July 1998

Ahimsa sends poetry and pictures in the mail from Oakland, while inside I continue to feel a certain shift, a moving, a burning. There's rarely a lull as I fight to be direct with people, honest. There are so many disappointing moments too. I am easily let down when others aren't as forthcoming as myself. Disappointed, really, when the arrow's not pointed at me.
Been living externally. It seems that my car and summer have stolen me from reflections and cogitations on the bus. Anna, Josh, and I drive up Mt. Tamalpais to see the sunset over the ocean. The drama and beauty of our vista, the silence up there is always an emotional experience.
One night on Josh's patio, when Anna and I had stolen away from others, she said to me, "I know you've struggled hard to get here. I know that, Emil. You've come a long way from that foreign little child. And you're a goldmine, a keeper."
I hugged her. The ironic part is that I have never complained to Anna and Josh about my struggles in life.
Intuitive souls.
My insecurities are mine to conquer on my own! Not through friends, family, and certainly not through lovers. My weaknesses I keep to myself because they are mine to nurture, to understand, and to overcome. Privately. Inwardly. And to give them away in conversation or drunken confessions feels superficial.
Anna, Josh, and I played Frisbee today. The sun was generous and warm. I marvel at our friendship. We are good to one another. No one's the scoundrel racing to undermine the other. We talk behind each other's back only with love and complements! Never a harsh, unjust remark.
Life on a glass scale continues- perpetually balancing between recklessness and composure.
These hot, hot days, and I am hot too. Dizzy with sexuality, orgasms that send me into phrases and poetry.
Still I choose to live with a protective border between myself and those I adore but cannot, cannot for the life of me trust.
I'm living on an excess of cigarettes and alcohol again until this bores me and I retreat into solitary musings and writing.
I seek courage, not cruelty. Reason, not tyranny.
I am always teetering on the portentous edge of melancholy. But how divine my ups are, how optimistic! When I lose myself, when I allow my wits to sink too deeply in serious waters, I become all too despondent and life attains a grayness, a darker hue that oppresses my otherwise good humor. But to be alive! What blessings we live with and take for granted!
Josh invited me over to his home in San Rafael. We sipped beers out of the bottle as we grilled a simple dinner in the yard. Josh's rosebushes looked perfect in the fading light. We heard music coming from the house next door- The Ali Akbar School Of Music. We talked about jazz. And about love, romance, and the people we both know. Josh admitted that I have contributed to his enlightenment and deeper understanding of homosexuality. No, he was never a bigot, but since he has met me homosexuality has become less of an oddity, less distant, and more human, closer.
The roses in twilight, the sweet smell of the grill, music in the air, friendship, and beers… It seems that what I failed to convey to my beloved parents has become a sort of a personal mission in my life- to make homosexuality less of an oddity, and paint it a likeable face…
Josh has endearing outbursts, sudden realizations, gusto. He speaks with passion, loudly, rapidly. He has a pureness about him that is out of this time and world. He is a friend I am thrilled to have made.
Anna says I could be a model… if I worked out. Talk about an underhanded complement!
It is loneliness and an unshakeable sense of restlessness that drive me into the yard where I smoke in the yellow light of a lone bulb. Like the moths that are fooled and crash and clink against the glass, I too am summoned. And the warmth of my dreams, the heat of my myriad desires is so intense that I am burned with joy. All my wishes are reawakened by the night, which spreads the buxom legs of beauty like a lover who seeks warmth, the grip, palpitating darkness.
Life explodes nonchalantly all about me.
In me.
I smoke in secret. There is a certain angelic image I hope to maintain with Jackie and Mom-Suzie.
One evening Anna and I went up to Mt. Tam for sunset. We parked the car by the side of the road where a middle-aged couple was enjoying the warm breeze. When we got out the woman spoke, "A beautiful car. Beautiful boy. Beautiful girl. Beautiful weather."
Sitting on the very edge of the world I feel I have come to know, overlooking the ocean that stretches, stretches, stretches as far as my heart can beat, as long as I can breathe, as deeply as I can feel, I look at Anna and know that we share an honesty that is complete, a concern with truth and beauty, and that our friendship will outlast disappointment.
I crave sex. I lie naked on my bed and dream of hands upon my languid body. Skin. Contact. Sex. Sex. Sex!
Drove to Modesto to see friends. At The Brave Bull Gary came around the bar and gave me a huge hug. Casey the owner recognized me, nodded, and offered only a half smile. He never smiles fully, but wears a countenance that is as gruff as his Scottish accent.
On stage a drag queen quipped with the audience and noticed us- Kelly and Stephanie at either side of me. She stopped in her tracks and said flirtatiously, playfully, "Well, well, well, look at those three!" The entire bar turned to look at us- Stephanie the former child beauty queen, Kelly the blond bombshell. We merely smiled at everyone and sheepishly waved. After her number the drag queen was to adopt us and buy us a round of drinks.
Every day is an art.
This my infinite space.
My personal garden.
Trapdoor to awesome love preamble.
Each new journal entry is like a prayer I repeat as if in repetition there lies redemption and hope.
In Modesto Stephanie had asked if I am still writing, then said wistfully, "I wish I could write like that." Her words still echo and I think: I wish I could write like that too.
A cool carefree wind blows through the yard where I write, but misses me. I feel the urgency to slip back into the story, to relate everything back to the written art, breathe poetry and symbols again, not oxygen.
Assyrian guests have just left. The smell of perfume still lingers over the table that was laden with fruit, chocolates, nuts, and tea. I thought: It is sunflower seeds that have kept Assyrians united all these years. Nostalgic stories were exchanged tonight of how fecund Iran's soil was that made the fresh herbs there in turn more pungent and flavorful. As I listened to the elders I could almost smell the very air of the Assyrian villages we would visit in the summertime to see relatives that had opted not to move to the cities. I felt the aromatic breeze of my childhood in Iran on my skin, and walked on dream dust trails.
They talked also of hints of the coming revolution in the seventies, which they had chosen to ignore, unwilling to accept that the life they knew was about to change drastically. The young who were home from schooling abroad brought ominous news of impending wars and uprisings, but the adults had too much faith in the Shah, trusted God, and could not imagine things changing for the worse. They assumed that the young were just excitable, went about their lives as usual, until conditions began to visibly deteriorate. What seemed unfathomable became the new regime.
How, I wonder, did some of us come to decide to leave Iran while those very dear to us remained behind?
We Assyrians set off for new lives in Europe, Australia, and America…
I guess I understand more and more when Assyrians aren't as frivolous and insouciant as Americans, or as confident. We have lost so much, and when something wasn't violently taken from us we were forced to give it up willingly. Should it take so many sacrifices just to be Assyrian?
Tonight I feel the division again, that eternal split of identities inside my body. The Assyrian and the American meet in a space that shifts as the forming continents did billions of years ago. Earthquakes! Emotional tremors that keep me in dreams that like clay and lava set and harden, then shatter and crumble to allow for new experiences, a new language, a different home, adopting, adapting.
I refuse to choose one culture over the other. I will not limit myself to one devotion that might imprison me to many prejudices. I will remain universal at heart because I am Assyrian and am not limited to one nationality. I choose the tradition of identification, sympathetic and emotional, universal acclamation. I am a citizen of hope. Here there are no borders, no documents, no wars and prejudices.
I am two, I am three, I am just as simultaneous as life is a constant cohabitation of infinite joy and infinite sorrow.
This I swear by on this cool residential night in the hills that cradle Marin.