Hank Poori

I have been watching Californication. It started all because of my favorite actress Natascha McElhon but then I got interested in Hank Moody's fuck-ups. I never noticed that his life was kind of similar to Charles Bukowski's life but completely Californicated for 21 century, more glamorous and sexier. At the same time, I couldn't understand why all of a sudden I was yearning to go back to Bukowski's poems, then I found out about the Bukowski: Born into this documentary. Yet there are zillion's of clues in the series about this theory but again it wasn't convincing enough for me to get rid of some other mind boggling thought; that both Moody and Bukowski (both Hanks) have something in common with someone else, someone who is not a celebrity, someone that I know closely. There it was!!! I found out who that was while I was sitting on the toilet sit: A.P., his indefinite hunger for women, his face scars, the reminder of his adolescence years acne's, then Moody's trouble with Karen, fucking it all up over and over, yet not being able to move on from her ever. And the most import thing in common amongst all three of them: good sense of humor.

It feels like all the stories have been told or acted or lived over and over, there is nothing left to be told, no more fresh stories, but that's not true, every single personal touch makes it a complete unique life.

Oh well! Shit happens



Nothing goes as planned
Everything will break
People say goodbye
In their own special way
All that you can rely on
And all that you could fake
Will leave you in the morning
Come find you in the day
Oh, you’re in my veins, and I cannot get you out
Oh, you’re all I taste, at night inside of my mouth
Oh, you run away, cause I am not what you found
Oh, you’re in my veins, and I cannot get you out
Everything will changed
Nothing stays the same
Nobody is perfect
Oh, but everyone is to blame
All that you rely on
And all that you can save
Will leave you in the morning
Will find you in the day
Oh, you’re in my veins, and I cannot get you out
Oh, you’re all I taste, at night inside of my mouth
Oh, you run away, cause I am not what you found
Oh, you’re in my veins, and I cannot get you out
No I cannot get you out
No I cannot get you out
Oh no, I cannot get you out
No I cannot get you out
Everything is dark
It’s more than you could take
But you catch a glimpse of sunlight
Shining
Shining down on your face
Your face
On your face
Oh, you’re in my veins, and I cannot get you out
Oh, you’re all I taste, at night inside of my mouth
Oh, you run away, cause I am not what you found
Oh, you’re in my veins, and I cannot get you out
No, i cannot get you out
No, i cannot get you out...
Oh no, I cannot get you...

I want to watch this film so badly.

Casually numb


Is this "love means nothing" in tennis supposed to be cute or just dorky? I don't know but it's stuck in my head from the that stupid commercial.

It's been a long time. We haven't talked. I haven't written here. You have been checking it or if you have, you've become disappointed by seeing the same content. I miss our conversations, about films and things like that.

Kind of feel scared and hopeless with this script. I want it so badly to be materialized and turned into the vision I have in mind but it's too big of a project to undergo and too risky for asking people who would be interested to be involved - those who will want to travel home - I am feeling frustrated because of my inability in finishing it perfectly in a way that no one could say no to it. I can feel it so badly that it has a very good potential for something great. It is a story that should be told; leaving it untold would be a crime. Uh! It feels so numb, this moment, so casually numb.

Isn't she adorable?

Drifters - Patrick Watson






PS: This Montrealer is extreme of Radiohead. He is very good too but nothing compares to you Thom!

They both "recommend" things every second as if I am still their 7 year old kid.

I was thinking how come I am so angry inside, around them all the time even at vulnerable times like this, that they should be my safety zone and they should have refuge for me but no, it's all frustration in my head and agony in my heart. Ever Since I was able to understand the Commands and the Orders 'till I turned 18 and rebelled it was times of suppression and parental tyranny. Everything had to be done according to their instructions and orders and they had one for every single moment of those year, even orders how to hold a cup of tea. This was in the dark years of 60s that my generation was being suppressed at school and society as well. It was 16 hours of constant suffering for me when I was awake in school or in the streets or at home and 8 hours of nightmares, 365 days a year for 14 year; the best years of a human beings life when one should have no responsibilities of adults world and feel liberated and happy.

She came up with her old trick last night to scare me with his hearth condition and how drinking has endangered his life, right at the moment he went to the bathroom. I knew what she was doing and has been doing over and over through out the years. "How come you tell me things like this about him only when he is absent; this happening all the time." I asked. She blushed while was caught off guard; responded in a way as if I had offended her with the question. She tried another avenue, she said "You've always denied my Motherhood Right". It even made me more furious. "What Motherhood Right?" I ask. "Motherhood is supposed to be comfort and peacefulness not the opposite in a very invasive way. Victimizing yourself will not work on me anymore." Then he comes out of the bathroom and there it goes, the big confrontation: Dad! Because I know mom doesn't like you to drink at all I've never offered you any beers or other alcoholic beverages unless you've asked me and as your host I would never say no. So has drinking beer here and there in last few weeks bothered your heart or harmed you at all?

He turns to her immediately and says no, not at all. The thing is your mom doesn't want me to drink that's why she relates thing to one another and jumps into irrelevant conclusions.

"Please fix your differences on this drinking disagreement between the two of you and leave me the fuck out of it." I snapped and stopped right there.

Being disconnected from them and trying so hard in last few years to fix the broken connection and failing over and over is one thing that I gotten over it eventually. I just want this 9 weeks to be over soon while I try so hard to make this the vacation of their lives.

When Artemis passes by a pile of coffee beans

Her presence, placid like.
Her inner side stormy.

Vergiss Mein Nicht!

Sea of love

Sometimes a piece of music hits me hard; it either makes me ecstatic or extremely sad. This is one of them and Cat Pawor's voice in general makes me fall in love.

Up in the air

Walter Kirn created Ryan Bingham of Up in the air and Jason Reitman rendered him perfectly. In one of Ryan's public presentations he says "Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life." Perhaps he never realized the true meaning of that 'till the moment the Captain in the middle of the flight asked him "Where are you from?". With a profoundly sad voice says Ryan "I am from here" which is no where but up in the air.

They say mortgages, car loans, credit card balances etc, they all chain us down and commit us to banks and all sorts of financial institutes but the truth is we can always pay them off and leave or just give up everything, kiss goodbye a good credit and walk away; it won't scar our souls, but we can't just easily walk away from our relationships, even if we do (for no good reason) it'll come back to us and haunt us. Parents, siblings, love partners or friends are those who keep us responsible in the relationships. We are the balloon and they are the ones who hold the thread. We always flow over their heads even if life distracts them from checking on us once in a while, soon they will turn their head and check on the balloon.

رقصی که آرزویش را بر دلم گذاشتی!

Other Side of The World - KT Tunstall

Over the sea and far away
She's waiting like an Iceberg
Waiting to change,
But she's cold inside
She wants to be like
the water,

All the muscles tighten in her face
Buries her soul in one embrace
They're one and the same
Just like water

Then the fire fades away
But most of everyday
Is full of tired excuses
But it's too hard to say
I wish it were simple
But we give up easily
You're close enough to see that
You're.... the other side of the world
to me

On comes the panic light
Holding on with fingers
and feelings alike
But the time has come
To move along

Then the fire fades away
But most of everyday
Is full of tired excuses
But it's too hard to say
I wish it were simple
But we give up easily
You're close enough to see that
You're.... the other side of the world

Can you help me?
Can you let me go
And can you still love me
When you can't see me anymore

Then the fire fades away
most of everyday
Is full of tired excuses
But it's too hard to say
I wish it were simple
But we give up easily
You're close enough to see that
You're.... the other side of the world
Ohh.... the other side of the world
You're.... the other side of the world
To me.

Joe Blow or Joe Shmoe

No one thinks they are average Joe, not even average Joe. That term is a myth to everybody, a myth that exists truely but it's not visible to anybody. If I live an adventureless life, if I have a steady 9 to 5 office job with a medium size mortgate and an ordinary Japenese sedan and spend my week days at work and and home after work and eat my dinner in front of the TV and pay my taxes and shovel my driveway to avoid any law suits and forget to vote and pretend I know where Belize is located when I hear it from a colleague; if I am all of the above despite the fact that I refuse to be, I must be the average Joe. If I am not then who is? We all think there is something extraordinary about us even if it's not revealed or discovered yet. There is always a dream of an extraordinary version of us as individuals that has not happened yet but it potentially could happen, therefore none of us can be average Joe.

