The Pragmatic Hybrid

Predictable outcomes of the “where I’m from” question

Amna Ahmad | October 14, 2010

I believe this is the longest I’ve ever put off writing a blog post I knew I had to write. Though I can’t say I didn’t see it coming.

It’s actually what I was afraid of when I opened this very can of worms with this post about why it’s not okay to ask some people where they’re from.

I love that you guys read it seriously. And heard what I was saying. And asked questions from the genuine desire to connect with other humans, and to do it in a loving, conscious way.

LOVE IT.

At the same time, I knew when I wrote it that I would want to run away after.

Because what I was avoiding – being in the position of educating people about this issue – is exactly what happened.

There’s another layer to this not-asking of thoughtless questions. That layer looks like polite non-asking, out of respect and consideration, and then asking someone to explain to you why it’s not okay to ask.

Like: “But when I ask, I do it in this other, more aware way, with this context. Doesn’t that make it okay?”

Or: “I’m asking with good intentions! Surely the askee can see that, and not lump me in with other less considerate askers?”

I understand the question-beneath-the-question here. It’s something like “don’t my good intentions make it okay?”

The short answer: No.

Good intentions don’t make it okay. They may not add to your personal karmic burden, but they do add to the Mountain of Hurtful Questions that the hearer has to do something with in her life.

I will probably come back another time and talk more about why it’s not okay.

Knowing that I need to do this is exactly why I’ve put off writing about it for weeks.

The issue I’m having now is that I feel duty bound to teach on this. Because here I am, talking about it, and it’s apparently still not old news, based on the response.

While I get the necessity, I must admit that I’m not pleased that it’s up to me to educate smart, sophisticated people who should be well capable of educating themselves on these matters.

I know that the majority does not usually go out of its way to learn about the experience of the minority. That it may not even realize that there is an experience other than its own. This is as good a functional definition of privilege as any.

I get it. I’m privileged in many ways, and it is not always comfortable to be confronted with this, to be asked to take responsibility for educating myself about things I take for granted. But as unpleasant as it is for me to be called on it, it’s a thousand times harder for the brave person who’s pointing it out to me.

I get that if things are going to change, the people affected by the unfairness of things are going to have to be the ones to raise hell about it. That if we wait around for the world to just spontaneously figure it out, we might be waiting a few minutes.

But when I think of writing everything that lives inside me about Belonging and Identity and Race, I just want to take a nap.

I said as much to Edgar, and he encouraged me stay strong. To stay awake, and to keep talking about it. And that he is going to do the same, painful as it can be, because it needs to be told.

He helped me know that I AM going to talk about it, even though it’s difficult, because every time I do, someone responds as if they’re hearing it for the first time.

So here I am. Being brave.

Comment Fu

This is sensitive stuff, my chiclets. Ya-buts will get the unceremonious high hat.

As always, loving discussion is welcome. Let’s be awesome to each other, and remember that people have a right to their own experience, especially as we talk about this really hard stuff.

Comments: 10 Comments » Categories: Being who you are

Writing is hard. I try some things.

Amna Ahmad | September 27, 2010

This writing business isn’t for sissies. Sometimes it totally blows. I would stop, except I don’t seem to be capable of leaving it alone.

So I try things. I am always with the trying of the things. Today I bring you an update on the recent learnings from my tryings.

First: I’m trying a new approach these days for my n-o-v-e-l in progress. (I spell it out so that I don’t wake up any tricksy faeries that might interfere with my humble efforts.)

The loosely-held goal is to write for five minutes, three times a week. More is always okay, but the idea is to set a teeny-tiny expectation, so that it’s almost impossible to wiggle out of.

I’m being very influenced right now by Eric Maisel’s Fearless Creating. One of his big things is that artists who succeed in creating consistently do so because they find ways to manage the anxiety that attends the creative process.

My current way of doing this is to write “even though” sentences.

Like this: “Even though I feel massive anxiety at the thought of writing the actual n-o-v-e-l instead of just writing about it,  and thinking about it makes me want to take an immediate nap, I am allowed to not know where to start today.”

And so on. I write these for as long as I need to – until the knot of anxiety loosens and I’m able to imagine myself picking up a thread in my growing story and following where it leads.

So I’ve been going along for a couple weeks now, practicing managing my starting-anxiety, setting a timer and seeing how far I get, with permission to keep going after the timer dings if I feel like it. I won’t lie: sometimes it flows. And sometimes it’s really, really hard.

