What dreams may come?

The challenge:

Apply to 12 law schools.

The reward:

I haven’t decided yet.

Okay. I can be a bit of a strange mix of things. On the outside, it may seem that I’m some version of Together Girl; I dress well, tool around Cambridge in my cutie Dutch bike, I’ve just applied to law school, I run a successful outreach program at New England’s largest mosque, and I have a few small community-building projects that appear to be working in the way I had hoped.

This is what Together Girl looks like. Boots included.

Now, inside, it is a different matter. Inside, I am a half-fried mad-hatted writer with a thousand ideas, a hundred ambitions, and not enough time to wash yesterday’s coffee pot. Thankfully, I am able to disguise this well, but that doesn’t mean that my befrizzled inner self doesn’t weasel herself out of her cage now and again. And on those days, she renders me incapable of being either responsible or productive.

Five minutes. It's all I need, I swear.

This happens every time I have to do…anything large. Queen Procrastination reigns with horrifying tyranny, her adviser Sir  Stress faithfully by her side. The torture they inflict is excruciating. I hope you never, ever experience such pain.

Here’s where the odd mix comes in. I don’t not do things because I don’t care about them. Take these pesky little applications. I didn’t not complete them…um…more than a day before the deadline because I didn’t care. I do care. I care so much that I am paralyzed with fear. What if no one lets me in? What if I get one digit of my social security number wrong, and no one knows who I am? What if I mistakenly mark that I am from Bangledesh and they think I’m a lying fraud? What if I send the Penn essay to Northwestern, and the Northwestern essay to Columbia? What if I’m too late already, with a December LSAT? What if they don’t let Muslim girls into law school? What if I’m not smart?

Maybe if I curl up in this ball, the applications will do themselves?

I know. I know I know I know. Muppie, CHILLAX, it’s not that deep. It’s just an electronic application. Fill out phone number and permanent address, attach personal statement, press send. It is soooooooooooo very simple. Really. Seriously.

(In my defense, hindsight, wisdom, and friends all have 20/20 vision. Insecure girls masquerading as more together versions of themselves do not.)

So, you’re right. It’s not that deep. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Worst possible scenario: I get in nowhere. I reapply next year. In, like, September. Get the rolling  admissions process on my side. And I get in places. And I go to law school a mere 12 months after I had originally intended. Big freaking deal.

Thing is, to me it would be. I have never ceased to be terrified of suddenly finding myself incapable or inadequate. This has resulted in a lot – a lot – of playing it safe. Of putting things off. Of dreaming crazy dreams that involve Yale, a lot of ivy, a lot of coffee, a lot of all-nighters, and a Juris Doctor, and then placing them on that tidy shelf in my psyche labeled Pie in the Sky. Also known as the Maybe Later? shelf. As long as they are dreams, I cannot fail. As long as they are dreams, I do not have to hold myself up next to my high school classmates who are (gulp) already practicing lawyers. Because I’m finding myself. Very consuming work. Far too busy to take entrance exams and fill out applications now. Next year. Maybe next year.

BUT. But, dear readers, my lovely blog-visitors, I have TRIUMPHED! I have barely triumphed, yes. But I. Have triumphed. Over Procrastination Queen and her Minions of Misery. I. Have applied. To graduate school.

I flabbergast myself!

Do you realize what this means? Maybe. Probably not. I am on Cloud Nine right now. I can do things! I can apply to grad school, if I feel like it! I MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE A FUTURE! Can you believe it?

Anything can happen now. I will believe anything. I will believe it if my favorite juvenile cartoon prince shows up with roses.

I just can't get enough of this guy.

I will believe it if the sky is purple tomorrow, or I wake up and don’t have Tragic Morning Hair. I will believe it if I get into law school. Anything can happen to me now. Anything!

I want to give myself a prize, but what? I’ve contemplated a cheesy romance novel instead of some more serious literature for my next book; throwing myself a party; allowing myself to watch as much Buffy the Vampire Slayer as I want for an entire week (I know, I’m like, crazy). I haven’t decided. So I’m blogging. Because clearly, this is what you do when something momentous happens. A girl needs witnesses.

What dreams may come, you ask? Any. Any dreams may crawl off your Pie in the Sky shelf and sneak over to Real Life. Isn’t existence delicious?

Pinch

I dreamt that I went to Easter at Grandma’s, and didn’t poke anyone with the pins on my hijab as I hugged them. Nobody said “Oops, you got me right in the eye,” and nobody cackled too loud in response. I didn’t blush.

