Again, I misfired a post yesterday. It’s about the halfway point that we are approaching, in this most tumultuous decade. So here’s the link again, to the finished version of the rough draft I emailed to all you last night. Also I could fit more silly pictures in the site version. Please disregard the unfinished email version.
I promise not to do that again, and to release all the research on the trans movement I’ve been delaying until people like Dr. Phil finally started saying what my reading of the available studies is telling me. I’ve been dealing with a lot, but I can write again. I’ve got to stay well ahead of the carefully famous if I am to offer value to this space. More is coming soon.
I promised myself not to eat sugar this year. Fortunately, being iranian, culturally Iranian that is, I get a second New Year. This year that’s March 19th, because for thousands of years the Persian New Year has been the exact moment of the Spring Equinox, and this year it falls next Tuesday (11:06 p.m.) and I’ll be celebrating my resolutions/compensating for their delay in followthru by issuing one last round of free 90-day paid subscriptions.
(I’m american culturally as well, because american culture allows and even encourages becoming part of an amalgam, if one is willing to melt. America’s culture is the hip hop, the Jeet Kune Do, the four-cheese fondue of cultures. I rather be stronger as part of an alloy of many metals, each changed forever by adopting the same set of principles, than stronger temporarily, as an ally.)
(Too corny? Corny and punny? Cut the thread, cut the thread…)
I wish you a happy new year in advance (eid pishapish mobarak), to give you time to build your three fires and consider what you’ll leave behind in their cleansing light. Candles set inside on an uncarpeted floor are a permissible firelighting for the ritual. I’m not sure yet about cigars. Jump or step over the three fires in succession, wait your next turn, and take three turns.
That’s nine times you can knock a fire over or light yourself. The danger of the past is in allowing it to keep a hold of you when you should transcend it and leave it behind.
I’m American, with American citizenship, currently living in America, and I’m allowed to light things on fire in a yard, jump over them, and sing songs in a different language, even in an enemy language.
My favorite thing about Americans, even more than the expectation we can be heroes and ought to try to be, is that Americans think such individualistic or cultural practices are beautiful, good even. Americans will shake their head at the overly pierced pink-haired teenager walking half-clothed down the street, but they will allow her, approve of her will to self-expression, and consider it good in the long run she is so free.
Let’s keep these in mind as we bitch about the problems our media masters want us distracted by. Other places direct and re-direct you by force and cultural punishments, mostly to engender a desire to breed inside a marriage and to be willing to fight for their governments. This place rarely compels you to fight for it, focusing instead on giving you reasons to.
In Eide Bastani Mobarak