☾

— by Zahra

[orchidego]

tiny bio: muslim woman personal blogging est. 2011.

mostly posting about art, fashion, books, writing and such nowadays but if you scroll really really far back you’ll see all my teenage fandom posting, so that’s funny

[orchidego]

Hard balance to strike is when you’re forgiving yourself, with the power of hindsight, for not achieving in the way that you see your peers do because you realize their starting line and yours were miles apart—yet, when does this cross over into excusing yourself from participating in your life? giving yourself permission to roll over and die, because you made it as far as you could go and your progeny can take it from here? I hope I never stop learning. But achieving….well, that’s an interesting metric.

[orchidego]

Watching that Muslim matchmaker lady repackage dusty regressive classist south asian hierarchical auntie bullshit in her shortform content as “just telling it like it is” and people swallowing it brainlessly because she doesn’t have an accent.

With what authority do we accept Real Human Value as the domain of a clearly bored westchester county rich housewife sitting at the top of the pyramid scheme that is “being marriageable”. Congrats, you won at being valuable based on a metric that commodifies people in the exact way our religion tells us to actively minimize. Amazing you’re using your good fortune to reinforce the hierarchy that you won by sheer divine magnanimity! This is why blessings are also considered tests of character, by the way.

The only matchmaking related service that I would deem actually innovative and dire is one that could teach people how to see people as God sees them.

Credential matching is not a suitable heuristic for real, lived-in attraction, and it’s so unrelated to True Love that it’s laughable.

If you are looking at someone and the foundation of your lens is their credentials you are not serious about love. you do not have the capacity to unguardedly hold another person

[dsunearthed]

Chrysanthemum at Shinjuku Gyoen Park, Tokyo, 2005

[orchidego]

last time I took a bar exam was five years ago. Studying for one rn and……..it is not going well !

[leahberman]

field trip; antelope valley, california

available for purchase here

[themakeupbrush]

Gaurav Gupta “Siren Rising”

[eexpensive]

[moodcafe]

name moodboard: order for "erin" | want one?

[orchidego]

The difference between a man who is raised in a family culture that valorizes women suffering or even just expects it to happen vs a family culture that makes it a point of pride to actively alleviate women suffering is so deeply determinative to the ultimate trajectory of your life.

[paulromijn]

Sign outside coffee lounge in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

[theinternetarchive]

'flowers along the coast, 17-mile drive, monterey, calif.,' sevilla brace shuey, april 16, 1950.

[stamenpistil]

Just a few of my journals from the past seven or eight years

[youngyoungteenteen]

[ferrantte]

architecturebyari

[sylphmotif]

Finished this shirt !!!!!

[gouged-doll]

kristin jones and andrew ginzel, new york subway, 1998