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Baby Boy

My husband is sleeping.
Do you mind that I tell you these things? (Does he mind?)
Well, anyway...

He is an angel...and there are these moments in life, like this moment - meaningful only to me simply because I am the only one here to appreciate his darling sleeping-baby-boy gorgeousness - that are impossible to share with anyone else, but demand that the attempt be made anyway for their absolute beauty.
I would sometimes watch Nathaniel and Sophia sleeping when I was still living in the States working as a nanny - and was overcome often by this same feeling of being privy to some kind of living-poetry. A secret, the pure deep-breathing repose of those candy-sweet children who I had somehow managed the unbelievable bonus of being paid to spend time with.
There is something about those moments - the quiet darkness of the room, and a person you never knew you could feel so much unchecked love for, sleeping, human before you.
The word 'love' takes on a whole new meaning during those instances.
I adore my husband awake too, of course. But sudden insomnia - something that used to mean tossing and turning, or worse: light-back-on-and-now-what? - gives me a consolation prize, a memory, yet another of those poems I write in my head and keep forever.

Its love. Sure. But its an entirely different hue.

Happy 1385!

Happy 1385!

The Persian New Year celebration started the day before yesterday - according to their calendar it's now 1385.

The names of the 12 months that comprise the Persian year are:

1. Farvardin (31 days)
2. Ordibehesht (31 days)
3. Khordad (31 days)
4. Tir (31 days)
5. Mordad (31 days)
6. Shahrivar (31 days)
7. Mehr (30 days)
8. Aban (30 days)
9. Azar (30 days)
10. Day (30 days)
11. Bahman (30 days)
12. Esfand (29/30 days)

The month of Esfand has 29 days in an ordinary year, 30 days in a leap year.

Years are counted since the Hijra which was Mohammed's emigration to Medina in AD 622. On 16 July (Julian calendar) of that year, Anno Hegirae (AH) 1 started (the year of the Hijra).

Of course, we were hoping to be in Iran by now - enjoying the customs and traditional meals and parties with our family and friends...soon, soon!

Eid e shoma mobarak!!

Old School

I still like listening to old school music. The stuff I grew up on...streaming from giant, plastic, battery operated, cassette walkman through gawky wired headphones (imagine!).
You know, the 80's.
But now, thanks to the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I can add popular music my grandparents and great grandparents rocked to to my collection.
The site has compiled over 6,000 digitized versions of songs, spoken performances, and other sound files - originally recorded on tinfoil and wax cylinders, some as early as 1877.
Now that's old school.

I wonder if anyone will remix this stuff.

Search by keywords, or artist name - if you actually know any.

Bangalore, India

Escape

A year and then some in Bangalore without a holiday has really taken its toll.

H and I woke up the other morning to the sound of the pack of dogs on the street barking at the roaring garbage lorry amid the usual cacophony of hammer and nails...street vendors shouting about tomatoes, paper collection, and plastic goods...the neighbor's stereo pumping out the latest Hindi hit...Enfield engines revving repeatedly for no good reason...mopeds rattling past, quite possibly dropping bits and pieces of themselves as they go...autorickshaws honking...and said 'enough already!'

Hence, we've a set of one way tickets to Goa, leaving late tomorrow night - not to return until the 20th.
Take that, Bangalore!

We're going to stay in the sea until I soak up the entire thing and then we're going to walk ten kilometers just for the sake of walking and breathing clean air at the same time.

We're going to live in bikinis and miniskirts 24 hours a day...Ok, well, that'll just be me, but I don't think H will complain much.

Bangalore Fire and Rescue

Whiner

Watching weather patterns on CNN, after flipping through the channels for what would qualify as 'way too long' when it's something like 78 degrees outside...I don't even know anymore what 78 degrees feels like I am so pale.
I hate going outside here during the day. I absolutely hate it.
I'm not even really in India, in some ways, with this attitude. But I don't see how anyone really ever could be. I cook in the sun now that I've stayed out of it as a rule for over a year.

It's just that I have the same disdain for television that sold my TV years ago for nothing just to get it out of my house. And I've no books at the moment (though I just finished the 500 page GIRLY and will say that it is really such a good story. I related to an aspect of each character, blurred in the tunnel-vision of self recognition but still honestly.
Elizabeth Merrick writes like a real person. That statement seems so simplistic it almost doesn't seem like a compliment, until you realize that so few authors succeed at doing just that.)
It's also hard to go to the bookstores - not the being in them...they're wonderful and quiet, the bigger ones - and even have fabulous non-book things to buy (silver glitter gel stuff and handmade paper bags and pens) - it's just the getting there that is so tortuous.

And this is where I start feeling bad, as if telling the truth about what it's like to live here somehow makes me look bad.
Like I'm whining.