This weekend I had one stellar writing session in which I wrote about 1,000 words in 25 minutes. This is probably some kind of land speed typing record for me. It was so shocking a number that I had to go back again to make sure I’d done the word count right (yes, there is a bit of sub-clinical OCD in my family, why do you ask?).

And then there was one bleh session. It started with my inner writer bitching: “But we wrote yesterday! Whaddaya mean we have to write again today? Writing is hard! We deserve a reward! We deserve to skip writing today!”

Which stopped me up short.

Because writing is what we do, my inner writer and me. Not writing as a reward for writing? Maybe not the most productive thing.

I get the utility of rewarding myself for doing difficult, virtuous things. But the writing thing is not a chore I can do once and be done with. To write all the stuff that wants me to write it, I need to work consistently over a lifetime. Two, maybe.

The reward thing is fine. It just needs to be something other than not having to do it next time.

So: what are possible rewards of Having Written? Outside of things that exist in material reality, I mean. Because I don’t want to bust the budget bribing myself to write.

The biggest non-material reward for me is how I feel. I feel good after writing. Really good after writing well, but plenty good enough even after writing badly. I feel like my day is spent well, no matter what else I do with it.

And when I haven’t written at all, there’s a free-floating crappiness that affects everything. Even when the crappy feeling isn’t at the forefront of my brain, it’s in there somewhere, making me despairy.

This movement away from pain is less interesting to me than the move toward feeling good. So that’s the thing, I think – to deepen my appreciation and noticing for how I feel after I’ve put in my writing time. Like a professional! Like part of the community, of the society of writers.

To remember the many, many people all over the earth who are – right at that very moment – writing too. In the words of Jane Smiley, “to be someone who has volunteered to be a representative of literature and move it forward a generation. That is all.”

The inner rebellion also made me see that I wasn’t making it as safe as necessary for me to start.

I believe deeply in the power and necessity of the shitty first draft, as described by Anne Lamott. Out of this permission to write badly comes safety, and safety is what makes it possible to begin. Permission is the tonic that gives you courage and power, and that makes it possible to play and lighten the eff up.

But, as I discovered, there is a difference between saying it’s okay to write really badly and for only five minutes, and actually meaning and believing that it’s okay.

And I was saying it to myself, but not meaning it. The quality obsession was always there, lurking just out of sight, even in the shitty first draft phase.

This is the thing – when you say this to yourself, mean it. Make it really, truly okay to write badly and little. It has to be meant, and it has to be a blanket for as long as something is in the SFD stage. When it’s time to revise, it’s okay to start appraising.

Until then – give yourself honest, sincere permission to write badly. Mean it. It’s okay – no, it’s required – to let it come the way it comes.

P.S. – Probably my top-favorite trick for making it safe to start is to write with others. You’re together, you’re enjoying and cheering each other, and suddenly it’s possible. I am running a writing workshop in January that is all about this safety and support to let writers find their own voices. I haven’t gotten around to polishing up the official page yet, so if you want to hear the details first, get on the Happenings list.

Oh – and if you have any bright ideas for a name for the workshop, leave them in the comments! If I use your name or something based on it, you’ll win free registration for the 10-week session.

Comment Fu

This space is like a Quaker meeting that is happening in my living room. Honored guests, please speak as you are moved to. And let’s be awesome to each other, because graciousness among friends is why we hang out together.


Comments: 3 Comments » Categories: Writing

Where I’m from, redux

Amna Ahmad | September 20, 2010

I say this with love, because I know some people’s hearts are in the right place. But it must be said:

You can’t ask people of color, who obviously grew up here (wherever here might be), where they’re from.

It is not okay.

I hear the question, but what comes through loud and clear is the real question under the spoken one: “Why are you brown?”

Here are some of my smartypants answers when I get what they’re asking for but don’t want to give it to them:

“I was born in Washington, D.C., but we moved when I was small so I don’t remember it.”

Or “Oh, I’m from Arizona.” And then I watch to see the calculation happening: is she Mexican? I don’t think so, but aren’t there supposed to be a lot of Mexicans in Arizona?

And then sometimes, the follow-up question: “But where are you really from?”

Even though I know how much I don’t like it when people ask me, I totally get the temptation.

I really, really do.

