fire to finish the last log through the night. In the dead calm of night, just as I was falling asleep, a wind swept through the mesh of the tent. It was followed by others. In an instant the still night had been overtaken by a storm. We rushed out to pin down the tent cover and put things away. I poured water over the fire and just as I turned around the wind lifted the flames again.

Throughout the park were "Grizzly Bear" warnings. "Entering Bear Country," they read with a picture of an angry bear, jaws open, below the warning. Bear spray sold out instores across the park. We are not used to feeling our place in the food chain. But these bears with four inch nails, that were feared so much and were depicted so viciously, filled themselves with berries and fish!

I have locked certain images and scenes from this trip in my heart and in my mind. This Ramadan, I want to meditate on the still lake and the sound and image of water, stars in the sky against a backdrop of owls calling. This is my goal--to breathe every breath through this view, to understand how much of nothing and how much of everything I am, like the small, red rock rock against which the creek slides against that nudges it down to the river, to the fall, to the lake...