I went to Easter, and my grandfather said he would go see the doctor, and didn’t smoke any cigarettes, and wasn’t out of breath.

Nobody told me she had a dream that I wasn’t wearing my scarf, and how wonderful it was to see my hair. Nobody told me that wearing the hijab is like going to a Muslim country wearing a giant gold cross. Nobody said that it is cultural and not religious, and nobody said it didn’t matter. Nobody told me that I’d never get hired again if I didn’t take it off. Nobody told me nicely, in so many words, that I make everyone uncomfortable. Nobody said it was “food for thought”.

Nobody told me I think too hard about prejudice.

Nobody sold guns for a living. Nobody said they don’t believe in global warming.

Nobody told me what a shame it was that I didn’t go to medical school. They didn’t ask me why I had switched fields. They thought it made sense that I want to be a writer, and encouraged me.

When I gave someone a page from my novel, he said he liked it, and wanted to read more.

When I said that I had been hired to write for a magazine, they asked, “which one?” and asked for a reminder email. When I told them I had a blog, they asked for the address.

My fifteen-year-old cousin didn’t say that she never wants to get married. In response, I didn’t think: You haven’t lived alone in the world.

I didn’t serve pork.

I enjoyed playing dice games as much as everyone else, and didn’t wonder if it constituted gambling. I wanted to win and felt bonded by mutual enjoyment to the family members sitting around the table. When I looked around, I felt we shared more than a certain similarity about the forehead, eyebrows and lips. I looked down at the penny with which I played our game and thought we were a true manifestation of the hope stamped there: E pluribus unum.

When we left, no one avoided my head so that I wouldn’t stab her with my pins, and I hadn’t checked to make sure the ends were tucked on the inside five times. I wasn’t obsessed by the idea that I had upset my only aunt who never gets upset by hopefully insisting that some Americans wouldn’t mind my working for them, and that I don’t necessarily alienate everyone. When I told her I came from two communities: WASP and Muslim, I felt at home in both. I was sorry to go. I felt connected.

I didn’t fear that I had offended anyone by trying to worship God. And the way I try didn’t scare anyone at all.

Bottle it up.

Love…….how glorious and crazy-making it is.

Falling in love is such a curious experience. It’s tempting to miss the heady ignorance of my first time, but the first tingles that come, both familiar and new, allow a sort of anticipatory pleasure that I wouldn’t trade.

Funny thing is that it’s kind of the same for everything. Sure, the first time I fell really hard it was for a guy, but now I’m all kooky over the experience of writing (and people reading it….dear Lord, what are they all thinking of me? Being anonymous – or not – not even knowing which I am at which computer, where…well it’s been less than a week, but I’ll tell you it’s fairly addicting). And over this novel. So that I experience the rest of life in terms of this one thing, and not the other way around. Time spent away from the beloved becomes interesting only in the terms that it will inform our next meeting…the seconds, hours, days, weeks between are grey.

I experienced this feeling too when I first converted, I now realize. Every new thing was something that was happening for me through the new adopted framework of Islam (and I hardly knew what that was), and it heightened, and colored, everything. I cast off everything that might come in conflict with my newfound faith with imaginary impunity. I left a longtime love with a few sentences, proud of myself, clear, free, as I thought I should be. Only weeks later, after the initial euphoria, did I even stop to grieve properly. And even then…my Islam was new, I felt new, I felt a new and better and more interesting person, and there was a whole world to discover, and it was mine.

I think it’s much the same with falling for people. Immediately we imagine a whole life as though it has already happened – it is territory, it is our territory, and the only thing separating us from the thousand mythical experiences is time. We consider the deal sealed with the first taste of mutual admiration, even if we don’t yet admit it to ourselves. Though our lives lie in wait with or without that person, that book, that occupation, it is as though we’ve come out of a long and cobwebby slumber and suddenly, yes! Life awaits!

Of course, it is much simpler with writing, with books, and even with religion. These things don’t require the consent of another party, so it’s much easier to live out the fantasy in precisely the way it is imagined.

