Fresh water
I see you as my supply of shoes to amble through my own memories

January 26, 2007
iranian.com

I want to forget about the heartaches in the world. I want to think of you, just now, just this minute of writing to you, for you. Let me. As if nothing existed before knowing you and nothing will come after. Between my hands and my heart is a drop of dew. Hold it. Don't spill it. Take it into your mouth. Drink it. It's my longing for you. Now I feel fortunate. You haven't let the distance of coasts twist my devotion to your presence. I want to believe it is a fruitful season. A season when I can sleep next to you and dismiss all rationalizations, the insanity, and displaced relationships. I love your insights, your outlook, your not restricting yourself to places, to people, to earth, to life. I am unlike you. I restrict my self to places and that make me journey beyond time. I restrict myself to people and that makes me leave or want to break free. I restrict myself to earth, that is why I don't drink wine. I restrict myself to life and that alone makes me want to understand my other dimensions. To me, you are my other dimension, a pure soul, an absolute commitment to the act of confidence in the matter of truth. You submerge in the most unexpected places. You don't suffer from mortality or from what is moral to the suffering. Ah, I love you and keep you in me like the memory of the church bells that signified the hour in Switzerland. I love you like that sunny afternoon in Mashhad when I was 5 and heard the adhan's Hayya 'ala khayril-'amal: make haste towards the best deed. I cherish you like Shabbat before the sundown on every Friday. I love you like my memories of childhood and growing up in Tehran. Days when I wasn't taken for granted.

Now days are uneven. I don't complain. They have their routines, senses, overheads, presentations, differences, fusions-diffusion, realities, delusions, emancipation, and conclusions. Sometimes I take it emotionally, sometimes rationally, and at other times as special occasions. I have a commitment to these days, to satisfy them, never to let them be forgotten. To move to their rhythm in a Kathak dance with my Persian hand gestures, to give birth to Mujra and make it seductive, and erotic. The truth is there is nothing exotic about the land I come from. I grew up hearing about the massacre of Kurds, the executions of Bahais and the political prisoners, the honor killings, stoning. My soul clenched. It mattered then, it matters now. I scattered like a mirror. I ached for you to hold me in your tender words. I called out for you but my voice didn't reach you. Now, you have arrived and every day I wake up believing you are Apsu, the mythological fresh water. I wait to hear you, to read you not in a social event, not as a dressed up philosopher, not as a writer but as mine, your words, doves that will not migrate from my eyes.

This morning I was thinking how your presence has brought so many images back to me. Images of places that I had not thought about for many years, the flowers, the sweets, tombs, shoulders, cupboards, arms, ghazals, aluminum pots, rounded cheeks, Mahanadi, roofs, climbing, Ramadan, Shahi Mohalla - Lahor's red zone, cities, homes, UK, Poland, India, France, and so many more countries. Maybe I see you as magic. You are just about everything, every one. I love it. Last night I recalled one of your writings and it made me sad, almost like crying but then I remembered how happy I am to enjoy this very time that I have, to write down what I write, as if I needed a new pair of shoes to help me suddenly walk again. You know during the last year of Iran-Iraq war, the sounds of 14 rockets at a time had affected my nervous system. I needed help to stand up, to sit down, and to walk. Now I see you as my supply of shoes to amble through my own memories. I collect me in you. You, a man I haven't met, haven't touched, haven't kissed, haven't made love to, and haven't walked next to. You, a man I don't know, yet I like his smell, his presence, his touch, his lips, and his hands, a park in the middle of desert, water. You do it without populating or crowding my mind, you sit on the floor, fresh like ancestry yet not. Yes, As if nothing existed before knowing you and nothing will come after. A common attraction, ah, so uncommon. I am not your costumer. You are not mine. No background noise. No lightning to burn the eyes, no watchfulness, no edge. You don't know how many freckles I have on my face, not black, not brown. Even if there is a mixture of ridicule when you read these constant writings of mine, I still write these for you. This is me now. I am traditional in the act of faithfulness, yet I struggle every day. Across the room you sit, face too, and want to. I do want you to comb my hair. I like the Chinese wooden comb. There is no poetic meaning in these writings, no idealistic reasoning. If we get, we lose, if we lose we gain, there is a place of honor and a place of lies. We either hear or not but what is the truth? What is a lie? The mind? The heart? The soul, the spirit, the body? The memories? The procedure to recognition, none, one or all?

Sometimes
I have always pursued the men I have wanted. Sometimes they turned into an enduring pain, and sometimes to a lover but never in them had I found you, the beloved. The amusing part is, you don't even know me, and I don't know you in the constant terms. Thus, I want you to write to me, to take me in your arms, to whisper me your solemn words. I want to feel your divine approach. There is no plan, not an inch thick crowd of the grownies, who judge, and not thin lipped ties and shiny shoes in you. There isn't any chocolate blood cake on my plate or yours. I am not an empty jar; you are not an empty glass.

There is this river that I swim in and there you are; the water that holds me clear. You don't walk backward, and I don't trip over earthen dissipates. I can see eyeful. I can smell you warm in my baked bread. I eat you like butter and honey. I drink you in each letter, each word, sentence, and on each page. You are generous. You let me make you into my notes, love you as I please, wide and close, tempt you, tingle, lick you, hold you, and run my fingers through your heat, yet you don't burn me.

Each morning you may ride on a bus, may drive a car that doesn't start easy, fly as the birds, or swim like the fish. Each noon you may avoid the salt; have a sandwich, or a big bowl of soup, and a salad. Each night you may peel an orange, bite an apple, eat a silver wrapped sweet bought from a south Asian shop, a bruschetta, or go out, to shake hands with friends, meet your lovers, or sit alert, or sleep in your bed. Each day I pursue you. Each night I choose to walk in and out of you, and every time the air gets balanced-imbalanced with your words.

With you, I have no pride, no modesty, and no bruises to hide. With you I have no sheep to take up the mountains before the sunrise, or bring down before the night arrives. With you I have no wolf wounds on my soul, and on my body to lick, or rinse, to stitch, and cover. With you I have no questionable satisfaction to feed. With you there is no dawn, no darkness, no black and no white, no inquiry as to where to start or finish, no claiming or rejecting, and no grabbing to hold. With you there is no lightness and no darkness my beloved. Comment

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