Digital Bin:

All I Need is Graph Paper.

I don’t know what it is about graphing paper that gets me all happy. Is it the uniformity? Or perhaps the intersecting lines and endless sea of perfect squares that beg for some input. I really don’t know if it is one or the other or both, but whatever the case, I love graph paper.

The keyboard has become an extension of our fingers. The sound of typing produces it’s own sound. Happy exclamations, intense ideas, shout with glee. Shock, sheer boredom, or confusion let out a dismal bellow.

But graph paper, let me tell you presents acres and acres of building promise. You can fill in those boxes with a really smooth charcoal pencil or in a mad mind-mapping session break a few lids. Graph paper, plainly put is magnificent.

Other than drawing random abstract patterns with my old graphite pencils, I really enjoy bullet lists. My geeky nature draws me towards venn diagrams, lists and mind maps ALL the time. 

I actually have a dedicated graph pad journal just for those geektastic moments (remind me to upload a pic).

This is an excerpt from my list in my journal that inspired this digital bin post.

Category: Explore

1. learn how to cultivate and sustain a bee hive. What is the exact term for that? I have always been fascinated by bees. They get a bad rep for producing so much honey. I love bees.

2. I want to see Glaciers. I get the National Geographic Expedition magazine and I just visualize myself hiking through ice caves and witnessing the beauty for myself. A long time ago I went to a Volcano tour in Hawaii and saw lava, and it changed everything for me. I am committed to seeing Glaciers in my lifetime. Inshallah.

3. I would love to learn about farming and agriculture. WHAT?! Yes! One day when I cash in all my chips and God willing, I would love to buy a farm in central coast of California. I want to raise animals, live off my land, donate and raise awareness for humane livestock practices, local farming, and zabihah lifestyle.

4. I would like to learn a second language in the full context: reading, writing and speaking. Arabic, Urdu and Farsi are the top on my list. I hope it’s not too late. I would love to explore some of my favorite mystic poets.

5. Live abroad for a while or short while. I have never really had the chance to immerse myself in another culture; mainly due to practical reasons. Born and raised in America, the longest jump for me was Texas to California. The ideal scenario would be to do some kind of relief work, documentary work, or then just set aside 3 months  out of the year to just absorb my surroundings.

I have my lists with subjects and this was explore. Earlier this year a friend told me to start throwing my ideas out there into the “universe”. I am guilty of having too much of  a tunnel vision, if such a thing exists. But then again, that is true of all the late blooming type A types out there.

Later later. Where is my graph paper?

-Farida

Don’t hit the pause button.

All day I had this deep craving to purge my mind bytes. Below is a verse that needed a place to dwell.

Don’t hit the pause button.

Don’t hit the pause button.

Don’t hit the pause button; just let it go.

Don’t hit the pause button.

Don’t hit the pause button.

Let it play and let it go.

Let it play, let it play, and forget rewind.

Let it play, let it play, let it play forward in time.

I also could not help but think about some dear souls that I used to share some kind of philosophical camaraderie with. As a former serious blogger/journal writer, I have a fond appreciation for quality over quantity. There is too much superficial mulch out there in the blog world. I think the blog feeds both professional/industry and personal/lifehacks  I subscribe to alone are well over 100 by now. Yet there are only a handful that I walk away with some kind of hefty thought matter. Soul searching yet mind provoking, inspiring or uplifting were usually the kind of blogs I admired. I walked away with some thing to meditate on. Pardon the lack of specificity but the night it getting late and well, I just like to skim the surface in the short posts. In other words: You know what I mean.

Thinking out loud can be prodded into a “stream of consciousness”, but I find sticky CAPS lock key and manic punctuation to be a tad compulsive. Writing from the soul is something is entirely different than “blah-ging” to hear yourself speak. I find writing from the soul is peeling away the greetings, formalities and ice breakers. It’s like an unapologetic endangered fountain pen leaking cobalt ink without permission onto porous paper. Your thoughts hardly flutter quietly down a “stream”, they make waves.

Waves on a quiet day with a few solid words and waves that crash gracefully onto a rocky shoreline.

I guess if anything is to be requested, I shall say this to the writers’ I know out there,

“You should write more, cause I like to read.” (said the writer to herself).

