Untitled
This little story will be full of the minutia of a drive home, an addiction to audiobooks, a damaged iPhone and my extremely superficial thoughts on religion and if you care to continue reading after that disclaimer you're truly committed or rather should be committed, or maybe both.
I dropped my phone. It didn't slip from my lap after forgetting I had set it there as I raised up from my chair to refresh my drink. It didn't tumble from my purse as I dug frantically for a mint to curb the hunger induced by this latest diet. It simply fell from my hand, in what felt like slow-motion, as I was choosing my next aforementioned audiobook. And that little bugger landed on the top right corner in such a way that the screen shattered like my hopes to marry Prince Harry.
I considered living with the phone in its desperate state until a relatively large chunk of glass dislodged from the phone as I attempted to do some online banking (shopping). My husband, who probably already had a standing appointment with the cell phone repair guy, expecting this any day, offered to take my phone to be fixed.
Without my phone, like any quality person not yet forty (but painfully close), I would be lost. I would miss crucial Facebook, Twitter and Instagram notifications but worst of all, I would be without my beloved audiobooks for the entire twenty-four minute drive home from work.
I entered the minivan with an empty feeling and tried to remember how to work the radio. I eventually found the CBC and settled in for the long and lonely drive home. Where would I be without the soothing voice of the narrator and the complex twists and turns of a well-thought out plot. I lived for the drive in, the drive home, forty-eight minutes, every day, where my brain didn’t defy me. A time when, if the book was good enough, intriguing enough, it would fill my thoughts and offer a meditation, a mindfulness that I craved but could never reach on my own.
The highways were extra gray, and the windshield impossibly dirty. The seatbelt was digging into my neck and I felt agitated. I drove in the right lane, behind a black car. I didn't let my brain remember the make or the model because there is no room for that. Instead, I memorize the landmarks because this is crucial to getting home. Could my abysmal sense of direction be directly related to my brain’s inability to stop thinking about thinking? See what I mean?
I reluctantly became engrossed in a CBC interview with the author of a book and, of course, didn't catch the title. He was young with a tone far more casual and confident than most. He was a sophisticated thinker and easy on the ears. I guessed it wasn’t so bad. He mentioned a term that rang true. I think he credited Richard Dawkins, but I can’t be sure. He coined himself Culturally Muslim. This young man, who had authored a book and spoke to CBC listeners like an old friend, had declared he was an atheist but that he enjoyed so many of the parts of being Muslim that he continued to celebrate Eid and Ramadan with his family and he said it without apology.
And this kind of thinking was what I had been avoiding. Not the religious tone in particular, but the kind of self-realizations that come along with thinking about it. Does that make any sense, at all? Maybe not, but it’s the kind of thinking that my brain does late at night, or when I’m alone or when there is little to distract my conscience from wondering if I’ve totally fucked it all up. You know, the fun stuff.
Well, hell, if I was going to listen to an interview about religion, and I was a from a demographic that worshipped its Mobile more than its Messiah, I might as well weigh in on the subject. After all, I was an audience of one, and though none would judge me harsher, I could at least speak freely.
Of course, it occurred to me that I was, in fact, culturally Christian, and was raising my family as such. I would happily label myself culturally Muslim or culturally Buddhist but I can’t get an invite to any of those parties. Some, far more cultured than I, will scoff at the idea of taking the food, festivals and fun approach toward religion for my family. ‘Why should she and her family enjoy religious ceremonies when they don’t practice the self-sacrificing parts of the Faith?’
Well, because I wanna.
I enjoy the commercialized forms of Christmas and Easter. I love the idea of a Nativity Scene and a Passion Play. I relish in a choir and a stained-glass window. I think I might even pray. Well, if praying is when you say a silent wish in your brain and send it out to the Universe or your creditors.
What I won’t do, or encourage in others, is to take part in the study or worship of the archaic, misogynist and harmful ideas and actions endorsed by a person or religion. So religion has never been for me.
Maybe you’ll call me a hypocrite, and you wouldn’t be completely wrong. And as far as you're concerned that is as much as I’ll say.
So, I'd been forced toward the cognitive dissonance that I constantly avoid and it turned out to be okay.
My phone will be fixed soon and I can go back to the world of audiobooks and avoid anything more thought provoking than an unsolved murder or two, but for today I’m glad I listened.
