Tribute to Sohrab

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xuy8QoQD65o&feature=related

Pro-reincarnation argument

It used to be that you got accepted into a well-known university, then your life was set. The name of the place alone opened doors for you. "Mr. A went to UCLA. WOW, come on in."

Then came graduate school where grades really mattered. You excelled and then that itself got you a good job. Top 5% come on in.

After that Who You Knew was important. People were the ones who guided you and showed you the right doors to open.

One day you arrived into the real world and found out that no one told you the Truth: Now YOU are the one who has to make your way through life and open all the doors by yourself. This is called adult life, where no other names or affiliations would matter anymore. It's just YOU.

Now your own name is the only way to open doors. Sometimes, it takes so long to find the door, then you fear to even knock. After you gather up enough courage to knock, and wait for a while, sometimes...no one is even there to answer. You then have to turn around and find another door. Some doors are open for you, however, you won't dare enter for fear of failure. Some doors are locked and on one will tell you where the key is. Some doors don't even have a knob and you have to figure out a way to get through, maybe you have to break the door. Sometimes, when you gather enough strength to break the door, you find out there was nothing there to begin with, it's just empty. Why? because people before you had found out there was nothing there, they were smart enough to close that door and throw away the knob but you, the stuboorn being that you are, didn't believe them and didn't take their advice, you wanted to see for yourself so you wasted so much time and energy to break that door. You spend more time after that regretting that you wasted time and being depressed, meanwhile new doors are being built all the time and you, being depressed, are missing them. You are angry and annoyed that in the begining, no one told you about being alone at the end, by yourself.

One sad day you get close to the end of life and realize that the whole "door thing" was just a big phat lie anyway, that the game was just the joys of the journey to find the doors. What lied behind the doors was just a mirage. But it's too late now because you have wasted your whole life missing the point.

This is why we have to believe in reincarnation because we all deserve a second chance, and a third and a fourth...until we all finally get the point.

On Orgasms

Now I get it. After all this time, I get it now.

Human beings are whole for brief moments in time, five seconds or so, during orgasms only because that's the only time that they are present in the "Here & Now", not in the regrets of the past and not in the worries of future. Here, at this moment, only comes during orgasms when the flood of energy and its release transcends dimensions of time and space.

That's why we need orgasms to survive as species. It's the only time we are really Present. The rest of the non-orgasmic time is just an illusion.

I get it. Here and Now...

No ice cream for him at Tajreesh

Mr. M has said he saw my Dad eating ice cream one day in the middle of Tajreesh, in the middle of the day. This, Mr. M believes, is a crime for some reason.

Mr. M then decided to feel sorry for me, working here in America so hard, while my Dad eats ice cream at Tajreesh. Dads don't do that you see, they work very hard until they die, while children sit on their asses. Well, Mr. M's children never worked a day in their lives and never will, neither will his grandchildren.

Mr. M is stupid. He is judging my father in one instance of time, without seeing the whole picture, without seeing all the 17 years that he worked every day, seven days a week. Mr. M has seen one scene in a very long movie and he thinks he knows what the movie is all about.

But Mr. M is human and humans make snap judgments subconsciously. They say, those scientists, that snap judgments were developed through evolution so human beings can survive in times of danger, where there is no time to waste. The nomadic tribes...those early homosapians...those hunter and gatherers.

I am not going to make Mr. M's stupid snap judgment about my father get to me. Not after I have blogged about it anyway.

People are so stupid, they are funny.

299 Mirdaamaad Blvd, Tehran, Iran

We have almost arrived. Almost but not quiet yet.

We are very close to the point where we can forever get rid of the brown four story building at 299 Mirdaamad Blvd... the building that destroyed a family, the love between a mother and daughter, two brothers and now a brother and sister.

How much power can a building have over human beings?

I have a vague memory of its inception...brand new carpets and new paint. I must have been two or three. Then came all the times we got stuck in that elevator, all those scary nights we spent in the "cellar" to hide from the bombs, all those night and days we had to take the stairs down after a power outtage, all those snowy days I played in the yard, all those moments we spent on the roof looking at the far distant airplanes landing at Merhraabaad...wishing so very badly that we would leave soon in one of them and never come back.

Well, we did leave but this brown building was mad when we all left him alone by himself. He felt abandoned, like an orphan, but worse since orphans' parents are usually dead, while his parents had left him for a better land, America. First he had to endure a bridge being built in front of him viewing his block, which brought lots of noise and pollution with it. Then he became so angry and enraged that it decided to send his negative energy all the way across the world, pulling us back to himself one by one. He told himself, "They left me here, and I am going to make them suffer. I am never going to let them move on..."

