Brooklyn Bedouin

Listening Creates Movements + Real Change

Last night I watched Inside Out - the documentary on HBO - about JR the social instigator, wall-tagger, interventionist or just plain “artist” who is literally changing the world using wheat pasted portraits and a silly idea: that people actually CAN change their world —- totally blew my mind last night.

Inside Out’s impact on post revolution Tunisia transforming a wall that used to have only the omnipresent image of the king into a cascade of images of regular people was true political, artistic, and cultural transformation. His interactions with Haitian artists who may never see his level of fame and money but who were every bit his intellectual equal was astonishing. JR also exposed the sadness and hope at the very fringe, the frontier, of America by bringing you into the home of a Native American family whose son had ended his own life. 

In each instance the Inside Out project created more discourse, shed more light, broke down barriers and inspired me to be better. 

Simple and crude and elegant; his insistence on listening and getting ordinary people to see themselves as extraordinary has resurfaced in me a yearning to be more committed than ever before to the basics: find, in every client and every engagement, the net positive benefit. Expose ways to push people to be their full selves. Uncover the tools to remind them of what they already know but have somehow forgotten. Bring back community and fellowship around an idea… a feeling. 

Above all, listen, you will be amazed at how much you need to learn. 

ibrahim

At Least we Have the Yankees and Giants.

The identity of the NY sports teams seems to be set in stone.

The Yankees surprise you and win when they are not supposed to. Sometimes they even win when they are supposed to and even when they lose and everyone claims they are dead they lose in the heat of battle, a few outs from the World Series and stuff like that. 

The Mets lose when they are not supposed to lose and when they are. 

The Giants are a professional outfit that somehow has a mystique of being able to win any game against any team. 

The Jets are a shit show. 

The Nets don't really have an identity even though they forced the "Brooklyn" one on themselves. 

The Rangers are scrappy, tough, and might just make a run (every year). 

The Islanders... weren't they good in the 1980's or something?

The Knicks? They tease you, convince you that this year is going to be different and then their star player coughs up turnovers, the players they have banked on miss layups and their star defender sings bullfighting songs and throws the cape to the side. 

It has been 40 years since a new banner was hung in the "Mecca" of basketball and I am starting to wonder if I am ever going to see one hung in my lifetime. 

Thank goodness for the Yankees and the Giants. 

ibrahim

My Knicks Don't Want To Win

The Chicago Bulls have heart. They play with their heart on their sleeve. The Golden State Warriors have faith. They play believing that they can always win no matter who the opponent. THe Indiana Pacers play together. When chips get them down they pull back to basics and focus and do not make the same mistake twice. They rebound, they defend, they create victories from defeat. The Memphis Grizzlies are sick of losing. They have been there before and lost to the Thunder and others and now they are playing like they are sick of it all, sick of missing shots when they count, sick of letting their man blow by them, sick of being losers. 

 The Spurs and the Heat are champs. 

 My Knicks? They do not have heart. They do not have faith. They do not play together. They don't rebound or defend. They lose games when they are down. They seem to want to lose and are playing like they think losing is inevitable. They feel entitled. They think it is the officials fault they are losing. They point to one another when one of them makes a mistake. They miss shots. They do not bust their butt on every play and the second their shots do not fall or they get a bad call they get down on themselves and then play angry, broken, jilted - spoiled. Adjectives that describe people who feel entitled when they do not get what they want. They are not playing like champs.

 No one "deserves" a NBA title. I love you Knicks that's why I can tell you straight up how I feel about you right now. 

Prove me wrong on all counts. 

Melo + J Swish Please.....

... PROVE THEM WRONG 

From the ESPN Dime:

Foster: J.R. Smith and Carmelo Anthony. The NBA Sixth Man of the Year and the MVP candidate have combined to shoot only 37 percent from the field in the playoffs. After months of trusting their teammates and making quick decisions with the ball, Smith and Anthony have regressed back to shooting bad jumpers off the dribble. Against Indiana's defense, this could get worse before it gets better.

Polk: The Pacers. The Knicks aren't consistent or mentally disciplined enough. 

Get it together tonight. Box out. Move the ball:

REMEBER THIS IS THE EMPIRE STATE.

DOMINATE. 

Where I Learned to Love to Read....

