The Song of Sisyphus

...feeling, now, that the trauma of immigration may have erased the memories i developed prior to the age of six. there are none before canada. i've never said this aloud. there are four or five images.. snapshots.. locations frozen in stiff black and white. and i'm not sure, still, whether the details are real or whether i've dreamt them--filled them in with other people's memories.

...

my mother's cousins passed through recently and told her a family story--a ghetto, an escape in the night, this cousin's father a witness to the deaths. one canadian memory confirmed, now, as real, with a mixture of relief and deep regret. my grandfather told me about this, although it had blurred over time and joined other half-memories. even my father knew--but my mother didn't; or did, once, and willingly forgot..

identity crisis

i've only recently begun to consider how crippled i am by the need/desire to be helpful.

i love being this; i love doing it; i get anxiety if i don't, because thinking about other people's anxiety makes me shaky and depressed.

if i were to stop it, though, to just feel like a friend or an intelligent, interesting person--not a helper--well.. there's a very real fear of having nothing else to offer.....

powerful address to the UN Security Council by Hagai El-Ad, director of B'Tselem:

The UN Security Council has more than just power: you have a moral responsibility – and a real opportunity – to act with a sense of urgency, before we reach the symbolic date of June 2017 and the second half of that first century begins, to send to the world, to Israelis and to Palestinians, a clear message, backed by international action: Israel cannot have it both ways. You cannot occupy a people for fifty years and call yourself a democracy. You cannot violate the rights of millions and claim international perks justified by hollow words about commitment to shared human rights values.

Israel is a sovereign country established through international legitimacy granted through a historic decision by this very institution in 1947. I am a citizen of that country. It is my homeland. For most of my country’s existence, the world has allowed it to occupy another people. I have lived my entire life, every single day of it, with that reality. Millions of Israelis and Palestinians know no other reality. We need your help. Fifty years of “temporary” occupation are too long for even a single person on this planet to accept such a contradiction in terms. The rights of Palestinians must be realized; the occupation must end; the UN Security Council must act; and the time is now.

last night was the first time i spoke both russian and persian in my dreams; the first time i felt the dizziness of being drunk after a shot of, possibly, tequila; the very first time i dreamt that something terrible happened to my mother--that she was kidnapped, possibly by terrorists... the first time i spent what felt like hours in total hysteria worrying about how frightened she must feel

i remembered, as i got out of the water, all of the beautiful wrist watches given to me by my grandmother that ended up water-filled and broken because in my excitement to swim i always forgot to take them off

it's with regret that this came to me, and heaviness.. a darkened spot on an otherwise perfect moment

i did not intend to post any personal anything on facebook; i intended to leave all that for my blog. but look what's happened.. for an over-sharer like me, the more outlets there are the more they'll be used, the more you'll all know, the sooner everyone can get sick of me, the sooner i'll lose all my friends and relations... 

i both hate myself and continue to be fascinated by what can only be described as exhibitionism