For the first year since I can remember, I questioned the purpose of the festivities beyond its material benefits(more extensive than you would think).
I mean most of us rather use the term "Persian New Year" to evoke the grandiose imagery of a long lost people to overshadow the crap hole into which our country is right now. Civil uprising, pollution, radical Islam, destitution of women's rights, malnutrition and illiteracy in the rural areas and to top it all a legitimate threat of becoming the next target of a war on terror.
Then I think of my uncle back in Cali with his 150k pool who wont give in to buying a coffee machine just because he doesn't want to waste money when he can filtrate coffee manually.
My cousin who "hates" her parents because she didn't get the car she wanted.
And here I am literately trapped between two worlds of opposite cultures trying to adapt or get conquered.
Cursed by the pride my grandfather forced into me, toppled by MTV telling me to give in to my impulses for cash&hoes.
A tradition of new year, my father randomly opens me the book of Hafez, Iranien poet whose lines are used as prophetic message for doubts and worries.
"Seek that from idols, O knowing heart,
Said the one whose insights, his knowledge crowned.
My heart, like a compass, goes round and round,
I'm lost in that circle, with foot firmly on the ground."
Said the one whose insights, his knowledge crowned.
My heart, like a compass, goes round and round,
I'm lost in that circle, with foot firmly on the ground."
Again forced back into status quo.