Call it off



I won't regret saying this
This thing
That I'm saying
Is it better than
Keeping my mouth shut
That goes without saying
Call, break it off
Call, break my own heart
Maybe I would have been
Something you'd be good at
Maybe you would have been
Something I'd be good at
But now we'll never know
I won't be sad
But in case
I'll go there
Everyday,
To make myself feel bad
There's a chance
I'll start to wonder
If this was the thing to do
I won't be out long
But I still think it better if
You take your time
Coming over here
I think that's for the best
Call, break it off
Call, break my own heart
Maybe I would have been
Something you'd be good at
Maybe you would have been
Something I'd be good at
But now
We'll never know
I won't be sad
But in case
I'll go there
Everyday,
To make myself feel bad
There's a chance
I'll start to wonder
If this was the thing to do
I'll start to wonder
If this was the thing to do

Lars Von Trier is a sick sick MF! No more respect for him. Dogville and Breaking the waves were accidents. I regret watching Antichrist.

Ani DiFranco rocks!

Ani was fantastic last night in Vancouver.

Fool




Apartment in New York, London and Paris
Where will we rest, we’re all living on top of it
It’s all that we have the USA is our daily bread
And no one is willing to share it

Why can’t we see our fortunancy
Living as legends have lived.
Bane and dismannered
We coax all the time
Knowing that nothing is left when we die

Come along Fool
A direct hit of the senses you are disconnected
It’s not that it’s bad…it’s not that it’s death
It’s just that it is on the tip of your tongue, and you're so silent

Wanting to live and laugh all the time
Sitting alone with you tea and your crime
Children with kids, and people with parents
Anywhich way there’s no past and no presence
When the day comes and all of them bums
Will reveal enchanting persons
Come along...

When it's a rut and baby's no luck
Half of it's misunderstanding love
The war we have won we're winning again
Within ourselves and within our friends
Come along...

Remark the mark for future

This dream "goes bang bang in my head" and turns into a nightmare, night and day, day and night. I think to myself how come I feel dizzy all the time and not just the moment I get off the bed and land on the ground. On the same lousy shaky ground that moves no matter what I do or how I feel. I should know better it's not the ground that is being shaky, that, it's all in my head, in my head. The dreams and the hope somehow, have turned into disappointment and gloominess.

I light a cigarette. I cup my chin and stare at the burning cigarette close-up and gently blow into the crimson tobacco to watch it burn faster. I refuse to shake the ash and I suffer under the stress of the ash falling on the rug any moment; I still refuse and refuse and refuse till it burns to the nonburnable point and it gets heavy, unbearably heavy, the ash. It falls on the rug and leaves a mark on its brightness. That's when I regret it all and think to myself: I could have seen this coming and I could have prevented it.

Cover your ears and eyes! Please?

I can't even write in here anymore. A chest-full scream is stuck in me.

High and Dry but not dry enough yet.

I've poisoned you all, every single one of you, with my poems, with my favorite songs and my thoughts. Then I made you "to live up the image" I fabricated of myself. You all fell in the trap, you were drugged. You felt helpless, you had no choice but to fall for this image of me. And then one day you woke up and couldn't take it anymore. You volunteered to register for a rehab, the Reality rehab center. After few days, weeks or even months going dry and staying sober, you felt liberated from this hallucination and went your way. You all left me high and dry.

Afterwards, once in a while when we'd pass by, we all put on this unreal smile and pretend nothing ever happened.

I wonder when I would sober up? When would I check in the Reality rehab center?

Get me out of this head!

I am sitting in a restaurant in Berlin. People are coming and going. The patio is quite pleasant and peaceful. A mild half cloudy half sunny day with a nice breeze. The only annoying thing is the presence of these bees. They are everywhere in this town and yet no honey in their sack.

Across from my table an old man and a man in his mid 40s are sitting together. They seem to be father and son. May be they have a Sunday ritual of getting together in a restaurant. When the son was approached by the waitress he declined the menu and ordered for both of them in German. A minute later two nice Konig Ludwig Blonde with a good inch of foam sitting on top was served on their table. They exchanged words here and there, otherwise their gaze traveled to far places. May be the father lives in an old tiny sad flat by himself. May be his daughter-in-law doesn't like him, that's why they have to meet in a restaurant.

I don't know why all of a sudden my mother's face appeared in front of my eyes. I am walking around shouting and moving my hands in the air as if I am performing a dramatic part in a play, sobbing: "This is the nature of fucking life...to be born alone and to die alone. In between to feel lonely."

"But you have us, your family, me. Why such strong emotions and sorrow, why feel lonely?" She says. She in the verge of bursting into tears, she walks away and hides in the bedroom. She always hid her tears from me. And then she disappears.

There it was. My nightmare in a day light with wide open eyes. How did I get here?

My 300+ days of her

I am definitely over her. Moved on. No hard feelings at all, but I can't understand how everything happened so fast, so out of the natural cosmic order of "boy-meets-girl". I didn't get the chance to make my typical mistakes to be yelled at or to be frowned upon. I didn't get the chance to know if I was slightly wanted, ever, at all, loved? Not even close. My hands, my arms, never got the chance to be surprised by her hand when she would reach out, out of a sudden loneliness or a simple crave for me; you know, one of those rare moments that you never expect them, but when they happen, they make you feel good.

500 Summer Days triggered all this. I felt like Tom through out the film. Like he said I didn't care about the boy friend label, or being defined in the relationship; I was just looking for consistency of a sort.

It was a strange journey but a totally good one. Thank you for the ride. :*

I have no idea how it ends...

The movie About Elly, already admired, praised and well awarded in some major festivals and in so many reviews. It has been a success in Iranian box-office under the worse screening circumstances. All of the above is a good indication that the story should have been revealed by now, but it hasn't. As if there has been a collective agreement on not giving away the story by those who have already seen the movie. As far as I've read in the reviews, this film fits in suspense genre. This is how I interpret the post-viewing collective silence of spectators:

- There is a message in the credits by the director such as "Please do not reveal the story after watching and thank you for watching" or
- It is part of the film viewing etiquettes to keep quiet after watching a suspense movie.

Either way, it makes the whole waiting process for my local screening more exciting and it creates suspense of its own kind.

I wish there was same type of collective silence on every single move that Iranians are going to make in their revolutionary Green Movement, knowing what the next move is going to be without revealing it to the enemy; to catch them off guard and hit them very hard. I am quite certain that they all know the ending but they don't tell us 'till the sweet ending arrives and gives us all the joy of a happy ending in a non-Hollywood way.

Hell on earth

A hell has broken lose again, on this very planet which looks so calm so quiet from outer space. "It's not easy to remain uninvolved"*. One must take a side to remain human.



* from The Quiet American by Graham Greene

I-spot

I was reading my posts in both blogs and I didn't like the person who wrote them. I don't like myself when I'm angry. Being melancholic, listening to melancholic music, dreaming constantly, fancying unattainable idealism, wanting to alter the reality and not accepting my thresholds has turned me into some creep who's unlikely going to change.

I wish there was a virtual GPS device that could measure one’s distance from their ideal spot in life that would beep or give out warnings when one is walking away from the Ideal spot, the I-spot, like the spot that I fancy for myself.

Heading to mountains

Fury should die off in the mountains where no one is around. This way no one gets hurt. I scare myself when I am furious.

A short film about death

Exterior - By the foot a high-rise - Breezy March morning

Two strangers passing by from two different directions.

First man: You know those things could kill you eh?

Second man [holding a cigarette]: Yeah and I'm not gonna quit.

First man: I guess it only takes a real man to face death like that.

Simplicity of a mind

I can't bear being marginalized in a relationship. Being hid or covered, being loved in the dark, being loved in doubt -if being loved at all- is like being wanted conditionally. We live in the West, in 21st century, but you love me as if it's dark ages and you need to hide me or hide our love. It's cruel and painful. Love is all about altering priorities. You were my priority from the very beginning, but I've never felt being anything at all in this relationship, even in last few days, I just felt I am filling some gaps in you and your life, not a bit more.


It's not smart to exhaust an avenue to figure out it's a dead-end when there is a big sign in the very beginning of the road saying loudly and clearly: "Dead-End". I think we should take a U-turn right here and look for different roads.



PS: Come on! Think about it; this is far from modernism.

Hola Ciudad del río del mono, estoy viniendo!

Here we go again, back on the ground; realizing and materializing the essence of being lost and down. What do I want to do now? Run away from here? But for running away, I will need navigations, directions, or at least a destination. Where would be a perfect destination? Darwin? Tangier, Minsk? or may be Monkey River Town in Belize for the sake of hilarity of the name?

I need to get away at least for few days.

For my joy which died unexpectedly


W. H. Auden


Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

I am coming home

I am at the verge of breaking or making. Just wait two more months. Just trust me and yourself on this and hang in there with me. The moment I clear everything I'll get a plane ticket and get on board and fly over the ocean to reunite with you.

