Salma: This sounds like the finishing music on a Spanish movie…where the guy leaves towards sunset in an old American car filled with Arab oil on a road made by Chinese in a film directed by an Italian…err …reviewed by a Brit!

Lu: I see the Brit was an afterthought… how rude [Lu is the perfect British guy] …and he probably didn’t like it

Salma: you people sit back and comment after the mess has hit the fan…thus he is the reviewer…

Lu: notice this though… we start everything… and alarmingly enough… we aren’t all that affected by those things that we start…but something we don’t begin, we poke our nose into and our nose gets burned off…

***

Salma: do you think movie reviewers in hell are made to eternally make movies?

Lu: nahhhh…. movie reviewers go to heaven…

Salma: but heaven is such a boring place!!!

Lu: so is hell

Salma: no way! …all atheists would be there…it’d be one hell of a party!

Lu: ohhhh… come on… nothing would be more boring… what’s the fun if everyone around u is an atheist… and besides they’d be feeling very stupid… no fun

Salma: not really…they’d still be insisting that god doesn’t exist … I mean it’s fun to sit at a table with god and try to convince him that he isn’t there …Kant will be there … so would Nietzsche

Lu: Kant will probably be the ringleader there… you know… the don… we will all be his bitches … notice how both of them are German…

Salma: haha ..German philosophy … yes … the real philosophy …

[Keyboard stopped functioning here]

Salma: flourished in Germany* (and my keyboard was made in china)

Lu: don’t worry… so was mine and almost every other thing that was ever made

Salma: I think god is Chinese

Lu: nahhhh… god is African

Salma: hmm…why?

Lu: I wouldn’t know…. he just is

Salma: I think god is Chinese because he is injecting mass produced low quality essentially inessential goods into our lives

Lu: still can’t figure out why god is African

Salma: maybe he is hungry and has AIDS … and he is being politically ****** up by a general with a gun and 50 illiterate soldiers

Lu: that could make him Pakistani…. or Burmese… hell… that cud make him any damn national

Salma: only last week I was thinking of giving up and going to Africa by the way

Lu: ohhhh… call me… I’ll tag along… Darfur would be… err…. something

Salma: really? Are you willing to give up everything and volunteer?

Lu: the two of us have thought about it extensively… a LOT… and believe me, its tempting…. we would be in Cambodia for sometime not as volunteers… but tourists… and believe me, we won’t be ‘enlightened’ by the plight of some poor hapless souls there… its just that… well… it cud be hmmm… fun is not the right word I suppose… but u know what I mean

Salma: it’s not the fun I’m looking for … it’s the egotistical self satisfaction that I need

Lu: to each his/her own I suppose

Salma: so you are coming as an aid worker?

Lu: I don’t know… not sure… but I have thought bout it a lot

Salma: yeah…me too … it’s like suddenly letting go of everything …mind you I think I’d never want strangers in my land coming to help me …it would feel like being used

Lu: …

Salma: I’m making no sense again

Lu: if bush has anything to say bout that… well….

Salma: you think Iran will end up as a war torn country soon?

Lu: if not bush, then someone else…too much oil …get rid of it

Salma: hmmm… have you got a pump?

Noga who was invited to this game has invited me too and described it like this:

Bobfrom tagged me

for the following book game:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

I had no idea bloggers outside the Persian circle did these blogging games as well!

I’m pleasantly surprised …and this particular one was a bit challenging for me… here is why:

The first book I had nearest me was a Persian translation from the well known German work by Heidegger “Time and being”. I had it near by because I bought it around a week ago after a friend’s recommendation (Dr. Mazidi) and since then I’ve been carrying it everywhere with me (even to bed and to the hair-dressers) and I’ve been trying very hard to understand it (don’t ask!)

The concept is difficult enough, the work is translated from German to Persian and now I had to translate it into English … not so easy!

 On page123 … the 6th, 7th and 8th sentences are as follows:

So again the term “appearance” can be defined in two ways.

First Appearance as something that shows itself as something that doesn’t show itself; and the other as that self-announcing which shows something and that in its self-announcing way is a sign of what doesn’t show itself.