The most proper way would have been for us to sell him to a new loving owner who would take care of him and maintain him, just like 90 percent of people who sold their damn properties before they left. We should have done that, for his own sake. We should have had a proper closure, a decent funeral. We should have never had unfinished business like this...

I have a dream of one day, in 30 years, I would go back there and spit over his face for what he did to us. By then, all the big players involved that he victimized will be gone and only ashes will be left of them...Mamani, Daee S, Daee H and Mom, but this bastard will still be standing tall at 299 Mirdaamaad. Isn't that ironic that human beings build buildings that stand longer than themselves, for years and years to follow?

Unless, of course, a new owner buys the damn thing and decides to destroy it and build a brand new "borj" at that prime location. Then I would be very happy because if all the people i love have to suffer b/c of him, he needs to die soon. Maybe then that day, in 30 years, I will go back and buy the 15th floor of that borj for myself, where it has a beautiful view of Tehran, 360 degrees, you see Damaavand from the North and airplanes still flying in Southern Tehran. By then, I can invite my American born grandchildren to come visit their grandma in her home country and I can tell them stories of this old brown building that stood there 60 years before and all that ensued after...

That day will come. I can see it now.

Be gone brown building....Be gone soon. Time to say good-bye.

The man who waited in his white Cadi

He is back in town to see his kids, for their Xmass break. I hear it from Daee H, of course since he doesn't call us when he comes.

I have various emotions towards him. I pity him sometime for the sad, horrifying person that he has become at his age, for all the rage he has taken inside him all of his life...pathetic. And I resent him for all the words he has said to my parents.

Sometimes I miss him, but soon I realize I miss that man who used to wait outside of Mark Twain Jr. High School in Venice, California in his white Cadillac and take me home, and teach me English and tell me not to worry if I don't understand it now... that soon I will be very fluent. The man who taught me to always have a $10 bill around...just in case...just in case.

The man who used to study for the bar exam he never passed, while having a cigarette every 30 minutes. (God, is he also living through me since I passed the monstrous exam that he never did)

The single hip man who wore a white suit with ultimate chic cream shoes one day, in 1985 in Tehran, and picked me up in my little doll dress and took me out about town.

The man who used to call me , "Layla baba..." because he was kind of a father to me...

I miss that man. Not this one...never. I have nothing to say anymore to a horrible person that says my mother has become sick because she inherited all the money from grandpa, and that she deserves to be sick because he didn't get any.

Who is this man? Why has life done this to him?

My heart is very saddened by the thought of knowing this new man. I don't know him, he is not my uncle.

Bookaholism

The Orange County Library System consists of 34 branches spreading all the way from La Habra, in the Northern part bordering LA County, to San Clemente at the Southern tip. Shortly after becoming a member, I figured out the system: for a measly 25 cents, you can order any book from any library to come to the library of your choice. Besides this wonderful cooperative system, there are hundreds of e-audiobooks available online, some of which can be downloaded for free onto a CD.

I have basically raped the system in the past few months.

It was the best thing that could happen to me since I had developed a horrible habit of purchasing books and not reading them. Now, I just borrow them and when I don't read them, I don't feel as bad. Let the government pay for it.

The problem is, I am a bookaholic, and by that I mean I need to be around books, surrounded by volume. I don't necessarily have to read them though, at least not thoroughly anyway. As long as I browse through them, and get a bite here and there, it does the job. Just like a kid in the candy store taking bites from different kinds of candy, being satisfied at the end.

Books make me feel safe. They contain words from others like me that felt the same way I did at some point. They give me hope and direction, however imaginary. With books around me, I don't feel alone.

If I were to choose a place to die, it would most likely be in the library, probably a home library sitting on a sofa in front of the fire place.

That's the most ideal place to die.

Synchronicity

I was driving to school, one afternoon in 2002 or 2003. The radio was tuned into 670 a.m., Radio Iran, and she was speaking on a program about domestic violence.

She was informative, knowledgeable, strong and full of self-confidence. Her name was Sousan Al-e-Mansour, at attorney, which I jotted down in the back of a notebook, while I was driving. The next day, I looked her up on CalBar. She had left a lasting impression on me.