I know this is a hard time for you. Getting out of a cloudy relationship with a heart half leashed to somewhere and somebody that have been a big part of your growing up process and forming your identity. But that was just a jumping platform for you. You have to set yourself free. It wasn't meant to be.

We all go through this thing called identity crisis and it has no designated age or number. Some go through it when they are 16 some ignore it till they are 30+ and some don't even notice it. Some go through an additional crisis on top of that. The intellectual identity crisis. Having doubts about whether to persuade a Bohemian life and go through all the pain of being poor and miserable; feed the brain with a hungry stomach and watch all your friends have the comfortable and secure life with their weekend barbecue gatherings and the shining houses and cars and let them give you a pitiful look in the street etc.

At the end of the day none of it really matters, because this time will pass and will leave some mark on our heart and mind. It's all part of the growing process. But I am begging you to trust me on this that we are for real. What we have here is a real thing and quite rare in a pleasant way. Just hold on to it. I am coming home...

Double Scotch, neat please!

Distance again. When would you set me free, Distance? When would you end? Where are you leading me? I'm constantly walking you off with a painful knowledge that you won't end ever, if you ever, it'll be perhaps too late. She won't be the same. She won't grow old with me. She will join you, Distance, she will be distant.

Is this a pattern in my life? To seek out for love somewhere else? Am I longing not to belong to where I am? Or is this all a series of coincidents? Life is too short and I'm already half way through.

Huh! All the others are watching you honey. They are clapping and welcoming you to the BRBDS! Broken up Before Dating Society.

In Town

Too many Prides* in one town
All driven madly
All rough looking yet fragile
This one is too proud
Be the big man and let him go first
Let go of this Pride
Let go




*A model of Kia assembled and manufactured in Iran

Divine Intervention – Elia Suleiman - 2002


Anatomy of a film





The Theatre of the Absurd, or Theater of the Absurd (French: "Le Théâtre de l'Absurde") is a designation for particular plays written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The 'Theatre of the Absurd' is thought to have its origins in Dadaism, nonsense poetry and avant-garde art of the 1910s – 1920s. Despite its critics, this genre of theatre achieved popularity when World War II highlighted the essential precariousness of human life. The 'Theatre of the Absurd' is primarily existentialist. It is also often known as theatre indented to shock the audience. Most exemplary is Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Divine Intervention is an avant-garde dark comedy "Cinema of Absurd" so to speak that shocks the audience by its brutal sarcasm on Palestine-Israel conflict.



At first film seems like a collection of unrelated slices and episodes of life in Nazareth, but slowly these small episodes begin to interconnect to one another and create a wholesome in an avant-garde and abstract way.
The Arabic title of film which is Yadon Ilaheyya bears more profound meaning than its English title Devine intervention and ties very well with the symbolism of Jerusalem (Beito' Moghaddas: Sacred Home) which is the birth place of Christianity. The post colonial intervention of Americans and British, Christians in general through last seven decades in the name of god and religion has always been an issue in this conflict for Palestinians.

Elia Suleiman's sharp knife-like satire parodies Hollywood/East Asian box office cinema by transforming the woman who represents the mother land to a Ninja. She defeats the heavily armed Israeli soldiers who are performing the fight with choreographed dances and moves which represent the fact that the Israeli side has rehearsed this war and the whole thing is like choreographed/directed show. The red balloon with Arafat's portrait on it is another metaphor well utilized. The classic film, The Red Balloon (Le Balloon rouge - 1956) represents cinema and serves as Palestinian voice which can pass through any check points and go beyond the barricades and borders to be heard and cinema is a perfect medium to do so. Film avoids explicit political messages instead leveraging some repetitive bizarre habits of people in film to create situations that are heavily armed with political objections and protest against the tragedies Palestinians have been going through. Habits so bizarre such as the man collecting empty bottles and sorting them out on the roof to use them a defensive weapon when the Israeli soldiers come to his house, or the man who dumps his bag of trash into the neighbor's back yard and the neighbor dumps them back at his yard in respond, or the man who's waiting in a bus stop knowing the bus will never come or the woman gathering the garbage in the back yard and burning them etc.

In the opening scene we see Santa Claus is being stabbed in Nazareth, the birth place of Jesus. Santa Claus instead of facing the kids and handing them the presents, runs from the kids and leaves a trace of presents dropping from his bag unwillingly as if Santa Claus who represents innocence is frightened and has to run away from the youngsters.


Suleiman’s appearance in the film as the film maker character E.S. or perhaps himself with a script and two walls full of post-it notes representing pieces of an unsolved puzzle is an emphasis on the fact that the artist has lived the story and is not fabricating it. The form chosen for the film seems quite unrealistic and abstract from reality but using the pieces of day to day habits of ordinary people and Suleiman’s appearance as himself serves at its best to give the audience a sense of realness of the story. Perhaps the two walls represent the two sides of Israeli Palestinian conflict and E.S. as an artist in between is avoiding to take any sides but to piece the how puzzle together and be a voice to tell us the story. The stalled script symbolizes the conflict between the Israeli and Palestine that is going nowhere or no solution has been good enough to resolve this long going war. One of the characters in the film is E.S.’s father who sits in his kitchen, drinks coffee and smokes while checking his mail. He doesn’t open most of the mail and just piles them on the side. Mail represents the communication tool from the outer world; however this communication turns out to be nothing but a pile of junk mails. The man in the balcony who’s barbequing is a representative of this outer world whom in his comfortable world is not even slightly bothered or concerned. When the neighbor brings up the issue of his car blocking the garage door, he asks irrelevant questions such as the brand or the model of the car. In another scene, on the right side of the frame three men keep beating up a person who is out of the frame while in the left side of the frame some men are just watching the event without any reaction. In visual language of camera there is subtle convention of left side of the frame represents the west and the right side of the frame represents the east. This is derived from the fact that nearly all maps have north at top, thus west is left and east is right. This perhaps is another indication for who western world is just simply watching this conflict in silence without any reaction.

On the post-it notes there is a message which appears in several scenes and it says “I AM CRAZY BECAUSE I LOVE YOU.” The message is aimed at the woman who appears to be E.S.’s love and also as mentioned above is a symbol of the mother land. Suleiman and many other Palestinians who love their mother land can have a comfortable life in other parts of world, yet they continue this painful love affair and Suleiman is questioning this craziness in a poetic way.



In the hospital scene, three ill men resting on the beds, the heart monitor devices produce steady beep one by one which should indicate the connected patient is deceased but each one of them get up afterwards and walk to the balcony to light up cigarettes which indicates their die-hardness. In the same scene everybody in the hospital is smoking which perhaps is a criticism on Palestinians’ approach on all the self-destructive paths they’ve taken to fight this war such as suicide bombing approach.

Not a poem for sure


My fellow country-men,

I might sound absurd
When I wonder where my home is

I might sound sick
When I ask myself: Has ever mum enjoyed her womanhood?

I might seem crazy
When I dream of floating above my body

I might sound infidel to fate
When I Only think about earth and nothing above it

Grapes are drying on the branch
While I'm thinking about wine
I go crazy
Every time she knocks on my door
And shows up in a dream

But I feel sane
When I say poetry can save the world.

The existence of a specie; from flesh to text

Behind the red traffic light, I was looking at the crossing traffic light, the green one. I was anxious to get to wherever I was supposed to. I'd been behind this traffic light hundreds of times, so I could anticipate when it was going to change to yellow and eventually to red, a red that could change my red to a green; a green to go:

- Five come on, four; yellow is hot but I know you can do better, three, almost there; two give it to me baby, one give me the bloody red, 'cause it's time to go.

I pressed the gas pedal. I was looking straight, because I was going straight. The mechanical order of a lawful society ensures that when I get a green light I just have to look straight because it's my way not anyone else's. But for some unknown reason, I got this urge of looking to my left. There it was: a biker coming like a bullet towards me, right towards my face with that perfectly round shaped helmet and the leather suite and the boots with flames of fire painted on them. It was coming to shine on me as if light is coming in slow motions. I could hear the lion like roaring sound rushing to my ears. I had less than no time to think and to decide how to react, physically and emotionally. This was it. This was a moment of truth. I had no other options but to witness that perfect occurrence of the hit, the contact of the closest, fastest and hardest of its kind: The Lethal Collision.