So finally appearance can be considered as a title for the pure and original phenomenon, or sich zeigen (self- announcing).

I had to read a few pages before and after the page 123 to figure it out!

Good blogging game!

Now as for the 5 bloggers I have to invite to the game I’ll go with:

1- Brett (any book or any business document will do in his case because he sometimes deals with pretty interesting documents!)

2- Kamangir (he is the master of finding something out of nothing with a graph attached! and he invited me to that embarrassing photo-game!)

3- Dr. Mazidi (for the book that has me struggling to understand it the way I like and no, I can’t put it away either …his fault, his turn!)

4- Mister Peace (have no idea where he is these days but I’m dying to know what he comes up with)

5-Sepideh (not my old classmate but just as dear!)

Ok that list more sounds like a revenge black list!

But believe me it’s all from Tehran, with love!

She walks about and nags…today’s her pms…tomorrow’s her boyfriend.

It’s just pain and nags and despair…

She’s beautiful, rich. She is wanted. She is a normal girl…

And she feels entitled to bitch about …someone else’s dress…someone’s nose…someone’s taste in wine and their lack of consideration for her (!)

She walks and nags…and walks and nags…

And I sit here thinking…but she’s beautiful. She’s everyone’s favorite…and she’s still nagging?

If only I was normal…I was just simply average normal ordinary…

She bangs on the ringing phone and says: “oh fuck…doesn’t he understand I don’t want to talk to anyone today?”

I pull the blanket over my head…a voice screaming in my world “give me a break will you”

If only I was beautiful.

P.S: he says: you’re not a freak Selma…and even if so you’re a wonderful freak….something out of the ordinary…not like one of those…Normal Freaks.

Yeah …I can’t even make a good “normal freak”

.

So

I’ve been using Twitter and Friendfeed and del.icio.us for about a week now. It sort of feels like I’m caught in the huge wave of the Persian IT bloggers on wordpress(which is true) and it is pretty much scaring me.

But before telling you why, let me get this off my chest:

Twitter: is fun for a few days, it’s like chatting (an activity I truly die for on the net) but in a much slower pace and with a limit of 140 characters (meaning you can’t blab…sheesh). In the first few days it is exciting, funny and useful in getting to know other bloggers up-close and personal…but then…after a while you begin to wonder what the hell you are doing there. Are we using it the wrong way? I have no idea.

What is the right way of using twitter anyway?…well maybe it’s not that useful for me personally but should work for others.

I feel very guilty spending time there while my school work lays on the desk and the in-tray is never empty.

One thing is for sure though…twitter is as addictive as chat and I’ll be going back to it every once in a while.

Frendfeed: well it is fun, exactly because it also involves posts from twitter but…I like it a lot more than google reader, it’s easy, contains anything and everything and I’m usually lost in it but in a good way…also…I get to learn about many new blogs that way that I never knew about them when I used google reader.

 del.icio.us: the easiest way for bookmarking and sharing web pages as far as I have tried…I love it!

Just look what I found in there:

Iranian women talk about their body and sexual desires

But the point is not that…

What scares me is the fact that I’m going with the flow, and I’m enjoying it, I’m being less shy. I actually go and directly talk to total strangers (something I never did before). I am scaring myself!

It has kept me from reading and writing … I’m enjoying telling everyone what I am doing at any particular moment which gives me a certain weird exhibitionist feeling… no wonder Lu screams “I HATE THAT BLOODY TWITTER” everytime I am distracted when he is talking to me.

I don’t like it… I just don’t…it’s just…not for me…

I prefer my own little lonely cave … to love you, from here in Tehran.

This was written a few weeks back in appreciation of an old friend’s strikingly unconventional and far-fetched photographs (in an absurd way you can call his art absurd). I postponed putting it here waiting for a good occasion to post it…for his new photoblog to get going and for him to get his huge archive of photos organized.

Today is his birthday and as I was uploading a couple of music files for him as a simple and friendly birthday present (all I can manage to do where I am).

I decided to revise this and put it up here. What better occasion to appreciate a passionate and extraordinary friend than his birthday!