Time passed and I became a lawyer myself. One day, four years later, I met a short woman with curly black hair at a meeting full of lawyers, who introduced herself as Sousan Al-e-Mnasour!

A few months later, I sat in her office and accepted a job offer. Then I walked out of her office and recalled that afternoon that she spoke on the radio, remembering that I knew that day, I would meet this woman and she would become my mentor.

Carl Jung's description of the concept of "Synchronicity" is what quantum physicist today would call the phenomenon of superluminal information transfer between space-like separated events.

Basically, that in Nature everything is related somehow...although unseen by the eyes and unexplainable by ordinary senses.

Starbucks Moments, Part II

I met two people this time.

First was a woman who was writing her holiday cards while she sipped on her coffee. I actually started the conversation, telling her how I ran out of my address labels before I was done with all my cards. Then she told me about how her credit card was stolen this week and they charged a lot on it...on and on about her credit card problems. (I just have to accept that people just feel comfortable telling me their problems...I just have to come to terms with it.) I wanted to give her my card but I decided against it. She would just call and ramble on.

The second one was a man who asked me if I like the color brown, being sarcastic b/c I was wearing brown pants and a brown top, and sitting on the brown leather arm chair, melting away in brown. He was annoying but since he said he is into mortgage banking, I took advantage of it and gave him my card. He might bring in business.

Starbucks is a great free advertising market.

Tis the Season to be Jolly...la la laaaaallllll lla

Every year I resist it at first. It seems routine, with the same stupid songs playing every where you go, year after year. It is frustrating to hear "Let it Snow" and not see a drop of snow anywhere when the Season comes. Basically, it's fake and commercialized. I resist it as long as I can.

This year, however, I tried to embrace it to see if it works. I bought my cards again and I think sent out about 50 of them. One of them got me a job. It's really a great networking strategy, if nothing else. I used some of them to make up with old friends. I used some to forgive old enemies. I wrote different things in all of them. I tried to be creative.

Then after all were mailed out, I realized I had misspelled "HappiEness" with an extra E!

Woops. No wonder I have issues. I can't even spell the damn word, let it alone let it come into my life.

Happy Holidays!

The Untold Love Story: based on true events

I must have been six or seven when I first began to actually notice that I had feelings for him--God knows when they started really. I remember this because I have this vague memory of being on our balcony one day on my little swing, writing down the names of the boys I had crushes on. There were probably about four of them, but His name really weighed more than the rest. So I made a decision then, on that day on our balcony, that he must be the One.

I wouldn't see him much though. We were distant relatives and would only see each other during occasional family gatherings, and of course, for Norouz, which was the best part because then I would see him a lot, every day for 13 days. I remember little things like being in a room with a bunch of kids playing, then he would walk in and my heart would light up, and then I could no longer think.

Whatever it was, it must have been strong because yavash yavash everyone started to notice, including my mother, who condemned it, and banned me from seeing him or his family much. Like sometimes not attending certain places if they were there, just to make sure I don't get too "goo-goo-ga-ga"...because after all, I was a little girl, nothing but a child who could not possibly know love.

Then came that one Fall day in October 1989 when everything changed forever. (Of course, my mother wasn't there to interfere with it which really helped the situation). All of a sudden, his family decided we should all go to Shomal to our villa. And we did. For three days, we spent every minute together and this time, no one opposed it. We took long walks together and talked.

I was 12, he was 15. We were in love beyond words, and we had waited all this time to be together. On the way back to Tehran, he sat in our car next to me the whole entire time and his leg touched mine for a five hour drive.

Then the next day, he called and confessed his love to me and I did mine to him, and my world changed forever. It was worth waiting all these years. Except there was one slight issue: I was soon leaving for America. So we both knew we were running out of time.

We spent the next few months making up for lost time and loving each other. He was sad that I was leaving but he couldn't do anything about it. Sometimes he complained. Sometimes he would ask me if I really wanted to go to America. I didn't know what to tell him except that I would miss him, and that maybe we would not stay there for too long.

The time finally arrived though. The week before I left, sometime in March 1990, we got together with my older cousins, who all knew about me and him by now, and we met at a coffee shop in Yousef Abaad to discuss strategy: How I could send letters to him from America so his mom and the rest of the family doesn't find out. "Noushin" was a friend of my cousin who volunteered her identity and her address: I would send my letters addressed to her name and to her address so no one would suspect anything. He could then go pick it up. Great plan, we all thought.