The round casket and the head inside, the leather suite and the body in it and the bike hit the side of my car, turned the glass into beautiful small pieces of sharp edged crystals, then touched my head and splashed it into the air like a watermelon. That was when I stopped being me. I couldn't see or hear or feel anymore. I just had a very short moment of sensing that ending; sensing the finale, the end of a life. That was it. I died. It is the truth. Believe me, I died. You might ask then who is narrating this. I am. I am narrating it, except that this I is in a different form. It is not the usual tall skinny bald man figure that you used to recognize, not anymore, this I is in form of a text, a narration, a voice in your head or an imagination. The I doesn't exist, it can't be touched, it can't be described by some geographical X, Y and Z co-ordinations. This I exists and it can narrate this whole incident or accident and its precedent. It can. It does. It just did and you are reading it, the narration. I am nothing but a narration.

The dream of you

There is you and then there is the dream of you. Which one can I reach at any given moment? Just the dream I guess, and it lives here, day and night. Once in a while I feed it subconsciously, I take it for a walk; I open a window to it for fresh air.

In the dream you are so vivid, so real that it rushes blood and adrenaline to my head, I get so happy, excited and very high. One night I saw you in my dream. In the dream you walked into my bedroom, I was facing the wall not the door. You lifted the edge of the comforter and crawled under it. Your skin touched my skin. It woke me up, it gave me goose bumps and scared me, I didn’t want to turn back for fear of not finding you there. I paused for few seconds, I called your name out loud and when I heard my own voice, I came back to reality, the reality of your absence. I couldn’t get the realness of our skin touching out of my mind for few days. How could it be only a dream? It couldn’t be, it shouldn’t be; and had I refused to wake up it wouldn’t be. It was so real, I felt it with all my skin cells. Don’t the skin cells send a signal to the brain when skin touchs something? I’m sure my brain received the signal. I needed a cigarette. The intensity of that moment had to be replaced with some artificiality to calm me down.

How grateful I am to the inventor of life who provided the dream phenomenon, otherwise the certainty of not being able to see you again would have been a good reason not to go on. How can one go on knowing there is someone out there that might make them happy, and yet is going to be absent forever?

Reach me if you can


I saw only a glimpse of it on TV this morning, I couldn't catch the title of the newspaper. On the front page of the paper there was this amazing symbolic sad picture of Condoleezza Rice and Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora, standing at two opposite sides of a conference table, stretching so hard to shake hands as if there is a huge distance between them.

It’s a dirty life

The homeless man is walking around the smoking corner of a downtown tall building, full of smokers. Nobody cares what he’s doing, or they pretend to. He bends over, collects all the bottoms of cigarettes. I see him doing the same thing almost everyday. The first time I saw that I felt bad, because when I step on my cigarette to put it out, it's like I’m stepping on someone’s mouth. I wonder if I should quit, stepping or smoking either one.

The door and the walls

Last night I started a course in university to upgrade myself for next upcoming promotion. It turns out this course is in the same building as the other certificate course I took five years ago. Back then my marriage had already fell apart and my ex and I had decided to split. It was a difficult time for me. I was taking an expensive, difficult and very intense course – five weeks long course - while I was dealing with my personal life – oh wait! It’s not over yet – I received a phone call from one of my colleagues, most of us have been given a 6 months notice for a mass layoff. It was rough and harsh. Everything! I would wake up every morning with this heart squeezing, soul crushing pain, I would just survive ‘till the end of the day, I’d get out of the campus building to get drunk and forget the pain, but I wasn’t forgetting a bit of it, I would just cry inside and go to bed with a more fucked up mind and carry on the same routine next morning. At the end, I failed the course, went back to work and saw my termination notice. I went insane and did crazy stuff which is another story and irrelevant. Last night when I walked through the same door and hallway, I was so depressed, the whole building refreshed the bad memories. I paused there for a second, tried to convince myself to go home and forget about course. I ended up going to the class.

Places, buildings, smells and many other objects; if we have a bad memory associated with them, they’ll haunt us forever. It seems we have two sets of memories, one in our brains one in our hearts. The one in my heart is always black and white. Either good memory or bad memory. Nothing in between.

In poker, when two beautiful monstrous hands go head to head 'till the very last community card; the river, eventually if one loses to the other in a very good combination with community cards, like one hand makes a full house and the other makes a four of a kind, it's called bad beat. Like pair of aces lose to pair of tens. There are times and situations in life that I call them bad beat too. The other day, a friend of mine was telling me a story of a young brilliant kid, a classmate of his, had barely stepped into seventeenth year of his life at the time, got overdosed with drugs and died right in front of his eyes. That's a bad beat. I believe life is an accident and most of the time it is a good accident. Indefinite factors have to coincide to give birth to a human being. When a man is born no one asks why, why did this happen. But when a life ends almost everyone takes a moment to think could this be prevented, even if the diseased is 94 years old.

Self off the shelf

Sleep deficit, confusion, raw emotions, pleasant surprises, unbearable occasional selfishness of the sexual partner and her unpleasant passiveness in many aspects and yet her craving for attention, and all don't leave any space for creativity and being with self. I've been away from myself and my thoughts and still feel lonely. Whatever it is, it's quite indefinable, not that I am trying to define a relationship, because this bizarre interaction between her and I (I can't even use "us" to describe this party of two) can not even be considered as any kind of relationships. I need to reset my mind. I wish she wasn't here anymore because she consumes me but she's not with me.

Exile

Abbas Milani an Iranian writer and an expert in history of Iran, in Lost wisdom: Rethinking modernity in Iran --a collection of essays, says Exile is when you live in one land and dream in another. When I was living back home in Iran, I had this sense of not belonging to that land for many reasons. I was dreaming in an imaginary land, and according to Milani's beautiful definition of exile, I was in exile when I was living in my mother land. I was constantly seeing myself living somewhere else and since my late teen age years I began considering my life in Iran as a temporary state of being and mind. Over every plan of my life there was this shadow of leaving the country, but never knew where to. Years passed by and I lived life the way it dictated me, I began settling down without losing the dream of the unknown land. Then I migrated to Canada. For first couple of years I was preoccupied with adjusting to the new life style. I was exploring and exploring. I had no time to dream. Then the reality of north-American life style started to bite. The financial obligations, the tight grasp of financial institutes and giant corporations on people's personal lives, the fear of instability in job market, barrier of language and many other things. You dream when you lack something or when you mind the reality. So I started to dream again but in a different way. I felt being home in Canada; yet not feeling quite accepted and welcomed by her. Now after seven years I've noticed that the dream has changed in a bizarre way. It doesn't occur in any land, it's free of any geographic sense. Even in my nightly dreams, most of the time, I can't identify the places of my dreams or nightmares. They are mostly formed by personages and the interaction between them. It feels like I am not in exile anymore, not because I have settled down in Canada, but because I've lost my utopia or I have lost the land of my dreams.

Fear of a season

To Sping and her strong spirit


She is afraid, but who is not? Life can be scary and unpredictable, yet so beautiful and full of wonderful surprises. She is afraid of loss. But how can you be afraid of loss before even reaching out for a grasp?

Spring is here or will she? I am happy and yet afraid, afraid of getting hurt and hurting. Being lonely is an easy path to choose. You don't need to worry about a thing; it's just dark, narrow, quiet and cold; that's all it is. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Do I want to stay there? Does anyone?

I can feel the breeze. Winter is long gone and Spring is already here. I swear I can feel it.

Historic burdens

I rented Egoyan's Ararat last week and watched it yesterday. I wish Egoyan had made that film differently. I love Egoyan's works, especially The Calendar. In my opinion, The Calendar is Egoyan’s best work. He is a great writer and a great artist. But with Ararat, he stepped on a ground full of politics and historic arguments which is the biggest distraction for an artist from their art. And by saying that I don't mean, artists should not care abut politics. I believe the most political artists of past and present time are those who reflect the politically incorrectness of human being in general in their art regardless of artist’s personal bonding, in which this case is nationalism. I am neither a Turk nor an Armenian and I am not writing this entry to deny the 1915 Armenian genocide by Turks. I look at it as another act of barbarism against human beings. It moves me as much as the Rwanda genocide moves me or the Bosnia ethnic cleansing does.
However, since Mr. Egoyan is a very powerful story teller, he has implanted few beautiful twists into the story which made me curious to get to the ending point. The story is told in bits and pieces, with a wonderfully designed structure of events, characters and places. But yet, at the end I found the film very sentimental. Egoyan, in his official website says At the press conference for The Sweet Hereafter at Cannes in 1997, a journalist asked me if the film couldn't be seen as a metaphor for the Armenian Genocide. It was one of the few times in my life when I found myself quite speechless. The journalist went on to suggest that many of my films had dealt with themes of denial and its consequences, and was interested as to why I hadn't dealt with the subject more directly. What Egoyan has done in his previous films is that he has shown the consequences of that genocide in years after, in lives of Armenians today and I believe that is as political as an artist can get, otherwise he/she will get drawn in sentimentalism.