I learned to love to read in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I spent part of my childhood living on St. Johns between Washington + Underhill. Those were different days and it simply was not as safe. My mother would let us roam around freely in three places: The Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Library Main Branch's Children section. My favorite, by far was the Garden. There were countless days that the Garden security would have to wake up an 8 year old me from napping on the Cherry Esplanade. My head resting on the a book bag and the book (or comic book) I was reading draped over my chest. 

This past weekend I shared part of that experience with my son. My plan was to let him experience the Cherry Blossoms - when the soft pink petals drift from the blowing wind and fall like delicate snow flakes in spring. The green grass glittering with these petals. Walking around barefoot was my plan, letting us both feel the grass, the freedom, and the lovely connection to Brooklyn's natural world. Well, we arrived and he had just fell asleep. I took him out of the car and loaded him onto the stroller, wheeled him in, bobbed and weaved through the crowds and found a patch of grass and then gently laid him down. Ismael slept for another half hour, giving me time to write and to think and to feel very blessed. 

He woke up underneath a cherry tree with pink blossoms and to a very smiling happy daddy and we had a glorious day in the sun, the wind and, of course, the cherry blossoms. 

Cautionary Tale...

Kobe's mother and him are in a legal battle over his old athletic mementos?

Not sure about the back story here but from a casual observer of Kobe's life it is strange. Wasn't he the baby-pro who lived with his parents when he was first in the league? 

This seems like a sad part of his story - especially for this to come about when he is laid up with an achillies tear, his Lakers are a sideshow, and his career in decline. 

I hope they figure this out without a court to get all up in their family business and bloggers waxing about their life from afar...

iam-

 

When Brooklyn Starts to Mimic Manhattan

NYC is a City of islands. Each island is comprised of former small villages that over time merged into distinct cities. The reason that you can walk around the block in your neighborhood and see all the people you want to see without using your phone is that you live in a small little village. Your shoe fix guy is there, in the old days the knife truck drove by and rang bells to let you know it was time to sharpen your knives. Your worldview is determined by your neighborhood; who you see everyday, the trees and cracks in the concrete, the way the sun and moon take to the sky, the lights at night….

Walking Up Park Avenue Between 27th + 28th

She talked about the consumer experience while I waxed poetic about the American Dream. She stayed focused:

“People [the consumer] want things quicker” she said, ” who wants to spend time shopping?” she added. 

My American Dream obsession was centered on this: “It used to be about owning a home,” she nodded, “but that is passive. I mean, it is nice to have a yard, and be able to lay around when not in work, but is that really the dream?”

She waited for my punchline while I waited for hers. There was an awkward pause. She broke it....

read the rest here

On the Corner of 14th and 1st -- Sounds of the City at Night.

The city is a place of encounters. You create the canvas that you want your feet to paint on. And yet you acknowledge that you control absolutlely nothing. You have to suspend that control. So instead of forcing the issue - taking the train from the west side to the east, you let go and walk, thinking that you at least can calculate when you might arrive, by foot, from 8th avenue to 1st. 

But anything can get in the way. 

Memories can. But as you get older you realize that memories are essentially useless - unless you are 80+ and memories are clinically proven to make you feel healthier. For now, in this state where the present is so overwhelming and the past is nothing I can control  -similar to the speed of crosstown buses or finding a seat on the L train - instead I like to just keep it moving...

to be in the moment, soaking in the sounds of the city, waiting for my boy pablo...

The Green Door

 

Press Play After the Sun has Set Today

We arrived just as they called the adthan for isha. We hurried and got into the inner area where the kaaba is and prayed

Damn Good Pizza

My wife suggested pizza. However, being out near my moms house by Brooklyn College I was very suspicious of my options. If she was serious about pizza I was prepared to go downtown to get a pie I could count on for overall quality. My mom suggested a place near the college but told me to hurry as they might be closing soon. I did. When I arrived I saw he was making good looking pies - both white and regular. I wanted both so I asked him to make a fresh pie half whit and half regular. The man was an artist that took his craft very seriously and made hte pie meticulously. 

Needless to say, It was incredible. Give them a shout: Luigi's Pizzeria, 16 Hillel Place, Near Brooklyn College, 718-692-0521.

