WATER

Over a year ago, I got my third tattoo. It's the Chinese symbol for water. Sitting in Miami Ink, my goal was altering my first tat to match my second, not get a THIRD! I was waiting reading the Dao Te Ching and the following words jumped out at me:

Muddy water, let stand, becomes clear

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.

That is the thing to which I aspire most, to be soft and strong, to overcome without fighting. And it is the thing I am worst at. Why? I find myself thinking about that a lot. Why do the corners of my world feel so rigid and sharp? Why am I the rock, when I so wish to be the water?

Life, as it is wont to do, forced the answer upon me, again and again, until my world was so void of anything delicate that discomfort became the compass by which I found myself. And finally, I understand. Water flows, or sits, it warms or wears, but it is, even in the state of stagnancy, full of motion. Motion is change. A rock resists such change, and will always be forced to surrender to it. Water is change. In my attempt to hold on, I am the rock. When I see only what I have and forget what I want I am the rock. Every time I force motion to stand still because I fear loss of what I know I am the rock. To be the water I must be quiet, and move with the things around me. As relationships bend beneath the weight of life standing still, and the world I am just starting to get used to refuses to stay large enough, I remember something I had long forgotten. I never liked this area. It never liked me. I always wanted to move away. And there was always some reason to be the rock. To stand still and support everything around me as it wore me away. What I hear now muffled in the chaos of sorting things out, compartmentalizing, fighting what is, trying to go backward, is the murmur of the water. Moving, changing, and being. So, it was decided, before I even knew to want it. When school is done, I will leave. West Palm Beach Florida, horse country, ocean country. Where those things I love the most already are and can be together. Flow, forward, change, don't fight. And somehow, life makes sense again.

SILENCE

As I sit here, in this once crazy house, I feel the silence settle. It's not sad anymore, just different. The snore of Snoopy sleeping, like a little engine. Titus running in his dreams. Morrigan waiting by Caitlin's bedroom door, only a few days left girl. She'll be back. A teenager in the house, now that's a breath of fresh air! And I realize how strange life really is. All the things we plan with such diligence, if only a fraction of them happen, it's a miracle. And usually, almost always, even those events are not exactly as we expected. The pinnacles once reached never seem to have an adequate view. So what is the point exactly? I spent all those years telling my mother that I'd get to graduate school eventually, ignoring the worry in her tone, the verdant, deep well of hope balled tightly behind her gaze, all invested in the one thing she thought I needed, to further my education. Those were her plans. To watch me become Atossa Shafaie, PhD. Now that I'm on my way, she's not here. And how arrogant I was to envision all the talks we would have about my professors, my classes, my short stories, and the novels yet to come. I look around me, and I see a world of blue prints, a network of expectations constantly rerouted by life. Get married, not divorced. Have children, not adopt. Don't have children, not a baby. Be a career woman, not a housewife, or a housewife, not a career woman. Get a divorce, not a mistress. Have a family, not a big empty house. Plan for retirement, not cancer. And with every schedule not reached, the weights add, fear triples, and truth becomes more remote. The truth, the one finite goal we all become too terrified to face. Happiness. Unfettered, unconditional, impenetrable happiness. Who, I wonder, has the courage to meet that goal? I'd love to meet that person. Not the one that plays happy, but the one who truly lives it, to the core. THAT is the person that will die well, no matter how, no matter where, no matter when. And that will have been a life well lived.

DIFFERENT PROFILE, SAME FACE

Bethlehem, PA. Not a place I would choose to spend a weekend, or a day, or let's face it, even an hour. But sometimes life makes the choices for you, and you remember some things long forgotten. My horse trainer, now friend, and I set out on a muggy Friday morning to enter no man's land. For those of you who take offense at Bethlem, PA wearing that label, relax. I'm not talking Bethlehem, I'm referring to the desert that Joseph and Mary had to travel to get there! The horse event we were traveling to was in Reverie somewhere about 20-30 minutes from the city center of Bethlehem. And our modern day North Star was fairly unforgiving with the accurate directions "recalculating" quite a bit before we finally arrived.