When I was watching the bonus material in DVD, I found all the deleted scenes very interesting, with the exception of one; the scene the homosexual father is reading his son his favorite book, yet I couldn't understand why he eliminated those scenes. Perhaps, he was concerned those scenes could distract the audience from the central story.

Tie boys, specially the bowed ones

Sometimes when I take a smoke break, I go with couple of my colleagues to the back alley of the office building. One day two men were walking through the alley wearing expensive suites. One of the colleagues said it would be funny if we all dress up one day and come to work with suites and ties. I said sure, I'll wear a suit with a bow tie tomorrow. I always wanted to experiment it one day. Next day I did it and when I walked into the office with a black suite and a silk red bow tie everyone was surprised. It seems it's a big deal for most men seeing a bow tie wrapped around another man's neck, never mind about wearing it. A couple of weekends later Ian Brown wrote an article about bow ties in The globe and mail and a couple of days after that I saw him on a TV show wearing an elegant bow tie, talking about books. I've seen different reactions to bow ties. Like when Jon Stewart was on Cross Fire he made fun of Tucker Carlson for wearing bow tie at his mid 30s. Or last night on Who wants to be a millionaire one of the contestants was a doctor wearing a bow tie. Meredith Vieira, the host of the show asked him about the bow tie and then she said it suites you doctor. The doctor said ok -- in a situation like that it think "Ok" is the best answer, it means neither I am taking it as a compliment, nor as an insult. --

Ian Brown writes: More dangerously, a bow tie tells you where to look -- at his face. Rather than emasculate a man, a bow tie desexualizes and sometimes re-sexualizes him by diverting our attention upward to his head, from his groin to his gourd. What's above my neck, the bow tie wearer says, is even more interesting than what's below it.

But why did I want to try it at least once? I am not sure. Ian articulated it very well: For me, it's still an experiment, a test of my own fortitude. I wear a bow tie to see if I can stand the heat.

I was able to take the heat in a small environment like my office full of young and single men in their late 20s who don't take anything seriously.

Allow me!

Time is passing, I don't like my job, I hate my boss, the company I work for is getting richer and richer by sucking bloods and it's being run by some assholes who openly admit they are assholes. I just baby-stepped into my 35th and I feel so unaccomplished. And please don't try to imagine a faceless loser in your mind when you read "I feel so unaccomplished". For we should all know accomplishment is quite a relative concept.

I used to blame myself for not being accomplished, I used to blame myself for being lazy and not concentrating on one thing and never noticed that how much this the urban life style is eating us up. It's like an endless hunger which will never get satisfied of eating. You have to keep the job in order to pay the mortgage and pay the endless bills. Then I notice that not only I have to blame myself for being lazy, I also have to blame myself for giving in to the awful urban life obligations, mortgage, loans, credit card balances and some unmentionables. I take the blame.

Call me traitor

I am an immigrant, like many others here in Canada. Immigrants are involved with many issues and emotions in their first 3 to 5 years of new life -- I guess I am talking about average --. As an immigrant, first thing in your mind would be the barrier of language and consiquently the slowness of job finding process. If you are lucky you'll find a job within few months if not you'll hook yourself up to a college program or a course or if you are brave and not too old, you'll commit yourself to a degree or so. After a while the barrier of language becomes shorter and shorter by daily practice of dealing with native speaking people, after couple of years that barrier will look like a road bump, short enough to ignore, thick enough to slow you down when you are having an intelligent conversation. And if you are obsessed with learning and exploring, you'd try to make friends with people who were born and raised in the host land country. You'll face two different types of people, interesting and sophisticated exotic-land lovers kind of people and none-interested-in-forigners kind of people. The first group are those who are like yourself, obsessed with exploring and learning, the second group who get stuck in their own politeness, so at first they try to figure out what the hell you are trying to say, a couple of frowns or questioned faces here and there and then once you make the first pause, they are out of the conversation like a cartoon character with a circular tail of dust at their buttom while they are running away. They are the reason you become concerned with your accent. After a while accent becomes your new obsession.

And there are immigrants who are so protective about their homeland culture; they live under this constant shadow of “one day I'll go back home with my family, because I don't belong here”. They don't deal with native speaking people unless it's necessary; they find their own people, they make a community of their own, they even get special satellite dishes to watch mother-tongue speaking TV or radio channels. Practically they live same life and same culture in a different geographical position.

I guess I belong to the first group, yet in touch with second group of immigrants and I see the culture shocks the second group goes through. I see how difficult it is to live as an immigrant in a different value system and not contradict your own biased values. I've seen people who suffer a lot for not sacrificing their original values, I wonder what is the point of immigrating then? I came to this land to redefine some principal values which were defined for me, values that didn't make sense to me at all. I was having culture shock of my own when I lived where I was born and it’s hard for me to call it home. To me home means something else. I don't know what but not the place of birth. Perhaps home is where you want to settle in not where you left behind.

Knock knock! Who is there?

Winter is coming. Things haven't been very well lately. Oh well! Life is a roller coaster, isn't it? I had the most amazing winter last year and it gave me sweetest memories of my life. Despite the fact that last winter became a memory or at its best a nostalgia, despite the fact that I am watching a spider walking upon my wall, life is going on. No matter how hard, it seems we manage to carry on with it. Sometimes hope is just a rope for us to hang in there until a better day comes along. Every one has their moments, the very moment that you hear a knock on your door. "Who is there?". You ask. "It's me!" Snow-white says. "Open up! I am home."

I love NY

I was in New York City for couple of days. It was good. I love the spirit of that town. Kinda harsh and not welcoming yet very appealing by its sophistication. I had a very long walk on my third day in there. I started walking from 42nd st. up to south side of Central Park and then walked in the park in random directions for 2 hours and then found myself out of the park in 73rd st. Then I took Madison Ave., Park Ave., Seven Ave., Fifth Ave. and Broadway on and off all the way to lower Manhattan, wondered around Wall st. area and then got really tired. In between I had lunch in a Chinese buffet and in there I started up my laptop hoping to get a wireless connection. I got tones of different signals just like that. All of a sudden this idea clicked in my mind that, if some crazy hot-shot hacker could sit down in a public place like that restaurant and decode all the signals flying around, what stories could come out of it. Lots of financial transactions, emails, file transfers, photos, Instant Messages, string of words going to different weblogs and thousands of more unimaginable other cybermatic entities. It would be like a galaxy of information highway with millions of cars carrying objects and subjects back and forth.

This can be an inspiration for a Hollywood screenplay. And I wish I had a free mind to sit down and write something based on this idea and sell it to a Hollywood producer and make money out of it and travel more often to the Big Apple.

I am still hung up on that galaxy of information and the stories flowing in it. I love stories, especially if they are about New York City or happenning in New York City.

Kids must have been watching the Casino.

I was watching Scorses's Casino on Bravo (we are talking about the better Bravo, the Canadian Bravo, not the American one). Casino is rated. Do you know what I found so bizarre about Bravo last night? They were broadcasting kids' toy commercials. How sick is that? What were people in Bravo thinking? That there were kids out there to be targeted by Fisher Price commercials. Kids who were watching Joe Pesci popping out an Irish guy's eye, or swearing his guts off when he was cracking somebody's head?

Give me a line! I want to get on it.

