painted on water

Who will remember us, when we have turned to ashes or dust? Who will we become in their...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 17:18:57 -0700

Who will remember us, when we have turned to ashes or dust? Who will we become in their memories?

When the traces of a life lived (not-so) well no longer are imbued with their special powers that we have given them. The little black dress that made her feel desired is now woefully out of fashion. A DVD he played until the scratches made it no longer watchable now refuses to be played by man or machine. A wallet purchased at a flea market on their first date has holes that let loose change fall out. A postcard from a country that no longer exists from a past that may never have been can no longer be read due to caresses of time and decay. These are precious to us for the memories they conjure, but are the cast off items of another life to others.You should see the vultures (myself included), picking through the culminations of the material life of someone else at an estate sale. A beloved stamp collection is for sale for $10. Four doilies crocheted to comfort herself in her loneliness on sale for $3. All of the photographs of the deceased or those whose families cannot (or refuse to) take care of them any longer have been removed from the frames that are for sale.

Even photographs of the dead are only as significant to those we leave behind as the value of the relationship. Vaguely friendly smiles from ghosts and now corpses or awkward flash-flattened lighting on a slightly staged social interaction may be treasured or glanced over without recognition or reverence. I myself have done both. Photographs of my grandparents I hold for a few moments on the edges, careful not to let my fingerprints contaminate the sacred scene of my ancestors at the seashore. However, I see notes that were saved by my grandmother from a friend of hers, or photographs of unfamiliar adults standing with my uncles and I put them aside rather quickly. Film clips of the now dead cooking an omelet, or glaring at the offending videographer, a close up of hair undone and makeup kissed off may provoke tears or no feeling whatsoever. Voicemails of reminders to get more milk may be saved to several places or deleted. Someone accidentally erased the last recording we received from my grandfather, calling to see how we were and to talk about the stock market; tears well up when I think that I’ll never hear his voice outside of my own memory again. Hours of conversation, exasperation and tears may never be brought to mind. Our essence will be distilled into an “I love you” written on the back of a take-out receipt.

The half scribbled out notebooks that I pick up and seem to abandon half way through would probably have their pages stripped of my influence and then reused for someone else’s blitherings. The icons would likely be deemed unsettling and be sold. My teas tossed, mismatched plates sold for pennies and my books donated. “Who is that one? The one with the squinty eyes and pointy chin?” a little boy will press his thumb over my face while asking his maman someday. She’ll frown and say, “I’m not sure…she must have been a friend of your aunt, I suppose,” and they’ll put aside the photograph. Little gifts I’ve made for people may be treasured and passed down through generations of my friends’ descendants, or abandoned to landfills. I hope to be remembered fondly, treasured, the memories I leave behind deemed sacred. Perhaps it’s a lot to ask for. But I’ll ask anyways.

Monolingual VS Bilingual

Fri, 24 May 2013 18:23:23 -0700

nerdgraph:

via: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nerdgraph/~3/Wddsl2i-q5Q/

Benefits and setbacks of being monolingual or bilingual.

Denizens of the Bus or Immigrants to Nowhere intermission

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:51:07 -0700

Me to caretaker: Sorry, did you see which bus just past by?
Caretaker: Sorry, I didn't see the number.
Me: That's OK, I--
Quadruple amputee: Are you going to miss us when we go on our Disney cruise?
Me *smiling*: Yes.
Quadruple amputee: Are you going to write?
Me: I can't--I won't have your address.
Quadruple amputee: Oh.

When I was a child, my father made me a most wonderful present; a small bow and arrow out of twigs...

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:39:57 -0700

When I was a child, my father made me a most wonderful present; a small bow and arrow out of twigs collected from the trees he planted in the front yard before I was born. He carved grooves into the wood with one of the numerous files he owned and let me play with sometimes. He made the unladylike toy to celebrate no particular occasion, not to reward good behavior, but just because. I was delighted. I imagined that I was a girl version of Robin Hood or Pocahontas as I crouched on the edge of the yard in my shorts, firing my arrow at imaginary armies attacking my base. Unfortunately, since there were no identifying markings on the arrow, it would quickly become camouflaged by the myriads of other fallen branches, smooth sticks and carpets of deciduous leaves from seasons past when I tried to look for it. Then one day, the arrow was nowhere to be found. The snapdragons were collaborators with the enemy, so it was no use looking to them for aid. The junipers were treacherous, promising that my arrow was tucked behind the cobwebs, and then stabbing me as I reached my tawny arm to search for it between the branches. Alas, the arrow was lost forever. I felt that my dad was disappointed when I told him. I may have hurt his feelings, even though he promised he would make another one.