Home

Confused art gallery

Life frozen in frameworks

Frameworks windows to the life

Life sitting in every corner

Corners echoing the life 

“First you were born

And then came

The disillusionment”

Yes, a beautiful portrait

To turn onto philosophy

As you walk on Persian carpets

And flirt with the idea of God

And despair

And lament

When you find

 There is none

But in between

You discover something

You saw in a rainy Sunday

And a flower in fear of the storm

Yes, in between

Lies amour

Though it withers away

And you might even

Read a few excellent books

But

Time is old photos revisited

Life, a bird on a steel tree

Birth…

That phonograph needle

From Tehran, with Love!

Selma

I’m back from vacation and here are the photos!

Fishermen at work - Caspian Sea – Iran - Gilan Province

We bought some fresh fish on the spot.

The strange thing about the place is the hugely expensive sea side villas with people so rich that it seems like they live in another planet …and then less than a mile up the same shoreline you see simple fishermen laying their faith on what the sea is offering them that day.

Today it wasn’t that good … One says “Maybe tomorrow”

I wonder how many of these tomorrows they are going to pray for…and how many they’d actually see.

Up the shore, in a restaurant every single meal costs three times as much as the fishermen make in a month.

The great thing about the northern provinces of Iran is that you get jungle, mountains and sea in just a couple of miles distance of each other. And that’s …GREAT!

 I loved the snails there.

Today is the first day of spring and the first day of the New Year in the Persian calendar. Here are parts of the Wikipedia article about Nowruz:  

Happy new year to all and have a lovely spring!

From Tehran, with Love!

I was wandering around the web, sipping my tea as usual trying hard to suppress a headache when I saw this in Persian, written by Roya Sadr. I think she used to write for “Gol Agha” a Humorous weekly magazine, published in Iran that I used to read since my childhood.

Although I don’t know much about her, I really like her works. I had to translate and share this with you as an example of women writers and satirists in Tehran.

Here is a translation of her post for January 31 2008 in her Persian weblog:

.

 Sometime ago the ministry of education in Iran announced that it is necessary to change and separate the school textbooks for boys and girls and adjust them with their different needs in life and society.

Here are a few suggestions for adjustments of course topics for girls.

.

Religious teaching courses:

The laws of Shari’a for Ladies

.

Art:

The art of cooking

The art of keeping a husband

The art of giving birth

.

Physics:

Chapters on Core and fission including discussions on:

          Apple-core, Cherry-core and reactors and reactions (based on magnitude)

Light and reflection including discussions on:

          The limits and rules for female flesh exposed to light.

Thermodynamics:

          Heat and family life

          Keeping elections hot

          Fossil fuels and warmth in the house

.

Logic:

Since this branch of science is unsuitable for the natural structure of female mind, it is highly advised to exclude this topic from their coursebooks.

.

Literature:

Kitchen terminology

Newborn’s linguistics, baby talk and burp grammar structure

.

.

Towards an ever increasing respect for the status of our nation’s women to the skies and beyond!

..

.

Tehran - 14^th of March 2008 – a polling station [Interior] 

Someone next to me in the line asks someone else for the date!  I want to giggle as I’m reminded that today is Friday 24^th of Esfand in the Persian calendar, 5 days left to the Persian new-year, 5 days to the beginning of spring!

They call my name. Ah! Thank all the mighty computers. I am now officially a voter! I’m so proud when I get the paper and what’s next? … they ask for my finger print…

I’m left handed and usually use my left hand automatically. I have to grab my hand bag in my left hand and keep reminding myself …use right index finger …use right index finger …

 5 minutes later I have a sticky blue index finger that has left a tiny blue mark on my head scarf as I was tucking in my hair. And I’m looking for a seat to write a list of 30 reformist candidates. The few that were not announced disqualified and barred.

As I’m writing my form, thoughts sink in…

If my candidates were disqualified, am I not qualified for voting too? What if the things others say are true… what if my vote really doesn’t count? What if those who are getting in for the parliament are already chosen?

Am I really free to choose when my choice has been limited like this? Is it true that if voting really made a change they would ban it? (Now where did I read that?)

Am I choosing the right people? Am I under pressure to vote?

