Good Muslim Brian: Praise God. I have done nothing to deserve this. Truly.

Prideful Brian: #$%^ yea! How many engineering grad students can do THAT? Huh? ... I will now introduce myself to everyone as an "award-winning author".

Writer Brian: But the judge's citation said nothing about my collection's themes. ... I wonder if he or she really "got" it. (It's about the environment, stupid).

Realistic Writer Brian: This is a small victory. You still need to rewrite the last two stories so they don't suck. And then you need to find a literary agent to represent your work and, God Willing, get it published with some humble independent press.

... adelante.

For better or for worse, everyone stands before love as a child.

For better or for worse, everyone stands before love as a child. We become fragile vessels with profound capacities for possessiveness, anger, envy, woundedness, and simultaneously adoration, selflessness and sacrifice, surrender, reverence.

true joy is born from knowledge of suffering

My first 3-4 days in the DC area have led me to believe, based purely on personal, anecdotal experience, that everyone in the DC area is Muslim.

Somehow I feel this is inaccurate.

Still. I have to resist the urge to say as-salaamu 'alaikum to everyone I speak to.