India is an interesting place, in every sense of the word. It's gorgeous in its own way - as is any foreign place. I was just telling Miss Jess the other night, as she contemplated a trip to Mongolia with trepidation, that if someone offered me two tickets ANYwhere....I'd go (of course round trip tickets are an added comfort for those who are freaked out by the idea of something-else) I'd go to Zimbabwe, I'd go to Vietnam, I'd go (two tickets=not without my darling.) I'm the first one waiting in line, ever so patiently, for a visa to Iran.

I would go to Iran tomorrow, if they would just let me in.
I want to see my husband's country-and not just as a foreigner...but as a part of his family, and to find the lens that is me, being American, and work at being aware of it so I can get rid of it. Lenses are never a good thing. Never ever.
Imagine.

There seems to be an idea that Iran is a nation of government...that it HAS no people. That the one person who has a voice loud enough to be heard on the world stage isn't the sum total of the society he governs is the most important truth to know.
This is what must be remembered, when all is said and done: that these are the things our government taught us about global cultures, varying faiths, philosophical ideas - as we watched them disappear, morph into what any third world, occupied, war torn country will look like as it grows into Americanhood. Until it has Coca-cola and copyright law.
Iran isn't families with normal lives who drive their kids to school and sing in the shower and work to make a life, a comfortable life...
Iran is not a neighborhood, or a Kindergarten with a town's generation of babies settling down for story time, it's not a freeway with a thousand human stories all going in a thousand directions.

Instead I see this underlying sentiment in the overall news reports out of the west: "See Iran as a target, be afraid...you see, everyone else is afraid...your neighbors are afraid, here's a study to prove it. Now just be quiet...look, here's something shiny, wanna buy it? Oh, no money? It's OK, we'll extend a line of credit if you'll just sign away your conscious state of being...riiiight...there."

I cannot see one objective argument for the kinds of behavior I am hearing about my country and it's military on a daily basis. And shame on the UK for being a puppet as well.
Do we even know the difference anymore?
Do we know the difference between the 'bad people' and 'Islam'?
There are those words now, like 'jihad' that evoke an immediate reaction in Americans. We are scared, because we don't understand any of what's going on.

I can feel the solid end to all-this-waiting just ahead, and so I'm in between two countries. You know that feeling, when you're getting ready for a trip that you've anticipated for a long time. It's that feeling of passport stamp and airplane and the wonderfully boxed meals on trays with a window seat, and taxi (whatever that may actually BE wherever you end up is another thing) and hostel or hotel or spa or shack on the beach with ocean at your doorstep or glossed museum floor or third world bazaar. It's all the things you know are coming, that you can't possibly imagine even from the pages of a Lonely Planet.
If there were no politics involved with Iran I'd already be there. My country's government is screwing up my personal life right now and it is making grievous decisions on my behalf about an entire nation of people without even once asking what I think.
How loud do I have to be to be heard? Whining from so far away, about so many things today?

Yeah Right...

Well then, thank goodness it's 2006...

The Good Wife’s Guide, “Housekeeping Monthly”
13 May, 1955

1. Have dinner ready. (Does that include ordering delivery by phone?) Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed. (Whatever.)

2. Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. (Please, spare me. Anyway, he tells me I'm gorgeous regardless - THAT should be in 'The Good Husband's Guide")

3. Be a little gay (I'm not even going there, it's too easy) and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it. (I AM his day...and I am never, ever boring. Completely silly and a little weird sometimes, but not boring.)

4. Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. (No thanks. I don't do clean-up so much.)

5. Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper etc. and then run a dust cloth over the tables. (We are happily messy, together. It's more fun that way.)

6. Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction. (I relent, this last statement is true...)

7. Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet. (Fortunately for both of us those little darlings don't exist just yet...though knowing how Hamid was as a child, and how loud and rambunctious we are NOW, I doubt very much any efforts at keeping them quiet will have much success.)

8. Be happy to see him. (It seems to me, if you have to be reminded of this, then you're in the wrong marriage...)

9. Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him. (OK, I can do this.)

10. Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours. (Ummmm, not so much.)

11. Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax. (Fortunately, I don't have this problem....)

12. Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit. (It's not my problem if he doesn't feel like doing yoga.)

13. Don’t complain if he’s late home for dinner or even if he stays out all night. (EXCUSE ME?!) Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day. (Again, not so much.)

14. Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. (Believe me, I've got more than that 'ready for him.')

15. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice. (Does the master wish anything else?)

16. Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him. (I call BULLSH*T)

17. A good wife always knows her place.
(Yes, she does e.x.a.c.t.l.y....and don't confuse the reality of that with any of this gibberish. I, as most women who are in love with their husbands, don't mind the least bit taking care of my darling...but there never has been and never will be a day so archaic as the one described here. Normal men don't think this way or expect their wives or partners to behave this way. If a guy actually says to a woman 'But, I'm the man...' It's time to say 'Yes, yes you are my darling...' as you're closing the door behind you.)