Studying for Finals?

I've been downloading music in the library for two hours because the internet connection is like a thousand times better than the one in my room.

I hate finals week. Usually I can easily ignore the fact that I'm supposed to be studying, but then finals week comes around. I wish I could take a class on downloading music. Or sleeping. Or playing chess. Which is all I have been doing while I'm supposed to be studying for finals.

I'll study tomorrow.

we are very busy people

my best friend at school is leaving at the end of this semester. hes going off to Argentina for six months to work on farms where who knows how well i'll be able to contact him. then hes transferring schools. im really the only person hes talked to about this change, though hes told a few others that hes leaving. his reasons dont make sense, frankly. ive been walling myself off to avoid the fact that it upsets me that hes leaving and hes been walling himself off to prepare for the change. he wants me to be excited for him, but every time he brings it up, i shut down. im happy for him and i want him to be as happy as he can be, obviously, but i dont know what im going to do without him here. hes the only person who has crazy, deep conversations about life with me on a daily basis. hes the only person i feel totally comfortable with without any occasional pangs of awkwardness stemming from past mistakes. hes the only one on the same cultural page as i am. hes a big reason of why im happy here.

ive been feeling very disconnected. like my dreams are more real than my reality, more exciting, more tangible, more present. i feel things. i dont view whats happening through a haze of indifference. i have all these separate lives that never touch. i travel to different lives when i travel. home has nothing to do with school and school has nothing to do with home in the way that life should have nothing to do with dreams and dreams should have nothing to do with life. i feel like time is never passing yet passing so quickly. every time i leave and come back to a place, it feels both like eternity and no time at all has passed. i want something radical to happen to me. something earth shattering and challenging that i dont know if i'll make it out alright. but i also want stability. i want to stop walking this tightrope and go back to solid ground because ive been up in the air for far to long and its become normalcy. i feel like im wasting my youth drowning in trying to feel something.

the weight of my decisions is not yet falling on my shoulders. im holding nothing up but trying to pretend like its something heavy. i stress about nothing and everything because i know i can never fall so far i cant get back up. i want to fall apart just to see if i can pick up the pieces of my life again. can i be destroyed completely and bounce back? can i lose everything and still come out with something? what can i do completely on my own? what if that nets gone and when i fall from this rope, i fall straight to the ground, shattering into a million pieces and reassembling slowly in a newer, better form? who will i become?

My philosophy

For some reason I thought that once I got to college I would never use Spark Notes again...and yet here I am.

I never fail to find joy each and every day, because I am forever being presented with the one true fact I have ever known about life: every little aspect of it is hilarious, because if you really think about it, each moment is, in its own special way, utterly perfect.

And that's why I'm laughing as I copy and paste information from Sparknotes so I can write a paper about a book I didn't bother reading, a paper I'll probably get an A on. I'm laughing because I was doing this same thing three years ago. I'm laughing because it's moments like these, moments when I'm back home smoking a joint with old friends, moments of skipping class to sit at the river and talk about life, that reveal to me the beauty of the circle of life.

The circle of life always brings us back to ourselves, back to the past, back to the present, back to the future. It makes me feel like I'd love to live forever if it were possible. When I ride ferris wheels I pretend the wheel will never come to that inevitable halt signifying an end to the ride.

Because to be a part of eternity is to see the true beauty of life, even if it seems like it's just a trick of the light. When you see the never ending circle that is the path of your own life, you see the deceptive quality within the anticipation of death, and how it's kept you from seeing the eternity within each moment you're alive. It's made you live like you were dying all these years.

I think that's why I sometimes feel like nobody ever fully understands me. I choose to live as if I'll never die. Death only means something if it has fear to thrive on. I live without fear of death, without a single thought of death. I choose not to believe in death. I believe in forever. I frustrate those who don't realize I'm simply living as if I'll live forever. I do it because belief in my own eternity allows me to take my time. Life in slow motion is painted in higher detail, each brush stroke singing forgotten melodies; one may gaze intently at a painting, but do they ever think of listening to it just as closely? Isn't that how someone first discovered the roar of ocean waves inside a seemingly voiceless conch shell?

When you live forever you learn to speak the language of everything...from clouds to the arcs of a skipping rock.

If I were qualified to give out life advice I would say only this:

Take your time. Why else would it be given to you? Take it, it's yours. It's up to you and nobody else what you use it for. Take your time. It's a gift sent by eternity.

let me get a hold of this

what if we're all exactly the kind of person we hate. we have all those qualities we abhor in others and that's why we hate them. we hate ourselves and we take it out on others. those things we admire? we're none of them. we do things and think we're one way but we're absolutely nothing like who we think we are.

Nostalgic

I just found this old picture of me from junior year of high school that Dan constructed out of all the things that were said to me on a daily basis. People really drove me crazy. I had finally discovered how to free my spirit, and they didn't understand it so they had to break it. I'm still trying to put it back together. I miss those days, when I was carefree. Now I can't just get rid of them.