I was just in Holland, and it was much more racially and ethnically heterogeneous than I expected. I saw that modern Dutch people are very commonly of Arab and African and South Asian descent.

And even though I know how much it irks me when people ask me “where are you from” when what they really want to know is “why are you brown,” I was still SO tempted. One night I had a beautiful curly-haired waiter with skin almost the same color as mine, and I almost died of unsatisfied curiosity.

Here’s why I went ahead and risked death from dissatisfaction: if someone is born and/or raised in a particular place and looks different from the majority, asking where they’re from is not a neutral question.

It points out to them – again, because believe me, you’re not the first person who’s asked, or even the twenty-seventh – that though they think of themselves as regular, they are seen as something different. As Other.

If you go down this conversational path with someone and they are too polite to deflect it, it goes to well-worn places that just make one into a bigger and bigger ass.

To wit: “Oh, I had a Pakistani friend in college!” This is the most innocuous of the many dumb things people have said to me.

More insidious, and altogether too common: “Oh, are you Muslim? What do you think about Iraq/Iran/Qaddafi/Hussein/Ahmedinijad/Afghanistan/Palestinians/the Taliban/Three Cups of Tea/Reading Lolita in Tehran/the oppression of women/hijab/niqab/burqa/chador/the veil/madrassas/jihad?”

This one is usually accompanied by the fish-eye. Like, “I thought you were alright for a foreigner, but I stand ready to adjust that opinion based on any insufficiently vehement espousal of the proper opinions!” Or maybe a gleam that translates to “Let me demonstrate my insider knowledge to you, so that I can build a bridge between our cultures!”

I will pause here to heave a mighty sigh. Because it’s almost funny, isn’t it? If you’ve been the unfortunate recipient of this line of questioning, it’s so ridiculous that you have to laugh, because the script is so familiar.

It’s such old news that I hesitate to write about it, because it’s no longer even an interesting topic of conversation to those on the receiving end. It’s just the laughable, pathetic way things sometimes are, and when it happens you shake your head about it and roll on.

Except lately, it’s getting worse.

I grew up in an environment where I got this kind of agenda’d questioning all the time. It didn’t feel good, but I could tell myself that it would be different when I lived in a bigger place, and that it was getting better all the time, and that the world was changing and ever-evolving in the direction of love and acceptance and clear-seeing.

But we seem to be going in reverse. Something backlash-y is happening recently to make Pakistani and Arab and Muslim even dirtier words than they already were in this country.

I wish it were just a matter of rhetoric. But these are things that are affecting people’s physical safety and fair treatment.

I don’t worry so much about hate crimes for my own sake, because I’m probably safer in New York City than in most places in the U.S. (the recent slashings of taxi drivers notwithstanding).

But it hurts my feelings, even if I poke fun at it, that I am seen by some as a permanent foreigner.

That when everyone else goes through airport security unmolested, I get patted down even when I don’t beep.

That I have to go through the “special handling” line, and every now and then the special handling involves phone calls and verifications that take so long that I miss my flight.

All this being-put-in-a-particular-box (the one labeled “the usual suspects”) makes one extremely sensitive to being unfairly categorized.

This sensitivity also makes me hyper-adept at sniffing out the intentions of someone asking “where are you from?”

I get that occasionally the intent is just genuine, open, loving curiosity about another human being. It does happen!

But more often, it’s an attempt to relieve the asker’s cognitive dissonance. To get a short, easy answer that will confirm his suppositions so he can stop trying to figure me out and relax into his picture of me.

Wouldn’t it be cool if it wasn’t so loaded?

If asking about someone’s cultural/racial/geographic origins was a neutral thing that meant no more than that?

It would be AWESOME. Because it’s fascinating – where people’s ancestors came from, and when, and why. What it’s like to live in their skin, with their particular tribe, in that particular place.

And when that day comes, I will feel completely free to ask someone I don’t know well if his curly black hair comes from his mother’s side or his father’s, and what it’s like to grow up with that particular cultural mix in a small city in the Netherlands.

Until then, I’m keeping the question under wraps. It’s only polite.

Comment Fu

In case you couldn’t tell, this is sensitive territory. I’m really curious about what this brings up for you. If you’re a receiver of the above-mentioned boorishness, how do you respond? How does it affect you?

This space is like a Quaker meeting that is happening in my living room. Please speak as you are moved to. And let’s be awesome to each other, because graciousness among friends is why we hang out together.

