facebook love

the post:

I won't ever understand why those with the biggest hearts always end up being treated like sh*t.

and the comment:

Pardon the philosophising, but I think the people with the biggest hearts are more sensitive to ill treatment, not necessarily more prone to being treated negatively. It hurts but it is also a gentle reminder to be cautious about one’s own wellbeing and not just others. This sensitivity is also only possible because of the strength of those with the biggest hearts to know when to look out for others and how everything they do can have a positive or negative effect on others. Even if it means feeling hurt a few more times than others, you can be reasonably sure that you’ve also lifted people up from darkness more than those with not quite so big hearts as yours. Chin up lovely.

I was neither the poster or the commenter, but I can relate to the poster and want to give the commenter the biggest high five and/or hug. I hope you feel the same.

this is beyond lame.

These are not my own words, however I carry the same sentiments to a tee:

"I need to get something off my chest that I’ve been holding in so as not to offend peoples delicate liberal sensitivities. Illicit drug use is really lame. I mean, could you think of something lamer to do with your life? Seriously. You only get one shot and you never know when you are going to die. To the drugged out flakes, festival pill poppers and shufflers of Sydney - (wo)man up for fucks sake and do something real to help society with your limited time on this Earth instead of participating in and funding a disgusting industry that causes nothing but destruction in the world. You think you are “free” and having “experiences” (because its all about “experiences” when you are a hipster flake) but you are just buying into a lifestyle which ultimately leaves you terribly limited. When I have a stable asset base, full use of my mental faculties, a range of healthy habits and the financial and physical freedom to do whatever I want in 10 years, we will see who is “free”. 

Drug users always say to me, “you’re so judgemental, you are not accepting of who I am, it’s not like I am a junkie, it’s not a big deal”. I beg to differ. Accepting someone into your life is about being attracted to the qualities of a persons soul - kindness, courage, generosity, compassion, respect etc. It’s not about accepting someone’s bad habits and encouraging them. In fact, I think that sort of indulgence and acquiescence is negligent and the opposite of love. What sort of friend supports their friends in taking toxic substances that have the potential to serious harm or kill them just so they can have a surge of energy (or sedation) and escape the world for a few short hours? I like to think I’m a better friend than that. 

I bet people will look at this article and say “see everyone’s doing it, it should be decriminalised”. To those people I’d like to say, go down to any rehab clinic in Sydney and tell me Ice should be easier to access. Dipshits." 

kthxbye.

S.Z.

oh soul

‎"Oh soul,

you worry too much.

You have seen your own strength.

You have seen your own beauty.

You have seen your golden wings.

Of anything less,

why do you worry?

You are in truth

the soul, of the soul, of the soul.”

― Rumi

connect the silence

connected by more than words can define,
connected by ties between our divine,
blessed by more than 5 lucky dimes,
blessed by your presence,
without being by my side,
I keep you at a distance,
loving you inside.

leave you

leave you.

I never understood the saying “love you and leave you” until I gathered the courage to finally expunge you from the realm that existed only in my head… the only remnant of you that prevailed beyond time and space and reason and rhyme.

In reality, you haven’t been in my life for much longer than you were ever in it, but the heart has different plans, and different levels of attachment. The strings that fasten my heart to your fictitious memory were just as tangled as my memory of you was warped.

Unlike the commonly applied stigma of a ‘first love’, I did love you unconditionally, and without prejudice. And although I would un-do everything that I had with you for the sake of my own state of mind, that isn’t an option, neither is my continued love for you. The choice I do have is to leave you, to disentangle myself from your memory, to detach my association to your entity and destroy the fabricated image that has haunted my subconscious since the day you walked away.

You already know you were loved, now consider yourself left.


[24/01/12]

once a Danske time

Prompted by a recent request to give a presentation on my experiences in Denmark, I started sifting through my photos and things I had written whilst I was living there. So, please allow me this moment to reminisce. Written over the span of 5 months, below are just some snippets of my experience. (My apologies for the poor use of tense, this is essentially a cut/paste job. The use of paragraphs is to assist in outlining the progression of time).

In a country filled with tall, fair, fashion conscious descendants of Vikings, where the men’s shoes make more sound than their female counterparts, the bicycle is an extension to feet, beer is drunk more by girls and every room has coat racks and heating, it is needless to say that I feel a little out of place. Now, things like a bicycle are easy to adjust to, but other than that, Danish culture is slightly out of reach…

The Danish are so very proud to call themselves Danish. They even celebrate their birthdays by draping everything in their national flag! Their pride also manifests itself in their stand for independence – an example of this would be the continued use of the Danish Kroner even though they have been long-term members of the EU..

In my neighbourhood, Nørrebro, you can’t walk more than a block without coming across a shawarma/kabab stand or an Arab supermarket – try to imagine my excitement when I could by all the Middle Eastern ingredients that have become so normal to find in Australia (and so abnormal in the regular Danish supermarkets) and suddenly I had an ethnic kitchen! I had no choice but to start recreating my mother’s amazing cooking, or at least make my feeble attempts…

When I started shopping for a bicycle I was a little lost, what did I know of a city bike? I had only ever owned a mountain bike and rode around the quiet streets of my neighbourhood or on bike tracks. I was accompanied by my favourite little German when we stepped into our first bicycle shop, only to be greeted by the owner, “Irooni hastin?” (“are you Iranian?”). Not only did we leave the shop with a great deal on a bicycle for myself, one for my friend’s use free of charge for the rest of her visit, but I had found myself a friend that I could swing by for chai whenever I felt like it...

The summer fought on with pleasant weather throughout September but everyone I spoke to was certain to emphasise that, “we’ve been lucky” and “it won’t last”. My denial of the graduation of the year, resulting in colder weather, was as strong as ever, and my choice of clothes as a result started getting more peculiar looks (I still don’t own a pair of winter boots)...