Then came the day we had to say good-bye. I remember bits and pieces of that evening, just going there, I think he wore a yellow sweater and looked pale. I went to his room at some point and gave him a little gift that had "I Love You" on it. I think we hugged and kissed but I don't remember because my stomach was upset with too much emotions.

One cold winter night, we left Iran forever.

The letter strategy actually worked for a while, I think maybe for a whole year even, until Noushin's mom found it and told her to cut it off. Then we had to come up with a new plan, and a new address, which we did and it worked again for another while. So we wrote and wrote for four years after I came to America.

FOUR YEARS...until one day I woke up and decided this love will never go anywhere because I wasn't going back to Iran-ever.

So I wrote him my final 8 page letter and said my good-bye. It didn't go too well with him at first. He actually telephoned and wanted to talk and hear it from me directly. And he did. I said "Man deegheh Iran bar nemeegardam heechvaght. Beekhody vaghteh khodeto talaf nakon", and I hung up the phone. And that was it.

I never talked to him again. A few years later I heard he got married.

10 years passed and I went back to visit Iran but I refused to see him. I avoided every party and every place that he could be at, on purpose. I specifically didn't want to see the wife of a man I had been in love with since the age of seven.

A few years after that, he had a baby boy. Recently his wife gave birth to a baby girl.

Sometimes I felt as though he cursed me and that's why I can't find true love anymore. He wanted revenge and that was his curse. Recently though I had this huge realization about me, him and what happened. I realized I was the one who had actually put the curse on me, that night when I hung up the phone on him, I had decided not to ever forgive myself for it, and to always ban myself from receiving love. I realized I had punished me over the years--not him.

My cousin said once that he told her he chose his wife based on my personality and character, he used to tell me I have "ghoroor", and that he liked it.

In order to let go and move on, should I also try to choose someone similar to him and his character? Except that I barely knew him, nor do I really remember how he behaved or what he was like.

I only know one thing now and forever-- he loved me, and his love was so strong that it flew over the vast oceans between us and reached me, and continued to reach me for years and years, even in my dreams...and still does. Yes, I can still feel it.

And that's my untold love story...just unfolded at 2 a.m. on a cold December night.

Global Connection

Just got an e-mail from a childhood best friend saying that she is pregnant.

She lives in Dubai, half way across the world.

Her and I were best friends in 6th and 7th grade. One day, as we sat and chatted during "zangeh tafreeh", we found out we were born on the same day, in the same hospital, meaning we were in the baby room together!

Without Internet, this news would have probably arrived so late, maybe after her child was born...in months or years. Now, she is sending me a picture of the ultrasound.

Wow. What a phenomenon.

Two pink backpacks: promise of an American Dream

He used to shower us with goodies from America. Every three or four months, the "F-F" would ring around noon time and the "postchee" would announce "basteh". And I would jump from excitement knowing that "bastehs" only came from a distant place named America, and from a grandfather I met once or twice when I was two years old, before he vanished for good.

He would put some clothes in there for my mom and grandma and then little things for me, such as Hello Kittie pencils and erasers and things I could take to school and "poz" with, saying they are from America. By age 11, I think I had the entire Hello Kittie collection. He would also include several Sneaker bars in there which I did not want to share with anyone. Life was good, I tell you.

A couple of times, he gave his friends entire suitecases to bring to us. Now, that was what you would call Christmas in heaven.

Then came the two pink backpacks, several years apart. The first one was soft, and I think it arrived in second grade. I could still feel its softness and smell the brand newness of it. My mom would not let me take it to school for a long time saying it would get dirty, until I pleaded and pleaded and I may have finally just sneaked it with me one day. I sure felt so special and unique with that backpack since no one else in school had it. I felt whole.

Then when the first one wore off in a couple of years, I actually asked him for a new one around fifth grade. This one was pink also but came in the shape of a rectangular box! Surely, once again, no one in school, nor in Tehran for that matter, had anything like it. (I wish I had a photo of it).

So the good feelings of wholeness and uniqueness continued on and on for a bit longer until we left Iran and came to America.

Soon enough, I started looking for similar backpacks, just out of curiosity to see where he had bought them from...and 18 years later, I have yet to find them. I never even asked him where he got them from, being afraid that it may have been a dream only.

At some point, I decided it's best to keep the dream in my mind with the beautiful memory of those two pink backpacks that got me through my elementary school years in Tehran...best to keep it in there with the promises of the American Dream...to believe that one day, the promises will come true...one day, as I wonder around the Mall, I would pass a store which carries those backpacks.

