Birthday 2020

Well, birthdays arrive even in the middle of pandemics, wars, crises, dark eras. Colorful blossoms are born in Spring in Aleppo or a camp of Taliban, as beautiful as cherry blossoms in a quiet, peaceful village in Japan or Switzerland. Nature is moving forward, & life is that current of a river, passing before the eyes when the head is full of other thoughts and plans, blind to see the flow of the river, the flow of life. 

What do I ponder these days about? I believe that I must think less about myself. Having a more holistic view, thinking about all and me as a member of this system, this universe, as a piece of a big picture. Wish to perceive better the whole picture, the meaning in it, find and play my role satisfactorily.

Tears of Apple Blossom

Tears of Apple blossom 

The night was nearly over

I came inside and closed the windows.

The wind was whirling around a branch of the tree

I was so lonely in this house and my heart so heavy, 

Suddenly felt someone out in the garden is crying by the window. 

But it was morning dew dripping from apple blossom...

By: Houshang Ebtehaj

گریه سیب

شب فرو مي افتاد

به درون آمدم و پنجره ها رابستم

باد با شاخه در آويخته بود 

من در اين خانه تنها تنها

غم عالم به دلم ريخته بود

ناگهان حس کردم

که کسي

آنجا بيرون در باغ

در پس پنجره ام مي گريد

صبحگاهان شبنم

              مي چکيد از گل سيب

 هوشنگ ابتهاج

Life in the time of Corona

These days! Who would have seen these years? Perhaps screenplay writers of apocalyptic movies.

2020 has started as a roller coaster of catastrophic events, hasn´t it?

Now all disasters are passing like a parade one by on inside my head. God knows how many times I have put myself inside that plane as it was hit and started to fall...

Days that earthquakes and floods have lost their terrific effect. We are number and number hearing the News. People in masks, in Quarantine, prisoned at their own houses.

We feel guilty thinking about our personal lives´issues, they seem so unimportant, so little, thinking about survival. Just survive and you are luckier than thousands of others who didn't.

Why am I vomiting all these hopeless thoughts here, I´m just trying to catch them, like a fisherman catching fast passing fish, I am just trying to write them down, in a hope that they lose their power, they became part of history, part on memory and tomorrow when I read these lines, everything would be ok and the world would be more peaceful.


“…it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.”

What can I do for life, for the being? What life does expect me to do?

Time

Time, time, this obscure entity, vague notion.
Who can define time? The number of hours, days, seconds, that human being has defined to make this notion understandable. Setting rules, every 60 seconds one minute, every 60 minutes one hour, days, weeks, months, seasons, years...
What we can see is that it is passing, we feel it as we see we are aging. We observe changes happening in us, in nature, all around us.
We feel we are running out of it. It´s limited, 60, 70, 80 years maximum and goodbye. We are in a rush, in a race.
On the other hand, we know all phenomena, all processes, natural or unnatural changes need time to happen.
Fruits require time to get mature, a baby takes time to speak, a caterpillar needs a while to become a butterfly, the moon has its own cycle, full, half, crescent, half, full, on and on. Each process needs its own time to take place.
Is it that difficult to comprehend?
Why we can not cope with it? Why most of the time we don't have enough patience for things to happen in their appropriate time when it should?

When we learn that if we pick the fruit early, it would be raw and bitter?
When we will learn that if we take out a butterfly sooner than when it is supposed to out of its cocoon, it won´t fly, it will die? *
When we will learn that perhaps being a patient fellow is the biggest lesson that life and whole this universe are trying to teach us?


*Read in Zorba the Greek Book

Days of Summer

Days of Summer, my lovely season, the season of long days and late sunsets. July passed in a blink and now August.  I see myself as a moody person, while Summer keeps me in high spirits. Yet, I am still not pretty sure that is the weather affecting the mood or the mood affecting our perception of the surrounding parameters, like the weather.

Beats me, questions without answers, like most of the things in life. Anyways.