I love that we fall in love. I love that we all do it, and still we experience it as the most uncommon, unique, particular and precious experience in all the world. I love that no matter how cynical we are, no matter how hurt we’ve been, no matter how many times we’ve tread the same exhilarating ground before, we experience it as new all over again, as soon as that first glimpse of love is there. I love that we love, and fail at it, and recover and do it again with the requisite amnesia. I love how willing people are to love. I love that we are foolish about it, and I love that with time and experience we learn to temper that with rational prudence: alone again, still giddy, we ask ourselves: is (s)he a sheep, or a wolf in sheep’s clothing? I love that it makes beggars of kings, and kings of beggars. I love that in the first stages we feel we are only the best versions of ourselves, I love that we have faith in that, I love that we let someone else feel beautiful and good and fascinating, and I love that with time we let them settle into their flawed humanity, and continue to love them anyway.

Whoever said that religion is the opiate of the masses was a fool. It is love, love, love – and what a fool I sound. I am. I’m a fool for walking around with my little notebook, and a fool for scribbling in it, and a fool for looking forward to a Saturday night in, alone, with only a novel for company. So be it. I’ll bottle it up and be regular come Monday.

(….and hey, I’m sorry about this post. I know. I know how ridiculous I am. I think the headiness of Atonement has really infected me. Don’t worry; I’ll be wry and sarcastic again soon enough.)

A little austere

I’m currently devouring Ian McEwan’s Atonement as though the act of finishing it will be some saving grace for me.

It feels incongruous, wrong, and perhaps that is part of the deliciousness of the novel. The title implies a world, or a life, overtaken by sin, hijacked. I suppose we all dread doing something unfixable, something dreadful and permanent. Something that we cannot come back from. But what may be irredeemable about the story is contradicted completely by the way it is told; I’m still stunned, hours and days later, by small details in McEwan’s prose that cause me to reexamine my own experience: the smell of cow dung is leathery. I find myself pausing and inhaling deeply, trying to remember the farm fields I regularly drive through with the windows down in a town adjacent to my home. I can’t ever remember having made the same association, but I feel renewed, somehow, by it all the same. There is no doubt that next summer I’ll be searching the air for that clean, functional scent among the cows.

And then there is the love scene, the love, the lovers. I remember being struck during the film at how artful it was: the colors, the shapes of bodies against the dark leather of bound books, splayed like giant spiders conquering a wall. And I’m left wondering if that’s not how we all want to be loved, really: for that mole, that scar, to be not a blemish, but an adornment. Something specific and extraordinary, to be kissed and adored simply because it doesn’t exist on any other person in quite that spot in quite that shape or hue. To be familiar and strange all at the same time – to be able to be remade by the beloved. I’m slightly (very) fanciful, but I like to think that we all want that. That kind of intimacy is a very human need. I think we’d all like to be examined, not for what’s right with us, but for what’s there. Acceptance pre-guaranteed, affection secured. And then we lay ourselves bare. It’s so safe – McEwan paints it – or types it, rather, exactly. And without saying so in the crude way I have.

And the smell of perspiration like cut grass. How often I’ve felt awkward to be comforted by the smell of a loved one’s sweat. How fresh and human it feels to breathe it in. How natural. I’m a bit of a hippie in disguise, but I’ve always felt that this urge we’re all encouraged to have (and spend fountains of money on) to smother every innate scent, to smooth every line, to pluck and dye and starve ourselves into severe, gaunt, unanimous perfection is bizarre. One of my favorite scents in the world is that of my sister’s bedsheets. Hers always smelled different than those draping the other beds in the house, and it was between them that I crept after every nightmare, during every insecure midnight of my childhood. Nothing can replace that for me, and it smells like person. And I like it that way. It’s proper. Someone shouldn’t only smell like Chanel, or Polo. We should smell like people. It’s so meaty and personal. Why should we want to stuff it away, ashamed of our failure to be a flower? Roses smell like roses. Let them. I’ll take in the tang of my father’s musty neck, the mildness of my mother’s hair, and be satisfied.

I know I’m focusing on scents here. But I’m so haunted. I can’t help it. This whole novel wound around an obsession with repentance is the most luscious thing I’ve ever held between my two hands. It’s ludicrous. And perfect in its irony. And the feel of reading it is so bracing and wonderful that everything is fresh, every word tormentingly flawless, and I never want it to end.

…On a more personal note (if possible): I’m afraid that I’ll never write anything so beautiful. But that failure wouldn’t be so bad. I could write something that falls far short of McEwan’s mark and still exceed my own hopes. It would be pathetic not to try, but I often feel crushed under so much beauty that has come before. To dream of joining the ranks of the published (and read admiringly, fingers clutched, breath held) seems so presumptuous. But we all have our purpose, and I can’t imagine dreaming of anything else anymore.