I just realized that what i am going through is like coming down from a high. it is that feeling of loss, when you are standing in a doorway, struck by the warm yellow glow on the other side, but just as you are about to walk through, the door slams and shuts. I am left there, by hand still gripping the door knob. now i must turn around and go back to my life, knowing that i have seen other things. i am weighted by the necessity of integrating what i have seen into my normal life. that is always the most difficult part. how can i go back into my regular life, doing the same thing i was doing just 45 days ago, but bring in the new pieces? i don’t think the way i have been doing it has been working. it is as if i have been hiding my treasures. i have a little box inside where i have put everything. it is my secret. that is really how it has been my whole life here in america. i have never learned how to integrate these two worlds. it’s always one or the other. and right now more than ever, it makes me want to hole up and retreat. only peeking my head out when i absolutely have to, sometimes for air and sun. i feel like that is the only way i can keep my secret pristine and uncontaminated. i am not interested in melting.
8/07/08
it has been more than a week that i have been back in America but it feels like a lifetime. my trip to Iran sometimes feels like a dream. the kind of dream that you feel like you never really woke up from. the kind of dream that you felt was so real that you could have sworn it really happened, yet it still carries a distance and unfamiliarity that makes you realize that it is not from this world. that is how i feel. and because of it, my days are like that morning after such a dream, hazy and ungrounded. i am so distant from my life here. sometimes not really engaged in it. sometimes it feels like the scenery on a set, like my life here is made out of cardboard, held together by tape. every time i move from place to place, the cardboard scene changes. there are very few permanent cast members. this does not provide me with the stability that i seek. ah yes, that is what i miss-the stability, the security, the feeling of home.
POMEGRANATES AND DREAMS 