Talking about life, today is my middle sister birthday. I was seven when she was born. I was so ready and thrilled to have a sibling especially a sister. I was super happy when we brought her home and the process of choosing her name, that is what I remember and after that? Strangely enough, I don't have a vivid memory about what happened next! How I was dealing with her? whether or not I was playing with her, having a good time with the baby? Some times I feel shameful, it is like I was occupied with my own life, going to school, having routines, or maybe I WAS around her and just don't recall. I prefer to believe the latter.

However, I can recall better the time she was a bit older like 5,6, first years of school. I wish I had been a better company for her, like she was for our youngest sister, playing with her and entertaining her all the time. I have not been good at getting along with kids, lack of patience that is required, but in my dreams when I can let myself to be a better version of me, I am playing and talking with kids, with my sisters when they were little, for hours, discovering their world, making them laugh.

For her as an adult, my performance has been a bit better I guess. Talking to her, being on her side going through stages of life, traveling with her, dancing, crying, laughing, studying.
Hope I will be a better and better sister for her as we get older, perhaps compensating childhood.

I have learned a lot from her. Adorable traits that she owns without any effort. I have been observing all these years, trying to acquire them and at the same time, to help her see her strengths when she feels insecure or with low confidence.

This post is for her, a girl born in Summer, a Ph.D. student! She has earned all she has achieved by her own efforts and perseverance and that´s priceless.

The night of

It is amazing how we change over the years, our goals, our dreams, our standards, our priorities, our hobbies, etc. All and all everything in this world seems so relative, so there is nothing to be prejudice about because apparently we won't think the same next year and consequently, we don't believe in the same things as we do now.

As Bijan Jalali, an Iranian Poet says: Keep some room for not knowing, for ignorance. One day, it might be filled by a piece of knowledge that we don´t believe in today.

Well, thoughts are so distracting,  the objective of this post was about series.
 I was not a fan of watching series in the past like 10 years ago, for instance, only movies. To me, series have too much time to say what they intend to. Several seasons, lots of hours...

However, sometimes you just better not resist the stuff. Series have been improving over the years. Brilliant ideas, intriguing subject, well-chosen actors...Irresistible!

Honesty I still go for mini-series rather than soap operas, waiting for each season for ages.

And at last, let's talk about my favorite mini-series so far, THE NIGHT OF.

I don't know is it me or it has the same effect on everyone who watched it. I was totally immersed in the story, in the characters, especially Nasir. Is it because I am from the middle east? Is it because I am immigrant and well-aware of preconceptions about us? We are people from lands of wars, people from restless lands, extreme believes for the rest of the world.
How lonely Nasir is, how he falls down and down under the dark shadow of his race, his origin, his roots, things that he didn't have a chance to choose.
And who believed him? who heard his story? A miserable looking, in trouble lawyer. I don't give away the rest. Just I lived and loved every minute of this story.

We are still on a long road of struggle to see beyond racist stigmas and stereotypes, not letting them to cloud our judgment and see people as a human sees a human, give people time to show their true color, their inner self, without being labeled already.

PHOTO CREDIT: COURTESY OF HBO

Birthday

Life has been like a hurricane last recent years. Unpredictable and tense. How has it changed me?
Honestly, I don't know.

What I assume is that this hurricane needs to follow some patterns, like a Sine wave, give some rests, give some sunny days, some pleasure and then goes down to the hard, dark, heart-breaking moments following some resting time. However, there is no pattern.

Happiness and satisfaction are told to be found inside. What I am trying to observe, to discover.

I had to make the most difficult decisions of my whole life these years.

I have always been an overthinker but decisive, open to changes, to adventures, still, am.

So, all I wish for my birthday is courage, courage, and courage to continue passing through the hurricane of life. Maybe life is laughing at me saying you haven't seen a real hurricane yet. So, that´s all I need, the courage to fight. Like that "peaceful warrior"