went to the second-last "rethinking religion" lecture today, where i was extremely tired and thus slipping between consciousnesses...however, what i did understand was quite beautiful. he quoted the kierkegaard below, and brought together dostoevsky and levinas. i was most able to understand things during the first part of the hour, when he talked of how we are all (via the karamazovs) "guilty to one another, and i more than the others"...and that, by existing, we are given the terror of choice / the inevitability of betrayal: to enter into relationships necessarily exclusionist and thus sacrificial, we must be just, give an 'other' their rights, but in so doing deny others; if though we try to bring others into the relationship, we corrupt it. we must thus ask forgiveness for being just; in our very justice we have had to be unjust.
basic ideas, if you had read derrida and kierkegaard before. which i hadn't.
i was explaining some of this to family this evening. noor: "but what's the point? everything you just said /sounds/ beautiful, but it doesn't mean anything in the real world. it's empty, meaningless."
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talked to people i knew in damascus. i am surrounded by the spirals of disbelief: it was only three months ago. i cannot think of this too much, to keep myself from going mad.
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a midterm today, finished the readings at 5.30 this morning. i may take christian theology, aquinas and augustine, from st.joseph's college. what people who raised eyebrows at the hebrew will say to this. the midterm went far worse than the previous. dish out the humility, ladle it on.
farooq and i are recently discovering our callings as performing artists. spoken word from khalil gibran, parveen pasha, and our own selves, on the one hand, and classical anasheed accompanied by drum and sounding-sticks, on the other.
placed in a room with an individual i had never known before, and the words seemed to flow from me without anything from my part. (questions on islam, etc.)
march inshaAllah sees taqa rooq and i at CANIMUN as Team Afghanistan Reunited. just find someone to pay my plane ticket.
: in a world where children die of malnutrition, i am thinking of doing this. there are days i do not believe myself.