Since internet and World[Wild]Web became a daily obsession for the young hungry portion of Iranian population, dating with opposite sex became easier than ever in that country unlike my time in 80s and early 90s. Once upon a time in those dark years of Hush! Don’t say I love you or I kill you!, I was walking my girl friend -- who became my wife later on and became my ex-wife later than later on -- to her uncle's apartment around 10:00 pm. We were passing through a park, holding hands and whispering L-word in one another's ear, all of a freaking-terrifying-shocking sudden two 15 year old boys with the unofficial militia uniforms of Basiji forces ran towards us from two different directions and got really close to us and pointed their hand guns at us. We both were totally shocked and terrified. I got rid of them with an old stupid cliché trick which was popular back then and nothing serious happened but that night we had fear branded on our foreheads and on our souls. Now it's different. Same regime, same rules, but different life style. Dating is easy nowadays. Boys and girls meet and chat first in a public/private cyber room, some of them even do their foreplay in the room or their PM and then set up a date in one of the coffee shops in town -- and when I say town I don't mean just Tehran, this is happening in most major cities now. I haven't been in Iran since year 2000 but I've tried to keep myself up to date with news, life style and pop culture, what is hot and what is not, even today’s slang -- which by the way is changing so fast these days, it's hard to catch up. In last couple of weeks I've been in different Iranian chat rooms, I've noticed that it's getting harder and harder to make a simple adult conversation in those rooms. Guys don't want to waste their time chatting with a guy, girls; not all but many of them, don't want to waste da time on regular chat, they want cyber sex or an actual date in couple of hours if you happen living in same town, and some are looking for a man who lives in abroad and wants to get married to an Iranian girl. The other day a friend of mine was telling me that he was chatting with a 23 years old sophisticated prostitute on internet. She was a professional, she claimed having a lot of rich customers and she met some of them in internet. This generation is utilizing a medium to express, to live and to share. The other night I logged into a chat room and sat there and watched. They were talking about cyber sex, rock music and marijuana. It felt like 60s. Sex, drug and Rock'n Roll.

patterns and patterns again

We've heard and read zillion times about patterns in relationships, patterns in break ups, patterns in finding the right ones and the wrong ones, yet most of us deny having our own patterns, while our lives flow into these patterns unconsciously and form the exact same shapes over and over. Three years ago, in my last break up I was way down for 3 months, all of a sudden I got sick of myself and turned into exercising and paying attention to my body. This time, I got sick of being down for 4 days (which is a big improvement comparing to 3 months; can we say I am growing up?) and started heavy exercise and home projects.

The thing I hate about break ups is that, to avoid remembering the "ex" -- this is the first time that I call her "ex", it doesn't sound good, it feels so cold and sad -- I boycott whatever reminds me of her, like songs, places etc. As if I fast her and her memories, because I know if I don't, eventually I will break down and will think about getting back together for wrong reasons; while most of those songs and places and things are my all time favorites, I love them. I have to fast 'till I get over her. Break ups suck.

Slices of nothing

Writing is a relief and thank the Edison of weblog who made writing so accessible to ordinary hands. I am saying writing is a relief for me, because in times like this, when there is no one around to hear you yak without analyzing your words or be wise with you when unnecessary; or when your girl friend is not around or her mom is in town and you can't whisper things to her ears, then you asylum to writing, writing about everything and nothing, writing about slices of life, your life, my life or life of a pedestrian who is just a pleasant stranger to you and means nothing to you but impulsive eye contact which lasts only a blink and half. Here is a slice of my life today, boring may be, but true:

Came back from work; had heart burn, had it since early afternoon; craved for a glass of milk and dates; noticed one missed call from F.; called her, flirted with her like I flirt with my girl friend -- 'cuz F. is my girl friend; sort of complained and nagged about how she's neglected me since her mom came to town -- her town not mine/we live in different time zones; exchanged a couple of "tele-phonny" kisses, said I love you, heard I love you back, hung up; laid back on the coach in front of Friends; released couple of real laughters because of Joey; flipped the channels; fell in sleep during flipping; woke up one hour later starving; warmed up left overs; ate like a perfect modern human being in front of the TV; went to the back yard; chatted a little bit with the lazy guy in the basement and returned him 50 bucks; told him count it twice before handing over your rent; came back inside; watched Seinfeld, Friends, Sex and the city; Got sick of myself and TV; grabbed the laptop; logged into Blogger as SlicesOfLife; paused while looking at the ceiling; started writing like this: "Writing is a relief..."

Get high!

It's been so long since my previous post. I am a total mess, I know that, you don't have to remind me that.

I was reading this post in a weblog which is about - I'm just paraphrasing here- "having crush on someone and letting it go like a passive person, because you were waiting for the chrushee to step forward and ask you out, and since that never happened, the crush kinda expired and now after six months it's too late" etc etc. Like many of you, I beleive a relationship -- which in its most exterem and most intimate form transforms to love; is something you build, something you erect, brick by brick. The more you build up, the more it takes you high, and in its climax, it gets you so high, higher than anything. And of course there is always this risk of this high rise not working some day and it may collaspe and take you down, so down, even downer than ground. But it's the risk we take. After all, isn't the whole life experience a big risk?
I somehow passed my message to the writer of that post that, it's never late for any relationships of any kind, it's just a choice that we make.

Does love work in a binary logic?

If it's only true or false, or if it takes only a yes or no, it's a binary logic. Like job status, you are either employed or not. Now, does that logic work for love? Can you say you are either in love or not? Can you say your love has drifted apart or not? Are there absolute sings about these things or not? Even in surest times, you tell yourself or your lover, hey it's not working, yet in the darkest and most lost corner of your mind you'd question yourself: "Did I do all that I should, that I could have done?" And that question stays there for ever, even after you give it a second or N-th chance, specially for people like myself who suffer from lack of self confidence or per say lack of decisiveness. It may sound doom, but it's like gambling, when you lose all the money, you walk out, yet keep repeating to yourself, what if I'd played one more hand, I might have hit the jackpot or the big prize.

Is it O.V.E.R.?

I've been missing most of the episodes of final season of Sex and the City, why? Well, good question, but let's leave that for another post.
Last Friday night I was watching the very episode that Carry got invited to live in Paris by her b/f -- for those of you who may say hey buddy you are way behind the schedule; up here in Canada, Sex & the City is aired a season behind the American broadcasting sked. -- This episode was so bizarre or it seemed bizarre to me. Characters kept saying "New York is O.V.E.R.", even Carry's narrative voice indicated this sad news; Carry BradShaw, a City paper columnist, a girl from the Big Apple, an absolute New Yorker? It sounded kinda sad; ain't it sad?

But when I think through it and recall the days of my last trip to New York last year, the City was totally different from my previous trips to NYC. The tension in Manhattan on new year's eve and the whole tight security thing in the island; man! Everybody was there to celebrate the new year but they were hiding the fear and the fever under the brim of their hats. What happened to the best city in the world? Is New York over because of aftermaths of 9/11 or it is over because this whole thing was only a party and the party is now over?

Someone was telling me about how his father has cheated on his mother at the age of 63, that he's been having affair with an older woman. He was saying that whenever I saw these things in movies or on TV never got a serious understaning of the situation, but now that I am in it, it feels so bad, you feel that you hate your father with all your guts. He wasn't able to understand how could someone at that age sacrifice his familly and fourty years old marriage for an older woman. And I came up with a why not.

What is age anyway? Isn't it just a number, not a sense. I am 34 and I feel so fresh, and even younger than my second half of twenties, and it's all because of situations and the things I've given or received in last 12 months as oppose to what I've of lost in last 8 or 9 years.

Sometimes at the very first moment I wake up in the morning, I feel, I live in absolute abstraction, I don't have any sense of place or time, that's why I can't really say how it feels when you are 34. For me it feels way better than my 24.

Sinfully committed, Saintly embarrassed

I was sitting behind the wheel on a Friday evening after an exhausting and disappointing week; waiting for a green light to begin my weekend, instead, I was stuck behind one of those giant Envoy SUVs which block your whole view of the world. It was already getting on my nerve. In times like this I play my silly childish game, making words with random letters and digits of the surrounding car plates, an attempt to give some meaning to them or trying to guess personality of car owner. Accidentally, this view blocker Envoy, didn't leave any space for my imagination, since the owner was probably one of those relatively newly wealthy people who buy a customized plate number to send their own message to people who get stuck behind them. The Envoy owner had this message carved on his plate: "Saintly". I had nothing to say or think but rising my eyebrows. But then something from inside the car grabbed my attention like a magnet. The passengers sitting in the Saintly owned vehicle were watching a movie on the DVD player of the car. I narrowed my eyes, focused my vision; cool! They were watching hard core porn movie. I was amazed by the grade of their comfort and choice, I became curious about the passengers of the car, but it was quite dark inside there, I just recognized three female figures. But then said to myself, hey who cares about them, I should enjoy the free porn, so I began watching the movie itself, it was then that they noticed an outsider was stealing their "privacy", they shutdown the screen immidiately. I was so annoyed by this selfishness, so got around them and drove side by side. It seemed to me they were so embarrassed by the whole incident, because they were hiding their faces.

