Day 550.

*drops mic*




Find me soon at http://mahfaminthemorning.wordpress.com/
Lotsa old posts to read here, in case you want to browse my brain in the meantime. Feel free. (Feel free!) Thank you. I love you.

Day 549.

Big things.

Day 548.

I am thisclose to shaving my head, getting a new tattoo, and shutting this thing down all random like before planning for a new way to publish my brainbarf online.

Day 547.

SO MANY THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AHHHHHH

Day 546.

A monster lives in the folds of the curtain that is drawn between the real and the imaginary. A monster is more often than not, misunderstood. A monster is wounded in ways you couldn't possibly imagine.

A monster has parents. A monster eats and a monster shits, and a monster probably laughs and cries. A monster wants things, like lemon bars and hugs, and maybe romance and family, too.

Day 545.

Want to write but don't want to feel my emotions so I'm not and I'm not.

Day 544.

People have to tell themselves all sorts of stories in order to survive.

Day 543.

Day 542.

Day 541.

I look greasy & scared! Today, I met the new love of my life, Zora. More to say soon, but so exhausted from a very full day.

Day 540.

Yesterday's photo.

Day 539.

Thank you.

That's what it says on my wrist in the picture to the left here. "Thank you." I thought today about getting it tattooed there, as I really want to cultivate this prayer, this constant gratitude. I want it there when things are delightful and when they are full of pain. I want to have gratitude for every experience as it teaches me more and more about the ways of the world and the ways of us humans and the inner workings of this precious and wonderful being named  Mahfam, she: the visage of the moon, the color of the light of the moon. Moon-face, my soft light casting a pool for you to dance in or run away from into the shadows or simply use as a stage to act out your relationships with your demons or your ghosts or your beloveds, toward me (but always actually toward you.) This moonlight thanks you; for whatever you bring, for whoever you are. I thank you.

***

I had an outburst on the street today. I was walking my somatics practitioner's dog, and, as happens when I am out for a stroll in just about any neighborhood, I was greeting most of the people I encountered with a simple hello. Three men were working on a car. I greeted one of them, ignored the one under the vehicle, then greeted the third. He said, "Hello there, beautiful." Maybe I am overly sensitive about this word. Maybe you didn't hear his tone, so you don't know how disgusting it sounded.

Day 538.

Day 537.

Day 536.

What if I just let it look like this all the time?

Day 535.

Tired and wept out and no product in my hair and danced out and probably a little dehydrated and off to do more more more so maybe all of these relationships can help take care of me and it's time for a run-on, apparently.

Day 534.

Poverty is stressful.

Day 533.

"What are you going to do with the rest of your night?" asked my eight-months-pregnant friend.

"Go home. Blog. Finish writing my fifth poem about her." I rolled around on the yoga ball.

***

Later: "Do you have Reality Bites on DVD?"

Day 532.

Day 531.

How is it that after all these years of taking care of myself, and being alone, I am just barely now feeling like I am learning how to be on my own?

One of the many shared stories of the displaced: If only this world would notice how great I am, I am sure it would find a place for me.

Day 530.

Day 529.

Gratuitous ponytail shot.

Day 528.

Thunderstorms and interruptions and old, sad men, and all the old ghosts.

Day 527.

Feeling really grateful for all of the different roles all of the different people in my life play.

Day 526.

yessssssssssssssssssssss

Day 525.

I don't remember what it's like to feel healthy and whole and not have to worry about meeting my basic needs. Staggering just how many of us face this.

Don't really feel well enough to write more. Going to try to rest up before I leave for my trip tomorrow.

Day 524.

So many poems, all of them elsewhere. So many poems to write and so many poems to read.

I wish I could be a rich girl and have time to read and write poems all day.

Day 523.

I miss you. Are you reading this? I think you might be. I think you might check this regularly. You never mentioned it, not once, but I do believe you are a bit of an internet lurker.

I'm tired of missing you. I wish you missed me back. I wish you would call to say you miss me back. 

It's so hard to not turn the story of us into more proof that humans, and in particular, humans like us, are too sad and broken to sustainably connect. It's so hard not to make it into a story about how I should never reach out, reach for what I want, tell the truth, be free in the ways I am trying to convince myself I deserve to be . . . how I should never do that. Because it means an end to things. And it means I never get to have what I want (even if the "having" looks different than I thought or hoped it would.)

Day 522.

It's just one of those, "What next?" days.

Day 521.

Day 520.

Walk the dog. Do jo kata. Scrub the tub. Clean the stovetop. Bathe thyself lovingly. Make gangster-ass delicious, healthy lunch. Go to work. Be unstoppable.

Day 519.

So this is what it feels like to be chronically ill.

Up until about a year and a half ago, I got sick once a year. Rarely, twice. Usually it would be an ass-kicker of a cold or flu, and after a few days of hell, I would be back on my feet. Starting about a year or a year and a half ago, I started to get sick more frequently. Way more frequently. It soon became once a month. And for the past few weeks, I have been inexplicably and pretty much constantly exhausted. As of a few days ago, I have not one but two ear infections.

Day 518.

Two severe ear infections.

Day 517.

Still sick. Still pretending I'm not. Ugh.

Day 516.

Eardrums blocked and hurting. This illness disconcerting. Everything breaking, too much time
To lie around
And obsess about inconsistencies,
Desire,
And this deteriorating body,
Fingernails digging into, clinging to the improbable possibilities
Of regeneration, procreation,
Newness.

Day 515.

Sick again. Always sick. Can't escape the nagging feeling that something big is wrong.

Day 514.

Day 513.

Day 512.

Day 511.

Day 510.

Day 509.

Sometimes the sheer amount of shit and people and attachments that I know I need to let go of is so absolutely terrifying that I want to crawl into my bed and close my eyes and not come out for so long that the next time I do, the world is guaranteed to be drastically different.

Being with change, as it happens, slowly or suddenly or however it feels like doing its thing that day, is so excruciating sometimes.

Day 508.

Off to celebrate the last bit of the high homo holidays.

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 506.

Day 505.

This is the first photo I have ever posted in which I am not looking directly at you.

It is the first day of summer and I am bleeding something fierce. I am in a lot of pain. Cramps, yes. But they are a physical manifestation of all the other stuff. Sometimes I think that's what they are, in general. For all women/people assigned female at birth/people with vaginas. A reminder, once a month, that the world is a hard place for you to be born into, a hard place for you to live in. And if there's even some little bit of pain from the assaults you have surely experienced daily just because of who you are that you are not letting yourself feel, here's a reminder. Feel it. Feel that pain.

Day 504.

No time to write because of all the editing.

Day 503.

Today's public sobbing happened like this:

I am leaving Berkeley Bowl with a shopping cart full of groceries and become annoyed to see a taxi parked behind my truck. I maneuver around it and am loading my purchases when the driver comes out of the cab and asks for my help in translating between him and his passenger. (How did he read me as Iranian? Even with his broken English, he has to have lived here in Berkeley for long enough to have seen a shitload of us, because unless it's a delighted white person telling me how much they love every Iranian they've ever met, most folks usually call me something like, "That Mexican girl with the funny name.") 

Day 502.

Day 501.

Today's stories brought to you by: exhaustion, and the overwhelming guilt brought on as a result of asking for help and allowing myself to be vulnerable.

1) no one is ever going to commit to me
2) no one is going to care about me if I'm not there every single time they need something
3) I am going to have this job forever
4) nobody sees that I am valuable
5) I'm going to die before I leave any kind of mark on the world.

You know. Just a little light Father's Day thinking for ya.