Comments: 25 Comments » Categories: Being who you are

The writing workshop nudged me and told me to tell you this.

Amna Ahmad | September 6, 2010

You know how I was saying, about writing your future into being and your past into peace?

Yeah, well. About that.

That’s what I’m doing right this minute, in this here blog post! (So meta, yes?)

What I mean is that the writing workshop planification is shifting before my very eyes.

This happened partly after an illuminating session with Hiro, and partly from scribbling in my journal about it (like I do with everything I don’t know how to make sense of).

And here’s where it wants to go: in the direction of broad, expansive belonging-ness.

I want it to include people writing all kinds of things, including things that have no defined name or form or known endpoint. This means you! Yes, the You reading this right now.

Because my real, true intention is totally radical and subversive, and I suspect my original workshop plan didn’t give it proper prominence.

The goal of my work is to help people be free.

To help them be themselves and shed unwanted indoctrination and notice the world and see how they want to fit into it.

And my top most favorite tool for doing this is writing.

How can I say this without being too dramatic? Writing saves my life all the time. For me, it’s often (but not always) about all this hybrid stuff – living at the borderlands of place/religion/culture/allegiance and negotiating all the blessings and nonsense that come with.

It’s how I explain myself to myself.

I don’t think you have to identify as a capital-w Writer to write true, powerful, healing things. Writing is storytelling, and storytelling belongs to everyone.

Stories are how we make sense of our lives, and how we polish and admire the experience-gems we’ve lived through. I’m particularly interested in using stories in ways that create freedom.

So this is where I’m going.

I’m working out the details, but here’s what I know so far:

In its revised incarnation, the workshop will exist as an intimate space where your genius, your You-ness, can emerge. Where your Writer-self can come out and play, safely and supported-ly.

It will be open to everyone, of all genders, writing any and all sorts of things.

You don’t have to identify as a writer, or have a single thing in progress.

Sharing your writing will be completely voluntary. Detailed feedback will only be offered when you ask for it.

More to come! Including a proper name. (God help me, I’m terrible at names. If anyone has any good ideas, I will welcome them.)

Actually, that’s an idea. I’m inventing a contest, right here on the spot!

Please halp me name my workshop!

Here’s what I know about it:

  • It’s for everyone, because everyone is a writer!
  • We’ll be writing together. It will be a safe space for exploring anything you want in writing.
  • Your sharing level is completely flexible and up to you. No one has to share their work, ever.
  • People looking for opportunities to improve their writing will have them, in an environment of safety that invites your craft to unfold.

Leave your ideas in the comments! If I use your name, or a variation, you’ll win free registration to the first round (which will be eight or ten weeks long).

Okay! Good. More to come on the details as they reveal themselves to me. If you’d like to hear about it first when it’s ready, you can hop on my Happenings list.

Comment Fu

This space is like a Quaker meeting that is happening in my living room. Honored guests, please speak as you are moved to. And let’s be awesome to each other, because graciousness among friends is why we hang out together.

Comments: 10 Comments » Categories: Writing

What I talk about when I talk about writing

Amna Ahmad | August 30, 2010

I pace around the kitchen. Make tea, put away dishes, wonder if there’s coconut milk in the pantry to make that curry I’ve been tasting since I woke up.

There’s a kind of restlessness in my activity. I don’t find any satisfaction in this puttering. It’s a distraction from the pressure I feel building, the anxiety.

Something in me wants me to write it.

For me, this restlessness looks a particular way. It’s gruff, and a little touchy. My eyebrows frown and my jaw is set. If there’s anyone around to see me in this state, they keep their distance, because they know I won’t be agreeable again until after I’ve had some quality alone time with my notebook.

The restlessness wants nothing more than to steer me to my chair and minimize Firefox with its gazillion open tabs and write something. Anything.

It’s rarely easy, even when I can stand the anxiety enough to sit down and begin.

Mostly, I slog. The hardest part of the slog is letting myself feel the pre-beginning anxiety enough so that I’m actually driven to sit down and write.

Often – too often – I toss something shiny at the anxiety to make it leave me alone. And it does, for a time. But it always, always comes back.

I’m grateful that it does. Because what will I be when I no longer have this ocean of words pushing at the dam inside me? Dead, most likely.

But that doesn’t make the sitting-down-to-write part any easier.

I’m not claiming to be representative in this way.