A Fajr Note From the Brooklyn Bedouin Notebook

In the past two days I have crisscrossed the continental US going from Virginia to California with a layover in Dallas there and one in Chicago on the way out. In Chicago my layover was quite long and the time for magrib was drawing close. I needed to find a place to pray. 

Saying this I must admit that I miss the familiarity of being in a Muslim country (Malaysia, UAE, Saudia Arabia) where the call to prayer and places to pray are embedded in the very fabric of life. There is never a  moment when you would not know that it is prayer time or have access to a place to pray. In hotel rooms and even in offices in the Muslim world they put arrows on the ceiling or on the floor that tell you the direction of the qibla - or the direction that a Muslim must pray - the direction of Mecca

Here in the USA a Muslim has to be creative and, if nothing else, persistent. When I came through SF I wondered if there was even a regular prayer place in the secular SF airport. I did not find one. What I did find was a place where you can do yoga! I wish I had brought my yoga mat. 

In Chicago I felt a strong urge to pray and was dissuaded by the swarm of people that O'hare usually attracts. I followed the signs to the "chapel" which lead me outside the security area and then proceeded up stairs, past the USO area and some offices, overlooking the security screening location and past signs that tell you that taking photographs from this vantage point is forbidden. I arrived at a room fitted perfectly for a small Christian mass.

Chicago is a scrappy town where waves of immigrants have made their home and raised their families surrounded by Catholic iconography. I surveyed the room and found two prayer rugs and looked to see if there was an arrow telling me the direction to pray. Not finding one I improvised, finding the direction of the setting sun, west, and then extrapolating from there. 

No other faith creates more connection amongst strangers. I prayed the prayers that I had missed while 30 thousand feet above the air. In the middle of one prayer a man joined me. After we finished he and I gave each other the greetings. He left, I prayer some more and the  behind me a man came up and he used the prayer rug I was using. I was beautiful, here was a Black American, praying with a Ghanian, then passing off the space to a Turkish man. 

When all alone among a sea of strangers, as the saying goes, membership has its privileges. 

As I finished this blog, still waiting for my flight, a monk passes by wearing his brown habit and some sandals. Something tells me that God's name is invoked in all languages 30,000 feet in the air. 

Can someone say amen please?

"Poor Diets Kill More Brothers Than Pistols" -- Sticman

ruby's currently snacking on...

My friend Elisa recently told me about this crazy-easy concoction that her son loves. Mix together one ripened banana, one egg, and one tablespoon of peanut butter, and it makes a pancake-like cake full of protein for the little ones.

via ohjoy.blogs.com

Definitely going to try this!!!

The Morning Brightness

Leaving Saudi Arabia after a quick trip I had a seven hour layover at the Riyadh Airport. We could not check in until 4AM so I had about four hours to find something to do. In Jeddah I made brief traveling friends with a Pakistani-Atlanta family headed home as well. The mother said that her and her family were going to stay in the masjid. I expected it to mean a small prayer space in the terminal but upon following the signs in the arport I came to an incredible masjid that looked as though it were on the moon. 

The night was cool, a brisk breeze swept through the desert and past me as I crossed the street. The minaret rose above me as I approached and caught my breath to lean back, juggling my luggage and my zam zam water that took me up the escalator and onto a wide plane. Everywhere hexagons were carved into the smooth concrete. I arrived at wooden doors with a few pairs of shoes and lugged my bags and water inside. I then took off my slippers and then dragged my bags inside the musulla. 

The whole place was a domed palace. An awe inspiring hexagonal shaped, with plush carpeting, and in the far distance a seat fit only for a king in a deeply recessed prayer niche. I sat in the center and looked up at the verses arrayed around the edges. The acoustics beckoned one to talk as the sounds bounced back. Your prayers and dua hitting you back inside your heart if your heart was open to it. 

I sat cross-legged and began to meditate. Soon, I got up and went outside, took off my glasses and put them on the concrete wall of the wudu area, made wudu and came back inside. Having not made Isha, I offered that prayer and then settled into some extra prayers. After a while I retreated back to the pillar where I had left my baggage and laid out, not sleeping, but resting. 

An hour or so later an arab man came towards me quickly and I sat up alarmed. He reached out and handed me my glasses. I had left them by the wudu station. I got up and offered more prayers, went to use the restroom and make wudu again, and then came back again. I had an hour left of this morning. 

