Modern Girl

I'm nocturnal.
I hate that I have to be quiet at night when I wish I could be bouncing around to Sleater-Kinney & writing music.
I'm coming to the realization that all I was missing in my life was laughter. I had literally forgotten how to laugh. No matter how funny I thought something was, my laughs would be forced. An awkward and contrived replication of instinct. Portlandia fixed my problem. Now I laugh a lot.

I am the product of my own imagination. If I want to be happy all I have to do is close my eyes and imagine sunny days and Fred Armisen. I can keep Tegan and Sara on repeat for hours on end and remember waiting in line for 10 hours to see a screening of their new DVD Get Along. Sara Quin and her beautiful smile ten feet away from me.

I know better than anyone that life is just a collection, a flimsy string, of memories. Who you are is subjective upon which of those memories you choose to bring to the surface.

There is nothing I can't do. I'm writing music that is blowing me away. I'm preparing for a life on stage, a life of story telling. There is nothing that can get me down now that I feel this high.

No one can let you down until you give them the power to do so. And if someone turns out to be the big bad wolf, why give them that much credit? Enough credit to get you down.

May you have an infinite amount of tomorrows. May the beautiful ones give you stomach aches from laughing too much. May the dark ones lead you to create beauty out of the awfulness of it all.

I wish nothing but internal sunshine for every one.

The sun will be up soon, thats my cue to nod off into a Donnie Darko dreamland.

See you tomorrow with the moon.

Yaz

Turpentine

I chose to wait. I decided that waiting for the ultimate final destination was better than moving on to mediocrity. So when I see that they're lives are moving on without me, why do I feel saddened? I don't regret my decision 95% of the time, but the other 5% are just an agonizing and circuitous slideshow of all the reasons I have to melt my sword down and start hammering it into a better shape. I am walking ambivalence, and the people I love pay the price more than I do sometimes. It's so selfish to want anything in a world that makes it impossible to achieve a single goal without feeling the flesh of an innocent person's face against the sole of your boot. It isn't fair that instead of using this fervent realization of my mistakes to fix the things I broke, I just sleep on the couch and stare at the ceiling, praying for rain to wash it all away (or at least give me a miserable enough head cold to wipe the slate clean). I don't want to be Meredith Grey, I really wish I wasn't Meredith Grey. Excuses pave the way through my maze of hallucinatory, straight-faced humor. It's this twisted gut reaction to lean towards the "i'm fine" approach that keeps me believing in crossed fingers and lucky pennies. There is nothing worse than straddling the line between harboring a delusional, innocent hope alongside an insatiable hunger for the ability to hope. There is nothing worse than trying to be yourself and getting tangled in your personalities. There is nothing worse than knowing that you're on display for an empty gallery. My chest is open, exposing my beating heart, and even the crickets are too busy to chirp away tonight. At least for tonight, it's quiet.

copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

Thanksgiving In Retrospect

I’m thankful for this tunnel of light I just pulled up in front of. Amidst this horrible, threshing feeling in my heart, I found that I’m not broken. I still have hope. I still have a necklace of optimism laced around my neck. For the first time in my life, I can feel that my growing up is more than ostensible. I realized that this thing, this experience that I thought would break me once and for all, hasn’t made me bitter. Not only am I alive and breathing, but I have no doubt in my mind that I will get up and walk away from this fire unscathed. For the first time, I’ve realized that nothing can take you down but you. I might be lost, I might be forever caught up in my delusions, but I’m not broken. The next time you touch me, I will be heavier, fuller, and lighter all at the same time. It’s a tragic and beautiful thing to realize how much power you really have. So today, that’s what I’m thinking about. I’m thankful for every single thing I have, and every single thing I don’t, because I am me, and I am not broken.

Copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

The Moon On My Ceiling

I was reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, and I came across a quote that quite literally knocked the wind out of me. Kundera goes on to explain how in all Latin-derived languages, the word compassion is built from a prefix-suffix combination that means, “from suffering”. This makes the whole business of being compassionate seem condescending, like you are lowering yourself to the level of someone less fortunate. It’s a word that has nothing to do with love or empathy. But in all other languages, German for example, the word compassion is created by a prefix-suffix combination that means “from feeling”. It’s the ultimate emotion because it means you are feeling exactly what the other is feeling. You are tapping into their unique frequency as if their nerves were attached directly to you. It’s an honorable and perhaps the most powerful sentiment in the human emotional spectrum. I don’t want to be the former. What use is it to be understood if you’re just a project? If you don’t want to understand me because you love me or feel connected to me in a profound way, then what’s the point? Compassion shouldn’t be a talent; it shouldn’t be an ability that you spread around the world as if you’re doing a good deed. It should be a natural instinct, when in the presence of someone who has grown into your heart like a rooted tree, to feel exactly what they feel. You can be as complicated as you want, but that shouldn’t be a test of clairvoyance for someone who comes along. If they should see right through you like an x-ray machine, it doesn’t mean they have achieved some honorable level of greatness. It can only be rendered significant if they can feel their heel throb when you step on a tack, or taste salt on their cheeks when you cry because you couldn’t make your rent payment again. I don’t care about being understood, it’s irrelevant in most cases. I just want an invisible piece of string to connect my heart to yours. But asking that is equivalent to me asking you to shrink the moon and place it on my ceiling so I can fall asleep fearlessly at night. I believe in magic, but I think you can only create it for yourself. The rest of the world will have to find their own way to get to where they’re going.

Copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I hate that feeling where everything you are begins to slip through your fingers like sand. You build yourself up, not realizing that the foundation is shaky, and at the slightest touch the whole thing crumbles. A single breath from the lips of change and you wake up one morning having shed your skin in the night. How nice would it be to be able to trust yourself? to trust in your instincts and convictions as if they were permanent? But there's always something that we want that our present selves can't reach out and grab, so as our desires change so do we. But what are we supposed to lean on then? If you think about it, the only constant thing is the past, but if you lean on the past then your not living at all. We're left hopping from one space to the next as they shift and shake and throw us tumbling off the edge only to land, not so gracefully, into the arms of the next person who claims to "understand". Then they catch onto you and wheel around your head until your too dizzy to notice them slipping out the door with a suitcase full of your ideas and plans.

I'm just wondering why. Why am I willing to participate in the game even though I clearly understand there's no way to win? And why am I willing to lose everything for someone who is as permanent as dirt on a car windshield. One revelatory rain storm and they're gone.

I'm just wondering why. Why am I so in love with idea that I'm not one thing, but everything and everything I want to be? Or maybe everything you wish I was.

I'm just wondering why being sad can be so wonderful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMG6W-kPk6g
Drop-Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.
Sylvia Plath

"People Are Strange That's Why We're Strangers"

I have mentally regressed in age. I don't know what happened. Have I always been this sentimental? Where's my brick wall, I don't want to be made of glass. I don't want to be made of glass. It's funny what happens to a person once they've completely assimilated themselves into loneliness. It becomes more than a lifestyle, or a state of mind, or an emotion. I don't know how I let it get this far. I know how you see me. I know you think you know things about me that I don't know about myself, that you have x-ray vision. I hope to God you do. Because that's the only hope I have of getting out of this mess I've made.

It's kind of funny...but I get lonely too sometimes.

To Remember

I predicted that they would be able to read in between the lines, that I had enabled them somehow to do so. That's what I selfishly expected of them. Yet, in the meantime, I had been living with the people I created. Ostensibly I waited impatiently in solitude, yet I was leaning on the shoulders of my imaginary spectrum of personalities. I will admit I have built so many walls over the past few years, but if one were to look closely enough they would see that the walls themselves were made of transparent and malleable material, like plastic. Taking into account the actions of those around me, whom I do not believe have blind eyes, I must conclude that this facade has become a perverse reality. Against my better judgement, I feed and nourish this malicious demon and its basket of fallacies. I stand back and taste salt on my cheeks as I watch it grow and envelope each facet of my being with its shadow. How can I stand in full view of this horror? I call myself a martyr, yet cannot identify the cause to which I have bound myself to. It is well known that loneliness will drive any man or woman mad, but it seems so candid. It seems too conscious of a decent to make the trek without an anesthetic. I am wrought with a dissociative sadness that inundates itself into to every new cell that groans it's way into my pores. I drive long distances and think this through, philosophical skepticism paired with ordinary skepticism ,and no conclusion is derived. I park in the garage, get out of the car, and think "fuck, I'm alone".

I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.
Carson McCullers

copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011