Locked in/Locked out

"She is considering moving to another town, a place far away from here," a mutual friend said. I felt some sort of weakness in my legs, for few seconds my legs began shaking but I managed to hide my anxiety. At the time I liked Lilac a lot, but no one knew about it, not even that mutual friend. Despite that weakness and those shaking legs, I didn't realize what world I was stepping into. I had no understanding of long distance relationships, not in the slightest, besides, emotionally she was standing in a distant spot from me because she had no interest in me and so, I hid my feelings completely. But, as unimaginable things happen all the time, we became involved, more than I expected; we didn't get the chance to imagine things, every thing happened so fast: we were inseparable, period. And it was already too late to undo things, she had no choice but to leave the town, I had no choice but to stay, we couldn't NOT love each other.
After she left, I played it very strong, didn't show any irrational emotions, I even quit smoking the day she left to show my surrounding world that I have everything under control, that I am going to hang in there for as long as it takes, that I have a hold on reality. But when for the first time I felt that heart squeezing agony of missing her, the feeling that eats you from inside and leaves a big hole in your sole, I broke apart into a zillion pieces.
Are long distance relationships possible?
Long distance relationships are like lines, with two ending points, each person stands at one end and they point at each other all the time, as if they are trying to make or claim a path. A long distance relationship is like being locked; one person is locked out, the other is locked in; they are closely in touch, but they literally can't touch each other, something is blocking them off. They both lean their heads on the door, they hear each other so closely and so intimately, but the final touch is not possible, it's not there, it's being missed, just like my Lilac; I miss her. Yeah the truth is: I miss her so.

Wholesome or nothing

"So, are you coming to the party with your better half?" The guy asks me at work, while he is pouring coffee for himself. "Better half"I thought to myself. Are our love partners really our better halves? Do we believe in this urban mythology, that we are species in halves and need to be completed thus we look for our other halves? I don't. I never looked out there for any body to complete me. I like myself the way I am: not complete. I don't want to be complete. If I am complete, I am finished, unbearably tedious, unquestionably boring. I believe that "I" can join a "you" and many other things in this life, like trying to make sense of an "us" at its best. I never sought more than this in any relationship. To me a healthy modern relationship is the one with a little bit of compromising and a lot of independence. A little bit of compromising to sort out the differences, to reach tolerance, and a lot of independence to avoid a master/slave bond.

"I will be coming in a full status (as oppose to two halves, a better one and a regular one) accompanied by a "fine one", who I adore a lot, because she's the greatest one." I said to him while walking to my desk and thinking about the "fine one".

I have a young friend. I exchange emails with her here and there, and it started when she needed to talk to someone not from her generation and not judgmental. A couple of days ago I replied her email like this:

Asking me about my life? Well, nothing's changed really and it aint happening, because I don't want it to, I guess I am afraid, I am afraid of ruining this beauty. There is this beautiful beautiful girl that I have a huge crush on; she knows nothing about it and I want her not to know either, because her soul is free, free of any attachments. And I don't want to change this unbearably pretty image of her and her liberated life. Besides she is leaving this town in a matter of weeks and there is no point in letting something happening. And do you know where she is going to? Montréal! This is not fair. I love that town to death, I love this girl to sickness, and them both will be together soon, yet miles away from me. So who the fuck invented this word: "Fair"

And this is what she surprisingly wrote:

...Dude, I hear you... but let me say one thing about fairness, if life was fair, things would be a lot less interesting. It's that bitter unfairness that makes so many other sweet things so much sweeter some times. Or not... I mean, I kinda like it in a crazy sick way. I think sometimes that it's really not the "thing" I want but the process of getting it is what really interests me. That's kinda sick and twisted but hey, I never claimed it wasn't.
About your beauty who will soon part, look at it this way, that'll only make her more beautiful and make Montréal a better place. That's in a way a good thing. And, one more approach: why won't you go? Just take off and leave, and go to Montréal again (ok at this point I've lost your respect because in an adult world I'm being completely unreasonable and irrational but that's ok... ) What else can I say about it, maybe try to get something going for the time being? But you didn't seem to have a lotta fun with that idea either so how about this? Observe. Just watch her and be happy that she's so beautiful and just admire her...

It's a shame that adults run this world not kids. It's a shame.

Simply complicated

Could you hold me for a moment,
'cause I am falling,
'cause I am cold,
'cause I am scared.


How does it happen? How do we fall in love? Do we jump into it intentionally? What do I know about you other than your pretty pretty face; the smell of your hair, the enchanting smile of yours or your magnetic eyes. I know nothing about you. I don't know what is your favorite color, your favorite food. I don't know what you do when life sucks, I don't know what kind of music you listen when you miss a friend, I don't know what poet you read when you feel empty. I don't even know if you've ever felt empty at all.
So why do I let it happen? Specially the way I am operating it; all in my head without saying a word to you. Is this just a physical attraction? I don't even know what is it. I can't call it love for sure, because that's not how I define love. Your lot in my mind is deserted. There is nothing build up on it yet; not even a brick or stone, no foundations. There is just this visual image which is getting vague day by day. I wonder I just wanted to avoid or fill my solitude, so I sought someone else's corner and where cozier and dreamier than yours. I wish I knew. I wish you were here.

I am back

It's been so long since last time I wrote in here. I missed it here very much but there was not enough motivation to be here; just like anywhere else, I feel like I haven't been anywhere in last three months. Anyway I am back and I am glad for it.

Things have changed, specially in last few days. I am so exhausted, sleepless and preoccupied. It feels kind of num and good in a way but I wish it was different.

A fine episode of Frasier

I was watching a rerun episode of Frasier. In that episode, Frasier becomes frustrated with his love life. Then he hits the road to think through his situation and he ends up arguing in his mind with some of his lovers from past and his first love: his mother. And through these arguments, he notices that he is alone because he is afraid of being alone. He keeps pushing away perfect women because he is afraid of losing them.

This episode brought up some questions in my mind. Are we stuck with thoughts from our past? Why do we keep doing the same mistakes; particularly in our relationships; committing the same patterns? We walk through same hallways and put ourselves in the same misery over and over again. Those of us, who fail in a relationship, force themselves in the same path; force themselves to love someone else. For the rest of us whom failure is a sin and/or pretend to be happy, still force ourselves to stick to one person and keep insisting in loving another human being for the sake of not being alone even if we know that person is right for us? What is this all about: the fear of being and dying alone? In that episode, Frasier's mother uses death as an excuse in her failure. Is death really a good excuse for all the things we can do but we don't or fail to do? Is love something that we choose put ourselves into it just to justify th fear of being alone? Are we so unbearable to ourselves that we need some one else’s company in order to keep a distance between us and our real selves? Is there really someone out there for every one of us to fill all the gaps we feel in our being? Am I over analyzing again? Yes, no? Say something then?

I could see this day was coming,

but not this soon. During G.W. Bush's day and night rants on fictitious subject of Iraqi weapons of mass-destruction and way before the recent war, through some media propaganda (today's most powerful urban mind distracter) particularly American ones and most particularly CNN, I predicted that after Iraq the gang of White House will go after Iran (if they be able to renew their White House lease and stay there for another term) not that the predictions of this kind take a rocket scientist. And now recent demonstrations by students in Tehran in last couple of days ring some bells in my mind, bells that sound bloody and violent.

In 1997 when president Khatami's landslide victory shock everyone the nation, things began to change gradually, professional and independent journalism blossomed, withheld books and cultural materials began to be published and rules began to loosened up a bit on young generation. The more people demanded freedom, the more pressure increased from hard liners on Khatami, and the more Khatami became passive. In 6th Majlis (you read parliament) election, majority of seats were taking by pro Khatami candidates followed by Khatami's second presidential landslide victory which came along as expected, but this time with less enthusiasm from the nation. The political recession had begun. Khatami and his guys in Majlis were not able to fulfill nation's demands. After 6 years, this recession has become a reality and a sort of deadlock until last few days. All of a sudden the political silence in Iran breaks down, right after devastating war in Iraq and American invasion in the neighborhood. Are Iranians terrified of being next victim of same scenario, therefore they want to take action directly before it's too late or this is just an over analyzed thought in my head?

Choices we have

I was watching Matrix, Reloaded. It was quite a movie, definitely a good one in Sci-Fi genre, because it's one of few movies that could drag me to the theatre; I don't like most Sci-Fi movies. There were some lines about choice in the movie said by the architect of the Matrix, the guy with white beard and the look of a wizard on his face (I don't know why but he reminded me Sigmund Freud). I don't remember the exact words, I am just paraphrasing one of them: "The bad thing is that we have the choice." I don't know if it's true or not. I mean I don't know if we do have choice at all. We don't get to choose between life and the quick wrap up death in a tissue when we are in the form of a sperm. We don't get to choose our race, our gender, our nationality, our first language (which is the ground basis for our personality almost for our life time), we don't get to choose our family. We don't get to choose stay innocent like a child, we have to grow up, otherwise we will be called retarded. We don't get to choose our politicians while we are minors, we can't even choose not to be or to be a minor. We don't get to choose not to live even if we live in a hell because life is a must to do, no question on that base on all social norms and even abnorms, and finally we don't get to choose stay alive as long as we want. So do we have choice or not?