Writers vary, just like the cussed stubborn humans we are, and I’m happy to know there are people who just sit down and do it, with minimal torment and maximal results.

Because I  hope and believe it’s possible to cultivate this. To practice facing up to the anxiety so that it becomes a wee little gecko I pat on the head each day as I sit down, instead of a dragon enflaming my fears. I intend to keep facing up to it.

In the meantime, I have some tricks.

The first trick is going on retreat.

Just me, a chunk of time, the bare minimum of life stuff, and a tiny cabin in the woods where I will be left entirely alone. If necessary, I tell everyone about how I will be observing silence to go deeper into my communion with the divine (which is not so far from the truth, plus it gives people a good reason why I can’t be disturbed).

The first few days I nap. And read. And fret about why I’m not writing, and count down how many days I have left, and do paranoid mental math like an insomniac waiting for dawn, like how if I write X-thousand words a day starting immediately, I could have so many by the time I go home.

Then, sometime around the third day, I start to let go of the world. I sleep at odd hours, whenever I feel like being horizontal, and eat when my stomach growls. And I noodle, and look out the window, and have strange, deep, useful dreams. This is when the writing starts to happen, almost without me doing anything about it.

Because there’s no risk anymore.

I am safe, cocooned away from the world, suspended in a dream space of doing nothing but taking care of my most pressing animal needs. Any critics – real, or in my head – feel very far away. It’s just me and my inner life, floating in an inner tube on a calm ocean of peace.

I’m totally fascinated by my inner life, when I’m not distracted by the world’s demands. Inner Me has smart things to say. Plus, she’s hilarious.

Then the words flow. They don’t come in any orderly way. I don’t try too hard to corral them, or to slot them into my outline. I just take dictation.

And I come out of retreat having made Real Progress.

Though I love it and recommend it highly, it’s not always feasible to go hide in the woods for a couple weeks at a time. It’s worthwhile to cultivate methods for fitting writing into my regular life.

My other trick is the exact opposite of going into deep seclusion and floating in the womb of the forest.

I write with others.

I write with a friend, or with a group. We write together at the same actual time to the same actual prompts. Also, we have deadlines!

Just by making a commitment to show up at a certain time with some writing to share, magic happens. Writing happens.

It sounds so simple, but I really can’t over-explain the wondrous effectiveness of this method.

A meeting is going to happen. The group is waiting to read your work. By hook or by crook, you produce some and send it out to them on time.

You show up, and they’ve read your piece and have brilliant and validating things to say about it, and you come away knowing that you’re a writer and that you’re feeding your Writer Self the best kind of food. And you’ve written another chapter or essay or series of blog posts.

I’ve led many writing workshops, and experienced the magic of this effect firsthand.

So many of my fellow writers (and you know who you are) could benefit from this. I sure as hell have.

It’s actually super-simple. Once you show up and make a commitment to your community to produce something, miracles happen.

I heart creating this sort of safe incubation space for writers to write and grow and explore.

I am running a fabulous online workshop, called Writing From Life. This one is for women writing memoir, personal essays, and other You-based creative nonfiction.

You can read all about it here.

It starts September 19th and goes for ten weeks.

There are but ten spots in the group. If you want structure, and the magic effects of writing alongside friendly others to bring forth the work that wants to come out of you, you’re invited!

(If you love the sound of being part of a community of writers, but you write fiction or poetry or other stuff, I’m hatching a workshop especially for you! Get on my Happenings list to hear about it and get first dibs.)

Comment Fu

What do you talk about, when you talk about writing?

This space is like a Quaker meeting that is happening in my living room (albeit one where emotions can run high). Honored guests, please speak as you are moved to. And let’s be awesome to each other.

Comments: 3 Comments » Categories: Writing

A Hybrid Manifesto

Amna Ahmad | August 11, 2010

Let us commence with a battle cry. RAWRRRRR!

1. You are entitled to be who you are.

Your complicatedness, that you thought was the source of all your suffering in life and that you would never transcend? That complicatedness is a gift.

You have the struggle and the privilege of making your life for yourself—drawing from the components you inherited, if you like, without being bound by them.

You – and no one else! – get to take it apart and look at it up close and put it back together in a way that nourishes you, keeping some parts and leaving others.

You are blessed to be able to see and hold complexity in your mind and in your heart. You contain multitudes, and bridge divides with your being.

