North Wind

Tonight I intentionally skipped yoga which I have been religiously attending every week for the past four months. Instead, I made pasta and indulged, while watching the movie Chocolat...the story of a gypsy woman and her illegitimate daughter who travel from town to town and village to village curing people with homemade chocolate...traveling with the North Wind each time. But one day when the wind knocks at her door to take her away, she finally resists and refuses to go. She decides that it's time to stay.

My North Wind is is knocking again too these days. I am not sure if I should resist him to give in. This time it came unexpectedly once again, always a surprise.

I am not responding to him now. In fact, I told the answering machine to take a msg. I have to contemplate on this one.

I have to pray this time...

I have to meditate on it...

To leave or not to leave?

Integrity of a farmer

The Farmer's Market near me is on Tuesdays from 9-1. It's one of the smallest farmers markets I have ever been to. Right across from a typical California strip mall which includes a Target, a PetSmart and all other signs of a corporate world on the border of Tustin and Irvine, there it stands next to an actual strawberry farm and the old white house that has now been renovated as a historical building and made into a new library.

Today I stumble in there wanting to buy some strawberries. I only have $10 in cash so I have to budget my shopping properly. After I spend my first $6 on three packs of strawberry, I walk more and look to see what else I can fit in with my four dollars. The zard alloos look good. So I take one pound and that's another $2. I go next door to the Asian farmer and she has good peaches and nectarines for $1.75 per pound. I start filling in my plastic bag and give the farmer lady what I have gathered to weigh. It's one and a half pounds. I tell her I only have $2 left and ask her nicely to take a couple of them peaches out. She listens and weighs my bag again. Now we are at .95 pounds. I smile and say thank you to her thinking we are done. She says wait. Then she looks around and adds one small zard alloo to my peach bag. She smiles and says to me in her thick Korean accent to come back next week.

I walk away in awe of the integrity of a farmer I just met.

Friends

The day I moved in, she was making pasta. The early October sun was still warm and her mom was sewing the throw pillows for our living room. There wasn't much furniture there. The carpet still smelled new.

I didn't think we were gonna be friends really...just roommates. She was a neat freak and a Republican for God's sake. It took me a while before I actually "hung in" with her at home and a longer time before we "hung out" and went to a movie or whatever...

Three years passed and if one night she wasn't home, I could barely sleep.

Then she moved out.

Then I moved out.

Then we lost touch. We would only talk once or twice a month.

Then she got married.

Then she moved closer to me.

Then we became close again.

Now we hang in and hang out, and she tells me about married life issues.

I tell her to see a therapist. (When in doubt, see a therapist. They do help sometimes).

Then we goof off and talk the whole time while the old lady sings her sad romantic jazz songs under the May moon.

Then we leave, and on the way back home driving I think about how much I misjudged her before, and how foolish of me to think I could never befriend her.

Note to self: Life is like a box of chocolate...(ok, that's not very original but Forest was right and I can't think of anything more profound to say right now.)

Who is this voice?

I gotta change my outgoing message on my voicemail.

I sound so serious.

It's been three years officially. I did it right before I got my bar results in May 2005. I was stressed, depressed and bee hoseleh.

I don't recognize my own voice now from 2005.

I gotta change it.

I have changed. I am still stressed but less depressed and have some hoseleh these days.

I gotta...

Good Deal?

I have had one glass of Charles Shaw and I am drunk...how did that happen? I had avoided Two-Buck Shaw for a while but it was an open bottle on the counter already, so I could not let it go to waste.

So in the midst of my drunkness watching Deal or No Deal who has decided to go to South Africa now, I call her to say hello.

She repeats the same exact story from last night. She has gotten so much worse. I listen patiently without telling her, "oh, Mamani, you said that last night..." I listen partly because I am too buzzed to say anything and because I don't really listen to her when she talks...really, I stopped listening to her a while back, maybe 10 years ago.

Then I hear her suddenly, saying this, "az to entezaar kasi nadareh, yek zendegi daaanesh jooy daaree..."

EXCUSE Me? I have not been a "Danesh Joo" for four years officially.

"Deegeh taa shohar nakardi, Danesh Joo hasti...deegeh," Then she laughs at her own crooked logic.

Great.

Somehow the "empty" period between being a Danesh Joo and getting married will not account for anything...until there is a man in your life. Until then, you are really not officially a functioning member of this society. Because, really...it was supposed to happen the day after graduation from law school, that day I was supposed to say yes and cut the deal. But it didn't happen. So now they have a hard time legitimizing my status as a human being.

Great.

Note to self: relax. All this comes from an 80 year old woman who probably has never had a real orgasm.

All I want to say to her is this: "een Shohareh shoma cheh goli zad beh sareh shoma?" but then I don't even know if I am saying it right? Is that the right phrase? My Farsi has gone bizertte....

So I shut up and drink some more Charles Shaw and listen to her.

Let her ramble on and on...

*****************************************

She gets an offer of 105k and accepts.

But the real question is, Did She Make a Good Deal?

UnMehmoon Navazi

Meeveh ro bayad khoshk kard, badan tooyeh zarf gozaasht joloyeh mehmoon.

Kaardeh meeveh khori ba kaardeh ma'mooli fargh dareh.

Khiar keh meezari, make sure kon keh taheh khiar ro bezaari paeen. (khaily badeh kooneh khiar ro mehmoon bebineh, aberoo reezieh).

Woops.