I’ve been doing a lot of listening to Sam Cooke lately, thanks to Suheir Hammad’s reference to him in her poem, Daddy’s Song. It took me a few years, but I finally decided to check out who exactly he was, and, whaddaya know, he sang beautifully. I would have just shared this on tumblr, but […]

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Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
I’m so tired of constantly feeling so tired - I don’t sleep enough, I fall asleep holding books I once could have finished reading in a single day, I sleep crookedly, and my neck has been aching for over a week. Also, there’s that drama that enters my head once in a […]

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Near MACLA, downtown San Jose, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
I was taking BART into San Francisco one Sunday a few weeks ago when a young man got on the train at the MacArthur station and glanced curiously at me for much longer than I was comfortable with as he made his way down the aisle.
A […]

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Poetry in People’s Park, Berkeley, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
My new buddy recently introduced me to the poetry slam at MACLA and upcoming open mic nights at Blue Monkey in downtown San Jose [Blue Monkey! The name just makes me laugh and think of Baji, my favorite robot monkey pirate], then I also attended the Poetry […]

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Light upon light, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
[When I transferred all my weblog archives from Blogger to WordPress, I found nineteen DRAFT posts amongst the lot. NINETEEN! I’m working my way through them, trying to figure out where I had been going with each of these. Meanwhile, here’s something simple I had been meaning to share […]

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Wishing you much sunshine!, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
Nearly two years ago, I visited UC Berkeley for a conference and stopped to check out a workshop entitled, “WRITE OR BE WRITTEN: Using Spoken Word to Speak the Truth.” The workshop was lead by Junichi Semitsu, then-director of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People course at UC […]

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A chessboard awaits potential players in an Oakland park, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
“Are you happy, Yasminay?” asked HijabMan the other day through GMail chat [apparently the best/only way to get ahold of me these days - since I suck at returning people’s phone calls and replying to their emails and I can’t be bothered […]

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Year-round shoes of choice, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
A couple of weeks ago, I went out to dinner with the very few friends from high school whom I like enough to engage in such activities with. Remind me to tell you stories about why I disliked high school, and why my fifth-year reunion last December was […]

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The Basic Conby Lew Welch
Those who can’t find anything to live for,always invent something to die for.
Then they want the rest of us todie for it, too.

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Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz. [Photo on the left taken by my friend A, cropped by me.]
The other day, I slipped on my green jacket (the one my father always glances at sidelong before asking rather scornfully, “What sport are you playing?”) and throughout the day I kept sniffing at my wrist. The perfume still […]

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Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz. [Click to read in the original sizes]
Actually, I don’t really have much to say about the 25 thing, except:
1. The poetry in the photos above really resonates right about now. [Click the photos to read.]
2. I don’t feel 25. Actually, I never felt 23 or 24 either, or anything older […]

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Sorry, my wannabe English/Comparative Literature-major tendencies wouldn’t let me bypass all this drama without making use of such an obvious pun. Apparently, I’m not the only one.
Truthfully though, I’m damn tired of the drama - of the emails, the articles, the conversations with friends regarding this mass chaos and fury all over the world. Also […]

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originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
The above photograph was taken last Friday, after I had completed Jummah salah (the Friday congregational prayer) in Oakland and decided to swing by downtown Berkeley really quickly. […]

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"With every difficulty, there is relief" Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
Nightly, I dream of rain and hail and snow-covered mountains, when in reality my local mountains are gorgeously goldenbrown and I daily chase patches of sunshine all over the house so I can gleefully warm up my […]

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In characteristic Yasmine-is-a-Lazy-Bum fashion, I’m a few days late in posting this update. Here’s wishing you much ease and discipline in your fasting, whether it’s for Ramadan, Navratri, or the ten days from Rosh Hashana until Yom Kippur for the Jewish New Year. Abhi has a lovely post over at Sepia Mutiny entitled My first […]

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