Issue: Karma Cycle
When I first read the list of my karma cycle below, I found out that there is this pattern that keeps repeating over and over again. In them, there are two most distinct groups of persona: scientists and artists. The scientists group consists mainly of physicists while the artists group includes rock stars. If I was to have faith in reincarnation and the karma cycle, I would have drop my engineering textbooks and start fresh a new life as either a mad, messy-haired physicist or a glamorous, longhaired rock star. But then, surely it doesn’t make sense, right? I mean, would the masses want to think highly and seriously of the two? The only people that I know who believe the words of the two are folks like me: those who reside at the extreme ends of the social spectrum. I’ve always dreamt of becoming either of the two. Ever since I was in high school, I’ve had my eyes on the Nobel Prize for Physics and ever since I had my own radio in my room, I’ve had my eyes on becoming a multi-instrumentalist rock icon. Then, in a really unexpected turn, I landed in the United States at near dawn of the millennium eve, assigned to a chemical engineering degree for completion in 4 years. Maybe there is a good reason why I can’t be one of them. I know that Allah is trying to send me some message here, but I can’t figure out what it is. This bowl hat I am wearing is obstructing my eyesight.

Issue: Is It Time Already?
I woke up at near ten in the morning and it was still raining. I had woken up before some time around five but the rainy weather outside was so inviting that I decided to spend another few hours of my birthday in my wonderland (that’s to mean I extended my sleep). Minneapolis was in a scorching-hot streak for the past week and the ceaseless downpour of rain and cold Canadian wind on the day that I was born is a rather heavenly coincidence, don’t you think? I walked up to the PC and opened up my inbox and the first email was from my SPM-taking kid brother, the one I dubbed the ‘Family Romantic’. Remember him? Well, he was the first person to say happy birthday and his email was somewhat the perfect gift for the occasion.

From: Mohamad F (II) Mohamad-Sharin [hanamichi_s_10@yahoo.com]
To: Mohamad F (I) Mohamad-Sharin [lalat_1881@hotmail.com]
Subject: You tub full of lard!
Date: 1 Aug 2001 11:36:55 EST

[Laughs loudly] You are in your twenties today. Here, I would like to present you a piece of poetry:

"You've reached twenty, but still you stood lonely.
Where is that girl, who will bright up your world?"

[Laughs loudly] Hey dude, get one already. [Laughs loudly] Happy birthday! You are not a teen anymore. Starting today, you are a full-grown man. Thus, it is time.

When my eyes arrived at his last sentence, I had this bizarre déjà vu. I remember writing one short piece of anecdote with the title ‘It is Time’ during the first few weeks of this journal. I remember writing that piece after the Mall of America incident and it was such a profound experience that I made it into a promise. I logged on into my archive’s server and searched for it and here it is.

# Published 19 May 2001 #

[It is Time]
By Mohamad Mohamad-Sharin

The sight of the plain, white ceiling looked different the morning I woke up to it. Inside my head, thousands and thousands of thought were running through, all bundled up together, simultaneously demanding my best of attention. Some of them craved more of it than others, driving me extra hard, trying to decipher their message and relevance. Gazing at it for a while, the ceiling looked pale in comparison to these insights, in terms of how they would and had influence the course of my life. Living to a scripted destiny that is illuminated by various colors of emotions and decorated by the flapping banners of hardships, life it seems has a more different meaning and depth of relations that I thought it had.

Yesterday, I had a talk, a long and exhaustive one, with an acquaintance that I presumed was more than just that of her, especially by what kind of an impact she had had on me after yesterday’s event, the things she revealed as sincere as the smile she gifted me with. From her, I learned new things, new realizations, of how reality works in manners that were never truly understood by anyone, not even by the most savants of savants. From her lips, came out the longed truth in its own most naked form: a sad and painful one. The one that reminds you through and through of how helpless we are and how devastating it is for this youth and energy to be wasted on matters that do not concern you and me as we have thought it would. Yes, it was about love and friendship and everything in between.

The hassle and the joy, the agony and the tenderness, they all seemed distant from where I am standing now. Who would think that I almost fell to this chasm of infatuation, as blinded as I am? It never occurred to me before that this dreaded phase of maturity has set foot so near to me so very often, so very early. I am yet to prepare for its existence, moreover its howl of urge, its spiked tongue of vile. Will I survive, provided how awkward and alienated to me this thing is, this beast that bites barbarically and kiss lustfully at once?

Oh! There are so many things to say and think and feel and decide. No wonder the greatest of lovers in time had had their life shortened by this gnawing rat. How Romeo and Juliet idealized the sacrifice of passion, leveling it to the misery of suicide and this mystified suffering continue to mesmerize adolescents and fools. Deciding on a road that has inflicted sorrow, unique upon whom that chooses, and knowing that it inevitably will, requires more than what the soul and the mind combined could provide alone. All this demands more than just the will of desire and the sanity of decision, all of this long for the spirit of youth and everlasting patience to glue and harmonize two opposite beings from two contradicting worlds.

I woke up to the sound of a call. The freshness of the early morning air calmed me to its mild coolness; the gentle caress of the light of dawn opened my perception to its message, for I am not ready to commit myself to love, not now, not soon. I will let fate to tap me warmly on the shoulder, informing me with a gentle whisper of "It is time". Then, I would embrace it with my arms wide open and a smile of sheer delight.

I didn’t know how to react and what to say. God, through the hands of a romantic fool, had once again hinted to me this notion of commitment. Before this, He told me the same words, the same idea through the mouth of a girl in a crowded bus. Then, He hinted to me again, using my own fingers to write the above short essay. I couldn’t stop wondering if all of this coincidence are one part of a divine grand plan. There is the longed rain in the midst of near drought, the early morning email from the least unexpected on the issue, the message in the karmic cycle, the day I was given the chance to start a life and now this notion. Has the time arrived already?

Issue: Rewarding Yourself for a Teen Life Well Spent
The only thing that I have in mind to celebrate myself is watching a new Japanese movie that I rented last night. Since it was my birthday yesterday, the video store clerk said that I did not need to pay for the renting fee. "It’s the store policy, dude." However, I still have not pop it into the video player because I am waiting for the right moment to enjoy the movie alone. Other than that, I am currently thinking of getting a haircut. When I was back home, living with my parents, a trip to the barbershop is the usual gift that Mom would give. Dad would take me to the dentist while my kid brothers would beg Mom and Dad to take them to the fast food restaurant in town.