It seems that this is something I’ve gotten unintentionally good at these days. He often seems wounded as a result of how I’ve developed and continue to grow as an adult, and even more so at a lack of consistent communication. I’d rather not see my dad’s face express mini-stress patterns when I express my dreams to travel, nor hear the sadness in his voice in my head when I read messages from him asking if everything is ok when I haven’t responded to him in a few days. There seems to be a delicate balance of dependence and independence to adult child-parent relationships, and like that arrow which likely disintegrated by now, I haven’t quite found it yet.

peacecorps: From the Peace Corps Digital Library: Photos taken...

Thu, 02 May 2013 08:23:20 -0700

peacecorps:

From the Peace Corps Digital Library: Photos taken by Peace Corps Volunteer Ron Dizon for a Peace Corps/USAID Project called Operation Help during the 1970s famine relief in Afghanistan.

"Arab children, Corn ears of the future, You will break our chains, Kill the opium in our heads, Kill..."

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:32:00 -0700

“Arab children,
Corn ears of the future,
You will break our chains,
Kill the opium in our heads,
Kill the illusions.
Arab children,
Don’t read about our suffocated generation,
We are a hopeless case.
We are as worthless as a water-melon rind.
Don’t read about us,
Don’t ape us,
Don’t accept us,
Don’t accept our ideas,
We are a nation of crooks and jugglers.
Arab children,
Spring rain,
Corn ears of the future,
You are the generation
That will overcome defeat.”

- Nizar Qabbani, “Verse” s. 20

newyorker: Cartoon by BT Schwartz. For more from this week’s...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:39:22 -0700

newyorker:

Cartoon by BT Schwartz. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/XVUssG

13’s always been my lucky number…

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:38:21 -0700

13’s always been my lucky number…

kolkhara: Rolls of Inked Paper with Printed & Hand Written...

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:03:00 -0700

kolkhara:

Rolls of Inked Paper with Printed & Hand Written Farsi Word “Eshegh” - Hadieh Shafie

Love encircled, love enclosed.

Books Read in 2012, part 5 (last one)

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:25:00 -0700

I completed reading 22 books this year, including four classics, four novels featuring characters from Istanbul, three Iranian-American memoirs, modern classics, fiction and my first graphic novel. Each book is listed in chronological order completed along with a brief review, and my favorite reads from this year are highlighted in bold. Here are parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and The People Who Love Them, Elif Batuman I would love to have a cup of kvass with Elif Batuman. Her plucky, hilarious, effortless enthusiasm and brilliance make her instantly endearing to readers, and may incite jealousy in the reader for not being as witty as she. Her memoir could just as well be titled, “Adventures in Grad School,” and further convinced me to avoid the general silliness of green eyed monsters blowing their own horns, demanding that their backs be scratched. From her awkward, dysfunctional college relationships, to her absurd misadventures in Uzbekistan (Gogol would chuckle) studying Uzbek solely to earn grant money, Batuman, to some, seems to meander through her wealth of experience and wander off topic. However, this structure is reminiscent of the Dostoevsky and Tolstoy novels she loves so much; characters pop up, are discussed for a while, and then either reappear later with greater significance, or disappear altogether to underscore the essence of the moment. Witty and delightful, Batuman’s enthusiastic experiences with Russian literature and the study of them are infectious.

Laughing Without An Accent: Adventures of an Iranian-American at Home and Abroad, Firoozeh DumasWhen faced with adversity, there are two responses—you can either cry about them, or laugh. Firoozeh Dumas was born in Iran, and during what was intended to be a short term stay in America in middle school, ended up staying in California due to the Revolution in her home country. Dumas chooses to laugh. Laughing Without An Accent chronicles memories, thoughts and experiences regarding her idyllic Iranian childhood home, confusing adolescence in California, and self-discovery in college. Although there wasn’t as much emphasis on Persian and American culture as I would have liked, that’s not what Dumas intended. With her vivid portraits of her family members and friends, you recognize your own parents, remember your own identity crises as a teenager, and come to realize that underneath parenthetical identifiers, no matter where our point of origin, no matter what language our mother sang to us as children, we’re still essentially the same in the things that matter. A humorous and lighthearted look into identity, belonging and culture, Dumas’ memoir is a refreshing addition to the generally more severe and political Iranian memoir genre.

Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran, Azadeh Moaveni When we last read from Azadeh Moaveni, she was discovering her identity as an Iranian in America, and as an America in Iran, with all of the hope, angst and confusion that comes along with it. Now, Moaveni is more savy, comfortable in her own skin, and flits between government minders and politicians with ease. And yes, she falls in love. Thank all that is good, this is not a cautionary tale with Taken plot twists. It’s an honest to goodness love story set in Tehran’s complicated atmosphere with all of the good, the bad, and ugly associated with it. Moaveni’s experiences with her love of her man and her love of Iran are fascinating, insightful and page turning. From the live-fast-die-young lives of particular Iranian celebrities to the absurdities of everyday life in the country, to the tenderness Moaveni feels towards Iranians and Iran, Honeymoon in Tehran is a unique look into Iran and Iranian life from someone who lived and loved there.

Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov is possessed by the Muse that is his photographic, poetic memory. Speak, Memory is the mellifluous summation of his childhood, adolescence and young adulthood in beautiful prose only Nabokov could conjure. Rather than ordering the events of his life by clock strokes or calendar pages, Nabokov considers time to be much more fluid, and references happenings that occurred earlier or in the future in the midst of his recollections. The events that take place, by themselves, would likely be considered unremarkable. Nabokov’s privileged childhood in pre-Revolutionary Russia does not immediately appear to be engrossing, but that’s not the draw of the autobiography. Nabokov’s magic lies in the loveliness, the sensuality, the immediacy of the moment of which he portrays is inspiring. Speak, Memory is best enjoyed slowly, with cup of tea, and maybe your favorite childhood snack, but speed reading is verboten for this thoughtful, lovely collection of thoughts and memories by one of the English language’s premier wordsmiths.

My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk In 16th century Istanbul, one of the Sultan’s artists (miniaturists, to be exact) turns up dead after a piece controversial to Islam is commissioned. At once a mystery, a love story, a history of sorts on Islamic art in the Ottoman Empire, and a philosophical piece on Eastern and Western cultural differences, My Name is Red is a fiendish and absorbing read, twisting and turning this way and that, but entirely ignores the confines of chronology or plotline. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, it’s not hard to see that My Name is Red is not like most mystery novels you’ve read. Each vignette, some as short as a few paragraphs, is narrated by a different person, animal or object, each with his, her or its own perspective. A gold coin provides illumination just as much as a dog, the love interest, or the murderer himself, at once providing valuable clarity, and fogging up understanding of what happened. And the timing jumps backwards, forwards and to the present again, I had to stop a few times and reread the last few pages in order to get some sense of where I was in the storyline and who was saying or thinking what. While the ending itself could have been a bit stronger, the read was interesting and compelling to the completion of the tale.

LA, I love you. Photo by me.

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 10:38:48 -0700

LA, I love you.

Photo by me.

"Attempting to reestablish connection. Please wait."

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:15:58 -0800

The miles between us are shortened by man made miracles, yet underscored by the inadequacies of the virtual. A thousand, “I love you“‘s tinged by tungsten and the glow of my screen is an unequal substitute for my head on your shoulder, the squeeze of your hand, an afternoon spent laying in the grass. The curve of your face is still identifiably yours, though pixilated. The depth of your voice takes on a metallic quality when technology rebels and refuses to serve. The clock is a cruel, greedy master, and does not afford us much time together, now. The fragility of this connection is like a paper boat rushing through a stream polluted by fear and impatience, and at times threatens to dissolve altogether. I’m forgetting the way your hair smells. I can’t remember what kind of cologne you used. The roaring din of the silence of waiting for the briefest of meetings nearly drowns out tenderness, at times.

But we wait.

And we will still wait.

Until Time himself must stop and stare (like everyone else will) in that moment when the only space between us is contained in our interlocking fingers, and held captive between our lips.

likeafieldmouse: Patrick Jacobs “Jacobs’s dioramas provide...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 13:19:27 -0800

likeafieldmouse:

Patrick Jacobs

“Jacobs’s dioramas provide peeks into a world in which reality is presented in such exquisite detail it begins to look surreal.

The artist draws from art history and garden pest control brochures alike to create miniature 3D works of art, viewed through a circular glass lens. Viewers get the impression that they are looking into another realm, simultaneously natural and constructed, familiar and unknown. In a way, we get a taste for a fish’s life from inside the bowl.”