Windburn, or Seperate of Doors

Our fragile faces are our foes:
would we were in the wind
(the cold night air unfiltered
on our cheeks so chafeable),
and sun-squinting soreness
beckoned us back to the beginnings,
days--decades--desperate of doors,
could we live any longer?

To the People Who Call Me Lazy

At age 3 my musical training began with the piano. For five years I had weekly lessons with my father, who educated me mercilessly until I was 8 years old and I made the decision to receive private instruction in the Cello. I played the cello for eight years, trained by the best cellists in the Washington D.C. area. Everyone thought I would end up at a top music school and have a successful career as a cellist. Until I was 16 and quit the cello for double bass lessons...the pressure was just too much. They called me talented, they called me a genius, but I didn't know if I loved the cello or if people loved me because of the cello...so I quit. I played the bass for three years, then at 18 I decided I wanted to play the guitar...I had two lessons, my teacher told me I showed great promise...then I quit.

I started reading chapter books when I was 3 years old. At age 9 I decided I wanted to read every book that was ever written. Whenever I wasn't practicing the cello, or at my private art classes my dad arranged, I read. I read one book a day for a year, each one no shorter than 300 or 400 pages. I read three hundred and sixty five books that year. I wrote several unfinished novels of my own that year.

It was at that point, now in the 5th grade, that I realized I had no interest in school. It occurred to me that the assignments were mundane, stupid, standardized, and a complete waste of my time. I stopped doing school work. At home I steam rolled through books and studied the cello, sometimes tinkering on the piano. I quit my art classes, I just could never draw people's noses. I still can't.

In the sixth grade I took up martial arts. I started living at the Tae Kwon Do academy on top of my cello lessons, got one belt away from being a black belt, and quit.

Freshman year of high school I tried out ice skating lessons. The old lady in my class skated backwards faster than I could. I quit.

Freshman year of college I decided to teach myself how to play the guitar. Over the course of that semester I failed three classes but I'm now more advanced at the guitar than others who have played for as brief a time as me. You won't see that on my transcript.

Piano lessons, cello lessons, bass lessons, those two guitar lessons, chess club, art lessons, ice skating lessons, Tae Kwon Do, raging attempts to become a future class author, hundreds of books, hours mastering the strategy of the card game Hearts, scrabble fever, hundreds of hours trying to teach myself the guitar.

These days I hide from my talents. I rebel against my potential. Because I'm scared. People used to call me a genius, used to praise my talents, and my potential...and I disappointed them by leaving it all behind.

I want to be more than what I can do. I want to be good at something because it makes ME happy, not so that they can put me on stage again. Is that selfish?

But then why do I get so mad when people doubt my intelligence, or call me lazy? Maybe I need to stop hiding from myself. I think I'm just scared because people used to call me a genius, used to praise my talents, my potential...and I disappointed myself by leaving it all behind.

I'm so fucking sick of my potential. But what if I do something with it and my worst fear comes true, the one that I've never told anyone of?

My worst fear is that I'll find out I'm ordinary...mediocre...normal. My worst fear is that I'll find out that they were wrong about me. My worst fear is that I'll always feel like I do today, knowing that I used to be a genius, that I used to be talented, and all I am now is potential that never turned into something beautiful.

I just feel so unevolved sometimes.

who would have ever thought that everything would be the way it is today a year ago? two years ago? three?

time is completely unpredictable. there's nothing you can do to stop it or reverse it. there's no reason to dwell on it. you can never go back or forward. you can plan for the future and learn from past mistakes, but when its all said and done, the only thing you really have is the moment. there's no such thing as permanent or temporary, just happening.

everyone's turning 20. we're no longer teenagers.

Wanted

There's an investigation going on in my residence hall concerning one of the adirondack chairs in front of the building. It would seem that over the course of two months, somebody burned a hole going across one of the armrests.

What some people call vandalism, I call art. If they want to catch me, they'd better be prepared for a long and grueling chase. I'll burn whatever I see along the way. It's all I know I suppose...I have mastered the art of destruction.


Plus the chair looks really funny now.

“Mamihlapinatapai: A look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.”

let's grow old

Let’s not shave our body hair
and grow old together in an old farmhouse
where the petals blow across our porch in the spring
and leaves blow across it in the fall
we’ll sit on a swing
with an old quilt wrapped around us
and maybe we’ll be smoking cigarettes
and there will be a candle on a wicker table
I’d make our clothes myself
and you’d chop wood for the fire
and together we’d watch the seasons change
our hair will grow gray
and we’ll think of dying
and mourn for every beautiful moment that has already passed
but I’ll grab your hand
and we’ll stare at the vast emptiness before us
and from our front porch,
we’ll see into eternity.

It's not fair

Study, study, study,
meiosis, mitosis
then like lightning
it pervades my mind.
A flash of her
sweating
shaking
crying
vomiting
detoxing miles away
in a place my mind
just can't reach.