This is a land where cows are the best form of lawn mower. This is the place of guys like Mark, who will walk and talk and talk and talk with you while you unpack your horse's stuff. This is the place of my childhood, where bad memories are worse, and good ones never seem to stay long enough. It is here, not in the halls of George Mason University, where I expect the "go home" attitude. This is the place that should have no room for my curly out of control ethnic hair, my no matter how hard I try to be Ann Taylor more Lucky Brand look. People don't wear big silver jewelry here, they don't have brown skin. This is where I joke with Jess, a gorgeous tall white blond, that I will follow ten steps behind her and call her "masser." And in this exact place is where a lesson learned reminds me never to float too long on the current of preconception, because how does that make me any different from the woman who tells me to go back where I came from?

Reverie, PA, where family is so important that every single hotel room is booked solid for high-school graduation ceremonies. Reverie, PA, where although ordering two sandwiches takes forty five minutes from the local deli, they say "good morning", and "hello." And why does it take so long? Because life here flows at a pace all it's own. The lovely ladies behind the counter have no urgent place to be, and they can discuss Beth's picnic, or John's truck with a delight most of us have forgotten. This is a town, an all American town, the heart of it all, and not once was I treated badly. Not once was I told "if you don't like it take it home." Now, I wasn't wearing a chador, I wasn't darker than brown, I didn't have an accent, but just for once, I don't want to wonder about those things, or ponder how they would have changed my experience. Just once, I am going to enjoy my random "good mornings" and "hellos."

I try to think back to when I was too young to know any better, and remember who stood beside me. I try to be that person now. And I appreciate so much more what it took to give more than you get, to dig in when everything points to running. If I don't want to live in a world of islands, I have to build my own bridges.

Entering the world of the blog

Well, I finally did it, I'm now a blogger. I have no idea why, or what I'm going to say, or who is going to want to read it, but if my professor does it, then I suppose I should give it a try?

I suppose the real reason I started to do this was that I feel I need a venue to get certain things said, regardless of who is listening, if anyone....and what prompted this desire to enter this space is an incident in the halls of George Mason University after my Arab Women Writer's class. What a great class this is! I've never actually had a course that prompted students to stay after it is over and continue talking! On just such a day, a friend of mine made the following comment about a book we were reading called Girls of Riyadh:

"The only other thing that I didn't really like was that the only character in the book with a critique of Riyadh society was half American."

Now, as she was saying this, another student had come into the room, a middle aged American woman. Apparently she took issue with the comment my friend made. The professor, my other friends and I stepped out into the hall while the student that made the comment gathered her things. She took a while to come out, and when she did, she related the following story....

You have no idea what just happened! That woman told me that my remarks were inappropriate and when I explained to her that I was making a specific comment about a specific character in a specific book she told me that 'someone had to defend the poor women over there' and that if I didn't like it I should take it home." (Now admittedly, I'm ad libbing here but this is the gist of it.)

As she is relaying this story, the woman walks out of the classroom to go to the bathroom. The "take it home" comment strikes a nerve with me. Since I moved into this country at the age of 7 I've been hearing that phrase and defending myself against it. So my reaction was a bit visceral. I told the woman that her comments were inappropriate and unnecessary, to which she answered "My comments or hers?" "Yours, we are all free to be here, and freedom of speech is something this country is great for, she has every right to say what she did." "Take it home," she replied, "If you don't like it". At this point, I started getting loud. "We are home, you take it home! Where the hell did you come from? You don't look American Indian to me!" I wish I had said Native, but I didn't. My friends sort of pushed me out the door and she went into the bathroom, but I"m sure we'll all see her again on Monday, at which point, I just don't even think I will say anything to her ignorance.

So, here's what I'm wondering...where is all this anger coming from? Why did this random woman feel the need to involve herself in a conversation that didn't involve her? Why did she feel she had to defend "her" country against a woman who is also American, and wasn't making a statement about America, but rather a statement about an author from the Middle East writing about the middle east and a decision of that author to give the only voice of criticism to a character that was half american...i.e. why does it have to be an American voice that critiques, why can't it be a Saudi Voice. Yeah, that's really anti-America. Definitely worthy of harassing someone by trying to make them feel smaller, as if they don't belong, when they have every right to be standing exactly where you are. Ignorant, but why? Why the rage? Which brings me to my own rage. Why? Why did I feel this absolute need to speak up to a woman who has no power over me, whose opinion means nothing to me, and whose life will never intersect with mine in any real way?

Where is this all coming from? This is the question whose answer will solve the ridiculousness of this world. And for my part, I have no idea where to begin to answer it.