Lately I seem to find myself doing housework to Arabic music from the 1950’s and...

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 19:41:00 -0800

Lately I seem to find myself doing housework to Arabic music from the 1950’s and ‘60’s. I imagine I’m declaring love that surpasses understanding or reason while I iron shirts, and asking God for patience with a lover’s thick headedness while wiping down the countertops, complete with emphatic hand gestures and head tosses.

Photo

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 01:07:58 -0800

The Sacredness of Steam or the Tao of Tea, part 2

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:15:00 -0800

Although it’s not a tea, the yerba mate is on my tea shelf, along with the metal straw used to drink it. Along with a scarf that used to smell like him, and a few photographs scattered on my computer, the bitter grindings of this South American plant are the remnants of how I spent my time with my first love. We were both students and strangers in another country, spending our free evenings drinking the highly caffeinated beverage beloved by those in his home country. As we sipped through our metal straws, we would talk, listen to Fairooz, giggle while gazing into each others’ eyes, secretly hold hands under the table and share ourselves with each other. Like all good things, our time together was to come to an end. The night before I left the country, he gave me the straw I used, as well as the rest bag of mate we consumed together. I protested, but he lamented, “Who else will I drink it with?” As we kept in touch through video calls half a world away, he would prepare a glass of mate for himself, and then one for me to recreate the experience again and again. Since he was my only exposure to the drink, he was my sole memory I formed with it, and drank it far less often. I was alone in my childhood room the next time I sipped it through my straw and tiny glass, and tears would become a familiar companion. The beverage was more bitter than I remembered, and I would never see him again. After a year of being in love, waiting and hoping, countless emails and video calls later, outside pressures ripped us apart. He would eventually find someone else to drink mate with. I haven’t drank it since. Even though we did not get to spend the rest of our lives together as we had hoped, and even though it ended with tears, anger and hurt feelings all around, I have never regretted my time spent with him. He helped me learn how to be myself again, the self that my inner child would recognize once more, and how to see beauty in life in the midst of pain. I do still keep the mate and straw he gave me as a reminder of the happy times we shared together. They remind me that even in the aftermath of the painful breakup, that the end result did not taint the value of the overall experience. It reminds me to not let a potentially painful outcome prevent me from experiencing a possibly wonderful thing, and that is a lesson that I never want to forget.

Photoset of Snow in the Middle East and Turkey (The Atlantic Monthly)

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 11:56:28 -0800

Photoset of Snow in the Middle East and Turkey (The Atlantic Monthly):

Who wouldn’t grin at the sight of an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man in Jerusalem wearing a snow blasted beard? Or at grown men having a snowball fight in Jordan? Who wouldn’t have their breath taken away at the sight of a frosted Istanbul? Or at blankets of snow in Jerusalem? Both heartwarming, and saddening (a kid in Jerusalem built a snow Hamas Rocket; the snow in Syria did not deter conflict in Damascus), The Atlantic Monthly’s Wintry Weather: Middle East Edition displays a the humanity of people in the region that not many exposed to Western Media get to see very often.

theatlantic: Learning How to Grieve in Color Ten years ago,...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 11:33:10 -0800

theatlantic:

Learning How to Grieve in Color

Ten years ago, Danny Gregory, the executive creative director and managing partner of the New York ad agency mcgarrybowen, wrote and illustrated a heart-wrenching testament to love, Everyday Matters: A Story of Love and Recovery.

See more. [Images: Danny Gregory]

A Grief Illustrated. An artist’s depiction of loss. Beauty from pain. All of these things are true, but do not capture the poignancy and tragedy of the death of his wife and his processing of it. Around the week of their 10th anniversary, Danny Gregory’s wife was ran over by three subway cars, leaving her a paraplegic for the rest of her life. Until her death, Gregory had used exclusively India Ink, or grey scale tones in his art. Patti loved riotous color, and Gregory’s choice to produce the book in such intense colors is a dedication to and constant reminder of her and her effect on his life, furthering the immediacy of loss, yet somehow suggesting that she will always be with him.

I’m twenty-two years old, and I still get antzy when I’m falling asleep and I notice my...

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 21:36:36 -0800

I’m twenty-two years old, and I still get antzy when I’m falling asleep and I notice my closet door still open.

Books Read in 2012 part 4

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 20:46:00 -0800

Traveler of the Century, Andrés Neuman.