There has been a sura that has eluded me. It is not a long one but has some measure of complexity for a non-native speaker. I opened up a Quran, looked for that sura, and then opened up my small notebook bound in leather and with golden leaf on the edge of the pages and then started to write that sura in arabic. 

Wa Duha - The Morning Brightness - Sura 93 - An early Mecca Sura addressed to the Prophet (Peace and Blessings be upon him), when he had not recieved revelation for some time, that his Lord had not forsaken him contraty to the taunts of some disbelievers. 

Initially I was stunned at how steady my hand was and how well the transcribing was going. I started sweating and struggled to maintain focus. Time was ticking away as I struggled and my penmanship receded as the surah went on, but I kept at it. it was a labor of pure love and it was the perfect final stroke in a journey that included my second Umrah and my first time visiting the Masjid-i Nabawi.

 Here are a few lines from my own hand... May Allah accept my efforts.

Amin. 

Notebooks Are Essential to the Traveler...

A few years ago my wife gave me incredible feedback. Listening to it changed my life. She told me to stop using different notebooks for the different aspects of my life (and brain).

For example: I used to have a poetry notebook, a work notebook, a book and speaking engagements notebook, and a figurin’ notebook I used to track all my income and expenses. 

She was tired of seeing these various notebooks be used or unfinished and laying around or stuffed into an overstuffed bag and lugged to places and never opened. 

Her advice was to choose one book and use it for everything. That advice has changed my life. What it made me realize is the other most important aspect of keeping a notebook: re-reading it. 

I offer this to you on this winter day. Go to your note or sketch books, pull them out and start from the beginning and see what you have been doing, thinking, and thinking about doing.

I now use this for everything I do. Ranting, raving about things that I cannot do publicly, scribbling brilliance disguised as pen scratches and squiggly lines, and mapping out steps for every process imaginable in my personal, private, work life. Most importantly, I use it to chart out the different stages in my own personal narrative arc as I move about this planet mostly in disguise, as a phantom, somewhat lost, wandering, looking for that permanent place to call home.

 

National Signing Day Reflection (On Alex Collins + My Own Signing Day in 1995)

The story about Alex Collins is fascinating. The signature of a parent or legal guardian is required for a student-athlete under the age of 21 for an agreement with an NCAA institution to be valid. Up until the last moment Collins and his family understood that he was going to play closer to home in Miami. At the last second Collins shifted course and decided to go to Arkansas. Football wise Collins, a running back, made a great decision. Bret Bielema was recently hired as the Arkansas coach and was instrumental in his previous role as Wisconsin head coach of establishing a powerful, fast and explosive offense grounded in an versatile running game. 

The family backstory makes me concerned. Collins signed a day later than he wanted because his mother would not sign the paperwork. She wants him to play closer to home so that she does not have to get into a plane to see him play. He eventually 'recruited' his father to sign the paperwork. Maybe the Arkansas boosters can help her out?

This made me think about my stories about getting recruited to play college football and my signing day. Of course I was not an All-American, there was no ESPNU that tracked all the athletes and made national television about it. My experience did include flying in a small plane for the first time (crazy bumpy ride into Maine), partying with Villanova basketball players after they had just won a big game, and listening to Illmatic for the first time. Like most players I made my decision on one of these trips and chose not to tell anyone. My actual signing date was a small affair in the office of my high school principal with my coach, my guidance counselor, my dad and all the local papers and media.I was lucky, my father was a central part of the process as my agent and negotiator. I wonder if Alex had made his decision long before and did not have the heart to tell his mother until the very end. 

As a new dad I think about this from a new angle - what if Alex were my son and he and his mother disagreed on where to go to school? What would I do?

trailblazing African-Americans working in America today...

theGrio 100

Good vibe + Good Design + Good People + Good tunes = Good Times.

Maybe we did not need to work out as much back then. I look at some of the pictures from those days and look skinny. Maybe it was the walking, I think it was the dancing… And to get people to those gigs, well, we had to do it the old fashioned way. I remember going to people in the street. Finding folks that "looked interesting" and who I wanted to know and wanted my friends to know. How does that happen now? Where do people find and connect with "interesting people" that they normally would never connect with?

At the end of the day, it was truly all about bringing people together. Thank you Mode2 for making our jobs that much easier with the incredible artwork.