Day 359: Thinking About Things

OYLPA Day 359: Thinking About Things, a photo by klodhie on Flickr.

The last day of this blog nears, and I'm completely behind! I wonder if I've been passively sabotaging (new phrase learned at work) my blog progress. Picking up my camera last weekend while in the city with my brother was such a good feeling, and one that I miss already. While layers of papers to be graded sit stacked in front of me, I think of the sensation of just having the camera in my hands, seeing light and shapes and situations, and going through the physical process of trying to capture what I see the way that I'd like. I don't think I appreciated the act of taking a photograph until now.

While I sit and reflect on how Friday's lessons could be improved, family and Pakistan and general worries about the future are always on my mind. I worry for my sick uncle, and worry also for my father and their other siblings. I think of how short life is, and how sad it is that in this short existence so many lives are filled with little but constant striving to find happiness and emotional satisfaction, and for so many others the strive is simply to find food or water. Perhaps completely unrelated, I am reminded of how important my culture is to me, how I miss just hearing Urdu, seeing my mother in shalwar kameez, seeing Geo News and "Utho Jago Pakistan" as I walk to the kitchen. I miss that smell of dust and burning tires and fabric and ithar that hits you when you step off the plane in Karachi, the hauntingly beautiful sound of the azaan when the whole city of Lahore is awash in that ocean-blue before dawn, cool flat rooftops and intricate iron latices spreading out for miles and miles.

I look down and there is my tall coffee, the blue pen for responding to student work, the stack of papers, the screen on which I see these letters and words appear. Too layered. Time to get back to work.

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