It was Will who noticed the striking image: row upon row of stones in varying shades of grey/black, stern and hard against the sunlight and the heat.

Since flowers are not a Jewish tradition, little towers of rock perched precariously on those hard edges, casting long shadows over the newly turned soil...

Hello, 3:00 a.m. reader.
I do hope you're overseas.

When I was young, only the fat books mattered. In bookstores, I gravitated towards the thickest volumes, the highest page count--understandable, I think, after a childhood spent with Dickens, Dumas, and "collected works" (Conan Doyle, London, Poe). 

Now, I find myself attracted to the most elegant slivers--the books between books--with their needle-sharp eloquence, and their pointed prose, and their quick destruction.

f's phrase of the month--in response to my suspicions that the "gatecrashing messages" from Putin's annual Q&A were the result of somebody's failure to screen:

That poor somebody is going to accidentally fall from somewhere or get food poisoning or contract some sort of patriotic disease...

مَرْحَباً

Hello, lone reader in Lebanon.

on serendipity

i don't care much for Gibran, but this beauty has echoed throughout my life since high school:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
- Gibran Khalil Gibran, "On Joy and Sorrow," The Prophet (1923)

while this is by no means a unique concept, i was pleased to notice an interesting similarity (and inversion) in Blake:

Under every grief and pine 
Runs a joy with silken twine 
- William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence" (1863)

it appeared quite by chance.

... how lovely, then, to discover that parallels have, indeed, been drawn between the two.

... i've had it up to here with my waterfall of screw-ups today

i accidentally killed a spider this morning, and the nausea didn't wear off until i got to work. honestly, even thinking about it now makes me shake...

i can't even imagine
i can't even imagine

عزیزانم، در کنار همیم

.... all the terrible news i couldn't bring myself to write about--Kabul, Manchester, London--and now this... now Tehran.

it's been eight hours since i started writing, and the words are still out of reach.. floating somewhere in a swamp of grief and worry

Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind. 

-- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

the first time i became aware of socio-economic difference (in grade six, when i realized that i went to a private school and that fees for new immigrants were subsidized by the Jewish community--but that my rich classmates, judging by their blank faces, had never known such need)

the first (and only time) i've been called the equivalent of "a dirty Jew" (by a Russian on ICQ messenger--for having declined, i think, to send a photo)

the time i became hyper-aware of my own pretense (the day of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, which meant nothing to me, but which, i felt, should have--and which earned a solemn entry in my diary)

the first time i disappointed​ an adult who was not one of my parents (my high school English/literature teacher, who couldn't control her face when her model student told her she was going to university for computer science)

the time i became aware of having been bullied (in adulthood, while wondering about my discomfort regarding a certain classmate)

the time i felt the needle's sting (not more than a few months ago, upon learning that my sister had no memory of something that had always stood out to me--judging by her reaction at the time--as a moment of great selfishness on my part and of great disappointment on hers)

همراه شو عزیز

With best wishes

With best wishes and deep regrets that I won't be there with you tomorrow

تنها نمان به در

yesterday, as the day before, i saw the same older man, in the same wide-brimmed hat, at the same intersection, ogle a gorgeous blonde.

... can somebody's laugh have an accent?

ergg... nothing i've eaten this morning has worked out.

how to maintain your identity in the move from non-profit publishing to corporate law:

remain totally anal about punctuation following greetings (Hello, Mark, | Mark--Please see below.). while this may make you look arrogant/snooty/overly academic, so be it. perhaps it's useful to learn what it is to be disliked.

"The time has come," the Walrus said....

....to increase the font size on my monitor.

oy.

you know what, you asshole?? you and your totally english name have no idea what it means for someone to get your name wrong. i have been any number of combinations (Tina, Gina, Mina, Nina, Eye-na); i've even been Hello Rasitsan, if you can believe it. there's no point even talking about what i've heard on the iranian side.

i can be easily, easily forgiven for this mistake. and if you could be even the tiniest bit as gracious as i am in accepting the millions of errors every immigrant encounters every day, we'd all be in a better place.

strange sightings

first, it was a former oxford employee crossing the street--someone who, just days ago, had browsed the company's careers page and saw my position up and wondered

then, it was a man i used to see ages ago on various richmond hill buses--someone whose enormous eyes always struck me as looking startled... scared... whose sad, strange features had remained with me all this time, it seems

then--dare i say it--a face from elementary school? imagined, perhaps, given the somewhat surreal context, but there was a strange familiarity in that curly blonde hair, those dimples. how heartbreaking to see him now in those old, baggy clothes.. possibly homeless.. possibly broke

i consider it a real and serious accomplishment--the fact that i didn't burst into tears at my desk after reading a lovely thank-you note for the flowers i sent to my former manager...

i could never... i could never have seen myself outside oxford. but somehow i've done it. somehow i'm here.

the last few weeks have been such a struggle, such a frenzied mix of chaos, exhaustion, heartache, and just... the superhuman effort to keep myself together for the sake of both these jobs--and, more importantly, everyone around me.

on the scale of life's hardships, it was not supposed to be a trauma.