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mountainous heathen!
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holly girl jennyman cyrus boyk sina boy robert reich honey jaan Prufrock If Afraid So Today's poem |
~ Tuesday, March 22, 2005
scattered and sinful saturday night was new years eve and after coming back from my aunt's house, my mom and i stayed up until 4.30 drinking wine and eating pistachios. o and we watched sina nap, although in his defense he did wake up just in time. i can't believe i was tipsy for welcoming in the new year. don't laugh. it's terrible. what's even worse is that the whole day after i was all woozy and still out of my skin. wine is so full of baggage. you can't drink it and forget about it. it makes you remember, damn it. another thing that leaves a lil nasty taste in the new year mouth is that...well, all the fish died by the second day of the new year. we try not to take that as an omen. but really, we're such bad people. my cousins make me want to reevaluate my faith in people and take them with a much larger grain of salt. it's my own fault for having false expectations. silly. sina gave me my first dvd ever. napoleon dynamite. it was way too short of an overlap of my time and his time here. i should visit him in ass hot boston this summer. i'm not looking forward to the 405 in the rain. but so it must be. i've been lagging on the biochem. i think to make myself study, i'm going to go to a library tomorrow. among other news, i find myself taking more and more "dietary supplements" everyday. other than the old lysine, and multivitamins, and vitamin C tablet, i am once again starting the consumption of the crap drink that some of you have come to know so well. next week when i start on my olive leaf extract, i'll be well on my way to being an organic, herbal fiend. on another note, i now have a small collection of dvorak, tchaikovsky, beethoven, and other good things to distract me from studying. and lastly, i miss the ocean. i've been here for three days and i still haven't gone. what sins. what sins i start with. ~ Wednesday, March 16, 2005
found it's wednesday, and it feels like a thursday that has been delayed to a saturday since yesterday it felt like a friday. this week, i've been trying to find items that belong on the new year's "spread." i went to solano in search of pastries and flowers and let's admit it, a little khosh 'o besh. i didn't find flowers or that much khosh o' besh, but i found pastries, which i was happy with. but this business of not finding the sweet smelling hyacinths drove me into somewhat an obsession about finding them soon. yesterday i dropped by a flower boutique on bancroft right in front of sather lane. it was the mean man with the hat. i never liked him much, but i thought i should give him a try, for the sake of the hyacinths. he had two out. they were both completely bloomed already and somewhat dying and lowly looking. i said how much, and he paused, nodding disinterestedly, and said...uhh,,six dollars. and i thought, o ya, you're persian alright. so then i remembered that there was a flower shop inside of sather lane as well. i said i'll be right back and went to see if that one had any. i got there and saw that the flower pots had been arranged in a semicircle around the edge of the store entrance such that it was difficult (but not impossible, mind you) to go inside. no one was there. how curious. i thought i saw something that looked like a short flower pot inside, so i went inside past the buckets of flowers that were trying to block the door. so i'm standing there in this empty store looking out and around the place for flowers, when by and by the man in the hat appears. i stand there "blocked" by the flowers, as he looks at me saying, "you are here." i step outside past the flowers and say, "yes, you are in many places at once." he doesn't say anyting as he moves the flowers closer together reasuring himself that this time, no one will go in. so that was that, and in the afternoon, i went with soodeh to the unit 3 man on durant. he has a huge selection and his flowers are always fresh. she said he was half persian. his name is masoud, but he calls himself moe. we asked him if he had any hyacinths, and he said not at the moment but that he can try to get them for us today. he asked us how many we want, if want singles or bunches, what colors. when we went to pick up our flowers today, he wrapped them both very nicely, and said that they were of no charge. that they were presents for the new year. after thanking him perfusely (as they are usually ass expensive everywhere), soodeh asked if he celebrates the new year at all. and this i won't forget. he said he might see his nephews...maybe. but that he has been here for 35 years and is by now.....lost. ~ Friday, March 11, 2005
twelve so it's been twelve years since my famiy has been here. i sat up in bed this morning and didn't know whether i should be glad or not. should i even go through the usual trials and tabulations that come with reflections of such a day? sure, i can recount it hour by hour, as it happend in such a confused blurred eight year old fashion. but let's not. the number is well over half my life now, and i don't want to come to the conclusion that i'm more of this than i am of that. mainly because it's untrue, and partially because i'm tired of looking at it that way. on sunday, nikolai was saying how a family friend who travels the world brings back persia from iran, but she brings back hollywood from paris. and how good it is to have a country like that. at which point i started my rant about how it's not for one to own anymore; it's more like having one sock on this continent and one in the other; the plight of the immigrant's mind, i said. then he said something i hadn't realized before. he said "it's not about knowing where you're going, it's about knowing that you came from something." and i guess it's because the former you can never know for sure, and the latter you can never change. now, suffice it to say the immigrant's life style sneaks its way into my mind as a regular topic even on days other than this, but today of all days, it takes over. and i'm unfortunately endowed with a memory of the smallest things that happened long ago. today, the first thing that popped into my head was my dai mahmoud (dai = uncle). because he was like a dad for two years. and then my dad, who prides himself in the fact that he got us out. and that i for one have no right to impinge on that and ask whether it was the right thing to do or not. i wasn't there. i was eight. i read the Sun. i need to remember always that i am able to read the Sun. ~ Sunday, March 06, 2005
the day i taught you how to weave hemp it's sunday, and i should be solving problem sets. but i was just thinking about those times in life when you just have to take people's words for what they are. maybe for more than what you thought they were. and it isn't as if there was no other way. it isn't as if you had no other choice than to believe them. on the contrary, there's no reason as to why you should believe them and yet you still stand there looking into their "honest" face willing to somehow go with what they're giving you. and i mean, these aren't people who have ever lied to you. i'm sure i'm making no sense to you. but let's say usually, or more often than these rare times mentioned above, you believe them and all, because i mean, they've never lied to you and they're not the lying kind, so why shouldn't you, but as you stand there looking at them, your heart is not fully with it. you're thinking that this is fleeting, that it's nothing you should be naked for. if anything, it's something you should have armor for. and you speak to your heart after they've gone away and you ask it, "what of it, what's wrong with you, why don't you believe the honest man? isn't he the only one worth believing?" and your heart says to you, "yes, that may be true, but perhaps i'm figuring other things into this. go with me here, mind. i'm thinking too." and so they fight it out, and sometimes, some rare times, it comes to them agreeing on the matter. you stand there glad that "justice" has been done; that the true man among the crowd was recognized and believed; and that you have finally given up your silly doubting and seen the "light." agreeing that you'll take their sorries to heart no matter how much it hurts; that you'll go willingly with their sorrowfilled goodbyes and meaningful looks when they say: thank you. | |