Day 507.

On Pride

I'm proud, this year, of Hanifeh, the young, Shia Muslim, Afghani woman whom I've never met, with the Sunni husband of whom her family does not approve and the three year old daughter named Dayana, and who lives on the 10th floor of my grandmother's apartment building in Toronto, and who has begun to help my Mamani bathe, as she has trouble stepping in and out of the tub on her own.

Day 411.

Vernal Equinox. 2012.

The family collects, around a new table, sitting on new, soft, powder blue chairs, a pre-purchase image of which was emailed to me, months ago, just after my sister moved into her new apartment. Her new apartment - that's a heavy thing. It's in a shiny monster of an LA gated building called "The Palazzo" and you have to drive to a gate with your car and have the old man who most likely hates his job and hates your stupid face for needing things from him call the tenant you are visiting to make sure you are allowed. And in our case, he had to give us a code, because the complex is so enormous that we had to enter from a different gate than the one we were in front of, before we found a spot labeled "guest," parked, and followed a straight couple comprised of a muscle-y dude wearing an Ed Hardy shirt and a girl with bleached hair, a nose job, a tit job, a half shirt, and $400 jeans into the elevator and up to the penthouse floor.