2. Yes and No are both your birthright.

There are many, many ways to do a thing.

All options are yours. You get to create and assign meaning.

The only right way is the way that you choose for yourself — the way that integrates all your knowing and experience and life force and wishes.

You can bring in stuff from new sources as you wish, so the You that results is a sturdy, magnificent new thing, unlike its sources, but drawn from each, and better all around.

3. You save the world by your own aliveness.

It is not selfish. To the contrary – the biggest gift you can give the world is to save yourself. To find where your life is and to be alive.

In nature, hybrid offspring are a new, third thing, distinct from and hardier than their parents. Hybridization is a mechanism for making new species and entire new lineages on the tree of life.

By choosing the elements that make up powerful, beautiful You, you create the possibility of newness and freedom. You enliven the world.

Comments: 7 Comments » Categories: Being who you are

No. Just, no.

Amna Ahmad | August 6, 2010

Let me tell you a story, my friends, of boundaries, breached and defended. And what happened after.

I was at a conference, where a Nigerian grad student took a shine to me. And let me know in no subtle way.

Day 1:

Him: Hello. Where are you from? How long are you here? Are you married? Why not? Where are you staying? Are you staying there alone?

Me, up until the last question: Chat, chat, polite conversation, charmingness training warring with urge to tell him I’m not interested.

Me, at the last question: I’m not answering any more questions.

Him: But why not? I would like to take you out on a date.

Me, losing my good humor: No, I’m not interested.

Him: Why not?

Me, good humor well lost: Just, no.

Day 2:

Do you believe he had the nerve to come back? I see him approaching and fortify the boundary of my energy field, and send him the vibe to change directions if he knows what’s good for him. Of course, he has no such sense.

Him: Hello, how are you?

Me, wearing my mean-face, not looking up from my computer: Fine.

Him: It is not a crime to let someone know you like them.

Me, foolishly acknowledging the apparent truth of this: No.

Him: I would like to have a date with you. But you mentioned that you don’t have time. Can we get together in New York?

Me, aghast at this spin: No, I didn’t say I don’t have time. I said I’m not interested.

Him: Wow, you are very blunt. My problem is that I like you. It is really a problem for me.

Me, having never looked up from my computer this whole time: This is not a problem for me. It’s your problem.

Him: Blah blah, that’s true, okay, see you later.

Me: WTF!?

This situation was just all kinds of wrong. I mean, anyone with two brain cells to rub together could look at my mean-face and see that he should go far away. But not this guy. I was concerned that he would turn up again.

So, I thought about telling the conference organizers, or someone, that he was harassing me. Which I didn’t end up doing.

What I did do: resolve to repeat my NO at increasing volume if he came back for more. And to feel wholly free to punch him in the neck if that didn’t work.

Day 3:

He waves from afar and makes like he’s coming over, but swerves away when he sees that looking at him is making my eyebrows meet in the middle.

After this, I remembered Gavin de Becker.

He wrote The Gift of Fear, which I super-duper recommend highly. I want to get copies of it for everyone I know, because it’s that good and necessary.

Two key things I took away from the book:

One danger sign of bad intent is over-explaining. It’s something untrustworthy people do when they’re trying to confuse your own sense and pull something over on you. Like the guy on the street saying “I don’t want to hurt you” as he follows you home from the subway.

Big hint: he does want to hurt you, or it wouldn’t occur to him to say this.

The other thing I remember: NO is all you have to say.

You don’t have to explain it, or justify it. While it may be necessary to repeat your NO loudly to draw attention to the situation, someone who wants you to defend your NO is trying to get you to back off from it and change your answer to YES. Or even MAYBE. So he can wedge his foot in the door.

This all happened a few days ago, and I’m still pissed.

It stirred up a lot of old bullshit situations when I was nice to people who were not so nice to me, and when I agreed to their nonsense even when I didn’t want to, because my agreeability indoctrination was so deeply ingrained.

(This agreeabilty indoctrination is a whole separate rant. I got a near-lethal dose of it, as the girl-kid of conservative desi parents. But I think very few women escape unscathed. There’s a lot to talk about on where it comes from, and why. But today I want to focus on what I’m doing to give it the finger.)

So now, inspired by Annoying Clueless Man, I’m making a practice of Enlightened Selfishness.

I know – what a radical and novel concept, right? Saying NO to what you don’t want, early and often? I too may have come across this idea once or twice.