Addicted to Poverty

I was sober for exactly four months this time. I made money. I wasn't poor.

Then, I relapsed again.

Addiction takes all kinds of different forms. Poverty is one of them. I am addicted to poverty because it is familiar zone, because it feels as though I belong there more than anything, because sometimes when I have too much money in the bank, I don't know what to do with it.

It's ok. Addicts are always welcome to go back to sobriety.

Starbucks Moments

John with blue eyes asks me randomly if I am Iranian, as I sip my tall double latte.

- Yes, but how do you know? I don't look typical Iranian?

- Oh, I can tell from the beautiful eyes. "Sharghi"...I lived there before the Shah left. For three years, right on Takhteh Jamsheed. It was fantastic, best years of my life...the people, the food...wow. We used to go to the Caspian Sea. When were you there last?

- 8 years ago. I really want to go back soon though. I hear things have changed.

- You in school?

- No, I am done with school.

- Oh, what do you do.

- I am a lawyer.

- Oh Khanoom Vakeel? but you are a bacheh! How old are you?!!!

- Oh I am old enough to be a done. I look young with no makeup.

- My God, amazing. Yes, I miss Iran. Too bad with what happened and the politicians today. We have a Divooneh president there and a Divooneh President here...

We chat a bit more while he reminisces over Lubia Polo and Ghormeh Sabzi and Nooneh Tazeh.

Then I give him my card so maybe a client or two will come out of him.

The eyes...they give it away.

I like my Starbucks encounters.

Roomie

She doesn't know many things, like how to mail a certified letter with a return receipt. However, she has a great credit score which helped me with getting the apartment. (She hasn't been here long enough to screw her credit maybe).

She wears perfect makeup every day before leaving the house. I don't do that.

She is clean. No, she is immaculate and organized. I am not and slowly, I can see her turning into a slob like me. (Oops)

She is lonely and at nights, she probably cries in her bed for the family and the memories she left behind.

She hates her father, who left her mother when pregnant with her.

I love my father who has stayed through thick and thin, and can not imagine my world without him.

Her mother was headstrong, worked full time and still does, and raised two daughters on her own.

My mother never had a real job outside the house, full time. My mother can barely function in her daily life without my father.

We are really different but somehow the Universe brought us together and recently, we have become family.

I have replaced the family she left behind, and she has replaced that family that left me.

Shaagerd Avval

When I brought my "kaar-naameh" home every quarter or "Sols", she would take it proudly and put it behind the glass door of our living room boofeh. That way everyone who walked in the house could easily see how her daughter had straight 20's! and she would feel good about herself.

I was so embarrassed but she would do it anyways. People, random guests, would smile at me in a fake manner and congratulate me. They didn't care or they were jealous, and their kids felt horrible in front of their parents when they saw my "kaar-naameh" since now, they had to strive to be just like me.

When I got into Yale's summer program, the entire Iranian community in Westwood Blvd. found out. He told everyone he had ever come into contact with in America. I couldn't stop him either. Let him feel good about his smart daughter.

When I was accepted into UCLA, I think everyone they knew in America AND Iran found out...even every distant relative living in Mashhad and Esfaahan.

Let them feel good both. Let them create this perfectionist self-image of a daughter for me that would, later in life, cause my very fall. It's ok. Parents don't know any better. We just suffer and then spend the rest of our adult lives doing damage control.

And the wost part is after we have kinda healed from the wounds that they inflicted, we do it all over again to our own children. And this vicious cycle goes on and on...

No. I vow not to do this to my children. Never, ever...the cycle has to stop. It can be fatal.

Be proud of your kids but don't make it so public and don't make them feel that what they do or their grades make them who they are.

I am more than "Shaagerd Avval". I am beyond Shaagerd Avval because then, when I am not Shaagerd Avval, I am still good and smart and capable.

A year without parents

2007 is almost over and boy am i happy.

In 2007, I fucked up a lot. No joke. I was lost and out of balance. Let's just say it wasn't the best year of my life.

I wondered what the heck was wrong with me until I realized this whole year, for the first time in my entire life, I was away from them. One whole year.

No wonder I was so lost and fucked up so much. Just like a lost puppy who doesn't know where to go and what to eat.

No matter how old we are, and how much adult responsibility we have, we are always like lost puppies without our parents.

2008 is going to be such a better year. I can already feel the breeze from behind the mountains and smell its freshness.