Isn’t it a bit too late to be thinking about this?

Naah … I am proud that I am voting! My vote WILL make a difference …it SHOULD make a difference.

Man – ok here is your pen and your form. Write!

Woman – alright! Give me a minute.

She adjusted her Chador and put her hand bag down.

*

I stopped writing and sat straight listening to the man dictate and the women fill her form. He is reading the list of fundamentalist candidates for her. I look at her from the corner of my eye.

She doesn’t look like she really knows what’s going on. She doesn’t sound like she knows any of these people as she stops and ask him to repeat a few of the names again.

I fill the rest of my form with my mind in an absolute blank. I feel useless. Now I know that my vote isn’t worth anything.

Tehran -20 minutes later- outside the polling station(back in the car) [exterior]

I take a look in the mirror.

Have you ever wanted to strangle someone with your own hands, because of their utter stupidity?

* The photo is not related to this topic, as I borrowed it from Kamangir’s blog at this page. But the story is true, it did happen to me yesterday!

Last night I talked with Lu about a friend’s comment on our “to be history” post… we ended up having another long discussion about the nature of death …   

S: read the comment… I’m reading it now so far it sounds interesting

Lu: lllol… that response… well… Good for him… I kind of envy the guy… is that weird?

S: blissful

Lu: I know…

S: you know what, I once saw a documentary …about near death experience. They said that … this famous light at the end of the tunnel is a very ordinary result of last neurons dying as they send the last signals to brain and that …when one is nearly dead…the hormones secretions from brain causes a trance like situ like being on LSD

Lu: ohhh… yeah… it’s the hmmm… last burst of acetyl choline in the synapses before the active potential is stopped being maintained 

S: could that be the heaven our friend has felt?

Lu: hmmmm… maybe… maybe… who knows?

 S: before this I used the NDE as a sign for there being another life. When I watched that …I went “damn!!!” I almost felt embarrassed

Lu: another thought…have you ever just woke up after some really elaborate dreams?

S: yes

Lu: ok… ok… have you ever felt this… its early morning… maybe 4… And you are woken by something… something… something random and you immediately go back to sleep and then, you have these elaborate dreams… long ones… entire scenarios are played out… you know… really long ones and then, you wake up again… only to find its been just 15 minutes since you woke up last… ever happened?

S: yes, happens a lot to me. Usually because I’m a restless sleeper

Lu: well… my thought is… if when we dream, we lose track of time… that is, we have no sense of time… maybe that is what death is… we lose track of time the time taken between us losing consciousness and our brain activity stopping… maybe, that, is our eternity

S: I don’t get it… sleeping? dreaming??

Lu: don’t tag it

S: but brain is active when we are sleep…when we die brain just decomposes…it physically stops being

Lu: yeah… we are not dead until our brain is…

 S: exactly… so death is not time travel

Lu: yes… agreed… but wait there’s a brief time between our heart stopping…and our brain stopping all activity…am talking bout this time. If we in fact lose all our sense of time when we are not conscious… well, can’t this interval be construed as our individual eternity??

S: hmmm

Lu: you know… for apparently, for an outsider, few minutes, time does not matter to us

S: I think that might explain the NED but not eternity…you are right though what do we know but then there is an end for it eventually just as is for our dreams

Lu: no… Not eternity, the metaphysical concept… no…. no… No… Am just using that word… we might never know… we might never be conscious of that end

S: hmm… true

Lu: our dreams end coz we wake up… who is gonna wake us here??

S: and then we are done without even knowing…like a candle going out very slowly

Lu: noo… candle not going out slowly… a perpetual motion machine… or at least, an apparent one. If what we see and feel is our reality then that, is our eternity coz we have no sense of time then

S: so difficult to understand

[So we changed the subject…I was at the time of our conversation, very busy painting eggs for the Persian new-year "Nouruz"(which is only a couple of weeks away) ]

 Lu: … what are u doing?

S: working on my eggs

Lu: llllol… that makes u sound like a desperate mother Salma

S: LOL…the mother goose?

Lu: yup

S: well they had better not hatch …I spent a hell of a lot of time painting them