Mother drives and I watch the road. I watch the man who bikes on the sidewalk, the sun that fades away, the little town houses, the purple-pink sky. I belong to these pieces of life, these particles and atoms and molecules that make up my days. I wonder if anyone is living the American dream right at this moment, right now where the sun beams and makes you feel like the most beautiful thing in the world. I belong here where I’ve learned to make sense out of things that were once unbeknownst to me. What was once a picture, a beautiful mystery, an unknown haven, is now America. It is the fifty stars. It is blue, white and red, the colors of my utopia. It all makes sense now. Everything makes perfect sense. In this imperfect utopia, everything is comprehensible, somehow, in some odd way, it’s possible to derive meaning out of the ordinary.
I look at mother. She is smiling. I look at the wide road ahead of me and then back at her. She too has made sense out of it. She too is living her dream, a dream long abandoned.
We are dreamers, me and mother. We will always dream…

Pop. Pop. Pop.
I sit in the back row of the bus, popping my gum. A man who’s dutifully reading his paper gives me a look. I disregard it and pop my gum even louder than before. In between each pop, I think of the road ahead of me. It’s rush hour and there are red lights and accidents and loud sirens…I become lonely again. The sweet taste of my bubble gum becomes unbearable but I continue chewing.
I pop it one last time and the paper man shakes his head in dismay, without looking up. I have the urge to annoy him but I decide against it.
The bus comes to a stop. I get out and no one pays attention as I blow bubbles, carelessly popping them.

In a moment of time, we found ourselves alone, parted from the rest of the crowd, the crowd of happy drinkers and boat owners. The Potomac River became our night guard and the rest was, quite simply, forgotten.
I was watching the American flag that danced with the wind. It was a beautiful dance, a dance with no steps, no rules or routines. I wished I could dance with the wind. Just me and the warm Western wind.
The water is too mesmerizing after sunset. And here where I am, the possibilities are so limitless that you can possess anything, even the picturesque night with the moon’s reflection.
I possessed that moment of peace, selfishly, greedily for my own sake. I held on to it and now I’m laying it out on a page. Yet I am failing to relive it, to recreate that sensation, that sense of pure liberation. I am failing.

After the Persian concert we drove to Georgetown. The roads became like those of Tehran. I imagined Tehran in the night. America became my beloved Iran and I…
The clubs were packed; a long line of people were waiting to get in. S and I were dancing in the back of the car. We were hungry. We parked the car somewhere near M street and walked to a small, Middle Eastern Gyro place. Unsure about where we wanted to eat, we took the Gyros and stood on M street near an Arab restaurant where live music played. R and I started belly dancing on the sidewalk.
We finally ate by a Subway restaurant. As we chewed our delicious meal, a guy who was sitting behind the window came outside towards us. “Where’d you guys get the Gyros?” We told him. Right before he left I added, “It’s really good.” “Really?” he asked. “yeah”.
The way we walked, and behaved, one could have easily thought we were drunk. But we weren’t. We were ourselves. I almost fell, trying to walk on the bumpy streets with heels. I managed however, to reach the car safely. Men glared at me the whole night and I was fine with that.
The car was beginning to smell like cigarettes. We all smelled like it, from our heads to our toes. I talked and rambled the whole ride, acting like the child I was. I told them, “hey guys, I’m a cigarette, you wanna smoke me?”
We had a good laugh. Lots of good laughs. On nights like these, you have to forget the world around you. You have to loosen up and have a good time and just be in the moment. The moments are too many to count and I, I will recount these moments of pure insanity and exhilaration as best as I can, and I will retell them…for the pure purpose of amusement.
-The End

It was a night of dancing and smokes filling the air and men and boys.
I became a cigarette again but I danced through it this time. A woman stepped on my shoe but she apologized, sincerely. The club was packed with Persians and Middle Easters and a few whites. The guys were having a good time, putting quite a bit of effort into their mimicked moves, huffing and puffing their disgustingly attractive cigarettes that almost made me choke. The women were…well they were themselves or rather replicas of themselves. Exotic, pitch black eyes, mascara, lipstick, high up-dos, leggings, hair bands, high heels, the usual. It’s superficial beauty when you wear all that make up. But make up is a routine that we have fallen for passionately, almost desperately to the point of not being able to go a day without it. But so what? Looking hot, beautiful, nothing wrong with that. Just be yourself. I will put myself in the same category of overdone eyeliner and mascara.
To be continued…due to my extreme fatigue.