I really wanted to like Traveler of the Century. I really did. I usually love philosophical reads without directly unfolding plots written by foreign authors. Traveler Hans gets stuck in the Germanic town of Wandernburg where he (wait for it!) get stuck, and meanders (shocking!) through the town, followed by an organ grinder and his trusty canine. Along the way, Hans falls in love with previously engaged Sophie, and devises a way to clandestinely meet with his beloved under the guise of translating poetry. A tome of rants and raves about the philosophical and political trends of the turn of the century with a few literary discussions thrown in and you have what should have been stimulating and interesting. It wasn’t. The plot quickly grew stale, the dialogue became flat, and what I had hoped to be a lovely hike through beautifully crafted sentences instead forced me to crawl through undergrowth to reach the ends of rabbit trails of ten page discussions on Kant. The occasional clever crumbs of narration sustained me to the next chapter where I would sigh and purse my lips. Originally written in Spanish, Neuman’s humor and craft may have been lost in English. Fine, read the Spanish version, but it will probably feel even longer than the 583 page sigh that I read.

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Guy Deutscher. If you’ve studied a second, third or fourth language, you will quickly realize that there is a link between language and culture. But which influences the other? Do both contribute to differing perceptions in speakers of the language? Yes, and no, answers Deutscher. Delving into cultural implications of language, and analysis of color perception in speakers of other languages (are speakers of languages that do not have a word for the color “blue” able to perceive it?), Deutscher ultimately attacks the Sapir-Whorf hypothosis and contributes to linguistics where others have hesitated to comment. Containing analysis, examples and anecdotes about various languages to support his arguments, Through the Language Glass is at once informative and delightful (seriously, where else are you going to read a “delightful” linguistics book?), Deutscher is a must for anyone interested in the connections between language and culture.

The Mysterious Stranger and Other Short Stories, Mark Twain. This collection of short stories is not written by the same man who penned The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nearly every story is drenched with cynicism, doubt and implication that underneath it all, we’re all rotten to the core. Whether or not Twain’s conclusions are true is debatable and beyond the scope of this review. Unlike in his previous works, the humor that Twain previously presented with a twinkle in his eye has been replaced with a sneer. To see Twain’s transformation as an author was depressing and saddening. Twain’s prose prods along at points, but the standouts for me were “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” about a frog jumping contest, which reminded me of his more lighthearted earlier works, and the title story, which at 44 pages is more of a novella than a short story. In it, Satan (no, not that Satan, his nephew, the angel Satan) presents 3 German boys an alternative reality that they control. If you enjoy Thomas Hardy’s novels, you might enjoy The Mysterious Stranger and Other Short Stories, but if you loved The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, you might want to put this back on the shelf.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce. Following the growth of Stephen Dadelus in a semi-autobiographical nature, A Portrait of the Artist was one of the most influential English language novels of the 20th century, with the style and linguistic complexity developing with each chapter. For me, the novel was interesting on a style and an autobiographical level, however, the unfolding of the plot was not an enjoyable experience for me, and I had to remind myself to finish the novel. If you liked Catcher in the Rye (which I did not at all), you might enjoy A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

painted on water

Who will remember us, when we have turned to ashes or dust? Who will we become in their...

Monolingual VS Bilingual

Denizens of the Bus or Immigrants to Nowhere *intermission*

When I was a child, my father made me a most wonderful present; a small bow and arrow out of twigs...

peacecorps: From the Peace Corps Digital Library: Photos taken...

"Arab children, Corn ears of the future, You will break our chains, Kill the opium in our heads, Kill..."

newyorker: Cartoon by BT Schwartz. For more from this week’s...

13’s always been my lucky number…

kolkhara: Rolls of Inked Paper with Printed & Hand Written...

Books Read in 2012, part 5 (last one)

LA, I love you. Photo by me.

"Attempting to reestablish connection. Please wait."

likeafieldmouse: Patrick Jacobs “Jacobs’s dioramas provide...

Lately I seem to find myself doing housework to Arabic music from the 1950’s and...

Photo

The Sacredness of Steam or the Tao of Tea, part 2

Photoset of Snow in the Middle East and Turkey (The Atlantic Monthly)

theatlantic: Learning How to Grieve in Color Ten years ago,...

I’m twenty-two years old, and I still get antzy when I’m falling asleep and I notice my...

Books Read in 2012 part 4

Denizens of the Bus or Immigrants to Nowhere intermission