Virtual voices

I've been participating in a group project called Virtual narrators. It is a kind of polyphonic ensemble. We all virtual narrators write in Farsi and the goal is to write a novel without a linear direction of a story or any direction or story at all. There is no rule how to write or what to write; something between democracy and anarchy. I am Iranian, born in a country full of dictatorship in its past and present. I live in abroad, but most of the participants of this project live in Iran. They write whatever they desire or whatever they think they should, having the fact that they live under a permanent shadow of fear. Recently, the young weblogger and journalist Sina Motallebi has been arrested and been in custody ever since, just because he was writing his weblog freely and he might have crossed some lines. Lines that you can't find them in law books. These lines are invisible to people. That's why writers, artists and activists never know when they are crossing a line and when they are going to be punished. Despite this uncertainty of law, people, specially young ones take the risk and do what they want. They write weblogs freely, wear what they want, speak out, party, they make love; even though they know all of the above is forbidden or considered as sin. And I salute them.

Should we speak out or not?

I've been in situations that I speak out my mind and once the words are out there, I regret the hell out of my brain. Oh god! Why did I say that? Shit! Damn it! etcetra etcetra. In those moments I think to myself honesty is just too much for people. I am not going to speak out my brain like this again. The world doesn't deserve the truth. blah blah bloody blah. And I tried to be like that, not a truth teller - not that I am a liar or something, I just keep the truth to myself, I guess I am a hider as oppose to a liar - and I thought it's a rule in adulthood world therefore I should feel mature when I hide a truth, but I don't. It's a fake pseudo glibby disgusting maturity which suites just those who want to play life cool; but they are so NOT cool.

And then I've been in very unique situations that I don't speak out and I don't put myself out there and the situation goes on waste. I am talking about those unique moments that happen once in a lifetime and you have your chance to step up and toss the truth to the face of the moment. So, shall we?

Moore guts

It takes a lot Moore guts to criticize your own people using a broad range media such as cinema and it takes even Moore guts to go on to a victorious Oscar stage and instead of "yakking a bunch of names" and "thanking the whole world that made this happened" kinda crap, condemn your president and question the legitimacy of his position and his administration's decision. Even the 400 pounds gorilla like Dennis Miller deserted on that matter after 9/11. The fact is that, Mr. Moore's accomplishment is more than just a speech in Oscar ceremony. I've been following his works since 1999, a little while after I came to Canada. I remember his fabulous documentary Awful Truth then his book Stupid White Men and finally his documentary Bowling for Columbine. His success in that movie is more than just getting his voice heard by average Americans. He and two of the stars in his movie, made the giant chain store K-Mart to stop selling bullets in a its stores as well as the real image that he showed from that old jerk/dinosaur Charlton Heston. I remember the commercials of Heston's phony videos on Christianity, and the way he was acting in those videos as if he was a saint himself. When in a scene of Bowling... Heston turned his back to the camera and walked away from his guest at his own house, one could feel how awful is the bitterness of reality.

Great job, Michael! Keep up on it.

After all this long period of uncertainties in my personal life, I get a bit of peace of mind, but the world is on fire and how one could enjoy this personal moment. The war, S.A.R.S. and the economy. It's like chaos is finding its routine to happen on a regular basis. When was the last time that human beings had peace of mind in this planet, ever, at all? Is chaos and confusion nature of man kind or it's just some of us who are trouble makers?

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda?
Past, Present, Phuture?

I wish I could reach to the pure detachment of time; detachment of places and people from past or present. How can we live each moment as brand new as it happens? It seems almost impossible. When I go back to a place that I've built up towers of memories in there, I miss the moment that I am in, the very present time, the very present moment that is passing me by and is supposed to be joyful like love making, I miss it because I'm replaying the past in my mind. Like I am stuck in a cage of memories. How could I reach the pureness of moment? a sort of wide awake consciousness of NOW. Is time just a theory in our minds or it actually exists? If it's just a theory why can't we over-write a piece of present on the past? And if it exists why can't I feel the absolute joy of present time? I wish I could tear apart the past and live life moment by moment.
Never mind about the future. That WILL never exist.

Is history a bastard or what?

It's been said recently that Iran's western borders will be the biggest refuge camp for Iraqis in case of any US military action against Iraq. It hasn't been a long time for all of us to forget the war between two neighbors, Iran and Iraq in 1980s. How weird is that a once enemy-land could turn to a safety zone? Is it history that lies to us or the reality while it's happening? How many more reasons do we need to convince ourselves about ugliness of the fabrication of war? It's gonna be torn off sooner or later but to what price? And the cost does not just overweight on shoulders of one or two nations. The rallies of Saturday showed that it is a global concern. The cost is too expensive for all of us. The temperature was -25 on Saturday in Toronto downtown, I was there and so were hundreds of different races. I was crying out loud with thousands of Iraqis hand in hand here in Toronto rally. Not that I have forgotten those days of panic back in 1980s, when Saddam's missiles were flying over my head and powdered down a 4 storey building full of 8 to 10 years old kid guests attending a birthday party in the centre of my town. I remember every single moment of then so vivid. I have just lost my faith to the truth. There is no such a thing. Truth is just a philosophical difference, nothing else.

Let us have a louder voice in next rally.

First Sex and the Second Cup

In a cold cold day of January in Toronto, I walked into one of those fancy looking branches of The Second Cup, the chain coffee shop. I was looking for a second shift job; thank Air Canada's Mr. Milton who ruined canadian airline industry and put thousands of skilled workers out of job. I asked for the manager immediately. She was so busy with running this money making machine and serving coffee. I asked if they have any opennings, she asked for a resume. "I don't have any coffee shop experience" I responded. "But I still need to see your resume." she said.
Next day I went there with a useless IT resume in hand, after almost half an hour the manager said I am busy, just leave the resume and we will contact you. I did that. Long story short, after two weeks going back and forth she called and said wants to see me. Then handed me a video and wanted me to watch it and come back next day for two hours work. I watched the video very carefully and took some notes, reviewed the notes several times and went there next day. By the way, I forgot to mention, all the other workers in that store were females except one guy who was from the same country as the manager was originally. Next day I went there and began the job. Then at the end of the shift she said that I have to work 20 hours voluntarily so that she could decide whether I am a "suitable person" for this job or not. Yes! You read it right: twenty freaking hours of free labor for a simple job of selling a crappy cup of coffee or wiping the tables. And you guessed it right, I needed the job so I agreed to commit to this shameful slavery. "You need to correct one thing." she added at the end. "Correct what?" I said. "You have to be louder when you are serving the customer". She said.
Next day, she wasn't there. I began my job with enthusiasm. My co-workers told me to relax, it's just a simple work and bluh bluh bluh. Then suddenly, the manager appeared as a customer and asked for a muffin and she grabbed her son and sat right in front of the counter to observe from a customer’s perspective I suppose. Next day I had to start at 12:00. I grabbed the key of the changing room to hang my jacket. The manager came close to me. "What time were you supposed to start your job?" She asked with a grumpy face. "12:00" I said and looked at the big Second Cup clock on the wall. It was 12:04. I didn't have my watch with me to compare my time and see if I was late or it was just a asynchronous time difference. "You are always late. I have to send you home." She said while she was wiping the counter. I was surprised. Because I never was late before, besides this was my third working day and she wasn't even there on the previous day. "But…" I couldn't finish my sentence. She said the same thing and left pretending busy.

On my way home I tried to flash back and see what I did was wrong. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Here is a thought. I am an ordinary boring looking guy and not attractive enough to attrack the shoppers in to the store as opposed to the other Second Sexers behind the counter who can attract the customers to stay for the second cup. It's the only explanation I could come up with. What do you think?

People and places

I wonder if there is a magic in the spirit of places, streets or cities, some grow deep roots in people's soles. What is this magic? Does it come from the solid constructed soil and sand, the metals and the shiny glassy walls? Or it comes from us; human beings and the events that take place there?
I am standing in a corner, in Washington square, NYC; watching the crowd, it moves like a giant wave. I spot Jeremy and Simon among the crowd. Jeremy is a tourist from San Francisco. He was rubbed last night by a group of youngsters, right there. He hates that spot, even Manhattan and the big apple. And Simon is walking there too. He is a New Yorker. He used to love Washington square, because he met Angela in the same spot five years ago. She was his greatest love ever. But they broke up three years later. He was in pain and sorrow for a long time. It took him more than two years to get over her. Since then this monument reminds him Angela and the grief he went through.

But we know that Washington square has been the same for decades, no matter who is passing by or how we feel about it.