I miss writing. I am incomplete these days. I am a fragment, an unfinished sentence. I am everything that I don’t want to be.
Last year he told us to write about childhood memories that we had long abandoned. We were asked to recall those vague memories and fill in the blanks. He wanted us to reflect and analyze and interpret.
No one is telling me to do anything these days. No one is asking me to tell my story or share a poem. No one asks and I am not finding any stories. It seems as though I’ve told everything.
Give me something to write about. Give me a prompt. Ask me a question and I’ll answer it. I don’t like feeling incomplete. I have to write.

I was walking down Manchester Street, listening to a song, minding my own business, enjoying the breeze. I was then approached by two young women on bikes. I hit the pause button on my iPod when I noticed one of them stopping. I thought maybe she wanted to ask for directions.
They were not lost, nor were they going to ask for directions. They were missionaries, Christian missionaries on the road to serving god. I was taken aback, but I soon became amused. I decided not to be rude so I told them I believed in God but wasn’t religious. One of the girls said religion really helped her deal with life. The other said religion might not be important to you right now, but later it will do you good. I was then handed a card with a picture of a big, luminous church on the front.
The back of the card asked a series of impelling questions:
What is the purpose of life?
What is the true nature of God?
Can families be together forever?
Where do we go after this life?
-The Church of Jesus Christ
I took the card, smiled, and walked away. Did I really care to know where I would go after this life? Did I really know the true nature of the God that I’ve believed in all my life? Nah…
But I did find it interesting that even in the 21st century, people, young or old, still travel to convert sinners into citizens of god. I suppose they think they have some sort of duty. But what about freedom of choice? I mean this is America right? I can choose…can’t I?
I appreciated the nice gestures of the two young missionaries. I even kept the card, but only to write this post. I’m living in the moment for now…where I will end up after this life, I guess only God would know.

I did the laundry at 9 p.m. A full basket of dirty clothes was midway between the living room and my parents’ bedroom. “Do it tomorrow,” maman said. But I didn’t listen. I carried the basket into the empty Laundromat, opened the window so I could feel the wind, emptied the basket, separating the whites and darks. After the washing machine began to turn, I stood by the window. There was a tiny star to my far left. If I believed in wishes, I would have made one.
I had hoped to empty my head, clear my thoughts, cleanse them perhaps. I don’t know if I succeeded.
I closed the window with effort before I left the laundry room. I was still restless and dissatisfied with the world, with the fact that I couldn’t fly away, disappear into the pure black night, the night that held all that I wanted…

I’m in an elevator, barefoot, holding five shopping bags, a big purse, a lunch bag, along with a backpack. My hair is a mess of curls and looks wet; we worked out in the morning. I’m wearing the black leggings I bought last week and a long, green shirt I borrowed from my sister. My eyeliner is smeared, leaving a black shadow underneath my lids. The mascara sill remains.
No more details. You get the picture.
So I’m in the elevator, tired and worn out. A man asks which floor and I say five please. He presses five. Before he gets off at level three, he remarks, “it’s kind of cold, the floor”, looking at my bare feet. I smile at the friendly stranger and say, “I don’t care. My shoes were killing me.” He seems satisfied by this answer and looks at me once more before wishing me a good day.
“Fifth floor,” the recorded machine says.
I get off and stagger to my apartment. My toes are swollen and red. How many times am I going to make the same mistake? How many times do I have to remind myself that pretty shoes hurt?

It rained today and I’m choosing the word gloomy to describe it. But the aftermath of this rain has been surprisingly…good. I’m dancing to a Persian song, the window is halfway open and there is a fresh, spring-like smell.
Donya dige mesle to nadare…the world has no one like you, he sings.
I was telling Nura earlier that I wasn’t feeling too up. I was quite devoid of motivation and thought everything was pointless. The rain was pouring lightly, hitting my lashes. The campus looked dead; the usual crowd was gone. The smokers still smoked, exhaling into the clean air, one hand holding the cigarette, the other a cup of coffee. I’m still amazed by this. By the fact that so many are addicted. Or maybe we are all addicts in one way or another.
I’m leaving the window open. The world is mine, isn’t it?