And now in November the layers are adding on, the gloves have become a necessity rather than an accessory, particularly whilst cycling. The days are growing so short to the point that if I sleep in I’m likely to miss a majority of the daylight. I say daylight as opposed to sunlight given the near-constant overcast sky. The rain/drizzle, although painstakingly annoying, has become a daily expectation. And although my umbrella is always on hand, riding a bicycle doesn’t allow the easy access to umbrella ‘protection’, not to mention the safety risk of juggling an umbrella through (bicycle) traffic, which in itself is hazardous...

It’s already December, I don’t know where time disappeared. I have been in and out of Copenhagen so many times and now the friends I have made here will soon start leaving to spend Christmas at their respective homes. Many of them wont return in the new year. And so I must prepare to say goodbyes. I haven’t had to deal with goodbyes in while. And these will be different to the ‘see you later’s that occupied my departure from Australia in July. These are more permanent, much longer, if not forever, goodbyes – the worst kind...

I’m packing up my room, my cute little studio that has been home these past months. The snow has kept up, blizzard-like conditions at times. Copenhagen received more snow this winter than in the past ten. As my room becomes more bare, reality is setting in. I’m heading back home after nearly nine months of being in a state of travel-frenzy. I crave routine more than anything. (I’m going to regret saying that)

 

out of love, not revelry or fear.

A dear friend shared this story with me and although I couldn't find the exact reference I felt impelled to share it. The first is the original in Farsi, followed by a rough translation into English. :)

عارفی را دیدند مشعلى و جام آب در دست پرسیدند کجا میروی؟

گفت:میروم با این آتش بهشت را بسوزانم و بااین آب جهنم راخاموش کنم, تا 

مردم خدا را فقط بخاطر عشق به او بپرستند، نه بخاطر عیاشی در بهشت

!وترس ازجهنم

They saw an Aref (an enlightened person) carrying a flame and a chalice of water. They asked him, "where art thou heading to?"

He replied, "I am indeed on my way to burn away the heaven with this fire and extinguish the fire of the hell with this water, so that people worship God out of love and not for revelry in the heaven and the fear of hell."


If anyone knows/finds out where this is from, I would be very grateful!

embrace the new moment

we eat pomegranates differently

misplaced love breeds misplaced hate, 

at the end of the day they're one and the same,

when fascination subsides, reality overrides, 

is it too late to change how we operate?

you squeezed your way in, then rolled away, 

leaving a trail of lost moments and memory replays,

I downplay your importance, to match your nonchalance, 

aware that I could elevate you to heaven with no regrets,

but its the wrong place to invest, and it's no time to confess, 

you leave me a mess because you can't see that you're blessed

clap me in iron, leave me in chains, 

lock me in solitary, I'd still feel the same

I miss you most days, it's always this way, 

but one moment of sentiment breeds ten of regret

we seem to be going down different paths, 

but I want to believe that this is because

you know where you are going and I’m still lost.

"Just because we don't talk doesn't mean I don't think about you. 

I'm just trying to distance myself because I know I can't have you."**

words and their worth i have come to doubt,

unfinished half-truths leaving questions unasked,

the lines between saying more than I mean,

words no longer used to portray what is real

I poured out my heart and all I heard

was the echo of your laugh

we ate pomegranates differently,

but your indifference let us fall apart

** Wiz Khalifa

more difficulties, more perfection.

“The more difficulties one sees in the world the more perfect one becomes. The more you plough and dig the ground the more fertile it becomes. The more you cut the branches of a tree the higher and stronger it grows. The more you put the gold in the fire the purer it becomes. The more you sharpen the steel by grinding the better it cuts. Therefore, the more sorrows one sees the more perfect one becomes. That is why, in all times, the Prophets of God have had tribulations and difficulties to withstand. The more often the captain of a ship is in the tempest and difficult sailing the greater his knowledge becomes. Therefore I am happy that you have had great tribulations and difficulties. For this I am very happy — that you have had many sorrows. Strange it is that I love you and still I am happy that you have sorrows.”

—	Abdu'l-Baha - Star of the West, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 41.

You were so immense, you buried Pompeii

We must learn.

It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. 

- Letters to a young poet 

Rilke

“Break off my arms, and I will hold you
with my heart as if it were a hand;
strangle my heart, and my brain will still throb;
and should you set fire to my brain,
I still can carry you with my blood.”
                                                             - Rainer Maria Rilke

I realised

When my trust hung from the thin thread of justice
And the hearts of my lamps were smashed into tiny pieces all over town
And the childlike eyes of my love were blindfolded with the black kerchief of law
When blood was gushing forth from the anxious temples of my desire
When my life was nothing other than the ticking of the clock
I realised that I must love
That I must madly love.

This is an excerpt from the poem “Window” (1967) by Forough Farrokhzad, translated by Farzaneh Milani from the Persian.

New year, new requests.

A friend of mine posted this request on facebook and I felt impelled to share it:


Retirement request for the following words in 2012:
1. Epic 
Including its alliance with either of the following:
-Fail
-Win
(Or either of them, used on their own, as a noun.)
2. Legend and/or Legendary
Used to describe a person, or something, which is, let's face it, totally run of the mill.
3. Swag and/or Swagger
Say it and you don't have it
4. Boss
i.e. "like a boss"
This has now been rendered obsolete, as everyone has been branded to be "like a boss". Therefore, no one is.
5. Hipster
6. Random
7. Owned
In reference to someone getting put down or proven wrong.
8. Hater
I think we all know the contexts.

ps. Sydney NYE was quite fantastic..