I keep myself from crying out
The second is over
I'm safe now.
study, study, study,
genes, chromosomes
diploid, haploid
fighting off the void--no.
can't think about that
study, study, study,
inheritance, parents, offspring
maternal chromosomes,
maternal ties,
maternal lies.

It only took having my mother taken away from me, and the knowledge that I can't see or hear from her, and the pure fear I feel for her...that's all it took for me to forgive her...for hate to turn back into love...I wish I could call her so I could tell her that. I guess she won't know until she gets out of wherever she is. If she can ever escape the darkness.

dash period exclamation

what a fucking restless generation we are so fucking tired so fucking awake so fucking ambivalent so fucking passionate so fucking ignorant so fucking informed so fucking self-righteous so fucking humble so fucking caring so fucking hateful so fucking misunderstood so fucking validated so fucking ironic so fucking stale so fucking electric so fucking quiet so fucking obsessed with fucking and ourselves and each other

The human body has so many contours,
it’s as if each were made for a lover’s hand to hold
I’ve never before appreciated the warm smoothness of skin,
I’ve never understood muscle tissue until now

I love that you don’t care that I don’t care
-we might as well have just crawled out from under a bridge,
looking like a homeless couple-
and that your eyelashes are longer than mine.
I love when you switch to walking on my other side
because you don’t like holding hands with your left hand,
and when you make us yerba mate in a gourd just like the Argentines do

We spend our time grocery shopping and lying in bed,
driving without any clear direction,
walking without any real destination.
I’ll never forget your face
as I held you
and our bodies said the sweetest goodbye
that was never spoken

You say the house is empty without me
sometimes I wonder
is it months or is it lifetimes that we’ve been together?

Sometimes I wish I could jump into someone else's body and look at myself and see what they see. What is it that others see of me? I try and notice my flaws, but sometimes it's impossible to see what's really there.

I am not Persian

I am not Persian,

My Turkish peers are not called, and do not refer to themselves as Ottoman,

nor do any Italians that I know of go by Roman.

Why then does much of the Iranian community go by Persian?

I am an Iranian-American.

ee cummings

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which I will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh...And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you quite so new


Isn't it funny how sometimes things that were once familiar become so uncomfortable when you return to them after theyve gone sour?

Dear diary (publisher),

Recently, my history professor told us to read the diary of a woman who lived and died during the period we are currently studying.

So I read it.

I guess the assumption about reading these kinds of sources is that they offer a uniquely personal social perspective--a catalog of emotions and events recorded by a voice that needs to be heard, unfiltered--for once, an "honest" account of what was.

But something made me really uncomfortable reading it. It wasn't the translation that made it seem dishonest. It wasn't even the hundreds of arbitrary footnotes or the laudatory introduction by some random scholar. It was the writing itself.

Who says diaries are honest? The few times I have tried to journal, I have always felt so fake. I choose the events I want to record without really knowing which ones are important. And when I stray from the here's-what-happened style and decide to get philosophical about things, I always write as if someone is going to read it later. Never is it truly a secret document. And if there is one place I would rationalize, it would be a diary, not a conference with a living person that knows how to pick out my inconsistencies and failures.

So yes, a diary can be valuable (both for historiography and as a practice in our own lives). But let's not pretend that it is honest--that we are honest.

somewhere

Somewhere is the good life

Striving for contentment

Somewhere is inner peace

Somewhere unreachable

or too far away

Here are substitutes and distractions

Vices and friends to patch the wounds

And too much time in silence to brood

How to explain when nothing seems worthy of addressing?

How to write when nothing seems worthy of thinking?

How to love when everything is ephemeral?

Whatever the point is we are running out of time

Observations

Halloween weekend was fantastic, but also kind of crazy stressful at the same time. I hung out with my Quidditch team for the first time outside of the club and we bonded in a very positive way. I'm super excited to feel closer with so many new people. It's exciting to see a group of people whom aren't that close to choose to be together on a day that people typical choose to share with their closest friends.  This group of people wants to be friends with each other and I'm observing their friendships grow and form over just a couple of weeks.

But, with those I am close with, I've noticed some things I hadn't noticed before. I need to be more observant of what others are saying; about what they're feeling and what I'm feeling. Excitement isn't always a good thing.  We can get carried away with words and ideas and not truly know how our imagination can effect ourselves. We can imagine reality and get lost in what is not real. The feelings I thought were mine became someone else's because we weren't being observant but were too excited in the moment. Those feelings which were mine became hers, and she became confused, as so did I. Sometimes it's important observe what your actions are doing.  I've had to start over with some of my feelings and opinions because I wasn't observant enough on what my words were doing to another person. My enthusiasm was too strong and neither of us were observant enough to know if the thoughts being implanted in our minds were real or not.

Sometimes excitement and enthusiasm can carry you away to an unknown place without a name that is lost, confused, and, dangerous.