This little story will be full of the minutia of a drive home, an addiction to audiobooks, a damaged iPhone and my extremely superficial thoughts on religion and if you care to continue reading after that disclaimer you're truly committed or rather should be committed, or maybe both.
I dropped my phone. It didn't slip from my lap after forgetting I had set it there as I raised up from my chair to refresh my drink. It didn't tumble from my purse as I dug frantically for a mint to curb the hunger induced by this latest diet. It simply fell from my hand, in what felt like slow-motion, as I was choosing my next aforementioned audiobook. And that little bugger landed on the top right corner in such a way that the screen shattered like my hopes to marry Prince Harry.
I considered living with the phone in its desperate state until a relatively large chunk of glass dislodged from the phone as I attempted to do some online banking (shopping). My husband, who probably already had a standing appointment with the cell phone repair guy, expecting this any day, offered to take my phone to be fixed.
Without my phone, like any quality person not yet forty (but painfully close), I would be lost. I would miss crucial Facebook, Twitter and Instagram notifications but worst of all, I would be without my beloved audiobooks for the entire twenty-four minute drive home from work.
I entered the minivan with an empty feeling and tried to remember how to work the radio. I eventually found the CBC and settled in for the long and lonely drive home. Where would I be without the soothing voice of the narrator and the complex twists and turns of a well-thought out plot. I lived for the drive in, the drive home, forty-eight minutes, every day, where my brain didn’t defy me. A time when, if the book was good enough, intriguing enough, it would fill my thoughts and offer a meditation, a mindfulness that I craved but could never reach on my own.
The highways were extra gray, and the windshield impossibly dirty. The seatbelt was digging into my neck and I felt agitated. I drove in the right lane, behind a black car. I didn't let my brain remember the make or the model because there is no room for that. Instead, I memorize the landmarks because this is crucial to getting home. Could my abysmal sense of direction be directly related to my brain’s inability to stop thinking about thinking? See what I mean?
I reluctantly became engrossed in a CBC interview with the author of a book and, of course, didn't catch the title. He was young with a tone far more casual and confident than most. He was a sophisticated thinker and easy on the ears. I guessed it wasn’t so bad. He mentioned a term that rang true. I think he credited Richard Dawkins, but I can’t be sure. He coined himself Culturally Muslim. This young man, who had authored a book and spoke to CBC listeners like an old friend, had declared he was an atheist but that he enjoyed so many of the parts of being Muslim that he continued to celebrate Eid and Ramadan with his family and he said it without apology.
And this kind of thinking was what I had been avoiding. Not the religious tone in particular, but the kind of self-realizations that come along with thinking about it. Does that make any sense, at all? Maybe not, but it’s the kind of thinking that my brain does late at night, or when I’m alone or when there is little to distract my conscience from wondering if I’ve totally fucked it all up. You know, the fun stuff.
Well, hell, if I was going to listen to an interview about religion, and I was a from a demographic that worshipped its Mobile more than its Messiah, I might as well weigh in on the subject. After all, I was an audience of one, and though none would judge me harsher, I could at least speak freely.
Of course, it occurred to me that I was, in fact, culturally Christian, and was raising my family as such. I would happily label myself culturally Muslim or culturally Buddhist but I can’t get an invite to any of those parties. Some, far more cultured than I, will scoff at the idea of taking the food, festivals and fun approach toward religion for my family. ‘Why should she and her family enjoy religious ceremonies when they don’t practice the self-sacrificing parts of the Faith?’
Well, because I wanna.
I enjoy the commercialized forms of Christmas and Easter. I love the idea of a Nativity Scene and a Passion Play. I relish in a choir and a stained-glass window. I think I might even pray. Well, if praying is when you say a silent wish in your brain and send it out to the Universe or your creditors.
What I won’t do, or encourage in others, is to take part in the study or worship of the archaic, misogynist and harmful ideas and actions endorsed by a person or religion. So religion has never been for me.
Maybe you’ll call me a hypocrite, and you wouldn’t be completely wrong. And as far as you're concerned that is as much as I’ll say.
So, I'd been forced toward the cognitive dissonance that I constantly avoid and it turned out to be okay.
My phone will be fixed soon and I can go back to the world of audiobooks and avoid anything more thought provoking than an unsolved murder or two, but for today I’m glad I listened.