But I’ve never seriously taken it on as an experiment, because it threatened to make other people (and therefore me) uncomfortable. Well. I am braced for some healthy discomfort.

Hear my mighty NO, ye pushy bastards of the world, and despair!

No, I will not be meeting your cousin’s former neighbor’s cat for coffee this weekend to tell her where in NYC she should live. No, she can’t call me on the phone to chat about it instead.

No, I will not be calling you back to share my inside opinion about your current and my former employer.

No, I will not be squeezing in a brunch date this weekend.

What else will I say no to? I’m not sure, but I’m just slavering for opportunities.

It is maybe best to not press for a reason. But if you truly need a reason to feel complete, here it is: I don’t emmer-effin feel like it. And I’m only doing things I really feel like doing.

The guiding principle: when you want to do something, do. And when you don’t, don’t.

Join me, if you will. And you know I want to hear all about it.

Comment Fu

This space is like a Quaker meeting that is happening in my living room (albeit one where emotions can run high). Honored guests, please speak as you are moved to. And let’s be awesome to each other.

Comments: 19 Comments » Categories: Being who you are

Where I’m from

Amna Ahmad | July 28, 2010

I am from crinkly leaves in October left behind.
I am from growing watermelon near the back porch, my father skipping his leather chappal sideways along the grass at rabbits daring to raid.
I am from mesquite and cholla, bottlebrush and wolfberry, teddy bear, jumping, spiny, leaves folded against the sun in supplication.
I am from slithery scales and dry, smooth coils undulating tracks across washboard roads.
I am the turkey vulture landing heavily to check the scene,
the tarantula with the misfortune to blunder into the kitchen,
the scorpion fast enough to dart away.
I am from walking barefoot through sprinklers on the golf course and pausing under the weeping willow, alien and parched.
I am in the stunted grape vines, and the pear tree that refused to bear, and the heavy black fig that bore until the sparrows were sated.
I am from the sour apricot in the bare western patch of yard,
and the woodpile sheltering black widows gleamingly in its crevices.
I am from saguaro and joshua tree,
and shimmering water mirages on a blacktop playground.
I am from mulberry trees over rustling blue shade.
I am from monsoon-lashed windows and the skylight that leaked in every storm.
And sometimes, in a rare freeze, I am from icicles pointing from the red tile roof.

This is after a poem by George Ella Lyon. I wrote it in a folklore workshop, where we were given her poem as a prompt to start us thinking of and writing about where we’re from.

It’s a rich question – one that can pull a poem right out of your heart’s archives.

Where are you from? I want to hear.

Comment Fu

Your poems and prosems are welcome here in the writing room of my house.

This space is like a Quaker meeting that is happening in my living room. Honored guests, please speak as you are moved to. And let’s be awesome to each other, because graciousness among friends is why we hang out together.

Comments: 6 Comments » Categories: Poems and prosems

Recent goings-on in Amnaland

Amna Ahmad | July 23, 2010

I want to share some places I’ve been lately and the people I’ve been talking to there.

I was interviewed!

It was my complete delight to be interviewed by my friend Karen Caterson, of Square-Peg People. You can read the interview here.

Karen is a hoot, and her website is a welcoming home for all of us hard-to-pigeonhole types.

She has the kindest face, and a heart to match. And she can use the F-word as every part of speech, with complete nonchalance and while oozing with love for you. I hope to someday approach her gracefulness.

This was my first time being interviewed. Not counting the time the reporter for our local paper came to interview my mother about Pakistani cooking and I went on and on about how my cat Panda got his name.

Anyway. I’m counting this as my first.

I taught a teleclass! And you can hear it.

I recently had my First Ever Public Teleclass. It was a fantastical group, and we talked about being the beholder, and addressing existential anxiety, and how it’s hard to raise good parents, and how you are the thread that connects all your things.

The recording is free and available here.

The next free Hybridology Q & A call is scheduled for Friday, October 15th, at 3 pm Eastern.

If you’d like to join in the fun, you can sign up for my Happenings list here.

A cleaning update

My mom arrived. My house, it got Clean Enough.

The last few post-moving boxes did not get unpacked. But neither did the world end.

I’ve pushed the housekeeping boulder up the hill one more time, again. It is perched there for a fleeting moment. Which I am relishing thoroughly.

Love, relishment, and static boulders to you!