-Farida :)

Bookmarked: Thank You Steve Jobs (Part 1)

I decided to post links to the articles and tributes to Steve Jobs here on Digital Bin.

Click to bookmark or share: http://digitalbin.tumblr.com/tagged/thank_you_steve_jobs

Relieved.

Thanks for all the positive energy.

Astronomy Cafe

I swear sometimes I feel I am living in a space time vacuum. Time has passed by so quickly. Oh Astrophysicists  and rocket scientists, pardon the bad analogy, but there is something spacey timish and vacuumish that I have been experiencing lately.  I am trying to put into artful prose but alas my caffeine starved mind is failing me at this time.

Perhaps what I can conclude is without doubt is that the world web of humanity only goes forward and never looks back, especially if one is traveling in space.

-Farida

Rebirth

I have always found childbirth to be the most apt go-to reference in all stages of life. Even though my womb has not harvested such miracles, I am in awe of contractions and labor pains that push the seedling of hope into the world.

Just like the fiery molten lava that spills in to the Pacific, creating new lands and habitats, it must endure painful rebirth, it must shed it’s core. Like the the earthquakes that give off this vibrational reminder; “Yes”, that too must endure some pain, some movement, some charge to create a new space.

Waves, that go forth and recede, waves that reach the peaks of majestic glory, they too push and pull with the law of gravity. Creating turbulence, cleansing, purging and revitalizing.Pushing starfish and kelp onto the sand, ingesting lost seagull feathers and erasing names with them. The waves with their saline cleanse and redistribute in harmony.

As with any firestorm, debris of leaves and twigs, brazen trunks and honorable redwoods, they too disperse seeds of hope to be carried in the wind. The debris resurfaces and comes back as a little tree.

Within a beautiful looking glass one can easily forget the tiny shards reassembled and fused together to create something whole. Each shard with its own sharp edge, it’s own brilliance, some catching light, others in need of polishing—they too resurface as colorful prisms adorning and filtering the harsh rays of the mighty Sun.

-Farida

The Unpaved Road

Detours are better than roadblocks. -Farida MIA

That’s 3 for Farida. (86 the espresso)

So I wish I could don those glorious over sized over the top ridiculous dramatic shades at night and just observe. You know soak in the ambiance (or lack of), catch some witty dialogue and conduct some kind of sociology experiment. Why are people the way they are? Do they know they act like that? How do you perceive yourself? How do others’ see you? It’s not a question of it that matters, but what external cues one is oblivious of. It’s kind of like when you drop in on a conversation about shopping and you’re like seriously you can talk about that with such stamina. Or, then it’s exchange of sleuth like conversations between two people trying to figure out the third person’s life, who conveniently is not there. Simply fascinating. I am not above that or near that either.

I don’t know why I am shocked. Labels are an easy way to categorize people. With that being said, why is it we need to classify people? Why do we bundle people according to certain traits or socioeconomic factors?  When it’s almost impossible to know everything about anyone, even your closest friend or relative.We can file people in phyla based on the given material complete with assumptions and indulgent self-perceptions. Oh, it’s truly the unraveling of minds through hours of  conversations, proxemics,  static gestures, nervous twitches, digestible texts, and computed thought strands; that can lend to start of some kind of understanding. It’s more like an unsaid agreement between people. Person A agrees to your perception and in exchange accepts the image you portray. There is little work involved really. What is not mind boggling but worthy of my pondering is how some of us accept face value or certain projections in totality. The whole persona is never deconstructed and it’s never questioned. Pardon this next generalization, but for the sake of my midnight caffeinated musing, is it sluggish resistance to understand better? Or does it somehow beg us to dig deeper into the people we work with, live with, and coexist with, which requires us to step outside ourselves for a mili-moment? Whew, exhausted just from typing that!

Deconstructing, dismantling, detaching (from one’s self); destructive?

No.

I do not think so.

We (the collective we), do not fall into bundles bound by some lazy quick label. Far from it. People do not wear insides as beauty sashes or boast mortal miasma with banners. Humans even in this consumption-based society, still do not, regardless of full exuberant mental state of a yuppie or the sneaker wearing hipster, for hipster and yuppies are just labels, never let on everything.