Comment Fu

This space is like a Quaker meeting that is happening in my living room. Honored guests, please speak as you are moved to. And let’s be awesome to each other, because graciousness among friends is why we hang out together.


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Comments: 2 Comments » Categories: Making it happen

The dignity of certain futile acts

Amna Ahmad | July 16, 2010

I have cleaning on my mind.

My mother’s coming to visit. In light of her soon-arrival, I’m seeing my place with different eyes than I’ve seen it in a while. The last couple boxes that I never unpacked after moving in last fall and that gradually faded into the general scenery are once again glaringly visible.

I have a lot to do in this vein. It makes me sigh mightily.

I don’t have the most sensible relationship with housework. I do love a clean, orderly home. I do not love spending my precious time making it so.

Also, I can never forget that dirt is the ultimate destination of all of life.

Dirt is in charge.

We know this. We know the outcome before the beginning: that we, and all our belongings, will someday be dust. (In certain moods, I find this knowledge very comforting.)

But this doesn’t mean that we’re allowed to not care about it. Or that life-maintenance work is meaningless.

Sisyphus pushed the boulder up the hill anyway – not because he didn’t know it wasn’t going to roll down, but because that was the task before him. The task that established the boundaries of his life and infused it with meaning.

So it is with vacuuming up the dust-rhinos under the bed. They will always come back. But this doesn’t mean that dealing with them is pointless.

There’s a couplet from a favorite Urdu ghazal that I love. Translated, it’s something like this:

It was my work to build the nest.
What can I do if lightening knocks it down?

To me this speaks about knowing what your work and honoring it. About doing your duty, even in the certain knowledge that it may be undone be larger forces.

Housekeeping is a good proxy for life in this sense. A kind of snow-globe mini-universe, with our homes as a metaphor and laboratory for our lives.

Very little that we do there stays done.

There’s always another dish to wash, or another load of laundry to do. No matter how thoroughly I sparkulate the bathroom, it will soon enough need to be re-sparkulated.

It can get a little existentially depressing if you dwell on it.

The best, highest thing we can do is enjoy the doing, because there is tremendous dignity in the acts we perform to take care of our basic animal needs. Tall order, I know. I often fail at it.

My inspiration for this attitude – don’t laugh, okay? – is Sookie Stackhouse, the protagonist of Charlaine Harris’s vampire novels.

She is a proper Southern woman in the housework sense. The novels are all narrated in the first person, and Harris isn’t shy about letting Sookie tell us about how when she got home from work she made herself a single pork chop for dinner and then did the dishes before relaxing with a DVD.

The thing that so charms me about this isn’t the exposition — it’s that Sookie takes such obvious pleasure in the little routines of her life. She actually enjoys cooking her solo dinner and washing up after.

She takes pride in doing the work of keeping her house up, so much so that she tells us about it as she does it.

Sometimes, I swear to god, when the floor needs cleaning and I don’t feel like doing it, I channel Sookie. I ask myself: what would Sookie do? The answer is, Sookie would get the broom off her back porch, and if she didn’t get abducted by supernatural beings while she was out there, she would come in and sweep the floor and she would enjoy doing it, and she would be proud to have a clean floor.

And for those few moments, I enjoy sweeping. I use the broom time to think about how smoothly I would probably handle things if I were to get caught up in some vampire politics.

Sookie is my housework hero.

She is a great model in general for bearing up cheerfully under tasks that can’t be avoided.

I sometimes still forget to remember Sookie, and I grumble about life maintenance.

I think the next best thing then is to enjoy the fruits of your labors, knowing that they are impermanent and fleeting, and that you do these tasks in service of your human dignity.

Complain as you tidy your nest if you have to. But then soak in that sparkly tub. Wash the greens in that sink you just scrubbed to gleaming perfection. Admire the sun on the oak floor of the living room, free for a short, precious moment of cat hair tumbleweeds. Love it with your eyes. Appreciate the bones of the structure, the gracious windows, the kitchen with your pots snuggled together at-your-service in their cabinets, and the income, wheresoever it comes from, that lets you live there in peace.

Comment Fu

How do you do it? What’s your relationship to tasks that could be described as futile (in the existential sense)?

This space is like a Quaker meeting that is happening in my living room. Honored guests, please speak as you are moved to. And let’s be awesome to each other, because graciousness among friends is why we hang out together.

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Comments: 8 Comments » Categories: Making it happen

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