There is room for miscommunication and misinterpretation. Which brings me to a rather silly digital excavation. I had over 3,000 e-mails left unread. A while back almost 3 years ago, I totally wiped out my old e-mail addresses, and I distinctly remembering pinging people with a new address. Today because I had no time and plenty to finish, because I am practical, I decided on a whim to check out those addresses. I definitely  missed some engagements, weddings, evites, bridal showers, videos,  and baby announcements. It just baffles me that even though I wasn’t in touch with a good deal of people due to number of reasons, that I still was on the e-mail list. I kind of felt special but a little perturbed too. Couldn’t you all have called? I had one friend change her cell number at least 3 times in three years. I guess the degree of friendships come into question, but still, kind of silly you know. Still on the fence if I should even attempt to reply. This one friend has 2 kids now, I was sent a photo album.  Even the spammers got more creative in my absence. This one lady (?) sent me an e-mail every Friday asking for medical treatment donation, all I had to do is wire her at her off-shore account with my routing number. I hope she is recovering. I can’t imagine my self-imposed fast from fb will entail. People even in the third tier, still rely on the visual profile to remain in touch. 

This is a hard post to conclude. I think I ran off on a tangent 117 words ago. So yeah, I am just going to conclude now. Abruptly. Full Stop.

-Farida

Rewind. (that’s 2 posts now, high-five)

I think I really wanted to vent. I think I was supposed to devour a cathartic feast. I think I will pause my thoughts and paste all the residual slush here.

I am relentless to a fault. I am torn between being an outsider and an insider. (decode that on your own). I don’t really care about either too much and feel silly for even typing this out.

I wish I could rewind time.  I don’t really feel like someone in her 30s. Not at all. In some ways I matured early on and in others I just never grew out of my whimsical 20s.

I don’t know. I am still working towards some greater purpose, but now it’s starting to rear its ugly head and I look at my watch and it’s like___. The purpose isn’t ugly, it’s just the process. Oh, now more than ever it’s nice to feel support.

I don’t know how many of you out there are first-born kids—but I  think they are incredibly critical and harsh on themselves. Call it over achieving, ambition, or modern day romantic. At least from my perspective. I know I am.

I keep on rewinding to a decade ago lately. Time just flew by for me. I realize that I have changed so much and not really at all, all at the same time.I resisted to sell out on my dreams and conform to certain standards. So here I am with a dream to nurture. A bouncing joyful dream. Yes I created something, a bouncing dream. The dream is alive. The dream is crawling.

Maybe it’s time for me to join the peace corps. Go abroad for once. Help some beautiful people. Feel something greater than my own goals.  Donate time in service instead of graduate school. Nurture my dreams, pay it forward, and grow in other ways. I am ready to make some real change.

The other day I came across a discussion about souls. Our souls never age. Our physical bodies do. Someone was explaining to me that’s the anchoring age we feel through out life. For example if I go back to 2003 or 1998 or 1994, those years mean nothing to the soul. I always remember feeling a certain place and time. I am doing a horrible job of explaining this rather interesting conversation. You get the drift right? What was your earliest conscious memory? I know I can go earlier, but mine was when I was a year old in a playpen in my parent’s Chicago apartment and my parents were eating dinner. This is not an impression from a photograph that seeped into my subconscious, but rather a moment I can recall. That astounds me. I still had that sense of being present at that age and it still resonates with me now.  Oh I can speak volumes about a having meta moments, but this would not be forum for that.

So the soul doesn’t age. Okay I can accept that in theory. What about being present? Always feeling you have a connection with God even before you were old enough to understand religion or spirituality. For some people they have a stronger antenna signal or frequency from the start and when they start really focusing on it, it deepens immensely. For others it lies dormant for a while, until something  or someone or some event in their life activates it and abacadabra, they are tuned in. Now I am drifting into random topics.

I think the thing to take away from this if any of this makes any sense, is that perhaps in the large scheme of things, in the large timeline sense, maybe all these years will seem like a blip, an insignificant scratch on the record of life, because there’s more up ahead, fruitful and joyful. God Willing.

So there you go digital bin, my new found forum for all things slush. It’s not a rant or rave.  It’s more of a stretching exercise really.

Farida